Table of Contents
Act of intimidation
• The death of Shujaat Bukhari in a terrorist attack at close range in Srinagar has taken away a journalist who held bold and independent opinions on the conflict in Kashmir and how
it should be resolved.
• Chilling message: that on the eve of Id-ul-Fitr and in the closing days of the government’s Ramzan ceasefire against militants, there are forces determined to gut the emerging
consensus for extending the cease-ops and preparing the ground for dialogue.
• Whichever terrorist group chose to kill him would have been aware of the consequences of his death.
• On Thursday too, the body of Aurangzeb, a jawan with the 44 Rashtriya Rifles who had been kidnapped while on his way home for the Id holiday, was found in Pulwama district riddled with bullets.
• In Bandipora, two militants and an Army jawan were killed.
• Days earlier, terrorists killed two policemen in Pulwama.
• Bukhari’s killing highlights the dangers that reporters and editors face in the country — his death draws a direct line to the attacks on countless journalists, including the murders last year of Gauri Lankesh in Karnataka and Santanu Bhowmik in Tripura.
• Over the decades, Bukhari enlightened readers even as he mentored journalists as the editor and founder of Rising Kashmir, and earlier as The Hindu’s correspondent.
Temple and state.
• The “Act of Supremacy” enacted in 1534 declared that the monarch was the “Supreme Head of the Church of England”.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and other high-level church officials were appointed by the government.
• New monarchs were crowned by a senior member of the clergy, and senior bishops were represented in the House of Lords.
• Much of this remains true today.
• How, then, did the idea of secularism take root in India, which derives many of its institutions and practices from England?
• Initially, the East India Company (EIC) got itself intricately entangled
with the administration of religious institutions.
• Temple employees were appointed by government officials. Royal salutes
were fired from the batteries of Fort St. George in Madras, at the
celebration of Pongal, and at Ramzan.
• Under the orders of the public officer of the district, a religious offering
was made at temples for a good monsoon.
• Laws were enacted which said that the “general superintendence of all
lands granted for the support of mosques [and] Hindoo temples” was
vested in the colonial government.
• All this annoyed Christian missionaries and members of the clergy in
England and India who put pressure on the government.
• Consequently, in 1833, the Court of Directors of the EIC sent
instructions to the colonial government outlining its policy towards
India’s religions.
• The Directors wrote that all “religious rites” that were “harmless…
ought to be tolerated, however false the creed by which they are
sanctioned.”
• However, they wrote: “The interference of British Functionaries in the
interior management of native temples, in the customs, habits and
religious proceedings of their priests and attendants, in the
arrangement of their ceremonies, rites and festivals, and generally in
the conduct of their interior economy, shall cease.”
• The wall of separation between temple and colonial state in India was
achieved in 1863, when a law was enacted which said that it would no
longer be “lawful” for “any Government in India, or for any Officer of
any Government” in his official capacity, to take over the
“superintendence of any land or other property” belonging to a
“Mosque, Temple, or other religious establishment”, to take part in
the “management or appropriation of any [religious] endowment”, to
nominate or appoint any trustee in a religious institution, “or to be in
any way concerned therewith”. Referring to this law in the legislative
council, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal said that it would “rid”
the government of a “burden”.
• However, this colonial vision of secularism was rejected by India’s
founding fathers.
• Note for Prelims: After the Government of India Act, 1919, Indian
legislators came to power at the provinces.
• Indian political leaders enacted the far-reaching Madras Hindu
Religious Endowments Act, 1926, which virtually took over the
management and administration of Hindu temples in the province.
It established “boards” appointed by the government.
Temple trustees had to furnish accounts to and obey the instructions
of the boards.
Temples’ surplus funds could be spent by the boards themselves, on
any “religious, educational or charitable purposes not inconsistent
with [their] objects”.
• In the Constituent Assembly, B.R. Ambedkar drafted an establishment
clause which said that “[t]he State shall not recognize any religion as
State religion.”
• K.T. Shah’s draft said that the government would be “entirely a
secular institution”, which would “maintain no official religion [or]
established church”.
• H.V. Kamath: “The State shall not establish, endow, or patronize any
particular religion.” However, his amendment was put to vote and
rejected.
• The Supreme Court has allowed governments to heavily regulate
Hindu temples on the theory that the freedom of religion does not
include secular matters of administration which are not essential to
the religion. Sometimes, the court has perhaps gone a little too far
since the line between integral religious practice and non-essential
secular activity is often hard to draw.
• For instance, though the government cannot interfere with rituals and
prayers at temples, it can regulate the amount that temples spend on
such things. Even the appointment of priests in Hindu temples has
been held to be a secular activity, which the government can
regulate.
• In a letter written in 1802, President Thomas Jefferson advanced the
idea of a “wall of eternal separation between church & state” in the
U.S. The wall of separation between temple and state in India was
first constructed by a colonial government which wanted to distance
itself from religions that it considered heathen and false.
• That wall was then pulled down by Indian leaders who felt that
government entanglement in religious institutions, especially Hindu
temples, was essential, even in a secular state.
A spate of lynchings
• Democracy establishes a conversation between citizens and the power
elites they have elected into office.
• Associations bring people together in different projects, enable them
to speak back to power, and protect them against arbitrary exercise of
state power.
• For these and related reasons, associations are considered
indispensable for democratic life.
• If the state is marked by the logic of power, and the market
dominated by that of profit, the logic of civil society is that of
solidarity and civility.
• They would deny this space to others. Civility is no longer the signifier
of civil society dominated by these organisations, incivility is. We see
today an inerasable boundary based on religion, opinions and food
habits, inflexibly drawn between the ‘insider’ and the ‘outsider’.
• The sorry saga of immense violence against the Muslim community was
initiated with the killing of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri district of
Uttar Pradesh in 2015 on the suspicion that he had butchered a calf
that had gone missing.
• While he was beaten to death, his son Danish and reportedly his
grandmother were assaulted.
• Till today none of the accused has been punished.
• Civil society is considered indispensable for democracy because
associations shield individual citizens from the state.
• When people begin to harm their fellow citizens in abnormal ways,
who will protect the defenceless?
Sweet nothing
• Centre proposed a special cess under the GST to help alleviate
distress among sugarcane farmers.
• Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved a ₹7,000- crore
package for the sugar sector last week.
• This package, with a mix of assured minimum pricing and special
incentives for increasing molasses and ethanol production to gainfully
mop up the glut of sugar in the country, is independent of the cess
proposal that was expected to raise ₹6,700 crore.
• To put this in perspective, sugar mills’ dues to farmers stand at
₹22,000 crore.
• Under the proposed bailout scheme, the government will procure
sugar from mills at a fixed minimum price to help them clear dues to
farmers, and also offer them other financial assistance.
• Only about ₹1,175 crore, however, will be used towards procurement
of refined sugar from mills to create a buffer stock of 30 lakh tonnes.
• This is a fraction of the 63.5 million tonnes output expected in the
two sugar seasons from October 2017 to September 2019.
• With the record output, sugar prices have dropped from an average of
₹37 a kg in the previous season to ₹26 in the current season.
• The bailout plan promises to pay ₹29 a kg.
• Sugar mills say this is below their production cost of ₹35 a kg, though
it may dissipate their immediate liquidity problems to an extent.
• Centre’s sweetener for the sector does little to address structural
problems and sticks to old-style pricing and stock-holding
interventions instead of signalling a shift to market-driven cropping
decisions.
• Political compulsions driving the bailout: that is no excuse for not
thinking the package through.
• The best way to address the problem of excess supply in the long run
is to ensure some linkage between the price paid for sugarcane and
the end-products it is used for; and encouraging the feedback from
market prices to inform farmers’ future cropping decisions.
Important News
• U.S. strike kills ‘Mullah Radio’
• He was responsible for the attacks on Peshawar school and Malala Yousafzai
• High UIDAI charges leave banks stressed
• ‘Exorbitant’ authentication licence fees hurt smaller banks
• Sri Ram Sene man shot Gauri: SIT
• U.S. tariff to hit imports from China
• China to impose ‘equal tariffs’ on U.S. goods
• Centre allows pulses import despite overflowing godowns
• Trade deficit widens to $14.62 billion
1. Neel Darpan, which gained great fame for vividly portraying the
oppression by the Indigo planters, is written by
A. Dinabandhu Mitra
B. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
C. Premendra Mitra
D. Michael Madhusudan Dutt
2. With reference to `Yellow fever’ consider the below given statement
1. Infected mosquitoes spreads it in humans
2. The name Yellow Fever is derived from the yellow skin colour
(jaundice) of patients affected by this disease.
Choose the correct option
A. Only 1
B. Only 2
C. Both 1 and 2
D. Neither 1 nor 2
Answers-
1. When is World Day Against Child Labor observed every
year?
A. 13 June
B. 11 June
C. 10 June
D. 12 June
2. Where the 11th World Hindi Conference will be held?
A. Sri Lanka
B. Mauritius
C. Bhutan
D. Nepal
Questions-
1. When is World Day Against Child Labor observed every
year?
A. 13 June
B. 11 June
C. 10 June
D. 12 June
2. Where the 11th World Hindi Conference will be held?
A. Sri Lanka
B. Mauritius
C. Bhutan
D. Nepal
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