Feedback

The greatest moment in the evolution of Constitutional Law was reached on 29 March 2007 when the Supreme Court stayed the "anti-national" and "anti-social" law providing for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in higher education institutions such as the IITs and IIMs for 2007- 2008.

At the same time, a Bench consisting of judges Arijit Pasayit and Lokeshwar Singh Panta declared that the quota for the Scheduled Castes / Scheduled Tribes could be implemented.

This landmark order of the Supreme Court of India founded on timeless elemental principles of equity, natural law, natural justice (which does not exclude social justice) will be welcomed by all the enlightened people of India committed to the noble cause of eradication of untouchables and other forms of cruel discrimination practiced against the Scheduled Castes / Scheduled Tribes for centuries by all the other communities, definitely not excluding the so called "Backward Classes" who are being converted into scapegoats in the dirty and murky world of caste-based vote bank politics patented and perfected by men like Arjun Singh, Karunanidhi, Ramadoss, Sonia Gandhi, Veerappa Moily, Lalu Prasad Yadav and many other sworn enemies of the "Forward Classes."

By implication, the Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear to the Central government that they are not willing to buy the "caste-based, caste-hatred" founded theory of the Mandal Commission that the vote-bank generated "Backward Classes" can on no account be treated on par with the Scheduled Castes / Scheduled Tribes.

The Supreme Court passed the interim order on petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Central Educational Institutions ( reservation in admission ) Act 2006. The Supreme Court rejected the government argument that reservation was not anti-merit. The Court also summarily rejected the absurd, aboriginal and abominable argument of the government of India that in the absence of Caste Data after 1931, there was no alternative to projecting the population proportion of socially and educationally backward classes and OBCs from the next best source � the latest available census of 1931.

According to the Supreme Court, the policy of reservation cannot and should not be intended to be permanent or perpetuate backwardness. To quote the historic words of the Supreme Court in this context : "Nowhere in the world do castes come up, classes or communities queue up for the sake of gaining backward status. Nowhere else in the world is there competition to assert backwardness and then to claim we are more backward than you."

The Union Minister for Human Resource Minister Arjun Singh has as was to be expected reacted to the Supreme Court judgment by saying that the government would exercise all legal and constitutional options to implement the 93rd Constitutional Amendment that extends reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). He has also brazenly refused to term the verdict of the Supreme Court as a setback.

The decision will impact 20 Central universities, the IITs, IIMs and colleges supported by the government. The government is considering accepting the Mandal Commission's suggestion of 27 per cent reservation for backward classes in Central government educational Institutions and the quota increase is a part of this process. The saddest part in our democracy is that there is complete unanimity among all political parties on the question of endless enlarging of the area of caste-based reservations. This kind of political unanimity was not noticed even in the days of the "Quit India Movement" in 1942. For example, the great Communists of India did not support the Congress party at that time because it was led by Mahatma Gandhi. Today their attitude is different of course because they are supporting the Congress led by "pseudo-secular and anti-Hindu" Sonia Gandhi.
The Communists of all brands and brigands in the UPA government stand for the emancipation of the people of India through the dictatorship of the proletariat. The "puerile, petty-fogging pseudo-secular sycophants and flatterers" of Sonia are all bent on countering the Communist propaganda by the slogan of QUOTA FOR ALL BCs, OBCs AND SCs AND STs IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR.

In order to meet the economic challenges posed by the ruthless march of the communal and saffron's forces of globalization and privatization throughout the world, the Congress wants to inaugurate a new era of politically maneuvered, socially engineered, culturally secularized private sector in the larger interests of equity, social and natural justice for all political parties.

Amid the raging controversy over the number of other backward classes in India, following the 61st Round of the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) for 2004 - 2005, it was officially announced that the OBC population was 41.1 per cent. Earlier Arjun Singh had taken the stand that it was 52 per cent. For UPA government, official data relating to anything concerned with Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities and above all the Backward Classes and the OBCs will vary from zero to infinity depending upon the exigencies of "pseudo-secular" coalition politics from time to time.

The UPA government has committed the dastardly political crime of using the Caste Data available in the 1931 census of the government of India when Lord Irwin was the Viceroy. In no other country in the world, a democratically elected government would dare to use caste, communal, sociological data collected more than 70 years ago as the fulcrum and fundamental basis for introducing a system of State sponsored concessions and incentives to different castes and communities, not for their advancement, but for the purposes of vote bank politics of different categories of political thugs. This fundamental issue with all its ramifications have been brilliantly analyzed and presented by Arun Shourie in his classic book Falling over Backwards, An Essay Against Reservation and Against Judicial Populism.

It is very heartening to see that the Supreme Court of India have taken a careful note of the fundamental national, social, political and cultural issues raised by Arun Shourie in this great book. I fully endorse the views of Arun Shourie in this book : "The bottom-line is surely there are problems with the caste system as it exists but note that at first the British and then the Congress accentuated caste differences to meet their political objectives. Also see it as a ploy by the Christians/Muslims to encourage conversions and weaken the spirit of Mother India".

The Congress party has buried fathoms deep the following sensible advice given by Jawaharlal Nehru in his letter to Chief Ministers on 27 June 1961: " I have referred above to efficiency and to our getting out of our traditional ruts. This necessitates our getting out of the old habit of reservations and particular privileges being given to this caste or that group. I have no doubt that there is a vast reservoir of potential talent in this country if only we can give it opportunity. But if we go in for reservations on communal and caste basis, we swamp the bright and able people and remain second-rate or third-rate. I am grieved to learn how far this business of reservation has gone based on communal considerations. It has annoyed me to learn that even promotions are based sometimes on communal or caste considerations. This way lies not only folly, but disaster. Let us help the backward groups by all means, but never at the coat of efficiency. How are we going to build the public sector or indeed any sector with second-rate people? Karunanidhi in Tamilnadu will be the first leader in India to run down Nehru for saying all this as an enemy number- 1 of the Backward Classes and the OBCs. Sonia Gandhi, Arjun Singh and all the other "pseudo-secular political jokers" in the UPA government would join the "rabidly communal chorus of Karunanidhi' with "disgraceful" gusto and enthusiasm today.

When the Constitution of India was drawn up after independence, it provided for Fundamental RIGHTS. It also provided for hereditary Funda-Mendel Rights to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes based on the well-known Mendel's Law of Inheritance in the field of biology. The constitution makers thought that the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes deserved a special treatment and consideration taking note of the established facts of brutal discrimination and untouchables practiced against them by all the Caste Hindus and the forward castes. This situation was altered by V P Singh in 1989 when he accepted the Mandal Commission's Report on Backward Classes. I call the rights conferred on the Backward Classes following the official acceptance of this report, as Funda-Mandal Rights. In the light of this three-fold classification, it should be clear that the Indian Constitution originally provided only for the two pillars of Fundamentalism (General Rule for All ) and Funda-Mendelism (Special Rule for the Scheduled castes and Scheduled Tribes ) in the field of public employment and education in government institutions. Then came the nefariously propped up grand and massive pillar of Funda-Mandalism ( The fraudulent Structure of Caste based Quota Raj proposed by Mandal with reference to 1931 Census Report Caste Data !! ). The Supreme Court of India in its historic verdict delivered day before yesterday has duly endorsed the two original pillars of Fundamental RIGHTS and Funda-Mendel Rights. It has rightly struck down the artificially raised caste based political structure of vote bank politics created by Funda-Mandalism � I mean Funda-Mandal Rights.

Hundreds of students who were part of the anti-reservation agitation at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences ( AIIMS ) heartily welcomed the new Supreme Court Order. There were tumultuous celebrations at AIIMS after news about the Supreme Court order came in. I congratulate the students of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT ), New Delhi for having shown the necessary physical, moral and political courage to come into the open public platform and declared in one voice : "We welcome the Supreme Court order staying the 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes ( OBCs) in elite educational institutions including the Indian Institutes of Management". All India Resident Doctors Association Vice President Arnab Pal said : "We are celebrating Holi and Diwali together and are happy with the Supreme Court order. The proposal was wrong to begin with and was aimed at creating a Vote Bank". The President of the IIT Alumni Association, Delhi Chapter, Ashok Singh declared amidst cheers : "The only way to improve education is to remove corruption from the Government-funded and managed schools and institutes. Let the elite show the way by sending their children to Corporation Schools to show their trust in their own educational system. The need of the day is to strengthen the basic primary education for the backward Classes. Many other senior politicians run hundreds of collages. Why have they excluded them from reservation ?"

Youth for Equality, a non-political student movement has announced : "We welcome the move and are happy that the Apex Court's decision which is both student and nation friendly. The Government has to admit that its proposal was politically motivated and did not take into account the fact that meritorious students did not stand to benefit from the revised reservation proposal".

We cannot expect our third-grade politicians to study Aristotle. Aristotle may have had Indian political scoundrels in view when he said: "Democratic education ought to mean, not the education (or more precisely non-education!) which democrats like, but the education which will preserve democracy". Until we have realized that these two things do not necessarily go together we cannot think clearly about education.

Rajaji spoke against the "Licence-Permit-Control-Quota Raj" in the 1950s and 1960s. If he had been in our midst today, he would have spoken against the "Licence-Permit-Control-Quota Raj" created by our politicians in the field of professional, higher and university education. This Casteist and Communal ARAJ has been created in the name of casteless society raised on a fraudulent superstructure of caste-based structure of quotas. Thus the stark and hideous specter of Funda-Mandalism is endeavoring to uproot and overthrow the original Constitutional pillars of Fundamentalism and Funda-Mendelism erected with noble, lofty and good national intentions by our founding fathers.

Why has the Supreme Court struck down the proposal of Arjun Singh ? Arjun Singh adopted the Mandal Commission Report as his Bible. How did the Mandal Commission identify the "Other Backward Classes" ( OBCs ) whose cause it championed ? What was the irrefutable , rational and logical basis on which suddenly in 1991 - 92, instead of 22.5 per cent seats being assigned on the basis of birth, 50 per cent came to be assigned by Government of India in that way ?.
 
Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal who headed the Mandal Commission had the temerity to criticize the finding of the First Backward Classes Commission set up in 1953 by Jawaharlal Nehru under the Chairmanship of Kakasaheb Kalekar in these words : " The Kalekar Commission specified certain criteria for adjudging Backwardness and then proceeded to list 2399 Castes as Backward. But it is not clear from the report as to how the lists of Backward Classes were derived from the application of that criteria and in the absence of any explanation of the rationale for fixing different percentages for different groups of posts etc, the approach appears somewhat arbitrary".

Having made this seemingly objective but essentially hypocritical observation against the Kalekar Commission , the Mandal Commission proceeded on blatantly stupid, politically vicious and legally untenable basis to determine first what percentage of our people are "Other Backward Classes (OBCs)" . The cardinal fact is that there has been no Castewise enumeration of our population since the Census of 1931. This handicap did not in any way deter or halt the planned and ruthless political march of Mandalism. The Mandal Commission just assumed that the relative rates of growth of the population of different castes of Hindus have been identical ever since 1931. And thus it concluded that Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) today are the same percentage of the total Hindu population as they were in 1931 !. The Mandal Commission did not stop with this abominable caste advance or avalanche !. In the next step the Mandal Commission was politically determine to identify Other Backward Classes (OBCs) among other religions too � Muslim and Christian religions which have been priding themselves on the ground, and whose propagandists have been running Hinduism down on the ground that, unlike Hinduism, the have no castes among them. The point to be noted is that there was no caste wise enumeration of non-Hindus even in the census of 1931. Even this did not pose any problem for the disgraceful Mandal Commission. It has determined to make one more abominable assumption ! To quote the Mandal Commision in this context : "Assuming that roughly the proportion of OBCs among non-Hindus was of the same order as among the Hindus, population of non-Hindu OBCs was also taken as 52 per cent of the actual proportion of their population of 16.6 per cent, or 8.4 per cent."

Based on the above two atrocious and untenable assumptions, the Mandal Commission came out with this judicial verdict (!) when it declared : "Thus total population of Hindu and non-Hindu OBCs naturally added up to nearly 52 per cent ( 43.7 per cent Hindus plus 8.4 per cent of non-Hindus) of the country's population". This is neither imaginary fiction nor acceptable fact. I call it the Menacing Mantra of Mandalism founded on a superstructure of fraudulent foundations and this mantra has been overturned by the Supreme Court.
In Tamilnadu, the quota system has been specially designed to academically, culturally, socially and economically eliminate and destroy the people belonging to the Forward Communities (FCs). According to a report in The Hindu (23 August, 2004), admissions to the 12 government medical colleges in Tamilnadu were: Total 1224; Scheduled Castes (SCs) - 231; Most Backward Classes (MBCs) - 952 and Forward Communities (FCs) - 28. In the open competition, only 31 in the FCs category qualified but the numbers for the others were BCs - 315, MBCs - 45 and SCs- 5. The lowest marks under various categories were: FCs - 295.74; BCs- 294.26; MBCs - 292.13; and SCs - 287.50. Evidently, backward communities are not backward at all. May I invite the kind attention of our wicked and barbarous politicians to the lethal words of Harold Laski in this context : "Any constitution or formula or system which cannot constitutionally be amended is only an open invitation to an armed and bloody revolution".

All political parties in India today are pitted against any system founded on merit or excellence or intellectual superiority. The demand for equality arises from two sources. One of them is among the noblest, the other is the basest, of human emotions. The noble source is the desire for fair play. But the other source is the hatred of merit and superiority. The kind of democratic education which is being advocated by all political parties in India today is bad because it endeavors to propitiate evil passions, to appease envy. A truly democratic education, one which will preserve democracy, must be in its own field, ruthlessly aristocratic and shamelessly "highbrow". Our infant democracy demands that little men should not take big ones seriously ; it will die when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.

For the surrogate Anti-National UPA Government in New Delhi, industrializing the country means, Mandalising the country. Mandalising the country means Communalising the country on the basis of an artificially and even criminally contrived superstructure of Quota based Araj. To quote the brilliant words of Arun Shourie from his eye opening book on the communal politics of reservations titled "Falling Over Backwards": "How far have we descended! Today progressives dress up their casteism as secularism". As politicians and political parties have been less and less able to commend themselves on the basis of their performance, they have deployed a standard technique: look for a grievance, for some measure by which it can be shown that the target group has been left behind; when you cannot find the grievance, invent it; stoke the sense of being discriminate against; frighten the group into believing that others are out to take away even more of what is its right ;and present yourself as the only savior. Inevitably, in each succeeding round, two things have happened. On the one side, the grievances that have been stoked have been more and more far-fetched. On the other, the group at which the rhetoric has been directed has been narrower and narrower. In the end, politicians pass laws. They appoint Judges as much as Vice- Chancellors and IGs of Police. Hence, the ultimate responsibility lies with them. But they have received much help from others - the "Progressives" who have dominated public discourse, for instance, a handful of "progressive" judges for another. Arun Shourie rightly indicts these "progressives" as Aiders and Abettors. For some of them, he says that the right word ought to be Instigators. Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal of the Mandal Commission has been an Aider, Abettor and Instigator in this sense in which Arun Shourie has used those terms in his essay against "Reservations" and "Judicial Populism". "Judicial Populism" is quite distinct from "Judicial Activism". Judicial Activism, devoid of party politics, can often help in making the Rule of Law prevail over long established social conventions and prejudices. On the other hand, Judicial Populism functions as a hand maid of communal and party politics and only leads to the de-thorniest of the Rule of Law, Rule of Equality before the Law and the Rule of Overriding Majesty of Law. Many petty and unscrupulous Judges, interested only in advancing their career prospects, by falling head over heels at the feet of communal politicians, have almost succeeded in destroying these three classical Pillars of Law in India. This ugly phenomenon has been clearly brought out with factual details of men and matters by Arun Shourie.

The Mandal Commission in India was established in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to "identify the socially or educationally backward." [1] It was headed by Indian parliamentarian Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal who considered the question of seat reservations and quotas for people to redress caste discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine "backwardness." In 1980, the commission's report affirmed the affirmative action practice under Indian law whereby members of lower castes (known as Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes and Tribes) were given exclusive access to a certain portion of government jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended changes to these quotas, increasing them by 27 per cent to 49.5 per cent [1]. The report, released in 1980, was the source of great controversy, and its implementation in 1990 was the ultimate cause of India's Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh"s resignation.

The Mandal Commission raised its superstructure of caste based reservations for the Other Backward Classes based on the lists and figures of castes in the 1931 Census. All the ICS officers who were in charge of the Census of 1931 had uniformly reported that it was impossible to give a precise definition of Caste. To quote the words of the Census Report of 1931: "The term caste needs no definition in India." Could it be that we can get a definition of the other two categories that the Census uses � "tribe" and "race"? Can we get a definition of caste by looking at what it is not?

"Tribe was provided to cover many of the communities still organized on that basis in whose case the tribe has not become a caste," the 1931 Census recorded. In a word, a "tribe" is that thing which has not become the thing that needs no definition.
As for "Race", the 1931 Census said, "no attempt was made to define the term "Race", which is naturally used so loosely as almost to defy definition." The same Census went on to clarify as follows: "Nor is it intended to do anything so rash as to define it here, while in the Census Schedule its very looseness enabled it to cover returns which, though not strictly referable to the same category, were quite adequate for the purpose intended, which was primarily to obtain a return of Indians to whom the terms "Caste" and "Tribe" are inapplicable and a means of identifying Anglo - Indians whose birthplace might be an inadequate means of identification".

Even a cursory perusal of the 1931 Census Report will clearly show that there was a great degree of conceptual confusion even at that time regarding the precise meanings and definitions of the terms "Caste", "Tribe" and "Race". Thus the British officers in charge of that Census followed the slippery procedure of definition by residuals, by presenting many problems, and were very honest and candid about them, quite unlike the fraudulent Mandal of the Mandal Commission who has been guilty of gross and blatant concealment and fabrication of facts and figures, derived tangentially from the 1931 Census.

For instance, the Census Commissioner of 1931 Census took special care to point out that Indians who had been classified as "Tribals" formed a very heterogeneous group. Even the simplest step � that of comparing these figures with what had been reported in previous enumerations, the Census Commissioner wrote, "has been made very difficult by the irritating practice of some missionaries to induce their converts to abandon their tribal name and return themselves nondescriptly as "Indian Christians", as though they had some cause to be ashamed of their forefathers�. The Census Commissioner openly declared that some religions like Islam and Christianity foreswore Caste in a brash manner even after conversion. They are doing so even today with the willing co-operation of all our Pseudo Secular Politicians.

All the rabidly communal politicians of today, assert with pompous arrogance about the continuing rigidity of the caste system even today being as frozen as in the days of Manu. These politicians would get frozen by the following telling observations of the Census Commissioner of 1931: "There is apparently a tendency towards the consolidation of groups at present separated by caste rules. The best instance of such a tendency to consolidate a number of castes into one group is to be found in the grazer castes which aim at combining under the term "Yadava" Ahirs, Goalas, Gopis, Idaiyans and perhaps some other castes of milk men, a movement already effective ever since 1921".
M W M Yeatts (Thank Periyar that he was not a Brahmin!!), the Superintendent of Census Operations in the Madras Presidency in 1931 and who later became the Census Commissioner of India wrote as follows: "Several of them "individuals and groups" manufacture "cacophonous combinations". Sorting by caste is one of the most complicated of all Census Operations. Sorting for Caste is really worthless unless nomenclature is sufficiently fixed to render the resulting totals close and reliable approximations. Had caste terminology the stability of religious returns, caste sorting might be worthwhile. With the fluidity of present appellations, it is certainly not" 2,27,000 AMBATTANS have become 10,000 (!!) "Navithan, Nai, Nai Brahman, Navutiyan, Pariyari claim about 1,40,000 - all these ever fluid and ever changing terms unrecorded are untabulated - Individual fancy apparently has some part in caste nomenclature. For example, an extremely dark individual pursuing the occupation of waterman on the Coorg border described his caste as SURYAVAMSA (!), the family of the Sun. Many of the claims and appellations used for Castes recall irresistibly the ruse of that hero of W S Gilbert's who christened himself "DARWINIAN MAN". Energy expended in pursuing euphemistic Caste synonyms bears a strong resemblance to that involved in hunting a will-o"-the-wisp and is as profitable or useless. Censuses can deal usefully with facts, not with fashions".
There has been no Caste-wise enumeration since the Census of 1931.The great Mandal of the Mandal Commission used this Census as his Bible which has been rejected by the Supreme Court of India. Even the English Regional Census Commissioners from all parts of India had reported in 1931 itself that they all felt shaky and uncertain about the Caste-wise enumeration. All of them had reported that Caste Lines were getting to be disregarded and new and technological developments were upsetting the very basis of Caste divisions. By stark contrast Pseudo Secular Mafia Men of Mass Media today write with Biblical Authority that such and such exit poll shows that all the Kurmis have deserted BJP or Congress and so on!! Politicians talk the same way. Even some of our Supreme Court and High Court Judges think that India is what it was, in fact what some Text collated over 700 years says it should have been 2500 years ago!!

As early as in 1921, the English Census Commissioner for Baroda State had warned with a clairvoyant vision that in the face of change all round, "Caste may soon adapt itself and be content to remain as if it were the Election Agent of the new Democracy". The Mandal Commission was the final culmination of this vicious process.

A careful reading of the Indian Constitution will bring out the following patent facts of great public significance: a. The fundamental guarantee in every Provision was of equality, of non-discrimination.  b. CASTE was consciously avoided or eschewed: The proviso to Article 15(1) spoke only of women and children; Article 16(4) spoke only of "any Backward Class of Citizens"  c. Where CASTE was mentioned, it was only to prohibit discrimination ON GROUNDS OF CASTE  d. Where "Equality" was made specific in Article 16(1) in regard to employment under the State, for instance the expression that was used was "equality of opportunity," and this expression has been buried deep under the rhetorical flourishes and fulminations of "progressives" among politicians and some politicking High Court and Supreme Court Judges interested only in pandering to the tastes of low level communal politicians.  e. Only in respect of Adi-Dravidas or Harijans, the term Scheduled "Caste" has been used in the Indian Constitution. It does so to lay down a negative; namely, that "Caste" shall not be a ground for discrimination. Nowhere is there any reference to Backward Castes; there is only reference to Backward Classes.  Yet Mandal of the Mandal Commission treated these cardinal Constitutional provisions with supreme contempt and raised a super structure of fraudulent and fabricated Other Backward Classes (OBCs ) for the political purpose of creating a Quota Raj in the dubious name of a casteless society! What about our criminal politicians, many of whom are functioning as Chief Ministers today?

 Arun Shourie summarises the present disgusting situation of merit destroying Quota Raj brilliantly as follows: a) When these politicians and their parties mobilise groups to demand reservations, they mobilize them as Castes. b) When their case is urged before duly constituted Commissions of Inquiry, it is argued that they be given reservation as Castes.
c) When Government Commissions examine the case and eventually recommend that reservations be given, they too recommend that reservations be given to such and thus again on the basis of Castes. d) When the Government of India and the State governments decree reservations, they also take particular care to ensure that they are given to Castes.
e) The reservations that the Courts of Law uphold in India are also reservations on the basis of Castes and to Castes alone.

The Mandal Commission criticized the Kalelkar Commission report by saying that it had mostly borrowed the lists of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) prepared by the Ministry of Education for the award of post-metric scholarships. The Mandal Commission in its own report criticized the recommendations made by eight (8) States and Union Territories and observed "They have notified lists of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) without ordering a formal inquiry into their conditions." These States included Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan and Orissa. The Mandal Commission sent out a Questionnaire to all the States and Union Territories seeking field data on OBCs. They too did not cooperate with the Mandal Commission which lamented as follows "It was rather disappointing to see that hardly any State was able to give the desired information. Repeated reminders and contacts at personal level did not materially alter the situation." Several questions pertained to the representation of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in elected bodies, services etc. A couple of States have replied to these questions and even these replies are inadequate. Regarding the representation of OBCs in higher public services, only a couple of States have given some information. Even this information is too sketchy and scrappy for any meaningful inference which may be valid for the country as a whole." So this was the self-estimate of the Mandal Commission which has been made much of by Karunanidhi and his government. In no other civilized country in the world, a duly elected government would use the strong arm of the Police for organizing a bandh and use that brutal power for closing shops and other commercial establishments in the tamasha name of a bandh. The same Chief Minister would talk about the moral responsibility of the Chief Minister of Karnataka to respect the verdict of the Supreme Court in respect of the Cauvery dispute in letter and spirit! DK leader K Veeramani has recently accused the two Supreme Court Judges who gave an interim stay in respect of 27 per cent reservation issue, of lacking in judicial honesty and discipline. Veeramani's exemplary record of self-sacrifice, selfless service, high moral character and unsurpassed discipline should by themselves be adequate to persuade the government of Tamilnadu committed to such Dravidian values to recommend his name for the award of Bharat Ratna by the President of India.

Dr P Radhakrishnan, Fellow of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, has recorded that the list of Backward Classes in Tamilnadu grew from 11 in 1883 to 39 in 1893 to 46 in 1903 to 122 in 1913 to 131 in 1923 to 182 in 1933 to 238 in 1943 to 270 in 1953. The Mandal Commission listed 288 for Tamilnadu, a State from the Government Service of which and from several professions in it, those not fortunate enough to be Backward have been well nigh driven out.

Though the Mandal Commission Report is considered as a Bible by all the unscrupulous politicians of India, yet the Mandal Commission itself was very modest about its worth. To quote the words of Mandal: "In the end it may be emphasized that this survey has no pretensions to being a piece of academic research. It has been conducted by the administrative machinery of the government and used as a rough and ready tool for evolving a set of simple criteria for identifying social and educational backwardness. Throughout the survey our approach has been conditioned by practical considerations, realities of field conditions, constraints of resources and trained manpower and paucity of time. All these factors obviously militate against the requirements of a technically sophisticated and academically satisfying operation."

In the well known Indra Sawhney vs Union of India (Supreme Court 1992), Justice Kuldip Singh of the Supreme Court pointed out that the Mandal Commission did no work to establish either the "backwardness" or the inadequate representation of the 3743 castes it proclaimed to be backward (based on 1931 census caste data alone) and thereby entitled to reservations. To quote his sharp words in this context "The so called socio-educational field survey was an eye wash. Only two villages and one urban block in each district of the country were taken into consideration. Only 0.6 per cent of the villages in the country were surveyed by the Mandal Commission." If the castes enlisted by Mandal are permitted to avail the benefits of job-reservations, thereby depriving half the country's population of its right to equality under Article 16 (1) of the Indian Constitution, the result would be nothing but a fraud on the Constitution. The Mandal Report virtually rewrites Article 16 (4) by substituting CASTE for CLASS. "CASTE" has been made the sole and exclusive test for determining which group is backward and which is not." The obsession of the Mandal Commission with Casteism is such that it invents CASTES even for non-Hindus. As a result, the entire approach of the Mandal Commission has been anti-secular and against the basic features of the Indian Constitution." Theses relevant points raised by Justice Kuldeep Singh have weighed with the Supreme Court when they gave an interim stay to the operation of 27 per cent reservation last week.

I fully endorse the view of Arun Shourie that intellect marked by depth, disinterested public spirit and high moral courage has been driven out of all public discourse in India. Firstly it has been driven out by intimidation. Secondly, by superficiality � any public debate seldom goes beyond the clattering and clanking slogan mongering. Thirdly by superciliousness. Fourthly by tepid and balanced journalism which is always neutral between the fire-brigade and the fire, between good and evil and hell bent on being adamant only for drift and solid only for fluidity. We require a strong, principled, virile and fearless free press to highlight public issues which plague our country. We also require a reasoned and informed free speech, buttressed by cogent argument and exceptional ability for gathering and delivering irrefutable evidence. Restoring solid and sacred substance to public discourse is the crying need of the hour in India today.

V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.

       Send your views to author

Do you wish to reach our readers? submit your guest column

Copyright and Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and not of this website. The author is solely responsible for the contents of this article. This website does not represent or endorse the accuracy, completeness or reliability of any opinion, statement, appeal, advice or any other information in the article. Our readers are free to forward this page URL to anyone. This column may NOT be transmitted or distributed by others in any manner whatsoever (other than forwarding or web listing page URL) without the prior permission from us and the author.

Previous articles by:
V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.

NGOs, subversive activists, foreign funds

An Assault on The Soul of The Nation

A "Great" Congress MP from Nepal!

Bush-sponsored Evangelisation of India

Tying Bharat Mata up in knots!!

CPI(M)s pseudo secular contortions

Evangelization or Satanism: Cause & effect

Jinnah - A genuine Muslim communalist

A great harbinger of Hindu renaissance

Islamic terrorism in Tenkasi

Chennai"s tribute fo Judge"s verdict...

Aurobindo"s vs Congress nationalism

"Churchianity" - An artifice for aggression

Congress-sponsored communal brutality

Archbishops" guilt march

All articles by:
V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.