Sunday View: The Best Weekend Opinion Reads, Curated Just For You

The Quint’s compilation of the best op-eds for your Sunday reading.

Nothing like a cup of coffee and your Sunday morning reads. (Photo: iStock)

Dear Yogiji, for UP’s Growth, be Bullish on Buffalo

S A Aiyer pens an open letter to Yogi Adityanath with a game plan for him to not only become a successful Chief Minister but also possibly secure the Prime Minister’s position: buffaloes. Writing for Times of India, Aiyer is quick to distinguish between cows, bulls and buffaloes and once he establishes the buffalo is indeed not holy and simultaneously vital to tUP’s economy, Aiyer has some thoughts. For instance, it would take only three years and a dispensable amount of money to eradicate the common foot and mouth diseases that plagues buffaloes in the state. Another great step would be to create conditions for high-quality and quantity abattoirs that export buffalo meat to foreign clients, instead of simply shutting all the illegal ones down.

Yogiji, if you want 10% economic growth that ensures your re-election, a vital initiative must be to quadruple UP’s buffalo exports. Then leather and dairy exports (and jobs) can quadruple too. Every municipality and district should, by law, have a slaughterhouse for supplying meat. Don’t just close illegal or polluting ones, create conditions for a boom industry. Outsource decrepit government abattoirs to top exporters, whose foreign clients will insist on pollution-free systems.

Out of my Mind: Forward to Nehru

Meghnad Desai wants to propose a “radical policy package”for the Mahagathbandhan (MGB) in The Indian Express. First, he proposes Sharad Yadav to lead it. Then, he suggests the MGB make a different economic policy from the BJP/NDA’s. If farmer suicides are the issue, more debt cancellation simply won’t work, per Desai. It’s a good thing he has some tangible ideas: the MGB could return all the PSU’s to the private sector, like in Nehru’s days. What’s better? The MGB could adopt Nehru’s skepticism about religion, which would be true and different secularism compared to the BJP’s controversial idea of it.

There can be more. Nehru’s scepticism about religion guaranteed genuine secularism. There were no communal riots throughout his tenure as Prime Minister, and 11,000 in the 30 years following. No gurus or swamis advised the Prime Minister, no astrologers darkened his doors, no ulema or bishops either. He could not push through the full version of Ambedkar’s Hindu code Bill but managed a substantial reform. Now in the light of the Supreme Court’s triple talaq decision, the MGB should promise Uniform Civil Code as its homage to Nehru and Dr Ambedkar. 

No Kissing the Supreme Court

Jayant Tripathi wants to celebrate as he writes about the SC’s judgement declaring the right to privacy as a fundamental right in The Indian Express. But he’s being cautious because as the saying goes: “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away”. Tripathi outlines how the court very clearly specified while making the landmark judgement that the State can now pass laws restricting the right to privacy in “permissible” limits, per the Constitution. He’s also keen to see how the court now acts on Section 377, but more than anything, he comes with a reminder that in India the right to life is the fragile one, with thousands of people dying of things like malnutrition on a daily basis– still.

In a judgment, liberally sprinkled with quotations from judgments from other countries, scholarly works on privacy, poetry, and other literary and non-literary works, one is reminded of the Bible – “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” Their Lordships have given us the right to privacy, but it remains to be seen what contours that this right will take, and the extent to which encroachment will be attempted and permitted.

Across the Aisle- India at 70: The Curse of Caste

“The annihilation of caste is nowhere in sight”, writes P Chidambaram in The Indian Express. His column this week is a basic introduction to India’s never ending fight to get rid of the caste system and why it hasn’t worked. He starts from the very basics: varna, jati, untouchability and then goes on to talk about how even leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Dayanand Saraswati have made “anti-individualistic” speeches that reinforced the varna hierarchy!

How and why the caste system has survived through the centuries is a puzzle. Why did the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, who had power and money, accept the Brahmin as their superior? Why was the guru invariably a Brahmin? Is it because humans crave an associational life, that caste became a convenient association that gave a measure of physical and social security? Thanks to education and urbanisation, caste may be eroding at the edges of Hindu society, but caste still sits at the core of Hindu society.

Up Ahead, Bigger Battles Loom Over Polygamy, Personal Laws

In The Times of India, Swapan Dasgupta ruminates about why the Triple Talaq verdict is a landmark one, and why it received such less flak in an increasingly polarised country. For one, he believes it’s because the judiciary took it upon itself to pass the verdict, and not let Narendra Modi get all the credit for it. Had the verdict been the minority judge’s decision– to strengthen the ban with parliamentary legislature– Dasgupta believes Triple Talaq would never have been abolished. Of course, that means India is moving toward more “judge-made laws”, eroding the power of the Parliament, but Dasgupta saves that fight for another day.

The real reason why scrapping triple talaq has drawn relatively less flak is because it was an apex court judgment. Had the court directed the government to sanctify the judgment with parliamentary legislation — the minority view of Chief Justice Khehar — the whole business would have become extremely cluttered. The very same parties that welcomed the apex court judgment would have developed second thoughts and been subjected to sustained pressure from Muslim orthodoxy. No doubt the BJP would have loved a battle that would have exposed the existential dilemmas of the ‘secular’ parties — Mamata at least is being honest in her espousal of old-fashioned vote bank politics — but the clash could well have been bitter and ugly, and even have spilled over to the streets.

It’s Time for New India to Give Talaq to Old, Prejudiced Bharat

Sagarika Ghose is as elated as the next person by the Supreme Court verdict declaring Triple Talaq unconstitutional; she says so in The Times of India. But she has some burning issues with this idea of a ‘new Bharat’ that has come along, complete with Muslim bashing, trolling women on social media and moral policing about what to dress and eat, and who to marry. What she wants to see from the government is an equal gusto about fixing gender injustice in Hinduism, along with blind faith and superstition in the country, in general.

The symbolic “victory” of  ending instant triple talaq cannot  be allowed to overwhelm the facts. For a society that turns a blind eye to the killing of girls before birth and to the shameful discarding of elderly women, a society that can’t recognise gender or caste injustice and even rationalises them, to talk obsessively of injustice to Muslim women is hardly sincere. While mosques are seen as a male-dominated space, don’t forget the battles women are fighting for equal temple rights, most notably in the case where two Hindu women have taken the Sabarimala priesthood to court.

Why Modi Should Pick Sushma Swaraj as new Haryana CM

Lend Prashant Jha an ear as he makes a very compelling case in Hindustan Times for why Sushma Swaraj should be made the new Chief Minister of Haryana– a state burning, as we speak, with the capability of “burning BJP with it”. One, she has the national stature and skill to handle the bureaucracy. Two, Narendra Modi will appear serious about tackling the issue by appointing a high-profile cabinet minister. Three, Swaraj stays away from caste and party politics which is what the state needs. And finally, four: by appointing Swaraj, BJP will come across as less of a patriarchal, misogynistic party. Jha reckons it’s time to send her back to South Block, where she started from.

The first is her equation with the PM. It is an open secret in Delhi before 2014 that Swaraj, close to L K Advani, was opposed to Modi’s elevation as the party’s PM face; that as the leader of the BJP in the Lok Sabha, she harboured her own ambitions; and that Modi was uncomfortable with her. But top sources - in the party and the government - have told HT that the Modi-Swaraj equation today is far smoother than is publicly believed. Swaraj has kept a low profile as minister, worked efficiently in key areas, not tried to steal the limelight, and reconciled to her role and the PM’s leadership. Modi has appreciated the shift in attitude, given her space and appreciated her work publicly. The clear hierarchy now means that the equations are more settled.

Fifth Column: Waking the Deaf

In her weekly column for The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh pens down her experience of speaking at JNU, on a topic no less than the perils of socialism. The issue has always been close to her heart as her previous columns would testify; she simply believes India could have and can do better if it does away with Nehruvian socialism. However, while she knew that leftists are a “humourless bunch”, what she didn’t expect was downright hostility and no space for debate.

After this I was allowed to make my case against socialism, but when it came to the audience’s turn to ask questions, it surprised me that the first two questions had nothing to do with anything I said. First, a gentleman rose to tell me politely that he read my column every week and did not agree with anything I said. I told him that he had every right to disagree but then he went into a short tirade about my going to Davos this year and being ‘gung-ho’ about it when even globalisation economists were gloomy. I reminded him that my talk had been about socialism and not globalisation and admitted that I have gone often to the World Economic Forum’s annual conference. I did not remember immediately what I wrote this year, but later when I checked, found that I had done a very gloomy piece about how Xi Jinping was the glittering star of the forum while India was almost absent.

Inside Track: Nitish’s Choice

To end your weekend reading on a cheery note, here’s Coomi Kapoor with her weekly report on the going ons in the hallowed halls of the Parliament in The Indian Express. Look out for Amit Shah standing up for Rahul Gandhi (!), Sharad Yadav being appointed the protector of India’s “composite culture” and unhappy MLAs in the Tamil Nadu government (still).

Amit Shah gave a dressing down to BJP cadres in Karnataka during his recent visit to the state, including snapping at former deputy chief minister R Ashoka. Shah felt the state BJP was taking it easy and not being proactive in campaigning against the Siddaramaiah government. He warned that party ticket allotments would be decided on the basis of organisational work. Ever since, aspirants for tickets have been scrambling to muster workers to take part in protest rallies. They have also hired a large numbers of photographers and video camerapersons in Bengaluru to ensure that there is documentary proof of their hard work.

From The Quint:

• Beyond ‘Love Charger’: How India’s Babas Seduce the Vulnerable
• Triple Talaq Verdict: Muslim Women Are Cheering – But So Is BJP
• What Right to Privacy Means to an LGBTQ Beef-Eating Dalit Muslim
• ‘We Are Not Just Kashmiri Pandits or Muslims, We Are a Family’
• In Midst of Doklam, Don’t Make the Mistake of Missing Out on BRICS