nov 2012 - rh

Founder Editor: M. N. Roy

512

THE RADICAL HUMANISTNOVEMBER 2012

Rs. 20/monthVol. 76 No 8

(Since April 1949)

Formerly : Independent India (April 1937- March 1949)

Secular Humanist Paul Kurtz passes away(December 21, 1925 - October 20, 2012)

THE RADICAL HUMANIST NOVEMBER 2012

The Radical Humanist

Monthly journal of the

Indian Renaissance Institute

Devoted to the development of the Renaissance

Movement; and for promotion of human rights,

scientific-temper, rational thinking and a humanist

view of life.

Founder Editor:

M.N. Roy

Editor:

Dr. Rekha Saraswat

Contributory Editors:

Prof. A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed, Dr. R.M. Pal, Professor

Rama Kundu

Publisher:

Mr. N.D. Pancholi

Printer:

Mr. N.D. Pancholi

Send articles to: Dr. Rekha Saraswat, C-8, Defence

Colony, Meerut, 250001, U.P., India, Ph.

91-121-2620690, 09719333011,

E-mail articles at: [email protected]

Send Subscription / Donation Cheques in favour of

The Radical Humanist to:

Mr. Narottam Vyas (Advocate), Chamber Number

111 (Near Post Office), Supreme Court of India, New

Delhi, 110001, India [email protected]

Ph. 91-11-22712434, 91-11-23782836, 09811944600

Please Note: Authors will bear sole

accountability for corroborating the facts that they

give in their write-ups. Neither IRI / the Publisher

nor the Editor of this journal will be responsible

for testing the validity and authenticity of

statements & information cited by the authors.

Also, sometimes some articles published in this

journal may carry opinions not similar to the

Radical Humanist philosophy; but they would be

entertained here if the need is felt to debate and

discuss upon them. —Rekha Saraswat

Vol. 76 Number 8 November 2012

www.theradicalhumanist.com

1. From the Editor’s Desk:

Secular Humanism in India:A Remote Possibility

—Rekha Saraswat 1

2. Paul Kurtz: Obituaries 2

Remembering Paul Kurtz

—Sanal Edamaruku 5

Paul Kurtz: Father of Secular Humanism,

—Nathan Bupp 7

Paul Kurtz & the Virtue of Skepticism:

—Michael Shermer 11

12 Reminiscing about Paul Kurtz

—Center For Inquiry 15

3. Guests’ Section:

Protecting Biodiversity and Soil Fertility

—J. Sharath Chandra Rao 20

Scattered Ruminations on M. N. Roy’s Ideas

—B.P. Rath 22

Reservation in Promotions

—Mastram Kapoor 24

4. Current Affairs’ Section:

Is it Economics versus Politics?

—K.S. Chalam 27

FDI; UPA; Water disputes; Rahul’s Initiative

—N.K. Acharya 29

5. IRI / IRHA Members’ Section:

Turmoil in North-East: A Lesson From Sikkim

—Subhankar Ray 31

6. Teacher’s & Research Scholar’s Section:

The 'Maid of Honor': Humanity hidden in slums!

—Namita S. Kalla 33

7. Book Review Section:

The Magic in the Trees

—Dipavali Sen 34

8. Humanist News Section: 36

Contents

From The Editor’s Desk—

Secular Humanism in India:

A Remote Possibility

The idea of a secular kind ofhumanism is still alien to the

vast majority of us Indians. I do notknow what the percentage of secular humanists in

the West vis-à-vis the religious society is; butleaving aside a few conglomerations in the name ofthe heritage of path-setters, like Gora and Periyar,who have named themselves as the Rationalist andAtheist groups, humanism in India is completelyimmersed in religion. Our personal conduct, oursocial behaviour and our political choices, all havereligious connotations.

M.N. Roy was a rationalist humanist, who haddreamt of a scientific renaissance in India in hisfinal years. But he had a history of a politicalactivist also and many in the fold are still undecidedabout the hue and purpose of our radical humanistmovement. Whether it should be a rationalistmovement, a socialist movement, a politicalactivist movement or a combination of all the threewith special emphasis upon a cause which would bethe need of the hour is still a matter of personalsensibility in the assemblage.

We are such experts in converting a logical thoughtinto a myth that even Gautam Buddha and Mahavir,who were themselves averse to the concept of anysuper human power, are now revered in our societyas deities. Their ideologies are taught as twodistinct varieties of Buddhist and Jain religions.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati, a religious reformer,who was strictly against any kind ofidol-worshipping, is himself adulated in every AryaSamaj Temple with his picture or sculpturegarlanded by his followers all over the world.

To be secular in views and to be secular in actionare two very different things in our culture ormaybe in other societies too. We may vouch forrational philosophical interpretations of life’shappenings but we adopt a complete irrationalbehaviour in practice; sometimes in the name of

social pressure, sometimes in the name of habit andmany times in the name of family expectations. Theexact reason behind this quasi-rationalism mayprobably be the quasi-conviction in one’s ownrational perceptions! Slight provocation byunexpected happenings or developments in ourlives or surroundings shakes our rationale, makingus so insecure that we tend to revert to faith-healingand a spiritual-reprieve.

It is usually said that skepticism needs abackground of sound logic. Sound logic needs abackdrop of strong alternatives. Strong alternativesneed a history of profound wisdom of thephenomena around us. If we examine our legacy onthat scale, there has been no dearth of wisdom inour past. We have almost the longest heritage ofsages and sears, Sufis and saints who spent longyears in caves and islands, beside the rivers and onmountain-tops and travelling from one corner ofthe nation to the other, studying nature’sphenomena and preaching their derivedperspectives to their disciples. But all ourtruth-seekers succumbed to the pressures of faithand the aura of the unknown. Finally, they usedtheir scepticism in relegating and depredatingChârvak’s reasoning to the ulterior motive ofacquisitive-materialistic salvation.

The farthest that we could go in the name of secularhumanism was to suggest a kind of co-existence toall the religious cults in our political system. We arestill correlating culture and decency, sincerity andauthenticity with our level of devotion andfaithfulness to our religions, consciously andsubconsciously. Like the medieval politicalimplications we still seem to agree with the ideathat one’s faith-abiding instincts naturally lead tothe law-abiding habit.

A civic society where the need to co-exist leads tothe moral sensibilities of controlled, cooperativebehaviour and not the fear of a reprimanding rod ofthe supernatural is a long way to go. We needanother Paul Kurtz for us, here, in India, and soon!!— Rekha S.


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Paul Kurtz: The TirelessCrusader of Secular Humanist

Values

Dear Friends,

We are deeply grieved to learn about the sad demiseof Prof. Paul Kurtz. This November 2012 issue ofThe Radical Humanist is carrying obituaries fromradical humanists and rationalists.

I am also publishing the illustrious panorama of hislife from the Statement issued by Stuart Jordan,President, Institute for Science and Human Values;from the website of Center For Inquiry as well asthe complete article of the Founding Publisher ofSkeptic magazine and Executive Director of theSkeptics Society, Michael Shermeron, taken fromeskeptic.com

As we all know, The Radical Humanist journalgoes to a wide variety of readership but most of ourveteran readers are still not computer-savvy.Therefore, I am publishing the above statement andarticles about Prof. Kurtz for their benefit (givingfull details of the source names of the e-journalsand their respective URLs, if anyone of you wantsto read them directly at the sites).

This will help us all to know in greater details aboutthe tireless efforts put by Paul Kurtz and by thepeople working for the organisations founded byhim in giving secularism and humanism newmeanings and in evolving a completelyunambiguous secular humanist ideology guidedonly by reason, science and human values withoutborrowing the heavily loaded religious or spiritualdicta.

No one can replace Prof. Paul Kurtz and hisenigmatic ways of managing collective humanefforts towards his set goals but all who knew andagreed with his principles of life and philosophywill undauntedly carry forward his missionaccording to their own vision and imagination.Such efforts as his never go a waste and theydefinitely leave their indelible imprints on the

sands of time. The coming generations of newerscientific era are sure going to look back on hisachievements with awe and inspiration anddetermine in their minds that ‘well if he could go onamidst so much of opposition from the believingworld why can’t we’!!

In solidarity with Paul Kurtz’s mission and vision!

—Rekha S.

Editor, The Radical Humanist

[email protected]

Indian Renaissance Institutegrieved over the sad demise of

Prof. Paul Kurtz

Indian Renaissance Institute, India, isdeeply grieved over the sad demise of Prof.

Paul Kurtz who breathed his last on 20th October,2012. He worked and lived as an ideal humanist,rationalist and secularist. His life and writings haveinspired large number of individuals throughout theworld, especially in India, to adopt scientific andhumanist outlook. He toured many times in Indiaand participated in humanist conferences in orderto promote humanist movements. He helped indeveloping and promoting many humanistinstitutions in India like ‘Centre for Inquiry’ and‘Centre For the Study of Social Change’. He was agreat friend of leading Indian humanists andrationalists, some of the names are, V.M. Tarkunde,Prof. Sibnarian Ray, Innaiah Narisetti, SanalEdamaruku, Dr. Indumati Parikh and Sri. B.D.Sharma, (to name a few). Many of his books havebeen translated in several Indian Languages.

Indian Renaissance Institute, India, at this momentof great loss, resolves to re-dedicate its work andefforts to promote humanist, secular and rationalistvalues for which Prof. Paul Kurtz strivedthroughout his life - a resolution and a fitting tributeto his memory.

—N.D. Pancholi, Secretary,

Indian Renaissance Institute, India

[email protected]


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A Secular HumanistPhilosopher

The sudden death of Dr. Paul Kurtz on 20th

October in USA at the age of 86 is a greatloss to the world Humanist Movement. He was arenowned philosopher and founder editor of “FreeInquiry” magazine. He was the founder of apublishing house Prometheus Books which wasintended to propagate the values of Humanism,Secularism and free Inquiry. He was also thefounder of Institute for Science and Humanism. Hewas the author of 40 books. He was the founder ofCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry, Council forSecular Humanism and Center for Inquiry. He wasthe co–editor of Humanist Manifesto an updatedversion 1933 Original.

I became an admirer by reading his articles in the“Radical Humanist” magazine since two decades.I met him in 1997 at Buffalo, NY state USA alongwith two other Indian friends, and discussed aboutHumanist and Socialist Movements. This interviewwas fixed by my friend Dr. N. Innaiah.

Just as renowned social psychologist Dr. ErichFromm introduced socialist component into theHumanist Movement, Dr. Paul Kurtz Introducedsecular component into the Humanist Movement.Dr. Paul Kurtz was not nearly an academicphilosopher but was also a great activist. Hetravelled all over the world propagating secularhumanist values. He attended a world HumanistConference in Mumbai.

We should study the ideas and ideals of Dr. ErichFromm and Dr. Paul Kurtz of the West, Humanistthinker M.N. Roy and socialist thinker Dr.Rammanohar Lohia of the East, in order to build aNew Human Civilization and for the developmentof a New Human Culture.

—Ravela Somayya

Veteran Radical Humanist & Socialist

[email protected]

Extremely sorry to know about this. Wehad translated into Hindi and published

as a booklet the Secular Humanist Manifestodrafted by him. As you must have noticed, we havebeen translating and serializing his Neo-Humaniststatement in the Buddhiwadi. We have also beenassociated with Institute for Science and HumanValues (ISHV). I didn't get and opportunity to meethim, though I corresponded with him. Kawaljeetand my daughter, Priya, had an opportunity to meethim at the World Humanist Congress in Mumbai.We all are grieved by this.

—Ramendra Nath

Veteran Radical Humanist

([email protected])

It is great loss to the humanist, rationalist,secularist movement throughout world .

Prof Paul Kurtz died on 20 oct at the age of 86. I hadthe privilege to work with him since two decades. Iassociated with him in Center for Inquiry andInstitute of Human values. He encouraged mywritings: Forced into faith, writings of M N Roy,and The truth about Gita. We toured together inIndia and associated with several internationalseminars in USA.

—Innaiah Narisetti


([email protected])

It is indeed a great loss. He was a scholar, atrue humanist who lived his life teaching

others and working for human values and dignity. Ihad the opportunity to meet and discuss issues withhim several times thanks to my father's affiliationwith him and his work. He will be missed!

— Naveena Narisetti

Physicist, U.S.A

([email protected])


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It is indeed a great loss to the radicals. Myheartfelt condolences to the family

members, and also to the radical humanist andrationalist friends

—Mahi Pal Singh

Secretary, PUCL National

([email protected])

Passing Away of a

Secular Humanist“No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.”

—P.Kurtz

An international giant of SecularHumanist Movement, Paul Kurtz

(1925-2012) passed away on Saturday 20th ofOctober at the age of 86. This news was confirmedby the American Humanist Association. He wasone of the greatest contributors to the developmentof our non-theistic philosophy. He wrote that“to-day the campaign for equal rights and for abetter life for everyone knows no boundaries. Thisis the common ground for the people of the world:worthy of highest aspirations.”

When receiving a lifetime award for his work in2007, he declared: “I am a secular humanistbecause I am not religious. I draw my inspirationnot from religion or spirituality but from science,ethics, philosophy and the arts.” In recent years, theU.S.-based Prometheus has brushed aside threats to

publish studies on the origins of Islam that questionthe traditional history of the faith, and on thesituation of atheists and agnostics in Muslimcountries. “He was one of the most influentialfigures in the humanist and skeptical movementsfrom the late 1960s through the first decade of the21st century,” said an obituary issued by Centre forInquiry which was founded by him in 1991.

He coined the word “Eupraxsophy” and inspiringpeople with the “courage to become” whatever wewant, including a good humanist, with the basicspirit of the human being, living the good life andenjoying the exuberance of life. The word is basedon the Greek words for “good”, “practice”, and“wisdom”. Eupraxsophies, like religions, arecosmic in their outlook, but eschew thesupernatural component of religion, avoiding the“transcendental temptation,” as Kurtz puts it.Although critical of supernatural religion, he hasattempted to develop affirmative ethical values ofnaturalistic humanism.

He said that “our planetary community is facingserious problems that can only be solved bycooperative global action.”

We the Indian Radical Humanists pay sinceretribute to Paul Kurt for his life long passionate andcommitted fight for upholding human values.

—Bipin Shroff


[email protected]

I deeply appreciate the gesture of bringingthis sad news to all of us. I was one of those

who used to read his articles in the Radical

Humanist journal that was subscribed by AUlibrary. He was an original thinker. we have lost agreat philosopher and defender of humanist ethics.I join you in conveying our grief to the humanistcommunity.

—K.S. Chalam

Secular-Rational Activist

[email protected]


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Remembering Paul Kurtz

—Sanal Edamaruku

[Sanal Edamaruku is President, Rationalist

International and President, Indian Rationalist

Association [email protected]]

For many years, Paul Kurtz has been animportant figure in my life as well as in

the history of Rationalist International. He wasboth a travelling companion and a friend. Myspecial relation with him started with a post card. Ihad never met him, when he wrote to me that hewas personally very happy that the IndianRationalist Association has applied formembership of the IHEU, of which he was aco-president then. Later when we met atAmsterdam, he congratulated for what I was doingin India, and expressed interest in working closewith me. His vivid little eyes were twinkling. Heseemed to know his own mind so damn clearly.Always! That is how he was able to movemountains.

And mountains he moved in his life. Paul Kurtzwas a creator of precedents. Single-handedly, hecalled institutions into being and made them focalpoints and catalysers of a new intellectual andsocio-cultural movement: the Committee forSkeptical Inquiry (formerly Committee for theScientific Investigation of Claims of the

Paranormal, CSICOP), the Council for SecularHumanism, the Center for Inquiry, the Academy ofHumanism and finally the Institute for Science andHuman Values. Kurtz’ creations gainedmomentum as he animated, nurtured, shaped andgroomed them with utmost dedication and aprofessionalism you would not expect from aphilosopher. Paul was a great organizer and atalented and passionate networker.

We maintained regular contact ever since then –during the pre-email times over letters and laterintensely over the Internet. We met at several citiesacross the globe – in Europe, USA, Australia andIndia.

In September 2008, I met Paul for the last time. Hestopped over in India to receive an honorarydoctorate of the new Periyar-ManiammaiUniversity at Tamil Nadu and to speak at theRationalist Centre in Delhi on occasion of thesecond death anniversary of Joseph Edamaruku,my father.

His speech is deeply engraved in my memory. Sowas the last evening that we spent together,speaking heart to heart about past and future. Hewas on a mission, creating new Centres for Inquiry.Along with Innaiah Narisetti, the previous day wevisited Delhi’s Maulana Azad Medical College,where a new Centre for Inquiry was in theformation. The future never ceased to fascinatePaul. He was travelling alone then, 80 years old and


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not in best health, but in indefatigable spirits and

bursting with ideas and energy. He remained apioneer and a visionary till his end.

In my eyes, Paul’s greatest contribution was thesecularization of humanism. As M.N. Royre-casted humanism as Radical Humanism, Paultransformed it into “Secular Humanism", strippingthe movement that had once been widely perceivedas a new religion without god from all itspseudo-religious aspects and leanings. His SecularHumanism was closely linked to Skepticism andPhilosophy – a combination that so far did not existanywhere but in the Indian Rationalist Association.That was the deep root of attraction between us.Paul firmly aligned with me and with the evolvingRationalist International. His landmark speech “InPraise of Rationalism”, held in the secondInternational Rationalist Conference in January2000, was the beginning of a close cooperation.Rationalism and Secular Humanism became astrong tandem moving towards new horizons. Inthis conference, Paul Kurtz – an HonoraryAssociate of Rationalist International since its

inception in 1995 - received the first InternationalRationalist Award.

Our co-operation intensified in many fields, weworked on common publishing ventures betweenIndian Atheist Publishers and Prometheus Books. Iintroduced some of his most important writings,among them Transcendental Temptation andForbidden Fruit, in translation to Indian audiences.In September 2002, Paul invited me to speak in thefourth World Skeptic Conference at Burbankhosted by the CFI. It was a great conference, but themost important events took place in the lateevenings, when Paul called me to his hotel room todiscuss with me confidentially and for hours overtuna salad and wine about his insights and plans.We stayed in close contact and discussed manyaspects and developments in the world movement,took many common decisions and initiatives,sometimes of far reaching consequences. Paulwould sometimes call me at night from a cottage inthe French countryside where he used to spendmuch time or from a hotel swimming poolsomewhere in the world to discuss a strategy. Hecalled me also in May 2010, when he was toyingwith the idea of resigning all his positions. Wetalked long and exchanged numerous emails. I wasconvinced his resignation was a mistake andwarned him. But once more he seemed to know soclearly what he had to do. He resigned.

A series of emails over how he felt about theresignation followed. Since then we did not havemuch personal contact. He went into a kind of innerimmigration. I wished I had visited him some dayto discuss once more the future, over tuna salad andwine…................


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Dear Friends,

We are planning to organise an International Conference in Delhi in the first week of February2013 to commemorate the 125th Birth Year of M.N. Roy. A detailed programme will follow inthe December 2012 issue of RH and will be declared on the RH Web portal in the 3rd week ofNovember 2012. Please begin making your plans to attend it from where ever you are.

Looking forward to your suggestions also regarding the same. —Rekha S.

Paul Kurtz,

Publisher, Public Intellectual,And

"Father Of Secular Humanism,

Dies At 86(1925 - 2012)

—By Nathan Bupp

Institute for Science and Human Values,

Amherst, New York

Paul Kurtz, philosopher, prolific author,publisher, and founder of several secular

humanist institutions as well as the for-profitindependent press Prometheus Books, died onSaturday, October 20, 2012 at his home inAmherst, New York. He was 86.

Professor Kurtz was widely heralded as the "fatherof secular humanism." With his fifty plus books(many translated into foreign languages around theworld), multitudinous media appearances andpublic lectures, and other vast and seminalaccomplishments in the organized skeptic andhumanist movements, he was certainly the most

important secular voice of the second part of the20th century. He was an ardent advocate for thesecular and scientific worldview and a caring,ethical humanism as a key to the good life.

Kurtz was a professor of philosophy at the StateUniversity of New York at Buffalo from 1965 to hisretirement in 1991 as professor emeritus. Hefounded the publishing company PrometheusBooks in 1969, Skeptical Inquirer magazine andthe Committee for the Scientific Investigation ofClaims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) in 1976, Free

Inquiry magazine and the Council for SecularHumanism in 1980, and the Center for Inquiry in1991. Later projects included the launching of ascholarly journal, The Human Prospect, and a newnonprofit think tank, the Institute for Science andHuman Values (both in 2010) where he served aschairman until his death.

Paul Kurtz was born on December 21, 1925 inNewark, New Jersey. After graduating from highschool he enrolled into Washington Square Collegeat New York University, where he was electedfreshman class president and became head of astudent group called American Youth forDemocracy. This was the beginning of his longromance with the power of ideas, but soon hewould feel the call to serve his country.

Six months before his eighteenth birthday heenlisted in the army. In 1944 he and his unit foundthemselves smack in the middle of the Battle of theBulge. Kurtz would later recall, “I was on the frontlines for the rest of the war, in units liberatingFrance, Belgium, Holland, and Czechoslovakia.”He entered both the Buchenwald and Dachauconcentration camps shortly after they wereliberated and met the survivors of Nazi brutalityand their SS captors. It was an experience thatwould be seared in his memory for the rest of hislife. Kurtz traveled with a copy of Plato’s Republic

throughout the war, referring to it frequently duringdown times. His love of philosophy was becomingsolidified during the most trying of times.

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Upon the end of the war, Kurtz returned to theUnited States where he resumed his studies at NewYork University. It was there that he cameface-to-face with the pragmatic naturalist SidneyHook, the staunch anticommunist, humanist, andpublic philosopher who had studied himself underthe leading American philosopher of the first partof the 20th century, John Dewey. Kurtz would latercall this encounter “his most important intellectualexperience.”

As “Dewey’s Bulldog,” Hook’s fierce commitmentto democracy, humanism, secularism, and humanrights exerted a powerful influence on the youngstudent. Kurtz completed his undergraduate studiesat NYU in 1948 and decided to continue his studiesat Columbia University—where Dewey’sinfluence was even more palpable—but Hook andKurtz would remain lifelong colleagues andfriends. When Hook’s famous autobiography, Out

of Step, was published in 1987, Hook sent apersonal copy of the book to his former studentwith an inscription inside that read “Student,colleague, friend and co-worker in the vineyards inthe struggle for a free society, who will carry thetorch for the next generation.”

Kurtz went on to earn his MA and, in 1952, his PhDin philosophy at Columbia, where he studied undera group of distinguished professors—many of themformer students of Dewey—and all scholars withsterling reputations of their own. The title of hisdissertation was “The Problems of Value Theory.”His years at Columbia gave shape and definition tohis life; he emerged from his rich educationalexperience as a philosopher firmly under the swayof pragmatic, naturalistic humanism. The upshot ofthis orientation was the abiding conviction that itwas incumbent upon philosophers to descend fromthe isolation of the ivory tower and enter into thepublic arena where scientific and philosophicalwisdom can be applied to the concrete moral andpolitical problems of society at large and individualmen and women engaged in the heat of life. This isthe philosophical perspective that he would carrywith him for the rest of his professional life.

Before settling at SUNY-Buffalo, Kurtz heldacademic positions at Trinity College inConnecticut (1952-59), Vassar College (1959-60),and Union College in Schenectady, New York1960-65) during which time he also was a visitinglecturer at the New School for Social Research.

Kurtz was the editor of The Humanist magazinefrom 1967 to 1978 and was responsible for draftingHumanist Manifesto II, which was greeted withimmediate enthusiasm upon its release in 1973.Endorsements rolled in from Sidney Hook, IsaacAsimov, Betty Friedan, Albert Ellis, B.F. Skinner,Maxine Greene, and James Farmer from the UnitedStates, and Nobel Prize–winner Francis Crick, SirJulian Huxley, and A.J. Ayer from Great Britain.Altogether there were 275 signers. Humanist

Manifesto II also became instant news, with afront-page story appearing in the New York Times,and articles in Le Monde in France and the London

Times in Britain. An enduring phrase from thatdocument stood as a clarion call to all clear thinkingpeople that democratic, engaged, and responsiblecitizenship was needed like never before: “No deitywill save us; we must save ourselves.”

The international skeptics movement got a lift in1976 when Kurtz founded Skeptical Inquirer

magazine. Concerned during the mid-1970s withthe rampant growth of antiscience andpseudoscientific attitudes among the public atlarge, along with popular beliefs in astrology, faithhealing, and claims of UFO and bigfoot sightings,Kurtz, along with fellow colleagues MartinGardner and Joe Nickell, became a persistent foe ofclaptrap everywhere. As a critic of supernaturalismand the paranormal, he was consistently on the sideof reason, always demanding evidence forextraordinary claims. It was during this period thatKurtz emerged in the public square as a stalwartproponent of the need for critical thinking in allareas of human life.

As a champion of many liberal causes during hislifetime, Kurtz became, during the late 1960s andthroughout the 1970s, an ardent supporter of


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women's reproductive rights, voluntary euthanasia,the right to privacy, and the teaching of evolution inthe public schools. And he was adamantly opposedto discrimination on the basis of sexual orientationor skin color. Yet Kurtz often found himself thetarget of both the extreme left and the extremeright, as his own critical and moderatingintelligence often led him to embrace centristpositions on a variety of issues. He was a strongcritic of supernaturalism and religiousfundamentalism, but decidedly against the tone ofthe militant atheists.

During the student riots of the Vietnam era, Kurtzand his colleague Hook organized a moderateliberal-conservative coalition of faculty fromacross the New York state university system tooppose the often violent disruptions occurring oncampus, as rebellious students set fires, blockedentrances to classrooms, and staged sit-ins. Kurtzfound himself thrust into the middle of the dramaand the spotlight, as SUNY-Buffalo became knownas the “Berkeley of the East.” Kurtz’s battle againstthe mayhem made him a target of the student andfaculty radicals. Soon he was being bitterlycastigated as a “right-wing fascist” and “lackey ofKissinger, Nixon, and Rockefeller.”

But it was Kurtz’s deep involvement with theinternational humanist movement where hisindelible mark will be felt for many years to come.Of all his contributions, it was his role as theleading intellectual and organizational figure inhumanist and free-thought circles that he relishedthe most. It was the animating force of his prolificcareer. Bill Cooke, an intellectual historian, wrotein 2011: “Like Hook, Paul Kurtz has always beenkeen to distance humanism from dogmatic allies ofwhatever stripe. And like Dewey, Kurtz has wantedto emphasize the positive elements of humanism;its program for living rather than its record ofaccusations against religion. But it was Kurtz’s fateto be prominent at a time of resurgentfundamentalism.”

“Free Inquiry (magazine) was founded in 1980 at atime when secular humanism was under heavyattack in the United States from the so-called MoralMajority,” wrote Kurtz in 2000. His aims weretwofold: by reaching out to the leaders of thoughtand opinion and the educated layperson, he soughtto bring intellectual cachet and respectability to thephilosophy of secular humanism while alsoforthrightly defending the scientific and secularviewpoint at a time when it was being demonized.The magazine grew to become a highly respectedjournal of secular humanist thought and opinion.

Kurtz was responsible for drafting four highlyinfluential documents (“manifestos”) that served asguideposts for the secular movement from 1973 to2010. These statements attracted the endorsementand support of many of the world’s most esteemedscientists and authors, including E.O. Wilson,Steve Allen, Rebecca Goldstein, Steven Pinker,Arthur Caplan, Richard Dawkins, BrandBlanshard, Ann Druyan, Walter Kaufmann, DanielDennett, Terry O' Neill, Paul Boyer, LawrenceKrauss, James Randi, Patricia Schroeder, CarolTavris, Jean-Claude Pecker, and many more. Hislast and most recent excursus was theNeo-Humanist Statement of Secular of Principles

and Values (2010) a forward-thinking blueprint forbringing humanism far into the 21st century andbeyond, emphasizing the need for a planetaryconsciousness and a shared, secular ethic that cancut across ideological and cultural divisions.

A genuine pioneer, Kurtz was always blazing newtrails. He was the first humanist leader to call forand help implement a concerted worldwide effortto attract people of African descent to organizedhumanism. He helped establish African Americansfor Humanism (AAH) in 1989. He wasinstrumental in helping to create and support, withJim Christopher, Secular Organizations forSobriety (SOS), a nonreligious support group forthose struggling with alcohol and drug addiction.

Especially proud of his cosmopolitanism, Kurtz’simpact was truly global in scope. In 2001, he helped

9


finance the first major humanist conference insub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria). He helped establishhumanist groups in thirty African nations, Egypt,Romania, and the Netherlands. He was so highlyadmired in India that he became virtually ahousehold name.

Settling into his role as the elder statesman of amovement he saw take on wings around the world,he wrote, “Embracing humanism intellectually andemotionally can liberate you from the regnantspiritual theologies, mythologies that bind you andput you out of cognitive touch with the real world.By embracing the power of humanism, I submit,you can lead an enriched life that is filled withjoyful exuberance, intrinsically meaningful anddeveloped within shared moral communities.”

Kurtz’s joyful philosophy of life is presented in The

Fullness of Life (1974) and Exuberance: A

Philosophy of Happiness (1977). Of his manypublished works, the two he was perhaps mostproud of are The Transcendental Temptation

(1986) and The Courage to Become (1997). Hiscore books on the importance of criticalintelligence and the ethics of humanism includeThe New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable

Knowledge (1992); Living without Religion:

Eupraxsophy (1994); and Forbidden Fruit: The

Ethics of Secularism (2008). His primer What Is

Secular Humanism? (2006) is about as cogent andclear an introduction to the topic as one can find.Meaning and Value in a Secular Age—a collectionof his seminal writings about eupraxsophy—waspublished this year.

Kurtz is survived by his wife, Claudine Kurtz; son,Jonathan Kurtz, and daughter-in-law GretchenKurtz; daughters Valerie Fehrenback and PatriciaKurtz; daughter Anne Kurtz and son-in-law JesseShowers; and five grandchildren, Jonathan, Taylor,and Cameron Kurtz, and Jonathan and JacquelineFehrenback.

The family has requested that gifts or donations inhonor of Dr. Kurtz be given to the Institute forScience and Human Values. A public celebration ofhis life will be held at a future date.

[This Statement is taken from the online journal

of Institute for Science and Human Values

authored by Nathan Bupp

Statement URL:

http://www.instituteforscienceandhumanvalues

.net/index.htm]


10

Indian Renaissance Institute

Condolence Meeting in memory of Prof. Paul Kurtz and Shri Prithvis Chakravarti

Prof. Paul Kurtz, well known humanist and rationalist, and Shri Prithvis Chakravarti, eminentjournalist’ breathed their last during the last few days of October, 2012. Prof. Paul Kurtz died, (as notedin above pages) at the age of 86 on 20th October, 2012 in USA and Shri Prithvis Chakravarti at the ageof 95 on 31st October, 2012 at New Delhi. Both were deeply attached to the objectives and activities ofthe Indian Renaissance Institute (IRI) and Indian Radical Humanist Association (IRHA). Sri. PrithvisChakravarti, an associate of M.N. Roy was a life member of the IRI and IRHA. He was also the foundermember and past President of the National Union of Journalists.

IRI and IRHA have organized a condolence meeting on Monday the 12th Nov. 2012 to pay tributes toboth of them at Gandhi Peace Foundation, 223, Deen Dayal Upadyyay Marg, New Delhi-110002 (Ph:011-23237491, 23237493)

Yours sincerely,

N.D.Pancholi, Secretary

[email protected]

Ph: 0120-2648691, (M) 09811099532

Paul Kurtz

& the Virtue of Skepticism:How a thoughtful, inquiring,

watchman provided a mark to aim at

— By Michael Shermer

[Dr. Michael Shermer is Founding Publisher of

Skeptic magazine, Executive Director of the

Skeptics Society, and columnist for Scientific

American.]

Skepticism dates back to the ancientGreeks, well captured in Socrates’

famous quip that all he knows is that he knowsnothing. Skepticism as nihilism, however, gets usnowhere and, thankfully, almost no one embracesit. The word “skeptic,” in fact, comes from theGreek skeptikos, for “thoughtful”—far frommodern misconceptions of the word as meaning“cynical” or “nihilistic.” According to the OxfordEnglish Dictionary, “skeptical” has also been usedto mean “inquiring,” “reflective,” and, withvariations in the ancient Greek, “watchman” or“mark to aim at.” What a glorious meaning for whatwe do! We are thoughtful, inquiring, and reflective,and in a way we are the watchmen who guardagainst bad ideas, consumer advocates of goodthinking who, through the guidelines of science,establish a mark at which to aim. Paul Kurtz, whodied this week at the age of 86, was one of the

founders of the modern skeptical movement, and heembodied the principle of skepticism as thoughtfulinquiry. He truly was a watchman that provided amark at which we skeptics may all aim.

Since the time of the Greeks, skepticism (in itsvarious incarnations) has evolved along with otherepistemologies and their accompanying socialactivists. The Enlightenment, on one level, was acentury-long skeptical movement, for there wereno beliefs or institutions that did not come under thecritical scrutiny of such thinkers as Voltaire,Diderot, Rousseau, Locke, Jefferson, and manyothers. Immanuel Kant in Germany and DavidHume in Scotland were skeptics’ skeptics in an ageof skepticism, and their influence continuesunabated to this day (at least in academicphilosophy and skepticism). Closer to our time,Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley were skepticspar excellence, not only for the revolution theylaunched and carried on (respectively) against thedogma of creationism, but also for their standagainst the burgeoning spiritualism movement thatwas sweeping across America, England, and thecontinent. Although Darwin was quiet about hisspiritual skepticism and worked behind the scenes,Huxley railed publicly against the movement,bemoaning in one of the great one-liners in thehistory of skepticism: “Better live acrossing-sweeper than die and be made to talktwaddle by a ‘medium’ hired at a guinea a séance.”In the twentieth century Bertrand Russell and HarryHoudini stand out as representatives of skepticalthinkers and doers (respectively) of the first half,and skepticism in the second half of the century wasmarked by Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies inthe Name of Science, launching what we think oftoday as “the skeptics movement,” which Kurtz socourageously organized and led.

There has been some debate (and much quibbling)about who gets what amount of credit for thefounding of the modern skeptical movementthrough the organization Committee for theScientific Investigation of Claims of theParanormal (CSICOP) and its journal Skeptical

11


Inquirer (much of this history has been outlined inthe pages of my own magazine, Skeptic, ininterviews with the leading lights of the skepticalmovement). This is not the place to present adefinitive history of the movement, but from what Ihave gleaned from first- and second-hand sourcesis that science writer Martin Gardner, magicianJames Randi, psychologist Ray Hyman, andphilosopher Paul Kurtz played primary roles in thefoundation and planning of the organization and thesubsequent movement.

There is little to no chance that we can convinceTrue Believers of the errors of their thinking. Ourpurpose is to reach that vast middle ground betweenhard-core skeptics and dogmatic believers—peoplelike me who thought that there might be somethingto these claims but had simply never heard a goodcounter explanation.

Regardless of who might be considered the “father”of the modern skeptical movement, everyone I havespoken to (including the other founders) agrees thatit was Paul Kurtz more than anyone else whoactually made it happen. All successful socialmovements have someone who has theorganizational skills and social intelligence to getthings done. Paul Kurtz is that man. When hefounded the organization that launched the modernskeptical movement, I was a graduate student inexperimental psychology. About this time (the mid1970s) Uri Geller entered my radar screen. I recallPsychology Today and other popular magazinespublished glowing stories about him, and reportswere afloat that experimental psychologists hadtested the Israeli psychic and determined that hewas genuine. My advisor—a strictly reductionisticSkinnerian behavioral psychologist named DougNavarick—didn’t believe a word of it, but I figuredthere might be something to it, especially in light ofall the other interesting research being conductedon altered states of consciousness, hypnosis,dreams, sensory deprivation, dolphincommunication, and the like. I took a course inanthropology from Marlene Dobkin de Rios, whoseresearch was on shamans of South America and

their use of mind-altering plants. It all seemedentirely plausible to me and, being personallyinterested in the subject (the Ouija boardconsistently blew my mind), I figured that this wasrapidly becoming a legitimate subfield ofpsychological research. After all, Thelma Moss hada research laboratory devoted to studying theparanormal, and it was at UCLA no less, one of themost highly regarded psychology programs in thecountry.

With the support and encouragement of Kurtz,Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, and especially James“the Amazing” Randi entered the public spherethrough popular and technical publicationsdebunking such nonsense, and Randi went ontelevision to reveal how the psychics actually dotheir tricks. It was, in fact, on Johnny Carson’sTonight Show that Randi demonstrated how tolevitate tables, bend spoons, and perform psychicsurgeries. Randi didn’t convince me to become afull-fledged skeptic overnight, but it got methinking that if some of these psychics were fakes,perhaps they all were (and if not fakes, at leastself-deceived). Herein lies an important lesson.

There is little to no chance that we can convinceTrue Believers of the errors of their thinking. Ourpurpose is to reach that vast middle ground betweenhard-core skeptics and dogmatic believers—peoplelike me who thought that there might be somethingto these claims but had simply never heard a goodcounter explanation. There are many reasons whypeople believe weird things, but certainly one of themost pervasive is simply that most people havenever heard a good explanation for the weird thingsthey hear and read about. Short of a goodexplanation, they accept the bad explanation that istypically proffered. This alone justifies all the hardwork performed by skeptics toward the cause ofscience and critical thinking. It does make adifference.

For 20 years now I have been at the head of theSkeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, and as suchas much as I admire Randi, Gardner, and the other


12

public faces of skepticism, I have come to respectmore than ever before what Paul Kurtz has done forour movement. He may not be as prolific andfamous a writer as Martin Gardner, or as public andvisible an activist as James Randi, but in terms ofthe day-to-day grind of keeping a movement afloatthrough the constant battering and assaults thatcome from variegated sources, there are few thatcan be compared with Paul Kurtz. So I close thisbrief remembrance with several excerpts from whatI still consider to be his finest work, The

Transcendental Temptation that should bemandatory reading for all graduates of a Skepticism101 course.

The temptation, says Kurtz, “lurks deep within thehuman breast. It is ever-present, tempting humansby the lure of transcendental realities, subvertingthe power of their critical intelligence, enablingthem to accept unproven and unfounded mythsystems.” Specifically, Kurtz argues that myths,religions, and claims of the paranormal are lurestempting us beyond rational, critical, and scientificthinking, for the very reason that they touchsomething in us that is sacred and important—lifeand immortality: “This impulse is so strong that ithas inspired the great religions and paranormalmovements of the past and the present and goadedotherwise sensible men and women to swallowpatently false myths and to repeat them constantlyas articles of faith.” What drives this temptation?The answer Kurtz provides is both insightful andelegant:

Let us reflect on the human situation: all of ourplans will fail in the long run, if not in the short. Thehomes we have built and lovingly furnished, theloves we have enjoyed, the careers we havededicated ourselves to will all disappear in time.The monuments we have erected to memorializeour aspirations and achievements, if we arefortunate, may last a few hundred years, perhaps amillennium or two or three—like the stark andsplendid ruins of Rome and Greece, Egypt andJudea, which have been recovered and treasured bylater civilizations. But all the works of human

beings disappear and are forgotten in short order. Inthe immediate future the beautiful clothing that weadorn ourselves with, eventually even ourcherished children and grandchildren, and all of ourpossessions will be dissipated. Many of our poemsand books, our paintings and statues will beforgotten, buried on some library shelf or in amuseum, read or seen by some future scholarscurious about the past, and eventually eaten byworms and molds, or perhaps consumed by fire.Even the things that we prize the most, humanintelligence and love, democratic values, the questfor truth, will in time be replaced by unknownvalues and institutions—if the human speciessurvives, and even that is uncertain. Were we tocompile a pessimist’s handbook, we could easilyfill it to overflowing with notations of false hopesand lost dreams, a catalogue of human sufferingand pain, of ignominious conflict, betrayal, anddefeat throughout the ages.

Although Kurtz sounds like a pessimist, he’sactually a realist, occasionally even an optimist:

Were I to take an inventory of the sum of goods inhuman life, they would far outweigh the banalitiesof evil. I would outdo the pessimist by cataloguinglaughter and joy, devotion and sympathy,discovery and creativity, excellence and grandeur.The mark made upon the world by every person andby the race in general would be impressive. Howwonderful it has all been. The pessimist points toCaligula, Attila, Cesare Borgia, Beria, or Himmlerwith horror and disgust; but I would counter withAristotle, Pericles, da Vinci, Einstein, Beethoven,Mark Twain, Margaret Sanger, and Madame Curie.The pessimist points to duplicity and cruelty in theworld; I am impressed by the sympathy, honesty,and kindness that are manifested. The pessimistreminds us of ignorance and stupidity; I, of thecontinued growth of human knowledge andunderstanding. The pessimist emphasizes thefailures and defeats; I, the successes and victoriesin all their glory.


13

The most important point Kurtz makes in The

Transcendental Temptation comes toward the endin his discussion of the meaning and goals ofskepticism. It is an admonition we should all bare inmind, a passage to be read once a year:

The skeptic is not passionately intent on convertingmankind to his or her point of view and surely is notinterested in imposing it on others, though he maybe deeply concerned with raising the level ofeducation and critical inquiry in society. Still, ifthere are any lessons to be learned from history, it isthat we should be skeptical of all points of view,including those of the skeptics. No one is infallible,and no one can claim a monopoly on truth or virtue.It would be contradictory for skepticism to seek totranslate itself into a new faith. One must view withcaution the promises of any new secular priest whomight emerge promising a brave new world—ifonly his path to clarity and truth is followed.

Perhaps the best we can hope for is to temper theintemperate and to tame the perverse temptationthat lurks within.

R.I.P. Paul Kurtz.

We all owe you a great debt of gratitude for makingthe world a better place.

You will be missed.

[This write up is taken from eSkeptic.com]

It begins with—In this week’s eSkeptic, Michael

Shermer remembers Paul Kurtz, who died October

20, 2012 at the age of 86. Kurtz was one of the

founders of the modern skeptical movement, and he

embodied the principle of skepticism as thoughtful

inquiry.

Article Link:

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/12-10-24/#feat

ure


14

Do come forward to become a part of the

Encyclopedia of Radical HumanistsTo be loaded on the RH Website (http://www.theradicalhumanist.com)

Dear Friends,

This is to request you to send in your personal details, contact numbers etc. (along with yourpassport size photographs) as well as brief accounts of how you got associated with M.N.Roy/Radical Democratic Party/Radical Humanist Movement directly or indirectly through thephilosophy of New Humanism.

This is also a request to all those friends, whose deceased parent/parents were involved in orwere sympathetic with Radical Humanism and its Movement, to send in accounts of theirparent’s/parents’ association (as much as they can recollect and recount). This will be a lovingand emotional tribute to their memories from your side.

All this effort is being made to form an encyclopedia of the Radical Humanists right from thedays of the beginning of M.N. Roy’s social and political activities in India and abroad.

All this information will be uploaded and permanently stored on the RH Website in the Profilesection for everyone to read and come in contact with one another.

This will be a historical check-list to connect with all the crusaders who worked or are stillworking for the human cause on the humanist lines.

—Rekha S.

Reminiscing about Paul Kurtz(Center For Inquiry)

(http://centerforinquiry.net/paul_kurtz_obituary)

Founder and longtime chair of theCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry, the

Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center forInquiry, Paul Kurtz has died at the age of 86. Hewas one of the most influential figures in thehumanist and skeptical movements from the late1960s through the first decade of the twenty-firstcentury. Among his best-known creations are theskeptics’ magazine Skeptical Inquirer, the secularhumanist magazine Free Inquiry, and theindependent publisher Prometheus Books.

Early Life: Paul Kurtz was born on December 21,1925, to Martin and Sarah Kurtz of Newark, NewJersey. He enrolled briefly at Washington SquareCollege of New York University before enlisting inthe U. S. Army at age 19, at the height of WorldWar II. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge andserved in a unit that liberated the Dachauconcentration camp. He was demobilized eighteenmonths after the war’s end and resumed his studiesat New York University (NYU). At NYU Kurtzstudied philosophy under Sidney Hook, who hadhimself been a protégé of the pragmatistphilosopher John Dewey. The philosophy ofDewey and Hook, arguably the greatest Americanthinkers in the humanist tradition, would deeplyinfluence Kurtz’s thought and activism. Kurtzgraduated from NYU in 1948 and earned his Ph. D.in philosophy at Columbia University in 1952.

Academic Career: Kurtz taught philosophy atTrinity College from 1952 to 1959. He joined thefaculty at Union College from 1961 to 1965; duringthis period he was also a visiting lecturer at the NewSchool for Social Research. In 1965 he wasrecruited by the new State University of New Yorkat Buffalo. The former University of Buffalo hadrecently been absorbed into the state universitysystem; under Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the

institution launched an aggressive program torecruit top young academics to its faculty. Kurtzbecame professor of philosophy at SUNY-Buffalo,a post he held until his retirement from teaching in1991. At this stage of his career, Kurtz focusedprincipally on methods of objective inquiry and thehistory of American philosophy. He contributed thesignificant entry “American Philosophy” to theinfluential first edition of the Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy (1967), edited by Paul Edwards. Heedited two large anthologies of Americanphilosophy and published his best-known scholarlywork, Decision and the Condition of Man (1968).

The Humanist Movement: It was in the late 1960sthat Kurtz embarked on the pursuit whoseprominence would exceed even that of his career asa philosopher, when he began his involvement withthe humanist movement. In 1967 he was namededitor of The Humanist, published by the AmericanHumanist Association (AHA), then the nation’sonly significant humanist organization. He took themagazine in new directions, both by making itscontent more sharply critical of religion and byusing aggressive techniques to expand itscirculation. Arguably, The Humanist never enjoyedgreater cultural prominence or higher circulationthan during Kurtz’s editorship, but his forcefulstyle led to friction with others within AHA,including some members of its board of directors.Kurtz gave up editorship of The Humanist andparted ways with AHA in 1978. Ironically, that wasthe very year in which, owing to Kurtz’s influence,AHA moved its headquarters from San Franciscoto Amherst, New York, the location ofSUNY-Buffalo’s suburban campus. (AHA wouldremain headquartered off Harlem Road in Amherstuntil it moved to Washington, D. C., in 2000.)

Kurtz was for more than a quarter-century aninfluential figure in the International Humanist andEthical Union (IHEU), a worldwide network ofnational humanist organizations founded inAmsterdam in 1952. He joined IHEU’s board ofdirectors in 1969 and served as the organization’sco-chairman from 1986 to 1994. During this

15


period, Kurtz hosted IHEU’s Tenth WorldCongress, held at SUNY-Buffalo during thesummer of 1988.

The Kurtz-founded Organizations: Kurtz wouldbe better known for his work through organizationshe founded and shaped from their inception.

In 1969 he founded Prometheus Books, a for-profitpublishing company that quickly emerged as thedominant imprint in skepticism, humanism, andatheism. It would become the most prolificpublisher of atheist and humanist titles in history.Since its founding it has published more than 2500titles in what has become a broad range of genres.Significant milestones included the 1998acquisition of most of the assets of the scholarlypublisher Humanities Press International, givingrise to Prometheus’s imprint Humanity Books, andthe formation in 2005 of its Pyr division, which hasemerged as a prestige imprint for science fictionand fantasy fiction. Now led by Paul Kurtz’s sonJonathan, the most impressive achievement ofPrometheus Books may be that it has retained itsindependence during five decades in which anenormous number of independent publishersclosed down or were absorbed. Paul Kurtz wasperhaps best known for the three mutuallysupportive not-for-profit organizations he foundedin Buffalo and later Amherst, New York, nowknown as the ‘Committee for Skeptical Inquiry’,the ‘Council for Secular Humanism’, and the‘Center for Inquiry’.

Kurtz and others founded the world’s firstorganization devoted solely to scientific criticismof paranormal claims at an April 1976 conferenceat SUNY-Buffalo whose participants includedauthor Isaac Asimov, author-mathematician MartinGardner, and magician James Randi. Theorganization was originally known as theCommittee for the Scientific Investigation ofClaims of the Paranormal, and became widelyknown by its acronym, CSICOP. Several monthsafter its formation CSICOP launched a journal, TheZetetic, which later achieved great prominence as

the Skeptical Inquirer, which continues to bepublished bimonthly. During its early yearsCSICOP encouraged the formation of localskeptics groups across the United States, and ofindependent national skeptics organizations acrossthe world. These groups would form the kernel oftoday’s international skeptical movement. In 2006,the organization shortened its name to theCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry, partly to showthat its concerns now extended beyond its originalfocus on paranormal claims to include the publicunderstanding of science and issues in medicineand mental health.

In 1980, two years after his departure from theAmerican Humanist Association, Kurtz launched anew, more explicitly nonreligious humanistorganization, the Council for Democratic andSecular Humanism (CODESH). The word“Democratic” was added to demonstrate thegroup’s opposition to Communist totalitarianism,an important consideration since non-theism wasthen strongly associated with Communism in thepublic mind. The new organization’s first act wasto release A Secular Humanist Declaration, aposition document originally signed by 57distinguished activists and academics. Its releasewas covered in a front-page story in the New York

Times. The Council simultaneously launched ajournal, Free Inquiry, with Kurtz as its publisherand founding editor. Free Inquiry quickly becamethe best-respected and highest-circulationhumanist magazine in the U.S. It continues to bepublished bimonthly.

In 1996, in response to the collapse of EuropeanCommunism, the organization shortened its nameto the Council for Secular Humanism. It maintainsa network of independent local groups, operatesNorth America’s only freethought museum, andengages in a variety of educational and advocacyactivities. Since 2007 the Council has been leadplaintiff in a lawsuit that challenges contractsbetween the state of Florida and explicitly religioussocial service providers.


16

In 1991, Kurtz’s skeptical and secular-humanistorganizations relocated from Buffalo to Amherst,New York. In the same year Kurtz founded a thirdmajor non-profit organization, the Center forInquiry. Originally conceived as a platform forconsolidating activities that CSICOP andCODESH conducted in parallel, from magazineproduction to payroll, the Center grew into anadvocacy organization in its own right. Its agendaencompassed both CSICOP’s skepticism andCODESH’s secular humanism, placing both in abroader cultural and intellectual context. Inaddition to the Center for Inquiry headquarterscampus in Amherst, which Kurtz expanded to some35,000 square feet, there at various times more thanfifty branch Centers for Inquiry operated in otherAmerican cities and across the world, employing avariety of operating models. From its transnationalheadquarters at Amherst, the Center conducted awide range of educational programs, including anonline master’s degree program in conjunctionwith the University at Buffalo. Its research librarieshold the world’s largest collections of humanist,skeptical, and related literature.

Awards and Recognitions: Paul Kurtz receivednumerous awards and other encomia. In 1992 hewas named a Fellow of the American Associationfor the Advancement of Science. In 1996 themain-belt asteroid Kurtz 6629 was named in hishonor. In 2000 he received the InternationalRationalist Award at the Second InternationalRationalist Conference at Trivandrum, India. In2001 he received the Charles P. Norton Medal, thehighest award bestowed by the State University ofNew York at Buffalo. In 2009 he received theEupraxsopher Award, a special lifetimeachievement award, from the Center for Inquiry, aswell as the Philip J. Klass Award from the NationalCapital Area Skeptics. In 2010 he received alifetime achievement award at The AmazingMeeting (TAM) sponsored by the James RandiEducational Foundation.

Publications: Paul Kurtz wrote or edited more thanfifty books for scholarly or general audiences.

Among the better-known are Exuberance: A

Philosophy of Happiness (1977); Forbidden Fruit:

The Ethics of Humanism (1988); Eupraxophy:

Living without Religion (1989); The

Transcendental Temptation. A Critique of Religion

and the Paranormal (1991); The New Skepticism:

Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (1992); and What

Is Secular Humanism? (2006). His works havebeen translated into multiple languages. Hecomposed a great number of essays, includingeditorials that appeared in every issue of Free

Inquiry magazine from its founding in 1980 until2009.

Kurtz was also organized humanism’s most prolificcomposer of position documents. When he joinedthe humanist movement, it was still stronglyinfluenced by the Humanist Manifesto of 1933.Drafted and signed by Unitarian ministers (with theconspicuous exception of signer John Dewey), theoriginal Manifesto explicitly envisioned humanismas a new religion. On Kurtz’s view, a more secularformulation was needed. As editor of The Humanist

he led a campaign for a new and more relevantManifesto. Humanist Manifesto II was published in1973, having been co-drafted by Kurtz and fellowhumanist leader Edwin H. Wilson. Where itspredecessor was religious, Manifesto II explicitlyabjured religiosity. In a passage reflecting Kurtz’swriting style, it declared: “Some humanists believewe should reinterpret traditional religions andreinvest them with meanings appropriate to thecurrent situation. Such redefinitions … perpetuateold dependencies and escapisms; they easilybecome obscurantist, impeding the free use of theintellect. We need, instead, radically new humanpurposes and goals.”

Manifesto II was signed by 114 activists andthought leaders at first publication, and wouldeventually attract 261 distinguished signers. Itsrelease garnered worldwide media attentionincluding a front-page story in The New York

Times.


17

The previously mentioned A Secular Humanist

Declaration (1980) was drafted solely by Kurtz. Itoffered a secular humanist interpretation of manyof the ideas developed in Manifesto II, but steepedin the recognition that an unquestionablynonreligious humanist institution needed to becreated, close to but slightly outside of a largerhumanist movement that included both religiousand nonreligious humanists.

In the late 1990s Kurtz began to compose a newsuccessor document. Originally he planned to titleit Humanist Manifesto III, asserting the right to doso as the sole living co-author of Manifesto II. Afterthe American Humanist Association assertedownership of the Manifesto title and threatenedlegal action, Kurtz retitled his document Humanist

Manifesto 2000.

Humanist Manifesto 2000: A Call for a NewPlanetary Humanism was issued in 1999 with about200 signatures. It was book-length, far lengthierthan the previous Manifestos, and represented thefullest statement of Kurtz’s vision for humanism asa planetary commitment transcending national andethnic identities. Besides challenging religion andchampioning the scientific outlook and freedom ofthought, Kurtz called for a popularly elected globalparliament, a World Court, a global environmentalmonitoring institution, and a new international taxto aid the developing world. These internationalistcontentions engendered substantial controversywithin the humanist movement.

Principal Contentions: Kurtz consistentlyasserted that morality should be rooted in humanflourishing and happiness, not on supernaturalrevelation. He attached high priority to individualliberty in a robustly democratic culture. His ethicswere primarily utilitarian, but he tempered hisutilitarianism with a strong commitment to basicliberties. As early as 1969 he had written that “thereare two basic and minimal principles whichespecially seem to characterize humanism. First,there is a rejection of any supernatural conceptionof the universe and a denial that man has any

privileged place within nature. Second, there is anaffirmation that ethical values are human and haveno meaning independent of human experience.”Repeatedly he characterized secular humanism lessas a set of moral or philosophical prescriptions thanas a process, a template for the conduct of ethicalinquiry.

Two further contentions strongly influencedKurtz’s thought and writing beginning in themid-1980s. The first was his growing sense ofhumanism as necessarily planetary. He argued thatsince the principal problems confrontinghumankind were global in scope, they requiredtransnational solutions. This view wasaccompanied by an assertive cosmopolitanism thatviewed traditional religious, ethnic, and nationalidentities as archaisms to be jettisoned wheneverpossible.

In addition, he sought an authoritative answer to thequestion “If secular humanism is not a religion,what is it?” His solution was to coin a new word,eupraxophy (in later years spelled eupraxsophy).Formed from Greek roots meaning roughly “goodwisdom and practice in conduct,” the word wasmeant to label a novel category of intellectual andmoral systems that met some of the social needsserved by religions without the supernaturalism orauthoritarianism of traditional faiths. Kurtz madehis most extended argument for the coinage in his1989 book Eupraxophy: Living without Religion. Asubsequent edition was titled Living without

Religion: Eupraxsophy. The neologism’s movefrom title to subtitle reflected the coinage’s fate.Kurtz’s arguments for eupraxsophy were receivedrespectfully, and some activists eagerly restyledthemselves “eupraxsophers.” Ultimately, however,the term failed to maintain traction and it isinfrequently used in the movement today.

Later Life: While Kurtz’s son Jonathan hadsucceeded him as president of Prometheus Books,Kurtz continued to exercise day-to-day control ofthe non-profit organizations he had founded wellpast his eightieth birthday. After 2005 there was


18

heightened concern on the part of theorganizations’ directors to implement a specificsuccession process. In June 2008, attorney andphilosopher Ronald A. Lindsay succeeded Kurtz aspresident and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, theCouncil for Secular Humanism, and the Committeefor Skeptical Inquiry. Lindsay was Kurtz’spersonal selection for the position. Kurtz continuedto serve as board chair until June 2009, whenBuffalo investment advisor Richard Schroeder waselected Chair and Kurtz assumed the new positionof Chair Emeritus. Kurtz faced this process withincreasing reluctance, and on May 18, 2010, heannounced his resignation from all of his remainingpositions at the three nonprofit organizations. Hisoffice continued to be reserved for his usewhenever the Center for Inquiry – Transnational inAmherst was open.

Late in 2010, Kurtz announced the founding of anew organization, the Institute for Science and

Human Values. It released a manifesto-style

document titled Neo-Humanist Statement of

Secular Principles and Values with more than 150signers and announced a new quarterly journal, The

Human Prospect.

Conclusion. Ultimately, Paul Kurtz did much toshape the American and world humanistmovements during the final third of the twentiethcentury. He was a prodigious organizer,responsible for much of the social landscapethrough which nonreligious Americans movedbefore the emergence of the so-called New Atheistmovement in the middle 2000s. At the same time, avibrant and varied skeptics’ community nowserved by dozens of local and nationalorganizations might not exist at all – and surelywould not have its current form – if not for Kurtz’sfounding of the first modern skeptical organization,CSICOP. His most enduring legacy may be theCenter for Inquiry, which continues to stand as thelarger movement’s largest, most active, andhighest-budgeted organization.


19

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Protecting Biodiversity and SoilFertility will Benefit Farmers

Reviving agriculture in a sustainablemanner preserving bio-diversity and

empowering the masses should be our top priority.This will lead to a true economic growth ofprogress and happiness. Such a policy willeffectively ensure household food securityminimizing widespread hunger and caloriedeficiency. The web of agricultural productionbecoming a monopoly in the hands of fewmultinationals will not lead to the well being of allthose who are being engaged in cultivation. Neitherdoes it help the consumer both from the nutritionalpoint of view and price. MNCs’ patents on seedsand life forms had led to the destruction ofbiodiversity so essential for farming, in the processaffecting the very livelihood of the farmers byincreasing the cost of production. Indianagriculture being trapped in the capitalist process ofinputs and farm outputs now being practiced inmany parts of the world had largely benefitted afew agri-business corporates and agro-industrialbusinesses making farming less and less viable for

the farmers. Corporate monopolies fromagri-business to seed and giant retailers haveaffected farmer’s livelihood. Rising input costs andun-remunerative prices for farm produce and also100% FDI in sectors like seed led to moreindebtedness of the peasantry driving more farmersto suicides. Farm suicides have crossed quarter of amillion in India revealing the sad state of thefarmers’ conditions in our country.

Further nearly 7½ million farmers abandonedagriculture in just a decade. Many driven by theso-called proclaimed policies of benefitting thefarmers. Food production activities destroyedbiodiversity damaging ecological systems soessential for food security. Policy makers inagriculture of the present day have been morecommitted to an agenda of reforms in favour of bigcorporates enriching their commercial interestsmore than the genuine needs of the farmers. Such apolicy the world over led to a handful of corporatesbecoming the top 10 economies of the world. Thefallacy of corporatization in agriculture from seedto domestic production to food processing tocorporate retailers did not benefit the farmers.Several states in India backing corporates havepushed farmers out of farming. Also food grainavailability sharply declined because of loss of soilfertility due to chemicalization of agriculture.Lesser yields and diversion of food grains topoultry, livestock and policies focusing on exportproducts and cash crops, conversion of farmlandsinto SEZs will lead to a severe food crisis. Beforethe entry of industrial farming there were wellfunctioning markets and cash crops driving growth,employment and economic prosperity in the ruralareas.

The uncertainty on several fronts like improperproduction price and credit, drastic climaticchanges and industrial corporates controllingagriculture making more and more farmers beingdependant on them for their needs have pushedfarmers into deep distress due to incurring hugedebts because of high input costs. A study revealedthat 40% of farmers have expressed their desire to

20


J. S. Chandra Rao

quit farming. It is time we change our policymaking our farmers self reliant enabling them tomaintain decent living standards helping them inovercoming risks and uncertainties. There shouldbe a mechanism wherein the farmers receive 50%of what the consumer is paying on his purchasedproducts. Unless Government structures themechanisms of calculating the MSP for all crops,there is little hope for reducing the present agrariancrisis in India. It is the bounden duty of everyGovernment to give reasonable price to the farmerswho have relentlessly toiled to produce food inspiteof adverse conditions which include climaticupheavals of storms and droughts, always cateringto the citizen’s needs and also helping themiddlemen. Transforming agriculture by restoringthe pride in farming can certainly revitalize ourrural economy. Further many useful pollinatingspecies of spiders, beetle and useful earthwormswhose contribution to the farm produce havealways been invaluable have now mostlydisappeared along with other useful speciessuccumbing to the spraying of insecticides.Protecting animals, birds, insects and variousplants maintaining biodiversity along withpreserving precious resources like water, air andland will always be an invaluable asset. All have atremendous positive value in boosting farmer’sincome. Lack of understanding of the invaluablerole of interdependence of species and itsfunctional role for the smooth functioning of the

ecosystems and the benefits being derived have notbeen taken into account properly by the policymakers.

The prevalent market mechanism always sulks topay a fair price to the farmer. The theory that lowfood prices enhances our global competitiveness inseveral sectors and also benefitting our urbanpeople has always been at the expense of the farmerand the rural sector. Every single produce of thefarmer is being taxed by way of service tax beingcollected whenever the consumer buys variousfood products and the food prepared in restaurantsfor the consumers have generated huge resourcesfor the Government. Sadly, such collected tax ofevery commodity produced by the farmers does notgo to the farmer, more particularly when they arestruggling to meet both ends.

What is needed in the present day is a farmercentered indigenous agriculture, growing cropssuitable to different climatic regions and not basedon the western model which is largely motivated bymonetary consideration of corporate rather than thewell being of the farmers and the citizens. Modernagriculture based on modern technologies like GMcrops with no proper testing and regulatingmechanisms in place having no accountability fortheir failures has caused immense harm to thefarmers effecting environment and biodiversity.Steps like soil conservation, improving soil fertilityand restoring dilapidated tanks should be ourutmost priority than any other policy.


21

Dear Friends,

Please email your articles at [email protected]

Send them by post (if you are not able to email them) at:

C-8 Defence Colony, Meerut, 250001, U.P., India.

Please try to keep them within the limit of 1500-2000 words.

You should also inform me whether they have been published elsewhere.

Do email or post your passport size photographs as separate attachments (in JPG format) along withyour brief introductions, if you are contributing in the RH for the first time.

Please feel free to contact me at 91-9719333011 for any other querry.

—Rekha S.

[Mr. Bhagwat Prashad Rath, who calls himself a

heretic, is a Gandhian socialist. He built

educational institutions, got elected as a

chairman of a Panchayet Samiti, resigned and

worked as a lecturer in English. A believer in

Lokayata philosophy, he is an editor of

journals—Vigil-English, Sarvodaya-Oriya. He is

also a writer of several novels, poems (in Oriya)

and essays (in Oriya and English). He has often

been subjected to police harassment, false cases

and threats from anti-socials due to his

association with people’s movements and

connection with human rights organizations.

Presently, he is researching upon the works and

literature on ancient Indian culture.]

[I will try to comment upon Mr. Rath’s

following article through another editorial. This

time Prof. Paul Kurtz is in my mind. The essence

of a phrase keeps changing, growing and

transforming with the passage of time although

its literal meaning may remian the same. It is for

us to decide whether to explore the essence or to

get caught up in the words. Meanwhile, the

readers may pick up a debate to everyone’s

benefit. —Rekha S.]

Scattered Ruminations

on M. N. Roy’s Ideas

After Roy’s death, science took giantstrides. The synthetic path gained equal

importance with the reductionist path. Complexity

theory and non-linear dynamics illumined thetheories of the rise of the universe, life, mind andconsciousness. Systemic views of life and theworld got confirmed through the emergent processof autopoiesis as devised by scientists, Prof.Francisco Varela and Prof. Humberto D. Maturana.

To quote Varela, “I’ve had only one question all mylife. Why do emergent selves, virtual identities, popup all over the place creating worlds, whether at themind/body level, the cellular level, or thetransorganism level? This phenomenon(autopoiesis) is something so productive that itdoesn’t cease creating entirely new realms: life,mind, and societies. Yet these emergent selves arebased on processes so shifty, so ungrounded, thatwe have an apparent paradox between the solidityof what appears to show up and its groundlessness’.

Today there is no need of calling matter ‘PhysicalRealism’. Water emerges from Hydrogen andOxygen. Water is also subjected to solid, liquid andvapour phase transitions. Matter is made ofProtons, electrons, neutrons and at a deeper levelquarks and ultimately from Higgs Boson, theultimate particle (the god particle). Matter isproduced through emergence. Every emergententity has its independent existence. Scientific lawsapplicable to the simplest constituents are differentfrom the laws applicable to the emergent entity.Laws of indeterminacy (Heisenberg) are onlyapplicable to the micro-level incarnations of matterwhich for all practical purposes are differententities. Roy’s first thesis has in its background thetwo world wars manned by robot-like obeyingsoldiers and the political ideologies docilelyfollowed by robot-like party men. Evolution tellsus that man developed bipedalism and languageonly in big collectives. Both the man-mechanizingcollective and the narcissistic individual areanomalies that are incongruities in a sane society.We need fully-independent individuals nourishedby collectives and compassionate individualsheeding the sufferings of others. To quote Roy’ssecond thesis, “Increasing knowledge of natureenables man to be progressively free from the


22

B.P. Rath

tyranny of natural phenomena and the physical andsocial environments.” Today, science characterizesnature not as a tyrant but as a stern but loving guide.Physicist Fritjof Capra writes, “…….the designprinciples of our future social institutions must beconsistent with the principles of organization thatnature has evolved to sustain the web of life. Aunified conceptual frame-work for theunderstanding of natural and social frame workswill be essential for this task.”.

In the face of the ecological disaster imperilinghuman existence, the economic Mantra of limitlessgrowth is a recipe for disaster. Accepting theancient value of Aparigraha is the only path open tomankind.

Roy’s stress on ‘freedom’ cannot be overemphasized. This is a foundational value sustainingother values. To make this possible in an unequalworld is next to impossible. Liberty, equality andfraternity are inter- locked values. Neither can existwithout the others. Nor can they solely exist in asection of the living world. Prof. Lynn Margulistalks of the entire living world as an ecologicalsystem whose parts cannot be fragmentalized. Prof.SibNaryana Ray writes, “At the same time the newrenaissance area will have to correct the mostdamaging erroneous view that all non-human

existence is only instrumental to the satisfaction ofhuman needs”.

‘Non-violence’ of the Buddhist middle path varietyis the only answer to the ecological peril.

‘Rationality’ is necessary for the healthy growth ofsociety but it cannot bring well-being to mankindunless it is free from vested- interest. Both greedand violence make a mockery of rationality like thedevil quoting the Bible. Russell made a paradoxicalstatement, “man is rational, but I don’t find muchevidence.” (V.M. Tarkunde Radical Humanism:

An outline) In matters of human concern, truth andrationality are blind without universal love (lovefor all living beings). Kant’s belief in absolute truthcould not save him from the racial bias. He wasconvinced that animals are machines and had nocompassion for them.

Roy is a great thinker. But no thinker is free fromreconsideration because science is advancing fast.Roy never wanted his thoughts to be put in a freeze.He always welcomed the open air of criticism.

[Mr. Bhagwat Prasad may be contacted at06856-235092, 08895860598,

[email protected],www.samalochanal.blogspot.com,www.samalochana.blogsome.com]


23

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[Mr. Mastram Kapoor is a freelance writer and

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literature, social and political thought, education

and children’s literature including 11 volumes of

documents on freedom movement and 17 volumes

of collected works of Dr. Lohia. He has had a long

association with the socialist movement. His

special interests of study are Mahatma Gandhi,

Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, Jaiprakash Narayan,

Acharya Narendra Deva, Madhu Limaye and Dr.

B.R. Ambedkar.]

Reservation in Promotions

There seems to be a sinister design behindimplementation of reservation scheme of

the Constitution. Although provision for specialopportunities (instead of equal opportunity) to theclasses who suffered for centuries due to the castesystem was based on natural justice, (the weakerprogeny getting special care among human beingsas well as animals), the upper castes neverappreciated it. Even the great man like Pt.Jawaharlal Nehru always talked of merit againstreservation or special opportunity withoutunderstanding that meritocracy ultimately leads tocaste. Our Varna Vyavastha was nothing but ameritocracy. This was a division of labouraccording to merit (Guna Karma Vibhagshah) butas the occupations became fixed and hereditary, thedivision into castes and sub castes according to the

division of occupations took place. This was (inAmbedkar’s words) division of labour becomingdivision of labourers. It may appear strange but it isthe truth that meritocracy leads to caste andreservation to abolition of caste.

When our Constitution was being framed, Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, Chairman of the drafting committee ofthe Constitution and Law Minister in cooperationwith the Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru,saw to it that the vast population of depressedclasses or Other Backward Classes (OBCs)remained outside the fold of reservation. Dr.Ambedkar wanted to exclude them so that he couldrealize his dream of number one minority status forscheduled castes. Earlier, he had advocatedseparate home for Muslims with this aim.Jawaharlal Nehru had tolerated reservation forSCs/STs thinking that 22% reservation would notmake much difference to the hegemony of uppercastes, which he called hegemony of merit. Butreservation for OBCs was a challenge not only toNehru’s dream of ‘meritocracy’ but also toAmbedkar’s dream of special status to scheduledcastes. Ambedkar was against scheduled tribesgetting special rights as per his submissions to theSimon Commission and it was only due to leaderslike Thakkar Bapa that the special benefits weregiven to them and both SCs and STs were groupedunder the Poona Pact and later in the Constitution.

Ambedkar and Nehru , the main driving force ofmaking of the Constitution, did not make anyprovision for OBCs until a representative fromBihar pointed out that OBCs had been left out. Itwas then as an afterthought, that Article 340providing for Other Backward ClassesCommission was introduced in the Constitution.But when the first Backward classes Commission(Kaka Kalelkar Commission) presented its report,Nehru was so annoyed that he forced KakaKalelkar to write in the forwarding letter to thePresident, that he did not agree with the report(although he had signed it) and this should not beaccepted.


24

Mastram Kapoor

Dr. Ambedkar also kept mum. No doubt, Kalelkarreport was consigned to the dustbin and laterMandal Report providing reservation for OBCswas also given the same treatment by Nehru’ssuccessors. However Mandal Report was acceptedby VP Singh government and despite ugly andviolent All India agitation against it by theCongress and BJP supporters, it became law afterthe 9-judge bench of the Supreme Court put itsstamp on it in Indira Sahani Case (1992).Scheduled Castes and Tribes had so far remainedindifferent to OBCs reservation and in fact opposedthem when they joined hands with upper castes intoppling Karpoori Thakur Government in 1978who had announced reservation to OBCs accordingto Kalelkar Report. But the agitation over MandalReport brought them in support of reservation forOBCs as they feared that this agitation mightendanger their own reservations. This is the bitterchapter of the history of reservations.

The Supeme Court bench in Indira Sahani Caseallowed the reservation for OBCs but with a rider ofcreamy layer concept (which is exterior toConstitution) and refusal of reservation inpromotions. Although SCs and STs were notaffected by this judgment they feared that thismight apply to them. They put pressure on theGovernment to safeguard their reservation inpromotions and the Government in order to pleasetheir vote-bank provided this safeguard byamending Constitution to this effect in 1995. Theprovisions of this amendment were not extended toOBCs. It was decided in Indira Sahani case that thequota of posts which would remain unfilled, wouldnot lapse but would be carried forward. Thisallowed the Government to fill the empty quotaposts with general category candidates after lapseof some period on pretence of work suffering due tovacant posts. Again, the Constitution was amendedto the effect that empty quota posts may be filledwith only reserve category candidates. This createda situation in which accumulated quota posts couldbe filled only if new jobs were created.

While this tussle between the politicians and thebureaucrats was going on, another controversyarose about the accelerated seniority. Since thecandidates of the reserve category were placedabove general category candidates in seniority,they were promoted earlier than general categorycandidates which was considered as acceleratedseniority or double promotion. This not onlycreated bad blood between the reserve categoryofficers and general category officers but alsoresulted in dominance of reserve category officersin higher posts. This accelerated seniority resultingin accelerated promotion was sanctioned byanother constitutional amendment (85th). Side byside, the Parliament also amended article 335permitting the lowering of standards for evaluationof SCs and STs. Now, there was no room forgeneral category bureaucrats to maintain theirsupremacy in higher posts. These rules ofrecruitment and promotions were also pinching thejudiciary setup. Ultimately, they found a way out.They took refuge under the Article 16(4) whichprovides that reservation will be subject to thecondition of adequate representation. The courtsaid that unless the Government proves that thegroup benefitting from promotion is inadequatelyrepresented reservation in the promotion cannot bemade. Now, the only way by which it could beascertained whether or not a particular group (classof citizens) had got adequate representation, wascast-census for which no Government was willing.This meant a ban on reservation in promotions.

The Government is once again trying to overcomethis hurdle by constitutional amendment [may beby nullifying Article 16(4)] but it will not be aneasy task since the amendment will surely hit thebasic structure of the Constitution. The OBCs-based Samajwadi Party has vehemently opposedreservation in promotion, since the OBCs havebeen totally left out from this promotionalreservation facility. The demand for inclusion ofOBCs in promotional reservation will not beaccepted by the general category bureaucrats andmay be by the courts too. What will be the final


25


26

Current Affairs’ Section:

[Prof K.S.Chalam is a former Member, Union

Public Service Commission, New Delhi. He was

Vice-Chancellor, Dravidian University, Kuppam,

A.P. and earlier Prof of Economics at Andhra

University. He was the first Director of Swamy

Ramanand Tirtha Rural Institute, Bhoodan

Pochampally during 1997-98. He is known as the

pioneer of the Academic Staff College Scheme in

the country as the scheme was strengthened by

UGC on the basis of his experiments in 1985. He

became the first founder director of the Academic

Staff College at Andhra University in 1987. He

was actively involved in the teachers’ movement,

secular and rationalist activities and served as

the National Secretary, Amnesty International

during [email protected]]

Is it Economics versus Politics?

The political crisis in Delhi due towithdrawal of support to UPA by Didi

has enticed commentators to make fascinatingobservations on economic policy and politicalaffairs. But, the news in English press and mediagive an impression that the regulators in Delhi didnot appear to be worried. It is only the academicpundits in their disquiet to interpret too many thingsin one single event that have started attackingeconomists and policymakers. One may keep inmind that the job of an economist is much widerthan the mere business concerns of some or simplygrowth rates.

There is also a subtle allusion that the whole issue isbetween the economic policies pursued bygovernment, or maybe a section of the government,and those who oppose it on the basis of convictions.Thus, the present disarray is basically leapfrogbetween those who subscribe to some kind of apolitical ideology and others who stand for certaineconomic policies. Is there such a separationbetween economic policy and political ideology? Isthere really an economic crisis or emergency nowto force the policymakers in Delhi to embark uponthe stream of reforms at once or something else?

If we look at the policies pursued by differentgovernments either at the Centre or in the States forthe few decades, particularly after 1991, one canfind that almost all governments followedanalogous policies irrespective of the ideology ofthe party in power. Otherwise, how could themassive economic outcomes like billions of rupeesworth of wealth through mining or share market orIPL, some other superficial activities have beencreated?

Is it possible to create so much affluence by so fewindividuals overnight? How many of the so-calledeconomists or bureaucrats are benefitted for part ofthe deals? How many of the real policymakers andbeneficiaries of such policies are brought to book?Unless we address these questions, it is difficult topose the present crisis as a machination ofeconomists or politicians. Some of them may be thesmokescreen of bigger players who are behindthese operations or crises and finally come out withsimple solutions to resolve them with ease.

As Hindus and Indians, we know how God appearsat the end of a deep crisis and resolves it as per therequests of the disciples/pundits. It gives animpression as if God is under their control andoperates as per their dictates. Though it appears tobe simplistic to imagine like that, the cosmic dramaof Indian politics signifies as if a supreme being hasmade all of us play the worldly characters to satisfyour egos. The moment we comprehend thenon-duality of self and the Brahma (the Supreme


27

K.S. Chalam

Being) or simply realize it as maya, we would attainbliss. Therefore, do not try to physically identifyhim as He appears everywhere; simply follow yourkarma. This is the ultimate truth of universal andsublime worldview that one can reach beingcitizens of this country! One becomes religious andotherworldly after seeing the continuous andunabated play of events without substantial gain tothe common man/voter. Therefore, he becomesworldly-wise and tries to get/squeeze as much aspossible from those who approach him/her at thetime of seeking his/her vote. He is doing his karma

and why do you blame him? Let us keep theVedanta aside and get into the philosophy ofsurvival politics in India.

It appears that all politicians have the same contenteven if we do not accept the crude adage that it isthe last resort of scoundrels. We do not know muchabout the Bengali society from where MamataBanerjee has emerged at the national politics and isthe centre of present debate. The Bengal bhadralok

are very intelligent guys and can put anyone in aquandary (there are exceptions) without directlyproviding answers to our immediate dilemmas.

I noticed a shift in their orientation about five yearsago when an old friend known for his radicalpostures explained to me that Mamata Didirepresented Bharat Mata with her attire andgestures. That was his retort when I told him that Iwas impressed by her opposition to some policiesof the government that affect aam aadmi. Whatdoes it indicate? It may signify that some of theforces that were behind the previous dispensationhave slowly shifted to the other side and startedformulating agendas of governance. This hasperhaps suited well everyone in Bengal as it did notmatter much since the superstructure of Trinamoolhas remained the same without substantial

participation of the real proletariat? It is here wemay try to understand the sociology of presentBengal so as to comprehend the significance of theutterances of Didi. Bengal and its indomitablecharacter of a mixture of Dravidian, Mongoloid,Austro-Asiatic and other indigenous groups hasnever been represented by the national Bengalicons that we are familiar with. There are districtsin Bengal where the majority of the population isfrom Muslim, Dalit and Adivasi groups like KoochBihar, Malda, and Jalpaiguri, etc.

In fact, more than half of the population of Bengalconsists of scheduled castes (23per cent),Scheduled tribes (5.5 per cent) and Muslims (25.2per cent). A recent PhD study by Dipankar Mandalhas broadly concluded that caste and tribaldivisions still persist in Bengal. Some individualcastes among these groups have been tacticallyencouraged by the previous party in power and areable to challenge the hegemony of the dominant insome pockets. But, critiques say they are pieces ofdemonstration but never surfaced to share powerand resources. This may be a formulation that canbe contested. The drama in Bengal is that withoutgiving leadership to the social proletariat, it ispossible to come to power through emotionalcatchphrases to capture the imagination of poor andilliterate. Thus, Didi and her political party areconditioned by the sociology of Bengal which thescholars of political sociology seem to have notaddressed to understand Didi. Neither the careeristeconomists nor policymakers do matter here, butthe corporate business interests and the games theyplay would govern the drama in Delhi. Let us watchthe moves and manipulations of the unseenspirits/deities that would ultimately decide thefuture of the country and not necessarily politicsand economics.


28

“No government likes to impose burdens on the common man. Our government has been voted to office

twice to protect the interests of the Aam Aadmi,” — Manmohan Singh(P.M.)

“Is it not becoming clear that use of the name of Aam Aadmi, and misuse of power of chair, is to finish

Aam Aadmi? Is it the game plan?” —Mamta Banerjee (West Bengal C.M.)

[Sri N.K. Acharya is an

advocate, columnist and author

of several books on law. He was

formerly Secretary of Indian

Rationalist Association and had

edited the ‘Indian Rationalist’,

then published from Hyderabad

on behalf of the Association

prior to its transfer to Madras.]

FDI in Wholesale: One can now try to analyse thepositive aspect of Foreign Direct Investment ‘inwholesale’ market as it is now permitted by theGovernment of India. It should have been named asForeign Direct Investment ‘in retail’. Because,what is achieved by the Foreign Direct Investmentin wholesale market is that the articlesmanufactured and goods produced are madeavailable to the consumers at wholesale rates.Wholesale shops indulging in distribution of goodsnow direct their attention to the consumers. Underthe new dispensation the whole system ofmiddlemen such as sole distributors, distributors,commission agents and brokers etc. is eliminated.The commission claimed in the above stages wouldno longer be added to the price. It makes the goodsavailable to consumers at wholesale prices. Thisnew system means two things: 1) the manufacturersand producers get adequate and profitable pricesand 2) the consumers get the goods at cheaperprices. Elimination of middlemen in trade is theprinciple purpose in promoting wholesalers toreach the consumers direct through departmentalstores or super markets established in every urbanlocality. The prejudice entertained by somepolitical parties against the traders themselves assuch, is the only ground which guides theopposition to permit FDI in wholesale markets.Otherwise, promotion of wholesale market isdefinitely advantageous to all the personsconcerned in trade. When the country adopted theValue Added Tax system which replacedmulti-point sales tax it indicated its policy toeliminate as far as possible several intermediaries

whose presence otherwise means enhancement ofconsumer prices. Value Added Tax rendered theintermediaries in trade unnecessary. The presentpolicy of permitting FDI in wholesale market isthus an inevitable next step.

[Why the help of a Foreign Direct Invester is needed

to remove the middlemen nuisance from between the

producer and consumer and why the Indian

Government’s legal machinery is insufficient in

controlling the affairs should be the next point of

explanation by Sri. Acharya.— Rekha S.]

UPA in doldrums: Coalitions are the naturalphenomena when democracy is beingexperimented. Each political party seeks to adoptits own method to gain power. In coalitions, theminor and insignificant political parties too claimto influence the party in power by holding outthreats of their disassociation with coalition. Therewere instances of the party which had hardly sixmembers out of about 500 threatening to upset thebalance. As a matter of fact, the Governments inKerala changed by reason of a single vote majority.Parliamentary Democracy is best practiced whenthe contending parties are only two. It is so in GreatBritain. But there, it took a long time to arrive at atwo-party Parliamentary Democracy. It is onlyshear experience which helped the US to maintaintwo-party system viz., Democrats and Republicans.It is, therefore, time now in India that politicalparties may divide themselves by national issuesinstead of bargaining for power. The politicalparties must evolve also basic national issues andconcentrate on them. Times were, when DMK andAnna DMK and such other regional parties wereplaying the role of kingmakers and the sameposition is being occupied now by TrinamulCongress and Bahujan Parties. The political partieshereafter formulate their strategies to work for thebetterment of localities if they propose to representregional interest and not aspire for working fornational issues and vice-versa.


29

N.K. Acharya

Reduction in marriageable age: The presentcontroversy over the reduction in marriageable ageis not necessary. It has nothing to do with theoccurrence of the crime of rape. The motivesbehind the rape have nothing to do with themarriage. Rape is a crime which occurs irrespectivewhether the woman concerned is married orunmarried. No offender has ever restrained himselfwhen he found his victim as married. Nor, has thetemptation for rape ever depended upon the womanbeing married or unmarried. The ancient viewabout the origin of the child-marriage before sheattained eight years was rooted in the belief, amongmany other, that children are likely to be convertedinto another religion. This is a belief of bygone age.Rape is a spontaneous aberration. It occurs incircumstances of isolation and never occurs inpublic. It is many times not a pre-planned offence.Hence, the steps to prevent its occurrence can beachieved only by offering adequate protection towomen and their privacy. The objectives of fixing ahigher age for marriage are different. Controllingincrease in population is one of them. The otherobjective is the protection of health of the youth. Itis not, therefore, proper to jeopardize the saidobjectives by reducing the age of marriage.

River water disputes: The sole purpose in settingup of a water tribunal as provided under theConstitution of India is to evolve a solution whichis based on consensus, That is why, the procedurefollowed by the tribunal is to receive memorandafrom every state and distribute the same to otherstates. Exchange of notes is a continuous processtill the states achieve a consensus on sharing waterson some equitable principle. The commissionrepeats the process any number of times.Therefore, the states concerned and participating inthe dispute shall try to implement a consensus. Ifthere is any doubt about the implementation, it isbetter if the concerned authority to implement theprojects associates the others with theimplementation of the projects. That is what hashappened in case of Tungabhadra Project which islocated on the border between Karnataka and

Andhra Pradesh. The scheme evolved in that matterenvisaged the appointment of engineers fromAndhra Pradesh on the Tungabhadra Board createdby Karnataka. That scheme has worked very well.There were no occasions in which either of theparties complained of any impropriety. What istroubling in the case of Kaveri Waters is stated to bethe phenomenal increase of the Ayakat in TamilNadu. It is here the role of agricultural scientistsbecomes essential. Tamil Nadu has to evolve somenew varieties of paddy which can be grown withless water.

The initiative of Rahul Gandhi: The initiative ofRahul Gandhi to bring the top industrialists toKashmir for meeting the students of that state iswelcomed by all sections of the people. Thepurpose behind the move is to engage theindustrialists to set up industries in that state andthereby create wide opportunities of employmentfor youth. Apart from their meeting with thestudents, it enables industrialists to discuss the roleof industry in cases where there is absence ofenterprises. The Federations of Industry andCommerce, no doubt, create such opportunities.Even then an independent assessment by individualindustrialists by visiting concerned areas offers aninspiration to the adventurous among them. ThatKashmir needs manufacturing industries iswell-known. But, for the local disturbances ofpolitical nature, Kashmir would have been in theforefront in fruit processing apart from generatingelectricity. The people there shall recognize that thepresent political dispensation is the only solutionwhich is beneficial to the people. The protectiongranted to Kashmir under Article 370 wassuccessfully implemented for the benefit of thatstate. In spite of it, if there are still certainelements working to the contrary (just the sameway as the Gurkhas of West Bengal, Bodos inAssam and groups of people of Telangana inAndhra Pradesh) is no indication that thealternatives proposed are in any manner lessbeneficial to the people of Kashmir. Therefore,industrialization of Kashmir is long overdue.


30

IRI / IRHA Members’ Section:

Turmoil in North-East.We Might Learn From Sikkim

—Subhankar Ray

[Subhankar Ray is a researcher in biochemistry

and long time associated with renaissance

movement. He may be contacted at 13 Regent

Estate, Kolkata 700 092,

[email protected]]

Even after more than sixty years ofindependence almost all the states of

North-East are in deep trouble driven byinsurgencies and secessionist struggles. Theintensification of ethnic differences posessignificant security challenges for India. It isworthwhile to note that a significant number ofpeople of these states are not only hostile to theCentre and people of the mainland but also they areequally hostile to each other; violent clashesbetween the states and also between differentethnic groups are rampant. It is true that Assam andTripura have a huge number of people whomigrated from Bangladesh and this migration hascontributed to a large extent to the turmoil, but forother states such as Nagaland, Manipur andMizoram etc inward migration is no issue. At leastthere is no migration from mainland India.

On the other hand it is very strange that in the last10-15 years there is a continuous migration/influxof large number of people of different ethnic groupsof the North-East to the mainland India. In everymetropolis we see them in every nook and corner,which was unimagined even before a decade and ahalf ago. If mainland India and its people areunfriendly and hostile to these people and if there isso vast a cultural gap that the North-Easterners feelalienated from mainland then why this influx?Certainly these migrants are more comfortable herethan in their home-field despite the recent bogus

threats to them by SMS. And it is quite likely thatthe number of migrants will gradually increase byleaps and bound.

North-East is abundant with natural resources suchas oil reserves, tropical forests, hydro-electricitypotentials of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries,tea, coal, timber, silk and jute. However North-Eastremains backward. It is often said that lack ofappropriate developmental initiative is the rootcause of violence and alienation.

In this backdrop we might look at Sikkim. Themonarchy was abolished in Sikkim and it became apart of India after a referendum in 1975 with 97.5 %voting in favour of union. Many social theorists andhuman rights activists thought at that time that thereferendum was doctored and this would lead tovery serious adverse consequences. However thatdid not happen. Sikkim has many similarities withother smaller states of North-East, it has borderswith foreign countries (notable among those isChina), multiethnic population of Nepali majorityand people being ethnically different from that ofmainland India.

Despite all these similarities the socio-politicalclimate in Sikkim remained quite peaceful since itsinclusion in India. Moreover in contrast to otherNorth-Eastern states there are plenty of migrantlabourers from Bihar, who are engaged inconstruction and other related activities, as well asBengalis who are serving in managerial and othercapacities in the thriving tourism industry ofSikkim. The most important thing is that despite thestate’s minimal industrial infrastructure, Sikkim’seconomy has been the fastest-growing in Indiasince 2000, with the state’s GDP expanding by over13% in 2007 alone.

When we notice underdevelopment in a particularregion we often blame the authorities for theircallous attitudes in neglecting the needs of thepeople and lack of initiative for their uplift. Thesefactors do contribute to the underdevelopment butmight be a minor issue. For proper functioning ofagriculture, industry, trade, commerce, service

31


32


sectors etc, which are the engines of growth, peaceand rule of law is a must and the people have toshun violence. It is probably true that theprovocation from foreign countries is a factor in thepresent and past turmoil of the North-East, but aquestion arises whether the people’s inherentnature has some role to play. Are some of thepeople of this region inherently hostile so theysuccumb easily to the provocation? This issueneeds some serious consideration. In Author’sopinion underdevelopment is not the cause of

violence; it is the other way round. In this contextpeople of North-East as well as social theorists andpolicymakers should learn from Sikkim.

The present Author is not a professional socialanalyst. This small piece is based on his experienceof visiting Sikkim twice and on some information,which we get easily. It is very difficult to make afinal judgment and predict the course that a societywill take in future. Still we might hope that Sikkimwill continue to prosper with the harmony that isnow present in this multiethnic state with its gentlepeople.

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Teacher’s & Research Scholar’s Section:

The ‘Maid of Honor’-

Humanity hidden in Slums!

Take a minute to think about that oneperson without whom life (at least in

India) would go for a toss. No matter how rude,how ruthless, how rueful or at times, how revoltingshe may be, she is still the one, most of us countupon, most of the times. Yes it is the maid, ourdomestic helper, the Bai as she is popularly called.

Right from my childhood, I have had various maidslending me a helping hand, and trust me, I haveadored them all. Starting from the two maids,Laxmi and Bala, who treated me as if I were aprincess; I also remember attending their wedding,to the one with whom, my brother and I went towatch a Telugu movie, (how she convinced mymother, is yet another story), to the christian maidwho would bring home a Christmas cake, the verynext day after the big eve; and a few more, all ofthem are very very close to my heart. Whenever Ithink of them a smile crosses my face, and I feeldeeply grateful that they have been a part of my life.

Well! I can actually go on and on, discussingalmost every maid that has served me, but this writeup is dedicated to my present maid, who is a fighter

by all means. she fights not only for her own rightsbut also for the rights of others. Here goes the story.

For the last one year Mamta, my maid, sets her feeton my doorstep at sharp 6.30 am, even on Sundays.She can actually put the ‘Time ’ to shame. One fineday this walking clock, (as I call her) was almost afew hrs. late than usual. So much that I dreaded shemight not come. After panicking for some time Igathered courage (I need lots, for the person whocannot even clean the spam mails, cleaning thehouse is a big big thing) and took my weapons to hitthe floor ( literally). It is then that I heard the doorbell ring. And BANG there she was right in front ofme. Obviously I enquired why she was late, and shenarrated a heart wrenching yarn, putting me totears.

That morning on her way to work, Mamta heard ameek cry. She followed the voice, and to her shockthe voice came from the nearby dustbin. Shepeeped into the bin, and what she saw was a ghastlyact of humanity. There in the bin lay a baby, whowas barely a few hours old. The little girl waswrapped in a dirty cloth which was kept in a hugeplastic bag. As she said these words tears rolleddown her eyes. My eyes were wet too. Withouteven giving a second thought Mamta took the babyto the nearby police station. She had to go through alot of queries at the police station but this did notdeter her from trying her best to help the child.After she was convinced that the baby was now insafe hands, she followed the road to her work.

The baby is now safe in an orphanage. There are afew more humble acts that this bold lady hasperformed, which make me salute this amazingwoman for the kindness and humanity that she hasdisplayed.

[Namita S. Kalla is a freelance journalist, author

of Experience Jaipur in 101 Ways (BCCL), a

linguist and an English language teacher. She

contributes regularly for TOI, DNA, DB, Jodhpur

and slogans for Radio [email protected]]

33


Namita S. Kalla

Book Review Section:

[Ms. Dipavali Sen has been a student of Delhi

School of Economics and Gokhale Institute of

Politics and Economics (Pune). She has taught at

Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, and

various colleges of Delhi University. She is, at

present, teaching at Sri Guru Gobind Singh

College of Commerce, Delhi University. She is a

prolific writer and has written creative pieces and

articles for children as well as adults, both in

English and Bengali. [email protected]]

The Magic in the Trees

[BOOK: Just Look Up – To See The Magic In

The Trees Around You by SadhanaRamachander, BluePencil Infodesign,Hyderabad; cover artwork Kobita Das Kolli;drawings Aiman, Eshana, Malini, Poojitha,Rahel; photographs Sadhana Ramachander;

2011; paperback, pp 60; price Rs. 175.]

Just look up and you will find the book allaround you.

It is an enchanting assortment of illustration andtext on trees, interspersed with quotations andinteresting bits of information.

The author, Sadhana Ramchander, is aHyderabad-based writer, editor and book designer.She has published poems for children(Autorickshaw Blues and Other Colours), but

targets this book at young as well as older readers.Encouraged by her parents, friends and associates,she feels that she must remit to a wider circle herenthusiasm and expertise on trees. As she says, wesee trees all around, but we do not really “notice”them (p 2). But trees are colourful personalitieswith exciting things happening to them all the time.

The Foreword is by Bittu Sahgal, the editor ofSanctuary Asia, who always carries a pair ofbinoculars on him so that he can watch birds,squirrels and monkeys on trees, not to speak of theflowers and foliage. He points out the nightmarishconsequences of wantonly neglecting trees, andfeels that this book will help deter them.

The book opens with a spectacular close-up of theKadamb tree, which belongs, we learn, to thecoffee family (Rubiaceae). Next comes theChenduphal or Badminton Ball tree with buds hardenough to give one a bump on the head.

The Palash and Rudrapalash (with buds that squirtwater) light up the next four pages. Pink-and-whitepuffs of the Shirish or Rain tree come next.

The author points out the ‘art’ that is in nature – instriped leaves and red seeds as well as in flowers, ofcourse. She also points out the possibilities of‘craft’ from trees. Bead necklaces and beadearrings, for example, from the seeds of theRaktakambal.

The Badam with its colourful leaves, the Gulmoharin its red and yellow variations, the Tree Jasmine orCork, and many other specimens, are treated withexquisite attention. The mauve blossoms of theNeelkanth or Jacaranda, the yellow Sonda orLaburnam…all are beautifully illustrated andannotated.

The Banyan, the Sandalwood and the Peepal havetheir place. The author points out how especiallyinfuriating it is when such trees are treated withdisrespect.

The book is called Just Look Up but has a delightfuldisplay of strips with the heading: “Before you lookup, you actually look down”. The strips show howthe ground below trees are strewn with blossoms

34


Dipavali Sen

and leaves of many hues, and indicate a lot aboutthe trees themselves (pp 56-57).

At the end there is “a calendar of magical events”showing which month of the year a tree reaches itsheight of beauty (p 60).

The quality of photography and printing isexcellent, adding to the magic charm of trees.

Children and adults alike will find this bookenthralling. They will also acquire somewhat of aglobal perspective. For, while the book is abouttrees in India, trees in India are not all Indian, or,only Indian. For example, the Neelkanth (NeeliGulmohar), says the book, grows in large numbersin Pretoria in South Africa. Pretoria is thus called

Jacaranda City. The flowering of these treescoincides with the examinations of the Universityof Pretoria and students on whom their petals fallare blessed with success in the exams! TheRaktarag tree (Lal Lasora) is of Cuban origin! TheBakul tree (mentioned even in Kalidasa’s works) isalso called Spanish cherry!

The global concern for Sustainable Growth callsfor awareness and affection for the heritage ofnature that human beings possess. To sustain andnurture, one must know and love. This beautifulpublication will create that love and awareness inits readers, and go some way at least, in promotingSustainable Growth and keeping the worldcolourful (not just green) for future generations.

35


Humanist News Section:

I

In India, Trained Priests FromLower Caste Are Still Awaiting

Jobs

Kesavan, a member of India’s Dalit caste, is

among those waiting

In India’s Tamil Nadu state, a lawsuit byupper-caste Brahmins has kept lower-caste

Dalits from taking up jobs as priests, the traditionaldomain of Brahmins.

—By Mark Magnier

October 01, 2012,

Los Angeles Times

CHENNAI, India: Kesavan’s father andgrandfather were caretakers who sold candles andperformed basic rituals at their local makeshifttemple attended by fellow Dalits, or members ofthe so-called untouchable caste. In India, thesestructures are omnipresent around sacred trees, onsidewalks, abutting overpasses. So when thegovernment of southern India’s Tamil Nadu stateoffered to train Hindus as priests regardless of theircaste (a calling traditionally limited to upper-casteBrahmins) he leaped at the opportunity.

Four years after completing the year-long program,however, he and 206 mostly lower-caste classmatesare still waiting for jobs as a lawsuit filed byBrahmin groups wends its way through India’s

Supreme Court. While the state owns and runs mosttemples in Tamil Nadu, the suit says, it has no rightto meddle in priest selection or administration.Angry and frustrated, the Dalit trainees say the longdelay only underscores Brahmins’ entrenchedpower in Indian society.

“We’re all doing makeshift work to survive,” saidKesavan, 26, who, like many southern Indians, usesone name. “It's a tough fight.”

Frustrating their ambitions are Brahmin religiousgroups, politically minded Hindu nationalists andtraditionalists keen to defend one of the last overtstructures protecting the 4,000-year-old castesystem.

Traditionally, Dalits have occupied the bottomrung of this complex hierarchy. They are viewed asunclean and relegated to jobs such as collectinghuman waste in a country where two-thirds ofhouseholds lack sewer connections. Althoughoutright discrimination in cities has eased in recentdecades, with Dalits edging into business andpolitics, religion has remained largely off limits.And on the social front, customs and prejudiceremain entrenched, especially in rural areas.

“The priests are the last vestige, the root ofBrahmin power,” said S. Kirupanandasamy, a portexecutive and lawyer advising the trainees in theirstruggle for recognition. “We’re not asking them toappoint some thief to the temple. These boys arewell-trained and qualified.”

The wannabe priests say they are not trying to takeover India’s most famous temples or pushBrahmins out. In fact, India has a significant priestshortage amid changing lifestyles that has leftthousands of temples of all sorts shuttered. Rather,they just want jobs in some of Tamil Nadu’s 34,000state-run temples, they say, in keeping with aConstitution that outlaws caste and otherdiscrimination.

The real problem isn’t Dalit impurity or tradition,they argue. Rather, it’s that Brahmins don’t want toshare money or power.

Officially, priest salaries are modest, often $50 to

36


$150 a month. But earnings from weddings,blessing-ceremonies and funerals can besubstantial. Top priests also rub shoulders withelite politicians, businessmen and socialites,opening various social and economic doors.

“They arrange deals with VIPs,” said Sathguru, 28,a Dalit who completed the course. “And they don'twant to let others in.”

Further upsetting tradition, the Dalit trainees wantmantras and blessings to be said in the local Tamillanguage rather than ancient Sanskrit, which theybelieve further safeguards Brahmin power. “Evenpious people can’t understand what they’re sayingto the gods,” Kirupanandasamy said. “It’s a deadlanguage.”

II

Announcing XIth

PUCL national PUCLconvention in Jaipur on 1-2

December 2012

The XIth National Conference of the PUCLwill be organised on the 1st and 2nd of

December, 2012 in Jaipur.

The venue of the two day conference is SwamiKumaranand Bhawan, Hathroi Gadh, NearVidhayakpuri Police Station, Behind Church Road,Jaipur.

Arrangements for stay have been made at ShriPrem Prakash Vishram Grah, Amrapura Sthan, MIRoad, Opposite OM Towers, hardly a few hundredmetres from the venue.

Both the venue and the place of stay are within akilometer distance from the Bus Stand and theRailway Station. All the members are requested tobring proof of their identity as it is required forstaying in the Dharamshala.

Registration fee of Rs. 200 has been kept for bothdays.

Jaipur conference contacts: Prem Krishna Sharma:0141 2206139, 9414055811, Kavita Srivastava:

0141-2591408, 09351562965, HaroldSingh,9314871749 and 9829856789, Pappu:9887158183, Malvika: 7742794190

Email Address: <[email protected]> and<[email protected]>

As planned in the National Council meeting thelarger theme for the year will remain Challengesbefore the Human Rights Movement and PUCL’sResponse (Manav Adhikar Andolan Ki

Chunautiyan Evam PUCL) in which the specifictheme of the Jaipur Conference will be:

“People’s Insecurity in the name of NationalSecurity: Citizen’s Rights, Democracy and StateTerrorism.”

The discussion will take place around the followingthree sub-themes:

1: Anti-Democratic laws and Sedition andExperiences of Combating it.

2: In the backdrop of Gujarat Genocide: Examiningthe ten-year struggle for Justice and Humanity inthe entire country.

3: Politics of Resource Grabbing: Resistance andthe response of the Indian State.

Discussion on Re-imagining PUCL and addressingorganisational issues within the PUCL will alsotake place. Information on the final programmewith sessions and speakers will be sent soon.

In case you want to join the conference then pleasesend your names in advance to Email Address:[email protected],

[email protected],

[email protected]

or by Post to:

PUCL, Rajasthan, 76 Shanti Niketan Colony,Kisan Marg, Jaipur 302015

Prabhakar Sinha, President PUCL,

V Suresh, National Secretary

Mahipal Singh, National Secretary

Chitranjan Singh National Secretary

Kavita Srivastava, National Secretary

—News sent by Mahipal Singh


37

III

Veteran Freedom Fighter AndSocialist Leader

Shri B. Satyanarayan ReddyPassed Away

He passed away in a private hospital inHyderabad on 6th October 2012 after a

brief illness. He was 86. He was a staunch followerof Rammanohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan.He was a bachelor, who dedicated his life for publicservice and served for long in the Janata Party, LokDal and Telagu Desham Party. B. SatyanarayanaReddy popularly known as Bhaiji, born on 21stAugust, 1927 in his native village Annaram, ShadNagar, district Mehboobnagar, Andhra Pradesh,hailed from an agricultural family. He had hisprimary education in village Edulabad ofRangareddy district in then Nizam State (NowAndhra Pradesh) and thereafter in KayasthaPathshala and Keshav Memorial School,Hyderabad. After getting his High Schooleducation in Vivekvardhini High School,Hyderabad, he had college education at NizamCollege, Hyderabad. He received Law Degree fromfamous Osmania University, Hyderabad.

He was a well known Freedom Fighter and tookpart in ‘Quit India’ movement in 1942 at an early of14 years, and was arrested when he took out a

procession of students against Gandhiji’s arrest.

Later on he took an active part in the Socialistmovement and participated in the HyderabadPeoples’ Movement in 1947. He took inspirationfrom Mahatma Gandhi, Acharya Narendra Deva,Dr. Rammanohar Lohia and Jayprakash Narayanand took part in the ‘Socialist Movement’ under theinspiring leadership of Dr. Rammanohar Lohia. Heorganized ‘Satyagraha Movement’ against theNizam’s Rule. At the time of merger of the State inthe Indian union, he was arrested in 1947 by thethen Nizam’s Government and imprisoned inCentral Jail, Chanchalguda, Hyderabad for sixmonths.

While in prison he started and edited the UrduWeekly Payam-e-Nav which he used to circulateamong his prisoner colleagues. Before this while hewas studying in Class VI, he used to publish a HindiFortnightly Mukul.

During the Emergency era he was arrested on 1st

August, 1975 and was detained under MISA for 18months and sent to Musheerabad jail during theEmergency period. He was arrested several timesduring the Congress Rule. He took part in theBhoodan Movement of Acharya Vinobha Bhaveand Sri Jayprakash Narayan.

Shri Reddy had a wide experience of Indianpolitics. He was the Chairman of the ActionCommittee of the Hyderabad Students’ Union inthe year 1947-48. He was the General Secretary ofBar Association, City Civil Court, Hyderabad. Hewas founder member of the Socialist Party.Socialist Youth Wing, National High School,Samajwadi Yuvajan Sabha and Janata Party.

He was also Chairman of the Telengana PrajaSamiti during 1969-71. He was General Secretaryof the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party,1956-64 and was also the General Secretary of theJanata Party of Andhra Pradesh Unit 1977-79.Thereafter, he was General Secretary of Lok Dal(1979-82). He was Convenor of JayprakashNarayan Committee, Andhra Pradesh in 1975. SriReddy visited Malaysia, Singapore, Rome, Libya,

38


Nairobi (Kenya). London, China, Hong Kong,West Germany, France, Holland, Switzerland,Netherlands, Norway etc.

He was elected to Rajya Sabha in 1978 as thenominee of the Janata Party but joined TeluguDesham Party in 1983 and was re-elected to theRajya Sabha as Telugu Desham nominee in 1984.He was Governor of Uttar Pradesh from12-02-1990to 25-05-1993 and later of Orissa.

A Telangana protagonist, Satyanarayana Reddyserved as an inspiration for those in the Telanganamovement. Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan and ChiefMinister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy expressed theircondolences. Mr. Narasimhan said SatyanarayanaReddy was a great freedom fighter and one of themost able and influential public servants of his

generation. In his demise, the country lost anoutstanding administrator.

Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy visited the residence oflate Satyanarayana Reddy and paid tributes to thedeparted leader. TDP president N. ChandrababuNaidu recalled the service rendered bySatyanarayana Reddy as Rajya Sabha member andGovernor and expressed his heart-felt condolencesto the members of the bereaved family. BJP leadersM. Venkaiah Naidu, Bandaru Dattatreya and StateBJP president G. Kishan Reddy describedSatyanarayana Reddy as an ideal politician and astrong socialist and nationalist, fighting againstrepression of Nizams.

—News sent by Qurban Ali

[email protected]


39

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The First Volume of M.N. Roy’s ‘Fragments of a Prisonner’s Diary Crime & Karma Cats

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