When Arun Shourie Speaks ...

Last Thursday Dr. Arun Shourie was giving a talk on “Equal Opportunities: Alternatives & their Efficacies” (no prizes for guessing that the talk was against the reservations) at IISc through our students’ forum called Prasthutha. It was an absolute delight to listen to him. I put some key points of his talk here.

Indian Constitution has given high prominence for equality. But has also said that the ways and means in which it should be brought about should not affect the efficiency and hence the growth of the nation. Else it would lead to other adverse repercussions. But what is happening today? We have become experts in identifying inequality. Courtesy: Leftist rhetorics. Our eyes are strained to look at injustice, problems, inequality etc. So we start writing about it. Then the people suffering from so called inequality read it and come to us, and then we write more about it, and if that is exhausted we go around and discover inequality. Finally, if we can’t discover inequality we invent it!!!

There is no historical evidence to prove that Manusmriti was practiced in actuality. No one has ever given evidence regarding its practice. Marxist historians keep referring to the same few verses in it and say more than a millennium was full of upper cast extortions. Even just for the sake of it if you consider it were to be true, the makers of the Constitution were no fools to recommend reservation for just 10 years to compensate for the mistakes of one full millennium. So, the Constitution does not recommend reservation to compensate for the historical mistakes. It was inevitable at the time of Puna pact, 1932- when Gandhiji had to agree to it to avoid separate electorate based on caste.

Now we take a look at one of the progressive judges making some statements in his judgment. What do you mean by equality of opportunity if it does not produce equal outcome? If the outcome is not equal then the equal opportunity was a sham!! That is the (il)logical level to which our progressive judges can go!! He quotes to a write up called “Merit My Foot” (written in Rise and Awakening of Depressed Classes in India by a backward cast propagandist) in his judgment and states “nowhere merit is given such high importance as in India. It’s a pure invention to maintain the monopoly of the upper caste. Upper cast people keep the vast original inhabitants untouchables, tribals, backward castes, religious minorities…” The judge in his emotional judgment has forgotten that the religious minorities are not original inhabitants!! There is another twist to this statement, which is mentioned in Shourie’s latest book “Falling Over Backwards”. The twist is the author of the book "Rise and Awakening .." sources the statement to “THE HINDU” newspaper of 1931!! And which year was the judgment made? 1992!! So the judge took the situation of India in 1931 as reported by a newspaper and made this judgment. No verification of the ground reality was made.

Finally few lines about Madal commission. What was the basis for deciding caste based reservation in 1992? The 1931 census report! Because, after 1931, there was no caste based enumeration in census. But if you read the census report of 1931, you will see that province after province the chief commissioners of census have reported that the caste system was fluidic and it was undergoing a rapid change. They had a great difficulty in caste based enumeration. To illustrate the problem just one line is sufficient: The total population of India was estimated to be 352.8 million and the total no: people covered by caste based table was 220.7 million. Finally they had to abandon that. But Mandal commission took it from there 61 years later, distorted the figures arbitarily and made its notorious recommendations!

These are few glimpses of what was there in the talk. To listen to the complete talk visit http://www.iisc.ernet.in/prasthu The entire talk can be downloaded. If you want the video file of the talk, I will be more than happy to provide you. Mail me at ananda.sreenivas@gmail.com. Also read Shourie’s book ‘Falling Over Backwards” to know more about these issues. Once again the statement turns out be true: “When Shourie speaks Marxists vanish”