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14th November is Nehru’s birthday Justice Katju

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru 14th November, is the birthday of Pt Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister.
A friend of mine told me this story when I was a lawyer in Allahabad. This friend, who was a few years older than me, is now no more.
In the late 1950s, a convocation was held in the Allahabad University. In this function, some university students, including my friend, put a garland of shoes on the neck of the UP governor (in protest against some issue). Consequently, these students were expelled from the university.
They decided to go to Delhi and request prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to get their expulsion revoked, thinking that since Allahabad was Nehru’s parliamentary constituency, he would get their expulsion revoked.
They took the night train to Delhi, travelling without tickets. When the travelling ticket examiner (TTE) came and asked for their tickets, they shouted “ Hum prime minister ke constituency ke hain; Bhaag jao “ ( We are from the prime minister’s constituency; get lost), and the poor TTE fled.
On reaching Delhi, they went straight to the prime minister’s residence at Teen Murti. When they wanted to enter the house, they were stopped by the security personnel, who naturally asked whether they had an appointment. They said “ Hum prime minister ke constituency ke hain. Hamein appointment wapointment ki zaroorat naheen hai “ ( We are from the prime minister’s constituency. We don’t need any appointment).
When the security personnel would still not allow them entry, the students threatened to commit suicide at the gate of the prime minister’s house, and created a ruckus.
This news reached Nehru, who ordered that they be allowed entry. The students then trooped into the prime minister’s house, and were ushered into a big hall, where there were a lot of dry fruits, such as kishmish, badaam, akhrot and cashew nuts. They ate some and pocketed a lot for future use.

After a few minutes, Nehru came into the hall, in shorts and a vest, and shouted “Jao padho, padho “ (Go and study). The students replied “ Kahaan padhein sahib? Hamein expel kar diya gaya hai “ ( Where should we study, sir? We have been expelled). Nehru again shouted “ Padho, padho “ and left the hall.

The students were bewildered, and they left the house wondering what the prime minister meant.
They then caught the night train to return to Allahabad (again travelling without tickets and eating the dry fruits they had pocketed at the prime minister’s residence).
In the morning, when the train reached Fatehpur, the station before Allahabad, one of them got off the train and bought a newspaper at the platform. There, it was published that their expulsion had been revoked by the university vice-chancellor.
Probably, Nehru, the magnanimous man that he was, had told a secretary to telephone the vice-chancellor and request him to forgive the students and readmit them. After all, boys will be boys (particularly Allahabad boys!).
Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.
Justice Markandey Katju

November 14, 2022
Celebrating our defeat By Justice Katju

Many Indians are celebrating Pakistan’s defeat by England in the T20 World Cup cricket tournament, as if India has won the Cup.
These fools don’t understand that India and Pakistan are in fact one country, only temporarily divided by the Britishers ( the way they divided Ireland, Cyprus, Palestine, etc ) by that historical swindle called Partition, on the basis of the bogus two nation theory, the whole object being to prevent India from emerging as a modern industrial giant ( for which it has all the potential ), like another China.
We share the same culture, look like each other, many of us speak the same language, Hindustani ( called Hindi by Indians and Urdu by Pakistanis ), and we were one since Mughal times. Indians and Pakistanis socialise abroad as if no Partition had ever occurred.
We are bound to reunite one day under a secular govt, though that will take time. West and East Germany were reunited in 1990 after a partition of 45 years.So a defeat of Pakistan is in fact our defeat, and their victory is our victory.
When an Indian soldier kills a Pakistani soldier he is behaving like a fool, because he is killing his own countryman, and similarly, when a Pakistani soldier kills an Indian soldier he is behaving like a fool because he is killing his own countryman.
Hindus and Muslims were befooled by the Britishers into thinking we are each other’s enemies, but how much longer must we remain befooled ? How much longer must we waste our precious resources in hostility with each other ? Is 75 years not enough ?
Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India.
Justice Markandey Katju
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.

November 14, 2022
The demand of Kashmiris for azaadi By Justice Markandey Katju

I condemn, and have always condemned, atrocities by Indian security forces, on innocent Kashmiris.But when Kashmiris demand azaadi ( freedom ) do they realise what the implications of azaadi are ?
Presently there is a huge handicraft industry in Kashmir, and the market for this are the hundreds of towns of India, in each of which there are shops of Kashmiris who bring their products ( carpets, shawls, pashmina, handicrafts, etc ) from Kashmir for sale in these shops.
In big towns like Delhi there are dozens of such shops. Once I went to Kovalam beach near Tiruvananthipuram in Kerala, and found a couple of shops of Kashmiris there too. In Kulti, a small town in West Bengal ( near Asansol ) there is a Kashmiri shop. Similarly, wherever one goes in India—north, west, south or east—one will find shops of Kashmiris selling their wares which they have brought from Kashmir in towns there.
Now if India becomes azaad, what will happen ? Kashmiris then cannot enter into India without a visa, and a visa will be next to impossible to obtain. The market for the products of Kashmiri handicraft industry will then disappear, and the industry will close down, throwing hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris out of employment, apart from bankrupting the owners. Will this not bring further misery to Kashmiris, who are already suffering from unemployment, etc ?
The horticulture industry ( which grows apples, babboogosha, akhrot, baadaam, etc ) will also similarly suffer.
When I mentioned this to some Kashmiri youth they said we will find a market elsewhere. But where ? It is not easy to find a new market. Pakistanis will not like competition, and as for the Chinese, experience shows that having economic ties with them can lead to bondage of a colonial type.
Kashmiris ( apart from JNU students and others ) do not think of the implications of what they say, but keep parroting ‘azaadi, azaadi’
You can’t eat freedom. You need food. And to get food you need a job. If freedom results in unemployment ( because the industry will close down if the market disappears ) what use is such freedom ?

Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India. Author can be reached at justicekatju@gmail.com

Justice Markandey Katju
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.

November 13, 2022
Sir Muhammad Iqbal Day By Justice Katju

Today, 9th November, is the birthday of the Urdu poet Mohammad Iqbal, and it is being celebrated in Pakistan as Iqbal Day ( since Iqbal subscribed to and propagated the 2 nation theory on which Pakistan was created )
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iqbal_Day
While I regard Iqbal as a good poet, I intensely dislike him for his strong support of dividing India and creating Pakistan.
Sir Muhammad Iqbal
Some people say that Iqbal wrote ‘ Saare jehan se achcha Hindustan hamara ‘ . Such people also quote the the sixth stanza of Saare Jahan Se Achcha (1904), as proof of Iqbal’s secular outlook:
Maẕhab nahīṉ sikhātā āpas meṉ bair rakhnāHindī haiṉ ham, wat̤an hai Hindūstāṉ hamārāor,Religion does not teach us to bear ill-will among ourselvesWe are of Hind, our homeland is Hindustan.

Such people say that this proves that Iqbal never wanted Partition of India. These people forget that this poem was written in 1904, when Iqbal was only 27 years old, and his later communal views had not developed.

However, his views evidently changed subsequently ( evidently after his stay in England from 1905-1906 ).
http://www.allamaiqbal.com/publications/journals/review/apr76/1.htm
Thus, in Tarana-e-Milli written in 1910 he writes :
Chīn o-ʿArab hamārā, Hindūstāṉ hamārā
Muslim haiṉ ham, wat̤an hai sārā jahāṉ hamārā
or, Central Asia and Arabia are ours, Hindustan is ours We are Muslims, the whole world is our homeland.
Iqbal’s world view had now changed; it had become pan-Islamic. Instead of singing of Hindustan, “our homeland,” the new song proclaimed that ‘ We are Muslims , and the whole world belongs to us ‘. (See also his long poems ‘Shikwa’ and ‘Jawab-e-Shikwa ).
Gradually, Iqbal became highly communal, and a strong supporter of creating Pakistan, a separate homeland for Muslims in India.
This, in his presidential address to the Muslim League annual conference in Allahabad in 1930, he strongly supported a separate nation-state in the Muslim majority areas of the sub-continent, an idea that inspired the creation of Pakistan.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allahabad_Address
Partition in 1947 was a historical British swindle, which caused huge sufferings to the people of the Indian sub continent ( half a million killed, and many millions displaced ). This is why I strongly dislike Iqbal, who had become a British agent, whatever others may say about him.
Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India. Author can be reached at justicekatju@gmail.com
Justice Markandey Katju
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.

November 10, 2022
Awarding Arfa Khanum Sherwani By Justice Katju

Arfa Khanum Sherwani, senior editor of thewire.in, will be receiving the Kuldip Nayyar Patrakarita Samman Award from the Gandhi Peace Foundation, allegedly for her great achievements in journalism.But her ‘achievements’ need some examination.
Arfa Khanum Sherwani
1. Arfa said India should have a Muslim Prime Minister. I regard this as a stupid idea. We need leaders who are truly secular and modern minded, and their religion or caste are wholly irrelevant. But Arfa’s ‘secularism’ is revealed by this fatuous and inane idea.
2. Arfa often speaks out against evils in Hindu society, e.g. caste system, and she has defended reservations for dalits and OBCs as they were oppressed for long.
Thus, regarding the recent SC verdict upholding 10% reservations for poor upper castes she tweeted against it, saying that reservations were meant to benefit the lower castes, not the upper castes.What Arfa deliberately avoids saying is that all caste reservations, not just for upper castes, are political stunts for getting votes, and in fact they have damaged the country, As explained in some earlier articles of mine ( which can be seen online ) “
So all reservations, whether for upper or lower castes, should be criticised, and not just those for upper castes. But Madam Arfa will never say this.
3. Moreover, while she criticises feudal evils in Hindu society e.g. caste system, she never criticises such evils in Muslim society e.g. sharia, burqa, madarsas and maulanas, which were suppressed by the great Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s.
Secularism has to be a two way, not one way, traffic. To be truly secular one must condemn feudal, backward practices among both Hindus and Muslims. But Arfa only criticises evils in Hindu society. This is the truth about her ‘secularism’, which is a one way traffic, a trait which she shares with much of our so called ‘liberal’ and ‘secular’ intelligensia
Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India. Author can be reached at justicekatju@gmail.com

Justice Markandey Katju
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.

November 9, 2022
Big business is taking over the media By Justice Markandey Katju

Rahul Gandhi has congratulated Elon Musk on his taking over Twitter, and has asked that the Opposition’s voice in India be not stifled.
What Rahul, wittingly or unwittingly, overlooks is that the big business which is taking over the media all over the world, looks only at its own interests, not the interests of others.
The take over of Twitter by Elon Musk in America is akin to the take over of CBN IBN by Mukesh Ambani, or of NDTV by Gautam Adani in India.
When I was Chairman of the Press Council of India, I came to know that the owner of one of the big Hindi newspapers, having perhaps the largest circulation in India, also owns about 50 other businesses e.g. mining, coal, iron&steel, real estate, etc. The newspaper was only a small business compared to his other businesses.
Why then was he interested in publishing the newspaper ? It was obviously to help his other businesses, e.g. by publishing something favourable to a Minister, who in return would help him in his other businesses.
Historically, the media arose in the 18th century in Europe as an organ of the people against feudal oppression. At that time all the organs of power were in the hands of feudal authorities, kings, aristocrats, etc. Hence the people had to create new organs which would serve their interests. The media ( which was then print media mainly in the form of leaflets, pamphlets, etc, not regular daily newspapers ) was one of the main organs created by the people for waging their struggle against feudalism, and it was used by great writers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Junius, etc. The media then represented the voice of the future, as contrasted to the feudal state organs, which only wanted to preserve the status quo.
Later, the role of the media changed. It was taken over by businessmen, and stopped representing the people. However, it still fulfilled a useful purpose by conveying news truthfully to the people. In India, great journalists like Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, Nikhil Chakrabarty, etc fulfilled this role, like William Lloyd Garrison, Edward Murrow, and Walter Cronkite in America.
Now the wheel has turned totally around. Now the worldwide trend is to totally emasculate the media, deprive it of whatever freedom it had, and make it an organ dedicated solely to serving the commercial interests of the proprietor.

This trend is most visible in Indian television today, which has turned largely into what is called euphemistically as ‘godi media’. Now all pretences of conveying the truth have been dropped, and instead one hears only a single refrain.

Rahul Gandhi’s message is only wishful thinking, and Elon Musk is unlikely to pay any heed to it. He has invested 43 billion dollars in buying Twitter, and will only be interested in having good returns from this huge investment.
Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India. Author can be reached at justicekatju@gmail.com
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.

October 31, 2022
Now even quoting Ghalib has become dangerous in Pakistan

By Justice Katju
Pakistan has become a strange country. Now even quoting from Ghalib, the greatest Urdu poet, has become dangerous there.
I had written an article on Urdu poetry, and sent it to a well known Pakistani online publication for being published.The article mentioned this couplet of Mirza Ghalib, the most famous Urdu poet :
“ Imaan mujhe roke hai, jo khenche hai mujhe kufr Kaaba mere peeche hai, kaleesa mere aage “
Lo and behold ! I received this email from the publisher :
“ Dear Justice Katju
We are avoiding all pieces featuring religion and you mention the Kaaba. I’m afraid this will have repercussions for us here in Pakistan. As mentioned, emotions are high, and religious mention can cause damage. We will not be able to use it unfortunately.Regards xxxx “.

It seems there are many verses of Ghalib which will invite a death fatwa if recited today, like that issued to Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeni.

Thus Ghalib writes :
“ Masjid ke zer-e-saaya kharaabaat chaahiye “i.e.“ Below a mosque there should be a wine shop
“Similarly, he writes :
“ Kahaan maikhane ka darwaaza Ghalib aur
kahaan vaaizPar itna jaantay hain kal voh jaata tha ke ham nikle “
i.e.” The tavern and the preacher ( mulla ) are said to be far apartBut when I was entering the tavern yesterday, the preacher was leaving “.
This is a subtle dig on religious clerics. Poetry of several famous Urdu poets may also invite a death fatwa in Pakistan today
Among the modern Urdu poets, Sahir Ludhianvi is outspokenly atheistic.
Consider the following lines :“Aqaayad vaham hai mazhab khyaal khaam hai saaqiAzal se zahen-e-insaan bastaa vaham hai saaqi
which means :
“Creeds are a delusion and religions merely false notions; From the beginning man’s mind has been a slave to superstitions” and again:
“bezaar hai kanisht-o-kaleesa se ek jahaanSaudagaraan-e-din ki saudagari ki khair
which means :
“The world is sick of temples and churches;pray for the safety of the traffickers in religion”
So it is best for Pakistanis to keep away from Urdu poetry, to avoid being declared a ‘kafir’ and having a death fatwa placed on their heads by some mad mullah, whose tribe has increased exponentially of late in Pakistan. After all, one would not relish the prospect of having ‘sar tan se juda’
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.
Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India. Author can be reached at justicekatju@admintnc

October 29, 2022
Urdu poetry is thoroughly secular – Justice Markandey Katju

Urdu poetry is thoroughly secular
By Justice Markandey Katju
Many people think Urdu poetry is communal. On the contrary it is thoroughly secular.
Thus, Ghalib, the greatest Urdu poet, writes :
“ Imaan mujhe roke hai, jo kheeche hai mujhe kufr
Kaaba mere peeche hai, kaleesa mere aage “
i.e.
“ Faith is holding me back, atheism is pulling me forward

Kaaba is behind me, the church is in front “.

As explained in some earlier articles of mine ( which can be seen online) , Urdu poetry is not to be understood literally. The Urdu poets often write not directly but indirectly, conveying their meaning allegorically by allusions, hints, suggestions and indications.
Kaaba is the place in Mecca, which is the holiest place for Muslims. But in this sher ( couplet ) Kaaba must not be understood literally. By Kaaba Ghalib means feudalism or backwardness.
The word kaleesa literally means church ( of Christians ). But here it means modernism.
So when Ghalib says he has turned his back towards Kaaba (
i.e. he rejected it ), he means he has rejected feudalism and backwardness.
The word kaleesa in the sher means modernism, and therefore Ghalib means that he is a supporter of modern civilisation.
Many similar examples can be given from the poetry of many Urdu poets.
Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India. Author can be reached at justicekatju@gmail.com
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.

October 29, 2022