NEW DELHI: This article was written in response to a ghastly piece of propaganda perpetuated on the unsuspecting masses that can be read here, which for some reason riled me immensely.

It is probably not a coincidence that the business leader, Jerry Rao, is a guest professor at IIT-Bombay, my current school, and therefore it was even more shocking for me to be reading this from the venerable professor. Perhaps Mr. Rao should stick to business and quit pontificating on culture and politics and the nature of dharma.

I will quote the article verbatim and interject as and when the propaganda (plot?) thickens –“One of the traps that our new government has gotten ensnared in, is the excessive focus on changing individuals rather than on changing institutional structures. And of course, our vocal leftist nitwits who never protested when mediocre Communist fellow-travellers were routinely appointed to head Akademies and Historical Councils are suddenly very concerned about institutional integrity the moment their buddies are kicked out and replaced by persons with different ideological dispositions. “

The author makes the point that the new government should focus on changing institutional structures, rather than individuals. The author concedes the point that the current appointees are mediocre by justifying them with past mediocre Communist fellow-travellers. This is the classic “Mommy, he stole the candy too” defense.

“They never bother to admit that previous incumbents were not worth much either. They just focus on the qualities and qualifications of new appointees. They also have a field day about bizarre statements that these new individuals tend to make. The debate now turns to whether Mahabharata is history or whether the Rig Veda should be researched. No one cares to make the point that the Leftist sarkari historians of the previous regime in their description of India’s freedom Struggle (assuming there was a struggle and not a step-by-step voluntary disengagement by the British) have gone out of their way to exaggerate the mythical contributions of Communists, assorted radicals and one family, totally ignoring conservative elements, be they groups with religious affiliations or even groups like the Swarajists or the Justice Party (once known as the South Indian Liberal front!). If Mahabharata is a myth, trust me, the contributions of Communists to our national freedom Movement, are also very much in the realm of myth!”

Why do Govt. of India appointees to prominent cultural and historical bodies make bizarre statements? Oh wait, let’s ignore that niggling issue.

The general diatribe against Leftist sarkari historians ensues – without naming names or quoting facts. He actually goes on to question whether there was indeed a freedom struggle, implying that the British just handed India back to us voluntarily. The fact that as late as March 1947, Winston Churchill (a Conservative, like the self-confessed Indian conservative Mr. Jerry Rao) was making impassioned pleas in the British Parliament against granting independence to India should probably allow us to assume that there must have been some teeny-weeny freedom struggle. Maybe we should let the whole world decide if we actually had a freedom struggle or it was some sort of collective 30 year hallucination. If not, we would probably still owe India’s independence to another one of those leftist nitwits, that Labour Party PM Clement Attlee who in 2004, was voted as the greatest British Prime Minister of the 20th century. But hey, let’s discredit our freedom struggle, maybe it was all a piece of cake – right from Jallianwala to Quit India, because of course- the Congress Party was involved. They must have been inept and awful.

The point where I do agree with the author is the contention that the Communist Party’s involvement in the freedom struggle (stroll-in-the-park?) was negligible. You know how I know that he is right? You guessed it – from history books written by leftists like Sumit Sarkar and sarkaris like Bipin Chandra, as opposed to fairy tale collections that we will soon see under the new ICHR dispensation.

But let’s all slander without a care and paint everyone with the same colour – in the hues of our own ignorance.

“The real question is whether we need a Sahitya Akademi, a Lalit Kala Akademi, a Sangeet Natak Akademi and an Indian Council of Historical Research, all occupying valuable urban real estate in Delhi (sorry Dilli, sorry Indraprastha!). Panditji had an exaggerated notion of the importance of India. We were a poor country then. And our policies over the last 60 years have ensured that even as Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and China have prospered, we have successfully stayed poor.

Being poor did not prevent us from wasting taxpayers’ money with our leaders and diplomats strutting around in comical Non-Aligned Nation Summits along with now unsurprisingly forgotten “leaders” like Tito, Nasser, Nkrumah, Sukarno and so on. Similarly, we thought it a proper use of scarce resources to give jobs to a variety of pompous individuals as Members, Directors, Chairpersons and so on of completely pointless high sounding and apparently intellectual/artistic bodies.

At least Panditji ensured that these jobs went to people he knew. As a young country, we were willing to indulge our Prime Minister’s weakness for extending patronage to Allahabadis and so on. But it’s been more than 50 years since Panditji’s passing. In the intervening years, as Kumaramangalam, Nurul Hassan, Dhar, Haksar, Ray, Arjun Singh and other self-styled leftists insinuated themselves into the government, these bodies, as well as newly formed acronyms (e.g. JNU, IGNCA etc etc) became cozy, comfortable places where idiotic crypto-Communists could have a good time, attend international conferences, make absurd speeches and so on.”

The author identifies the “real question” as the legitimacy or necessity of institutions like Sahitya Akademi, a Sangeet Natak Akademi, a Lalit Kala Akademi and an Indian Council of Historical Research and then proceeds to ignore it and take potshots at Nehru, as is fashionable these days.

In an argument that has all the sophistication of a bogan/chimpanzee, the author first complains about expensive real estate being occupied by these bodies (after all, he heads an Affordable Housing firm) and then attacks Nehru for the following list of incoherently sequenced offences – inflated sense of India’s importance, not having solved India’s poverty while China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea got ahead, wasting money on meeting forgotten NAM leaders and appointing pompous people as heads of these unnecessary institutions.

Nehru’s legacy will be better defended by far more qualified historians and hence I would just point out that when India got independence in 1947, we had 250 million people in abject poverty, no industry, low agricultural productivity leading to recurring famines, communal tensions that had already resulted in partition, an illiterate population with no experience of democracy, a life expectancy of 32 years for males, a tiny elitist bureaucratic structure, no foreign diplomacy, very few institutes of higher education and research and other such accoutrements of two hundred years of colonialism. In the period from 1947-1991, we achieved a GDP growth rate of approximately 3.5%, established a functioning domestic industry, achieved self-sufficiency in food and milk, established world-class institutes of learning in India, laid the basis for long-term stable democratic governance through well-developed institutions (not devolving into dictatorships like our neighbours) and we achieved all this despite fighting 3 wars and without committing mass atrocities on our own people (China, Indonesia). As a matter of comparison, USA grew at less than 2% annually in the first 100 peaceful (more or less) years of its freedom from 1790-1900. I don’t think Nehru’s legacy needs any help and no amount of hand-wringing and manufacturing history is going to change facts.

To be sure, there has been deterioration and extreme corruption in many of these institutions over time and claims of ineffectiveness may indeed be true. But to question the validity of institutions just because people manning the helm are inept is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Our naïve Hindutvics also fall for another trap: the press Interview. And during these interviews, they almost invariably make reference to the historicity of the Rig Veda or the magnificence of the Mahabharata or the fantastic speed of the Pushpaka Vimana. Poor folks— they just do not know that they are providing grist for the old mill. People who believe in myths (Marx was right, is right and will always be right; Lenin was not a murderer; Stalin was not a mass murderer; Arafat was not a terrorist; Mao was a poet; Sanjay Gandhi deserved to have a national Park named after him; it is correct for all Indian airports, except one, to be named after Rajiv Gandhi) have an uncanny ability to make fun of people who believe in our myths. And our media has a field day complaining about the fact that the new government does not “respect” institutions, without bothering to mention that the earlier featherbedding with cronies was somehow not disrespectful.”

Yes, Communism was Bad. Mao, Lenin, Stalin were all mass murderers. So was Hitler. Arafat was a terrorist, but not as heinous a terrorist as Menachim Begin or Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu or any Israeli leader.(remember Shabra-Shatila,1982 ??) Marx was not always right. Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi did not deserve everything they got. Such is the world, unfortunately. Unfair. We got that. So what?

How is it that the author manages to reduce every question to the simple play on categories – socialist/leftists versus others/Hindutvics. Are all members of these cultural institutions socialists and leftists? What is exactly the point of saying that socialists cannot make any reasonable arguments since the fall of the Berlin Wall? I can make many reasonable arguments about how socialist/leftist principles are enshrined in the most developed Western societies, how healthcare and education are subsidized by the Scandinavian states and how they lead to better human outcomes, how the PDS works marvelously well in BJP-ruled Chattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Communist-ruled Kerela. Markets left to themselves can’t possibly take certain risks, some social functions must be undertaken by the government – isn’t that the heart of the leftist argument and isn’t it still valid? Wasn’t subsidizing the Big American Banks in 2009 socialism? What was the Capital Injection Program, if not outright socialism? Would the financial system, as we know it, survive if not for this leftist move?

And how exactly does this discussion add to our “real question” – which was identified to be the validity of our cultural institutions. Why is the author inflicting upon us the turbid peregrinations of his rambling mind?

“The solution is simple: Abolish these totally unnecessary institutions. Britain, USA and Switzerland do not have a Sahitya Akademi. They do have reasonably flourishing sahityas. And so many countries manage to have both sangeet and natak without the need for any abominable Akademi to grace these arts. And trust me, the best histories are being written in countries which do not have History Councils. The argument can be made that if so many leftists have for so many years lived off our taxes, is it not fair and just for some Hindutvics to feed from the same trough? My advice to Hindutvics is to fall back on their dharma. Just think about it: Is it dharmic to loot the hapless taxpayers of India? Is it not the case that the best literature, art, music and historical research (and for that matter cinema) flourish only in the absence of state and royal patronage? Redundant institutions must go. To appoint dharmic individuals to head these money-guzzling idiotic edifices represents an act of adharma in and of itself. I rest my case.”

Mr. Rao has a solution. He wants to abolish all these institutions. Why? Britain, USA and Switzerland do not have a Sahitya Akademi. Neither do they have abominable Sangeet and Natak Akademis.

Again, let me first point out the intellectual sophistication here. They don’t have something like this. They are doing just fine. So we should abolish our existing institution and ape them. All that stuff about local solutions to local problems is just balderdash.

This would have been a reasonably compelling argument, had it been even remotely true. Yes, they don’t call it Sahitya Akademis, Mr. Rao. Surprise Surprise!

Here are the facts –

1. Britain – It started funding the Arts in 1940s under the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and Arts. (CEMA) The first head of the CEMA was none other than John Maynard Keynes. Currently all artistic pursuits are funded by the Arts Council England.

2. USA -- The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the US Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Even Ronald Reagan supported the Endowment. (not another leftist nitwit??)

3. Switzerland -- Cultural promotion in Switzerland – like education – falls under the authority of the cantons and communes and has been anchored in the constitution since 2000.

At the end, Mr. Rao goes ahead and preaches dharmic behavior to the Hindutvics, recommending them to give up on this greedy lunge for power and comforts and shun these institutions. The whole exercise is futile since his primary argument is to abolish these dens of leftist thought.

Setting aside this foolish, factually incorrect drivel for a moment, if one were to reflect on the actual purpose of these institutions, one would agree with the assessment that they are largely ineffective in their original mandate. The need for such institutions is to preserve the memory, the tradition and the soul of Indian culture and arts.

However, the way out of this present morass is not defunding or abolishing but more potent government support and oversight. Greater transparency in selections, fixed tenures of members and fixed qualification norms for governing council members could be a start. Greater funding would also mean proper vetting of projects undertaken by the institutions.

What rankles me the most is the fact that otherwise distinguished leaders of industry, with illustrious credentials and education, can spew such venom – unbridled in its hateful, vengeful tenor and completely unmoored from any notion of truth.

Are ideological dispositions so strong as to lead to such illogical, irresponsible statements from the best of us? I hope not. There is a section of the youth which takes such words seriously. Quelle Horreur!

Perhaps an unbiased reading of the sarkari/leftist history books will do both the author and our current leaders a world of good. (#YoBadalsoMandela)

(Ashish got his Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science from IIT Madras. In his spare time, he imagines he will one day write something meaningful and moving. He swears by Noam Chomsky & delights in Milan Kundera.)

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ASHISH KASHYAP