Call for a new social contract between science and society

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Bijker, W. E. (2020). Call for a new social contract between science and society. SEMINAR—The Monthly Symposium, (733), 16-21.

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N E X T M O N T H : A D E L I C A T E B A L A N C E

8 SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 QUESTIONING CORONA

a symposium on

the social impact

of the virus

symposium participants 10 THE PROBLEM Posed by Shiv Visvanathan, social science nomad 16 CALL FOR A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND SOCIETY Wiebe E. Bijker, Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim; Professor Emeritus, Maastricht University, The Netherlands 22 METAPHORS IN PROGRESS Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra (Portugal), Distinguished Legal Scholar, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Director Emeritus, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra 27 THINKING THROUGH SCIENCE, PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE VIRUS K. Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India, Delhi 33 COVID-19: DODGY SCIENCE, WOEFUL ETHICS Suranya Aiyar, lawyer, activist and mathematics graduate, Delhi 42 A VIRUS IS POLITICIZED Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey, social activists; founders, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), Devdungri 49 BUILDING STREET COMMUNITIES IN THE TIME OF A PANDEMIC Madhu Bhushan, activist, writer and (re)searcher, Bengaluru 57 MASKED HORIZONS: REFLECTIONS ON DEATH AND DYING Deepti Sachdev, Assistant Professor, School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi 62 ANXIETY AND EVERYDAYNESS Latika Vashist, Assistant Professor, Indian Law Institute, Delhi 66 COVERING THE REMAINS OF THE DAY DURING LOCKDOWN Saba Naqvi, journalist, commentator and author, Delhi 72 THE PANDEMIC AND POLITICAL ORDER IN BANGLADESH Arun Kumar Goswami, Professor, Jagannath University, Dhaka 76 REFLECTIONS ON CAPITAL, IDENTITY AND THE CORONA CONUNDRUM Sarasij Majumder, teaches at the Department of Geography & Anthropology at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, and Sudeep Basu, teaches at the Centre for Studies in Social Management, School of Social Sciences, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar 79 THE SPECTRE OF INDIAN MUSLIMS IN INDIA’S COVID EXPERIENCE Misria Shaik Ali, PhD candidate, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York 88 THE PANDEMIC AND THE TIBETAN STUDENTS Mousumi Mukherjee, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, International Institute for Higher Education Research and Capacity Building, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat 95 COMMENT 9 NEP 2020 and legal education Ivan and Vivek Mathur, practising advocates in the courts of New Delhi 97 IN MEMORIAM Ebrahim Alkazi 1925-2020 COVER Designed by www.designosis.in The problem NO doubts that the corona epidemic is complex in ignore the symbolism of death and dying. There is little nature. It evokes what the French anthropologist sense of the collective mourning in the everyday litany Marcel Mauss dubbed as a total social fact, a concrete of statistics. There is no language of loss, at best an event which connects and unfolds the various aspects empty hubris of control. Even nature in its polysemy is of a society in its totality. Such an epic event is not easy seen as a law and order problem. to study. At this moment I remember a sage piece of Given this liability, the Corona chronicle has to be advice I once received. I was told, ‘Sometimes, one read twice, once in the language of power and govern- needs to ramble. A walk is often purposive, a ramble ance, and once again as a reflection on everydayness gives you a dream time, allows you to float, waiting for groping for new categories. surprises.’ This essay is a ramble through the news, the A crisis can either approve paradigms or reinforce views, and gossip about the Coronavirus. It does not stereotypes, but either way, the crisis as a phenomena seek immediate solutions, but looks for nuggets and makes you reflect on thought, on the ways of thinking. frameworks of understanding. The Corona as a crisis is still unfolding, but right now, it Nature has always inspired performances, mag- reveals a rush to stereotype. But stereotype, rather than nificent narratives, whether it incarnates itself as a exacerbating the crisis, becomes a Linus blanket, deluge, an eclipse, or a virus. Whether it was the great whose intellectual security and warmth sustains habitual flood, the iceage, or the bubonic plague, it has shaped thought and becomes a social consolation. At the present history and controlled our imaginations. Of late man stage, the Coronavirus reveals the larger life power of has been contemptuous of nature and read the medi- standard modes of thought. eval plague as a thing of the past, while it is an imagina- A reading of Peter Drucker helps at this point. tion that should continue to haunt us. Drucker, a doyen of organizational thought once One of the first things one notices about the made a fascinating distinction between leadership Coronavirus is the narrow, restrictive glossary employed and management, an observation which looks like a to understand it. In India, it is not portrayed as a riddle play of words but has profound consequences, as it or a mystery, but strangely as a secular problem that unravels in daily life. Drucker claimed that a leader is threatened the competence and functioning of govern- one who does the right thing, while a manager is one ments. In fact, governance reduces it to an exercise in who does things right. The manager emphasizes the problem solving or policy allocations. One senses a tactical, he plays safe, where a leader confronts a more failure of language and imagination here because the open-ended experimental world which involves risk. virus broke through the everydayness of being, playing A manager is instrumental, and literally conveys a sense Humpty Dumpty with everything we took for granted. of impression management. One was pondering over Our pretended hubris of the lockdown which we pre- Drucker’s distinction as one listened to Modi’s first 10 sented Guinness Book style, reflected more an illiteracy speech declaring a lockdown. One expected leadership, of history and language, and lacked a sense of the but what one received was a managerial exercise, the deeper metaphysics of life and death. We seem to absence of ideas beyond the panopticonization of

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 spaces. There was a gimmickyness in the plate- tarianism is apt, because it possesses a kind of cyber- beating ritual, evocative of the Swadeshi movement but netic intelligence to handle the emergency. What we empty of ideas and idealism. There was little attempt acquire is not immunity to a virus, but a gradual and to think of healthcare, ethics, and the varieties of suf- accumulated immunity to a democracy as a way of life. fering the closure would create. The speech verged on Our fetish for the magic of decisiveness adds to it. the correct, but not on the true. Truth hurts, it opens you The problem stems from the way we construct up to new possibilities and it demands rethinking. One Modi. When we analyse Modi, we miss out on the of the interesting things is that people felt Modi had to genres of literature and philosophy. What we confront look decisive, and make decisive moves to prove he is is the immediacy of journalism, and the factuality of in-charge. All one wanted was a piece of drama. Modi social science. Both seek the factual, but by listing recited the lines as if by rote. facts we miss out on the truth. We see a political crea- In one sense, Modi is a collection of stereotypes ture, a policymaker, and we measure Modi in indices of the kind of authoritarianism India wants to see in as a measure, and a number, but we do not see him as power. Whether it is a rocket launch, an act of demon- a metaphor. There is an assemblage of acts, but an etization, or a lockdown, there is a technocratic absence of imagination. The mediocrity that Modi has machismo to the act. No one asks whether the act is a added to the country is not just intellectual, it is ethical, civil act or of power. The decisiveness of the image was aesthetic, and linguistic. We keep incarnating Modi as critical, one had to convey a sense of being in control. a managerial exercise, a crude outline of problem solv- But whether the lockdown worked or not was second- ing. Consider Modi’s speech on the Coronavirus. It was ary. It was as if the virus was being subject to a law and overpowering in its inanity, but exquisite in its impres- order solution. Public health, unfortunately, is more sion management. He asked everyone to drum plates complex than that. to all of the workers, and little was said about the suf- The logic was simple. The virus created a state fering, about the disaster called the informal economy. of emergency, a situation which demanded an unprec- The middle class echoes Modi. It is a meeting edented exercise of power. The virus, in the words of of comfort zones of the intellect. One wishes there was the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, created a state of a Robert Conquest to analyse Modi, instead of bureau- exception, a state where democracy could be suspended crats from our planning commission. In fact, Robert and treated as secondary. Two questions most of us Conquest, in assessing Stalinism, made a point that refused to ask at that time are: why do we take such deserves to be emphasized. He said, ‘Americans authoritarianism for granted, as an intelligent response were studying Stalin gathered intelligence, yet not all to a situation? Second, we do not notice that our demo- the facticity of intelligence provided insights into the cracy, already majoritarian in its idiocy, is an assemblage evil of the Stalinist regime.’ Similarly, not all the policy of evolving authoritarianisms, from CAA in Assam to analysis of our social scientists makes a critique of 11 AFSPA in Manipur, to the brutality of Kashmir, and the Modi. There is a failure of a moral imagination which lockdown in the Corona. We seem to assume authori- only the great literature or a new social science can cure.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 The Coronavirus has, in fact, provided a new lease of sounded like dated opeds that meant little. A lot of life to the Modi regime. Watching the Janta curfew, the what they said was empirically true, but fact did not superficiality of the event, one realizes that authoritari- graduate to a framework of meaning. They referred to anism to rule creates a crust of mediocrity. In Modi’s the blame game country’s play. They said they sensed case, he used the greatest good to the greatest number. the world as fragmenting. They added the usual wis- We need a different language, a different morality to dom that nations should find in themselves, sources of expose Modi. resonance for recovery. They hinted aptly and profoundly This partly stems from the fact that we have when such an event was the 9/11 of global solidarity. reduced Modi to a political creature. Modi and Amit Two things intrigued one. They spoke common Shah ooze the language of politics but little else. One sense, but one had to ask them whether common sense reads little that is literary, or aesthetic, or ethical about offers insights in a moment of paradigm crisis. Second, them. One can understand the problem of Modi better they both spoke as generalists, yet the connectivity and but one contrasts his career with the rise of Stalinism thought never came through. A generalist today is an or Fascism. There it was literature, especially poetry, innocuous creature. He lacks connectivity to the sys- that provided the acuteness of critique and understand- temic power of holism, which integrates knowledge and ing. Writers grasped the dangers of the fascism of understanding at different levels. In fact, but by the time everydayness, where one makes more compromises they ended, the only profound and welcome thing they to adjust with reality. Small adjustments became the said was, ‘Stay Home Stay Safe’. I wish they had, order of the day, and as a result, a majority of people because the performance was affably empty. There adjusted to tyranny. Literature saw through this pro- was little sense of medical discourse, and its connec- cess acutely, and challenged it persuasively. Sadly, the tivity to migration and globalization. One wishes they acuteness of his brand intelligence is foiling a moral cri- had speculated about the varieties of time they had to tique. In a spirit of adjustment we claim that Modi works tackle during the crisis, especially the time beyond the so he must be good. When politics becomes manage- short run. rial or ideological, it loses its sense of ethics. Our habits I realized two things at that time. Here were two like our concepts march in uniform to Modi’s drum. experienced men confronting the emptiness of the The acts of politicians are immediately consumed paradigms. They did not state it, but the body language and interpreted by think tanks, which try to create an of hesitancy, a rush to closure, revealed the tacit intermediate layer of understanding between act and understanding. It was clear that globalization as a value policy. As a collective text, think tanks in India have frame was fragmented and empty. Second, nation states exercised a fascination which needs to be examined. have become self-centred, and with the likes of US and The power and influence of think tanks reflects the Britain, literally parochial, even punitive. One realized, decline of an intellectual community. The academe is as one watches a fable, about the relation between the virtually missing in policy, media, even TV. What we paradigm and power system. The very helpless in have instead are policy experts from Centre for Policy articulation of the two senior bureaucrats was reveal- Research, Observer Research Foundation, the Carnegie ing. They sensed the end of the paradigm, and they were Foundation, creating a moral compass of policy direc- helpless to articulate the new world beyond cliche. Yet, tions and handing out report cards. One has to grant that the honesty lay in their hesitancy, and silence. they have an understanding of power and its idioms Beyond leadership and think tanks, one has to and they behave less acrimoniously than the univer- consider the press. sity. There is a more detailed sense of backstage. This eventually raises the question of truth and Generally, the main actors are bureaucrats who have narrative, of the roar of the writer as a journalist, story- both a sense of power and its absence. teller, scientist, and historian. Two articles of startlingly Consider the recent discussion on the state of the different style set the tone for the spectrum. The first world after the Coronavirus between Shivshankar was by Annie Zaidi, writer and filmmaker. They style Menon and Shyam Saran. Two formidable people, is compact, personal, like a metaphorical housewife suave, composed, easy with themselves, one expected cleaning up leftovers. For her, truth begins with the much and listened closely. One replayed the discussion self, with personal honesty and its professional accom- 12 wondering whether one had missed something. Both paniment. The pandemic leads to self-discovery, of the began by discoursing on globalization, highlighting key importance of truth. She refers to the list of evasions, words like security, borders, and connectivity. Yet both prevarications by citizens, whether consuming para-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 cetamol before a flight or bureaucrats helping relatives holier than thou attitude, that we know more than you. evade quarantine. She said, ‘No one admits they know little about what is The journalist has to become the truth teller at this going on. As a result, we have a Punch and Judy show moment. A journalism where exaggeration, which on TV, which is rhetorically empty, and consequently paints Modi as a new savant, will not do. Shekhar Gupta tiring.’ She claimed we are poor listeners at best and and ‘The Print’ had no recourse to either economy or complained, there is no sense of the constructive vision modesty. He pegs his own article on Gabriel Marquez’s of the community. Love in the Time of Cholera, but has little sense of the How do we work together? She claimed in that book. He plays with the title, but he forgets that it is the the emptiness of policy has to be met at two levels. First, language and narrative which makes it fascinating. there has to be an individual act which is ethical. This Shekhar Gupta, in fact, should have made a contrast then has to be scaled up to policy. She gave an exam- between the magical realism of Marquez and the cor- ple. On a walk back she saw a group distributing food porate realism of Narendra Modi. A magical realism in the slums. The food was packed diligently, and served tends to show how dictatorships can be surreal entities. carefully. She inquired about who was doing it. It was If Shekhar Gupta has understood Modi’s language, he not some big corporate group or politician, it was an would have made an interesting contrast between ordinary shopkeeper responding to the hunger in his socialist realism and nationalist realism as literary neighbourhood with dignity. People, she laughingly genres. He would have realised that Modi was uncon- added, did not know his name. He was either Pappu sciously imitating the Stakhanovite, Stalinist language Bhai or Yusuf Bhai to everyone. She admitted it was a of production statistics, which was used to celebrate small matter, a neighbourhood reaching out to itself. Soviet industrialization. Modi was mimicking socialist She said, ‘If Pappu Bhai’s ethics of generosity could realism to present epidemic statistics creating a Olym- have been scaled up to one square mile, we have a piad around death and its exponential activities. In its community.’ She claimed that Pappu Bhai was not a attempt to look managerially competent, Modi has problem-solving or policy-making person, he had just created a surrealist language of governance. created a caring economy. The langar, she added, was By the second fortnight of the virus, the texture another vigorous and traditional example of open of waiting and conversation changes. Modi appears like generosity. But the stories of the Pappu Bhais will not a replay of a bad play, an extra asked to do a heroic role, be written about in newspapers. He won’t be cited in and sounding tentative. He thrives on the rhetoric of CSR documents, but all democracy needs is a neigh- nationhood evoking an urgent Swadeshi era of together- bourhood of Pappu Bhais. He is not talking human ness and community, while there is anomie and devas- rights, just living it. tation all around. His speech has no sense of logistics, Pappu Bhai becomes a metaphor for a different the responsibility of delivery, questions of transporting kind of thinking. Unfortunately, nobody listens to Pappu migrants, issues of handling human rights violations. Bhai. Everyone watches Modi. She claimed that the I wish he could have taken a leaf out of Fidel Castro’s second phase of the virus lashing out at Modi adds lit- speeches. Once Castro addressed the nation on the tle. He is just a face in the mirror, the middle class echo- issue of milk shortage to the children, explaining the ing middle class emptiness. People on TV should now difficulties and apologizing to each child. One cannot work on the one square mile ethics. It also challenges see Modi doing such a similar act. false news with ease. She was right. Critique in the time Modi, in fact, tried to emphasize the development of virus demanded an ethical act. When the ethical act metaphor. While India is composed of different econo- becomes political, policy in a democratic sense is born. mies facing a variety of crisis, Modi created an image One can scale up the planetary ethics after that. The of an integrated world economy doing rather well. The simpleness of the ethical act my friend talked about Olympics image of a race of nations haunts him, and went beyond voluntarism or philanthropy. It emphasized Modi is more content handing out report cards to him- the face-to-face aspect of an eye-down relationship. self and the people when facing the concrete hard- The ethics is simple. Crisis demands that you rise headed questions of materiality and decision-making. above the average, crisis also demands that you rise But there is another emptiness that needs to be talked above your own average. Third, you do both in a self- about. A friend of mine, who is an avid watcher and sen- effacing way. Ethics as sacrifice, generosity, commu- 13 sitive critic of news and debates that follow, contrasted nity, speaks louder than policy, turning a political Modi’s unctuousness on TV with the critics echoing a economy into a model economy. One does not need a

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 handbook of management for it. It is there as a part of denied coping or muddling through as unscientific the wisdom of folklore. Parables often speak louder than or failed solutions. mere policy. In the infinity of postponed lockdowns, we now Another friend of mine added that critique needs realize that coping is what we do anyway, even if we to be constructive. It has to connect to a community, don’t understand it. It is the body’s innate wisdom, a share the spirit of storytelling, be plural and futuristic. sense of prudence. We have to bring back coping as a It has set the path of alternative ways, which neither craft or fine art, a way of intuitively reacting to the side possesses. It needs a moral imagination which is a crisis, by realizing that coping is not something your prelude to problem solving. This friend claimed, as a well scientists can turn into a handbook. It is not a technique, known social scientist, that public health of any crisis is just intuitive judgements within a cultural frame. Cop- an act of learning and an experiment in pedagogy. By ing is a balancing act an individual performs within locating oneself in a neighbourhood, the critic becomes the limits and possibilities of a culture. As a housewife witness, memory, testament, and trustee. He combines told me, ‘Coping is a home science, both of everyday- discourse and storytelling. Such ordinary literacy is ness and culture, because you sense the enormity of important in an age where leadership displays both limits, you sense the interstices of possibility.’ There is illiteracy and stereotype. To defeat a thoughtless no magical spirituality to it. One loses the wisdom of thought, one needs thinking action. Maybe the last coping in the age where psychology handbooks scout words belonged to a saddened policy expert. He said, like cookbooks, offering custom made solutions. These ‘We must stop pretending that policy is a perpetual are placebos, but one needs a deeper psychology of motion machine of problem solving. We need the everydayness in a crisis, especially as one as prolonged imagination and intelligence of neighbourhood and as the virus. community to keep sensitive and human.’ As a friend told me, ‘Coping is like cooking, we Our sense of stereotype and normative begins pick it up like tacit knowledge. Teaching it as manage- with the state and then moves to science. It is interest- ment destroys it like a folktale. Coping and prayer ing, we invoke science as a method, a technique as allow me to make peace with my fears, and almost feel something readymade and available, something liter- fond of my anxieties. Science cannot do that for me.’ ally off the shelf. Science, like the Everest, is there. Another scholar told me, ‘The sadness of science is There is no sense of debate, plurality, doubt, scepticism. its current isolation, science needs the company of the Science is the turnkey way of problem solving. The Shaman, the mystic, the trickster. Without myth, science technocrat and the citizen merge in this invocation of a would lose a sense of its own competence.’ Disasters normative science. There is little sense of metaphys- should train us to fight the poverty of dualisms. Dualisms ics or cosmology. Science is almost offered as a hygiene impoverish the world around, confronting science that purifies us in times of pollution. The presentations with superstition, that not all beliefs outside science themselves are completely sanitized of history, and is are superstitious. Lighting a lamp for your husband for offered as a form of immaculate innocence. his good life is not superstition. It steadies you, and it The absences and silences that surround the conveys more of what is called the Pascalian wager. virus are enormous. In our urge to be modernist, it is as Neils Bohr captured it when someone asked him why if we have lost the collective memory. India as a gov- he had a blacksmith’s hoof on the front door. He said it ernmental regime has lost its sense of metaphor, then works fine, and in the meanwhile, it does not do bad. one realizes that it is a straightjacket of an imagination. The world is full of Pascalian wagers that let us cope One senses it in a housewife with a PhD saying, ‘I wish with uncertainty. I could tell the story of Tenaliraman and the virus, some- It is not just coping, it is public concern on the thing to tell my child and reassure us both on the dan- sense of what is happening. I was asked why is it that gers of the virus.’ There is an emptiness which the advertisements do not change the logic and rhythm of science cannot fill, but a spiritualized scientism, a pack- their usual rhetoric. Take Amul, it is acting as if it is aged psychology, which promises a technique or a still festival time celebrating itself. In days of shortage, mantra but delivers neither. There is no sense of the fact can it not emphasize sharing, of doing with less. The that to be is to be afraid, and that we will have to create failure of advertisement, of an imagination is startling. 14 what Hans Jonas called, ‘a heuristics of fear’, a frame- Probably the one exception was the Corona footwear work of the imagination. Half storytelling, half faith, ad, which racing through a world of footwear explains which helps him cope. For too long now we have why safety demands we stay at home.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 A different question asked by a lover of graphic I even discovered / That housework is no longer mine / novels was, ‘Would we have coped differently if India It is what executive do at home / Between two cups of had a sense of science fiction?’ She was not referring branded coffee / They wouldn’t know how to make. / to populist caricatures, but the classic stories of epidem- While they are honored in newspaper supplements / ics providing scenarios for the inexperienced, the Beaming as if they have patented / A sugarcoated drudg- unbelievable. The question was both literary and peda- ery / Home work is the new corporate worship / As gogic. Could literature have added something to the way executives / Play narcissists as housewife. / My anxi- we responded? Could the sense of the knee-jerk be ety needs an impressionist / Not a handbook of psycho- broadened into a sense of scenarios about alternative logy / A sense of the skin deep / Frothing in a ferment / possibilities of lockdown? Can the virus not be seen as Of ifs and buts / Creating bleak futures / For everyone alien, intrusive, but as a part of a long duree of our around me. / This Covid is a virus / For bringing alive / imaginations? Empty time / Lost stories / Invisible people / From the Years ago, Johan Galtung and Robert Jungk had untold cities of today / Covid reveals / Everyday worlds suggested that the future as an imagination be taught / We fail to recognize / Creatures of textbook socio- as an exercise to children. Science fiction could have logy / Cloaked in invisibility. / The migrant, / There but been an interesting way of visualizing the Corona phe- not there / Servicing a city / As cook, tailor, builder, nomena. One needs a different sense of the evil and the cleaner / A creature out of Mahashweta / Or Whitman alien, even as metaphors for democracy to grow in our / But lost to literature; / Documentaries don’t invisible imagination. It could be a new meeting ground for sci- everdayness / The language of facts lack poetry / The ence, fairytale, myth, and science fiction, creating a plu- gossip of visibility / The voice of empathy / While my ralism that transcends the ability of the scientific temper. sadness is lost in silence. / I am the migrant / Liminal to There is little about the sociology of emotions. We work the core / An insult to citizenship / Unwelcome at home with concepts that neither have emotion, worse, we drive / An alien at work. / I service cities / While cities cloak emotion into the backstage of the private and the domes- me in invisibility / When I emerge / I am an embarrass- tic, and seek to scienticize it with canned spirituality. One ment / The refugee at home / Homeless everywhere / desperately needs a sprinkling of ordinary conversa- My borders begin with my body / I am hawker, the tions to add sense to the stiffness of policy initiatives. rediwala / As I am called / With fraudulent affection / To me the most stunning way this came home Walking streets with a bare cart in front of me. / I am was in scraps of ethnography presented in blank verse. chaiwala / Subject of political humbug / Unemployed / The housewife and the migrant become two classic Abandoned / No one speaks for me / While the P.M. / characters that require a different reading. Hosts my caricature / In political rallies / As his homely Why ask a housewife / To play Kierkegaard / “on double. / The city / A menagerie of the unwanted / fear and trembling”? / His is a metaphysics, / Mine is a Unemployed / Cook cleaner tailor / Barber and beauti- curdled everydayness. / “My fears are stark / I am cian; / Normalcy was my invisibility / I am the clock- scared / I am afraid / My anxieties overpower me”. / work / That runs your city / While the city runs away The Covid outside / Has created a Covid within. / This from me / Every nook cranny crevice / Is my home / In man’s world has no place / For anxiety, my anxiety / a world without homecoming. / Don’t talk to me about Men think in terms of / Pre-fabricated thoughts they policy / The ejaculation of economists / Flaunting their call policy / Not tiny fears like little alphabets / Enzymes impotence / As exponential fears / In web in air semi- of anxiety / Signaling an unnamed distress / My fears nars / The new salons of meaninglessness. / How does speak for me / I am afraid / Therefore, I am – / A shop- hypocrisy / Find an easy home / And we don’t? / We ping list of worries / Using silence / To shame storytell- sit / Confined in sheds and abandoned schools / And bus ing / And social science. stations / Sprayed with chemicals / Sanitized for a bus / I am the housewife / Working in drudgery / Cook- To take us back / To what was once home. ing, cleaning, washing / Repeatedly / My fear and trem- Unfortunately, the poignancy of the situation bling / Lost in waves of guilt / Dissolve in everydayness does little to the making of policy. The idea of the new / My anxiety becomes inanity / I am hysteric and hypo- normal destroys storytelling again and creates a post chondriac. / Yet no one senses my pain / The Covid has truth society which requires a different analysis. But infected my mind / Mutating dreams into nightmares / that needs a different story. 15 Everydayness becomes an insanity / Of anxieties / Where hope becomes / The guilt of fear and waiting. / SHIV VISVANATHAN

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Call for a new social contract between science and society WIEBE E. BIJKER

THE Covid-19 pandemic presents a research – technological development wake-up call to rethink the relationship – innovation. The Bush version of the between science and society. We need social contract, then, states that if to formulate a new social contract bet- society funds basic science, science ween science and society. Different will in return deliver innovations and countries may emphasize different wealth to society. aspects in such a new social contract, Central elements in the old social but I will argue that Covid-19 has dem- contract for science thus are the auto- onstrated the urgency for all countries nomy of science and the state funding to reconsider the role of science. My for science. Science is expected to plea will be based, mostly, on experi- deliver a steady stream of innovations, ences in The Netherlands, but I will but there is no detailed accounting also draw on my work in India. of those results. Additional elements The old social contract for sci- are implied, for example about the ence, which characterized the science- choice of research topics: the research society relationship from the 19th agenda is decided by scientists and century to the 1960s, can be traced without state interference. Quality back to the Humboldtian ideal of control of science is done internally university education and to the vision within science by peer-review. And of science spurring innovation by most scientific research is done in Vannevar Bush, US presidential advi- universities and is mono-disciplinary. ser. The Humboldtian model of higher This style of doing science has also education, named after the Prussian been labelled ‘mode-1 science’.2 philosopher and diplomat Wilhelm von This social contract of an autono- Humboldt (1767-1835), dates from the mous science that is delivering public early 19th century. It is mostly known goods to society has been crumbling for stressing the unity of research and since the 1960s. The autonomy of sci- teaching: both can and should be done ence has eroded since budget con- within one institution, the university. straints and international competition For my argument, another ele- prompted governments to set natio- ment is important: that these scientist nal research priorities and to make teachers have a high degree of auto- research funding conditional on deli- nomy. Vannevar Bush, in his 1945 vering specific results. Moreover, report Science, The Endless Fron- much more research came to be done tier, also stresses the autonomy of outside universities, in semi-public science.1 He presents a linear model: and private institutions and big corpo- fundamental research – applied 2. Helga Nowotny, Scott Peter and Gibbons 16 1. Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Fron- Michael, Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and tier. A Report to the President. U.S. Office of the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Polity Scientific Research and Development, Wash- Press in association with Blackwell, Cam- ington, 1945. bridge, 2001.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 rate industries. Scientific research now the driver’s seat. An ‘Outbreak Man- is often multi-, inter- and transdisci- agement Team’ (OMT) was convened A few observations will serve to expli- plinary. by the National Institute for Public cate the new position that science acq- Nowotny et al.3 have character- Health and the Environment (RIVM).4 uired overnight after the Covid-19 ized this as a shift to ‘mode-2 science’. This OMT quickly became the key outbreak. First, on the choreography However, previous decades have not adviser to the government on its poli- of the public meetings: the OMT chair only seen a crumbling of the old con- cies with regard to this pandemic. The stood next to the prime minister during tract. New arrangements and prac- OMT is a standing RIVM committee every press meeting; and this scientist- tices have emerged that relate science of scientists. It consists of infectiologists, professor lectured members of parlia- and society to each other in novel and microbiologists and epidemiologists, ment, who all tried to behave as good promising ways. These new arrange- and some experts on public health and students. Second, on the content of the ments, to which I shall return below, primary health care. scientific discourse, two elements stood already could be seen as elements for out. The scientific content was taken a new social contract between science seriously – no scientific-technical details and society. But perhaps the Covid-19 The OMT has some ten permanent were avoided but time was spent on exp- pandemic was needed to give the last members and an additional list of licating key concepts, going through push. experts, depending on the specific out- graphs in detail, and citing international break that is to be managed. Virologists literature. The other striking element was initially dominated the Covid-19 OMT, that the uncertainty of much of the data, When I now discuss the role of sci- but after the first two months social and lack of knowledge about this particu- ence during the Covid-19 pandemic, and behavioural scientists were also lar virus, was stressed rather than hidden. I am painfully aware that it provides added. The Director of the RIVM Third, on transparency – all docu- only a limited view on what happened Centre for Infectious Disease Control, ments were placed on the website of during the Corona crisis. Much of the also professor of internal medicine and Parliament and RIVM, all parliamen- initial scientific discussion and advice infectious diseases, is chairman and tary hearings and debates were broad- was about the degree of isolation spokesperson of the OMT. cast live and followed by an unusually that a government should declare – to Soon, The Netherlands settled high number of viewers (helped, no what degree should society be ‘locked- on a weekly routine. On Monday, the doubt, by the partial lockdown), and down’? The experiences of many OMT convened and formulated its datasets and scientific literature that countries, including India, does how- scientific advice. The following day, formed the basis of the OMT advice ever show that isolation is a ‘rich man’s an interdepartmental group of high- were all cited in detail. option’ – for the poor, a lockdown level civil servants processed this Fourth, on politics-science rela- makes survival very difficult when OMT advice. Tuesday afternoon, a tions. Briefly, it seemed that science the state does not provide for alterna- special Covid-19 ministerial council, had taken over the driver’s seat. The tive financial security. And in coun- consisting of the prime minister and a prime minister so often repeated that tries with extreme divides between few key ministers, discussed the OMT the government was following the rich and poor, that is typically out of the advice and commentaries by the civil OMT advice that some of us started question. But even in such countries, servants and decided on new policy to have bad dreams of an emerging policies could have benefited from measures. That same evening, broad- technocracy. The OMT chair himself more scientific advice, albeit from cast live by national TV, the prime deserves much credit for this bad the social sciences rather than only minister presented these policies at a dream not becoming a reality. He con- virology. press conference. Significantly, these sistently refused to make policy state- After a brief period of light- press conferences almost always had ments and always underlined the heartedly considering the corona virus two presenters: the prime minister and limited scope of the OMT’s scientific as just another influenza, the serious- the OMT chair. On Wednesday, the perspective. Paradoxically, this under- ness of the Covid-19 pandemic hit OMT chair would give a ‘technical lining of the limitations of science The Netherlands. Almost immediately, briefing’ to parliament, also broadcast resulted in its gaining respect and cre- science took a more prominent role – live on national TV. dibility. One incident, about the closing some said, critically, that science took of schools, also helped to underline the 17 4. For the OMT within the RIVM, see: https:/ /www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-covid- balance between politics and science 3. Ibid. 19/omt to which I will return later.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Fifth, on the public appreciation are always open and critical in our dis- tive of the school boards commented: of science. Half a year earlier, in a com- cussions – the OMT is not behaving ‘rational arguments became weaker, pletely unrelated controversy about scientifically’. This highlights an emotional arguments stronger’, and

CO2 and NO2 emissions, the same important difference between scien- ‘we cannot do the impossible; if the RIVM had come under severe attack. tific research and scientific advice, and situation cannot be contained, every- Farmers held rallies with hundreds of especially in the making of both. As we thing becomes different.’ This was a tractors in front of the RIVM building, have learned from the practice of the crack in following the scientific advice, questioning the scientific basis for Health Council, one of the most res- but it was, significantly, not a crack in restrictive measures to limit emissions. pected advisory bodies in The Neth- the new balance between science and Some government ministers and mem- erlands, the making of scientific advice politics: the scientific advice was still bers of parliament responded by being is a skill in itself, rooted in but different positively cited, but at the same time critical about the scientific quality of from general scientific skills.6 political leaders took their own respon- the RIVM advice. One important element in the sibility and decided differently. At that moment, in mid-2019, making of scientific advice is that the The third crack in the rosy picture several examples could illustrate the committee’s deliberations are com- was the role of parliament. Because decreasing acceptance of scientific pletely confidential, in order to allow for of national lockdown measures, par- advice by the general public: about the an open and safe discussion of alterna- liament did not convene in plenary

source of CO2 and NO2 emissions, tive readings and interpretations. The session. Also, the prime minister, in his about the need for vaccination, about advisory process is transparent in how duet with the OMT chair, acquired the lack of risk of electromagnetic ra- the committee members are selected almost presidential stature – a very diation from G4 and G5 masts, about and what their institutional links and non-Dutch figure. For a while, parlia- the need for climate change policies, interests are, but not in making public mentary control became difficult and among others.5 Against this back- the internal committee’s discussions. almost invisible. This raises an impor- ground, the almost unquestioned sup- The OMT responded to this critique by tant question about a new social con- port for the RIVM advice about the continuing to cite all the scientific lite- tract between science and society. Covid-19 pandemic was remarkable. rature behind the advice, but stressed What role can parliament play as a third Only a few populist, right wing politi- that there was no certainty. party in the triangle of Government- cians questioned the RIVM advise, but Science-Parliament?7 they were ignored and soon shut up, temporarily. A second and more serious crack was about the closing of schools. On This brief sketch of the effect of the March 10, the OMT advised to not close Covid-19 pandemic on the relationship Thus was the new role of science: pro- down primary and secondary schools, between science and politics in The minent, substantive, transparent, res- arguing that children with symptoms Netherlands provides elements for tricted to advising, and broadly accepted. are required to stay at home anyway, rethinking the social contract between But soon some cracks in this rosy pic- and that children are less affected by science and society. However, over ture appeared. Some were internal to the virus and less likely to spread it too. the past two decades, some other the scientific community. There was In the next four days, opposition against changes in the relationship between some debate about the degree of socie- this policy increased among teachers science and society are worth taking tal lockdown, and in the wake of that and parents. On Sunday morning, the into account as well. After all, it is not debate some virologists criticized the special ministerial council decided my argument that the Covid-19 crisis OMT for not being open enough about that the schools would be closed. is causing a complete change in the its internal discussions: ‘we in science Important for my argument is that 7. To begin with, every parliament should be 5. It is worth noting that a study by the the prime minister still cited the OMT served by an independent ‘Technology Assess- Rathenau Institute (the Dutch Institute for advice (of keeping the schools open) ment’ office. See Wiebe E. Bijker, ‘Technology Technology Assessment) and the Netherlands but admitted that sometimes one has to Assessment – the State of/at Play. Towards Scientific Council for Government Policy a Hybrid and Pluriform Process of Govern- (WRR) has shown that Dutch citizens still make another choice. One representa- ance of Science and Technology’, in Tomas trust scientists – at least much more so than Michalek, Lenka Hebakova, Leonhard Hennen, 18 that they trust politicians and journalists. (Will 6. Wiebe E. Bijker, Roland Bal, and Ruud Constanze Scherz, Linda Nierling and Julia Tiemeijer and Jos de Jonge, Hoeveel Vertrou- Hendriks, The Paradox of Scientific Author- Hahn (eds.), Technology Assessment and wen Hebben Nederlanders in Wetenschap? ity: The Role of Scientific Advice in Democra- Policy Area of Great Transitions. Technology Rathenau Institute, Den Haag, 2013.) cies. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2009. Centre ASCR, Prague, 2014, pp. 23-36.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 social contract; I argue that the Covid- Netherlands Academy of Arts and possibilities and constraints of scien- 19 pandemic provides a wake-up call Sciences (KNAW). tific research, the following example to continue with a revision of the Some questions were filtered out shows otherwise. In the first decade social contract between science and – for example because they could of this century, the Dutch government society that was already in the making. already be answered by existing know- saw the dilemma between the high One aspect of the current ledge. Others were considered impos- promises of nanotechnologies (such as research policy that clearly differs sible to research scientifically. This precision drug delivery mechanisms) from the classic Humboldt-Bush social filtering of questions was done anony- and high risks (such as nanotoxicity) contract is that countries now quite mously: the KNAW committees did not and decided to organize a societal dia- explicitly formulate societal challenges know whether a question was asked logue about the future development of which their research must help add- by a Nobel laureate or by a school kid. nanotechnologies. This public dialogue ress, and then organize their research The remaining questions were grouped resulted in the Dutch citizenry stating accordingly. The European Union’s in some 250 overarching clusters. that nanotechnologies should be deve- Framework Programmes have had These clusters were then discussed in loped further, but with more research that character from the very beginning three conferences – ‘Science 4 Sci- devoted to its risks. in 1984. And non-state groups have ence’, ‘Science 4 Competitiveness’, During the dialogue, citizens raised these questions too. In 2009, for and ‘Science 4 Society’ – amongst citi- could educate themselves through example, Indian and African activists zens, stakeholders and scientists. a broad range of projects and pro- and researchers asked what kind of The outcomes of the conferences grammes, and then express their in- research India and Africa would need were processed into 25 routes. A route formed opinion. This set-up worked for their own development; what does two things: it offers a path for well. Parallel to the process of the research agenda to set on Indian and research through a subset of the 250 dialogue, a representative sample of African terms, rather than await glo- question clusters, and it suggests a the Dutch population was surveyed. bal (i.e. mostly ‘western’) science to path for society towards addressing an Awareness as ‘having heard of nano- supposedly benefit India and Africa? important societal challenge. In Dec- technologies’ increased during the This resulted in two manifestos for ember 2015, these routes, clusters and societal dialogue from 54% to 64% of Indian and African science.8 underlying questions were presented the Dutch population, and ‘knowing the in an interactive on-line National meaning of nanotechnology’ increased Research Agenda. In 2016, the routes from 30% to 36%.10 In the previous cases, policy makers were elaborated and used as building and activist-experts set the research blocks for a Science Investment Agenda agenda. The Dutch National Research for the Dutch government. The gov- Yet another example of involving Agenda (NWA) is a recent example ernment adopted the agenda in 2017 society in science – and thus offering from The Netherlands, where all citi- and allocated 100 MEuros per year for a change in the old social contract zens were invited to engage with sci- NWA research.9 Since 2018, annual between science and society – is Res- ence’s research agenda. This process calls for proposals invite researchers ponsible Research and Innovation started in 2015: everyone in the to apply with their research plans. To (RRI). Four dimensions summarize Netherlands was invited to submit bring out the special character of this the thrust of RRI: it requires anticipa- questions to science, questions that socially generated NWA, projects are tion of the future societies that we needed to be researched. Citizens, required to be interdisciplinary, involve wish, reflexivity by researchers and stakeholders, scientists, NGOs, minis- stakeholders and citizens in their exe- innovators on the effects of their work, tries, municipalities, universities, cution, and pro-actively plan the socie- inclusion of relevant stakeholders, unions and businesses asked more tal uptake of their research findings. and responsiveness to the needs and than 11,000 questions. These were ambitions of society as well as to the then filtered and validated by the Royal intermediate research results.11 One f the previous examples suggest that 8. SET-DEV and ATPS, The African Manifesto I for Science, Technology and Innovation. citizens are only capable of sending 10. See https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/ ATPS, Nairobi and Brussels, 2011; SET-DEV, wish lists without any interest in the lead/The-public-and-issues-of-science/ Knowledge Swaraj: An Indian Manifesto article15444273.ece 19 on Science and Technology. University of 9. See https://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and- 11. See also the websites of some EU-funded Hyderabad & Knowledge in Civil Society results/programmes/dutch+national+ projects, for example: https://starbios2.eu and Forum, Hyderabad, 2011. research+agenda https://fit4rri.eu

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 implication of RRI – and of three dec- demonstrated how this knowledge of Here, I want to highlight the role that ades of work in STS (Science, Tech- handloom weavers, embedded in a farmers came to play. nology & Society studies) – is that flexible and home-based craft indus- We set out to investigate how knowledge provided by non-scientists try, offers a much more sustainable farmers could deliver the straw to the (in the sense of not being trained in livelihood in times of the Covid-19 biogas plants, and benefit from the universities) is also valued. pandemic than many standard mass electricity produced by those plants. Thus taking other knowledge industries.14 However, by listening to these far- systems seriously is in line with Shiv mers, we were pushed to radically Visvanathan’s plea for cognitive jus- rethink the definition of the problem. tice: ‘cognitive justice is the right of Another example of soliciting know- For most farmers the burning of straw every individual or group to pursue and ledge from non-scientists is offered by was not the problem, it was a solution. perpetuate the forms of knowledge that an RRI project that investigated alter- Since the Green Revolution, farmers their ways of life depend upon.’12 natives to burning rice straw. The burn- in Punjab have been charged with the Visvanathan grounds cognitive justice ing of rice straw in the north of India responsibility of ‘feeding the nation’ in India’s struggle for independence has become a massive problem – not and pushed into growing four crops a and adds: ‘In a negative sense, it seeks only social, but also political and envi- year. After harvesting the rice, they to protect the group from modern ronmental. In the months of October have only three weeks to clear their western science or any other form of and November, when harvesting of fields and prepare for sowing wheat. knowledge that seeks to hegemonize, rice takes place, the national as well as Most farmers do not see any other eliminate or museumize it. It is a con- international media are full of critical solution but burning the straw. For cept which seeks both the survival of reports about the issue. These reports them biogas is not a solution, only an communities and to protect the logic of often criminalize farmers and blame extra burden: collecting the straw from their creativity.’ authorities for inaction. Along with the fields, storing it, and transporting various versions of the problem, news- it to a biogas plant just costs too much papers also report multiple innovative labour, money and time. And addition- An example is the work by Anna- solutions. These include the production ally, Punjab villages typically have purna Mamidipudi about innovation in of straw-based bioenergy, which is enough electricity anyway. handloom communities.13 She demon- thought to simply remedy the situation. strates how sophisticated the know- Even though each year the dis- ledge and technologies of hand- cussion around this issue is enormous, We also met with farmers who label loom weavers are. Instead of treating the tension around straw burning themselves ‘organic’: for these orga- handloom as cultural heritage to be quickly declines after the harvesting nic farmers, biogas is part of the solu- museumized or as a backward tech- season when the smoke dissipates – tion, but a solution to a very different nology to be mechanized, she shows only to return again the next year. problem. Their problem is not prima- the innovation that is happening – with- Together with scientists, industrialists, rily the smoke: ‘we know that the out being called ‘innovation’, a term policy makers and farmers, we inves- smoke is hazardous, but pollution is also mostly associated in India with IT and tigated the possibility to produce biogas caused by the traffic in New Delhi, so biotechnology. And to underscore from rice straw as an alternative to why blame us?’ Their problem is that Visvanathan’s suggestion that cogni- burning the straw on the fields. Details burning the straw destroys important tive justice is particularly important about this project and its findings nutrients, which they would like to give to protect vulnerable and marginal have been published in a special issue back to the soil. However, it is prob- groups in society, Mamidipudi recently of Science, Technology and Society.15 lematic to plough rice straw directly back into the soil. It needs composting 12. Shiv Visvanathan, ‘The Search for Cogni- 14. Annapurna Mamidipudi, ‘Indian Weaving or mulching, and feeding it into a tive Justice.’ Karl Jaspers Centre, Heidelberg, in the Time of COVID-19’, Penelope, 23 April biogas plant would help: in addition to 2011. 2020. https://penelope.hypotheses.org/2100. biogas, such a plant produces waste 13. Annapurna Mamidipudi, ‘Towards a 15. Poonam Pandey, Govert Valkenburg, Theory of Innovation for Handloom Weav- Annapurna Mamidipudi and Wiebe Bijker, that can be used as organic fertilizer. ing in India.’ PhD, MUSTS, Maastricht Uni- ‘Responsible Research and Innovation in the We wanted to bring these views 20 versity, 2016; Annapurna Mamidipudi and Global South: Agriculture, Renewable Energy into the debate about managing the rice Wiebe E. Bijker, ‘Innovation in Indian and the Pursuit of Symmetry (special issue)’, Handloom Weaving’, Technology & Culture Science, Technology & Society 25(2), 2020, straw burning. But in regular policy 59, 2018, pp. 509-545. pp. 215-356. conferences and university work-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 shops, farmers do not feel comforta- logy and social sciences, the devasta- research, possibly different for each ble to talk about their practices and tion would have been even larger. country, is advisable. The element insights. For a free flow of ideas and The pandemic has also shown ‘incorporating cognitive justice’ – and discussion, farmers must outnumber that a new contract between science thus also taking seriously, for example, others, and the medium of communi- and society is possible. The pandemic farmers’ and crafts people’s know- cation has to be a local language that demonstrated the benefits of a rela- ledge systems – inevitably creates ten- could be translated into English in tively new role for science: prominent, sions with the element ‘prominent hushed tones without interrupting the substantive, transparent, restricted to role of science’ if the latter is read as flow of the discussion. Utmost care advising, and broadly accepted. Sci- standard university science. had to be taken to not individualize ence assumed a relatively prominent those who burn the straw in order to role in shaping public health policies enable them to speak openly about to contain the pandemic. Hereby, sci- There is no easy solution. Research- their vulnerabilities and challenges. entists did not hesitate to present sub- ers, activists, citizens: all need to strike These considerations resulted in our stantive content – explaining technical a balance between confidence in one’s organizing a farmers’ dialogue meet- concepts and highlighting the uncer- own expertise and modesty when ing where more than 100 farmers tainty of much of the data and lack of listening to others who speak from gathered for a whole day of discussion. knowledge about this particular virus. another knowledge system. Else- The event took place in an orga- The making of scientific advice was where, I have concluded that we need nic farmer’s field, which we chose to transparent – publishing the back- to cherish a style of ‘bold modesty’.17 demonstrate the potential of this far- ground of scientists on the advisory This new social contract is not ming method in engaging with the committees, and citing relevant scien- only difficult to implement, neither is problem of straw burning. The food tific literature. Both in the technical it a panacea for all problems we face. served during the event was organi- briefings to parliament and in the sci- For the new social contract to function, cally produced in the same farm and entific advice to government, scien- societies should have basic democra- locally prepared. This intervention to tists maintained their limited advisory tic characteristics such as a free and give more voice to a relatively power- role and refused to be pushed into a knowledgeable press, truly independ- less perspective resulted in the farm- policy making role. ent academic institutions, and respect ers – both regular and organic – to feel And Dutch citizens generally for minorities. The Covid-19 pandemic validated in their expertise and know- accepted this role of science, recog- showed that many populist, if not ledge and they subsequently accepted nizing its crucial insights to address undemocratic, leaders ignored scien- invitations to the workshops with sci- the challenge of a pandemic in our tific advice and thus catapulted their entists, policy makers and industrial- complex societies. Pre-Covid-19 ele- countries to the top of the pandemic ists. Their views were published ments, I have argued, can be added to death scores. alongside the other, more ‘standard’, this new social contract: society set- The alternative, however, is true scientific texts.16 ting a research agenda for science to too: implementing the new social con- address major challenges, responsible tract between science and society will innovation, and cognitive justice. strengthen democratic elements such We need a new social contract as strong universities, independent between science and society – the scientific advice, responsible innova- Covid-19 pandemic is demonstrating This new social contract is not easy tion, listening to citizens’ identification how necessary this is. The pandemic and without tensions. The element of of societal challenges, and recogni- has clearly revealed the crucial role of ‘society setting a research agenda’ tion of minority knowledge systems. science and technology in our societies should not be read, for example, as The Covid-19 pandemic thus presents – without globalization and its transpor- making a plea for stopping all funda- a wake-up call to rethink the relation- tation technologies, the Corona virus mental research. Such fundamental ship between science and society and would not have travelled so far and research is only guided by scientists’ thereby strengthen our democracies. fast, and without virology, epidemio- curiosity – but this type of scientific research has produced many of the 17. Wiebe E. Bijker, ‘Constructing Worlds: 16. Bharat Bhushan Tyagi and Richi Kumar, current insights and innovations that Reflections on Science, Technology and 21 ‘The Future of Farming: To What End and Democracy (and a Plea for Bold Modesty)’, For What Purpose?’ Science, Technology & our societies thrive on. Some mix of Engaging Science, Technology, and Society Society 25(2), 2020, pp. 256-272. society-driven and science-driven 3(315-331), 2017. doi: 10.17351/ests2017.170.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Metaphors in progress BOAVENTURA DE SOUSA SANTOS

THE new coronavirus has given rise metaphors: the virus as enemy, the to an abundance of metaphors, all of virus as messenger, and the virus as them involving a major move away pedagogue. from the contexts in which such meta- The virus as enemy is the favorite phors are commonly used. This, in metaphor of governments. War falls, itself, tells us a lot about the shock as it always will, within the exclusive and astonishment generated by the competence of the state. Among all the Covid-19 pandemic. The metaphors tasks performed by the state, it is the are but an attempt to tame the virus one around which the broadest con- qua phenomenon. It is not an easy sensus can be found. The enemy meta- task, given that we are not even sure phor is a double metaphor, in that it whether the virus is a natural or a conceives of the fight against the social phenomenon. virus as a war, and of the virus as the Metaphors are a call to reality, an enemy to be beaten. The war metaphor attempt to frame the virus in terms that is effective in its conveying of the we are able to grasp at the social, philo- gravity of the threat and the patriotic sophical and cultural level. Far from need for unity in the fight against that being arbitrary, metaphors are inten- threat. This call for unity is especially 22 tional. They point to different types of useful in states recently hit by wide- action and conjure up different post- spread social protests, as is the case pandemic societies. I distinguish three with France (and the gilets jaunes

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 demonstrations). War presupposes drugs and, in more recent times, the Aside from everything else, the the use of extreme combat measures. war on corruption. None of these wars war metaphor has a negative impact It promotes a simplistic political narra- has come to an end yet, nor are they on the democratic life of a society tive, of the ‘you’re either with us or expected to do so in the near future. engaged in the fight against the virus. against us’ type. An enemy is not to be Will it be the same with the War times are exceptional times, when persuaded or argued against, but to be war against the pandemic? Interest- orders are to be obeyed, not debated. eliminated. ingly enough, the war against recent There is no room for reasoning or for pandemics (HIV-AIDS or Ebola) coming up with alternatives. After all, shares with other permanent wars unconditional obedience is supposed The enemy metaphor suffers from the fact that it is an irregular war. The to be for our own good, and if we do two main biases. On the one hand, it enemy is elusive and deceptive. It has not obey, we put our lives, not to men- looks at anti-pandemic measures as no regard for the laws of war, eschews tion the lives of others, at risk. The coming exclusively from the state. But conventional tactics, and will not be war places an overwhelming pressure the fight against the pandemic also effectively opposed unless the fight on citizenship. This pressure will not enlists the staunch participation of against it is waged with identical means. be fatal as long as it is short-lived. But families, communities, associations Is the war against the Covid-19 pan- what if it isn’t? and, first and foremost, the health demic a new war, to be added to the care providers, whose sense of mis- list of permanent or eternal wars? We sion is not restricted by their obliga- do know that the war will not end until In short, the war and enemy metaphor tions as civil servants. On the other vaccines are made widely available. does not help us imagine a better soci- hand, this metaphor suggests that, once Until that happens, we will go through ety, i.e., one that is more diverse with the war is won, everything will go back a period of what I describe as intermit- regard to intercultural experiences, to normal. tent pandemic. Even with a vaccine, more democratic, more equal, more Now, in all likelihood that will however, and unless our current model just, and less exposed to lethal viruses not be the case, not only because final of development, consumption and like the present one. This metaphor victory sounds like a very uncertain civilization is altered, other pandemics expresses a death drive directed outcome, but also because, were such are highly likely to strike. Therefore, against the death threat posed by the victory ever to happen, the new nor- we may well be facing another perma- virus. It pits death against death, tell- mal will be quite different from what nent war. ing us nothing about the possibility and it used to be. Most of all, it is highly desirability of a no-war scenario. likely that the virus will not be elimi- Given all the above, it does not strike nated, but rather tamed or neutralized Such a possibility should be cause for me as very useful. Things could be by vaccines and the antibodies we’ll concern, and not just because it means different if the war and enemy meta- end up producing. In the end, maybe the recurrence of ever more frequent phor were to be deconstructed so as the war will never be won, and the best and more lethal viruses. In fact, the to let us see and understand the ene- outcome we can hope for is a tempo- abovementioned permanent wars mies in this war. After all, it stands to rary, conditional truce. have served those who declare them reason that if the virus is the enemy Over the past fifty years, the war in achieving ends that have nothing to of society, then maybe society is the metaphor has been widely used in the do with the ends they declared. Those enemy of the virus. western world – with the U.S. at its wars have served, before anything It would therefore be wise to head – to denote the perception of else, to neutralize political opponents follow the example of war photogra- the gravity of the perils threatening to and exert control over areas of geo- pher Karim Ben Khelifa, as presented destroy it. If history serves as a lesson, strategic influence. Will the war against in his remarkable documentary The those were designed as permanent or the virus lend itself to such a use? Some Enemy.1 After 15 years as a war pho- even perpetual wars. Such has been disturbing signs can be discerned. tographer, he began to question the the case with the war against commu- Viewed against the backdrop of the usefulness of his photos, since they nism, even though communism no world’s major powers (USA, China totally failed to change people’s atti- longer exists in the world, not even in and the European Union), the war tudes toward the war and make them China, where state capitalism is now against the pandemic is part of the desire peace. He came to the conclu- 23 the law of the land. The same applies war for geostrategic hegemony waged 1. Available at http://theenemyishere.org/, to the war on terrorism, the war on between China and the USA. consulted on 25 April 2020.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 sion that one of the reasons was per- at no personal risk. In western tradi- confront it, much less face the prob- haps the fact that enemies remained tion, on the other hand, there is a long, able reasons behind it. Instead, it con- invisible. So he decided to make the recurring history, going all the way centrates every effort on killing the combatants visible, by giving them a back to ancient Egypt and Greece, of messenger. voice and allowing them to introduce messengers getting killed for being the For this reason, the virus-as- themselves and explain their motives, bearers of bad news. Because of that messenger metaphor does not strike dreams and fears. By resorting to recurrence, the phrase ‘kill the mes- me as helpful in terms of allowing us to advanced communication technolo- senger’ has become a cultural topos prevent the future occurrence of new gies, he allowed the point of view of and a form of political tactics. messengers, possibly carrying even enemies to confront the point of view more terrifying news. Like the enemy of those fighting on the opposite metaphor, the messenger metaphor side. With that, enemies ceased to be In his Lives, Plutarchus tells the story focuses on eliminating this virus. It can enemies. of Tigranes, who, upset by the news prove useful to defend us in the pre- Would we be able to do the same that Lucullus was about to arrive, mur- sent, but not to defend us in the future. in the case of the war against the virus? dered the messenger to mitigate his How can one make nano-entities own distress. In Shakespeare’s play visible? How can we begin to know Antony and Cleopatra, the latter My personal preference goes to the their reasons for attacking us and their threatens to gouge out the eyes of the virus-as-pedagogue metaphor, the points of view about the society in messenger who brings her the news only one that requires us to try to under- which we live? And were that possi- that Antony had married Octavius stand the virus and the underlying ble, what reasons would we provide for Caesar’s sister, Octavia. The ‘kill the motives for its behaviour and, as a trying to eliminate or at least neutral- messenger’ topos is still very much result, to try and organize social res- ize them? Would it be possible to com- present today. Suffice it to consider the ponses aimed at reducing the probabi- pare motives and points of view, and way Julian Assange has been treated lity of being intruded upon in such an even be talked into substantially alter- (slowly murdered is perhaps how we unwelcome way by future viruses. To ing our ways of life? Would it then be ought to put it) for bringing so many conceive of the virus as a pedagogue possible to establish, not just a truce, bad messages to the powerful of the is to confer upon it a dignity far supe- but true coexistence based on more world. rior to that bestowed by the preceding civilized behaviour from both sides? ‘Kill the messenger’ is the opera- metaphors. For the war metaphor, the Despite Karim Ben Khelifa’s remark- tive cultural archetype in the case of virus is an enemy to be beaten; and as able endeavour, the sad fact is that the virus-as-messenger metaphor. to the messenger metaphor, it views war is war, and it is all about killing Granted, a small number of those who the virus as a carrier with no significant and getting killed. resort to this metaphor favour it over role in the rivalries at play. As a carrier, the enemy metaphor precisely because it will certainly only tell us what the they are intent on understanding the messenger told Cleopatra in Shakes- The second metaphor conceives of message, no matter how painful it peare’s play: ‘Gracious madam, / I that the virus as a messenger – a messen- may be. However, in the context of do bring the news made not the match.’ ger from nature, for sure. According public discourse, even when the virus- The pedagogue metaphor is the to this metaphor, the specific content as-messenger metaphor is used, not a only one that makes us interact with the or details of the message are irrel- single minute is spent in the attempt to virus, as it turns it into a subject wor- evant, for the message resides in the decode it. The panic or terror over the thy of holding a dialogue with us. It is virus’s very presence. It is a performa- performative message (death or death certainly a cruel pedagogue, who does tive message. It is also a horrible mes- threat) is such that no attempt is made not waste time explaining the reasons sage, because it spells death or the to investigate the cause of death, as for its behaviour and simply acts as it threat of death. This message leaves would be the case with any criminal is supposed to act. But it is not an irra- us with the question of what to do with investigation or detective novel. All tional being. It had its own reasons for the messenger. In eastern tradition, follow-up action is a non sequitur coming to us at this point and in the way and in China in particular, there used with regard to the meaning of the mes- it did. Therefore, we must try to think 24 to be an unspoken agreement whereby sage. As far as society is concerned, about it so that we will gradually be able a messenger sent by any of the war- it is enough to dislike the news brought to think with it, until we can finally start ring parties would travel unarmed and by the virus. It does not attempt to thinking from its point of view.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Thus, I propose a diatopic All these difficulties notwith- a much greater effort: daring to deci- hermeneutics of a new kind, poised standing, I believe that the virus-as- pher and to comprehend. between human rationality and viral pedagogue metaphor presents us with But how are we to communicate rationality, an interpretation of the a task at once viable and urgent. We with the virus? In what tongue or lan- world located between two different must start by engaging in deep listen- guage? With its infecting and killing, conceptions of life and of the relations ing with the virus. Dominant western the virus seems to excel in factual lan- between society and nature, in the knowledge has never taught us how to guage. To engage in argument with it, hope of reaching, through mutual con- listen deeply to anything.3 It has only aiming at an outwardly similar lan- cessions or transformations, points of taught us how to hear, but hearing is the guage, will result in neutralizing or convergence leading to a coexistence poorest and most superficial form of killing it. But in that case there will be between humans and non-humans. listening. To hear is to allow oneself to nothing to learn, and we will end up in The hermeneutics in question is aimed understand only that which we deem the realm of the war and enemy meta- at learning from the virus and transfer- relevant, whether pleasant or unpleas- phor. In order to learn from the virus, ring what we learn from it onto soci- ant. It is problematic, because it is we need to take a step further. We ety. Thus viewed, it amounts to an subject to our interests of the moment. must not limit ourselves to what it intervital pedagogy, halfway between In fact, since we are the dominant part tells us, but rather try to find out what human and non-human life. in the act of listening, we only hear and it wishes to tell us and why. value what interests us. When conducting interviews, all It will not be an easy pedagogy to a sociologist or a journalist does is hear. Having reached this point, we need embrace. Difficulties abound at many If the interviewee starts to talk about to be able to build a translation bridge levels. Is it possible to learn from what truly interests or upsets her, she or platform between human and viral someone we have never seen or will will only be heard if it coincides with language. This has nothing to do with ever see? Learning from the virus will the interviewer’s own interests. Every- mere linguistic translation. I am talk- always mean tele-, or remote, learn- thing else is irrelevant, no matter how ing about intercultural translation, to be ing. How is that different from the vital it may be for the interviewee. carried out between the human culture revelations of divinity to be found in of the infected and the dead, the cul- many religions? Besides, is society ture of the health care providers who open to learning? I actually think that How does one effect a deep listen- tend to them, the scientific culture of most people see the virus as a night- ing of the virus? First of all, we must those studying viruses, and the natu- mare from which they want to awake consider that the virus may well be say- ral culture of the infectious, lethal as fast as possible. In that case, the ing things that only sound unintelligible agent. It is a highly complex task, made drive to forget will be stronger than the because we cannot, or will not, under- worse by that fatal vice to which drive to learn. On the other hand, if we stand them. Let us assume, for the sake humans are so prone: anthropocentrism. agree, as I have been arguing, that we of argument, that the virus is a natural The vice consists in conceiving must learn from the virus,2 the learn- being; the difficulties involved in deep of the world in our own image, and thus ing process will run into huge obstacles. listening are particularly debilitating projecting motives onto the virus as if The best pedagogical theories in the context of Eurocentric culture. it were one of us. The problem is that, teach us that all learning must be The way in which Eurocentric human if we do that, we will learn but what we co-learning, i.e., reciprocal learning beings have been formatted by it has already know, which is nothing. It is aimed at mutual education. Even if rendered them unable to listen to therefore imperative to start from the we are open to learning from the virus, nature and willing to observe the latter assumption that the virus does not how can we know whether the virus only when it gives them pleasure (land- think like us, but rather like a virus. And wants to learn from us? Suppose we scape contemplation) or when they although it terrifies us, we must com- apply Paulo Freire’s theory – the justly derive some sort of advantage from it fort ourselves with the idea that, in celebrated pedagogy of the oppressed (appropriation of natural resources, this respect, we are superior to it. The – to such learning. In this situation, raw materials). Deep listening entails virus is incapable of imagining that it who is the oppressed – we or the virus? is possible to think differently than 3. As I have argued in The End of the Cogni- the way it thinks. 25 2. A Cruel Pedagogia do Vírus (‘The Cruel tive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemo- Pedagogy of the Virus’). Almedina, Coimbra, logies of the South. Duke University Press, How is intervital translation 2020; Boitempo, São Paulo, 2020. Durham and London, 2018, pp. 165-183. possible, given the unbridgeable gap

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 between our language and that of the I am talking about the fact that the virus? We might even imagine that we virus is a co-creation of humans and and the virus live in separate universes. nature, a co-creation that is a product Such a hypothesis is likely to please the of the way in which men have interfered proponents of the notion of a pluriverse with natural processes, especially – i.e., the notion that, even among since the 16th century. This long time humans, differences sometimes can span coincides with that of modern be of such magnitude that they are sim- capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. ply beyond compare, for they belong to different universes. The problem with this notion is that it makes it The unfettered exploitation of natu- impossible to even start to compare ral resources, combined with the appro- the differences, for they belong to uni- priation of, and discrimination against, verses that are incommensurable. If everything that was viewed as being comparing is impossible, then learning close to the natural world – slaves, is even less possible. But is it accept- women, indigenous peoples – inter- able to see as belonging to a distinct fered with nature to such a degree that universe a being that is so close to – if we now view nature, to a large extent, not already inside – us, and which poses as a product of that interference. In such an existential threat to us that it this light, nature is as human as we are, leads us to paralysis and forces us to even if in a radically different way. retreat to the innermost caves of our Under this conception, the virus may intimacy, where we still fail to feel one be said to mirror Goethe’s Faust or hundred percent safe? Los Caprichos, by Goya, according to whom ‘El sueño de la razón produce monstruos’ (‘The sleep of reason pro- The notion of co-presence can be duces monsters’). more productive than that of a pluri- Thus, the virus is in fact as verse. As unfathomable as the virus human as can be, with a humanity that may be, its presence in our midst is is radically other than the humanity frighteningly unequivocal. We are, we attribute to ourselves. The signs therefore, co-present, and that is the sent out by the virus are no longer basis upon which communication opaque but rather transparent, if we should be established. In addition to bear in mind that the human being the difficulties inherent in intervital who now is getting infected by it is the translation, a semiotic code needs to be same person who has been infecting developed in order to invest co-presence and abusing nature for centuries. The with meaning. Such a code can only be two processes are tightly interwoven. signal-based communication. We have Communication is possible in this already seen that infection and poten- case; translation and pedagogy are still tial death are the signs of the virus. The intercultural, but cease to be intervital whys and wherefores of the signs will in order to become intravital. only remain opaque as long as the virus The virus becomes our contem- is viewed, as I did above, as a natural porary in the deepest sense. To that entity. But is that really the case? What extent, signal-based communication if it is more human than we think? becomes possible because, as we I am not referring to the con- know, it is the precondition of such spiracy theories that claim the virus communication that the same visual 26 was created in a laboratory. I am talk- field be shared. Where communica- ing about something far more substan- tion is possible, learning becomes pos- tive and with far greater consequences. sible too.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Thinking through science, public health and the virus K. SRINATH REDDY

DID the Covid-19 virus choose to spread, extent of infectivity, accuracy leave its forest abode and make its of testing methods and efficacy of dramatic entry into the wider world at treatment regimens, it also threw up a time when public health was being questions on statistical indicators that choked by the knee of anti-science portray the speed, severity and shape propaganda and environmental sus- of the epidemic as it races across tainability was melting away in the several countries. It became the source rising heat of climate change? While of knowledge on terms hitherto unfa- it would be fanciful to credit the tiny miliar to most, such as exponential microbe with such deliberate intent, growth, flattening of the curve, contact the dance of the debutante virus on a tracing, social distancing and com- pandemic platform has certainly been munity transmission. While these are directed by human folly. important for epidemic control, the The virus has, however, proved major lessons it has delivered relate to to be a great teacher of science as well the origins of this virus attack from 27 as sustainable development. Apart induced ecological imbalance and the from posing riddles about its mode of changes that we need to make in our

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 developmental choices and behavi- hundreds of these viruses among ani- toms, varies between 2 to 14 days but ours as an integral part of the earth’s mals, this is the seventh virus in the is usually around 5-6 days. ecosystem. family to be associated with human The Covid-19 virus was initially infections. The Middle Eastern Res- considered to be a respiratory virus like piratory Syndrome (MERS) and the SARS-CoV2, mostly affecting the Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome lungs. Even while infecting the respi- by the SARS Cov-2 virus. Diseases (SARS), other corona viruses which ratory tract, the novel virus has a large caused by agents that spread from staged their appearance earlier, were presence in the upper respiratory tract, animals to humans are classified as far deadlier but much less infecti- while extending lower into the lungs. zoonotic. Over two-thirds of the new ous than the Covid-19 virus which Two types of cells in the nose have outbreaks in the past half century have now goes by the scientific name of been found to be especially preferred been zoonotic. This is because human SARS-CoV2. More innocuous corona sites for viral lodging. Hence the pro- beings have created conveyor belts for viruses are agents of common cold. pensity to be discharged even during the transport of viruses and vectors The ‘corona’ or crown of the loud speech or forceful breathing, apart hitherto confined to forest dwelling virus is made of spike proteins. These from coughing or sneezing. wild life into captive bred veterinary fit snugly onto the ACE2 receptors populations and human habitat. Apart which are plentiful in respiratory and from the much discussed fetish for vascular endothelium which lines the However, this virus does not confine feeding on the flesh of exotic animals, respiratory tract and blood vessels. itself to the respiratory tract. Because the major reason for such anthropo- These receptors are intended by it can attack the ACE2 receptors in the genic microbial migration is deforesta- nature to be the landing pads for the lining of blood vessels, it can spread tion that results from expansion of Angiotensin Converting Enzyme across the body and attack any organ. agriculture, urban growth, mining and (ACE) which is an important physio- Heart, brain, pancreas, kidneys, intes- timber trade. logical mediator of many functions tines and other organs have been These forest dwelling viruses which include blood pressure regula- found to be infected. Testes have a high can jump from their primary hosts into tion. By using these receptors to density of ACE2 receptors. This may other species. This ‘spillover’ into a unlock entry into the endothelial cells, be one of the contributors greater large human host population, either the virus enters the cells of various severity of Covid-19 infection in directly or through an intermediate ani- organs and tissues, captures their males. Besides direct infection, the mal host, gives the virus an opportunity genetic material and replicates itself. virus can also trigger immunological to multiply and mutate to more virulent and inflammatory responses that can forms. As infected humans commute attack many parts of the body. The far and fast, the virus hitchhikes with The virus mostly enters the human threat to life comes from viral pneumo- them to new population groups and body through three portals. They are nia which affects both lungs and finds other susceptible individuals to the nose, mouth and eyes. All of them reduces their capacity to breathe and move into. While in the confines of the are connected to the respiratory tract. enrich the body’s blood with oxygen. forestry, the virus would not be viru- The eyes too are connected to the nose Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome lent lest it exhaust the limited popula- via the naso-lachrymal duct through (ARDS) is a particularly dangerous tion of its host and thereby endanger which tear drops and infectious con- manifestation wherein damage caused the survival of its own species. Given junctival exudates can flow into the by inflammatory reactions to the per- very large numbers of the new animal nose. Our hands are the agents that meable membrane that lies between or human host, the virus can turn more transfer the virus from surfaces and the lung tissue and blood capillaries virulent without running the risk of fomites, on which droplets have landed results in flooding of the airspaces. obliterating its own genetic lineage. from an infected person who coughs Because of its propensity to The ability of a virus to exchange or sneezes, on to the face. While drop- attack the lining of blood vessels, the genetic material with other viruses let spread is considered the main form virus causes micro-angiopathy which also adds a dangerous dimension by of spread, aerosol formation can occur can lead to extensive clotting. Pulmo- leading to the emergence of new and and persist for several hours as viral nary embolism can also result from 28 more virulent forms. clouds in crowded indoor spaces. The venous thrombosis and contribute to The virus belongs to the family incubation period, from viral entry into fatal outcomes. Inflammation of the of Corona viruses. While there are the body to the development of symp- brain (encephalitis) is also known to

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 occur, as the virus crosses the blood occurring antibodies which weakly piratory distress. Unfortunately, many brain barrier or travels along the olfac- bind to the virus. These can be engi- affected persons, who have deterio- tory nerve, from the nose to the olfac- neered to create new nano-bodies rating lung function with falling oxy- tory bulb which is related to the which tightly bind to the virus. gen levels in the blood, do not recognise perception of smell. The heart is However, the body’s immune it and manifest ‘happy hypoxia’. That affected through inflammation of responses to the virus can also become is why finger pulse oximetry has been the heart muscle (myocarditis) or by self-defeating in the later stages of the recommended to persons diagnosed thrombosis in the coronary arteries. infection. A large number of cytokines to have Covid-19 infection. The clini- and chemokines are generated by the cal features of viral pneumonia, multi- body, as part of the inflammatory res- organ failure and circulatory collapse The body has non-specific innate ponse. These protein messengers occur in a small minority. immunity with which it tries to fight the signal distress and attract inflamma- A particularly distinctive feature intruder. This may not be sufficient by tory cells. While useful in early com- of this virus, compared to SARS- itself. Healthy diets, adequate sleep bat against the virus, triggering of CoV1, is that many infected persons and regular physical activity build large scale production in later stages can remain asymptomatic or mildly such immunity. Whether prior BCG or will damage the body’s own tissues asymptomatic. This makes diagnosis polio vaccination builds non-specific through their indiscriminate use of fire and surveillance difficult. It is possible immunity to protect against the virus power. This leads to ARDS and multi- that some of the ‘asymptomatic’ per- is hypothetical and is being tested in ple organ failure, with a fatal outcome sons were pre-symptomatic and clinical trials of prevention in high in many whose bodies are battered by developed symptoms after the test was risk groups such as the elderly and this storm. More than the level of conducted. Some others may have had healthcare workers. virus load and the direct tissue damage atypical symptoms like loss of smell or The novel virus also evokes spe- it causes, it is the inflammatory taste which were previously not con- cific immunological responses, through response gone awry that seems to sidered diagnostic of Covid-19. Even two pathways. First is the formation of result in fatal outcomes. Misdirected so, it does appear that a sizeable pro- antibodies which may be able to neu- ‘friendly fire’ can have huge ‘collateral portion of Covid-19 affected persons tralise the virus. These are produced damage’. (possibly around a quarter and mostly by B lymphocytes and are of two young) will be truly asymptomatic. types. The IgM antibody levels start The virus has been observed to rising in the second week after infec- Since the Covid-19 virus was initially have particularly severe manifesta- tion but fade away by the fourth week. viewed mainly as a respiratory virus, tions in elderly persons and those with The IgG antibody appears late in the the triad of symptoms associated with co-morbidities. Persons over 60 years second week, peaks in four weeks and its infection included fever, cough of age and those with pre-existing fades over time thereafter. The other and breathlessness. These remain the hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, is through cell mediated immunity main symptoms to look for. Though respiratory disease, obesity or any which is provided by T. lymphocytes. these overlap with influenza and com- immunocompromised state, will carry The relative importance, of each of mon cold, there are some distinguish- greater risk of an adverse outcome. these arms of the immune response to ing features like dry cough and more Younger persons generally fare better. the Covid-19 virus, is unclear at present. severe breathlessness in Covid-19. Healthcare providers who are repeat- IgG antibody levels, in persons However, several other features were edly exposed to high viral loads are who have recovered, decline in three recognised and later added to the especially high risk. Children were months according to recent reports. symptom list. These include features initially assumed to be unaffected but The role of cellular immunity has not such as fatigue, chills, muscle pains, recently a multi-organ immunologi- been adequately investigated for us to headache, diarrhoea, loss of smell and cally mediated inflammatory condition assess the extent and duration of its loss of taste. The last two have attracted has been described in a small number protective effect. Thus, the promise of great interest as they seem to occur of them. long lasting immunity is nebulous at far more frequently than in influenza present. What implications this has and common cold and last longer. for the protective effect of a vaccine Physical signs are mainly related After the WHO Director General 29 remains to be seen. Interestingly, llamas to fever and, if the lungs are involved, passionately declared that all countries have been found to have naturally clinical features of pneumonia or res- must heed the imperative of testing all

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 persons suspected of contracting the Even the specificity of the tive. Given the modest sensitivity of virus, the focus on diagnostic tests was RT-PCR test to accurately diagnose the RT-PCR and antigen tests, it is heightened among policymakers, an active viral infection has been recommended that a person may be health professionals, media and the recently challenged. Several countries managed as Covid-19 if highly sugges- public. Understanding on the types, reported persons who tested positive, tive clinical features indicate a high indications, interpretation and limita- then negative and again positive des- probability. tions of the tests was, however, limited pite good clinical recovery and even in these groups. immunological evidence of antibody Viral detection tests are of two response. After detailed investigations, Several statistical terms have come types. Nucleic acid tests (exemplified it was concluded that these were due to the fore in describing the course of by RT-PCR) detect the speed of viral to ‘dead viruses’ triggering RNA the epidemic. The Ro (R Nought) or RNA replication in samples extracted recognition. The most egregious case the basic ‘Reproductive Number’ from the respiratory tract. Usually, na- was of a mother in Montreal who was refers to the number of persons an sal or throat swabs are collected separated from her newborn child for infected person can infect. This is through special test kits. Recently, 55 days because of repeated false much higher with aerial spread, as saliva samples are also being used in positive nucleic acid tests. in the case of measles. With the some places. Rarely, broncho-alveolar Covid-19 virus initial estimates of Ro lavage is performed to collect samples ranged from 3 to 7. The epidemic is from deep down in the respiratory The serological tests identify the pres- judged to come under control when tract. The RT-PCR test has been ence of IgM and IgG antibodies deve- Ro falls below 1. It must be noted that credited with high specificity (the abi- loped by an infected person. Their the Ro is not homogenous across the lity to exclude false positive test results diagnostic accuracy is affected by country at any time. It is lower in less in the uninfected) but only modest three factors. If tested too early in the crowded rural areas than in crowded sensitivity (the ability to detect true infection, antibodies will not be urban areas. Infectivity has also been positive cases who are infected). Sen- detected. They may also be found from noted to be higher in crowded gather- sitivity is partly dependant on the previous exposure to other corona ings which can give rise to ‘super timing of the test during the course of viruses. If used in population surveys, spreader’ events. Such events have the infection and the ability to extract with a large number of asymptomatic been reported from closed areas like a good sample for testing. A sensiti- persons, false positivity rates will rise bars, restaurants, churches, musical vity of 60-70% means that 30-40% because of a mathematical principle events and night clubs and even from of truly infected persons may not be called the Bayes Theorem. It shows outdoor barbecues. identified. the dependency of the post-test prob- Some individuals can be ‘super ability both on the pre-test probability spreaders’ too. Invoking the Pareto and the test result. When the pre-test principle named after Vilfredo Pareto, The antigen test is used to identify probability is very low, the post-test an Italian-Swiss economist, it has been protein components of the virus. The probability is not high despite a positive projected that 10-20% of the infected ‘Spike Protein’ is most often the tar- test result. Nevertheless, antibody persons can give rise to 80-90% of the get of this search. It is easier to per- tests can be used to compare virus infections. While identifying such per- form and the result can be obtained exposure rates in different population sons involves diligent and extensive in less than 30 minutes, while the rates. They are not suitable for char- contact tracing, super-spreader events RT-PCR takes several hours for pro- acterising the exposure or immune can be avoided through regulation and cessing and reporting. However, this status of an individual with a high self-restraint. advantage is blunted by a low sensiti- degree of confidence. The ‘Exponential Curve’ has vity which is even lower than that of In clinical settings, other tests been extensively pictured in the media, RT-PCR. The antigen test has been can help to improve diagnostic accu- as the course the infection takes in its reported to detect only 50-80% of the racy in case of uncertainty. Chest ascent before it peaks or flattens and infections detected by RT-PCR. Given X-Rays and CT scans of the chest then declines. The ascent is marked the modest sensitivity of the RT-PCR which show patches of pneumonia by an exponential growth rate of daily 30 itself, it means that over half of the help to increase the estimates of prob- infections. Interventions are judged to infected persons could be missed by ability from those provided by clinical show impact only when the curve flat- the antigen test. symptoms, even when tests are nega- tens. However, the rate of rise of the

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 curve can also be slowed down by tance would vary depending on how or inactive. Which of these is possible interventions and the growth may no open or crowded a place is and the pre- and in what time? longer be exponential. The ‘doubling vailing wind conditions. In general, The concept of herd immunity time’ of cases has been often cited as indoor locations, crowded places, close involves a large proportion of the popu- a measure by which the epidemic is seating, poor ventilation, prolonged lation getting infected and recovering. gathering or losing pace but as the base conversations or proximity at work These persons, who are now presum- count rises the doubling time stretches would place people at greater risk. ably immune to reinfection, act as bar- even if a number of new cases are Masks, on which there was lack of con- riers in transmission to the uninfected occurring. The doubling time of cases sensus in the initial months, have now persons who are thereby protected. is also influenced by the testing rates. been universally endorsed as neces- Estimates of the Herd Immunity As the principal objective of sary by all scientists though not enthu- Threshold (HIT) for the Covid-19 countering the virus is to reduce the siastically adopted by all citizens. Since virus have ranged between 40-80% deaths caused by it, two measures of eye protection too is needed, trans- but are mostly around 60-70% of the death have emerged, besides the daily parent face shields are becoming population. Community surveys in death counts. Case Fatality Rate (CFR) more common, especially during air- most affected countries of Europe is frequently cited to assess the level line travel. Frequent hand washing and North America have shown anti- of control over time. However, the has been emphasised as a protection body prevalence ranging between denominator of total diagnosed cases against transfer of the virus from con- 5-10%, with a few pockets reaching will vary according to testing rates. tact with a person, surface or object higher levels between 10-20%. The With extensive testing, more cases who may carry the virus. largest survey so far, in the severely will be detected and many of them will Besides symptom based diagno- affected country of Spain, showed only be mild and do not contribute to deaths sis and testing, which help to diagnose 5% prevalence of antibodies in the in the numerator. The CFR will then and isolate an infected person, it is population. fall, even if the daily death counts are necessary to undertake energetic and rising, as seen in USA. extensive tracing of all recent contacts Total cases and total deaths are of any infected person. It helps to iden- Also, ‘herd protection’ is available to not useful for international or even tify, test and isolate others who were uninfected persons only when they stay inter-state comparisons, unless adjusted infected or observe them on quaran- within the herd that has crossed the for the population size. Deaths per mil- tine till the end of the likely incubation HIT. Assume that the population of lion (DPM) will provide that advantage period. Delhi reaches the HIT of 70%. Even but will not help in tracking the epi- Community engagement and then, persons in the uninfected group demic, as DPM will be a progressively effective risk communication are of 30% will not be safe if they travel to rising number till all deaths cease. Daily essential components of an epidemic another herd, for example Ranchi or death counts will provide that tracker. response. Social solidarity and health Raipur where the viral exposure level For minimising the undercounting of literacy are needed for avoiding stigma, may be at only 5-10% of the population. deaths, we need to to ensure accurate improving case detection, efficient The number of previously infected certification of all hospital deaths and contact tracing and reducing risky beha- persons there is too low to block trans- assignment of probable cause of death viours involving groups. Lockdowns mission. All of India will take long to in ‘out of hospital’ deaths through a represent government imposed disci- reach the HIT for Covid-19. verbal autopsy technique based on pline. When a lockdown ends, how The second potential saviour is symptoms and other clinical features well people adopt self and group dis- a vaccine. While several candidates preceding death. cipline determines the success of con- are being actively investigated, we trol measures. This cannot happen await large-scale trial results to assess without active citizen engagement. if a safe and efficacious vaccine has As the virus is highly infectious and been identified. This is likely to happen spreads mainly through droplets, by the end of 2020 or the beginning of physical (social) distancing of two There are potentially three fire escape 2021, even by the most optimistic metres has been advised as a sensible routes. The first, much talked about, is estimates. After that come the huge precaution. This is by no means a herd immunity. The second is immu- logistical challenges of mass scale 31 scientifically validated and precisely nity conferred by a vaccine. The third production and swift distribution, to determined safe distance. Such a dis- is that the virus becomes less virulent meet global needs with efficiency and

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 equity. Persons at the highest risk, such as healthcare providers, the elderly and persons with severe co-morbidities, have to be prioritised for early admin- istration of the approved vaccine. However, there is cause for concern on the duration of protection. Recent reports suggest that the anti- bodies developed through natural infection decline by three months. Some anecdotal reports, on persons who recovered from the first infection but experienced symptomatic reinfec- tion again in a few months, add to the concern. Will cell mediated immunity last longer? We do not know yet. A short duration of infection induced immunity also raises doubts about herd immunity. The prospect of the virus grow- ing less virulent over time, due to high ambient temperatures and humidity, have not found evidence yet. However, evolutionary biology may show us the path. If a virus that acquired virulence only when it had the luxury of a large and almost unlimited host to infect, we may be able to push it back into a less virulent form by creating a bumpy road for it to travel and making its transmis- sion difficult. Then the imperatives of species preservation may make it assume a milder form, to avoid exhausting its host. While theoretical in case of this virus, there is prece- dence of some other viruses mutating to milder forms over time. The threat of zoonotic viral infec- tions will not cease with this virus. If we continue to wreak havoc on the environment especially through defor- estation, and pursue unsustainable methods of agriculture and livestock breeding, we will not only hasten glo- bal warming but give viruses dwelling in wild animal a fast track entry into human bodies. More than vaccines and ventilators, the safety of human life 32 will be determined by the sanctity of our environment and the sanity of our living habits.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Covid-19: dodgy science, woeful ethics SURANYA AIYAR

WHAT is epidemiology? It is surpris- at them. Were they defying you to ing how few of us know anything ever really know the secret of the about it. In the Age of Science, the one universe? thing that we can be sure of is that At that time, we were all fami- wherever we go, most people won’t liar with the figure of the Mad Scien- know much science. tist and his twin, the Nutty Professor. But they have faith in it. We used to laugh at their absent- A lot has changed in science mindedness, their enthusiasm for ideas from when I was a teenager in the late that defied common sense and their 1980s. Computers had only just begun evil designs on us, that only they to come on the scene. Algorithms seemed not to know were doomed to were just a type of equation. Science fail. Beneath the hilarity, we were was about dreaming of the day when keenly aware of something quite seri- Stephen Hawking would finally solve ous. Even as we laughed at the Mad the riddle of the Universe with his Scientist and Nutty Professor, we Grand Unified Theory of Physics. remembered Hiroshima and Naga- Science was wonder and mystery. It saki, the Eugenics Movement, the was not so much about what you knew, Genocide of World War II, Albert but about what you did not know. In Einstein’s deep angst over the atomic some types of science, like quantum bomb and the threat of nuclear war. physics, it was about what you could Cut to the 21st century, and things never know, as you endlessly contem- were rather different. Gone was the plated those elusive subatomic parti- mystery of science. The science was cles that changed even as you looked now ‘Settled’. It had been ‘Settled’ by supercomputers. There was no sign of * Suranya Aiyar’s paper, ‘Covid-19: Dodgy the Mad Scientist or the Nutty Profes- 33 Science, Woeful Ethics’, is available on covidlectures.blogspot.com (https://covid- sor. In this new world, no one laughed lectures.blogspot.com/). at scientists and everyone knew what

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 an algorithm was. Stephen Hawking But epidemiologists are not big to work forwards to predict the number wrote, what would turn out to be his on theory; they don’t spend much time of cases. last book, The Grand Design, in which thinking about whether they have Do you see the circularity of the he said that he had come to the con- taken into account all the factors that reasoning? Where this keeps going clusion that there would never be a drive a disease outbreak, or their rela- wrong is that because there is no Grand Unified Theory of Physics. He tive importance. There is no great understanding in principle, of how said this had something to do with the understanding, in principle, of any the virus behaves, or why some peo- limits of physics as a method and the disease or any population. They pre- ple fall ill and others don’t, your pre- universe as its subject. But no one fer to run with working assumptions, diction based from the inference of noticed because now we had algo- which they keep changing as things present behaviour is only as good as rithms to tell us ‘Everything’. unfold in the real world, with whatever your assumption about if and how the We were primed for this. There disease they are modelling. Since R is going to change over time. is no way, otherwise, that we would these assumptions are made without have fallen for the Grand-Covid- much knowledge of the biology of the Chicken-Little-End-of-the-World- pathogen; or the population under We have, in very recent memory, Venture, as we have done. study; or of the actual practice of medi- all been the victims of the virtual real- cine, you do not have to be a mathe- ity that balloons out of this kind of matical modeller to predict that things feedback logic, viz., the World Finan- Let us start with understanding what are likely to go wrong. cial Crash of 2007-08. Writing about epidemiologists do. Epidemiologists the junk mortgage-backed securities work with algorithms that are sup- that were okayed by investment banks posed to enable you to calculate the The writer and mathematician, based on mathematical risk model- total number or size of a phenomenon Cathy O’Neil, puts it in this way in her ling, Cathy O’Neill writes: ‘mathe- by taking into account the variables book, Weapons of Math Destruc- matical models, by their nature, are that affect it. They feed the numbers tion: ‘models are by their very nature, based on the past, and on the assump- for different variables into a computer simplifications. No model can include tion that patterns will repeat.’ The that has been programmed to run cal- all of the real world’s complexity… Ine- assumption with sub-prime mort- culations using the chosen algorithm. vitably some important information gages was that everyone would not The results of these calculations can gets left out… to create a model, then, default on loans at the same time. But be plotted on a graph, to give you the we make choices about what’s impor- then they did, and it all came crashing curves with which we have all now tant enough to include, simplifying down. In O’Neill’s words, ‘The… become so familiar. the world in a toy version that can be false assumption was that not many But a computer can only run the easily understood and from which we people would default at the same variables according to the algorithm. can infer important facts and actions.’ time. This was based on the theory, It cannot tell you what those variables After putting together their back- soon to be disproven, that defaults should be, and herein lies the rub. of-the-envelope variables, epidemiolo- were largely random and unrelated Deciding which variables are relevant gists then start the exercise of ‘fitting’ events… The risk models were assum- to the phenomenon you are studying their models to the data. As the infor- ing that the future would be no diffe- is not a mathematical exercise, but a mation and data for the disease comes rent from the past.’ theoretical one. Ideally, you should in, the quantities assigned to different What makes epidemiological have a solid theoretical understanding variables in their model are changed modelling even more unreliable is of the phenomenon under study, on the so as to produce the outcome that is that epidemiologists do not even spend basis of which you can identify, in a observed. On this basis, epidemiolo- much time identifying their underly- rigorous, stable and complete way, the gists will work backwards to tell you, for ing estimates or assumptions when set of variables that apply. An estima- instance, the ‘Reproduction Number’ assembling the variables for their equa- tion using mathematical modelling is or ‘R’, which is the number of people tion. So, assumptions will be built into not merely about putting a number on who can be infected by one ill person; the epidemiologists’ models that they different elements in your equation. this is a key estimate that epidemiolo- are not even aware of. 34 It is, in essence, a theory of what ele- gists use to predict the rate of transmis- What’s wrong here is not the ments to include in the equation, and sion of a disease. After back-calculating maths, but the science, or rather the how they relate to each other. to infer the R, they then use this R value lack thereof. It is said of modelling that

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 your prediction is only as good as your cases a year, that tells you another tainties and inaccuracies that we data: ‘garbage in, garbage out’. But thing. If I tell you that India has over just discussed about epidemiological this really obscures the uncertainty, 57,000 Covid deaths, that tells you modelling. incompleteness and messiness that is one thing. If I tell you that India has This means that we are all embedded in epidemiological thinking. 2.7 to 4.0 lakh tuberculosis deaths, 10 punching in the dark when we are try- Your model is really only as good as the lakh diarrhoeal disease deaths and six ing to figure out exactly what the Covid theory on which it is based, and epide- lakh respiratory disease deaths a year, numbers mean. Even World Health miologists have very poor theories, if that tells you several other things. Organization (WHO) mortality data at all, behind their models. Often it is a needs to be placed in context in the case of garbage all the way down. same way. If you study the notes to Modelling may be helpful, but If I tell you that the USA has 57 lakh the WHO world mortality data, you only as an adjunct to a more rigorous Covid cases, while its annual tubercu- will discover that it assigns varying theoretical understanding of a disease. losis and HIV cases are 10 lakh each, degrees of certainty as to the accuracy The number of cases that we see for that tells you something. When I tell of deaths reported under different a disease are merely its outward mani- you that the US typically has 60 thou- heads of disease:1 For a given year festation. To truly understand a dis- sand deaths a year from respiratory there may be no data at all, and the ease, we need to dig much deeper into infections and the death toll from figure reported is… you guessed it… the biology of the pathogen itself, as Covid is 1.7 lakh and counting, that ‘estimated’ again. The WHO makes well as the way in which the human tells you something else. If I tell you these estimates even for countries body responds to it. If we have a cor- that the US has 22 to 24 lakh deaths a with no death registration data for the rect understanding of these things, then year from non-infectious diseases, that year under study, or with no informa- we can, perhaps, accurately model the tells you yet a third thing. So, in order tion on the cause of death, or with no disease. But without this knowledge, for us to really speak intelligibly about data for a particular disease. Even the modelling is a terrible way to evaluate the Covid numbers, we have to know disease to which the deaths are attri- anything. Even if it turns out to be right, something about what the numbers are buted can be done by estimation. it is so only by chance. for other diseases. But here we run into the difficulty that in the normal course, we do not The estimation is made from various In the Covid crisis, another problem follow disease in real time, counting things like projections based on avail- we have is that although we have so cases and deaths as they emerge, and able mortality data for a previous many numbers flying around – case estimating severity from there as we period, or estimating deaths by looking numbers! deaths! case fatality rates! have done for Covid-19. We do not at the demographic profile of a coun- doubling rates! – we have very little have outbreak curves for any other try, ‘interpolation/extrapolation of information to really make sense of disease because these were never number of deaths of missing country- them. In particular, we have little infor- plotted in real time as they were done years’, ‘scaling of total deaths by age mation about other diseases with for Covid-19. So we never had an and sex to previously estimated WHO which to compare the (so-called) Covid outbreak curve from another disease all-cause envelopes’, estimating adult data. with which we could compare the mortality from child mortality and a This is a problem because a Covid ones. key called the ‘WHO modified logit number by itself gives very limited We also have no actual count- life table system’, and so on. information, and numbers that are very ing of cases for other diseases. In The WHO does not even carry small or very large can be misleading order to determine the case incidence out estimations every year. Mortality if taken simply by themselves. If I tell or mortality rate for any disease epi- estimates are carried out only every you that Iceland has only 100 deaths demiologists need to do estimation. from infectious disease a year, that tells Yes, estimation again. So anything 1. See, for instance, https://www.who.int/ you one thing. If I tell you that Iceland you hear about the number of cases for healthinfo/global_burden_disease/ estimates_country_2004_2008/en/ and ‘Mor- overall has only 2000 or so deaths a tuberculosis, AIDS or malaria in any tality and Burden of Disease Estimates for year, that tells you another. If I tell you country is not actual counts, rough WHO Member States’ issued by WHO’s that India has 31 lakh Covid cases, that aggregations or averages of cases. Department of Measurement and Health 35 Information and ‘WHO Methods and Data tells you one thing. If I tell you that They are modelled estimates, which Sources for Country-Level Causes of Death India has over 31 lakh tuberculosis are, therefore, subject to all the uncer- 2000-2016’, dated 2018.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 two or three years, and take several of getting any numerical information positive for years, indeed for decades, years to be finalized. The 2008 esti- about diseases that can form a truly without falling ill. mates, for example, were updated in reliable standard against which to Antivirals and medicines like 2011, after taking comments from judge the Covid numbers with which hydroxychloroquine do not ‘cure’ all countries. For later years, for the we are being assaulted, ambushed and viral disease, in the sense of eliminat- moment, all that the WHO seems to disarmed. Talk about death by num- ing them from the body, but they are have are modelled estimates by the bers. It’s a billion! Bam! Now y’er dead. well known to reduce the severity of American epidemiological institute infection, which can also be life sav- called the Institute for Health Metrics ing. In the epidemiological work on and Evaluation (IHME). The WHO So where does this leave us? Is there pandemic influenza, the assumption estimates from after the year 2008 do a Covid-19 pandemic or is it all a fan- is that antivirals can be given for viral not say whether they have been circu- tasy of the epidemiologists? Covid-19 infections, both as a preventive and as lated to countries for comments, and is not a fantasy, but we have not been treatment: ‘prompt treatment with there is nothing to indicate that anyone seeing it for what it is. We have only antivirals reduces clinical severity and from IHME, which is headquartered been looking at the supercomputer- infectiousness.’2 Even the WHO has in the remote State of Washington in aided and algorithm-abetted drama acknowledged the efficacy of antivi- the USA, has ever been to countries performed by the epidemiologists. ral drugs and medicines like hydro- like India for which they have done The epidemiologists told us xychloroquine in retarding the progress these estimations. that if Covid-19 was allowed to spread of viral infections.3 unchecked, then billions would be infected, and millions would die. The The WHO says that you cannot com- WHO and public health experts told We need to turn away from those pare the country-wise data, or even the us that, therefore, we had to have a dis- exponential graphs, and look into why year-wise data. But what do the num- ease containment strategy that would disease containment rather than treat- bers mean if you can’t compare either stop the virus from spreading. Then ment has become the guiding princi- year-on-year figures for a country, or the epidemiologists and the WHO ple of public health interventions for country-to-country figures with each came together in a rousing jugal- epidemics, despite the availability of other? As I said earlier, garbage all bandi exhorting us to ‘flatten the medicines. The formal name for dis- the way down. curve!’ The idea, they said, was to bring ease containment is ‘Non-Pharma- So even comparing deaths from the number of infections to within ceutical Measures’. This gives us one disease to another only takes you manageable levels. some hint of what might be going on. so far. It is a quagmire of estimates. But Covid-19 proved to be The negation implied in this expression There is no escaping the uncer- unmanageable whether you had one is of Pharmaceutical Measures, i.e., tainties of disease estimation, even case or a billion. For reasons that we medicines. Did the idea of disease with large-scale testing. Even though do not, as yet, understand, Covid can containment arise as an alternative to, some countries tried to do real-time be mild and clear up in a few days, or or perhaps even in opposition to, phar- testing to assess rates of Covid infec- have you choking to death in nine maceutical measures? tion, no country had the resources to days flat. No amount of flattening the Writing in 2006 about non- test everyone. Even population-wide curve can solve this problem. And it is pharmaceutical interventions for pan- testing, if it can be done, will only give a problem of some significance if you demic influenza, the WHO Writing you a snapshot of the infections at the or a loved one is on the curve, how- Group rejects the feasibility of phar- moment. To keep tabs on disease ever flat it may be. maceutical interventions saying that prevalence via universal testing over Why, when antivirals were a period of time, the entire population known to be effective in reducing the 2. Ferguson et al., ‘Strategies for Mitigating would have to be tested periodically. severity of viral infections, was the an Influenza Pandemic’, Nature 442, July 2006, p. 448, 27. https://www.nature.com/ So what we have here are three WHO and public health field in general articles/nature04795 levels of missing science and infor- so focused on ‘non-pharmaceutical’ 3. COVID-19 – virtual press conference, mation – the general lack of scientific interventions? Because we do have WHO, 30 March 2020. https://www.who.int/ 36 knowledge in the public; the lack of medicines for viral diseases. This is docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/ who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press- science in epidemiological model- how AIDS was brought under control. conference-full-30mar2020.pdf? sfvrsn= ling; and the absence and impossibility With antiviral drugs you can be HIV- 6b68bc4a_2

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 the availability of antiviral agents is really only a problem for low-income Luckily, common sense pre- ‘insufficient’ and that while pandemic countries in Africa? High income coun- vailed over these academic fulmina- preparedness ‘ideally would include tries have a tiny disease burden from tions, and ZMapp was sent to Liberia pharmaceutical countermeasures (vac- infectious disease compared with non- and Nigeria. So much for the claim that cine and antiviral drugs), but for the infectious disease (cancers and heart ‘only 7’ doses were available.7 Old foreseeable future, such measures disease), and middle income countries hands at the Ebola game in West Africa, will not be available for the global show epidemiological transition, with Peter Piot and David Heymann, population [of more than] 6 billion’.4 a reducing burden of infectious dis- stepped in to say that given the sever- ease, and an increasing one under the ity of Ebola, they themselves would head of non-infectious disease. have been happy to try experimental But this was clearly a huge underes- For many years, there has been drugs had they contracted this disease. timation of the capacity of countries to something dysfunctional in the west- They also said, pointedly, that if Ebola deploy antivirals. Poorer countries in ern approach to drugs for infectious had broken out in the West then it Asia and Africa were the first to use diseases. A particularly sordid episode was ‘highly likely’ that the authorities antivirals, viral inhibitors and other occurred during the Ebola outbreak would have speeded up the testing of therapies like hydroxychloroquine, of 2014-16 in West Africa. Some experimental drugs for it.8 This turned ivermectin, plasma therapy and favi- European and American health work- out to be prescient going by the prompt- parivir for Covid-19 treatment. It was ers who caught Ebola there, were ness with which remedi-sivir was put Bangladesh that led the way with flown back home for treatment. Most to trial in the USA after Covid-19 came ivermectin and doxycycline. If any- of them were cured after being given to its shores. thing, it was rich countries with their, a cutting-edge medication called in the case of Continental and Nordic ‘ZMapp’. There was outrage in West Europe, total lack of innovation in Africa where people had been told for The West owes a debt to Ebola and pharmaceuticals, and, in the case of the decades that Ebola had no cure. West Africa. It was only after West USA, cumbersome clinical trials that Africans insisted on access to experi- lagged behind in finding pharmaceuti- mental drugs that attention was finally cal interventions for Covid-19. Initially it was claimed in America that given to working on Ebola drugs, and While it may be impossible to just seven doses of ZMapp were avail- it is in the course of this work that produce drugs for all the 7 or 8 billion able, which had all been used up, and remedisivir was developed.9,10 people in the world in a short period so nothing remained to be sent to West Even though the world went of time, this is not the way any disease Africa. But there was widespread spe- into an unprecedented lockdown that progresses. You will not have all these culation that ZMapp was still being sent 5. Annette Rid and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, ‘Ethi- people falling ill at once; and given to Spain and other places for repatri- cal Considerations of Experimental Interven- the vast numbers of mild cases for ated European health workers. The tions in the Ebola Outbreak, The Lancet 384, Covid-19, not even all those who governments of Nigeria and Liberia 22 November 2014. https://www.thelancet. com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140- do fall ill will need pharmaceutical immediately requested for the medicine 6736(14)61315-5.pdf intervention. to be sent to them, even while western 6. Angus J. Dawson, ‘Ebola: What it Tells us If you think about it, this was commentators were delivering sermons About Medical Ethics’, The Journal of Medi- surely something that the WHO knew on the indispensability of clinical trials. cal Ethics 41, 2015, pp. 107-110. https:// jme.bmj.com/content/41/1/107; Christian A. very well already. Could the truth lie in The WHO stepped in to say that Gericke, ‘Ebola and Ethics: Autopsy of a Fail- the fact that no one wanted to encour- given the emergency situation, expe- ure, BMJ, 2015, p. 350. https://www.bmj.com/ age the idea of drugs when this might rimental use of the drug should be content/350/bmj.h2105 have meant footing the bill (or giving allowed in West Africa. This led to an 7. ‘Trial of Ebola Drug ZMapp Launches in up patents) for drugs for infectious outcry from academics in the UK and Liberia’, US, Centre for Disease Research & Policy, 27 February 2015. https://www. diseases which, until Covid-19, were Australia against the use of medicines cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2015/02/ for Ebola. They made arguments such trial-ebola-drug-zmapp-launches-liberia-us 4. ‘Nonpharmaceutical Interventions for Pan- demic Influenza, International Measures’, as that looking at medicines merely to 8. ‘Africans, Three Ebola Experts Call for World Health Organization Writing Group, cure a few patients was ‘individualis- Access to Trial Drug’, Los Angeles Times, 6 August 2014. https://www.latimes.com/ Centres for Disease Control and Prevention tic’ or that this somehow betrayed the 37 Vol 12, Number 1, January 2006. https:// world/africa/la-fg-three-ebola-experts-release- www.nc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1370_ purported wider community good of drugs-20140806-story.html article. disease-containment measures.5,6 9. Op. cit., fn. 7.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 was supposed to stop the spread of to it. The shift in attention from ventila- What you thus have is a very dif- Covid-19, the cases relentlessly grew tors to the way the disease progressed ferent picture of treatment than the and grew. India went into lockdown at in the body, opened up investigation one envisaged in the ‘flatten the curve’ some 500 cases, today it is at over 31 into antivirals and enzyme inhibitors model, where everything hinged on lakh cases. Epidemiologists and the to block those aspects of the body’s ICUs and ventilators. public health establishment justify their natural immune response that were By mid-May, ICU facilities that disease containment approach by say- exacerbating the damage caused by had been ‘surged’ by rich western ing that ‘flattening the curve’ reduced the pathogen itself. countries, as frantically recommended the number of people who would have by their epidemiologists, were being been struck by the disease had there shut down, many without having seen been no lockdown. But this is no ans- In China, Japan, India, Bangladesh any patients.15,16 wer. Lockdown, other disease contain- and other countries in Asia and Africa, ment measures, and the atmosphere doctors immediately, as early as Feb- of dread cultivated by them have also ruary and March when Covid-19 was A fraction of unlucky patients who caused massive damage to life and first detected in their borders, began to might become critically ill may require health owing to the consequent repres- use drugs like hydroxychloroquine, full ICU intervention, but there are sion of social and economic activity. azithromycin, doxycycline and various many more options for the rest that the The adoption of containment meas- antiviral prescriptions like lopinavir, epidemiologists clearly had no idea ures was presented by epidemiologists ritonavir, ivermectin and faviparivir for about. For example, oxygen supple- and doctors as a false choice between treatment and prevention of Covid-19. mentation can be done at home with saving lives and saving the economy. The Bangladeshis announced excel- hired equipment and without the need The migrant labour crisis is among the lent results with a combination of the for oxygen cylinders, as they concen- many examples that show us that dis- antiviral ivermectin with the antibiotic trate the oxygen from the air. ease containment kills too. doxycycline, and India’s Council of The WHO and public health Scientific and Industrial Research thinking in general works with fixed began looking into the re-purposing ideas of wealth and hospital resources The ‘flatten the curve’ strategy was of 25 drugs, including faviparivir, in evaluating health issues. But what unhelpful in many ways. It assumed for Covid-19 treatment. These are is health and what are resources? that saving lives was a matter of pro- only some examples from Asia and Covid-19 reduced to nothing the viding Covid-19 patients with ventila- Africa of the immediate work that resources of the world’s richest and tors and critical care. But ventilators started with different therapies to help most technologically advanced coun- left the picture in Europe and the USA Covid-19 patients. By late June the tries. We have to ask ourselves what almost as quickly as they had entered USA had put remedisivir on the mar- was the worth of all these resources it in March. By early April, doctors ket and UK scientists announced when looking at the ravages of there began to report that ventilators some success with the use of dexame- Covid-19 in countries like the UK were not helping all Covid-19 patients, thasone for critically ill patients. and Italy. These are countries that 11-14 and might even be harming them. coronavirus-patients-who-are-put-on-venti- have made public health services into The focus expanded from ventilator- lators-ultimately-die-and-some-doctors-are- a defining socio-political project from care to other treatments, as doctors trying-to-stop-using-them/articleshow/ the middle of the last century. began to understand the way in which 75065623.cms Sars-Cov-2 attacked the lungs and how 12. ‘Why Ventilators May Not Be Working 15. ‘US Field Hospitals Stand Down, Most As Well for Covid-19 Patients As Doctors Without Treating Any Covid-19 Patients’, the body’s immune system responded Hoped’, Time, 16 April 2020. https://time. npr.org, 7 May 2020. https://www.npr.org/ com/5820556/ventilators-covid-19/ 2020/05/07/851712311/u-s-field-hospitals- 10. ‘Ebola is Now Curable…’ wired.com, 13. John J. Marini and Luciano Gattinoni, stand-down-most-without-treating-any- 8 December 2019. https://www.wired.com/ ‘Management of Covid-19 Respiratory covid-19-patients; ‘London NHS Nightingale story/ebola-is-now-curable-heres-how-the- Distress’, JAMA Insights, Clinical Update, Hospital Will Shut Next Week’, The Guar- new-treatments-work/ 24 April 2020. https://jamanetwork.com/ dian, 4 May 2020. Link: https://www.the 11. Sinead Baker, ‘80% of New York’s journals/jama/fullarticle/2765302 guardian.com/world/2020/may/04/london- Coronavirus Patients Who Are Put On Venti- 14. ‘Doctors Face Troubling Question: nhs-nightingale-hospital-placed-on-standby 38 lators Ultimately Die, and Some Doctors Are They Treating Coronavirus Correctly?’ 16. ‘Covid-19: Nightingale Hospitals Set to Are Trying to Stop Using Them’, Business The New York Times,14 April 2020. https:// Shutdown After Seeing Few Patients’, BMJ Insider, 9 April 2020. https://www.business www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp5 369, 7 May 2020. https://www.bmj. com/con- insider.in/science/news/80-of-new-yorks- RMutCNoI tent/369/bmj.m1860

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 American doctors in March and April, Americans and Europeans were slower If you follow the discussion amongst when they were first hit by Covid, about off the mark with antivirals and other doctors in developed western coun- being careful of lung damage from drugs than the Asians, Russians and tries, what comes through starkly is intubation, keeping patients ‘dry’, i.e. Africans. This may be partly because the lack of experience in dealing with being conservative on fluid replace- doctors in Asia and Africa who regu- infectious disease – a condition itself ment as this can cause further lung larly treat tuberculosis, meningitis, brought about by wealth. Doctors at damage, and on the timing of intuba- diarrhoeal diseases, dengue and mala- the epicentre of the Covid outbreak in tion for patients showing severe res- ria, among other infectious diseases, Northern Italy were quick to intuit the piratory distress, are covered as a are more experienced with these drugs misalignment of their current medical routine matter in the Indian National than western doctors. practice with the exigencies of a highly Clinical Management Guidelines for contagious disease like Covid-19: Covid-19. This may well be the case ‘Coronavirus is the Ebola of the rich… for other Asian and African countries Epidemiologists are like the blind- The more medicalized and centralized as well. folded men trying to guess what the the society, the more widespread the elephant was in Gandhiji’s favourite virus…17 fable. As the men groped at one or ‘The Coronavirus epidemics By mid-April there was a recognition other part of the elephant, they kept should indeed lead to a number of even in the West that the blood clotting, making the wrong guess at what it reflections on the organization of and other ‘atypical’ reactions they was. The one who caught its trunk healthcare and the way contemporary were observing in Covid-19 patients, called it a snake, the one who felt its tusk medicine has lost sight of some dis- might be part of the general deteriora- called it a weapon, and so on. Epide- eases, such as infectious ones, that tion into sepsis as is seen with other miologists get things wrong in the same were, probably prematurely, seen as severe viral diseases, and there was way. A telling example is how the most diseases of the past… We have defi- talk of including anti-coagulants like famous epidemiologists of them all, nitely not won the fight against infec- heparin for critically ill patients. But in the Neil Ferguson-led Covid-19 Res- tious diseases, but we have probably India, heparin had been included right ponse Team which included the Impe- forgotten about them too soon. In a at the start for critically ill patients in rial College of London and the WHO high-technology setting, it is all too easy the National Clinical Management Centre for Infectious Disease Model- to forget the overwhelming, often dark Guidelines for Covid-19. Chinese doc- ling, assessed the impact of age on their power of nature.’18 tors reporting the clinical course of ill- Covid case predictions. Some of the effects of severe ness in hundreds of patients in Wuhan In a report dated 26 March 2020 Covid-19, such as blood clotting, hospitals in January, had emphasized called ‘The Global Impact of Covid-19 noticed as new and atypical by west- the observation of thrombosis (blood and Strategies for Mitigation and ern doctors, are similar to those clotting) in critical cases and noted that Suppression’ they say: ‘The average observed in patients in the final stages elevated levels of a substance called size of households that have a resident of any illness when they are headed to d-dimers correlated with cases that over the age of 65 years is substantially sepsis and septic shock.19 Some of the proceeded to become severe.20,21 higher in countries with lower income worse cases of Covid-19 sound simi- While the WHO made the case compared with middle- and high- lar to patients in the last stages of Ebola for disease containment by invoking income countries… Contact patterns in West Africa, or dengue in India. A grim portents for the ‘poor’ and ‘dense’ between age groups also differ by lot of the issues raised by Italian and populations of developing countries, it country; in high-income settings con- 17. Nacoti et al., ‘At the Epicentre of the was these countries that led the charge COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: A Retrospective Covid-19 Pandemic and Humanitarian Crises for finding therapies for Covid-19. The Cohort Study’, The Lancet 395, 1054, in Italy: Changing Perspectives on Prepara- 28 March 2020, first published on 9 March tion and Mitigation’, NEJM Catalyst, 19. ‘Unexpected Cause of Death in Younger 2020. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ 21 March 2020. https://catalyst.nejm.org/ Covid-19 Patients is Related to Blood Clot- lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30566-3/ doi/full/10.1056/CAT.20.0080 ting’, BioSpace, 28 April 2020. https:// fulltext 18. Giorgina Barbara Piccoli, ‘Hospitals as www.biospace.com/article/covid-19- 21. Wang et al., ‘Clinical Characteristics of Health Factories and the Coronavirus Epi- increases-risk-of-heart-attacks-and-stroke/ 138 Hospitalized Patients with 2019 Novel demic’, Journal of Nephrology 33, 21 March ?fbclid=IwAR3wum5CgAyBrlCQ2eBwQCy_ Coronavirus-infected Pneumonia in Wuhan, 39 2020, pp. 189-191. https://paperity.org/p/ sU2Evq4iuyV4dqhT7ZP5efdSOVb_KWPkUnw China’, JAMA 323(11), 7 February 2020, 237906528/hospitals-as-health-factories-and- 20. Zhou et al., ‘Clinical Course and Risk Fac- pp.1061-1069. https://jamanetwork.com/ the-coronavirus-epidemic tors for Mortality of Adult Inpatients With journals/jama/fullarticle/2761044

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 tact patterns tend to decline steeply year, the disease was already entering A phenomenon that cannot be fully with age. This effect is more moder- countries from many places at once. explained by lockdown and contain- ate in middle-income settings and dis- If you follow the first cases in differ- ment measures, as this is a pattern that appears in low-income settings… ent countries, you see a pattern of dis- holds consistently in different coun- indicating that elderly individuals in ease importation from people with tries, despite differences in the timing these settings [lower-income and mid- no travel history to China. In fact, on and quality of intervention measures. dle-income countries] maintain higher nearly every continent, more countries There are many anomalies in Covid contact rates with a wide range of age- had their first imported cases from transmission that are crying out for groups compared to elderly individu- Italy than from China. In France, the attention if only we could snap out of als in high-income countries.’22 first major outbreak was in early March our epidemiology-induced hypnosis. from a Church gathering in Mulhouse The case onset data from China and in Haut Rhin where, till date, no cases Italy (other countries are yet to tabu- Based on this the Covid-19 Res- appear to have been connected to late this) show that their measures ponse Team claimed that the elderly Wuhan. actually came into force at or near the were less vulnerable to infection in time that infections peaked and pla- high-income settings. They were teaued.24,25 Given the 14-day incuba- completely wrong, as they failed to In Kenya, the first case (mid-March) tion period for this disease, lockdown account for the increased exposure of was of someone returning from the and other measure do not explain this the elderly to infection in the commu- USA via London. In Iceland, early trajectory. Another anomaly is the way nal setting of the care home, whose cases included an import from Austria. in which outbreaks have not been deaths tragically constituted 40 to 60% In Italy, early cases included imports traced to busy bus or metro routes in of the Covid deaths in high-income from Romania and Norway. In Paki- big cities with Covid outbreaks, or to countries in Europe and North America. stan and India, early cases were shopping malls or crowded vegetable In Canada and some US states, deaths imported from Iran. In India’s first mandis. This indicates that the sharing of care home residents were over 80% hotspot of Mumbai, early cases mostly of public spaces may not in and of of the total Covid deaths.23 came from the USA. This should not itself result in significant transmis- This is only one example of the surprise us as the whole idea of the sion, and a more intense, intimate and ways in which epidemiological model- pandemic is that the connectedness of prolonged interaction is required for ling failed to tell us things that might the world is the main risk and driver transmission to occur. If this is true, have been useful in mitigating the of such outbreaks. Yet, when the pan- then the whole idea of stopping public worst impact of Covid-19. Another demic actually hit us everyone reacted movement to contain Covid transmis- example is the way in which, while in a very un-pandemic way by focus- sion is questionable. we were focused on Wuhan early this ing only on China. In Sweden, early contact tracing 22. Report 12: The Global Impact of focused on people with a travel history y following the epidemiologist’s COVID-19 and Strategies for Mitigation and B Suppression, COVID-19 Response Team, to Italy owing to some early cases hav- approach of ‘flattening the curve’, we 26 March 2020. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/ ing been connected to travel there. But were all focused on overall numbers. mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid- Swedish officials later announced that Success in combatting the virus was 19/report-12-global-impact-covid-19/ while they were focused on Italy, cases judged in terms of how many infections 23. International Long Term Care Policy Net- work, ‘Mortality Associated With COVID were being imported ‘below the radar’ we have prevented. But this is a fact Among People Who Use Long Term Care’, from many other countries. This is a over which we can only speculate, while updates of 21 May 2020 and 26 June 2020. very clear example of how contact in some places, as in care homes in Link to 26 June 2020 update here: https:// ltccovid.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ tracing and other containment meas- Mortality-associated-with-COVID-among- ures can be misleading in giving the 24. Chinese case onset data can be found at people-who-use-long-term-care-26-June- early impression of the infection com- Figure 2 on Page 6 of the Report of the WHO- China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 1.pdf; ‘State-wise data for the USA from ing from just one or other place. Covid-19 brutal on NY long-term care facili- 2019, published on 28 February 2020. https:/ ties’, The Buffalo Post quoting Kaiser Family Another pattern to which we are /www.who.int/docs/default-source/ Foundation data, 26 May 2020. https:// failing to give proper attention is the coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on- covid-19-final-report.pdf 40 buffalonews.com/business/local/covid- highly clustered nature of Covid-19 19-brutal-on-ny-long-term-care-facilities- 25. Italian case onset data can be found at: nationwide-its-worse/article_739b408b- outbreaks, with successive disease epi- https://www.epicentro.iss.it/en/coronavirus/ 5d34-5b8d-be83-124047368d2b.html centres losing severity as they emerge. sars-cov-2-dashboard

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Europe and North America, we failed to notice and disperse chains of trans- mission as they emerged. Even today, so many months down the line, we are unable to remove the blinkers that the epidemiologists have put over our eyes to actually look at the virus and take into account the totality of its beha- viour and peculiarities. What emerges is the limited importance of mathema- tical modelling and the degree to which thinking in these terms only serves to further confuse and confound us when confronted with a novel disease. We talk of control, and even after the virus has raced around the world, infecting hundreds of thousands in the richest and most scientifically advanced places, we still think we know and can control it. In this we show the smallness not just of epide- miology, but even of science. At least of the kind of science that we are doing today. Even if we are willing to gamble on defying nature, we have to first be ready to accept that science in its current state knows very little about Sars-Cov-2. Before we can control it, we have to understand it. Perhaps we can start with this idea – Sars-Cov-2 is part of nature, as are we all. When we went to war against it, the ravages of lockdown have shown us that we ended up hurt- ing ourselves. Disease sits in people. Our war on disease became a war on the people. Whether we like it or not, we and this virus are connected. If we try to understand the nature of this connection, maybe we can reach the happy ending to which science has, so far, always led us. In order for this to happen we need to ditch the epidemi- ologists and the supercomputers, and encourage the real scientists to go ahead with a sober and uninhibited scientific exploration of Covid-19. Until science comes to the res- cue, we have no choice but take things 41 philosophically. If this is the end, then at least let us go with dignity.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 A virus is politicized ARUNA ROY and NIKHIL DEY

IF the world is indeed a stage, then down. India had never heard of, or Covid-19 has turned the play into a trag- experienced, a smaller version of this edy without a denouement. But Act I, vast draconian exercise. There had Scene 1 has laid the ground rules for never even been a dress rehearsal, and what is to follow in India. to claim legitimacy for the unprepar- The seriousness of the impact of edness, this was defined as a ‘battle’. a virus originating in a distant place in In seeking answers, the Govern- another country, with the potential to ment of India has made a big mistake become a ‘pandemic’, was barely in strategizing as if for war. Wars need acknowledged until the prime minis- adversaries and enemies. Natural 42 ter’s ‘special’ (8 pm) address to the calamities are very often beyond the nation on 24 March 2020, giving 4 hours potential of logic and reasoning, and to 1.4 billion people to lock themselves certainly not responsive to psychologi-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 cal warfare. The ‘enemy’ is not scared, (the virus), against the laws of govern- reasons for the success lie in two or courageous. The phenomena just ment (the lockdown). domains. One, decades of decentra- ‘is’. At the very start, the unexplained For vast multitudes of people, the lized planning leading to the develop- lockdown has created adversarial lockdown was a fiat never experi- ment of capacities to deal competently relationships that can never be consi- enced before. It came as a set of dras- with crisis at the local level. And two, dered the best way to acknowledge, tic, unquestionable orders, backed by serious attention to the spread of a dis- understand, contain, and best coexist centralized command and control, and ease in setting up of laboratories and with a virus, so it doesn’t become a the aggressive use of two laws (The health systems that deal with preven- multitude of pandemics. A tiny power- Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, and tion and detection. In dealing with ful think tank in New Delhi primed the Disaster Management Act, 2005) Nipah, Kerala also dealt with methods to function through the politics of to essentially put all controls in the and systems of addressing future power, perception, identity, and group hands of the central government’s health concerns. The Government of loyalties, will naturally look to perpe- Home Ministry and a small team India would have done well to heed and tuate the inequalities it is comforta- operating under it. The language and learn from the Kerala example. ble with. imagery of ‘war’ was invoked. ‘War On the contrary, GoI presented It is not surprising, therefore, that rooms’ were set up from districts to strong orders, with relief that was no the government even used the virus states and to the Centre, with chains more than a collection of platitudes. and the arms of the state to ascribe of command similar to what the armed In this top-down and hastily executed ridiculous identities to the virus – of forces follow at the time of war. method, orders were passed which religion, class, caste, and region and impacted many aspects of human life strengthen the prejudices it thrives on. – including health, food, travel, and What might be successful in polariz- The Indian citizen draws her freedom livelihood. ing communities and securing votes from the Indian Constitution, and the ‘Don’t move. Stay where you from the majority is a huge impediment heart of personal freedoms are found are. You will be looked after. Your in facing challenges of development in Article 19(1) of the Constitution. The employers have been ordered to pay and democracy. It will create chaos Epidemic Diseases Act (1897) and you your wages for the lockdown and confusion in trying to bring all seg- the Disaster Management Act (2005), period; your landlords will not charge ments of society together to face any began to be used as instruments in a you room rent; your families needs will challenge, including a pandemic. battle between the state and the peo- be taken care of...’ There were a series ple. By forcibly restricting people from of assurances with nothing to ensure being where they felt most secure, the compliance. Finally, there was the iron The virus calls for scientific under- central government might as well have fist within the velvet glove – ‘Make this standing and a rational approach for suspended Article 19(1) of the Consti- sacrifice for the sake of the nation.’ safety and detection. The lockdown tution, and the freedoms enshrined can go only so far and no further in within. containing the virus. The Indian state The Constitution of India states The prime minister set an example was unpardonable in how it used the in Article 19(1): ‘All citizens shall for the whole government to assume lockdown to once again perpetuate dis- have the right to freedom of speech and paternalistic postures. People were not crimination and increase deprivation. expression; to assemble peaceably and treated as equals who needed to be The panic in individual and collective without arms; to form associations or consistently informed and involved in consciousness weakened the resolve unions; to move freely throughout the any planning exercise for dealing with of most citizens to confront the state territory of India; to reside and settle the health emergency, the imminent and its dictatorial pronouncements. in any part of the territory of India; and economic disasters staring everyone The prime minister’s deliberate and to practice any profession, or to carry in the face, and of the unprecedented sternly announced lockdown went on any occupation, trade or business.’ restrictions imposed on travel and largely unquestioned. The lockdown and its authoritarian movement. The entire Covid-19 expe- The citizen has become a ‘sub- framework have vitiated many of these rience has become a lockdown on both ject’ for a policy of trial and error in constitutional guarantees. mobility and mobilization. There was the chaos that has ensued. The state In practice, the one state that set no effort made to build a grievance 43 defined the spread of the virus as a a clear, logical and rational example of redress system to deal with com- ‘war’, and pitted the laws of nature combating the virus was Kerala. The plaints about governance in Covid-19

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 times. The government, at every level, freedom. The right to ‘move freely walk back home following the lock- has discouraged questioning and in across the territory of India’ is cons- down is not a migration. It is a forced fact, most often threatened those who titutionally mandated, to build the relocation of individuals to go back to broke the rules, even if they were grounds for both liberty and fraternity places of comparative comfort and migrants trying to get onto trains, over the geographical area that is familiarity. It is, in fact, a distress based, buses, private transport, or walking India. Given the fact that the lockdown internal displacement of millions of home. There was no transparency in restricted freedom of movement, it Indian citizens. the process of decision-making, or in was a mass violation of Article 19. Actually, till the migrants by the money available for relief work. Before the pandemic became sheer presence, numbers, and visible The statement of ‘stay at home big news, there was incessant discus- distress walked home, and forced the and stay safe’ was an irony for any- sion about ‘illegal immigrants’ who pre- attention of a reluctant media onto one except the upper-middle class and sumably entered the country in search themselves, they were unseen and the elite. Staying home meant living in of work. Internal migration did not unheard by design. As they walked, it overcrowded houses, slums, work register on the radar of political dis- was clear that a massive human shift premises, in urban areas, or in small course. The freedom of movement was taking place. However, most of us domestic spaces in rural India. Physi- existed because business and the cor- seem to think that now that workers cal distance necessary for remaining porate sector used internal migration are no longer seen on the streets, the free from Covid-19 was also intrinsi- to hire cheap labour and maximize crisis has passed. cally linked to privilege. In fact, by profits. Workers remained largely living at home, the workers were invisible. divorced from their occupation, emp- The lockdown has repeatedly Policymakers, either had no clue loyment, wages and daily livelihood. shown us how little India’s policy- about the condition of 93% of India’s As a result, as soon as the lock- makers and so-called educated classes workforce, or studiously suppressed down was announced, people started knew about the vast numbers of infor- data and information in a bid to paint packing themselves into buses and mal (unorganized) workers – 94% of an ever ‘India Shining’. It is shocking trains to head home. The government India’s workforce. These workers that in contemporary times where banned all travel, and closed down were the backbone of the Indian eco- computerization and big data has road, rail, and air transport. People, nomy, responsible for decades of high become the norm, we are unable to determined to get home at any cost, growth rates. They were also invisible, get numbers of workers classified as started walking. As horrific images unrecognized, disrespected, and were ‘migrant labour’ in states or big cities. appeared on television screens and workers without rights. The panic of Even the numbers who stayed back, stories came through the media, more huge establishments in ever being able or live permanently in the ‘bastis’, are authoritarian orders were passed to to recall workers who had left, resulted not known. stop people where they were, put them in the draconian labour law related There is no clear picture or reli- into camps, police them so no one ordinances being promulgated by able statistics to be obtained about the escapes, and at all costs, enforce the some states like UP, Gujarat, Madhya number of migrants employed by the lockdown. Lockdowns followed one Pradesh, and even Congress ruled establishments in urban areas. Per- into the other, like a version of a bizarre Rajasthan. All that neoliberal India haps, while productivity, profits and computer game – 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. And like wanted was to make sure that these peo- growth rates are tracked, the condition some ever unfolding tragedy, people ple were available to go back to work of workers, and even their names, kept flouting orders, overriding res- and revive growth and the economy. never really mattered. Properly regu- trictions and under the most difficult lating their work and working condi- circumstances kept heading home. tions has never been a priority. To Migrant worker is a phrase that is make matters worse, they are now pejorative, evoking an image of a poor, stigmatized as carriers of the virus, as While the affluent were given time ill-clad, semi-literate, rural person, they reach home in search of social and resources to go home, workers without any sophistication. It is a security and a sense of belonging. were forced to stay where they were stigma not to be countenanced by any During the lockdown, crossing 44 with no support from the state. The affluent professional that frequently state borders was an illegal act. The whole struggle for independence was moves from city to city looking for bet- police were used to brutally push back essentially a demand for territorial ter opportunities and jobs. The mass those who tried to go home on foot, in

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 wooden carts, and on bicycles. The supplies. There were also many sto- anganwadis, for as long as they are perversion of this fundamental right ries of hunger and starvation. Never- shut, would go a long way in assuring at is reminiscent also of the control over theless, it must be mentioned that least foodgrain security to all Indians. movement in apartheid South Africa, notwithstanding the lockdown and and modern-day China, where a per- epidemic, agriculture and food pro- son needs to have the state’s permis- duction was the only work that was If cities were conceived as an alter- sion to cross internal borders. The rigid sustained. It is high time that agricul- native for employment opportunities, control over territory within the nation ture is properly recognized as a vital the conception has proved unimagina- state is but the beginnings of ‘banning’ part of our framework of food secu- tive and fallacious. In many ways the – a tyrannical practice in preventing rity, an avenue for employment, and a quality of life is better in the village, and people from congregating politically degree of basic income security for it is the poor returns in agriculture, as well. This also dilutes India’s fede- crores of people. unemployment, and the search for a ral nature, entrenches regionalism, and If it were not for the 80 millions better income that drives the rural heightens the identity debate. tonnes of foodgrain that were in gov- worker to cities. However, most of Desperation drove workers to ernment godowns at the time of the them are only temporary residents, with pay exorbitant amounts of money to announcement of the lockdown, our deep roots in the villages they came rent private buses or hide in trucks and capacity to respond to the lack of from. When work is brought to a stand- containers to cross the border. It is har- access to food would have been still, they have no reason to stay. When rowing that both the states and central severely impaired. Similarly, if it were they leave in large numbers, a very pre- government not only denied a funda- not for the well worked out systems carious supply chain will get severely mental right of movement, but com- of the National Food Security Act affected, and take a long time to rebuild. pounded this by actually booking (NFSA), 2013, we would not have If we want to come out of this migrant workers under the National been able to deliver foodgrain where it crisis with a more secure basis to the Disaster Management Act for being was needed and starvation would have quality of life in our cities, we must outside their houses and ‘breaking reached unimaginable proportions. stop thinking of these workers in lockdown rules’. merely utilitarian terms, and secure The immediate concerns for all their minimum rights as workers citizens were clearly even bigger con- However, despite repeated pleas and as residents. So-called ‘migrant cerns for these vulnerable segments of that this is the time to universalize labour’, in particular, are major drivers our citizens – access to health, to food, PDS entitlements, the government has of growth and production for Indian and to livelihood security in an eco- inexplicably and determinedly refused industry, and are the backbone for eco- nomic framework that had completely to do so. There has also been a stead- nomic activity in our cities, dominating unravelled during the lockdown. As fast refusal to adjust and increase the the construction, blue-collar, and basic we deal with the virus, we are still number of NFSA beneficiaries accord- service sectors. trying to understand the magnitude ing to the growth in population since From an administrative stand- of what the lockdown has done. The 2011 – the base year used to match per- point, delivery of entitlements and iden- vision contained in our policies as we centages to the number of beneficiar- tity documentation such as the ration face these challenges, will determine ies to be selected. The malnutrition, card and the Aadhaar card is closely our quality of life – also as a generation starvation and hunger that will spread linked to where you are employed and of survivors. Regardless of propa- in the months to come will be as a where you live. For these workers who ganda and political rhetoric, our suc- result of this unwillingness to liberally were in the cities, living in ‘unauthor- cess in establishing equal basic rights enhance the distribution of our food- ized’ settlements and slums, getting for all in the framework of a welfare grain stocks. This is at a time when we proof of an address and residence was state, will determine how this period have had bumper harvests and procure- a nightmare. On returning ‘home’ to will be gauged when we look back on ment, resulting in much more food- their villages, they are seen as no more these pivotal years. grain than buffer stock requirements. than temporary residents. It is an admi- A fair amount of foodgrain is lying nistrative nightmare to immediately exposed and rotting due to stocks over- secure work under MGNREGA, or As soon as the lockdown was flowing out of storage facilities. Uni- ration under the NFSA, and other 45 declared, there was widespread panic versalizing the PDS, giving take home social entitlements, because each of and scrambling for procuring food and rations in place of the mid-day meal at these come with their own procedures

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 and budget constraints. The announce- Of the 395 million intra-state migrants understand and respect the strength ments so far and their budgets might in India, 62 million are estimated to be of these natural forces. We need to sound large but are reduced to an Dalits and 31 million Adivasis. On their become a part of restoring and nurtur- insignificant amount per capita – par- return they face diluted labour laws ing the regenerative capacities of ticularly when, barring MGNREGA, and longer working hours. Oppressed nature if we hope to build and rebuild there has hardly been any new/ already both by class and caste, dis- a world that will live in harmony with enhanced allocation. crimination against migrant labour, the human race as an integral part of Runaway unemployment has daily wage workers, factory and its natural cycle. been one of the most damaging out- informal sector workers, is further comes of the lockdown. The economy entrenched by downgrading their has faced an enforced shutdown, rights and protections. The government imposed the lock- where restarting production is proving The lockdown laid bare how down in the guise of saving lives. For to be a big challenge. Under the cir- poorly labour laws had been imple- migrant workers the lockdown was cumstances, one of the only measures mented all these years. Instead of turned on its head in terms of its pur- of employment and income transfer assuring proper implementation and pose, as physical distance was impos- that has provided relief to millions of enhanced labour rights, governments sible to maintain, and as a frightened people has been the MGNREGA. This like UP, MP, Gujarat and others have mass of people moved together with immediately needs to be expanded by passed ordinances and amendments, the single-minded goal of reaching being converted into an open ended practically removing even the fig leaf home – the numbers of positive cases employment guarantee ‘on demand’, of protection that existed for workers. only grew. not restricted by numbers of people in Similar changes have been made by The immediate challenge has a household who can get work, or the the Centre and many states on envi- been to know how extensive the spread number of days of work they can seek. ronmental protection. It is crucial that of the virus is. Testing is something An urban employment guaran- our approach of a welfare state within India could have done much better – tee is also urgently needed. It would a constitutional democracy ensures even with the limited resources we help give people in urban areas fallback that the private sector and private have. Facilitating testing, and a national employment, as economic activity employers respect the rights of labour, policy for testing all potential patients slowly restarts. The urban employ- and make sure that the social security could have been put into place. How- ment guarantee can be used to provide needs of people, including access to ever this, like many other issues that much needed services in urban areas. employment on at least minimum could have been centrally facilitated, There is actually an immediate wages, is ensured. has now been left to the states, and need for a ‘disaster management emp- their very limited financial capacities. loyment guarantee programme’ to In the days ahead, testing protocols in deal with employment and income The Urban Employment Guarantee rural areas is going to be a challenge, security issues during the pandemic. framework could combine proper as are standard operating procedures This could be a central part of a ‘new regulation of conditions of work and of what to do when there is a need for deal’ India needs, to respond to the living for the vast, unorganized infor- institutional care. pandemic and the insecurities of its mal sector along with fallback employ- For all the faith, resources, and workers, with creativity, energy, synergy ment at minimum wages. It could also partnership the Centre and most state and basic security. The cash inflow to help build a framework of much- governments placed in the ‘efficien- people getting work through employ- needed ‘green work’ in our cities. This cies’ of the private sector in health, ment guarantee programmes would would really help transform the plight Covid-19 has completely exposed their also help generate demand and have and multiple crisis being faced by the selfish profit motive, their unwilling- a multiplier effect on a completely vast majority of Indians living in cities, ness or inability to deliver, and their depressed economy and market. turning the challenges brought about comprehensive lack of accountability. by the virus into an opportunity for Frontline health workers, in both assuring a basic level of dignity of the private and public sector, have The circulatory labour force migrate labour and life to all Indians. taken the brunt of being infected by 46 to cities because of poverty, unemploy- The virus is a reminder that the the virus while performing healthcare ment, caste violence, landlessness, laws of nature remain fundamental, duties. Instead of completely meaning- corporate land grabs and other factors. and our own laws and policies must less exercises in showering petals on

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 them for their courage and commit- made a part of our democratic frame- in protest. In the land of Gandhi, civil ment, we should be responding to their work in dealing with the pandemic. disobedience, public protest, and even demand for strengthening the public hunger strikes are seen as ‘violent’ health infrastructure, through better modes of public disturbance by the support in terms of personal protective The coronavirus pandemic has brought government in power. A series of equipment (PPE) kits, enough staff, to the fore not only a health crisis on a charitable efforts to feed migrants and beds and Covid-19 facilities, oxygen scale not seen since the Spanish Flu those affected by these calamities facilities, ventilators, salaries paid on (1918), but also a crisis of democracy. have come under the scanner for no time, and support from communities in The entrenchment of inequality and other reason than the identity of the terms of following safety protocols and enforced non-participation of civil people so benefited is that of minori- building preventive awareness. society has helped rampant state- ties or the poor. We also need to recognize that sponsored repression. For India, this is There is madness in our panic large numbers of health facilities are of utmost concern for citizens across reaction to the virus, but there is cal- not performing their normal duties all backgrounds, but to even lose the culated method in the lockdown, and on preventable and cureable diseases. right to speak out is especially devas- the appropriation and manipulation of For vast numbers of people these tating for the marginalized. state power. The virus certainly does are even more life threatening than At the core of this democratic not discriminate on grounds of class or Covid-19, and in cases like TB can crisis sits unattended health, econo- identity. The fear that has been stoked also spread rapidly if not contained. mic and social issues magnified to by governments is directed to feed Therefore, Covid-19 needs additional impose controls but unaddressed in prejudice and therefore, to usurp and resources and facilities. An already real terms. The priority of the govern- exercise more authoritarian power. under resourced and overstretched pub- ment has been to seize every opportu- lic health establishment cannot cope nity to centralize power and increase with these new demands effectively. the opacity and arbitrariness in govern- Democracy was, and is still set aside, ance/decision-making. Even the rheto- not just for citizens and workers, but ric of ‘PM Cares’ is exposed by the also for elected representatives, and This is the time for India to take fact that it is a national fund hidden their ‘sacrosanct’ parliamentary over- some strong comprehensive steps to from institutional scrutiny even of the sight. The state exercised impunity to strengthen our public health system. Comptroller and Auditor General give itself room to make mistakes We need to take a leaf out of the other (CAG), and a self-proclaimed immu- through trial and error and repeated rights based legislations like employ- nity from the Right to Information executive orders and amendments, ment and food, and seriously and (RTI). while questioning was outlawed. The quickly bring into place a right to health This centralized command and orders issued by the Government of law. India has enough resources in control has not substantially managed India had to be strictly followed. Fede- the health sector, though the bulk to curb the spread of the pandemic ral structures were sidestepped. It is of them are in private hands. Health is amongst the workers, nor alleviate the only when it became clear that the one sector where we should think immediate suffering caused by the central government actually had no about a form of nationalization, and lockdown. Our constitutional demo- answers and were unwilling or unable a national health system with equal cracy and directive principles of state to provide the resources needed to act access to health for all, and this is the policy lie buried under the goals of eco- that matters were turned over to the time. nomic growth, the politics of identity states to do what they could. This left Scientists across the world are and majoritarianism, and the forces little scope for building a decentralized, working on a vaccine, but to rely on of the market. Decentralization and synergetic approach for dealing with it is like relying on winning a lot- federalism envisaged for participa- any issue of governance including the tery ticket. Instead, we need to build tory self-government and democracy, execution of the total lockdown – per- decentralized health awareness and are the framework against which haps the largest ever administrative Covid-19 care facilities with the help we should measure our democratic orchestration in human history. of local bodies. Kerala has already pro- integrity. The states and districts were told vided a very fine example of the vital A calculating ruling dispensa- to implement orders through the colo- 47 role that panchayats and local commu- tion has used restrictions to Article 19, nial bureaucratic structure of chief nities can play. This approach must be to ensure that no voice can be raised secretaries and district collectors. The

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 complete lack of preparation, con- In a vast country like India, when sultation, practice, and a constantly processes of consultation and decen- changing understanding of the traits of tralization are not respected, we leave a new ‘virus’, has led to a legacy of a ourselves open to a perverted version twin national disaster. There is the con- of self rule. There are reports of vil- stant spread of a disobedient virus, and lages (and even urban colonies) barri- the unprecedented increase in controls cading themselves, and restricting and opacity, by a centralized govern- entry – with self-appointed leaders ance framework. The virus has justi- feeding on the fear of the virus – to fied the authoritarianism of a lockdown, build prejudice, hostility and exclusion. and the national disaster has allowed The Hindutva rhetoric falls on fertile the much-used façade of nationalism ground. There have been multiple to be invoked once again to justify fun- anecdotes of how people won’t buy damental violations of the promises we vegetables and fruits from people with made to ourselves in the Preamble to Muslim names, and villages in various the Constitution. areas of Rajasthan have started dig- ging trenches and cordoning them- selves off to disallow returning migrants The state has used its concentrated from entering. power by restricting mobility and mobilization. These are rights funda- mental to democracy and freedom. This is the exact opposite formula to Transparency is an incidental and what we need. This is the time when intended victim. Enforcing democra- the central government should be tic accountability of the state is almost working to provide leadership that impossible without mobility and the pulls together every citizen, provides right to protest – affecting millions of resources to states and local govern- workers and other vulnerable groups. ments, and helps remove fear and The opposition has been neutralized coercion as a means of governance. and is unable to function and provide a Covid-19 is not the only crisis we are strong alternative platform. facing. If every state, every community, Adding insult to injury, the cen- every sector were to be respected and tral government has appropriated treated with dignity, and every ward in power and is the only one with the the country, at panchayat and urban capacity to find financial resources, ward level, were to be involved in a joint but has shirked its responsibility of pro- campaign of synergy, support and com- viding the poor and vulnerable the passion, we might still convert this most basic necessities, alternative liveli- moment of crisis into one of opportunity. hoods, and transport to go home. Those Unfortunately, the current tem- who managed to reach home often- plate for dealing with the crisis leaves times saw an ill-prepared and under- no room for that. The days ahead seem funded state administration scrambling bleak for meeting the basic needs of to figure out systems that would pro- food security, livelihood security, and vide relief, ration and livelihood to the health security for most citizens. Only influx of people. The central govern- a functioning democracy can bring us ment, for the most part, has ignored the together to face these challenges. As need for consultation with states and at many times in history, even the civil society in making policy decisions. struggle to protect democratic rights 48 In the process, we have failed to secure and our constitution will have to come the much-needed informed participa- from the people, lest we write an obi- tion of all in dealing with this challenge. tuary for workers and democracy.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Building street communities in the time of a pandemic MADHU BHUSHAN

The streets emptied themselves out world’s religions to their knees. And into silos of silence. The giant hopefully humbled the government machines went into anaphylactic enough to actually do what they are shock. The cavernous malls stared elected to do. Govern. And not domi- into space looking haunted. The city nate, divide, control or exploit. Either withdrew into a fearful slumber the citizens or the natural resources of while smaller towns and village con- the country. tinued to spin the daily warp and It was like a pause button had weft of life with little disruption. The been switched on. And humanity, skies burst open with stars and it seemed, had been given one last planets that sparkled with barely chance to revive, restore, rejuvenate restrained glee. The air began to and reboot itself. breathe. Time it seems ceased to But that was for one glorious move forward. And instead raced moment. In the weeks that followed the backwards into a future that van- announcement of lockdown, the gov- ished into uncertainty. ernment at the Centre, powered by tes- IT was the first few days of the tosterone, speedily went back to the lockdown. For a moment it seemed business of consolidating power; prey- like the grand march of global capital ing on the growing fear and paranoia of had actually come to a grinding halt. the people; stigmatizing the poor, com- The gluttonous consumer economy munalizing the virus, criminalizing the cowered and starved in the face of the affected and impacted in dehumanizing world’s most powerful terrorist to date ways; incarcerating all opposition that – an invisible little virus. One that it had reared its head during the anti citi- seemed had even brought all the zenship protests of December 2019 to March 2020. And, of course, politically * This article, drawing upon personal notes profiting from uncertainty and misery. and social media posts, emerges from a sur- real journey as one of the many volunteers On the ground, even while the with Naavu Baharateeyaru and Bangalore with relatively more privileged retreated Migrants, two of the many networks reach- piously into their homes clapping hands 49 ing out to migrant workers and daily wage earners during and after the lockdown in and lighting lamps on the balconies to Bangalore, Karnataka. keep the virus at bay, the poor and the

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 less privileged scoured the streets for zens whether slum dwellers or apart- and unexpected ways. Restoring in jobs and livelihoods paying little atten- ment residents, workers and manage- the process some equilibrium and hope tion to pandemic. ‘Hunger will get us ment, rotary and lions clubs, retired of surviving a pandemic that on the before Corona will’, was the simple bank officers and housewives, school streets exposed social and political philosophy. As a fallout of the thought- teachers and students, fashion design- fault lines as much as it strengthened less and brutal lockdown and in the near ers and lawyers, actors and auto dri- a common humanity forged in the fires total absence of systemic safety nets, vers, private philanthropies and social of human solidarity. One day at a time. the economy went into a tailspin. A workers, sex workers and trans peo- One meal at a time. One quarrel at a myriad livelihoods disappeared leav- ple, people of faith and radical acti- time. One story at a time. ing millions who live and labour in the vists of non-faith. All came together shadow economy scrambling around and flowed into a river of diverse for basic food and survival. volunteers working feverishly on the Rejaul, West Bengal, 15 April 2020: And in the meantime from amidst ground and online to reach out to those ‘Vaiya, hamlok West Bengal ka this fear and crisis appeared an unex- workers on the move paralyzed by rehene bale he. Bangalore me kam pected sight. That of the marching the lockdown. Something about the ki sil sile me ayethe. lekin lockdown migrants who forcefully drew attention migrant moved them. ki bajase pichle 37 din se atak to their presence on the ghostly streets gayahu.ham logo ke pas jitni paise and highways of the metropolises. thi sob khatam ho gaya vai. sir ek It was a humanitarian response to a bakt ka khana nasip hota he vaiya. humanitarian crisis, both equally of please kuch kijiye vaiya hamlok Emerging silently from its under- epic proportions. And quite unlike bari mushibad me hu. agar aplok belly, the city it appeared was purging any response seen in times of other kuch kar sake to please kuch kijiye. itself off those who had laboured to humanitarian disasters, whether natu- ham 2 log he vaiya.’ construct its infrastructure, brick by ral or man-made. Not devoid of con- ‘Brother, we are from West brick, girder by girder. Those who had tradictions and painful paradoxes and Bengal. We came to Bangalore in melded anonymously into a space they yet strangely hopeful even in the midst search of a job. Because of the had made their temporary home. And of extreme despair and dehumaniza- lockdown for the past 37 days we when they appeared on the streets – tion. For this time both the despair and are stuck. Whatever money we had the blank faced young men with their hope revolved around three unlikely it is over. There may be just one more colourful plastic covers containing stories, each in their own ways the meal in our fate. Please do some- their precious identity papers and story of the devalued, the demonized thing we are in great distress. If you their bulging knapsacks, or anxious and the discarded ‘other’ of global capi- can please help. There are two of us.’ families with children slung across their tal on the one hand, and a majoritarian A desperate message that came shoulders pulling all their worldly nationalism on the other. One of course through WhatsApp from Rejaul, a goods packed into a plastic bucket or the story of the migrant and the others, young 18-19 year old migrant who sack, something fundamentally shifted. that of the Muslim and the local. had arrived in Bangalore barely a In public consciousness and con- For far away from the macro couple of days before the lockdown science. Even if not in public policy and world and imagination where the was imposed. our politics. Game of Thrones continued to be When asked if he could at least Locally, in the state, the admi- played, on the ground, on the streets, find his way to a ration shop so that nistration fumbled around for appropri- in shrunken micro worlds, broken and provisions could be organized, he ate ways to respond to the unfurling divided communities began re-weaving says that he is scared. That one of economic, humanitarian and health smaller webs of life, solidarity and the boys staying next door tried crisis and in the process unexpectedly interconnectedness. going out and was beaten back by reached out to civil society to come on And these webs proved to be the police. ‘Humko dar hai; hum board, including trade unions, citizen cussed and resilient even against per- bahut pareshan hai.’ He remembers groups, women’s and human rights sisting xenophobia, Islamophobia, and every single day of the lockdown. To groups with whom in normal peace globalized greed. For it was the ‘other’ the day. In a place he is not even able 50 times, it is at war. Others too came out – the migrant, the Muslim and the to describe. Or give directions to. to help including RWAs (Resident local that came together in unexpected There is no official record of the Welfare Associations), ordinary citi- camaraderie to fight back in strange number of migrant workers in the

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 country. Ironically enough perhaps the truction worker. As envisaged even by ‘While builders, engineers, only statistics emerging are from the government that initially released supervisors are hired directly by the records maintained by state govern- funds for their welfare through the construction company, cheap labour is ments about the number of migrant State Construction Workers Board, procured through a complex web of workers sent back to their home states which most could not access since contractors. This makes it extremely through free Shramik trains organized they were neither construction work- difficult for the state or public to access after an extended period of denial by ers nor registered in the states to which the workers directly, making way for the central government about their they had migrated for work. The work- several labour violations. Safety con- plight. According to the Centre, 60 ers not only came from, but also occu- ditions for workers have been neg- lakh migrants took 4,450 Shramik spe- pied multiple worlds which the official lected, which has resulted in several cials to reach their home states. The discourse could neither comprehend deaths on site the most recent deaths state of Karnataka is estimated to have nor accommodate. reported on March 4th, 2020. The sent back more than four lakh migrant On the one hand were individual workers work precariously on site workers in over 300 trains between the migrant workers like Rejaul who found without safety gear or supervision. months of May and July 2020, after the themselves totally lost in the city. Those None of the workers are registered lifting of the lockdown. Thanks to the who overnight lost their earnings, were with any trade union or the labour pandemic, the migrants on the move in danger of losing the roof over their department. Over the last decade, the could be counted. And seen. For till heads after being evicted by landlords Metro workers that have passed the then they were unseen and unheard – and had totally lost whatever little was city, building the Metro, would easily dwelling in the shadows of cities, towns left of their dignity. Having little or no be over one lakh workers.’ and even villages where everybody money left after sending their earnings knows everybody. As Srikant, a Hakki back to their villages many had no Pikki tribal, a diehard nomad him- access even to food. Some who called Between the closed world of inden- self but now living a more settled life had not eaten a proper meal for three tured labour, like the Metro workers in Bannerghatta, 20 kms outside to four days and were surviving on and the lost individual world of Rejaul, Bangalore city said: ‘It was only dur- water and biscuits. They were afraid lies the diverse and multiple worlds ing the lockdown that we came to of even going out to get fresh food of the migrant. Who not only do cons- know that so many Hindi people are being distributed by the trade unions truction work on flyovers, roads and living amidst us.’ since the police were beating them buildings as masons, carpenters, elec- The lockdown pushed them out back into their rooms. If lucky, they got tricians, painters, and plumbers, but from the shadows and anonymity. some rations from some good Samari- also do the finest of embroidery for Hundreds of migrant workers like tans in the neighbourhood and across chic boutiques and stitch the most Rejaul started desperately reaching the city. stylish kurtas and shirts in the nar- out for help, both through the dysfunc- row bylanes of Shivajinagar; Who do tional official helplines and the over- masterchef style cooking in swanky stretched unofficial helplines that the On the other hand were the anony- food courts in IT parks, and make idlis personal phones of scores of volunteers mous migrant workers – hundreds of on roadside restaurants on Mosque became. Workers being driven out who are locked up like slave labour in Road and sell crunchy golgappas in from their villages and towns by col- invisible labour camps, and caught smaller layouts. Who thread eyebrows lapsing agrarian economies or driven within a toxic contractor nexus that and wax legs in beauty parlours in by the aspiration to make a better life never enabled them to have a voice or downtown Brigade Road, and also in a city that promises opportunities a face. As for instance garment work- drive autos and repair bikes in local and mobility. ers and metro workers. The report neighbourhoods. Who work in the ‘Behind the Pillars of the Metro’ brou- garment industry and as carpenter, ght out by a local media group called electricians and plumbers and sell As more and more migrants began Maraa, at the height of the lockdown, clothes on their cycles on the streets. breaking out of their isolation and perhaps for the first time brought to Who play the guitar, belting out the reaching for help, what became clear public attention the plight of Bangalore gospel or swing to the raunchy beat of was that The Migrant could not be Metro workers who are typical of this a Bhojpuri song. Who speak Bengali, 51 reduced to one homogenous identity – new form of indentured labour that no Marwari, Manipuri, Assamese, Oriya, that of a Hindi, North Indian, male cons- Bonded Labour Act can apply to. Urdu and languages and dialects per-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 haps we don’t even know the names One hopes that when the world of. Who live not only on the outskirts For over the months, as the city emp- awakens from the virus, the lessons of of the city in tin sheds and huts but tied itself of the migrants, it seemed to the pandemic will not be forgotten – also in remote villages and in the heart have lost a palpable part of itself. And either by the migrants or the solidarity of old cities. soon enough the abandoned projects networks built up around the migrant. They are Hindu, Muslim, Chris- and industries began feeling the need And new forms of resistance will tian, Tribal and Dalit. Some are god- for ‘labour’ like never before. They emerge, central to which will not be the fearing; some god cursing. Some are were being wooed back by those same identity of the worker as an atomized Modi bhakts. Some are trenchant exploitative forces that had earlier har- and economized unit of production government critics. They are a remin- assed them with non-payment for and consumption, but an expansive der of the messy multiverse that is months, pushed them to barely survive and inclusive notion of ‘labour’ as India. And most important, they are in abysmal living and working condi- being central to a sustainable economy a reminder that home for most of tions and summarily discarded them and world. India still survives in the village or during the lockdown. Stories now are And Basavanna’s radical phi- small town. The home that they all being heard of how contractors and losophy of Kayakave Kailasa or universally wanted to go back to, employers are enticing the migrants Work is Worship, becomes not just rejecting the world that they realized, back with airfares, higher wages and a simplistic dictum but a transforma- at least for the moment, had sold better working conditions. tive political philosophy that digni- them broken dreams and illusory The tragedy is that even as the fies and values the worker as much as aspirations. loss of labour was being felt, the her work. central government, in the name of kick-starting the economy, introduced Harischandra, UP; 16 April 2020: labour reforms that all but legitimize new Nizamuddin, Orissa, 19 April 2020: ‘Why should we stay on here... what forms of slavery where workers, with He was one of 10 workers from is left for us here? We have our small increased working hours, decreased Orissa holed up in Ashoknagar. field back home and we can survive wages, and little or no right to unionize, Three couples with two children and by eating what we grow. We came lose all access to collective bargaining four bachelors. They all are cooks out to the city to earn money. We came which should be at the heart of any working in small hotels. Their own- here to work. But now we neither healthy economic system. And surpri- ers have abandoned them. And have work nor money. Nor dignity. singly enough this move has been today they are struggling to get food We are not even allowed to go out. protested not only by trade unions but to survive with some semblance of Please do something and just send also corporates like Azim Premji and dignity. It just needed one question us back home. Hamein ghar jaana Ratan Tata. for the floodgates to open and the hai.’ As Azim Premji said: ‘Diluting words to come tumbling out in a tor- The world had not delivered. It these already lax laws will not boost rent. ‘How are you managing to was time to go back home where they economic activity, it will only exacerbate survive?’ ‘Actually, my friends are would at least find some food to sus- the conditions of the low wage earn- saying let us stop asking for food tain their bodies and the familiarity of ers and the poor. Such measures tend and rations. Once what we have kinship to sustain their souls. to pit workers and businesses against gets over it is more dignified if we In a strange and twisted way, each other. This is a false choice. We just die. Yes, people come and take the pandemic that put up spatial barri- need only look at the past few weeks our names and numbers and go. But ers between people gave the migrant of experience, the unjust treatment of we never hear back from them. We a persona and a presence. The worker migrant labour vitiated the social con- must have just become another emerged not just as an anonymous tract between business and labour. number and name to be recorded in cog in the wheel. But a living, breath- This triggered the mass reverse migra- their registers. You too might just ing and complex human being whose tion of labour, undermining businesses. talk and go and we will never see you dreams could not be reduced to the Thus, such measures are not only again.’ deracinated desires of an antiseptic, unjust but also dysfunctional. The ‘Do you know now there is 52 aspirational economy and whose sweat interests of workers and businesses more hate in this world than love? and labour could no longer be ignored are deeply aligned, particularly in times People don’t want to talk to us. They either by the state or the public. of unprecedented economic crisis.’ don’t want to even buy vegetables

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 from us. Why have people lost the ing to protect the poor Muslim women refused to accept and eat food brought capacity to think for themselves? from bigamous husbands through to them by a Muslim relief worker Moorkhon ka majority ban gaya criminalizing the practice of Triple once again bringing home the fact hai. It is like the majority has Talaq, this year at the height of the that workers too cannot be organized become mindless. When will people pandemic started to punish young merely on the basis of their economic learn that the politicians to keep women from the community who had identities, but as products of their cul- their seats are spreading all this dared to cross the lakshman rekha of tural contexts which are getting highly hate? Everything has become about political dissent by incarcerating all communalized. Hindu and Muslim. When will peo- those who had been at the forefront ple learn that we all depend on each of the anti-citizenship struggles. other and help each other out. The It is not a coincidence that all April 5, 2020: Gulab is a volunteer government has no intention of those who came out onto the streets with Swaraj Abhiyan and Naavu listening to and thinking of the poor to lay claims to being an integral part Bharateeyaru (Hum Bharat ke Log), when they are making all their of this country also stayed back on the who had endeared himself with his plans.’ abandoned streets to become part of hard work and cheerful tempera- Nizamuddin was not merely a yet another battle. This time they were ment to all those volunteers and migrant or a worker, but also a philo- at the heart of the humanitarian battle workers he had connected with dur- sopher and a political analyst with lots to reach out to the economic other ing the relief operations. He was on to talk about – especially since he was through well organized networks from the road 24 hours a days, zipping also Muslim. And if over the last within the community, who with relent- across the city on his bike laden with months it was the invisible migrant less generosity offered their skills, rations and other relief material, who became visible in the labour land- commitment and financial resources come rain or sunshine. scape, it was the much demonized as part of the efforts of the state and One night Gulab had gone to Muslim who became a heroic saviour civil society. This was not easy. the edge of the city to deliver food in the humanitarian landscape. And to a desperate group of workers. the reasons are not hard to trace. Some local people from the commu- Not even six months back a great For at the national level, the project nity refusing the food sent back a battle was on in the country and in our of communalizing the virus had been message to the online relief worker own state and city. A battle that many achieved almost at the very beginning they were coordinating with on the said was for the soul of India, since it of the pandemic. A toxic media deli- phone saying, ‘please don’t send was against the changes in the citizen- berately whipped up the Tablighi jihadis to our areas’. When this ship law that marked a shift in the secu- incident, which ensured that in the went around in the group, some lar character of the Constitution. And public imagination Muslims became of us expressed our outrage. ‘So the Muslim community, particularly the the primary carriers of the virus, angry and upset about what hap- women, were at the forefront of this defying every scientific and rational pened with you today Gulab…’ His battle along with every thinking and understanding of the disease. Locally, response was typical: ‘Fine yaar, feeling citizen regardless of the faith Hindutva networks of relief, by being I don’t really care’ … (with a smiley) or ideology they belonged to. agenda and not response driven, began … I’m used to it.’ to unleash a subtle and not so subtle ‘That is your good nature and campaign against Muslim relief work- generosity of spirit Gulab! But The many Shaheen Baghs that flow- ers, building on existing fears and please know that we are all in this ered across the country showed that paranoia about the spread of the virus. fight together to save this country as a people they were refusing to be And despite the fact that the unholy from this kind of bigotry and hate...’ systematically written out of its history, virus had manifested itself in every And Gulab replies with another destroyed in its present and weeded holy space from Puri Jagannath to smiley: ‘Yes I like the way we NB out of its future. And as women they Tirupathi where scores of people have (Naavu Bharateeyaru) work.’ were refusing to be the mascots of tested positive, the toxic truth of the But the story does have an either a patronizing hyper masculinized ‘Tablighi virus’ totally poisoned pub- unexpected twist. A month later, Gulab nationalism or a protective macho fun- lic perceptions. receives a message from another 53 damentalism. Which is why perhaps There were even instances in Hindu group saying that there was a the state which till last year was claim- which workers from states like UP poor pujari family in dire need of

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 rations, and asked if he could help. ‘Don’t make me keep questioning the ing, on the one hand legitimized the Gulab accepts readily, but wary of the other... who is s/he, who is s/he. worst forms of caste and gender dis- reception he could get, he sends a May I always feel s/he is our own, s/ crimination in our society. But on the message to the family saying that he he is our own other, through limiting physical move- is a Muslim and would they be ready Koodalasangama deva, make me feel ment, it forced people to strengthen to accept relief from him. They send a that I am a child of your house.’ new forms of the local. A local that message back saying humanity is one, redesigned itself around an ethic of and how could they even think of say- care and political solidarity; an eco- ing no to somebody willing to help them. April 4, 2020: Life it seems will never nomy of subsistence and sustainability; be the same again since 22 March. an ecology of mutual interdependence Yes, perhaps life as we know it. But and the politics of democratic decen- And this incident followed quick on not perhaps life as it is meant to be. tralization. the heels of another one, in another Relief, respite, reconstruction seem area, where another relief worker impossible in these surreal times... Zarine Taj, her son, and members of and yet... When the more privileged commu- her family were distributing rations. #Chandar, a young nomadic nities came out of the safety and They were stopped and harassed by Hakki Pikki calls to offer the ragi security of their homes to reach out to some local Hindutva workers who they have grown for anybody who their neighbour, who was the migrant said: ‘We don’t want Muslims here... is in greater need than them. ‘Finally construction worker, many this time go and help your own communities’, it seems that we will have to go back did not deploy just their money, tech- and then proceeded to complain to the to the land and be sustained by the nology and expertise in an exercise of police saying that the food and provi- food we will grow to eat. We will benevolent power. They pushed for sions given by Muslims should be have go back to the lakes to draw more structural changes conscious of checked. The local police took a strong our water and drink. Thanks to the their own privilege within the system. view of this and told the volunteers to land we are on we have at least They approached the local adminis- carry on with their work, even offer- grown ragi to last us for the year trations to hold them accountable to ing them protection. Despite this the and we can stay at home and not go extend relief that was the right of the volunteer and other members of her hungry.’ dispossessed working class. They family, including son, were beaten up #Chandrashri from Sadhana also came out on to the streets to pro- by the goons. But spunky Zareen Taj Mahila Sangha, the sex workers test when the Shramik trains were this time filed a formal complaint. Now collective, worried about her women, stopped by the state government at the undeterred, she continues to go around sitting through the night and pain- insistence of the builder lobby which to vulnerable communities ensuring fully typing out on the borrowed wanted captive labour they could use that they have food and rations. And computer a list of the most vulner- and abuse. They also came out to pro- nobody has dared stop her. able – women living on and off the test in small groups within their locali- The conversations on national- streets, positive women needing ties when the young students and ism, identity, secularism, faith, gender ART and unable to go to hospital, women in Delhi who had protested the and sexuality that were evoked during single women single-handedly sup- citizenship bill some months earlier, the anti-CAA protests that so many of porting large families – not know- were being incarcerated under the dra- us were part of, have flowed seamlessly ing when their next meal is going to conian UAPA Act that criminalizes into the humanitarian work and are come from. all forms of dissent. reflective of the comfortably confused #People of conscience from When members of the less privi- common humanity we are all a part of. small neighbourhoods like my leged communities like Chandar and A vasudhaiva kutumbakam that the own Cooke Town, reaching out to Chandrashri came out to extend their current dispensation is systematically migrant workers living and work- solidarity in terms of sharing either dismantling in its self-defeating quest ing around them, finding out about their produce or their own labour with to build a Hindu Rasthra with no clue their contractors, employers and those who they felt were suffering about the culture it has been born into payments and assisting them with more than them, they reminded us that 54 and destroying. buying and delivering provisions. the notion of solidarity is not just the As Basavanna prays with unerr- The pandemic, through imposing luxury of the privileged classes but also ing wisdom to his Lord: the diktat of social or physical distanc- the survival instinct of the not so privi-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 leged. That the notion of subsistence from the gurdwara quietly set up tables and sleep away from the family. My grounding the ‘economy of the poor’ full of food, and without any fuss dis- niece wants to know why aunty, who can be rooted in notions of production tribute it to all there and pack up and used to come home and give me a hug, and consumption based on the more melt away. A relief group of lawyers has no love for me now.’ It was as holistic economy of sustainability and that has tirelessly been packing food though the pandemic had created con- not be reduced to the devalued and and water for the migrants to carry ditions within which power got dif- discarded byproduct of excessive con- with them on the journey, set up a fused and partially tamed to hold itself sumption which grounds the ‘economy public address system and start an accountable in unexpected, if more of the rich’. impromptu entertainment programme humane, ways. Unlikely alliances began to form which breaks the palpable anxiety and across barriers of state and civil soci- tension of the waiting workers. An old ety, across ideological and political man emerges from the crowd and An epilogue: It is strange. On the divides, and across diverse constitu- starts to dance while a young man with streets adding to the continuing narra- ents of civil society ranging from faith an extraordinary Rafi-like voice sings tives of our multiple ‘others’, are other based groups, charity organizations, – both enthrall the crowd. Even the ghosts from the past who also refuse corporate philanthropies, rights based space that could be totally dehuman- to leave – Gandhi goes on about how groups and unions that were forced to izing hums with resilient dignity. the earth has enough for everybody’s work together despite and through need but not everybody’s greed, while the clashes and contradictions of Marx critically deconstructs the unjust class, caste, communities and state And all this while behind the scenes structures of class, and Ambedkar dis- power. A new, or perhaps old ecology unions, lawyers and activists are mantles the cultures of caste and indig- of mutual interdependence tentatively fighting on the virtual corridors of nity. The unexpected visitors are Jane (re)surfaced around ideas of solidar- power within the government and the Jacob, the intrepid urbanist and acti- ity that appeared to defy both feudal courts to obtain progressive orders, vist from US, and Hannah Arendt the notions of charity that consolidates ensuring for the workers and the philosopher who fled Germany and cultural capital and new age corporate urban poor their right to life, dignity, Fascism in 1933. The former argues social responsibility that legitimizes food, mobility. for a community based approach to city economic capital. Senior officers who normally living and building neighbourhoods remain inaccessible in their citadels of in which all local residents get more bureaucratic power, suddenly became intimately invested. Hannah Arendt Like local neighbourhood, the ‘mus- relatively more accessible to the ordi- while warning us about the origins of tering centres’ to which the migrant nary citizen. They were actually availa- a totalitarian politics urges us to find workers gathered in the hundreds and ble at the other end of the phone – if not spaces of freedom, and freedom from thousands while they waited for the personally at least through WhatsApp. tyranny, in active citizenship civic trains to take them home, became And this was not only for pesky acti- engagement and collective delibera- another of the micro sites of this vists but also desperate workers who tion about all matters affecting the expansive notion of solidarity, where wanted to know where their trains political community. And amidst all this the ritual of sharing and caring played were, and if they could get on. one senses the ceaseless movement of out in interesting ways. Even the police who were bru- the Jangama who strives for liberation All kinds of people stream in tal and violent in the beginning months and emancipation through a devotion through the day. A group of women of the lockdown attempt to repair and to his/her livelihood. who have collected money from their rebuild their relationship with the The cacophony continues. At the neighbourhood, respectfully put it into workers with a more protective and macro level it seems the pandemic has covers that they then distribute to empathetic bond. ‘I feel sorry for them,’ taught no lessons. Among other archi- workers going to Assam. Some of the said a woman constable who was on tectures of power being reconstructed, workers come and take charge of piles guard there from morning to night. labour reforms, the proposed amend- of clothes that people have sent to be ‘They too are scared and want to go ments in the Environment Impact distributed. They sort through and back home. Look at my plight. I am Assessment Act, and the relentless share those that are respectfully new sitting here the whole day and when I use of the authoritarian UAPA against 55 while discarding with dignity those old go home, I cannot even go near my activists and students, does not portend ones donated with contempt. People children. I just go home to have a bath well either for labour, the ‘minorities’

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 or a sustainable ecology of mutual interdependence. At this moment when it seems that the future is being swallowed up, one wonders what will prevail in a post pandemic world. Hubris, arrogance of power and entitlement? Or a more expansive if humble narrative of resistance nourished by the smaller stories of resilient human solidarities that keep coming back like cobwebs refusing to be swept away into the dustbins of time. Postscript: Abdul, West Bengal, 28 July 2020: Abdul has been inces- santly calling over the last weeks, ever since he decided to go back to his home and village in Malda, West Bengal. Earlier it was to enquire about the timings of the Shramik trains on behalf of his friends. When my colleague asked him why he was not going, he said he was waiting to be paid his wages to take back home. He was so excited when he finally boarded the train to leave Bangalore that from the moment he got his berth (I am sitting on my seat) till he gets down (Malda is only few minutes away), there is a blow by blow account of the journey. Once he reaches home he calls and makes his children speak and sends photographs of his family and house of tin sheets and tiles that teeter over the river flowing behind the house. ‘The river has flooded our fields and we could not grow any- thing he says.’ He invites us to his vil- lage and promises to feed us with the famous sweet mangoes from Malda. His future plans include going to Thailand where he has been offered a job as a cable layer. In the message he sends this morning he is upbeat: ‘Good morning, this is the house photo, this is my family. I bought it to make it home, see, madam, if I go 56 to Thailand, maybe I will make a good house. God willing.’ The virus willing, I add silently.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Masked horizons: reflections on death and dying DEEPTI SACHDEV

AN eerie apparition seems to be clos- ness in the contemporary moment. ing in on us. More and more instances A preoccupation with death and its of those dying are becoming proximal. meaning is not new. Through time We wait with bated breath, immemorial, it has been an inexhausti- occupying our bodies tenuously, like ble subject of human curiosity, be it in tenants, migrants, forever under the philosophical contemplation, in reli- threat of eviction. The news on televi- gious doctrine, or in scientific enquiry. sion relays numbers and statistics. This It constitutes an individual’s deepest seems to be the language of global pre- dread and deepest enigma; a fact of ference, a language desperately trying which we are all cognitively aware, and to communicate the gravitas of what we, yet live in emotional oblivion. as a modern civilization, are confronted Sudhir Kakar, the eminent psy- with. The screen telescopes the tra- choanalyst ‘from the Indian terroir’1 gedy right into the heart of our room. writes, ‘As far as the unimaginability There are images of hospitals that have of death is concerned, there is little run out of beds, pavements that are lit- difference between Yudhishthira’s tered with sickness, and corpses that north India of 600 bce, the time of the no one wishes to touch. Bodies, bereft Mahabharata, and central Europe of of life, abound in these images. Sick, the early 20th century where Freud confused, confined, displaced, with writes: “It is indeed impossible to ima- nowhere to go. As the virus travels and gine our own death; and whenever we multiplies manifold, the pandemic attempt to do so we can perceive that leaves the body without destination. In this article, I want to open up 1. Anup Dhar and Anurag Mishra, Psycho- 57 analysis from the Indian Terroir: Emerging some reflections on death and dying Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood. that seem to flood human conscious- Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland, 2018.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 we are in fact still present as specta- As a student of psychoanalysis The avoidance takes effort. tors… (Psychoanalysis asserts) that at and psychology, the epistemic lineage There is the inexorable pull in the bottom no one believes in his own of the word ‘psyche’ is part of the intel- other direction that makes it hard to be death, or, to put the same thing in lectual inheritance bequeathed to me. away from the screen. Perhaps a another way, that in the unconscious, This nonetheless rests in close pro- lacanian jouissance that is at work to every one of us is convinced of his ximity with my worldview as that convert the formlessness of dread into own immortality”.’2 of someone born at the close of the contours of anxiety. The language of Jacques Lacan, the French psy- twentieth century, for who the soul is numbers seeks to lend a grammar to choanalyst widely considered as the a metaphysical construction, long the unnameable, which tosses us enfant terrible of psychoanalysis, banished from the assumptions of between terror and indifference. The asserted that death belongs in/to the modern secular science that has psychoanalyst Jeanne Wolff Bernstein realm of faith: ‘You are right to believe shaped my academics and modern suggests that what is overwhelming you will die.’ For him, it is death that medicine that has shaped my notions and unimaginable can initially be cap- makes life bearable, it is death that of life and health. This is a search for tured only in numbers and ‘facts’. It is sustains life. Writing in the ancient reconciliation. only later that it is ‘able to find a hold in period in Classical Greece, Plato called It is here, within this landscape a changed language afterwards, which Philosophy the practice of death, while of opposites, now dotted with the not only registers, informs and excites, the English poet, John Keats, who died covid virus, that a dilemma appears. but also offers a symbolic space in in 1821 at the age of 25 from tubercu- The clearing made by the winds of which the emotional losses can take losis, would advise that the affirmation modern secularism, freeing us from shape and resonate.’3 of life derives from its very fragility and the shackles of a prescriptive religio- transitoriness. sity, stands as a parched land where we struggle to recover the meaning Bernstein notes with perspicacity and morality of death. Where lies the how several of Freud’s theoretical Whatever be one’s persuasion, the horizon of living and dying? Where formulations including his work on arrival of the consciousness of death lies it now? Does it meet at the masks mourning and melancholia, written in one’s life is often decisive in usher- we wear? And does it stop there? under the shadow of the Spanish Flu ing a lasting psychological reorienta- pandemic in 1918, to which he loses tion. My contention in this write-up is to his daughter, differ markedly in mood, approach the imagery of death and the Like many people these days, over tone and content from the letters to fears around it present in the current the past few weeks, I have come to his friends and loved ones where the consciousness, and to ask what they avoid watching the news. The televi- inconsolability of his long enduring in-form us of. What are the images of sion screen has been abuzz with sta- grief is more readily expressed. Freud, death that are surfacing during the tistics from across the globe – numbers, the scientist, attempts to look at loss coronavirus pandemic? In selecting a graphs, diagrams, models – a shrillness dispassionately and distinguish, as a few of these images, neither exhaus- of sound that the mind slowly dulls diagnostician would, between a mourn- tively, nor with exactitude, I wonder into a distant blur. I am reminded of ing that is healthy and one that is ongo- what are the possible intimations they Derrida’s words: Monsters cannot be ing and, thus, pathological – what his bring about in our attitude towards announced. There is what could only theory calls melancholia. However, dying, its inevitability and its finitude? be described as a halting of life in an it is in his personal letters that we For me, this predilection, what I call unreal oscillation between routine encounter Freud as the devastated here an attitude, derives from a messy and bewilderment. I recognize this father and grandfather, struggling to amalgam of having grown up in a spiri- psychological numbness for what I find an adequate articulation of his tual non-religious family, a secular edu- have read it suggests – an emotional pain and feelings of sorrow. cation, a training in psychoanalysis and freezing, a response to the onslaught In 1929, writing to Ludwig social anthropology, and a turn to my of panic, psychologically protective in Binswanger, on the day that would own experience – choices and accidents the immediacy of the here-and-now, – which bestow the insights that I yet ultimately a defence that works by 3. Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, The Spanish Flu, 58 attempt to share and the limits thereof. considerably abridging our conscious- Covid 19 and Sigmund Freud: What Can We Learn from History, 2020. https://www.freud- 2. Sudhir Kakar, Death and Dying. Viking, ness of the full spectrum of what it museum.at/en/news/the-spanish-flu-covid- Penguin Books India, 2014. means to be alive. 19-and-sigmund-freud.htm

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 have been his daughter Sophie’s 36th of being, or of being-in-waiting, but a it is materiality that places the body at birthday, Freud remarks: ‘Although time that is declarative, subject to risk. With physical distancing becom- you know that after such a loss the calculation and precision. This in turn ing the new norm, circles of social pro- acute state of mourning will subside, configures the experience of the dying ximity and withdrawal get redrawn as we also know we shall remain incon- person as one that seems governed by touch becomes the new villain. Disease, solable and never find a substitute. No an anxious body’s ticking countdown. distance and desouling leave us fright- matter what may fill the gap, even if it ‘(It is) not the fact or experience of ened and imprisoned in our own skin. be filled completely, it nevertheless disease, pain, and so on, as much as the remains something else… And actu- experience of a body from which all ally this is how it should be. It’s the only promise, all hope, all potential has been Last month, I woke up one unevent- way of perpetuating that love which withdrawn; it is that which informs the ful morning to a message on my phone we don’t want to relinquish. (...)’4 pain itself, which lends to itself a par- informing me that an old friend of mine Against the extant widespread ticular kind of meaning to the pain.’5 had passed away. I read the message chaos of the pandemic, the last few We are urged to ask, within this con- again, then again. I sat down, read it months have stood witness to vari- struction of terminality, how is one to slowly. I thought of the farewell gift ous other catastrophic events from rediscover the sociality and the moral I had recently received from my cyclones, to earthquakes, locust inva- meaning of death and dying. mentor Anupda and remembered the sions, oil spills, the horrific loss of words ‘dead pigeon’. The message home and lives of workers, and an eco- fell at my feet like a dead pigeon. Or nomic collapse, each heralding a new Much of Farman’s meditation on perhaps I fell. Uneasy, fugue-like, my doom. Survival amidst this cataclysm terminality seems extendable to an feet shuffled to the terrace, hands has meant a normalizing of the apoca- analysis of our own existential predica- mechanically finished their task; for a lyptic, a survival between the disci- ment during the coronavirus pan- while a frenzy of desultory activity plined order of statistics and the unruly demic. Sickness and death is rampant. consumed me. I had to remind myself register of rumour. It comes to us in the distant, normaliz- to sit. My fingers trembled, as I ing mode of statistics carrying an air searched desperately in my inbox for of certitude, coherence, and precision, older emails, pictures, something, any- In his article on ‘Terminality’, Abou but emptied of the symbolic resonance thing that could wade through this cold Farman reflects on the condition of that enables a private knowing and vapour of emotional fog and offer me becoming terminal, through his per- meaning-making. How well can the something to hold, something tangible, sonal experience of caretaking for his finitude of large numbers substitute a body to my thoughts, in my hands, in wife in the last stage of her illness – a the human quest for infinity and eter- my mind, in my memory. In my crazed cancer that has metastatized – the nity that the desouled secular body desperation, I recalled we used to play medical prognosis for which estab- must come to terms with? scrabble on facebook. There must be lishes the body as being beyond the The ‘terminal body’ that Farman a profile there. Nothing. There is no scope of cure. He uses the condition of outlines exists in the realm of the trace. The pain in my chest continued ‘becoming terminal’ as an ontological obscene vulnerability of bare life and to swell. position to describe the secular body bare death: the body without soul. The Why did I not keep in touch? in a secular time and space, without terminal body of Covid-19 transmits The sharpness of the loneliness recourse to an imagination of tran- this condition of ‘withoutness’ to the in the days that followed surprised me. scendence, of future, of possibility for body itself. The body is housed with My closest friend, who also lives down building, both within life, as well as in risk. It is not just a vulnerable body, it the same lane as I, decided to bring over the after-life. is also a dangerous body, a zone of her daughter, one and a half year old, Medical practice reinscribes life, contagion. For those unable to derive who I hadn’t seen in more than two death, and future, to the saturated dis- consolation from the religious and months. We stood on opposite sides of course of numbers, of ‘time left’, a time cultural imaginations of an after-life, the iron gate outside my house. Sepa- which is not the phenomenological time the soul had long been banished from rated by iron bars, like in a prison. The imagination for its immateriality. Now little one wore a mask just like the rest 4. Ernst Freud, Letters of Sigmund Freud of us. She held out her arms, wanting 59 (selected and edited by Ernst Freud 1873- 5. Abou Farman, ‘Terminality’, Social Text 1939). Dover Publications, New York, 1960, 35(2(131)), 2017, pp. 93-118. https://doi.org/ to come to me. I hesitated, the futility p. 386. 10.1215/01642472-3820569 of the gesture piercing through me, yet

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 I held out my arms in turn, continuing waiting room in which we were alone banal, in the sense that it would be to stand where I was. together, in a different mythic time, ‘timely’ – in other words, one that We all remained where we were. held by our love for him, a love that comes from old age, natural causes, This moment is frozen. We are all fro- may or not reach him in the cosmos. and largely without too much pain or zen. Our fingers dance in the air thaw- suffering. When a death happens that ing the moment. The yearning to be is not in accordance with the cultural held hangs heavy. She waits, looks con- Phillipe Aries, the French medieva- ideals of what constitutes a good fused, and then wears an expression list and historian of family and child- death, our external social categories that is almost prosaic. To our relief hood writes about The Ars Moriendi, of membership in the world complicate (which will later become an anguish the Art of Dying that describes the the internal and deeply personal way that is cutting) she doesn’t protest too transition from living to dying which of working through one’s grief.7 much. I find myself compelled to entailed preparing the soul for transi- Silences in the language of the make some silly joke about how I stink, tion through the acknowledgment of social body cannot be articulated in which is why she must not come close the advent of death.6 The Ars Moriendi the body of non-social language. Psy- to me. She looks on, some distraction were a set of Latin texts written in the choanalysis suggests that herein lies sets in and she is confused again. (I’ll 15th century in the context of the a breakdown of symbols that is look back at this scene and marvel at Black Death pandemic, the term ‘art’ profoundly traumatic and painfully my friend’s ordinary courage). She has suggesting a skill or a method through alienating. In the absence of symbo- to be lured away back home with the which specific knowledge could be lic structures that enable and sanc- promise of chocolate waiting for her. applied to practical life situations. tion survival and the imageries of When was the last time I held her? The metaphysical assumption renewal, loss becomes absolute and underlying Ars Moriendi was that the insurmountable. fate of the individual in eternity was I had to be thankful for technology tied to the state of the soul as it left the when I learnt that the prayer meeting body. The deathbed was thus the site None of the culturally valued ideals for my friend was being organized over for repentance for the sins one had of good death are available for the ago- zoom. Family and friends congregated committed, the final opportunity to ask nizing crisis that the covid illness and in this virtual space, waiting to be let for forgiveness, and to resist the temp- death have plummeted us into. As in, as zoom beeped messages about tations that the devil brought along to health experts and professionals bat- the upper limit of users that could be entice the soul. In this last hour, the tle to rescue the patient from compli- admitted in. The rite for offering con- physician expert was to withdraw, as cations arising of a viral infection still dolences resembled a privilege that the dying person, in close consulta- too poorly understood, the compulsions had to be earned. (Now as I write this, tion with the family and the clergy, took to contain its spread have meant plac- I learn of people having to wait for over himself the role of presiding over ing the individual in absolute isolation. several days at cremation grounds and the rituals, prayers and preparations Clinical expertise suggests that older burial places that are overwhelmed for this journey. adults and those who have serious with death. There is no space for any Modern notions of what consti- underlying medical conditions may be of the customary rituals of mourning tutes a good death have carried over at a higher risk for developing covid through which those surviving ordi- some of these old attitudes of how to related complications. Yet, no one narily find some semblance of solace die well. These include a stance of amongst us is immune from the terrors and relief for their pain.) reflectiveness and wisdom as one of imagining the scene of the final Trapped behind our own screens, reviews the life one has lived, an atti- hour of life in this situation. To not be unable to offer or receive a hug, to wipe tude of acceptance and fortitude to able to perform rituals around death off a tear, to break down on a comfort- make the most of now, and dying at feels like a failure of our obligations to ing shoulder, what decent way could home surrounded by loved ones. We the dead, ushering in its own anxieties. there be to find consolation for the grief all live in the hope for this good death. As our meaning-making systems seem that had brought us together. Voices It is a belief that our own death will be to come under erosion, our capacity to spoke, adrift in echoes, as faceless feel diminishes too, unable to bear the 60 words seem to float away into the dis- 6. Phillipe Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present. 7. Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and tance. That is how we entered this Translated by Patricia Ranum. Johns Hopkins the Descent into the Ordinary. University of space for mourning, a dematerialized University Press, Baltimore, 1975. California Press, Berkeley, 2007.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 overwhelming and incomprehensi- that we must imagine our own death ble pain. in order to live more fully. After The loneliness in dying becomes Hiroshima, however, our further task too macabre. is to imagine the end of the world in It is here that our quest for hope order to take steps to maintain human and courage must reappear and radi- existence.’10 calize itself. We are on a precipice The long road waits ahead. where our whole cultural and civili- zational way of living appears to be under collapse. This quest for a hope I look to images that might make pos- and courage that is radical requires us sible the bearing of vulnerability that is to turn with sobriety to the minor a condition of human existence, more dream-visions we turned away from. acutely now than ever before, and There are no quick answers to be found what ethics may be born from the bear- for the sorrow that runs deep. We have ing of this vulnerability. I see women, become accustomed to a manic denial who continue to inhabit the site of loss of loss and a hyper-investment in func- and destruction, perform the labours of tionality – itself a product of a capital- mourning and keep life ongoing, not in ist consciousness that impinges on our heroic grand gestures but in gestures ability to care for others and to nurture of ordinary rebuilding and stitching a sense of social responsibility.8 Rela- back of life together. I think of indig- tional Psychoanalysis suggests how an enous cultures that have survived by acknowledgment of the damage we making peace with the inevitable may have caused to the other and the victors that conquered their land, and guilt that is attached to it are vital in painfully renegotiated their cultural reaching a sense of concern and inter- definitions of honour, betrayal and dependence and imagining possibilities courage, while holding on to and for reparation. recreating their language, its idiosyn- crasies, its meanings, its mysteries and secrets, however mad they were I am reminded of the works of the deemed to be. I remember the word psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton, ‘miracle’. I delve into our relationship who forayed into the study of history to nature, to forests, trees, skies, rivers, and vastly extended our understand- non-human beings in their eternal life ing of its patterns and repetitions, and death cycles, not God, not techno- through his extensive psychological logy, as the sacred and the soulful that work with survivors of wars and call for a return and reengagement. atrocities. Lifton showed that what crystalized as florid pathology in his So many seasons of my life psychiatric patients was in fact in have passed extreme form the unremarkable between habit and promise. pathology of society itself, its psychic Like lost love letters, fragmentation brought about by the those years fears and pressures of modern living.9 of promise will not return. ‘Western Philosophy has long realised This window of spring, 8. Neil Altman, ‘Manic Society: Toward the without announcing, Depressive Position’, Psychoanalytic Dia- house sparrows came back. logues 15(3), 2005, pp. 321-346. 61 9. Robert Jay Lifton, The Broken Connection: 10. Robert Jay Lifton and Mitchell Greg, On Death and the Continuity of Life. Simon & Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Schuster, New York, 1979. Denial. Harper Collins, 1995.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Anxiety and everydayness LATIKA VASHIST

I am writing this piece to reclaim my which keep me afloat with some words, words which I seem to have meaning of life, of being alive. lost. I am also writing this to make The pandemic caged us in a way anxieties – old and new – which the that nothing else has in the recent coronavirus pandemic ambushed me public (and even private) memory. The with a little bearable. I am writing to virus ordered us to ‘Stay at home’, make myself recognizable to myself, ‘Stay where you are, don’t move’ to to keep holding to the fast fading idea ‘save lives’ and we had little choice of any hope. but to comply. As I write this, I know I want to thank Shiv Visvanathan the ‘we’ that I talk about is the ‘we’ of for pushing me to write this. He helped my habitus. Millions who are not a me find words to describe the aridity part of this ‘we’ had little choice but to of life of my mind over the past few defy even the demands posed by the months (or may be years, may be life- cruel, deadly virus (not just the govern- times). And, Amit. He stayed with the ment’s lockdown orders and police ‘me’ that I want to run away from, he brutality). These millions stepped out nurtured our son with an enviable and walked and walked and walked. patience and held us all together, ten- Hunger and the fear of starvation were derly and firmly. These acknowledg- starker, more real, for them. ments are the prologue to what follows. We watched them, glued to our I began the process of learning to write television sets and smart phones; again, after complete collapse of the corporate media – left, right, centre – structures of language and signifiers made us consume these images, made us feel sorry for them, made us good * Ashley Tellis made many useful edits and charitable citizens who contributed made me think about ‘anxiety as hope’ even to X,Y,Z funds. Staying at home, we 62 though I am yet to reach there. I want to thank all were feeling so bad for them. We him profusely. Deepti Sachdev, Jyoti Dogra Sood and Pooja Satyogi who read different cursed the governments and politi- drafts reassured me that I was not alone. cians with the righteous rage that char-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 acterises (at least some part of) the The social has, mostly, ceased to despair and misery writ into the lives of middle class. We even vowed before exist. Or, has it? real human beings. We count, record our Gods (and on facebook) to ‘do and move on. something to help the unfortunate’ To manage anxiety, govern- (as we prayed and pleaded for ‘our’ The Covid-19 pandemic has also ren- ments and institutions have come up safety). The gap between the elites dered visible, and even exacerbated, with detailed advisories. The Ministry and the underprivileged has never we are told, the hidden crises of men- of Health and Family Welfare (India), been more visible. The pandemic has tal health. Across the world, lockdown for instance, advises that ‘at times of only widened it. and coronavirus fear have heightened anxiety, practice breathing slowly for levels of anxiety and stress in people a few minutes. Try and distance the across class, age, gender, and back- thoughts that are making you anxious. Caged in our homes, as we per- ground. The virus struck the living con- Think of something calm and serene, formed the rituals of sanitization dition with such speed that no one and slow down your mind.’4 with utmost sincerity, a new kind of could prepare for the unprecedented The United Nations, drawing on untouchability gained foothold in new realities that have come to con- the American Psychological Associa- our homes. The gated housing socie- stitute our world today. The marking tion and UNICEF, enumerates a few ties and residential complexes passed of vulnerable people – children less tips on its website for its personnel resolutions to ban the entry of domes- than 10, adults over 60, people with who may be feeling anxious during/due tic workers, nannies, car cleaners, A,B,C co-morbid conditions – endan- to the pandemic: keep things in per- drivers. I too internalized this untoucha- gered one’s whole world. spective; get the facts, communicate bility when I ‘handed over’ the lock- Beside the fear of contracting with your children, remember basic down wages of my son’s nanny from the virus and the ensuing strict social well-being practices, maintain work/ the first floor balcony. At that very isolation, financial insecurity induced life balance, stay in regular contact moment, I knew the indignity of this by the lockdown had a huge impact on with friends/family, and use techno- action but I settled myself by shifting the mental health of people. Accord- logy creatively to do this, practice my thoughts to my act of charity. But ing to the International Labour Organi- mindfulness, regulate your news does charity save us from the horror zation, while 1.6 billion workers in the media monitoring, especially TV of confronting the abominable beings informal economy (nearly half of the news (read articles, instead), a good crisis turns us into? global workforce) were in danger of antidote to adversity is kindness and Our anxious selves, throbbing losing their livelihoods1 more than one compassion.5 with anxiety, break all forms of socia- in six young people was out of work lity in our fear of losing that which we due to the pandemic.2 In India alone, cannot live without. The instinct of according to estimates from the Cen- The emptiness of these advisories is self-preservation does not allow us to tre for Monitoring Indian Economy, evident to anyone suffering anxiety. see the world beyond the confines of over 122 million people lost their jobs Even in the face of unbridled virus, our homes. This, even as we regularly in April.3 These statistics cunningly these advisories sustain the mythical consume images of misery, hunger, conceal the unaccountable anxiety, assumption of a subject-in-control, death, invoking streams of sympathy who merely needs to introduce certain in us. While we cooked delicacies 1. ILO, ‘ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the behavioural changes (practice breath- and flaunted our lockdown culinary World of Work. Third edition Updated Esti- ing, getting facts right, maintain work/ mates and Analysis’, 29 April 2020, available talents on social media feeds, thou- at: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/pub- life balance, regulating watching news sands queued up for miles waiting for lic/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/ etc.), distract oneself from that which hours and hours for food relief pack- briefingnote/wcms_743146.pdf induces anxiety (in the present situa- ages. Even such frightful uncovering 2. ILO, ‘ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the tion, divert one’s mind from the pan- of the underbelly of the promises of World of Work. Fourth edition Updated Esti- mates and Analysis’, 27 May 2020, available over-12-crore-indians-lost-their-jobs-during- equality, liberty and fraternity could at: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/pub- the-coronavirus-lockdown-i0n-april/ not destabilize the structural cohesion lic/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/ article31520715.ece of the social or the political. The mid- briefingnote/wcms_745963.pdf 4. Available at: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/ pdf/MindingourmindsduringCorona dle class waves of sympathy rose and 3. ‘An estimated 12.2 crore Indians lost their 63 jobs during the coronavirus lockdown in editedat.pdf fell in the dead waters of collective April: CMIE’, The Hindu, 7 May 2020, avail- 5. Available at: https://www.un.org/en/corona apathy. able at: https://www.thehindu.com/data/data- virus/wellness

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 demic) and get hold of her mind and dying planet, mindless governments time. But the mothers stayed up to pre- life. But anxiety escapes all assump- hurtling toward the precipice: what pare the food for the journey with ten- tions and injunctions of these adviso- world are they growing up in? There der care, and washed their children ries. There is no specific that which is no answer to this guilt, as there is no and packed the luggage; and at dawn makes one anxious; one drifts in anxi- answer to the desire to have a child. the barbed wire was full of children’s ety with nothing to hold on to. washing hung out in the wind to dry. Objectless anxiety creeps into Nor did they forget the diapers, the one’s mind and body to subsume For care-givers and mothers, anxiety toys, the cushions and the hundred everything, everyone. It has no object is often bound up with guilt: the guilt other small things which mothers and thus is not subject to any control, about being anxious. Being anxious remember and which children always reassurance, fact check. Anxiety rules, makes one unrecognizable, a stranger need. Would you not do the same? If controls, invades, pervades and makes to oneself, alienated from the needs you and your child were going to be one slave to its whims, whenever, and demands of others, a selfish nar- killed tomorrow, would you not give wherever. It awakens the phantoms cissistic self totally turned inwards. him to eat today?’ from the past as well as the future. How can this anxious self mother any- I read this passage over and over As Freud said in Inhibitions, one? The seamless flow of warmth, again. Symptoms and Anxiety: anxiety is ‘on love, care, reassurance and hope that the one hand an expectation of a is expected of mothering is foreign to trauma, and on the other a repetition an anxious body that shivers feverishly In A Life’s Work: On Becoming a of it in a mitigated form [...] Its con- with uncertainty about life. Mother, Rachel Cusk, demolishing the nection with expectation belongs to Yet somehow mothers, anxious ideal of motherhood, writes: ‘When she the danger-situation, whereas its inde- or not, strive to survive, as long they is with them she is not herself; when finiteness and lack of object belong can, to feed, wash, caress, rock and she is without them she is not herself; to the traumatic situation of helpless- yes, love their children. I don’t know and so it is as difficult to leave your chil- ness – the situation which is anticipated how I managed not succumbing to dren as it is to stay with them. To dis- in the danger-situation.’ It is as much despair and waddled through child- cover this is to feel that your life has about what happened, as it is about care, but somehow it happened. Our become irretrievably mired in conflict, what will happen, inducing a state of son took his first steps, said him first or caught in some mythic snare in which dizziness where the present collapses words (‘Em,’ he muttered. I quickly you will perpetually, vainly struggle.’ under the debris of the haunted pasts added, ‘Yes, “M” for Mother’) and I had started guiltily agreeing and futures. Intertwined between the began showing with all his might that with her in the last leg of my 14-month foregone and the upcoming, the time- he a distinct entity, not just extensions long child care leave, yearning to get less limbo of anxiety silently inscribes of our desires or expectations. back to reading, writing, getting lost in itself across timelines and lifetimes, We came to live with my parents ideas, enlivening the part of myself travelling trans-generationally, verti- and their presence helped me step which I nurtured all my adult life. I had cally, horizontally. out of the physical and mental inertia not even come to terms with this con- that had come over to possess me. My flict of being a mother and being myself, mother toiled all day; by evening her when the pandemic struck a blow to Every time I look at my infant (now slouched walk would tell us that her my ‘self’. I have to first gather and col- 18 months old) sleep peacefully, back is screaming for rest. Perhaps lect the rusted, broken and lost pieces a heart-wrenching feeling of guilt this is how she evades her anxiety. that used to constitute that ‘myself’. engulfs me. This certainly is not a After ages I reached out to a The first casualty of anxiety world children deserve. How could I, book and I don’t know why it was for me was the life of mind. Words, we, knowingly bring him into this joy- Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz: expression, language, reflection, which less world on the brink of apocalypse? If This is a Man. On page 6, describ- shape, sustain and breathe life into an If only he could go back into my womb ing the scene when Italian Jews were academic-being, sunk into the quick- and stay there, swimming in a peace- ordered deportation to Auschwitz, sand that the mind had turned into: a ful, uterine universe, protected with Levi wrote: ‘All took leave from like quiet surface atop terrifying ideas and 64 my arms curled around him. The chil- in the manner which most suited them. paralysing thoughts. These thoughts dren of this world, where are they Some praying, some deliberately drunk, were no longer the old, silent compan- growing up? The poisonous air and others lustfully intoxicated for the last ions watching, wondering and experi-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 encing the world, but now turned into sures us of a safety that doesn’t exist the fears and anxieties from which indefatigable enemies ready to choke anywhere. A safety against the uncer- there is no respite at bay. me if given any encouragement, any tainty of a future, a safety against the The unending repetition of leeway. The war against thoughts can incorrigible pace of time that we crave nothingness that defines the everyday never be won. There is no running for. The migrants, who walked with their holds power, like nothing else, to push away either; they will always chase parents, siblings, lovers, partners, chil- aside the nudging of mental life that you, find you. I do not really know when dren, and defied the lockdown, perhaps awakens one to terrors of human I succumbed to them, but I guess it were freer of the psychic illusions of existence. All the whys, hows, whens was when I developed the fear of safety and security. Perhaps their anxi- are buried silently, at least temporar- articulating them. And then, it almost ety transformed into a conviction. How ily, under piles of unwashed dishes, turned into a superstition that put to else would one describe their on-foot dirty floors, soiled clothes, pending bills, naught the ‘talking cure’. journeys across hundreds of kilometres? broken water supply pump, leaking So I let my dark thoughts be. basins demanding immediate attention. Unarticulated, unspoken. I never give The everyday, focused as it is on the them the shape of comprehensible, I compulsively reach out for my son’s present, the trivialities of the present, communicable words and sentences; forehead, to detect any changes in his dilutes the painful lingering of the past for the fear this would empower them body temperature. It has turned into an and allows for the procrastination of all and they would turn real. They are embarrassing obsession of sorts. But actions and decisions about tomorrow, better outside the realm of language, like all obsessions – like the obsession from the mundane to the profound. even as they slither through my body, of watching the world news, to be on top The everydayness destroys one, exploding into gruelling pain in my of what is happening where, what are even as it saves one, for the time back and ankles when I lie down at the numbers – it serves as the illusion of being. night. It is better to be weighed down everything being in control, for the time by the pain than the burden of obsti- being. It keeps one functional. Func- nate thoughts about what will be. It tional enough to return to the everyday. As we return to the ‘normal’, the was a painful vicious circle where the Everydayness sucks one into an ‘new normal’ – where numbers no fear of articulating led to a crisis of abyss, with never-ending chores – longer make a difference, it could be articulation. I could not speak out, or from morning till night, everyday, day- 2000 or 20000 cases a day – adapting reach out. Speech itself became taboo. after-day, cooking, cleaning, mopping, to the dangers of the virus in our lives, baby food, washing. As unfinished we go back to our old ways of being essays, breached deadlines piled up, and becoming. This pandemic, even Even as the failure of mothering – I returned to Simone de Beauvoir’s as it made us confront the precarious- being an anxious mother who most description of the drudgery of the ness of our existence, could not make likely will pass all this anxiety to her housework: ‘Few tasks are more like us really anxious. child – became pronounced every day, the torture of Sisyphus than house- Nothing has really changed for I regressed to my childhood and all the work, with its endless repetition: the the human condition. Thousands of fears came raging back to reside with clean becomes soiled, the soiled is lives destroyed by a flu-like virus, in a ‘me’ that ‘I’ could no longer recog- made clean, over and over, day after this day and age, have not led to a col- nize. The same old feeling – that I had day. The housewife wears herself out lective anxiety that could put a break felt everyday, all the time, till I learnt marking time: she makes nothing, sim- on the callous pursuits of the human to distract myself with ‘attempting to ply perpetuates the present… Eating, race. Even as we move towards a sem- do well in life’ – crept into me and pos- sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer blance of normalcy with the numbness sessed my body. As a child, I wanted rise up towards heaven, they lie spread of the new normal, instruments and to lock my parents, my brother, every- out ahead, gray and identical. The bat- technologies of death and destruction one I loved in a room. Huddle them tle against dust and dirt is never won.’ abound. Even as the virus mocks all together in this safe place, lock it up and Lives get on and get over, but notions of safe-borders, human lives guard the door outside. No one would these battles of the everyday are never continue to be lost in mindless pursuits be allowed to enter. No one could go won. Maybe they are not meant to be that involve the destruction of the out. So much like the lockdown. won because on the other side of the planet, the lives of even those we love. 65 The ‘lockdown’ after all is noth- everyday stands profound anxiety in all The world is so different today. ing but a delusional space that reas- its might. The everyday helps us hold How come it is just the same?

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Covering the remains of the day during lockdown SABA NAQVI

POLITICS, citizenship and liveli- The greatest reverse migration hoods went into a deep freeze when in history had begun and I was fortu- the prime minister gave the diktat at nate to be accredited as a journalist, 8 p.m. on March 24 announcing a listed as an essential services, to be national lockdown with four hours both at home with a view from the bal- notice. We have all, ever since, been cony, and step out for long excursions exiled in our homes, imagining the to witness this amazing regression. In future could be something like the Delhi, overnight, the air had become past, but increasingly uncertain about clean, and peacocks were blundering what will unfold. As middle class onto roads as if discovering a brand Indians shut themselves at home, and new world while cars and other vehi- many in North India banged pots and cles went off. There were other living pans from their balconies in keeping beings that stepped out in their hun- with the prime ministerial advisory, dreds, thousands, millions on foot. But there were those balcony-less Indians they were not there to breathe in the who started a long march to their pas- fresh air. They were there to stay alive tures, fields and hutments in the vill- and their survival instinct told them to ages. We called them the ‘migrants’ – walk home or perish. 66 these people who travelled to cities There were silent groups of and towns to supplement shrinking walkers who in a trice seem to have incomes from agriculture and labour. taken the extraordinary decision to

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 journey home without a reservation, workers that schemes like MGNREGA hold out his hands for food. He was both literally and metaphorically. The (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural not destitute but proud of the fact that great Indian railways, the lifeline of the Employment Guarantee Act 2005) can he had come to Delhi 15 years back country, had been shut down over- be a lifeline. and gone from youth to middle age night. Buses worked as and where There were also the really des- with his income reaching Rs 18,000 state governments allowed them to. titute, who had lost the ability to hold working in a large garment factory in I made a mental note of what I would mind and body together, and did not Gurugram. The family had land in say about the great dignity in the stoic have anything left too migrate to. They the village so he expected to survive march of India’s workers as they left would just move to shelter homes. during the harvest and after. I would India’s national capital. When the city was buzzing they would meet him on March 26 as he began get some wages here and there, per- his trek out of Delhi and keep in touch haps even beg. But the beggars were with him over the months to find out As soon as I stepped out of my home put out of pocket too in the great collec- how his life had progressed. in the Mehrauli neighbourhood of tive poverty that would hit the already Ramjeet was headed to his vil- south Delhi, near the Qutub Minar, I poor that meant more hunger than lage in Siddharthnagar district, Uttar saw small groups of people, backpack before, more desperation than before. Pradesh, not far from the border with over shoulder and water bottle in hand, These were the destitutes whom we Nepal. He had walked from the indus- trudging along. The men I met were shamed but whose existence in such trial hub of Gurugram in Haryana and mostly skilled workers who were leav- large numbers that became visible as at the southern extremities of Delhi to ing shut garment factories, carpenters, the city disemboweled itself, should the border on the east of the city with welders, and electricians. They were always have shamed us. Uttar Pradesh, where the Anand Vihar healthy and had decided to walk their Bus terminal is located. Google maps way out of joblessness and hunger this walk within Delhi at nearly 50 kilo- in the city that would reduce them to Fights broke out in shelter homes metres, but that was just the beginning. being nobodies compelled to eating along the Yamuna with one burnt His village was 850 kilometres away, in food kitchens. These were proud down. It stood there blackened, a sad and his plan like that of thousands of workers, men of some standing in testimony to human desperation. Half workers was to walk, hitch a ride, pray their villages, who supported large starved people would be found lying for a bus and somehow or the other families there. Many were returning to along the riverbank and would be reach their villages in Uttar Pradesh small plots of lands in villages where swiftly moved to another shelter to and Bihar. An extraordinary exodus the wheat harvest would begin in avoid any embarrassment of such a was unfolding before our eyes. April (wheat is sown in November- sight in the nation’s capital. At that December and harvested in April). time fear of the virus was at its peak There were those without any among those tasked with manning Ramjeet was a drop in the ‘river to lands too, the stone quarry workers food kitchens and shelter homes that the ocean’ journey that streams of who had walked from Gurugram, a were being set up. But the really hun- people walking from all parts of Delhi centre of construction and fancy apart- gry could not afford the Corona terrors, were making. They were all headed ment complexes, the route to which as there were more immediate things East and the river became broader and takes one past furniture stores, interior they could die from. flowed with a regular ripple as it con- designer stores, shop windows that Still, after a few terrible weeks, verged with a strong gush at the Anand evoke shaded lighting and lush interi- schools and government structures in Vihar bus terminal on the Delhi border ors, and many shops selling tiles and the city did gear up to distribute food. with Uttar Pradesh. Damn the masks flooring. Many quarries had just shut How the system worked was that one people were wearing, they were all without any notice and wages were individual would go with a few ration submerged in their collective hope of due but the manager had disconnected or Aadhaar cards and collect food for getting a seat on the limited buses his phone. From a difficult present, a few individuals. The quality of the available. Their hearts bursting with these workers were walking back to food was uneven, in some places pas- the desire to go home, they became a hopeless past in the village where sible, in others just awful gruel. specks in a tidal wave of humanity at they were landless and therefore hired Ramjeet Yadav was one of those a bus depot. Body pushed body to get 67 for less wages, if any work was avail- who expected to survive the long onto a bus. The prime minister had able. It is for people such as these march and never thought he would spoken of social distancing and told

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 people to barricade themselves in their workers as potential carriers of the homes, but to do so the workers of Corona virus. The next morning he Eighty percent of India’s 470 million India first needed to reach their homes. walked again, took a bus to one point, workers are in what is called the It’s extraordinary that the government another to another point, till he finally unorganized sector and are not pro- and authorities seemed surprised as if reached his village on the fourth day tected by labour laws. They migrate to they had learnt the art of winning elec- after starting his journey. No welcome big cities such as Delhi (population tions without any real understanding reception was awaiting him. He was 20 million) from the rural areas, and about how Indians live and survive. put in a makeshift rural quarantine in send their wages to families in the vil- Here Ramjeet’s account was the village and would step out after 14 lages. They live four or more to a room a safe journey compared to many o days have passed. in rented spaces in a city where no thers. On day one when I met him he Ramjeet accepted charity along income means no rent and eventually was too proud to accept charity or help. the way and says he is worried about no food. The abrupt shutdown without He smiled and said he was looking for- how so many people will manage in the guarantees was what sent workers onto ward to seeing the family in the village. village without his city income. But he the roads. There were some women Later he would tell me that the hunger told me during a phone conversation: and children too who had been pulled began gnawing at him and there were we have some land, what will happen out of schools for what they were told good people who began distribut- to those without land? His story actu- would be a brief visit to the village, ing food to the stranded workers. He ally turned out relatively well as he much like a holiday. waited till nightfall at the terminal as seems to have reacquired his status in At the start of the journey the thousand of workers continued to the village, and four months on when children were dressed in shiny new stream in. He boarded one bus but was I spoke to him on 21 July, he was clothes, their hair slickly oiled and made to get off by the police that said sitting in a village chaupal (square), braided with shiny clips. These were it was too crowded to move. He was enjoying tea and a smoke with fellow children protected by their parents. then jostled by the police and told to villagers. Later, as this exodus went on and on, walk to another bus terminal inside we would hear tales of child workers the city. The crowds there were even that had dropped dead from exhaus- larger. Eventually, he squeezed into a Yet he wanted to return to his job as tion, we would see lives of entire fami- bus where humans were packed next beyond providing for food, farming lies crushed by trains running on tracks to each other, breath to breath. created no income. He asked for they thought were not in use, and we advice on how to return and get a job would learn of children crushed under again. He had worked in a big export trucks and buses. This bus moved a few hundred kilo- company named Richa Global that I had covered the migration at a metres inside Uttar Pradesh. Then it had a garment-manufacturing factory good time; things would get worse. stopped and passengers were told to located in Gurugram. They still owed That day in late March when I stood disembark. He started to walk again him a part of his wages but was told on the border of Delhi talking to some till he was stopped by the state police he would get that Rs 8000 owed to him tailors headed to Bahraich in Uttar that helped some workers get on to a when he sent in a resignation letter; Pradesh, a writer friend turned to me truck carrying gas cylinders that was though they promised they would and asked whether we should also headed in the general direction of his reemploy him, he had no legal guaran- walk to Bahraich. When so many peo- village. That was a favour the police tees of anything. ple were making what seemed impos- did: packing humans along with gas Meanwhile, the only welfare sible, indeed incredible journeys, for a cylinders. Ramjeet was grateful, he work he had seen in his village was moment the thought did cross my mind said. ration distribution by the RSS. He that we should also just keep walking. But by then the enthusiasm at was also trying to understand how We were standing in the middle of the start of the journey, the thought of to be eligible for benefits from the one of the largest human migrations – home was slowly evaporating as he state. But whatever he had suffered, without famine or war. moved deeper into the state. When Ramjeet remained a fan of India’s For the first time, television Ramjeet reached the state capital, prime minister, who he believed had news was discussing poverty, migra- 68 Lucknow, he spent the night on the not been properly informed about tion, labour. At a time when people road as people he knew were by then what would happen to people like him were stuck in their homes watching TV looking suspiciously at the returning when he announced the lockdown. – viewership went up though advertis-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 ing revenues crashed – some uncom- in order to urge believers to follow a of the more toxic and communal con- fortable questions began to be asked. ‘pure’ form of the faith is what they do. tent produced by networks and shared Networks interspersed these discus- among millions through social media. sions on migration with varying and This is so because in the first term of terrifying data about the Corona virus, A gathering of thousands at the Narendra Modi, India became the most of which was proved inaccurate Tablighi Jamaat’s Delhi headquarters country with the cheapest data tariff as time went by. in March was found to be the biggest in the world. Jio, launched by Reliance The stories the migrants told had ‘super-spreader’ of Corona virus in Industries in 2017, offered free data a common theme. They were emp- India. The religious order had gathered and calls at the time of its launch and loyed in a small unit that had shut people with a history of foreign travel sent the industry into a tailspin. It also down. Some got their wage, others did in their headquarters in Delhi. Even- turned the local mobile phone market not, and some were given just enough tually, it would turn out that their con- into the world’s largest consumer of money to reach their villages. The con- gregations also spread the disease in wireless data. tractors and owners told them to go Malaysia and Pakistan. In the age of The plunge in prices led to a surge home. Four to five had rented a room Corona virus, faith groups and religious in data traffic to 1.5 billion gigabytes a near their place of work, but they could congregations did indeed spread the month, according to Amitabh Kant, not have paid rent and bought food infection, be they Christian or Muslim. chief executive officer of the NITI without earning. (Indeed the BJP is not a faith group but Aayog. In December 2017, Kant posted a political party; yet several meetings on his Twitter account: Mobile data at its Patna office had led to its state consumption is higher than USA and People asked on television what the unit chief in Bihar and 75 party mem- China put together. Today it is par for government was thinking when it bers and workers in the office testing the course to see farmers, labour, dri- announced a lockdown with four hours positive for the virus by mid-July.) vers and domestic help watch content notice and then cut off the lifeline of But the consequences of the on their mobile phone when they get a the Indian railways and interstate Tablighi outbreak were dreadful for moment away from their hard day’s transport. Did they fail to understand the world’s third largest Muslim work. the nature of the informal sector that population, mostly employed in the That is why I have always believed employs the majority of Indian work- unorganized sector and reeling from that the 2019 general election was not ers and did they not know that people the lockdown as all workers were. At a post Pulwana-Balakot or post-Mandal would be out of job and home in a a time when people were scared of the election but a post-Jio election. Only matter of hours? Labour experts were unknown, they settled for hating the the BJP and Sangh Parivar understood actually given time and space to talk. known enemy even more than before. this and created and forwarded con- But then the familiar trope Some hospitals in North India began tent that reinforced its worldview and appeared: Muslims as the enemy, who refusing admission to Muslims – one prejudices. During the Corona virus in this instance were apparently the refused to deliver the child of Muslim lockdown therefore, as a grand diver- ‘super spreaders’ of Corona virus. Who parents; another hospital in Gujarat sion from economic failures and the knows it may be a form of #Corona segregated Muslims into a separate consequences of the lockdown, com- Jihad, went the narrative on social ward and after an outcry, denied hav- munal content was promoted and con- media. The story of the Tablighi ing done so. A legislator of the BJP in tinued to grow at a faster rate than at Jamaat arrived to divert from state Madhya Pradesh was found advo- which the Indian economy and emp- incompetence. Founded in 1927 in cating a boycott of Muslim business; loyment figures were plummeting. Mewat, India, the Tablighi Jamaat is one vegetable vendors in some BJP/ angh of the most powerful religious reform Parivar ‘hotspots’ were asked to movements of the 20th century Sunni reveal their identity. And TV anchors The disenfranchisement of India’s Islam with millions of followers across and networks set about stoking all the Muslims is an ongoing project that the world. Puritanical and conserva- subliminal prejudices and speaking fundamentally involves demonizing tive, members of the order travel in a language that almost seemed to the community and rendering their across the world, and upon arrival in advocate genocide. vote redundant. As we have seen, with countries, travel some more to spread Television news has a far greater free data and growing mobile connec- 69 the word that they think is the last word impact than what is watched at the time tivity this process most frequently now on Islam. Travelling and congregating of broadcast. Capsules are now made simply involves creating content and

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 forwarding it. But the process also ral days to the part of Delhi where citi- class residents of Jafrabad rose to the involves making vicious speeches to zens had swiftly moved from riots to occasion, distributing food packets demonstrate that it is now possible to lockdown. Houses burnt, bodies still although business had been destroyed. threaten, vilify and abuse an entire in drains, people were suddenly Yet, in poorer parts of North community and get away with it. stranded without work or income in East Delhi such as Mustafabad, where Just preceding the lockdown and these nightmare localities that looked the number of middle class workers the gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat in like war zones. It was still, ghostly and became fewer and where the out of Delhi, there were vicious communal depressing. Most media had also work workers lived, one could see riots in northeast Delhi from 23 to 26 moved away from covering these human dignity getting degraded step February. These riots themselves ‘super-spreaders’. by step. If one appeared on a silent road, were the outcome of rage against pro- burkha clad women would emerge, tests that were taking place at several walk tentatively up to the visitor, and sites in the national capital, where I would learn that North East Delhi, ask for help. The number of women women and students were congregat- one of India’s most densely populated in search of sustenance was grow- ing at sit-ins against the Citizenship districts, had a mixed population but ing; many were widows, while others Amendment Act (CAA) that gave parts were a microcosm of the liveli- emerged with their faces covered to refugee status to people of all faiths hood patterns of the minority commu- collect food as some men found it except Islam. It was argued that the nity. According to data, most Muslim humiliating to stand in food lines. CAA went against the spirit of the workers are self-employed in the Indian Constitution. As the CAA was unorganized sector, as they do not get a pet project of Home Minister Amit jobs in the state or private sector. They It was a surreal and moving experi- Shah, and part of the ruling party’s are carpenters, electricians, rickshaw ence to see these women come up in ideological arsenal, there was no back- pullers, bakers, welders, or have small search of help. These were the occa- ing down on it. manufacturing units in their homes sions when the chroniclers of the time, where they employ a few workers. the journalists, do help – one should ide- Jafrabad-Seelampur, one of the sites ally take numbers and bank details and The protests were organic, creative of the violence, for instance, has one organize help, if not directly then and captured the imagination beyond of the country’s largest wholesale mar- through a state authority or NGO. But Delhi where similar protests were ket of ready-made clothes, made by to stand and start distributing cash recreated. The lockdown also became workers in small units or at times dis- would invite a stampede at any disas- the cover for arrests of several orga- tributed among women who could also ter site. nizers, participants and supporters of earn from their homes. Much of the I kept returning to Shiv Vihar, a the protests, who are currently being material used to come from China: neighbourhood that appeared to have accused of planning the riots, and being cheap nylon polyester was imported been hit by many cluster bombs. I arrested under sections of the law that from China, the manufacturing done tracked the movements of many peo- makes bail difficult. The Muslim com- in India, and then distributed from ple I had met the day after the violence munity (overwhelmingly the victims several market hubs. in February 2020. Salman Ansari, a of the riots) is therefore being accused There was, therefore, economic welder, had his home and workshop of being the perpetrators of their own disaster unfolding in these parts soon burned down. He had my card and murder and destruction. after the terrible trauma of the riots. stayed in touch; at times he was almost Simultaneously, that one moment Burnt houses, bombed-out cars, and incoherent and did not know the add- in recent contemporary history when incinerated mosques stood among the ress to which he would move. I met him Indian Muslim women and students clogged, filthy drains into which many in one of his rented houses where he stood up to reclaim their place in the human bodies were thrown. No one lived with his infant daughters and wife, Republic is being presented as some- came to clean the drains during the and asked him to come with me to his thing sinister and undesirable. The lockdown, no repairs were possible, old home and workshop in Shiv Vihar lockdown has certainly been the occa- and local MLAs vanished. It was just to see if we could retrieve anything, or sion to suffocate the idea of multiple fortuitous for the devastated residents take pictures to get some compensation. 70 and plural citizenship. that Ramzan fell during this time, when However, he said he would never return. Personally, for me the most dif- Muslims do consider it their religious Then one day after the lockdown ficult reporting was to return for seve- duty to give and share. The middle lifted, Salman called again: he was get-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 ting calls for work as a welder and had recovered enough self-respect to men- tion that he had even worked on sites such as the Delhi Metro; some labour he employed was also desperate for work. Could we help him buy the tools for the sum of Rs 20,000? I am ashamed to ask he said, I used to help others and now I have to keep asking. Salman did get his tools and could return to work. If such truths can ever have a happy ending, this was one. The world that has emerged post-Corona is meaner and smaller than the one before. There are borders between nations, within nations, bet- ween towns and villages, between neighbourhoods, and between apart- ment complexes and the street outside. The gulf between the rich and poor has become wider, as the poor have become poorer while the rich have survived but not prospered. The gulf between communities has increased and hatred for the Muslim community has escalated. The silver lining is that in the midst of so much hate, there has also been a lot of love that has come our way. The most unexpected people have stepped out to help. The worst and the best of human nature have been on display. I was privileged as a journalist to have witnessed the great tragedies unfolding in the city of Delhi and to record them. The debris that remains with me is in the form of photographs I have taken of three of the 14 mosques that were blasted in India’s national capital. I am not reli- gious, but those incinerated mosques are a reminder that we live in a dark, and indeed sinister, age. Every now and then there is a call from Ramjeet, now exiled in the village, seeking to return to his exile in the city. Salman has mustered up the nerve to reopen his workshop in Shiv Vihar, though he no longer lives there. 71 We have all become exiles in our homes, some more than others.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 The pandemic and political order in Bangladesh ARUN KUMAR GOSWAMI

HOW has Bangladesh so far managed been state capacity, social trust, and the transmission of Covid-19 and leadership. Countries with all three – faced the challenges posed by the pan- a competent state apparatus, a govern- demic? Governments worldwide have ment that citizens trust and listen to, and followed a different approach to the effective leaders – have performed challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic impressively, limiting the damage based on scientific findings, but the they have suffered. Countries with decisions taken have finally been poli- dysfunctional states, polarized socie- tical, not ‘science’ based. The entire ties, or poor leadership have done world, including Bangladesh, has badly, leaving their citizens and eco- fallen into a precarious state due to the nomies exposed and vulnerable.’ The sudden and strong surge of the corona- three elements, a stable state, social virus. It was so sudden that no coun- trust, and citizens’ response to decision try had any time to counter it. of the leadership that have been men- Nevertheless, before assessing tioned by Fukuyama constitute the the nature, and possible wear and tear main elements of political order. in economy, politics, and society, the A stable state survives through demons of Covid-19 have messed crises. Social trust is the key determi- up the economy of every country in nant of social and economic develop- the world. That said, the successful ment as well as of human well-being. management of any crisis by a society Without trust in others’ actions, people depends on the effectiveness of its may have to consider too many con- political order. Similarly, the success- tingencies and uncertainties to take ful management of Covid-19 also action, destroying the foundation of relies on the line of effective action community and society. On the other taken by the political order of a coun- hand, turning the decisions of govern- try. The present paper attempts to ment’s leadership into effective action assess the effectiveness of Bangla- depends on winning the support of desh political order in tackling the millions of people. challenges posed by the pandemic. The inability of the political order In his article, ‘The Pandemic and can lead to ‘disorder and instability’ in Political Order: It Takes a State’, pub- society. The American political scien- lished in the July/August 2020 issue tist, Samuel P. Huntington, in his of Foreign Affairs, American politi- 1968 classical work, Political Order cal scientist Francis Fukuyama has in Changing Societies, introduced identified the factors in the successful the concept of ‘political order’ in the management of Covid-19 pandemic. domain of Political Science. The He says, ‘the factors responsible for analytical insight of this book ‘is aston- successful pandemic responses have ishing, and cemented Samuel Hunting- ton’s reputation as one of the foremost 72 * Professor Arun Kumar Goswami is the political scientists of his generation.’ author of Institutionalization of Democracy in Bangladesh. Jagannath University, Dhaka, Before his death in 2008, and for its 2019. relevance even in the age of ‘third

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 wave democratization’, Huntington’s The government of Bangladesh ties concerned to hold Eid Jamaat book was republished in 2006 with a reacted by imposing a general holiday (congregation) of the Eid-ul-Fitr at foreword by Francis Fukuyama. Later to contain the Coronavirus pandemic nearby mosques instead of Eidgahs on, following Huntington’s idea, from 26 March 2020. It was extended (open space for Eid prayers) aiming to Francis Fukuyama (2011) identified in phases and ended on 30 May. Dur- contain the spread of coronavirus. The the main elements of political order in ing the holiday’s hospitals, kitchen ministry also urged the devotees not his The Origins of Political Order: markets, drug stores and other essen- to hug each other after Eid-ul-Fitr From Prehuman Times to the French tial services were left open. The gov- prayers. Such instructions were also Revolution. ernment repeatedly requested people applied during this year’s Eid-Ul-Azha. However, in order to address the to stay home in its efforts to contain initial question according to the ele- the spread of the virus. But soon after ments of political order, we consider the 24 March announcement, people The Muslims of Bangladesh cele- the efforts of the Bangladesh govern- began leaving the capital in droves for brated Eid-ul-Azha on 1 August, as the ment, Bangladesh Jatiya Sangsad their village homes. Several media country grappled with the Covid-19 (National Parliament), ruling and oppo- outlets reported that hundreds of city outbreak with floods inflicting untold sition parties, society and leadership dwellers boarded buses and trains to suffering on hundreds of thousands of of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh head back home, fuelling fears of people. The government took several Hasina, for the management of the further spread of the virus throughout measures to ensure that the celebra- Covid-19 pandemic. the country. tion did not worsen the outbreak. The government barred congregational prayers of Eid-ul-Azha in traditionally From the information provided by After the first case was diagnosed designated open grounds to keep every- national and international news media, in early March, the government of one safe. The authorities announced we find that many countries responded Bangladesh closed educational insti- the decision after an inter-ministerial differently to the pandemic. These tutions and nudged all non-essential meeting that precluding the use of approaches were informed by scien- businesses to go online. The govern- Eidgah – open areas where prayers tific findings, but they resulted from ment either scaled down or postponed were usually held en masse – urging political decisions, not science. Never- several events related to the celebra- people instead to perform prayers in theless, all countries were insuffi- tion of the birth centenary of the Father mosques, which are smaller. ciently prepared or not prepared at all of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh The meeting of National Moon for the sudden appearance of the Mujibur Rahman, from 17 March. On Sighting Committee chaired by secre- Covid-19 pandemic. 1 April, the government cancelled all tary, Ministry of Religious Affairs held For example, even after the first public programmes marking Pahela on 28 July 2020 maintained a similar Covid-19 detection in Wuhan, China, Baishakh, the Bengali New Year, to ruling on prayers for the previous Mus- in December 2019, Covid-affected avoid mass gatherings. The Bengali lim ceremony of Eid-ul-Fitr in May. Chinese were finding their way to New Year 1427 began on 14 April 2020. The ruling was arrived at via ‘consul- Italy. The Mayor of Florence, Italy, To prevent the transmission of corona- tation with experts, officials and reli- in February 2020, even launched the virus, Muslims in Bangladesh also gious scholars’. The decision required ‘hug a Chinese’ campaign. As a result celebrated their biggest religious fes- the removal of carpets from mosques of the mishandling by the government, tival, Eid-ul-Fitr on May 25, 2020 with- during the annual prayer, the disinfec- in March 2020, Italy became the worst out any outdoor activities this year. tion of mosque premises before pra- affected country outside China. It was Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) on yers, and greater sanitation and social only after four and half months of May 22, 2020 issued a 14-point ins- distance measures. Instead of the the first Covid-19 detection, that the truction allowing congregations to be National Eidgah, the main congrega- transmission of coronavirus has held indoors in mosques maintaining tional Eid prayer will be held at Baitul started to decline in Italy. Nevertheless, cautions asking devotees have to per- Mukarram, the National Mosque. The the country is still at 15th position form ablution from home before com- decision also required the elderly, chil- among the top twenty Covid-19 ing for Eid prayers, instead of using dren and those suffering from disease affected countries of the world as of mosque ablution rooms. Earlier, on not to attend the prayer. 73 August 04, 2020, with the USA at May 14, the Religious Affairs Minis- On August 04, 2020 Bangla- number one. try issued a circular asking the authori- desh registered 50 more coronavirus-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 related deaths, with this number, the Following the prime minister’s keeping in mind that part of the fund total coronavirus related deaths stood warning, a total of 104 public represen- will be spent on dealing with the pan- 3,234, as well as 1,918 daily infections tatives have so far been suspended for demic. Apart from that the govern- for a total 2,44,020. Nineteen people alleged irregularities in cash aid and ment has kept an amount of Tk. 10,000 per one million of the population have relief distribution among the destitute crore as ‘lump sum’ to deal with any succumbed to Covid-19 in Bangla- since the beginning of the outbreak. emergency health crisis and meet the desh, which is only bested by India and According to a Local Government healthcare needs in the fight against Pakistan in the region. Bangladesh has Division (LGD) notification, among Covid pandemic. In total as much as tested total of 12,01,256 persons until the suspended representatives 33 UP Tk.41,027 crore has been allocated for 4 August 2020. Besides, some 1,955 are chairmen, 65 UP members, a zila the public health sector, which is 1.3 people have recovered in the past 24 parishad member, four municipality per cent of the GDP and 7.2 per cent hours of August 4, bringing the overall councillors and one upazila vice- of the total budget. The budget has tally to 1,39,860 since the first case was chairman. However, reports of such exempted Value Added Tax (VAT) on detected on 8 March. corruption and relief embezzlement coronavirus kits to support detection have been published in various media and prevention of Covid-19. outlets. On 25 March 2020, following the The Anti-Corruption Commis- instruction of Prime Minister Sheikh sion (ACC) of Bangladesh has warned On the other hand, an Integrated Hasina, former prime minister and that the perpetrators of corruption in Health-Science Research and Deve- jailed opposition leader Khaleda Zia the health sector will face justice. lopment of Tk.100 crore has also been was released for six months amid the Meanwhile, the law enforcing agencies allocated to help develop research coronavirus outbreak. The 74-year- have also arrested personnel of private in the health-education and science old opposition Bangladesh Nationalist hospitals for providing fake Covid-19 technology sectors. To ensure the Party (BNP) chief is serving a 17-year certificates and embezzling money proper and effective use of the fund a prison term in two graft cases since from patients. The government has ‘high-powered’ committee comprising 8 February 2018. Begum Zia served suspended permission to conduct expert physicians, nutritionists, public thrice as the premier since 1991. Her Covid-19 tests at five private hospitals health specialists, sociologists, health party suffered a miserable defeat in and diagnostic centres: Shahabuddin economists, environmentalists and the 2018 elections bagging only six Medical, Care Medical College, Stemz civil society members will work. seats in the 300-seat Jatiya Sangsad Healthcare, and Thyrocare Diagnos- Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (National Parliament of Bangladesh). tic in Dhaka, and Epic Health Care in regularly reviews updates on the situ- She was sent to jail in February 2018 Chittagong. The authorities have also ation, and provides the necessary guid- by the court on charges of embezzling sealed the Uttara and Mirpur branches ance to bolster the country’s fight foreign donations during her premier- of Regent Hospital due to a scam against the pandemic. In such review ship between 2001 and 2006. The dona- involving Covid-19 tests. meetings, the measures taken to con- tions were meant for an orphanage, tain coronavirus infections, plans on named after her slain husband, former the collection of medical and safety Bangladesh president and founder of However, amid the crisis of Covid-19 equipment, and future initiatives to BNP, General Ziaur Rahman. pandemic the national budget for the inhibit Covid-19 are discussed. On Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina financial year 2020-21 has been passed 19 April the government formed a has urged the people to visit physicians by Bangladesh Jatiya Sangsad 17-member National Technical Advi- if they experience any symptom of (National Parliament of Bangladesh) sory Committee with a view to contain coronavirus and not to pay heed to with the slogan ‘Economic Transition the spread of Covid-19 in the country. rumours about the virus. She issued a and Pathway to Progress’. The amount On 30 May the prime minister, while 31-point directive on 2 April in view of this year’s national budget of holding a meeting with the National of the Covid-19 outbreak. The prime Tk.568,000 crore is the biggest in Technical Advisory Committee – minister also warned that no corrup- Bangladesh’s history. The health bud- formed to fight Covid-19 in the coun- tion would be tolerated in the distribu- get of 2020-21 has been hiked by 23.44 try – directed the concerned authorities 74 tion of relief and advised people not to per cent from the revised budget of to engage local public representatives use personal protective equipment Taka 23692 crore for the FY 2019-20. in a greater way to contain the spread (PPE) meant for health workers. The allocation has been increased, of coronavirus in the country.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 All offices and public transport for her sincere efforts to contain the reopened on 30 May on a limited coronavirus pandemic in Bangladesh. scale after over two months of nation- The magazine said Sheikh Hasina, the wide shutdown amid fears of further country’s longest serving prime min- increase in the number of Covid-19 ister, started evacuating Bangladeshi infections and deaths. citizens from China in early February. She harnessed tech, installing screen- ing devices across international air- With the country grappling with the ports, which screened some 650,000 pandemic, cyclone ‘Amphan’ headed people (of which 37,000 were imme- towards Bangladesh, posing another diately quarantined), something the challenge to the authorities. People UK still is not doing. living on the coast had to be evacuated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is while maintaining social distancing also looking after the opposition lead- and hygiene with limited resources. ers, Mujahidul Islam Selim and ‘Amphan’ turned into a severe cyclonic Dr. Zafarullah, who have been affected storm and hit the country on 19 May. by coronavirus. The result of a sample The task of keeping people safe across survey conducted by Germany’s inter- the coastal areas became immeasur- national broadcaster Deutsche Welle ably more complicated due to the pan- (DW) on 29 May, indicated that most demic. However, in a matter of days, people do not trust the main opposition Bangladesh prepared almost 10,500 BNP. The respondents were asked, additional shelters – over and above the ‘Do you think that the United Front led 4,171 in existence – to accommodate by BNP could play any effective role evacuees with a measure of social dis- in Bangladesh politics?’ Out of four tancing. More than 70,000 ‘cyclone thousand, most of the respondents, i.e. preparedness’ volunteers across coastal 81% said ‘no’ and only 19% said ‘yes’. areas were mobilized. Masks, water, soap and sanitizer were distributed. On the other hand, the garment industry, The Covid-19 pandemic has affected reeling from cancelled export orders, people’s thinking across the globe retooled production lines to manufac- with the unpredicted challenges and ture personal protective equipment. worries it has posed. Critical decisions Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in these times of uncertainty are taken jointly wrote an article with Patrick based on little information. However, Verkooijen, who is the chief execu- the Bangladesh government’s digitali- tive officer of the Global Center on zation measures have helped to fill Adaptation, regarding the twin perils the information gap. Flexibility of re- of cyclone Amphan and the corona- sponse is essential in a pandemic even virus pandemic. The article was pub- though political toughness implies lished in The Guardian of London on standing firm on decisions already 3 June 2020. taken. Based on new data, the deci- The leadership of Prime Minis- sions may be changed. ter Sheikh Hasina has been hailed in Finally, the picture that has managing the crisis, taking decisions, emerged from the pandemic in Bang- communicating with the field-level ladesh and other countries, raises administration regularly through video many questions about the existing conferencing. The prestigious US political order. However, it is too soon magazine Forbes praised Prime Min- to assess the success or failure of any 75 ister Sheikh Hasina and placed her in country in tackling the crisis of the the list of successful women leadership Covid-19 pandemic.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Reflections on capital, identity and the corona conundrum SARASIJ MAJUMDER and SUDEEP BASU

BORDERS, mobility, and crossings heralds a better world. One has to at are metaphors of our transnational the outset recognize the emergent existence. These concepts are used to logic of governance in the context of describe both movements of capital, mobilities, as the flexible containment and human beings or labour. For capi- of population. tal, they emerge and dissolve with We identify two logics in the regulations and their relaxations. For emergent responses to migration. One labour, they restrict movements and is the neoliberal governance thematic incite aspirations. In either case, the which prioritizes economy over peo- concepts become real in the actions ple, and the other is the populist logic and processes initiated by actors, that hierarchizes or divides the popu- human and institutional, both powerful lation on racial, ethnic lines to institu- and with less power. tionalize a graded arrangement of The pandemic enables us to citizenship using fear and withholding look at these metaphors anew, to read rights. These two sometimes coalesce the structural effects occasioned by to produce massive transformations of Covid-19, which emerge as real through space, place, and territory generating governance and livelihood practices. developments and unevenness that While borders mean national borders attract migration flows. Often they go that is guarded by the state, borders separate ways. This produces res- also mean boundaries separating ponses that can have a gamut of effects groups of human being living in the on the citizenry as well as illegal immi- same social space. Likewise, mobility grant subjects. has dual meaning of both geographi- The emergence of the global cal and social mobilities and how they Covid-19 pandemic seems to have intersect. overturned one of the logics in many Our main contention is that the ways. The outbreak has shifted the pandemic makes flows of labour and attention from the economy to the capital more complicated leaving the people. This shift is temporary, messy 76 structural underpinnings of global and episodic. Yet the shift is a reversal capitalism intact. While it challenges of a well entrenched neoliberal logic the world is flat narrative, it hardly that valued profit over people. The

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 reversal was palpable in the rising fronts: regulatory/ethical front, spatial site on tenterhooks or in competition significance of public health workers, front, and its rational and calculative with other sites to which business or doctors and nurses, whose values are character. investment can be instantly moved. not fully recognized in the market or First, on the regulatory front, this The pandemic compresses space even in popular opinion. A Spanish virus originates in precarity that is an and time but not from capital’s vantage ex-minister commented that popular outcome of capitalisms unwillingness point. While space-time compression footballers earn millions of dollars to regulate and promote freedom at the is the characteristic of late capitalism but corona virus vaccine will be dis- expense of health. Precarious living reliant on finance and hot money covered by biologists who rarely earn pushes/pushed poor people in China to which knows no barrier, the opposite as much. hunt wild animals and trade in them. has been true for many working Yes, such practices emerged in Mao- people. Migration across national bor- ist China that inflicted people with ders has become more challenging. At the other end of the spectrum, acute food shortages. But those prac- Demand for cheap labour in growing however, we see the renewed asser- tices got upgraded into an unregulated cities are, however, met by poor ille- tion of jingoistic nationalism or the trade and big business in capitalist gal migrants. Their illegalities or trans- populist logic that empower the right- China legalized by the state. The virus gressions of stringent migration rules wing politicians. Authoritarian rulers crosses over to human body from the push them to shadowy existence that are trying to grab powers of surveil- animal body not simply because of suppress their voices. lance at an unprecedented scale proximity but also because of the con- that they could only wish in the pre- ditions in which animals are kept and pandemic period. Coupled with such harvested. Caging wild animals in By bringing the economy to a desires, there is a fresh resurgence of large numbers in tiny containers emit halt, the virus leaves the space-time politics of hatred that is being instigated the virus that remains dormant in their uncompressed, i.e. increases the and used by the world leaders and bodies. notional distance between places for populist politicians to further strengthen both capital and labour. Ease of travel their respective positions. How these is greatly compromised. Rules of two tendencies interact and counter- The same is true of industrial farm- entry and exit from a country become act each other will shape national ing practiced in the West/US. Mad more stringent. Additionally, a cold war societies, global political economy or cow disease outbreak is a good case like impasse continues in the field of trajectories of capitalism or its neo- in point. While cost-effectiveness and internet technology between China liberal variant. While the identifiable profitability justify unethical produc- and USA as the trade war between structures and actors, such as the tion practices, yuppie consumer move- them intensifies. Such processes can states, leaders, people on the street get ments recommending ethical living potentially dismantle globalization. all the attention, the force or process and vegan diets focused on individuals Global and domestic trade, sup- that can match the invisibility of the are touted as the radical resistances to ply chains and consumption cannot virus is capitalism in its many guises. larger structural issues of production gain momentum without redistribu- Capitalism(s) unlike the virus is and lack of regulation. The question tion and investment in sectors that more ubiquitous. But the main charac- that the corona pandemic raises is value people over profit. The question ters in the potent drama that unfolds that how long we can remain blind- is how the regimes that profess aus- are capitalism, virus and the ubiquitous folded to the issue of unbridled meat terity will respond to this situation. life and mortality of populations. They production and precarities associated Trickle down clearly does not work. are forces and events that explode with it. This brings us to our third point, i.e. before us to be reckoned with because Second, this pandemic affects capitalism’s rational and calculative at this moment capitalisms scalar consumption and supply chains simul- character. abilities to affect our lives can only be taneously upsetting the global capital- The emergency socialist meas- matched by the pandemic or the virus. ist distinctions between zones of ures show that calculative character The sheer spatial scale of the spread production and zones of consumption. of policy making, the hallmark of of the virus and the speed at which The former being primarily China and neoliberalism, is at abeyance. It is in a it contracts and the ease of getting the latter Europe and the US. Pande- way a carnivalesque moment. While 77 exposed to it has challenged capita- mics planetary character does not leave political action is being undermined lism (or its neoliberal form) on three capital with any leeway to keep one in the name of war and solidarity, the

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 virus can and has potentially opened disciplining is one way out of the cri- up spaces to express dissent against sis of capital but the humanitarian not just the state but the attitudes. The outcomes will force capitalists and the virus has brought to the foreground the state to abide by safety and health views, grievances and struggles that standards for workers. This becomes health workers, like the Asha workers, like a never-ending cycle of debts and have been harbouring and waging for its revival is through conceiving of quite some time. In that sense it is altogether new ways of being with carnivalesque vis-à-vis the austerity. capital, a constitution of the pandemic Austerity measures are still subject which recognizes the priority being implemented but public opinion of biological life and non-rational might be turning against austerity at sphere of values and labour above least in key sectors. Or we should be capital. observing if the virus gives voice and Further the pandemic behoves deepens democracy and also how that us to pose the question to ourselves tendency is countered and undermined about who we are as a collective and by the agents of the neoliberal estab- where we are socially and spatially lishment by subtly pandering to the located, our social identities, being populist logic mentioned above. reconstituted in response to the capri- ciousness of capital stultified by the existential threat posed by the virus. The institutions that defend capital is pitted against the spectre of pandemic that is seen to favour welfare style Alertness is warranted specially socialism. What Covid-19 enjoins when the Covid-19 pandemic has states to do is to equalize that which shown signs of a revival of eugenic- was unequal before the pandemic on like discourse of herd immunity which two fronts, make health facility avail- may have to run its course, when dis- able to all or at least the poor and mass covery of a suitable vaccine is uncer- production of equipments for running tain. For the discourse can spawn new the health economy made into a busi- kinds of insubordinations, violence and ness of the state. What we have here is expulsions of those who are suppos- the omnipresence of a state which is edly thought to be weak in terms of not dictatorial but one which is pater- biology and culture. While the pan- nalistically inclined, authoritarian and demic exacerbates the precarity of highly dependable in extreme crisis or labour and unevenness of spatial deve- at least that is what a state run media lopment as witnessed in the return of is making us believe, in an increasingly migrants from cities like Mumbai and mediatized environment. Delhi following the lockdown, the pan- This plausible outcome of demic itself created conditions where Covid-19 forces us to rethink valoriza- ‘bare life’ became more important tions tied to capital. How the latter than the imperatives of capital and live- while it may try to wriggle out of its lihoods which forces a consequent impotency in pandemic times through rethink about our dependencies, hier- the backdoor of power relations and archies, value systems, solidarities and the deepening of technology in our ethno-national identifications. lives, ‘social distancing’ and the threat Coronavirus enjoins states and of contracting the virus due to expo- people to cooperate, foster peace, divert 78 sure makes war or escalating conflicts resources for promoting regional deve- an unviable solution to the crisis of lopment and value expert knowledge capital unlike in normal times. Labour as a route out of the pandemic.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 The spectre of Indian Muslims in India’s Covid experience MISRIA SHAIK ALI

THE essay emotes with two images: and civically irresponsible behaviour of the phrase ‘sleeper spreaders’ and the Tabliqis. The extrapolation of another image I came across on Twit- Tabliqis into the Muslim imagery of the ter – of a man’s silhouette with ‘a New India narrates a different story green cap’, his body filled with bombs to me, and the best way for me to make and hands with coronavirus. These sense of the event was to engage with representations are of Muslims who rhetorical refusal; I would deny to talk attended the Tabliqi Jamat’s annual about the Hindutva spun category, the conference at the Tabliqi Jamat head- Indian Muslim, and therefore this quarters in Nizamuddin, Delhi, that essay is about the Muslims of India.3 started on 3 March 2020 and contin- It is impossible to talk about the ued until a few days before Prime latter in the current atmosphere of self- Minister Narendra Modi announced defence that Muslims have adopted the Janata Curfew on 23 March.1 against the rising hatred in their coun- These representations are of try, while the former belongs to debate. the Muslim, seen through the eyes of Owing to that self-defence, which also a Hindu Nation, today’s New India.2 structures this essay, the essay alter- As such representations spewed my nates between the Indian Muslim, social media feeds, I wondered if they who has emerged as an epitome of the were actually talking about the morally enactment of victimization in the New India, and Muslims of India which is * The author thanks Kaushik Tekur, K12 more of an imagination for, as sociolo- Techno Services, Nishanth Kunnukattil Shaji, gist Shiv Visvanathan noted, a ‘crea- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Parth Viswakarma for their comments on the article. tive Muslim’ social order in a political 1. On 13 March, the Delhi government had moment when imaginations and feel- issued an advisory curbing congregation of over 200 people. The Tabiliqi Jamat con- nation if elected into power including the ference was clearly in violation of it. construction of the Ram Mandir. 79 2. The 2019 General Elections manifesto of 3. John Schlib, Rhetorical Refusals: Defying the BJP promised that the party will make Audiences, Expectations. Southern Illinois a ‘New India’, via its plans to reform the University Press, Carbondale, 2007.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 ings are denied to the Indian Muslims.4 Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! La been somewhat ambiguous about In such a way, this essay alternates bet- ilahailla Allah.’ the recitation of Azan and the local ween silence, a terrain of experience With at least 300,000 active police continues to threaten coer- for Indian Muslims, and synaesthetic mosques in every nook and cranny of cive steps against recitation of sensoria, a topia/place for Muslims of India, hearing an azan on the loud- Azan. It was further pleaded that India. speaker is something every Indian local police and administration would be used to. The submergence have pasted unsigned notices on the of a certain civically responsible beha- entrances of several mosques in the Submerged under the spectre of the viour of the Muslims of India, asking city and all attempts made to seek Muslim images are two things: the people to pray at home and not congre- redressal from the District Admi- Covid-compelled dismantling of the gate, need not be juxtaposed against nistration have been unsuccessful Shaheen Bagh protest in Delhi, a place the morally irresponsible behaviour of which has caused unnecessary dis- where Muslim women of India came the Tabliqi Jamat to showcase on the quiet and apprehension of violation together in December 2020 to protest bloodstained roads of New India that of this religious right in the local the Citizenship Amendment Act, and there are ‘good Indian Muslims’. The Muslim populace.’7 the change in azan my mother made submergence was indeed visible when me listen to, once the lockdown came the Allahabad High Court heard a into place, saying it’s a once in a life- Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by The Uttar Pradesh state, with little time that a Muslim would hear a Afzal Ansari, Salman Khurshid and interest in deciphering the rephrased change in the azan. The azan, a call for Wasim A. Quadri, around mid-May azan call, which was by then adopted Muslims to offer prayers, generally 2020, pleading the court to intervene in many mosques across the world, called out five times a day, was differ- in the state-ordered curfew on azans put a curfew on the 1400-years-old ent this time, and was civically respon- being broadcast through loudspeakers Islamic tradition of observing the fasts sible in containing the spread of during the lockdown.5 on hearing the sunrise azan, Subhu, SARS-CoV 2. The phrase ‘Hayya and breaking it with the sunset azan, ‘ala-l-Falah’ urges every follower, Mahrib, during the month of Ramadan. mostly men (as they are allowed to con- The letter/petition written by senior This became blatant when the state gregate for prayers at the mosque), to advocate Salman Khurshid, which Advocate General Manish Goyal’s rush to their nearby mosques for was later treated as a PIL, showed the only argument against the petitioners prayer. In the light of the global spread extrajudicial actions, like unsigned was that azan is ‘a call for congregat- of the SARS-CoV2, it was replaced notices issued to mosques, and threats ing to offer prayers at the mosque’. with an advisory to all Muslims to leveraged against mosques, even on The sense of community protection pray at home and not to congregate. occasions where the azan was not that haunts public concerns around the ‘Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu called out, by the Uttar Pradesh police, Coronavirus, conversed through the Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Ashhadu an la who have become a machinery of phrase ‘Sallu Fi Beyootikum’ (offer ilahailla Allah. Ashhadu an la ilahailla Hindutva violence perpetuated by the prayer at home), was eroded in the Allah. Ashadu anna Muhammadan state under the leadership of Chief very fact that azan is an ‘Islamic tradi- Rasool Allah. Ashadu anna Muham- Minister Yogi Adityanath.6 tion’. The court states: madan Rasool Allah. Hayya ’ala s ‘According to him [the petitioner], ‘Learned counsel for the petitioner Salah. Hayya ’ala s Salah. (come Azan is integral to religion and in no has not been able to explain why for prayer) Hayya ’ala I Falah. way undermines the society’s col- Azan cannot be offered without the Hayya ’ala I Falah. (come to prayer lective response to the pandemic. It use of sound amplifying devices. It congregation). has been further pleaded that local will be not out of place to mention Sallu Fi Beyootikum (or) Sallu Fi administration at Farrukhabad has that in the past, during old days when Rihalikkum (Offer prayer at home) the loudspeaker was not invented, 5. Afzal Ansari and 2 Others Vs. State of U.P. Azan used to be given by human 4. Misria Shaik Ali, ‘What the Ayodhya Judg- and 2 Others. See http://elegalix.allahabad ment Makes Evident: New India Is a Place of highcourt.in/elegalix/WebShowJudgment.do voice. The use of loudspeakers is a “No Muslim Things”,’ FirstPost, 19 Novem- 6. Harsh Mander, John Dayal and Natasha practice developed by someone and 80 ber 2019. https://www.firstpost.com/india/ Badhwar, Reconciliation: Karwan E Mohab- what-the-ayodhya-judgment-makes-evident- bat’s Journey of Solidarity through a Wounded 7. Afzal Ansari and 2 Others Vs. State of U.P. new-india-is-a-place-of-no-muslim-things- India. Context (imprint of Westland Publica- and 2 Others. See http://elegalix.allahabad 7660991.html. tions), Chennai, 2018. highcourt.in/elegalix/WebShowJudgment.do

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 not by the Prophet or his main dis- bles human progress. In such a way, ing Hinduism to desire one god. The ciples, and which was not there in religious practices that create new sub- monotheistic idea of Hinduism was the past, and that the loudspeaker jective possibilities for coexistence (a further refined by the second supreme is of recent origin and accordingly coexistence that’s anti-exclusionary) leader of Rashtriya Swayamsevak it could not be said that the use of under Covid like the phrase ‘Sallu Fi Sangh (RSS), M.S. Golwalkar, in loudspeakers and loud-speaker is Beyootikum’, is black-boxed as tradi- A Bunch of Thoughts, which regarded essential and integral part of the tional and parochial while the techno- the creation of a Hindu Nation as Azan. There is no such religious logical, although recognized to have something to strive for. order which prescribes that Azan ‘adverse effects’, is considered pro- ‘In terms of the letter dated can be recited only through loud- gressive and hence can never be, to 28.04.2020, addressed by Mr. Salman speakers or by any amplifiers. Azan cite from the order, ‘an essential part of Khurshid, which has been treated is certainly an essential and inte- the religion’. as Public Interest Litigation, that gral part of Islam but use of loud- While at one level the essence of reciting of Azan is a call for the five speakers and loud-speakers is not loudspeakers is denied its interming- times prayers, particularly the morn- an essential and an integral part ling with the essence of Islam, at a sec- ing Fajr which is also the beginning thereof. Loudspeakers is a gift of ond level, Islam is denied ‘the stretch of of Roza fast as well as Maghrib technological age, its adverse effect imagination’ to understand how its which is the breaking of fast at sun- is well felt all over the world. It is sensorial practices of listening can be set. It has been further pleaded that not only a source of pollution but it redefined for, to borrow a phrase from there has never been any restriction is also a source which causes seve- Shiv Visvanathan, ‘a new contract, on recitation of Azan by the use of ral health hazardous. Traditionally even a sacramental order between loudspeakers to call the faithful to and according to the religious order, orality, textuality and digitality’.10 prayer. According to him, Covid-19 Azan has to be recited by the Imam pandemic has necessitated strin- or the person in-charge of the Mos- gent containment measures and ques through their own voice. Right At a third level, the court in assert- Muslims across the country have to religion, by no stretch of imagi- ing that ‘no stretch of imagination ought promptly and willingly accepted that nation, ought to be practised, pro- to be practised, professed and propa- congregational prayer be suspended fessed and propagated saying that gated saying that loudspeakers has as long as the danger of spread of loudspeakers has become an essen- become an essential part of the reli- infection continues. Leading semi- tial part of the religion.’8 gion’ not only commands Islam and naries like Deoband and religious talks against the reinvention of Islamic leaders have advised people to social contract by the Muslims of perform Namaz at home consis- The architectonic of the court’s order India, but in doing so confesses its own tent with social distancing norms. emerges from the tension between the anxiety, layered under the Machiavel- According to him, Azan is integral parochial, the religious, the traditional lian text of the order, about the mod- to religion and in no way undermines and the subjective, and the modern, ernist Abrahamic tradition of Islam. the society’s collective response to the technological and objective. Such This anxiety seeps through and haunts the pandemic. dualisms were produced as conditions the everyday experience of the Hindu It has been further pleaded that that render modern scientific thinking psyche, constituted today– through local administration at Farrukhabad possible by the writings of natural 50,000 daily Shakhas and political cam- has been somewhat ambiguous philosophers like Francis Bacon and paigns – to be anxious about the mono- about the recitation of Azan and the Rene Descartes.9 The commitment to theistic allure of Abrahamic religions. local police continues to threaten upholding Cartesian dualisms and tele- While Moses, as Freud claims, gave coercive steps against recitation of ological thinking is sedimented by the Jews the monotheistic idea, Dayanand Azan. It was further pleaded that faith that the shift from traditional to Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj local police and administration technological, parochial to modern is (a Hindu reform movement), gave his have pasted unsigned notices on the indeed possible and as that which ena- Hindus the monotheistic idea by refin- entrances of several mosques in the city and all attempts made to seek 8. Ibid. 10. Shiv Visvanathan, ‘Towards a New Onto- redressal from the District Admi- 81 9. Ashis Nandy, Science, Hegemony and logy of South Asia’, Seminar 719, July 2019, Violence: A Requiem for Modernity. United pp. 87-91. http://www.india-seminar. com/ nistration have been unsuccessful Nations University, Tokyo, 1989. 2019/719/719_shiv_and_kanak_ mani.htm. which has caused unnecessary dis-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 quiet and apprehension of violation and proceeds to talk about the bureau- Indian Muslim, like the White Man’s of this religious right in the local cratic notice issued by the UP police Indian or indigenous peoples of the Muslim populace. Similar issues to a mosque in Gazipur. Is it that the Americas, under the monotheistic and have arisen from Ghazipur and spiritual comfort of Muslims, and so modernist thinking of Hindutva, is Hathras that may require directions the spirit of secularism, so impossible nested in ‘his’ tradition, past and paro- for uniform legal regime across the to reckon with for the imaginary of a chiality.14 Muslims as belonging to the State of Uttar Pradesh. secular state established after Parti- past, frames the Hindutva imaginary Lastly, it has been pleaded to this tion as India that this distraction onto that is required to make India into a Court to preserve the spiritual com- bureaucratic matters in the order’s Hindu Rashtra. fort and the wholesome spirit of script, was made necessary immedi- constitutional right to worship of all ately after enlisting the spiritual com- citizens. One notice issued under fort of Muslims and the secular spirit The Muslims of today’s India, those Section 149 Cr.P.C. by the Officer- of the Indian Constitution? Can law who live after the industrial revolution In-Charge (Prabhari Nirikshak), understand the epistemological fram- where sonic devices have flooded the Police Station Dildar Nagar, Ghazipur ing of Indian Muslim? Can one under- market to amplify sound in environ- has also been placed on record.’11 stand why the Indian Muslim, conflated ments of excessive white noise, are with terrorism and Pakistani Muslims, denied the reinvention of azan in digital continues to haunt the tumultuous ways, for a digital world, via this court Salman Khurshid remarked in his political terrain of India? order and the essential religious prac- letter that azan was a matter of ‘spiri- tices established in 1954. They are tual comfort’ and demanded that the asked to rest in peace by imagining as court preserve ‘the wholesome spirit Before we get into the haunting of though they are listening to the beauti- of constitutional right to worship of all Indian Muslims, the non-present pres- ful voice of the Ethiopian former slave, citizens’ by preserving Muslims’ spiri- ence looming over New India, I would social reality and hence, bounds religion to ora- tual comfort. How can the spirituality like to offer a fourth level of interpre- lity and textuality. Such a practice frames reli- of a secular constitution warrant the tation. The court, by denying the bene- gion to the traditional and in the past and not preservation of the spiritual comfort of fits of modernity and technological to the modern and the present stemming from the modernist anxiety about the traditional. a religious group? In a manner of avoid- progress like loudspeakers themselves 13. ‘5cr Minority Students to Get Scholar- ing matters of spirituality, religion and to the Islamic tradition of azan, in its ship in 5 Years’, Times of India, 12 June 2019. the nation state, the order immediately modernist thinking, temporalizes the Accessed 15 July 2020. https://timesofindia. moves onto saying: ‘One notice issued Muslim as one who belongs to the indiatimes.com/india/5cr-minority-students- to-get-scholarships-in-5-years-govt/ under Section 149 Cr.P.C. by the parochiality of the traditional, or in the articleshow/69748292.cms. Officer-In-Charge (Prabhari Nirik- manner of teleological thinking, one 14. I specifically use ‘his’ to point to the per- shak), Police Station Dildar Nagar, who belongs to pre-modernity and versity of the Hindutva regime that constructs Ghazipur, has also been placed on the past.12 The Muslim is also cons- the Muslim men of our households as the per- record’ – a move that distracts it from tructed as one who belongs to the past verse element it desires to jail under Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) the ultimate question of the struggle for (to the times of Mughals, Ottomans Act, 2019. The fear that demands protecting Indian Independence: how to under- and Nizams) in the acute need felt by Hindu women from the cusp of savage Mus- stand secularism, or for that matter Modi’s regime to ‘modernize madrasas’, lim men if interpreted through Fanon’s analy- sis of the black man shows the emergent order science, by not merely adopting west- an educational institute for Muslims of political alter(rity)-erotica where both the ern secularism (or science)? and by Muslims.13 The Hindu Rastra’s Muslim man and the Hindu women indulged The anxiety is captured in the in ‘Love Jihad’ are subjugated by the patriar- 12. The seven-judge bench of the Supreme chal order of Hindutva. On White Man’s order’s architectonic where the order Court of India, in 1954, established the prac- Indian and the politics of subjugation of distracts itself from matters of Islamic tices that are essential part of a religion to American Indians in the USA, see Sarah S. ‘spiritual comfort’ and the right to reli- encompass all practices that the ‘doctrines Kavanagh, ‘Haunting Remains: Educating a gious freedom that sediments the of that religion itself’ advocates for (Madras New American Citizenry at Indian Hill Cem- vs. Shri Lakshmindar Tirtha Swamiyar of etery’, in Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: secular spirit of the Indian Constitution Shri Shirur Mutt). This involves a constant Native Ghosts in North American Culture return to the oral traditions of the religion and History. University of Nebraska Press, 82 11. Afzal Ansari and 2 Others Vs. State of and its texts. However, the command by the Lincoln, 2011, pp. 151-78 and Robert F. U.P. and 2 Others. See http://elegalix. Allahabad High Court expresses the impos- Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian: The allahabadhighcourt.in/elegalix/WebShow sibility of interpreting religious practices for History of an Idea from Columbus to the Judgment.do the digital world order that constitutes today’s Present. Knopf, New York, 1978.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Bilal ibn Rabah (pbuh) one of the clos- Diatopical hermeneutics stands for editor of Roopbam, explicates that est companions, Sahabahs, of Prophet the thematic consideration of under- gayness and homosexuality are othered Mohammed (pbuh) and emancipated standing the other without assuming and tormented by Hindu fanaticism by the Prophet (pbuh), which echoed that the other has the same basic self- and Muslim fundamentalism by narrat- through the silence of Arabian deserts understanding.’15 Such an act of deci- ing his own experience of fleeing the call for prayer, azan, in the 7th phering the text of azan, an engagement Bangladesh for being gay, and seek- century. with the other, in the times of corona- ing refuge and possible citizenship in The court order further cons- virus – Sallu Fi Beyootikum (or) pray India, which has been rendered impos- tructs the azan called out via loud- at home – was circumvented by the sible, just for Muslims, by the Citizen- speakers as ‘noise pollution’, while it Allahabad HC for a lecture on the signi- ship Amendment Act of 2019.18 is precisely the noise pollution of ficance of modernity to human progress modernity and industrial revolution (a problematic that a century worth of that demands azan to be called out via works in cultural critique of science My lived experiences of being an loudspeakers so it could reach the com- and modernity has dismantled).16 Indian Muslim also suggests the impos- munity – asking for them to stay quar- sibility of talking about feminine sexu- antined and offer prayers at home in ality or homosexuality within the the time of coronavirus. The contro- As Levinas remarks, ‘addressing the frames of the households that middle versy around the Muslim and loud- other is inseparable from understand- class Indian Muslims emerge from. In speakers explicate a synesthesized ing the other.’17 The non-engagement not allowing for dialogues or engage- sensorality of New India, where the in deciphering the text of the call for ment with those whom a culture con- act of listening to the other is framed, prayer during the pandemic stemming siders as the other, the culture erects defined and conditioned by the see- from a disinterest in understanding walls of alterity. First, as a way of see- able, the spectacle and the spectre. the Other, renders the HC order as ing, the shift from Indian Muslims to one that does not address the Other Muslims of India comes with talking (although it addresses the concern of about that which is difficult to engage The sensoriality of listening (amplified the petitioners) thereby othering the with, otherness – be it an engagement by the non-essential loudspeakers) Indian Muslim even further back to with the others of Muslim communi- conditions the act of listening amidst the their religious pasts. ties of India like those who are homo- spectacle of marginalization that is Shiv Visvanathan, in calling for sexuals or an engagement between carefully assembled by a Hindu Nation an idea of secularism that is hospita- Hindus, Muslims and peoples of other for the Indian Muslim: to listen to the ble and dialogic, redefines secularism religions of India. Second, to engage message of azan is conditioned by what along the lines of alterity, as ‘the way with Muslims of India is to talk about is seen (spectacle) and the seeable, we respond to other’, arguing against Muslim-ness in India as it belongs to namely the (presence of) Muslim and both Muslim fundamentalism and the present and to situate them in the ‘the invisible’ coronavirus through Hindu fanaticism. Rasel Ahmed, a topias (locations) of Hindutva. An images like sleeper spreaders and the journalist from Bangladesh and the engagement with Muslims of India, Twitter image. The inescapability of rather than the Indian Muslims, is 15. Comment on ‘Diatopical Hermeneutics’. the modernist legal imagination that Search Results Web Results Diatopical necessary for the emergence of a associates religion to the past, and its Hermeneutics – Panikkar Written Words creative Islamic social contract where traditions as being parochial, confines (blog). http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/ the ontological experience of Muslim- the Allahabad HCs order from the fruit- english/gloss-diatopic.html ness in India enunciates a new order- 16. Such works include M.K. Gandhi, Hind ful exercise of what the theologian Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. Soil and Health ing along orality, textuality and digitality and philosopher Raimundo Panikkar Library, Exeter, 1910; Jitendra Pal Singh and for reconciling social difference calls diatopical hermeneutics. Uberoi, Science and Culture. Oxford Univer- in India. Any act of interpreting such Diatopical hermeneutics is a sity Press, Bombay, 1971; Zygmunt Bauman, an ordering in itself should stem from Modernity and the Holocaust. Polity Press, possibility that Panikkar offers to over- Cambridge, 1986; S. Irfan Habib, Jihad or 18. Rasel Ahmed, ‘First Person: As a Perse- come ‘the gap existing between two Ijtihad? Religious Orthodoxy and Modern cuted Gay Muslim from Bangladesh Seeking human topoi, ‘places’ of understanding Science in Contemporary Islam. Harper- Refuge, I Wasn’t Welcome in India’, Scoll.in, Collins Publishers India, New Delhi, 2012. and self-understanding, between two 25 December 2019. https://scroll.in/article/ 83 17. Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: On 947811/first-person-as-a-persecuted- – or more – cultures that have not deve- Thinking-of-the-other. Athlone Press, Lon- muslim-bangladeshi-seeking-refuge-i-wasn-t- loped their patterns of intelligibility… don, 1998, p. 6. welcome-in-india.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Panikkar’s idea of diatopical herme- tal amplification. The court’s under- John Cage’s musical piece, neutics where social groups, including standing of the problem is that azan in- 4’33”, explicates silence as (filled the Muslim, have to be necessarily put volves noise pollution, but not an with) white noise after modernity. The in the difficult position of engaging with understanding that loudspeakers try to piece has only one note in so much as the others of its own selves. amplify the human voice of the imam it allows for the ambient noise pro- amidst the white noise of modernism.21 duced in the opera house as that which exists and makes music possible – It is to the effectuation of a creative ‘what previously lay dormant outside Islamic social contract that Friedrich In elucidating a creative possibility for the scope of our attention [i.e., white Kittler’s analysis of Nietzsche’s writ- Indian secularism, Shiv Visvanathan noise] becomes possibility [for ings, and the material basis of the further notes that ‘Indian secularism music].’23 Confronted by multiple voices/noises he heard while writing, cannot not engage with religion but legal, media and technological moda- becomes useful.19 Kittler’s analysis of must create a communicative relation- lities of silencing, the silence of the discourse networks of the 1800s or ship with it.’22 In trying to rescue the Indian Muslim should necessarily be Romanticism, and the 1900s or Mod- secular demeanour of the technologi- understood as (filled with) white noise ernism, focused on how the materiality cal invention, loudspeaker, from the of Hindutva, a project of modernizing of technological ruptures, like the religious parochiality of Islamic tradi- Hinduism established with its claim to invention of the typewriter, telegram tion, the Allahabad HC fails to cultivate the Indic lands of the Indian subconti- and other inscription devices, shaped a ‘communicative relationship’ with nent, Bharatvarsha. writing and the production of the dis- the Islamic tradition of azan, thereby courses of romanticism and modernity. denying the engagement with orality For Nietzsche, Kittler explicates, the and textuality of azan. The anxiety of In such a way, the need to silence the noise from the pen scratching against the secularist modern court that pro- azan is not about rendering Indian the paper, the sound from the typewriter hibits the technological present for Muslims unfamiliar or silencing them as words get inscribed into text, are religious traditions simultaneously by restricting Islamic traditions from integral to the shaping of what’s spoken, frames the Muslim as one who belongs the roads and occupying it with newer written and thought. Hence, he claims to their past, reifying the Hindutva ima- traditions of New India such as lynch- that the very act of writing and typing ginary, and religion as something that ing. But rather, the need felt by the empties the meaning from the words doesn’t have a place under secularism. Allahabad HC and many other propo- written as it gets lost in the white noise nents of reduced ‘noise pollution’, is emerging from the materiality of writ- 21. Here I want the reader to understand that about the existing sense of unfamilia- the argument goes beyond and against ing with pen and paper or the typewriter. transhumanism that is the need for technolo- rity with ‘communally responsible’ Kittler remarks that the presence gical devices and apparatus, as inventions of behaviour of the Muslims of India in of voice, white noise or ‘deafening human intelligence or the mind, to transcend the Hindu psyche that makes it impos- noise’ emerging from the materiality the corporeal limitations of the body; so, it sible to deal with the text or the oral goes against the need to amplify the low deci- of sound from paper and typewriter bels of human voices with human invention. tradition of the azan. Noise pollution and not the orally spoken word, for Technology as that which enables the seems rational as against the text or Nietzsche, ‘halted all erotic exchange mind to transcend the limitation of human the oral tradition of the azan. corporeality or body reifies the mind-body between orality and writing, reducing dualism of modernist thinking. Rather the Hence, the premise of this essay writing to pure materiality.’20 In such argument is that the technological constitu- – in order to do the silencing and estab- a way, the orality of the azan, namely tion of industrialized world where white noise lish hegemony, Hindu Rashtra (and its has come to be a phenomenon that affects that which offers spiritual comfort for silence, voice and hearing, mandates such liberals) needs ‘the Indian Muslim’ as Muslims and the textuality of azan that amplification if the Muslim is to live, with an invisible presence that can continue asks Muslims to quarantine at home spiritual comfort, in the technological world to haunt the imaginary of partitioned and not congregate, are both circum- that defines the present moment. For a cri- India so a New India, along the lines tique of transhumanism and bodily limitation, vented and reduced to the problem of see M. Hall, The Bioethics of Enhancement: of Hindutva, can be established. With- loudspeakers, that is, a problem of digi- Transhumanism, Disability, and Biopolitics. Lexington Books, New York, 2016. 23. John Cage and Joan Retallack, ‘Introduc- 84 19. Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks: 22. Shiv Visvanathan, ‘Confessions of a Trou- tion’ (essay), in Musicage: Cage Muses on 1800-1900. Stanford University Press, bled Secularist’, Asian Age, 23 August 2012. Words, Art, Music: John Cage in Conversa- Stanford, 1990. http://archive.asianage.com/columnists/con- tion with Joan Retallack. Wesleyan University 20. Ibid., p. 184. fessions-troubled-secularist-053. Press, Hanover, 1996, pp. xxxiii.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 out referring to the Indian Muslim and To that extent, the anxiety of an presents and futures of Muslims of constant insistence on negating them, invisible coronavirus acquires a mani- India, their multiple and varied life the self of Hindu Rashtra cannot be festation using the images of the Indian worlds and livelihood, and the belong- constituted. Muslim, concretized by the symbolism ingness to the lands they occupy. of the green cap – the Twitter image that inspired this essay. Second, the The images using which this essay term sleeper spreaders dislocate the Second, the conflation of Muslims, emotes, rigidifies what they refer to by behaviour of the Tabliqi Jamat from terrorist and the invisible presence to multiple media enactments of alter- matters of civil irresponsibility and produce the alter-referential category referentiality, i.e. encoding the other locates it in the terrain of terrorism, of Indian Muslim is subjectively objec- in order to constitute the self through thereby reifying the image of the tive. To say that is not to categorize a constant process of negation. Alter- Indian Muslim: the monolith that is the conflation as merely an act of bias, referentiality particularly concerns produced through alter-referentiality but as something that was achieved itself with the process of encoding and conflation of the Muslims, the through a century-long mobilization who the other is in order to establish terrorist and the invisible presence. of Hindu subjectivity through the pro- alterity, the state of otherness. Hence, The image of ‘Indian Muslim’ or the cess of alter-referentiality oriented the images concretize who the Indian monolithic identity, occupies the pain- towards the establishment of Hindu Muslim is – an image of the Muslim, ful voids of pulmonary spasm as it Rashtra, the objective. This involved the terrorist and the invisible presence materializes into that which the Hindu the spectacle of the Partition and the unified into a monolith that continues Rashtra is anxious about, and in this state-induced genocide that accompa- to haunt the securitarian imaginary of case the invisible but very haunting nied it, India-Pakistan matches, mob partitioned India in an attempt to estab- presence of the coronavirus. In such lynchings, sermons at Shakhas and lish India as a Hindu Rashtra. a way, the spectre of Indian Muslim capital punishment for terrorists like Such an image allows for politi- haunts India’s Covid experience. Ajmal Kasab. The strangeness, the cal enactments of marginalization of ghostly presence, and the invisible the Other to render possible the New visibility of the Indian Muslims con- India, seen in the 2019 election mani- First, for Derrida and Stiegler, spec- verge in the production of the image festo of the BJP, and the first Indian tre is ‘the invisible visible’ and ‘it is of the Indian Muslim so that Hindu Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s the visibility of the body that is not Rashtra commits to sustaining the grammar in the Constituent Assembly present in flesh and blood.’24 That is perpetual haunting of the Indian Mus- Debates. Indeed, it is the Indian Mus- not to say Indian Muslim is an abstract lim (making them the invisible visible lim who is allowed to exist in India conceptual category that is immaterial that is what’s seeable) over the spectro- and not the Muslims of India. The or non-corporeal. The pain of being political landscapes of New India and/ hermeneutics of collective experience Indian Muslims is felt in flesh and or Hindu Rashtra. in search of the multiple truths con- blood on the roads of the New India Spectralities and hauntology lite- cerning alterity in India hence rests that is being established as (or becom- rature often discusses spectre or ghosts in the deeply fragmented nature of ing) Hindu Rashtra (imagine mob Muslim communities of India, namely, lynching). In such a way, ‘the spectre’ tears. Hence, in this paper, I ask, ‘who is a real Muslim in flesh and blood and how does Tabliqis, Thowheedis and the more of Indian Muslim ‘is already consti- that Muslim manifest their identity in the con- general Shia, Sunni and Sufi com- tuent of [the] material reality’ of Hindu text of New India?’ One answer this paper munities, rather than the image that Rashtra.25 This conceptual category provides is that such an object without flesh and blood is the ‘Indian Muslim’. In fact, the haunts New India: the Indian Muslim. has material effects that shapes pasts, bodies tormented on the roads are Indian In such a way, the Muslims of India 24. See Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Muslims and not, Muslims of India as the are the ones actually rendered invisi- ‘Spectographies’, in The Spectralities Reader: blood that drips from their flesh is made ble (to which Shaheen Bagh is an Ghost and Haunting in Contemporary Cul- oblivious to any forms of diatopical seeing and sensing, in so much the act of lynching antithesis) while ‘Indian Muslim’ is tural Theory. Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2013, pp. 37-52. Here, I am reminded is to reinforce the spectre of Indian Muslim. retained as an invisible presence, a of Mirza Ghalib’s Ghazal ‘Ragon men daudte 25. Arjun Appadurai, ‘Spectral Housing and spectre, that haunts New India allow- phirne ke hum nahin qaayal. Jab aankh hi se Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial ing for their bodies to be tormented na tapka to phir lahu kya hai.’ I interpret it as Mumbai’, in The Spectralities Reader: Ghost 85 Ghalib trying to point out the impossibility and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural on the roads to create the spectacle of of thinking about blood which generally runs Theory. Bloomsbury Academic, New York, the making of New India. through the arteries if it is not expressed as 2013, pp. 151-74.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 as the ‘invisible’ presence in the trauma- the loudspeakers, the religious and tic experience of the marginalized sub- Shiv Visvanathan’s idea of cognitive the traditional vs. the modern and the ject whom the spectre haunts (think of justice, which demands the right of technological, suppresses the civically how holocaust haunts the Jews). How- different knowledge systems, based on responsible Muslims of India thereby ever, the use of spectre in this paper their commitment to sustaining diver- allowing for the spectre of Indian Mus- suggests that the intentional manoeu- sity of life forms, to coexist, demands lim, as one that needs to be tolerated vring and production of spectre to ena- that such a plurality needs to ‘go beyond until a predetermined threshold, to ble the recognition of subjecthood that tolerance or liberalism to an active haunt the court’s order on the issue. experiences the manoeuvred spectre recognition of the need for diversity’. to be traumatizing so that new worlds Hence, today, as the question of azan like that of Hindu Rashtra can be for- enters the courtroom in the times of I also particularly ask this because of mulated. Hence, trauma is not simply Covid, I ask, is it to do with Covid at all?28 the discomfort expressed by the court ‘the hidden core of memory’, a prede- I particularly ask this because of the in engaging with the difficult conver- termined psychological explanation, reduction of the azan call to its digitality, sation of Muslim’s ‘spiritual comfort’ but a product of deeply politicized that is loudspeaker. I also particularly so much so that the bureaucratic and ideological memory work and ask this because the court refuses to order issued by the UP police is the anthropogenic production of pasts that engage with its textuality – ‘Sallu Fi next best thing it can talk about. But undermines historicity.26 Beyootikum’ or ‘Offer prayer at home’. ultimately, I ask this because while the On the textual level, this is a public azan and Tabliqi Jamat, categorized as health advisory that allows the Mus- civically irresponsible acts amidst a Experiencing such a predetermined lims of India to emerge as ‘civically global pandemic haunts India’s Covid trauma, the Hindus of India have responsible individuals’ – an aspect of experience as spectre, where can I get manoeuvred ‘the Indian Muslim’ to Muslimness in India that remains a chance to mourn the dismantling of haunt their everydayness as the spec- submerged. The court’s reduction of Shaheen Bagh? Are protests impossi- tre – as prospective tenants, as Muslim the azan to an issue of the Muslim and ble in the times of Covid? The Black merchants with Hindu names, and as Lives Matter movement and the pro- the roadside ‘Sullas’ who are, quoting into to understand the making of the self and test that sparked after George Floyd a Twitter post, ‘trained in vaginal oral the other, especially when they encounter (on was murdered by the racist police the terrains of Love Jihad). See Slavoj Zizek, sex’ waiting to ‘touch the g-spots’ of ‘Looking Awry’, October 50, Autumn 1989, structure in the United States, which Hindu women who after ‘relaxation’ pp. 30-55. doi:10.2307/778856. Hence, the stems from systems that policed Black offered by Muslim men and in unison problem of Love Jihad rests little in religious Slave bodies, suggests otherwise. conversion (Islamic evangelicalism needs with him are ‘no more than hormonal hermeneutical analysis by Muslims of India Nietzsche, who is haunted by the 27 female animals’. The haunting- in all its forms) but rather stems from mascu- white noise of technological develop- Indian-Muslim is tolerated until the line anxiety which renders, between Hindu ment, Kittler states, misses the femi- manoeuvred trauma of the Muslim male subjectivity and Muslim male subjecti- nine voice of the mother which teaches vity, the women who loves (for every reason ghosts meets the threshold. Here again, of fetishizing the Muslim as a cultural object) Rangoli, a practice of Hindus. Julia Kristeva, the threshold of tolerance is not merely non-existent. Fanon asks, ‘Still on the genital in Strangers to Ourselves, states: ‘To worry tested by sporadic and episodic irres- level, when a white man hates black men, is or to smile, such is the choice when we are he not yielding to a feeling of impotence or of ponsible acts of the Indian Muslim like assailed by the strange; our decision depends sexual inferiority?’ See Frantz Fanon, ‘The on how familiar we are with our ghosts.’ Bred the Tabliqi Jamatis. Rather the thresh- Fact of Blackness’, in Black Skin, White Masks. by the uncanniness of Hindus of India, the old is predetermined to eventuate the Pluto Press, London, 1986, pp. 109-40. decision to worry or to smile about my time and circumstance that is appro- 28. The author is ‘overwhelmed’ here and ‘Others’ is superseded by the emotion of desires to provide a subscript to the text overwhelm. In line with Virginia Woolf’s priate for establishing Hindu Rashtra, or stream of consciousness. The gross gene- words, ‘I am overwhelmed with things I ought the objective. ralization in the previous paragraph about to have written about and never found the Hindus of India as ones who have been proper words’, I would argue, feeling over- 26. Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, engaged in the manoeuvring of the monolith whelmed (by anti-CAA Kolam) is theory, The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunt- – Indian Muslim – in order to establish Hindu writing and critique. In seeking ‘proper ing in Contemporary Cultural Theory. Rashtra has an anti-thesis I need to attend to. words’, I leave this act of the critical insiders Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2013, Here I am overwhelmed by the interreligious by few Hindus of Tamil Nadu to the fact that 86 p. 13. dialogue that happened in Tamil Nadu where it indeed happened. See Virginia Woolf, and 27. I understand this is quite perverse for the many Hindus of Tamil Nadu participated in Anne Olivier. Bell, The Diary of Virginia readers but the perverse underground of every the anti-citizenship amendment act protest in Woolf: Volume One 1915-1919. Harcourt, power, as Zizek claims, needs to be inquired the artful exercise of drawing anti-CAA kolam/ Brace, Jovanovich, New York, 1980.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 the child to speak – not a language but to a world without certification where differences among Muslim sects) and ‘to speak’. While teaching a language one claims citizenship through an act the reading of the Indian Constitution operates at the level of textuality, teach- of connectivity or storytelling.’30 (for its poetic power). In addition, the ing how to speak as an act of engage- smell from Sikh langars added layers ment (with the other) operates at the of sensorial synaesthesia to the episte- level of orality. Kittler notes, ‘ever since While in patriarchal orders of exist- mological enactment of feminine sub- [modernism], there has been only ence the woman with hijab is the one jectivity at Shaheen Bagh ‘speaking deathly stillness and white noise in that’s oppressed (an outdated interpre- out’ a mode for interreligious dialogue. the writing room; no woman or muse tation which Zizek reworks in Into Shaheen Bagh spoke to the offers her kiss’. Kittler explains that the Archives of Islam, to show how emergence of Muslims of India, where towards the end of the 1800s, the alpha- women in Islam are the holders of sub- deeply bifurcated and divided Muslim betization of the mother’s tongue, via jective truth which Islam is deeply communities came together to see, mandating maternal instruction for anxious about and so veils them), in speak and listen to the narrative con- the educational establishment of the xenophobic orders of existence the struction of dissentious democracy as modern nation state, allowed for the woman with hijab comes to be the it was enacted epistemologically, call- child to learn the language but not beholder of truths.31 Wearing hijab, she ing for a new social order of creative how to speak. Such an act of moder- becomes the absolute signifier that Muslims. While this paper demands nity premises the commitment of threatens the Islamophobic subjects. the Hindus to engage with diatopical human reproduction to the progress of The potent power of so many women hermeneutic as an urgent and compel- the nation state. It is the halting of ‘all in hijab stood out as I watched the ling task, it simultaneously allows for erotic exchange between orality and interviews, one after the other. Shaheen Muslims of India to engage in difficult writing’, Kittler notes, that haunted and Bagh created the spectacle of demo- conversations concerning sexuality, traumatized Nietzsche while writing. cracy, enacted in the most ‘overwhelm- class and gender in Muslim communi- ing’ manner, to render the invisible ties. Let us stop talking about Tabliqi visibility of the spectre of Indian Mus- Jamat and start engaging with the episte- On an epistemological level, Sha- lim seeable and listen-able, expressing mological possibility of Shaheen Bagh. heen Bagh is one that’s deeply oral, a sensorial synaesthesia, though veiled striving to be inscribed into text and under the hijab. It also, hence, expres- mobilizing digitally against the white sed that visible invisibility is a difficult The mediocrity of juxtaposing the noise of a modernist Hindutva. Shaheen conversation about feminine sexuality irresponsible behaviour of Tabliqi Bagh, with the sheer presence of Mus- and social contract within the commu- Jamat to the Rath Yatra or pre-dawn lim women in hijab challenging patriar- nities of Muslims of India. pooja carried out by UP Chief Minis- chal Hindutva, expressed the erotica The communities of Muslims of ter Yogi Adiyanath, muffles any con- of democracy that is empathy, com- India are fragmented – broader com- versations about religion, science, munity care and alterity, through dis- munities of Shia, Sunni and Sufi, and alterity and modernity in India and sent.29 Shiv Visvanathan notes, ‘What particular communities of Tabliqi, reduces it to mere Hindu-Muslim was stunning about Shaheen Bagh, as Thowheedis, Wahhabis (little to do divide by pointing at ‘the subjective a drama, was that in the digital age it with Arabian Wahhabism) to name a bias’ of the Hindutva regime. In doing emphasized orality. It spoke. It was an few. Yet, in an act of coming together, so it reifies modernist dualisms of reli- utterance of freedom. Orality has a they came as they were to congregate gion vs science, faith vs truth, objective drama which the textual and digital against patriarchal Hindutva and per- vs subjective, traditional vs modern, cannot match. Orality demands a return formed art32 that expressed resistance, expert vs lay and modernity vs paro- to memory and storytelling. Shaheen qawallis (a Thowheedi would otherwise chiality. To talk about issues that lie in Bagh demonstrated that the social con- oppose), sermons (which expresses the between the dualistically established tract in India now has to link oral, tex- 30. Ibid. categories is to talk with difficulty. tual, digital and give a sanctity to the oral, 31. Slavoj Zizek, ‘Into the Archives of Islam’, Towards more difficult conversations in S. Zizek and B. Gunjevi, God in Pain: and the creative Muslim order that’s 29. Shiv Visvanathan, ‘The Symbolism of Inversions of Apocalypse. Seven Stories emergent, (lal) Salaam. Shaheen Bagh’, Seminar 729, May 2020. Press, New York, 2012, pp. 103-126. 87 Accessed 20 June 2020. http://ww.india- 32. Fearless Wall at Shaheen Bagh| Shilo Shiv Suleman, 1 April 2020. Accessed 21 June seminar.com/2020/729/729_shiv_ Suleman. Performed by The Fearless Collec- 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= visvanathan.htm. tive. Fearless Wall at Shaheen Bagh| Shilo Shiv Y48uBRjGQvE.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 The pandemic and the Tibetan students MOUSUMI MUKHERJEE

The racist behaviour towards our ethnicity both domestic and international stu- has increased since the spread of the Corona- dents. In many college campuses, they virus pandemic. We have been treated as if we have brought the virus to this society. are officially treated as any other The most recent experience of racism that I domestic student, as many of them are experienced was during our trip to Goa in first-generation Tibetans born in India. March, right when the lockdown was However, since some of them announced. People called us ‘Corona’ and saying ‘Go away, you, Chinese’ in addition to are born in Tibet and came to India only the rude ways they behaved towards us. while in high school or even later after We had many Indian friends from North East high school for college degrees, they in the group, who were also treated no differ- are treated as international students. ent. We are all born in India and it is like a second home to us, Tibetans. Hence, Tibetan students have to man- We are thankful to the country and its people. age a complex maze of identity chal- But this behaviour is not tolerable. The beauty lenges within the mainstream Indian of India has always been in the diversity of its higher education system. culture and religions that make it so unique. Moreover, my research findings We are a part of it and we want change in the unhealthy mindset of those who are treating reveal that Tibetan students are also us in racist manner. facing a very unfortunate issue of racist attacks following the recent global THE above vignette from an interview coronavirus pandemic. Tibetan stu- I conducted recently with a Tibetan- dents and the community at large have Indian college student in Delhi, born in been facing denial of their cultural Manali, Himachal Pradesh, tells the rights for a long time, even prior to the unfortunate story of racist profiling pandemic. The Tibetan cultural rights that many Tibetan and Indian students are not just jeopardized by Chinese from the Northeast are facing now in occupation of Tibet and forceful pro- the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic motion of mainstream Chinese lan- in India. In this article, I will specifically guage and culture through schooling,1 focus on the experiences of Tibetan Tibetan cultural rights are being also students and how their cultural rights violated in India because of mainstream are being violated because of racist pro- Indian ignorance about Tibet and cons- filing as Northeast Indians or Chinese. tant racist profiling of Tibetan students My research seeking to learn as Northeast Indians, who are also about Tibetan student experiences denied their cultural and citizenship began last year as part of a larger pro- rights by the mainstream Indian society. ject to study the experiences of differ- Northeast Indian students have ent groups of international students historically faced racist profiling and studying in India. The Tibetan students discrimination within the larger main- are not officially accounted for in the stream Indian context. Often they are official Indian government statistics 88 as International students studying in 1. G. Postiglione, ‘Dislocated Education: The Case of Tibet’, Comparative Education India. Their identity somewhere disap- Review 53(4), 2009, pp. 483-512. doi:10.1086/ pears in the government accounts on 603616

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 treated badly with racist slurs, such as would have become a perfect demo- ‘Nepali’ or ‘Chinki’, because of their The Coronavirus pandemic began cracy by now following the constitu- East Asian or Mongoloid features. spreading around the world from tional law, which came into force 70 Many incidents have been reported in Wuhan China around December 2019. years ago. Reports on racist attacks the media before. The racist imaginary In India, the situation was quite normal against the Northeast Indians kept of mainstream Indian society and poor and number of infected people very pouring in through the newspapers. treatment of Northeast Indians have low till the beginning of March. Things However, the experiences of the been documented and also critiqued began changing rapidly with the sud- Tibetan student community remained by a number of academics.2 In recent den announcement of a public curfew invisible, subsumed under the general times, following the pandemic, a on 22 March and then the national category of anybody with Mongoloid number of racist incidents involving lockdown from 24 March. features as Northeast Indians or Nepali Northeast Indians have been reported I had to cancel my own interview within the Indian context, who often in the media and comparisons have schedule with students and fieldwork hear racist slurs from mainstream been made with the spike of racism related to my research. Even prior to Indians as ‘Chinki’. in the United States following the the curfew and national lockdown, a pandemic.3 number of my research participants in Delhi colleges from the Tibetan com- I began learning about the racist munity began reporting to me over the attacks and discriminatory experi- However, in this article I will specifi- phone that the Himachal government ences that the Tibetan students were cally focus on the experiences of the had ordered all tourists to leave the facing through my personal contacts Tibetan students based on my own state and will stop interstate buses to with these students. However, just as ethnographic research with the Tibetan enter Himachal from 23 March. So, the identity of the Tibetan students are student community over the past one they needed to return home as they invisible in the Indian government year. Drawing on ethnographic evi- have also received notices from their documents, and somewhat blurred in dence and Clammer’s theorising4 of hostels to leave with higher educational the college records, their experiences the concept of ‘cultural rights’, this arti- institutions being made to shut down of racist discrimination are also invis- cle will also analyse how the Tibetan from 16 March by order from the ible in the public discourse and media. Youth-led civil society organization, the UGC (University Grants Commission) I was not surprised when the Tibetan Youth Congress, has been and MHRD (Ministry of Human secretary of the Tibetan Youth Con- campaigning using the new digital Resource Development). gress reported to me recently that social media to educate people about I had no choice but to postpone many Tibetan students across the the cause of Free Tibet and to also fight the interview schedules till the Fall country have requested TYC to send for their cultural rights faced with racist semester. However, I kept regular com- them ‘Free Tibet’ t-shirts out of frus- discrimination in India as Northeast munication with the students through tration faced with racist slurs and dis- Indians or Chinese. WhatsApp messages and occasional crimination as ‘Chinki’ carriers of the phone calls to check on their well- Coronavirus. By wearing these t-shirts, 2. D. McDuie-Ra, ‘“Is India Racist?’ Mur- being. Through these messages and they want to let people know that they der, Migration and Mary Kom’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 38 (2), 2015, phone calls, I slowly began to know are not Northeast Indians or Chinese. pp 304-19; K. Samson, ‘North-east and about the racist profiling that some of They want to educate people about Chinky: Countenances of Racism in India’, these students were also experiencing, their struggle for freedom from China Journal of Development Practice 3, 2017, pp. 20-28; T. Ngaihte, ‘Nido Taniam and the along with the Northeast Indian stu- and the cause of ‘Free Tibet’. Fraught Question of Racism in India’, Eco- dents. As the scare of Coronavirus Despite the negative discrimina- nomic & Political Weekly 49(11), 2014, began spreading even before the lock- tory experiences, I found a sense of pp 15-17; J.J.P. Wouters and B.S. Tanka, down, reports on racist profiling and gratitude towards India among the ‘The “Indian Face”, India’s Northeast, and “The Idea of India”’, Asian Anthropology attacks on Northeast Indians began Tibetan students I interviewed, includ- 12(2), 2013, pp. 126-40. appearing in the newspapers with ing the current president and secretary 3. N. Kipgen, ‘COVID-19 Pandemic and Rac- MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) advi- of the Tibetan Youth Congress, both of ism in the United States and India’, Economic sory asking people to stop discrimina- and Political Weekly 55(23), 2020, pp. 22-26. tion against Northeast Indian people.5 5. ‘Coronavirus Outbreak: MHA Advises 89 4. J. Clammer, Cultural Rights and Justice: against Discrimination of Northeast People’, Sustainable Development, the Arts and the However, if government orders The Hindu, 23 March 2020, https:// www. Body. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore, 2019. and laws would be so effective, India thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 whom are my former students. India IMAGE 1 Through my phone conversa- for them is not just a refuge, a safe Poster of a recent rally in New York and tions with former students now head- Toronto following the Galwan valley haven compared to Chinese occupied conflict with the Chinese troops ing the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), Tibet, they see India and Indians as I came to know that they have doubled- their primary ally to fight against Chi- up their efforts in the middle of the nese government aggression in Tibet. pandemic, utilizing digital social media- They have also gained inspiration from led campaigns, to educate people and Gandhi’s nonviolent freedom move- raise more awareness about the cause ment and strategies of nonviolent pro- of ‘Free Tibet’. According to the TYC tests during British rule in India. leadership, this was the only way to stop racist discrimination against Tibet- ans as carriers of the Coronavirus and In fact, one of the student, Kalden, to also increase international pressure who recently returned from New York on the Chinese government for greater after completing a Fulbright fellowship, accountability regarding the way they told me that because of his features, managed the Coronavirus pandemic most of his professors and classmates and also the Tibet issue. ‘Make China identified him with East Asian and Accountable 2020’ and ‘Global Move- Chinese students in class. But, he him- ment to Boycott Made in China’ are self befriended Indian students. two major digital social media cam- Kalden was born in Mundgod, lack in understanding diverse perspec- paigns launched by TYC in the middle Karwar district, in the state of Karna- tives and cultural attitudes.’ of the lockdown and the pandemic. taka, and did his schooling in Bylakuppe and Bangalore University before receiving a Fulbright scholar- Another student, Dalha, also exp- Though TYC is utilizing digital social ship. This student reported that he had ressed a similar sentiment. She stated: networking sites to spread their cam- experienced racist behaviour in India ‘As the saying goes, little knowledge paigns globally, and to educate people even before the Coronavirus pan- is dangerous. We need to educate peo- about the cause of ‘Free Tibet’ and demic. Though he spoke Kannada flu- ple to remove misunderstandings and Chinese government atrocities to sup- ently, as he was born in Karnataka, unhealthy rumours; education is a must. press their cultural rights and identity, local people, including auto-rickshaw Letting others know the other side of I found a good deal of compassion and drivers did not accept him as a local and the story will surely let them realise the sensitivity among the TYC leadership was always asked where he came from. consequences of their racist action. for Chinese people in general. One of Once while he was standing in Moreover, the society that ceases to the TYC leaders clearly stated during a queue inside his college campus, accept differences will never grow. But, our recent phone conversation: ‘Our some students got engaged in a scuf- the racist behaviour towards our ethni- nonviolent fight is against the authori- fle. Though he was not involved, a par- city has increased since the Corona pan- tarian Chinese government, not against ent pointed a finger at him, saying: ‘This demic. We have been treated as if we the Chinese people. In fact, boycotting is not Nagaland. Go back to your state have brought the virus to this society. Chinese goods will probably release and create trouble!’ Despite this expe- ‘In response to the racist behav- many Chinese workers from the fac- rience, the student explained it away iour, we try to educate people and tell tories that are sweatshops, where they as being due to a lack of multicultural them we are part of this great country are forced to work under the authori- education. He further emphasized that just as much as they are. Recently, tarian government.’ though people often looked down on the when there was a conflict in the Indo- Through my interviews and study of humanities and ethnic studies, Chinese border, many Tibetans and informal interactions with the Tibetan it can help us become better human Indians from the Northeast were in the students since last year, I found a dis- beings. During an interview, he stated: front lines to defend the country, just tinct difference in perspective among ‘Society looks down at the humanities as the Indian army. I have shared the many young Tibetans. I found that 90 studies. But, I think this is why the peo- stories on many social media plat- those who were born in Tibet and ple (especially those involved in sub- forms. This is one way I try to educate came to India later for studies were jects such as engineering and medicine) people.’ more passionate about the ‘Free Tibet’

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 IMAGE 2 News report of recent Tibetan rally in India following the Galwan valley conflict

movement of the Tibetan Youth Con- pation, freedom of their mind to pre- theorises cultural rights and justice as gress, while those students born in serve Tibetan language, culture and recognition, protection and respect for India had a more conciliatory attitude. heritage appeared to be more important. cultural diversity as a cornerstone for For these young Tibetan-Indians, it A strong sense of injustice sustainable development.6 He also does not matter anymore if Tibet is part appeared to be troubling many of them emphasized the critical role of the arts of China. Tibetans are now not just in as they struggle for their cultural rights and social movements as transforma- India, but are spread around the world in Tibet, in India, and other parts of the tive forces that could help bring about as diaspora. For these young Tibetans world, with regards to their own sense the necessary change to reinstate cul- (including the Karnataka, India born of identity and cultural affiliation vis- tural rights. He writes: Fulbright scholar) more than territorial à-vis how others see them based on ‘The uncovering of the conception of freedom of Tibet from Chinese occu- their physical appearance. Clammer cultural rights proves to be a rich and complex “anthropological” exercise – IMAGE 3 TYC Launch of the Global Movement to Boycott Made in China one that negotiates the global and the local, is concerned with the identifica- tion and recovery of forms of local knowledge, which respects the often radically differing epistemologies and aesthetics of different cultural systems, which seeks the preservation and pro- tection of such systems in a danger- ously culturally and linguistically homogenised world, which seeks not only to “respect” cultural rights to free expression, but to advance such rights and to establish their equality… ‘Political activism is of course the main means by which people have sought to change society. The pursuit of cultural rights however, also entails cultural activism, which can take many forms.’7 91

6. J. Clammer, 2019, op. cit.

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 They take utmost care through each power to establish self-rule or ‘swaraj’ Indeed, the young Tibetan students of these posts to educate people about by people of the local community. in the 21st century, and in the middle the Tibetan language, culture, history, India stands out as one of the forerun- of a global pandemic, have undertaken religion and the struggles of the Tibetan ners in the ‘swaraj’ movement for ter- digital social networking sites as their people to preserve their cultural rights ritorial freedom and self-rule led by the platform for political activism to spread faced with the oppression of commu- Indian National Congress under the awareness about Chinese occupation nist authoritarian Chinese government. nonviolent leadership of Gandhi fight- of Tibet and suppression of cultural ing for justice and freedom. rights of Tibetans. By spreading their During my research with the campaigns through online petitions on A s an educator, I am passionate students in the Tibetan community, I Change.org8 and through the digital about education and social change. The observed a strong desire among many social networking sites to the Tibetan statements from the Tibetan students Tibetan students born in India for recog- community around the world, the about the need to educate people about nition, preservation and respect of their Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) is unit- the cause of ‘Free Tibet’, Tibetan cul- cultural rights, rather than a strong ing Tibetans and their allies across ture and society, and all the political desire for ‘Free Tibet’. Though the geographical boundaries from Dharam- activism they are involved in to raise desire for ‘Free Tibet’ is very strong shala to Delhi, New York to Toronto, awareness makes me hopeful. Global mostly among students born in Tibet, and Tokyo and beyond. history provides us with a number of faced with discrimination as Chinese A digital ethnography of their examples to show that such forceful virus in the middle of the pandemic, posts in these social networking sites suppression of people’s cultural rights TYC has received requests even from reveals the strong desire of TYC for jus- after forceful occupation of their lands, many Tibetan students born in India tice and cultural rights through recogni- often leads to a strong backlash. for ‘Free Tibet’ t-shirts now. TYC has tion, protection and respect for cultural Some countries, such as the also doubled-up their campaign against diversity, as Clammer has argued. Each United States, Canada, South Africa the Chinese government seeking to and every post of the Tibetan Youth and Australia are now seeking the path capitalize on the current international Congress on social networking sites is of reconciliation for injustices they sentiments against China because of written in the Tibetan language and have done in the past to the indigenous the Coronavirus global pandemic and script followed by an English transla- communities, whose lands the white the emerging cold war between the US tion. The president of TYC and other settlers from Europe occupied. Within and China. youth leaders give speeches in Tibetan, the Asian context, we have seen a num- which are then translated into English. ber of forceful overturning of Imperial IMAGE 4 Only time will prove if ‘Free Tibet’ International Day of Justice campaign video on TYC social networking site will be ever realized or if the Chinese government will ever walk the path of reconciliation like some western impe- rial governments through recognition, preservation and respect for cultural diversity in Chinese occupied Tibet. In the meantime, hopefully these on-site and digital campaigns by the Tibetan students will raise some awareness among the mainstream Indian society about the Tibetan community and their struggle for cultural rights against Chi- nese government oppression. 7. Ibid., pp. 173-174. 8. https://www.change.org/p/secretary- general-of-united-nation-make-china- 92 accountable-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-and- resignation-of-who-director-dr-tedros/ outbreak-mha-advises-against-discrimination- of- northeast-people/article31145387

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 Comment NEP 2020 on legal education AMID the din of contrarian voices on the issue of Though seemingly benign, the above prescript medium of instruction emanating from the recently may well be the coup-de-grace for various stand-alone adopted National Education Policy, 2020 (hereinafter professional education institutes/universities of excel- ‘NEP’), of significant concern is the cursory yet sig- lence; it certainly sets the clock back by three decades nificantly damaging manner in which professional on the reforms in legal education. What the NEP wholly education, specifically legal education, has been dealt fails to acknowledge is the fact that the five-year inte- with therein. grated LLB programme was mooted in the early 1970s The NEP dedicates barely a single paragraph as a remedy to ensure that legal education moves out towards laying down its ‘profound’ vision vis-à-vis of the prevalent isolated and silo-based approach. legal education. It begins with the regular, and by-now Thus by its very nature, the five-year integrated overwhelmingly mundane, alliterations for the need to B.A./B.Sc. L.L.B. was tasked towards adopting an restructure legal education towards becoming ‘globally inter-disciplinary approach to law and its teaching. competitive’, ‘adopting the best practices’ and ‘embrac- This is precisely where the stand-alone ing new technology’. Further, this prescription as out- university/institution, subsequently which came to be lined by the newly christened Ministry of Education is referred to as the National Law University (NLU), was sought to be tempered with such ideals as ‘Constitu- conceived and considered innate to an integrated tional values of Justice – Social, Economic, and Politi- teaching of law, humanities and social-sciences. There- cal – and directed towards national reconstruction fore, the supposed novel ruminations of the NEP, through instrumentation of democracy, rule of law, and 2020 had already been considered, outlined and adopted human rights.’ prior to the National Policy on Education, 1986. However, the NEPs overall vision concerning The NLUs were born out of the need for quality ‘Professional Education’ may be taken as heedless professional education in the field of law. Had the law objective prescriptions for ailments that are very departments in various universities been offering legal clearly subjective. Specifically taking legal education, education at par with the requirements of an emerging what is of utmost concern is the almost cavalier man- corporate white collar India, the doyen of modern legal ner in which the policy envisions its ‘discouragement’ education in India, Prof. (Dr.) N.R. Madhava Menon, for stand-alone law universities in the following would not have stated that ‘…the quality of legal edu- manner: cation imparted in these colleges declined from the ‘20.2. …Stand-alone agricultural universities, legal professional perspective.’1 universities, health science universities, technical With more than three decades since the estab- universities, and stand-alone institutions in other fields, lished of the first NLU, i.e. the National Law School of shall aim to become multidisciplinary institutions India University, Bangalore (NLSIU) in 1986, it can be offering holistic and multidisciplinary education. All no ones case that the experiment has failed. In fact, its institutions offering either professional or general edu- further emulations in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhopal and cation will aim to organically evolve into institutions/ Delhi to name a few have only furthered the benchmark 95 clusters offering both seamlessly, and in an integrated 1. The Birth of National Law School (available at https:// manner by 2030.’ law.careers360.com/articles/birth-of-national-law-school)

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 of excellence in the field of professional legal educa- tion. Therefore, for the NEP to advocate a winding back of the clock is counterintuitive to say the least. Nonetheless, my ex-facie disagreement with the NEP in this regard ought not be taken as an attempt to gloss over the multitude of issues at the NLUs ranging from limited accessibility, high tuition fee, inbreeding of teaching staff and infrastructural issues to an overarching inclination towards corporate law. To add to this, for the longest the University Grants Commission (UGC) did not deem it fit to provide adequate funding to these NLUs and this led to a quid pro quo situation whereby the respective state gove- rnments demanded a domiciliary quota in return for financial assistance. However, these limitations do not in the least warrant that stand-alone National Law Universities be relegated to functioning as mere law departments in a larger establishment or to unnecessarily operate in clus- ters merely to be in line with a flawed policy that does not understand the associated professional require- ments of the field. The NEP gives no notable advance- ment in policy direction toward enlarging the scope of interface between legal practitioners and law schools. In fact, unnecessarily stringent and somewhat dilatory considerations vis-à-vis faculty at law schools (both NLUs and non-NLUs) has for decades now detracted from greater infusion of the practical industry centric knowledge and expertise and unfortunately shall con- tinue to do so under the new policy. In conclusion, attention must be drawn to another suggestion wherein the NEP ordains that, ‘20.4. …State institutions offering law education must consider offering bilingual education for future lawyers and judges – in English and in the language of the State in which the law programme is situated.’ The above proposition outlines the fundamental lack of understanding of the NLU model and unfortu- nately plays right into the hands of advocates of domi- ciliary reservations. The NLUs were always meant to cater to the best of talent from across the nation and in that there was a tacit acceptance that the graduating batch will invariably spread across the various legal hubs across the nation. Therefore, for instance a stu- dent from Mumbai coming to study at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore will in all probability not practise law in the state of Karnataka and would thus have no utility in being taught law in the 96 Kannada language.

Ivan and Vivek Mathur

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 In memoriam Ebrahim Alkazi 1925-2020 HE believed the devil was in the detail. I was his stu- tive and cultural fraternity. Writers, artists, poets, film- dent. He was fastidious and meticulous. A staunch dis- makers, actors, directors were in and out of our home ciplinarian, he directed and ruled his community of and I was naturally drawn to them and their work. The students with singleminded passion to achieve a level experience was profound and solid. I acted in plays of perfection that other institutions did not demand at school and spent most of my time in the art room. with the same, strict determination. Excellence was his Everything else was secondary. At university my endeavour and he instilled that sensibility in all of us priorities were exactly like they were at school and who were privileged to have him as our teacher. There I found I had been expelled from Miranda House after were no cutting corners permitted, no clumsy and care- I completed the first year. less interventions allowed. To think through every I then decided to follow what was my passion. move, to use the mind to question and debate, listen and Theatre. I applied to join the National School of argue till convinced, was what he taught me. That pre- Drama and went to meet Alkazi. School had already cious legacy has remained the bedrock of my life. started and he spent an hour discouraging me to join, I first met Alkazi as a young girl in Bombay when scaring me off by saying the plays would be in Hindi I went with my parents to see a play he had directed, and that I was not fluent and comfortable in the lan- staged on the roof terrace of the building where he guage; that the students came from across India, and lived with his family. He had designed an open air, from varying backgrounds, and that I would not fit in rooftop theatre where his passion kept his spirit alive. with ease. Finally, I persuaded him to let me sit for His wife and children, the extended family, friends and the entrance exam, albeit late, and take it from there. aquaintances, all gathered regularly to witness the per- I recall a piece I had to enact from Andha Yug, a silo… formances he staged. But that memory remains blurred of Gandhari, after which there was a rigorous viva. and distant. I was admitted for a three-year course to train as a thea- A decade later, Alkazi had become the Director tre director. of the National School of Drama in New Delhi, and had Ebrahim Alkazi had a larger than life persona, the begun to impact, dramatically, the cultural scene in the kind they do not make anymore. He encompassed a capital. At the time, I was a senior at Modern School, fund of knowledge and exuded the confidence that very interested in theatre, film and the arts, an interest comes with ongoing learning. He came from a lands- 97 that became the mainstay of everything I did thereon. cape that was peopled by progressives, men and women My parents were an intrinsic part of that larger crea- who were experimenting with their craft, in the wide

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020 and exciting realm of the arts and literature. They were sional spirit and expertise that he instilled in his student ‘collectors’ of both the intangible and the tangible. They community. Some joined the film industry, others were were all history in the making. India was a newly inde- linked to both film and theatre. The range of produc- pendent nation state and these professionals were tions he staged, from Danton’s Death to Andha Yug, influencing and impacting film and theatre, literature from Medea, Yerma, Cherry Orchard, to Hori, Jasma and art, dance and music. The list was long and diverse. Odan, Three Penny Opera that was translated into His wife, Roshan, came from a family of active practi- Teen Takke ka Swang, and Caucasian Chalk Circle, to tioners in the arts, Bobby Padamsee and Alyque, Akbar an experiment with Kabuki as a form, and more, all Padamsee the great painter. She mastered costume translated into Hindi, he encapsulated a trajectory of design and was responsible for dressing all the charac- world history, in time and space, in both his teaching ters in the plays he directed. Research was the key and and sharing. The training, apart from reading and she taught us, as students, how to conjure up the ward- understanding scripts and texts in their historical con- robe for characters in a play and establish time and place texts, included costume and set design, the study of in its historical context. Every prop mattered as did the theatre architecture be it the Koothambalam in Kerala, colour and texture of the costume. Their two children, the amphitheatre of the Greeks, to the Proscenium and Amal and Feisal, grew up in this 24x7 theatre space. It Black Box, the mastering of makeup techniques and was their life. It anchored them and both have carried also competence in carpentry. The teaching faculty was further the passion and commitment to theatre that excellent, all greats in their fields. He created the their parents had imbibed in them. Amal married a medi- Meghdoot theatre alongside Rabindra Bhavan where cal doctor, Nisar Allana, who very quickly became a the NSD was housed. It was an open air ‘auditorium’ set designer of excellence. Theatre enveloped them all. where the seating area was as deep as the perform- They lived, ate, slept theatre. ance space and where, for its inauguration with For me, he was a saviour, a mentor, a guide, friend Premchand’s Hori, an entire village was built and and philosopher. He ignited a range of emotions, from inhabited to ensure the best of realism. We as students awe to supreme aggravation, onto anger and then, helped build Meghdoot and it gave us all a sense of affection. He devoted himself fully to his students, to ownership, ownership of our professional domain. the institution and to the cause of theatre. He instilled Like theatre captured the spirit of times past and in us the discipline of team spirit, of learning and asking present, so did his second avatar as a gallerist, a vora- questions, of thinking out of the box, of research and cious collector and meticulous archivist. His eye was a the exploration of ideas, of the importance of observa- sharp lens that wanted to probe and discover images tion and dissection, of reflection, all of which compelled and icons that told the many truths and unending a respect for diverse views and opinions. When we did stories of humankind. His life was a stage where ‘his- a Chekhov play, we had to read and study the period it tories’ entered and exited. He too will become an was set in; what was happening in the world at the time; important ‘history’ of our times. His collection of pho- what did people wear; what was the cuisine in Russia; tography, through time, is priceless. He was a fine what was the style and design of the architecture, the painter himself and Amal recently exhibited his works furniture, the gardens and more. The range of the at Art Heritage, a gallery he set up at Triveni Kala experience was overwhelming. From the folk tradi- Sangam, with Roshan. tions of India to the classical, from Jasma Odan to He will be recalled and remembered as a man Mrichakatikam; from Shakespeare to Bertolt Brecht, who followed his passion and, like an enigmatic leader, Othello to Caucasian Chalk Circle; it was an infinite impassioned his followers. I was privileged. He was experience that kept unfolding histories and stories of my guru, he put me on track and gave me the confidence the past and the present. The diversity was staggering, I needed to follow my many aspirations. When I moved as was the learning. The world was his stage, the stage on and away, his enduring spirit guided and directed was his world, and we peopled it for the years we were me, silently but surely, into my unknown future. The at the NSD. energy, compassion and spirit of Ebrahim Alkazi, an Great actors were born under his tutelage. institution of his time, will live on as an important mile- Manohar Singh, Uttara Baokar, Surekha Sikri, Om Puri, stone in the contemporary history of India. 98 Raj Babbar, Nadira Babbar, M.K. Raina, Naseeruddin Shah, Amal Alkazi Allana, Meena Walwalkar and Malvika Singh many more confidently carried forward the profes- Publisher, Seminar

SEMINAR 733 – September 2020