Saturday 17 August 2013

The History of Lord Ganesh


Following other interaction with Sharmaji, one of our scholars, I asked: "Ganesh is worshipped as the first god in all yagyas. I have been trying to find out: Since when this is the case? And why? He is not mentioned in the Rg Veda."

Sharmaji responded:

"Lord Ganesh is mentioned in Ramayan and Mahabharat. Rg Ved mantras are in praise of nature and deities that personify its different aspects. Later, priests used these deities for sacerdotal puposes and[i] devotees to begin their puja etc. Ganesh is Ganpati, the people's god for beginnings and ceremonies. [ii] My conjecture is that he became popular in epical eras. Ganesh is more for the denizens of Sansar; Indra and definitely Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh, Mata Durga and other goddesses belong to the higher or other Loks, ethereal regions of devatas and rakshasa like bhasmasurs etc. Parvati is often shown to intervene on behalf of ordinary people in folklore and Ganesh is beloved son of Parvati. For him, going round his parents, Parvati-Shiva as the legend says,is the whole universe."

This response is fine as far as it goes, but I think you will agree that it does not really answer my question.

So I now open the question to all my readers, and will be grateful for any light that anyone can throw on it.

Thursday 15 August 2013

The Role of Corporate Governance, Citizen and Employee in Fighting Corruption, Enabling Development


When the British East India Company (EIC) became Bengal’s dominant power in 1757, the geographical area which came to be known as India was divided into about a thousand kingdoms.

Whether Hindus or Muslims, whether Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains or whoever, our forefathers knew caste, kingdoms, and empires, but not one person in our vast land had the political vision of uniting warring kingdoms into a nation-state, because the idea of a nation-state was a foreign one (it was invented in 1648, on the basis of the renewed understanding of the Bible which emerged in Europe from the 13th century and resulted in the Protestant Reformation). From 1757, it took the British just about a hundred years to create the colony which went on to become the nation that is now known as India.

That entire enterprise was driven by economics and politics: the EIC was a private company which got itself entangled with politics, as large-scale private enterprise always does.

However, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the British did not see history as a process driven by blind accidents of meaningless history. They saw history as working out God’s vision for humanity: God’s standards of truth, law, justice, and mercy creating more and more collective good. Adam Smith’s invisible hand, in their understanding, was nothing other than the hand of God, who wants us to act with Him to build our social, economic and political structures on truth, righteousness and justice.

You may miss a lot when you read the Bible, but you can’t miss the fact that the Bible shows God as being intimately involved in the world’s history, for the purpose of punishing sin and redeeming the repentant, to guide human destiny to a renewed earth and heaven, where our ultimate enemy, death, will be vanquished and eternal life will be the norm.

Even though the majority of British colonists did not follow the Bible and were interested only in looting India, Bible-believing British people saw colonization as offering to Abraham’s spiritual descendants a God-given opportunity to play a role in fulfilling God’s purpose to bless India by making it a great nation (see, for example, Genesis 12:2-3 and 18:18).

The mission to make India a great nation required bringing our individual sinfulness as well as our socio-religious evils under the searchlight of God’s truth. That could be done only if the Bible was translated and published, and then applied to specific areas of institutionalized darkness such as idolatry, inequality before law, untouchability, infanticide, widow-burning, child-marriage, polygamy, mass illiteracy, corruption, and feudalism. It is only when our social evils encountered the teaching of the Bible that the nineteenth century social reform movement was triggered which is known as the Indian Renaissance (more correctly, the first Indian NAISSANCE, as there had been none earlier, at least not from a social point of view: Thomas the Apostle, for example, and Guru Nanak and others, had tried, but it had not till then resulted in any India-wide re-start of something old, which is what the word “renaissance” means).

Anyway, Bible-inspired efforts set India on course to become a great nation by nurturing and strengthening three essential areas:

1. cultivating love for truth and virtue through mass education, development of vernaculars, import and use of the printing press, and journalism;

2. creating a legal environment for development through land reforms, property rights, development of the penal code, of a modern judiciary, and a consistent monetary system throughout the country;

3. building a nation-wide infrastructure for administration, transportation, and communication.

Naturally, the British got many things wrong. But they also got at least a few things right.

However, since Independence, the influence of the Bible, most often mediated through Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Marxists and others, continues to inspire new developments that take us in the direction of truth and justice. At the same time, a rising generation who are committed to materialism, even if often sheltering under the garb of religiosity, has undone some of reduction in institutionalized evil (e.g. by corrupting education, administration, Parliament and law) and created new institutionalized evils – e.g. by scams and corruption of various new sorts.

So we now have in our country a patchwork of institutionalized good and institutionalized evil, and what we would like to discuss is the role of corporate governance in reducing institutionalized evil.

The impact of the Bible has meant that, except for a few diehard feudalists found in the RSS and BJP (and even in those organizations, their influence is less than it once was – though it may rise again if Modi delivers electoral victories) – as I said, except for a few such diehard feudalists, all the public discourse in our country honours concepts of inclusive growth, secularism, equality, liberty, fraternity and democracy.

The problem in our country is that our culture divorces sound from meaning, and imposes a gap between what is said and what is done, as well as between appearance and reality.

How does our culture divorce sound from meaning? Take “Aum” for example. It is a very powerful sound in our culture, and you will find people discussing the healing and other qualities of the vibrations of that sound. But what does Aum mean? Well, it means whatever you want it to mean, from nothing to everything: I have heard at least 50 different explanations of what it means. The fact is that you can come up with your own interpretation, and if people like it, then it becomes an acceptable or even the most acceptable explanation. That is why the role of PR is so important in our country. Our culture does not emphasise what is real, what is true, so all that we are left with in our dominant culture is propaganda - which is why Modi hires so many hundreds of people in Bangalore and other centres to pump out his propaganda in every major newspaper and radio and TV station in India, and now even abroad.

Not only does our culture divorce sound from meaning, our culture also imposes a gap between what is said and what is done. How often have you heard a statement similar to: “Sahib ek minute lagega” (when the speaker has no idea of how long it will take, or even knows that it will take half an hour). Of course, part of the explanation is our Indian concept of “politeness” (which actually means an inability or unwillingness to tell the truth) and part of the explanation, in this particular case, is that our culture has no concept of the importance of time, because the kal that has gone (yesterday) is the same word as the kal that is to come (i.e. tomorrow): the lack of the importance of time is structured into our language, into the way we think. If this life is only one among innumerable births, then why is time in this life important? The time that is given to us in this world is only important if this is the only life we have and if, after this life is completed, we have to give an account to Somebody of how we have spent each minute and each second. But these are ancillary matters, the key point that I would like us to keep in mind is that, whatever the reasons, our culture has a deep and profound gap between what is said and what is done. Of course that is part of a universal human tendency, but one’s culture can either reinforce that tendency (as in our own culture) or it can struggle against it, as in Protestant cultures (e.g. of Northern Europe).

So our culture divorces sound from meaning, and it accepts a large gap between what is said and what is done; how does our culture split appearance and reality? Well, we could discuss at length the notions of izzat and shaan versus the real quality of relationships in the home, or even the real quality of life in the home. If I am willing to murder an unborn child or my grown-up daughter for the sake of izzat, what kind of izzat is that? Is it not an attempt to preserve an appearance, for the sake of which people are willing even to eliminate the reality of the life of our own flesh and blood?

In our culture, we have to struggle against the gap between appearance and reality (Mat 7.15); we have to struggle against the gap between sound and meaning by letting our Yes mean Yes (Mat 5.37); we have to struggle against the large gap between what is said and what is done by being people who, once we have said something, will do it even if it is to our disadvantage (Psalm 15.4).

If these are some ways in which evil is institutionalized in our country, what are some ways in which good is institutionalized? Well, consider our Constitution. Clearly it institutionalizes counter-cultural values such as democracy, freedom from hunger and education for all. But it is for you to tell me to what degree we actually have liberty, equality and fraternity in our country. Do we have the rule of law or has the law itself been turned, at least in many places and occasions, into becoming itself an instrument of exploitation, for example by the police on the road?

We may have good laws but, even those good laws, such as panchayati raj, can become a means of oppressing the lower castes (and that is the case even when a lower caste person becomes the Panchayat Sarpanch, she or he is simply manipulated by the upper castes and if the person refuses to comply has been known to have been beaten up, raped or even killed). Of course such malpractices do not mean that the institution of Panchayati Raj is somehow wrong. No. Malpractices mean rather that citizen power is required to identify malpractices, report malpractices, and pursue malpractices through the institutions of redress till wrongdoers are identified, judged and punished. Every case of a wrongdoer being punished is a blow for the right, and a demolition of the culture of injustice in our country. Exactly for that reason, every instance of the honouring (for example by a Prize or Award or Padma Bhushan or whatever of a person who has done something good) should be celebrated because it strengthens the kingdom of Right. Of course a Padma Bhushan or Award or Prize might be given to someone unworthily, and then it is our duty to expose that and to correct it.

However, the human tendency is to talk too much of the negative and not enough of the positive. As the Bible puts it: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things". We should focus our minds on such things - because if we don’t do so, it is too easy to become depressed, to become apathetic and withdrawn from the effort to build up our country, our people and ourselves.

Of course, governance is not only about where we should focus our attention, or about values. It is also about creating the right structures. That is why, at the highest levels in our political structure, we have a division of powers between the legislature, the executive, and the courts. And that is why our founders also institutionalized the freedom of the press. Of course, evil always tries to subvert each of these, and it is up to us to use the instruments offered to us by all these to fight against what is wrong, and to fight for what is right. You may have noticed that China has detained Xu Zhiyong, the prominent lawyer known for his support of human rights and greater government transparency, merely on suspicion of “gathering people to disturb public order in a public place”. Though India also has somewhat similar incidents occasionally, they are unconstitutional in India whereas they are entirely in accordance with the law in China. By contrast, if an IPS officer is doing something wrong in India, you have the right to gain access to that officer’s superiors or, if even that person refuses to act rightly for any reason, you have the right to gain access to the courts – you certainly have the right to gain access to the press – as well as the right to have access to the public, to organize a mass protest. Of course, all these may not be enough, and we may be defeated by evil in particular cases, but followers of the Light are called to rise again and fight again, in spite of defeats and reversals, whether in terms of their own personal and family lives or in terms of social and political life. Perhaps you also noticed that Zhang Xiaoming, China’s top representative in the Chinese colony, Hong Kong, met pro-democracy lawmakers this week for the very first time since the territory was taken over by China in 1977. This would be simply incredible in India, where we have had talks right from the start, perhaps not as often as would have been desirable, with separatists in the south, north-east and north of our country.

To continue with the theme of the right structures for corporate governance in our country: these include not only those of the Constitution at the highest level, or exalted things such as the separation of powers but, more recently, quite down to earth things such as Public Interest Litigation (PIL) and Right to Information (RTI) and Right to Education (RTE) and now the Right to Food (RTFood). Naturally, not everything is fine with these, let alone their implementation, but you and I need to be active and help to implement the system that is envisaged, and then identify how best to improve the operation of the system, whether in its implementation or even in the way it should be organized.

In the commercial sector, we have the proposed governance norms for all publicly traded companies produced by SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), which are actually tougher than corporations face in more advanced economies. For instance, the CEOs in only about half of India's top 50 listed companies still double as chairmen, and they will be required to split their roles (those that want to continue combining the roles will need the explicit approval of their shareholders). Further, SEBI wants to require companies above a certain size to appoint at least one independent director from among small shareholders. Still further, SEBI is apparently going to require independent directors, who resign their position, to publicly disclose the reason(s) for their departure - and "personal reasons" won't be considered a satisfactory answer if directors are only giving up one of multiple directorships. Till recently, Company founders in India have been happy with eager-to-please boards: you may recollect the way "independent" directors of Satyam Computers rubber-stamped the former CEO's desperate attempt to cover up fraud in December 2008.

Of course, changing the rules is no guarantee of future good behaviour. Even boards that boast of independent leadership can do better. Infosys Technologies, the only Indian entry last year in CLSA's selection of 20 large Asian companies with best corporate governance, lists KV Kamath, a former banker, as a non-executive chairman. But a former Infosys CEO holds the position of executive co-chairman. Meanwhile, Kamath continues to be "independent" chairman at ICICI, even though he was its founding CEO. So there are all kinds of holes and challenges, but the fact is that the web of corporate governance is gradually becoming more and more tight, and that is the case not only in India but also globally.

Let me summarise. Corporate governance, whether at the level of an NGO, a company or the country as a whole, has three dimensions: the dimension of whether the right values are embedded and nurtured, the dimension of whether the overall structure helps or hinders, and the dimension of the individual initiative and willingness to sacrifice one’s own time and energy and money and interest that is required in order to fight corruption and enable development. Due to limitations of time, I have focused on how these dimensions are essential to fighting corruption, but I am sure that you can see how these three dimensions are also necessary to enabling development.

Thank you.

On Generosity in Indian tradition versus other traditions


Re-reading the Kural this morning, I am struck by how different the emphasis in our own (Indian) traditions is, compared to other traditions, regarding who should be grateful, for what, and in what manner.

In the Koran, for example, the emphasis is on human duty to God - and it is God Himself who seems to be grateful to humans when they do right (which I find strange, but then there are elements that appear strange to me in all systems of belief including those in philosophy, science, psychology, medicine, economics, and so on).

For the Jews (and therefore for followers of Jesus the Lord, whether Hindus or others) the emphasis is on God's generosity to humans for the gifts of life, abilities and talents, food and shelter and air...so: humans ought to be generous to other humans because of gratitude to God, which should motivate us to want to love God, and motivate us to become like Him. We should be generous because generosity is God-like.

However, in the Kural, it is the human being who receives from other humans who ought to be grateful, totally and forever ....

In other words, the Biblical view is that the recipients of God's love and grace (that is, all human beings) ought to be so grateful that they long for God, and long to be like God - and, therefore, in turn, become generous.

In the Kural, the emphasis is on humans who have received anything (however small) from other humans, feeling a sense of indebtedness to those who have been generous - a sense of indebtedness to a donor that should last forever.

The chapter on gratitute in the Thirukkural has the following ten couplets only (presented at http://www.kural.kalyanam.ca/kcha011.html from the book: TIRUKKURAL with translations in English by Rev Dr G U Pope, Rev W H Drew, Rev John Lazarus and Mr F W Ellis Published by The South India Saiva Siddhantha Works Publishing Society, Tinnevelly, Limited. India (1982):

Kural-101 Assistance given by those who ne'er received our aid, Is debt by gift of heaven and earth but poorly paid. (THE GIFT OF) HEAVEN AND EARTH IS NOT AN EQUIVALENT FOR A BENEFIT WHICH IS CONFERRED WHERE NONE HAD BEEN RECEIVED.

Kural-102 A timely benefit, -though thing of little worth, The gift itself, -in excellence transcends the earth. A FAVOUR CONFERRED IN THE TIME OF NEED, THOUGH IT BE SMALL (IN ITSELF), IS (IN VALUE) MUCH LARGER THAN THE WORLD.

Kural-103 Kindness shown by those who weigh not what the return may be: When you ponder right its merit, 'Tis vaster than the sea. IF WE WEIGH THE EXCELLENCE OF AN BENEFIT WHICH IS CONFERRED WITHOUT WEIGHING ITS RETURN, IT IS LARGER THAN THE SEA.

Kural-104 Each benefit to those of actions' fruit who rightly deem, Though small as millet-seed, as palm-tree vast will seem. THOUGH THE BENEFIT CONFERRED BE AS SMALL AS A MILLET SEED, THOSE WHO KNOW ITS ADVANTAGE WILL CONSIDER IT AS LARGE AS THE PALMYRA FRUIT.

Kural-105 The kindly aid's extent is of its worth no measure true; Its worth is as the worth of him to whom the act you do. THE BENEFIT ITSELF IS NOT THE MEASURE OF THE BENEFIT; THE WORTH OF THOSE WHO HAVE RECEIVED IT IS ITS MEASURE.

Kural-106 Kindness of men of stainless soul remember evermore! Forsake thou never friends who were thy stay in sorrow sore! FORSAKE NOT THE FRIENDSHIP OF THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN YOUR STAFF IN ADVERSITY. FORGET NOT THE BENEVOLENCE OF THE BLAMELESS.

Kural-107 Through all seven worlds, in seven-fold birth, Remains in mem'ry of the wise. Friendship of those who wiped on earth, The tears of sorrow from their eyes. (THE WISE) WILL REMEMBER THROUGHOUT THEIR SEVEN-FOLD BIRTHS THE LOVE OF THOSE HAVE WIPED AWAY THEIR AFFLICTION.

Kural-108 'Tis never good to let the thought of good things done thee pass away; Of things not good, 'tis good to rid thy memory that very day. IT IS NOT GOOD TO FORGET A BENEFIT; IT IS GOOD TO FORGET AN INJURY EVEN IN THE VERY MOMENT (IN WHICH IT IS INFLICTED).

Kural-109 Effaced straightway is deadliest injury, By thought of one kind act in days gone by. THOUGH ONE INFLICT AN INJURY GREAT AS MURDER, IT WILL PERISH BEFORE THE THOUGHT OF ONE BENEFIT (WHICH WAS FORMERLY CONFERRED).

Kural-110 Who every good have killed, may yet destruction flee; Who 'benefit' has killed, that man shall ne'er 'scape free! HE WHO HAS KILLED EVERY VIRTUE MAY YET ESCAPE; THERE IS NO ESCAPE FOR HIM WHO HAS KILLED A BENEFIT.

What caste after love marriage?


A friend has drawn my attention to the following question posted on a chat site and asked for my answer.

Here is the question:

My girlfriend and I are from different castes. My girlfriend would like to continue in her own caste, and I don't have any objection to that. Is it possible for her to continue in her own caste after marriage? And, if we have children, is it possible for them to remain in the mother's caste?

Here's my answer:

In our country, there is a huge difference between what is said and what is done, what the law says and what happens in reality (to a certain extent, this is the case everywhere but, generally, Protestant countris have the least gap between these, while "non-Protestant Christian" countries have a larger gap (and non-Christian societies have the biggest gap). That is not to say that, in the modern world, Christians as individuals are better than others - they may be or they may not be. My point is about the societies and nations that have been created by the different religious philosophies or ideologies).

So the facts in relation to your question are the following:

1. There is no legal reason in modern India why a wife cannot retain her maiden name.

2. There is also no legal reason why the children cannot take the mother's family or caste name.

3. If the motivation for the move on your girlfriend's part is to retain the favour of her community, that is a very good motivation but, in order for it to work as intended, she needs to talk to her parents and her community leaders to see if this would be an acceptable compromise. If they agree, then there is no reason to avoid proceeding with this arrangement.

4. However, if the motivation is to avoid caste slurs from members of your wife's caste on your children, this may or may not work. That is because, in our society, inter-caste marriages are always "out-caste" from both castes, as are the children. Generally, if any society does not follow the rule of casting out mixed-caste marriages, the caste that does the accepting is the lower caste. However, you need to be aware that since India's independence, caste is becoming less and less strong. However, if BJP comes to power in the next elections, it is not clear whether casteist forces will regain official momentum, as they have been regaining some momentum in some parts of the country since the last spell of NDA rule from 1998 to 2004