Beliefs and Believers

                                      *Saumitra Mohan

            It is generally becoming quite fashionable for human beings to denigrate and deprecate God and religion as people go through the rigmarole of day-to-day life. This trait is noticed more when people grow up and have got through the mundane battles of their lives to make both ends meet. It also depends on the kind of formal or informal education, surroundings and circumstances that the particular human being has been through otherwise an ordinary individual is usually quite God-fearing and remains seeped in religion and the cognate rituals which seemingly have no values.

            The increasingly mechanical life devoid of interpersonal relationships and human emotions in the overpowering presence of machines, tools, instruments, gadgets and technology is also pushing humans and their society to alienation where an individual often ends up attacking and inveighing against the God who is never in a mood to defend Himself, has never expressly desired to be worshipped or followed through an organised religion. But the fact remains that both God and religion are important and this is more so in a time when alienated human beings through their garbled understanding of the ‘Supreme Being’ are wreaking havoc all across the world.

            The same is reflected as variously as in the rise of the rightwing forces, retreat of the liberal state, rise of illiberal and authoritarian regimes, and rise of intolerant theocratic forces all around us. Examples include mindless acts of terror in the name of religion, extremist and militant violence, shooting and killing of individuals for their liberal values and thoughts as seen in India, Bangladesh and elsewhere and imposition of majoritarian, monolithic and homogeneous ‘one-size-fits-all’ standards on all members of the society, something which is against the very innate nature of a creative human society. All the developments that we see today have happened because of the allowances made to the contrary beliefs and thoughts.

            Against all these incursions on religion and God, there are certain things which need to be understood metaphysically, spiritually and philosophically otherwise we would see no meaning in the mindless pursuit and protection of repetitive but fleeting life activities. The first thing that we need to notice is the transient and ephemeral nature of things around us including a human life. After all, what is the immanent purpose of human existence on this earth if nothing here lasts forever? Why are we living, surviving and struggling when we all have to die or get destroyed at the end of the day?

            In fact, most of us die live as if we would never die. But most of us actually die as if we never lived. We keep chasing amorphous chimaeras of life without realising the import behind the same. Have we not done the same mundane things like ‘eating-defecating-procreating-dying’ day in and day out all across the world and through the ages which keep us bogged in diurnal ontological struggles without most of us even getting a whiff of the same?  If we don’t comprehend the nuances behind the same, we would continue hurtling through our life like zombies without grasping the meaningfulness of a human life.

            One feels that all the individuals have come to this earth for a definite purpose and until we find and understand that purpose, we shall continue feeling alienated and disaffected against the order of human life on this earth. After all, as they say, if the world was good the way it was when we were born, we should not have been born at all because our existence would be completely irrelevant and asynchronous with the extant realities. So, we must find that purpose that most of us have so far failed to discover and that purpose is to strive for our ultimate spiritual development.

            We are all born and struggle through our lives to aspire, achieve and hoard the different goodies for a comfortable human life, often way beyond the requirements, only to realise at the fag end as to how we have frittered away the precious time on this earth. All the wealth and fame that we chase through our life suddenly appear to have no meaning as they were never ours and are finally left behind. What is truly ours are the precious and happy moments spent learning different aspects of life’s nuances and our relationships. Enrichment of our mind and consciousness in this life is carried forward to the next life. Hence, the intellectual difference shown by different individuals since their birth despite being born to same circumstances.

            Unfortunately, stuck as we are in the quagmire of religion, caste, nationalism, regionalism, linguistic jingoism, competitive one-upmanship and hedonist pursuits, we have mostly missed the wood for the trees. So, instead of savouring the magnificence of divine creations and helping ourselves spiritually, we have ended up messing our lives. At the end of the day, this world remains a ‘Maya’ or a Divine Drama which we are supposed to play out towards our gradual spiritual evolution for ultimate union with the ‘Supreme Being’. We continue taking birth and rebirth on this earth till we attain the elusive ‘Moksha’ or become perfect to merge with the Divine. YouTube, Google and literature are replete with the rebirth stories to prove that the same human being keeps coming to this earth over and over again. Past life regression therapies, Tantric wisdom or increasingly popular ‘Yoga’ tell us the same thing.

            The popular Hindu belief of our rebirth being pegged to our ‘Karma’ is actually a spin-off of our consciousness at the time of our death. Spiritual studies suggest that instead of the Divine assigning a particular birth for us, it is the humans themselves who decide their birth given the kind of lessons they still have to learn and the same is predicated upon their own consciousness. Otherwise, how come two individuals born to same parents and same circumstances show diametrically opposite traits and talents? It has got to do with their differently evolved consciousness in their previous births. So, a seeker of wealth when he dies again looks for a womb or parents where s/he can pursue the Mammon while a dying saint would look for parents who would facilitate his better spiritual upliftment.

            Viewed thus, the earth is nothing but a school where we keep coming to learn our lessons till we have evolved to understand the real truth of life to merge with the Supreme. As we remember all our past lives in the astral world, our spiritual growth is very slow because of the mechanically self-controlled behaviour. That is why, the human life on earth is preferred by souls because of the possible faster spiritual growth than is possible in the astral world but more often than not, we end up messing the same. The irony is that the Hindus who believe in ‘rebirth’ the most and accept the possibility of them being born as a person of other religion, faith, creed  or a woman still spoil their Karmic consciousness by indulging in such nefarious activities as actually keep him or her from further spiritual evolution and deliverance.

            Dalai Lama says, ‘if you are really selfish, help the person who can’t help you’, thereby creating an altruistic debt. However, one feels that there is none created without the capacity to help another creature or fellow human being. So, we should never run down or hurt another creature if we really wish to attain ‘Moksha’ otherwise we would remain stuck in the ‘cycle of birth and rebirth’. The ethics and values of humanity are more supreme than the ephemerals of identity or possessions which continue changing with our each birth. Religion and theory of Karma says that if you hurt or cheat someone, the divine play shall ensure that you shall also be hurt or cheated in equal measure sooner or later. It is advisable that while we live, we create a larger ‘circle of goodness and goodwill’ by touching as many lives as possible by the dint of our altruistic or selfless Karmic actions. That shall be a real enlightened selfishness than the seemingly selfish acts of running after wealth or fame.

            Also, how and why should a truly religious person act contrary to the scriptural exhortations against lust, greed, theft, anger or hate? By not heeding these religious commandments, are we not disrespecting our own religions? So, what we see today in the name of religion is nothing but a travesty and an abomination of religion which must stop. All the religions, nations, wealth or fame are nothing but means to an end and the end being our eventual spiritual evolution through attainment of ‘Moksha’. But, we all keep chasing the meaningless without realising the same. After all, money, precious metals or high positions themselves have no value. It is we who have assigned values to them and have been running after them ever since.

            Now, a question one often encounters here is the relevance and purpose behind this ‘Drama’. Made as we are in the images of God, we are said to be an extension of the Divine who is realising Himself through this Divine Drama. After all, all these things that we see around ourselves including sundry emotions, passions, objects, creatures, organisms, technologies, scientific discoveries and a complex operation of this world would have all remained mere conceptions and nothing else had God not created this world to put the same in motion to glimpse their actual working, and thereby also realise the significance of His own power. So while the Divine Drama plays itself out, many of us have fallen by the wayside which may at some level appear as a failure of the divine design but if the world is still surviving, it simply means that the balance still hangs in favour of the positive and the Divine Drama is playing out as per the larger cosmic plan.

            It is against this background that humans created religion and God, not only because they could not explain many things but also because of their own incapabilities. As some humans become liberated from the mundane struggles of making ends meet, they become alienated and atheist/agnostic because of a garbled understanding of the Divine while many have crooked conception of the same. That is why, we have a multiple understandings of God and religion. The various religions as have evolved are nothing but spatio-temporal expressions of humans trying to come to terms with their initial realities when they were in the Hobbesian ‘State of Nature’.

            Religions, ethics, mores, customs and values in the absence of means of transportation and communications developed as the primary laws during the early days of human civilisation. Even though there is no need for existence of multiplicity of these religions now, they still continue to be relevant not only because they add variety and colour to our dull and drab life but also because of their functional role in securing regulation and integration of human society. Temples and churches in themselves may not be of any value, but they become important because they bring humans together to perform certain collective tasks in a spirit of solidarity, thereby increasing social bonding and integration.

            As all the persons who visit a temple are generally carrying righteous thoughts and uplifting emotions, the positive vibrations of these religious places become very powerful and as such become very strong centres of social integration. Our seemingly meaningless customs, rituals, ethics, mores and values often play the same role. However, those becoming dysfunctional and conflicting with human existence, slowly stop being part of religion and go out of currency e.g. ‘Sati’, prohibition on widow remarriage, child marriage, human or animal sacrifice et al.

            At another level, it is really deemed an expression of human arrogance or ignorance that we have conceived God in our image. After all, if there are millions of creatures and organisms, why should God look like humans and not like a dog, a buffalo or a bacterium? Does it mean that all the creatures have their own God? In fact, it is this understanding that Hindus, heathens or pagans have millions of God as they see divine in every creation of the Almighty. Being rational animal with a consciousness, human beings have conveniently cast God in their own images who may not be like us, but there should definitely be no doubt about His very existence.

            After all, such a complex and beautiful creation cannot emerge out of a chaos. There is a defined divine plan, rather a micro plan which says that nothing which happens in this world happens without a reason. Science may explain evolution of nature and civilisation, but why a sperm and an ovum combine to form a zygote and finally evolve as a fully-grown organism of a particular species as per a definite genetic map has still not been explained. Humans have still not mastered the capability to create a new living organism as not found in nature. Why different organisms come out of similar looking seeds or eggs has not been explained?

            And there are millions and billions of such intricate planning through the nature which has been done very methodically and all of this could not have evolved out of chaos. So, there is definitely a ‘Supreme Being’ which has created us all and has been quietly chaperoning this world. But as long as we don’t understand Him and His ways, as long as we don’t understand the real purpose behind the Divine Drama, we shall continue to witness and experience the chaos and pain in our own lives as are reflected across the world.

*The views expressed here are personal and don’t reflect those of the Government.

             

Quixotic Mistakes of Bimal Gurung

                                                                                    *Saumitra Mohan

            The winds of change are sweeping across the Darjeeling hills. History seems to have come a full circle for Mr. Bimal Gurung who seemed to be completely out of depth with the ground realities and popular mood in is bailiwick. The split in the GJMM (Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha) and the rising voices of dissent as reigning now are nothing but a damning indictment and reflection on his leadership style. The latter had been thoughtlessly hurting the interests of his own constituents and thereby his own by frequent resort to agitational politics.

            The Hill economy suffered badly as a result of his ‘antics and shenanigans’ to force Darjeeling people to live under the constant threat of an agitation. The confrontationist approach laced with almost daily dose of strikes, bandhs and agitations played ducks and drakes with the local economy. Such unthinking and hair-brained politics hugely hurt the principal pillars of Darjeeling’s economy including education, tea and tourism.

            Today, if people are up in arms against him and his ill-thought agitational politics, then only he is to blame for it. Today, Mr Gurung finds himself increasingly isolated and in wilderness. A society as educated and sophisticated as Darjeeling definitely does not deserve a leader like him who can’t feel the pulse of his own people and can’t marry the regional with the national interests. Gorkhaland is definitely an emotive issue for the people, but emotions should always be tempered and informed by realism to balance the local and larger interests. It is here that Mr. Gurung failed severely.

            Mr. Gurung ought to have focused on better development and governance in the immediate aftermath of a long-drawn movement which eventually resulted in the formation of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA). It would have been very much advisable for Mr Gurung to consolidate on the gains made during the movement preceding the formation of GTA and for this a prolonged peace would have been in order. However, he never allowed the local economy to settle down.

            People had just come out of a long-drawn agitational politics and wanted a ‘prolonged peace’ to sustain and build on their life and livelihood. But Mr. Gurung never allowed a ‘movement-fatigued’ people the luxury of the same and kept the Damocles’ Sword of strikes and bandhs hanging over the people. But a garbled sense of politics and his own uninformed self led him into scuppering the very boat he was sailing in. Today, he is in splendid isolation and a declared offender for the inanities of repeated infraction of laws.

            Now, let's discuss some of the ideas Mr. Gurung chased to paint himself into the corner. The hill areas of Darjeeling (Gorkhaland movement is primarily confined to the three hill sub-divisions of Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of West Bengal district namely Darjeeling Sadar, Kurseong and Kalimpong) has a population of around 10 lakhs of which around seven lakhs people can roughly fall into the category of Gorkhas, the remaining being Lepchas, Bhutias, Marwaris, Biharis, Tibetans and other non-Gorkha communities. So, the proponents of this movement are actually seeking a separate state for these seven lakh people, the others perforce being part of the movement with no choice being available to them. In fact, the Lepchas have already been expressly complaining of being shortchanged by the Gorkhaland champions. The term 'Gorkhaland' itself is not a hold-all concept and ergo, does not do justice to the identities of the various other ethnic communities as residing in Darjeeling. 

            So, if a recognition were to be given to a statehood demand for a people of seven to nine lakh population, then how many constituent states or provinces should we be having in this country of over 130 crore people. If our mighty Gorkhas were to be given a separate state, then how many states are we actually bargaining for in a country where we have over 5000 ethnic communities and castes with around 850 languages. If this demand is recognized, then what justification shall we have to deny a state for the Yadavas, the Jats, the Rajputs, the  Santhals, the Meenas and what not, with most of them having a sizable population, in fact, many of them being much more numerous than the Gorkhas.

            In fact, there are already movements on for the formation of a Kamtapur (comprising areas of Assam and North Bengal) and Greater Cochbehar (comprising most of North Bengal) in West Bengal, Bodoland  and Karbi-Anglong in Assam,  Harit Pradesh, Bundelkhand and Purvanchal in Uttar Pradesh, Mithilanchal in Bihar, Vidarbha in Maharashtra and Saurashtra in Gujarat.

            Again, the demand for ceding the contiguous mouzas or areas with sizable Gorkha population attacks the very concept of pluralism which is the hallmark of our salad-bowl or Ganga-Jamuni co-existential culture. Mr. Gurung desires that all the nearby areas with substantial Nepali speaking population also be given to the proposed Gorkhaland state. Even if we ignore this most important factor of our societal pluralism being compromised as a result of such a parochial demand for a while, still such a demand is very difficult to be accepted for some practical considerations.

            First, this is plainly wrong to assume that all the Nepali speaking people are ipso facto Gorkhas or want Gorkhaland.  Secondly, most of the demanded areas have a predominant majority of the people other than the Nepali speaking population. Thirdly, even some of the areas where the Nepali speaking people are in majority are mostly enclaves within another district or other community dominated areas. Annexing these areas to the demanded Gorkhaland state is administratively not a feasible proposition as also observed by the Justice Shyamal Sen Commission which was constituted to explore the feasibility of such inclusions.

            Also, the Nepali speaking population in most of these mouzas is estimated to be not more than 20-30 per cent meaning thereby that by ceding such areas to the new entity, a great disservice shall be done to the desire of the other communities who are in majority in those mouzas. Besides, once we recognize such a demand, a Pandora's Box shall be opened. It not only jeopardizes the plural character of our society by artificially trying to make it monochromatic, but also opens the flood-gates for similar such demands from different parts of the country.

            After all, every state has some population of one or the other ethno-linguistic groups which can suitably be demanded by other states. By this logic, all the Bengali speaking areas of Assam should come to West Bengal or the Hindi speaking or tribal dominated areas of latter should go to Bihar or Jharkhand respectively. By the same logic, the entire Hindi heartland of North India should become a huge monolithic state. The resultant outcome of acceding to such a demand may indeed be very chaotic. It is a very archaic and regressive thinking which ought not to be given any further encouragement.

            Again, the alleged historical exploitation of Darjeeling by the state of West Bengal does not hold because Darjeeling has the best of social development indicators in the country and is definitely among the best in West Bengal. As per the West Bengal Human Development Report, 2004 prepared under the supervision of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Darjeeling was ranked 2^nd and 4^th in terms of the gender and human development indices respectively,  among all the districts of West Bengal.

            If underdevelopment and exploitation of Darjeeling can be cited as a justification for statehood, then Darjeeling ought to fall much behind in the queue for promotion to statehood as there are many more regions in the country which would have the first claim to statehood.  Be it the income, literacy rates, educational attainments, nutritional status, percentage of BPL (below poverty line) population, longevity, infant and maternal mortality, overall health status of people and infrastructures, Darjeeling fares much better compared to most parts of the country or the different districts of the state of West Bengal. Be it noted that Darjeeling has for the past more than three decades been under such autonomous local self-government bodies as Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) and GTA.

            But still, if the statehood proponents believe that Darjeeling needs more development, then statehood is definitely no solution. We are all well conversant with the experiences of some of the already existing states whose development record is just pathetic, to say the least. Jharkhand became a state against the same background of alleged underdevelopment, but even after a lapse of more than a decade's time, it is still much far off from realization of the developmental goals it set out to achieve way back in the year 2000. Jharkhand today fares very badly among the newly created states. The fact remains that the ilks of Mr. Gurung should actually be talking of good governance and good administration than anything else. A statehood trapping sans the desideratum of good governance will achieve nothing but zilch.

            Then, given its size, both demographically and geographically, Darjeeling already receives a disproportionate per capita share of resources compared to many other parts of the country. And a substantial share of these resources come from the state of West Bengal meaning thereby that West Bengal has traditionally been providing disproportionate resources to Darjeeling, often at the expense of the more backward and deserving areas of the state. The extant Gorkhaland Territorial Administration's revenue from all sources is assumed to be not more than three crores annually. If we also include the revenue received by the state government from such sources as land, excise, transport, professional and sales tax, then at most the figure is likely to go up to  around 30 crore rupees. At the most and at its best, tapping all the obtaining and potential sources of revenue, it can barely go up to 100 crore rupees annually in the most ideal of situations. In the shorter run, however, a 50 crore rupee annual revenue appears a more practical figure.

            Moreover, GTA reportedly has a non-plan expenditure of around 600 crores at the moment which with plan and schematic expenses would come to around 1400 crores. If at all the three hill sub-divisions become the cherished Gorkhaland state, the combined plan and non-plan expenditure is likely to shoot up to, at least, 2000 crores factoring the expenses for general and police administration, not to speak of various attendant expenses which come with the formation of a new state. So, if a region which has the best of developmental indicators and which has the revenue generation potential of only around 50-100 crore rupees, why should they be getting a disproportionate 2000 crores at the expense of the more deserving parts of the countries, particularly those areas of Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and other states reeling under extremist or other menace.

            Mr. Gurung should have done his homework better to show that Darjeeling is in a position to bear all the non-plan and, at least, a portion of the plan expenses of the proposed Gorkhaland state before demanding the same. If such a new entity expects to be spoon-fed through the Central government's doles, would not there be similar justified demands from different parts of the country. And if we allow this for one particular region, can we deny the same to others. We ought to understand that an eponymous Gorkhaland state is not just about emotional wishes of our countrymen in Darjeeling, but has much far-reaching insidious implications for the rest of the country as the same would only spur more and more such demands.

            If Telangana has today become a state, it is because of its geographical compactness, a suitable demographic size, administrative viability and self-sufficient resources. But the same does not apply to many such demands elsewhere including Gorkhaland. If all of us keep demanding statehood on such grounds, then our state-building process shall never come to an end, not to speak of the nation-building process. Mr. Gurung should have actually aimed at making the GTA work successfully, which came into being through a tripartite agreement between the Central Government, the Government of West Bengal and the dominant hill party i.e. Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) on 18th July, 2011. GTA is an autonomous and empowered body which can be suitably harnessed to fulfill the developmental aspirations of the local people, if development is what they are looking for.

            In an article published on 4^th August, 2012 in The Statesman, this author had strongly recommended that the GTA “should avoid the ‘Big Schemes-Big Projects’ focus of the erstwhile DGHC and should, instead, target such schemes and programmes, as have wider outreach and directly impact the quality of life of the hoi polloi,” an advice not heeded by Mr Gurung to his own chagrin, thereby bringing his comeuppance. It would be more in the fitness of things that GTA be afforded an opportunity to become the bellwether of Darjeeling’s development to ensure a peaceful and progressive life for our brothers and sisters there.

            Of all the things Darjeeling needs now utmost is a visionary and enlightened leadership which understands the needs and pulse of the local people to synergize the energies and interests of the motley interest groups in the hills to bring in better governance and development which would be in sync with the larger national interests. One would expect the incoming helmsmen of GTA to focus more on correcting the basics including repairing the damages done to the hill economy owing to recent ill-timed uprisings at the behest of Mr. Gurung. Well-planned development and good governance are the budge-words for Darjeeling and its new administrators. Entire country is waiting to see the Queen of the Hill smile.

*The author is a former District Magistrate of Darjeeling and presently working as CEO, KMDA. The views expressed here are personal and don’t reflect those of the Government.