Atheists per se are not barred from teaching

The bestest news I read in today’s (September 21) The Hindu was unfortunately buried deep in the paper, on page 11. This post is an effort to bring it out in the open. But, you must understand that my posts are read at the most by half dozen people and yet, I am claiming I am spreading the news about it. This is not my vanity.

The issue is about school education, indeed prayers in school. The issue is about a school teacher, teacher of English at that, an atheist one at that. It is about how the teacher stood up for his rights to stand up without folded hands during school prayer [1]. The school, by not giving him his due, sat him down. But now the school has relented, under a knuckle breaking judgment from the Bombay High Court. [2]

Now, you understand why this issue will not catch fire. People do not see this as a matter of human rights violation, like they do other things. This is the pity. In my understanding, a violation of human rights is a violation of human rights – no gradation in acknowledging the same; a khap panchayat induced honor killing is no different as an issue to be discussed, debated and addressed. Will there be any debates on TV on this vis-à-vis the veritable cascade we saw on khaps’ “honor killing”? I rest my case.

What is my interest in this matter, why did this article catch my eye and why am I blogging almost in real time? I am a rationalist and consequently an atheist, I fancy myself a teacher – not accredited as such yet an effective one, people have told me – and most importantly, the thinking that drove me to post on Narendra Dabholkar and superstition [3] drove me to post this. I see rationalism as a justifiable stream of thinking in society. In fact, I see religionism verily not as a way of living, and I will come to it in a subsequent post.

We have a tendency to compare ourselves to the US, on various things to pat ourselves on our backs (we are doing right, per the US), to criticize ourselves (typically in matters not deeply significant, like traffic discipline, the so-called meritocracy, governance etc.) and other matters that may not elicit foundational resonances. But, freedom of religion is a core issue of our republic, yet not recognized so. I hope this post will unravel the silence, as evidenced in the newspaper carrying it on page 11.

Yes, our conception of religious freedom and what the American constitution says on it are very different, but there is the underlying common thread of “Live and let live”. Had any instance similar to what happened to Sanjay Salve at the Savitribai Phule Secondary School taken place in the US, the issue would have resonated through local newspapers, would have percolated up to (if that is possible) regional newspapers and national ones too, would have been caught by the TV talking heads, and almost definitely reached the US Supreme Court, given the intensity of debate on the “establishment clause” of their constitution.

Here, we do not have such a mechanism. Indeed, I can bet half my estate (half of zero is still zero!) that similar case will be brought elsewhere in this vast land of ours, and we will start from scratch.

We shy away from discussions on religion because we are fearful – fearful of “offending the religious sensibilities”. Never has it been debated why we should not discuss religion, which as far as we can see, is a social contrivance. This should be the basic discussion on religion – questioning why it exists, whether it should exist at all, and if yes, should it be given any “fear” premium.

Now, this is where, even as I feel good for the judgment in favor of the teacher – an English teacher at that, an atheist at that – I am disappointed that the school acquiesced so easily. I would have liked the case to have gone up the high court ladder and on to the Supreme Court Constitution bench. That is when, we will know for sure that atheists per se cannot be barred from teaching, not only English but any and all subjects, including rationalism if ever it is introduced in the curricula.

Raghuram Ekambaram

References

1.    Pray, what wrong did I do, asks Nashik Teacher, Alok Deshpande, The Hindu, September 1, 2013

2.    After six years, atheist teacher to get his dues, The Hindu, September 21, 2013

3.    http://nonexpert.blogspot.in/2013/09/dr-dabholkar-and-superstition.html   

What’s wrong with American, Scottish, and Australian men?

In her regular weekly piece Ms. Kalpana Sharma asks, “What’s wrong with Indian men?” [1] From the title, I expected an analysis. What did I get? I will let you be the judge, down the line.

In the context of recent spate of sexual crimes in Mumbai, the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Himanshu Roy said in Mumbai, “The most obvious method of preventing such crimes is that women should be aware of their environment. This does not mean that they should be suspicious of all (my emphasis) their male relatives, friends or colleagues, but it would be wrong to assume that none (my emphasis) of these will ever harm them.”

Now, that did not sound all that awful to me. Of course, I am a man and what would I know about crimes against women. Another reason it sounded OK was an article I had referred to in an earlier post, by one Nilanjana S. Roy [2] Executing the neighbor in which the author, taking support of statistics, argued that rapes by acquaintances, relatives are far more numerous as compared to by strangers. The environment contains strangers as well as people you know. Further, in a series of articles in a newspaper on how unsafe women feel in Delhi, one writer mentioned that she crosses the road when she espies a group of men ahead [3]. I thought this is what the policeman must have referred to in his comment about women being “aware of the environment.”

But, no I got it all wrong. The policeman was “suggesting that the onus of preventing the crimes is really on women,” Ms. Kalpana Sharma says [1]. Unless Himanshu Roy had said more about women’s responsibility and for some mysterious reasons the writer failed to include it – after all, it would have helped her case to no end – she had gone way wrong; particularly when she throws this gem of a sentence: “Roy needs to be reminded that the job of the police and law enforcement is not (my emphasis) to tell women what they should do, but to do their own job more effectively.”  Sorry, both are the tasks of policemen. Police must tell both men and women, and children too, what they should do in the interest of their own safety, while discharging its other duties effectively.

It is more than likely that the writer has been swept away by the current hysteria. No, I am not discounting the horror visited upon the lady, and I as a male citizen of Delhi feel ashamed. But, unthinking finger-pointing does no one any good. And, hysteria carries a negative premium in charting out a path out of the mess through discussions and debates.

The irony of the whole article is in the conclusion that for the many troubling questions, including why men are this way, “There are no easy answers. We can begin by debating and discussing this issue much more than we do, in our schools and colleges, in the columns of our newspapers, and in our families,” after doing everything she could have done to undermine debates and discussions!

What I have got by reading the article is that I should title my post in the interrogative and proceed to give no answer. And, that gets me to American, Australian, Scottish men. Parallel to the Delhi gang-rape, the other unspeakable crime on the world stage is the massacre of 20 children aged six or seven in the US.

Bill Moyers, a left-leaning doyen of the American press, starts an article in the Huffington Post [4] naming the 20 children and six adults who were shot dead in Sandy Hook, Newtown, Connecticut, USA – the full address and you can locate it on your iPad. If he had wanted he could have likewise listed the most recent dozen are so such massacres. Indeed, he lists four: Newtown, Columbine, Arora and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Why he missed Norway, I am curious. What is common to all of the above and the other unlisted massacres? All were carried out by men. Now, you get why I titled this What’s wrong with …men?

Bill Moyers took care of American men. What about Scottish and Australian men? For that I have to take you to an article in The Economist of December 22, 2012, their annual double number [5], a nice Christmas gift this massacre was. In the piece, we read that after a similar massacre in Scotland, Britain banned private ownership of most handguns. That is, Britons do not trust their men. Likewise in Australia, after a massacre in Tasmania. Australians don’t trust their “Mates”!

But, in the US, apparently the distrust of men is not quite so severe. Charlton Heston, aka Moses, you remember, don’t you? He had come down from the mountain carrying, instead of the stone tablets, a couple of assault rifles. This is what his God, the National Rifle Association, had given him. But, NRA got the rifles as a gift from the US Constitution, its Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. You may challenge God, but how do you challenge God’s donor? You cannot. Hence, gun laws remain porous, as porous as the villain in any of the Dirty Harry movies will be after Clint Eastwood riddles them. There is no solution.

One thing to note though. Both articles with the Newtown massacre as their backdrop are not titled in the form of a question. Yet, they too failed to offer any solutions, except suggesting that the impossible must be tried!

So, it all comes to whether I like the title in the form of a question or not! I am never going to give any answer anyway.

Raghuram Ekambaram

 References

1.    http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/whats-wrong-with-indian-men/article4230617.ece

2.    http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/executing-the-neighbour/article4218247.ece

3.    http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/go-home-wear-a-pair-of-shorts-and-stare-at-your-own-legs/article4075959.ece

4.    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/watch-remember-the-victim_b_2341949.html

5.    http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21568764-if-even-slaughter-20-small-children-cannot-end-americas-infatuation-guns (This article is likely to get behind a pay wall, the Scrooge that The Economist is!)