Learning from YSR

Till his tragic death on September 2 not many people outside Andhra Pradesh knew that Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy was a Christian. Names of members of his family do not reveal their religious identity: His wife is Vijayalaxmi, his son Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, his daughter Sharmila. As Chief Minister he was not known to attend services in churches of towns or cities he visited. He went to Hindu temples and Muslim dargahs to join their religious celebrations and happily sported a daub of vermilion powder Hindu priests put on his forehead. He regarded religion a strictly personal matter not to be flaunted in public. By contrast Chief Ministers of other states, barring Communist, make a great show of going to temples, mosques and gurdwaras or seek blessings of some godmen the day they are elected. You may well ask, so what? The point I wish to make is simple: In any society which pretended to be secular, public figures should not assert their religious identities because it creates an unnecessary gap between them and people of other faiths.
This brings me to the role of religious minorities in India minus Parsis who are too minuscular to count. Christians form around 3 per cent of the population of India. There are not many very big Christian landowners or Christian industrial houses. The only really rich Christian family I know of are the Matthews who own the Malayala Manorama group of papers. Nevertheless, the community enjoys 100 per cent literacy and has done more for education and medical services of our country than others put together. I would hazard a guess that crime rates including corruption among Christians are probably the lowest. By contrast, Sikhs who are the richest minority, forming around 2 per cent of the population, have 30 per cent illiteracy, high rate of crimes of violence, and probably the highest incidence of liquor and drug addiction. Worst of all is the plight of the largest minority, the Muslims who form about 13 per cent of our population. Although they have a few multi-billionaires like Azim Premji, Hamdard family, Shahnaz Hussain and maybe some others, they also have descendants of erstwhile ruling families of Nizams of Hyderabad, Nawabs of Bhopal, Pataudi, Malerkotla, Junagarh and vast wakf properties. Their literacy rates are the lowest, particularly among women. A majority of them continue to exhibit their separateness by clothes they wear. It used to be Fez caps, now it is skull caps and Awami salwar kameez for men, a high percentage of their women folk in urban areas continue to wear hijab, either full length burqas or head-scarves which cover more than their heads. Instead of getting on with things that matter like education and health-care, their leaders waste most of their time asserting their separateness.
I regard Rajasekhar Reddy as the best example of what a state Chief Minister should be and the Christian contribution to India’s welfare as something other communities should emulate.

Month of September

It is best described as neither here nor there month. The summer is nearly over, but not quite. One day is as warm as any in August, the next day can be cool as early October. You do not know whether to switch on your AC or do without it and switch on your fan. Water-melons and mangoes are on the way out; apples, pears walnuts enter the market. The monsoon should be over by the end of August. But we had hardly any rain during the rainy season and had to make up the loss by having a few downpours in September. However, one thing is certain that even if there is drought in most parts of northern India, north Indian rivers will be in spate by late September and October. The Himalayas get their quota of snows in the winter and are exposed to the full blaze of the sun through the summer. Melted snow runs into all northern Indian rivers from the Sutlej to the Brahmaputra causing extensive floods as they go along on their sea-ward journey.
September marks the beginning of the season of fulfilment. Kalidas alludes to this beautiful verse translated by A.W. Ryder:

Over the rice-fields laden plants
Are shivering to the freeze;
While in his brisk caress dance,
the blossom-burdened tree;
He ruffles every lilly pond
Where blossoms kiss and part,
And stirs with lover’s fancied fond
The young man’s eager heart.

Statue Raj

Behnji is the true leader of the downtrodden.
They can never, never forget her contribution
And should somebody dare to do
She has erected a reminder by building her statue.
There is nothing wrong in it, it’s no crime
She has become immortal in her lifetime
In her lifetime, the poor and not-so-poor have understood
That eight-hour outages and dry taps are only for their good
That all her energy for their sake she has bent
And all the public money on monuments is so well spent.
They love her because she works hard
And fights the Centre with no-holds-barred.

(Contributed by Kuldip Salil, New Delhi)