📰 The atrophy of the neo-Buddhist movement in India
•Every year in October, thousands of people assemble at Nagpur’s Deekshabhoomi to pay homage to B.R. Ambedkar and remember the historic day of October 14, 1956, when he and half a million of his followers embraced Buddhism. Ambedkar chose Buddhism after examining various religions to understand the suitability of each to liberate socially marginalised communities from the exploitative caste order. He found that Buddhism is rooted in India’s civilization, supplements modern ethical values and is averse to social hierarchies and patriarchal domination. Neo-Buddhism was proposed as a mass movement that would elevate former ‘Untouchables’ and help them achieve self-respect. He hoped that Buddhist principles would mobilise them into a robust community to battle the ruling Brahmanical elites.
Struggles of neo-Buddhism
•Neo-Buddhism emerged as a maverick phenomenon that offered strong psychological solace to the struggling Dalit masses. However, Ambedkar’s grand hopes remain unfulfilled. Today, the Buddhist population in India is one of the smallest minorities, its ideological challenge against the Hindu social order has not been taken seriously, and even within the Dalit community, conversion to Buddhism is not perceived as a suitable path to achieve social emancipation. Instead, it is the BJP that often fashions itself as the new torchbearer of Buddhist identity.
•A large majority (close to 80%) of Indian Buddhists resides in Maharashtra. The neo-Buddhists have established social and educational institutions, initiated cultural movements, and organised popular public festivals to make Buddhism a visible force in Maharashtra’s public sphere. However, it is mainly the Mahar caste and recently, smaller sections within the Matang and the Maratha castes which have identified themselves as neo-Buddhists. Other socially marginalised groups are still defined by Hindu caste nomenclatures and traditional occupations.
•The Dalit sociopolitical movements in States including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have also not promoted conversion to Buddhism. In U.P., during the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)’s regime, cultural symbols related to Buddhism, such as the Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal and Green Garden, were erected in public spaces, but there was still hesitation in suggesting religious conversion as an alternative to fight the battle for social justice. Even in States where the Scheduled Caste population is relatively high, such as in Punjab, West Bengal and Odisha, Dalits have shown restraint in adopting Buddhism to challenge their social location.
•Importantly, India’s neighbouring Buddhist countries also have not identified neo-Buddhists as significant partners in their theological engagements. Several Buddhist countries have built their own pagodas and temples in Bodh Gaya and are more concerned with adding new sites in India’s Buddhist Circuit. Certain individuals and Buddhist associations from Japan, Thailand and the U.K. have established some close links with the neo-Buddhists of Maharashtra, but this is small support.
Appropriation by the right wing
•Interestingly, it is the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre that has often presented itself as the promoter of Buddhist cultural heritage at the national and international levels. In overseas diplomatic gatherings, Mr. Modi has frequently invoked India’s ancient Buddhist identity, especially in China, Nepal, Myanmar and Japan. Mr. Modi has made a conscious effort to emphasise shared Buddhist heritage with these countries. He also visited Deekshabhoomi in 2017, paid rich tributes to Ambedkar and announced multiple developmental projects. It is his government that proposed a Buddhist Circuit.
•Theoretically, the neo-Buddhist movement is seen as an ideological and intellectual challenge to the dominant social and political ideas of the ruling elites. Interestingly, within the Hindutva discourse, Buddhism has been appropriated as an integral part of greater ‘Indic Civilization’ and the Buddhist conversion movement has not been seen as antithetical to the Hindu cultural pantheon. Further, Hindutva forces, using assertive cultural strategies, overtly appropriate crucial Dalit-Bahujan icons and underplay the fierce ideological antagonism that the early Dalit movement had against the Hindu social order.
•When right-wing forces are asserting their Hindu identity to build a monolithic majoritarian community, a popular deliberation on Ambedkar’s logic of conversion to Buddhism would have helped the Opposition, including the popular Dalit political class, to challenge such hegemonic appropriation. Independent cultural and religious strategies are crucial in building a challenge to the dominant narrative of Hindutva.
•However, the current Opposition lacks effective cultural strategies to challenge right-wing assertion. Instead, it still uses the same old formal electoral strategies, as we are seeing in Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s current Bharat Jodo Yatra. In this context, revisiting the ideals of Ambedkar’s neo-Buddhist movement can be helpful in building fierce ideological challenges to Hindutva’s understanding of history and culture.
Three-member commission to be headed by ex-CJI K.G. Balakrishnan has been asked to submit report in two years; development comes even as Supreme Court is hearing petitions on the issue
•The Union government has now formed a three-member Commission of Inquiry headed by former Chief Justice of India, Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, to examine the issue of whether Scheduled Caste (SC) status can be accorded to Dalits who have over the years converted to religions other than Sikhism or Buddhism.
•The notification for the formation of the commission was issued on Thursday, days before the Supreme Court on October 11 is expected to hear the Centre’s present position on a batch of petitions seeking the inclusion of Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims and the removal of the religion criteria for inclusion as SCs.
•Currently, the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 provides for only those belonging to Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist communities to be categorised as SCs. When enacted, the Order only allowed for Hindu communities to be classified as SCs based on the social disabilities and discrimination they faced due to untouchability. It was amended in 1956 to include Sikh communities and again in 1990 to include Buddhist communities as SCs.
•The three-member commission will also comprise Professor Sushma Yadav, member, UGC, and retired IAS officer Ravinder Kumar Jain, and has been given a two-year deadline to submit a report on the issue — starting from the day Justice Balakrishnan takes charge of the commission.
To look into changes
•The Department of Social Justice and Empowerment has said the commission’s inquiry will also look into the changes an SC person goes through after converting to another religion and its implications on the question of including them as SCs. These will include examining their traditions, customs, social and other forms of discrimination and how and whether they have changed as a result of the conversion.
•Noting that several representatives of existing SC communities have staunchly opposed the inclusion of converts to other religions, the government has also tasked the Justice Balakrishnan Commission with examining the impact of such a decision on these existing SC communities.
•The commission has also been empowered to examine any other related questions that it deemed appropriate, in consultation with and with the consent of the Central government.
•The Social Justice Ministry said, “This is a seminal and historically complex sociological and constitutional question, and a definite matter of public importance… given its importance, sensitivity and potential impact, any change in definition in this regard should be on the basis of a detailed and definitive study and extensive consultation with all stakeholders and no commission under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952 (60 of 1952) has so far inquired into the matter.”
Social disabilities
•The petitions challenging the religion criteria for inclusion in the top court have cited several independent commission reports since the First Backward Classes Commission headed by Kaka Kalelkar in 1955 that have documented the existence of caste and caste discrimination among Indian Christians and Indian Muslims, concluding that Dalit converts continued to face the same social disabilities even after leaving the Hindu fold.
•These include the Report of the Committee on Untouchability Economic and Educational Development Of the Scheduled Castes in 1969, the HPP report on SCs, STs, and Minorities in 1983, the report of the Prime Minister’s High-Level Committee formed in 2006, a 2008 study conducted by the National Commission for Minorities, the Ranganath Mishra Commission Report among others.
•In addition to this, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and the National Commission for Minorities had also recommended providing SC status to Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians in affidavits filed before the Supreme Court in 2011.
•In an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court in November 2019, the Union government had refused to accept these reports as evidence of continued social disabilities due to caste identity, noting that there did not exist enough empirical evidence to support this in all of the reports cited.
•The Kalelkar Commission Report and the 1983 HPP Report on SCs,STs and Minorities were the basis for amending the Order to include Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Buddhists as SCs in 1956 and 1990 respectively.
‘Other factors’
•The Union government had also said in the 2019 affidavit that Dalit Buddhists cannot be compared to Dalits who converted to Islam or Christianity because in case of the former, conversions were voluntary “on account of some innate socio-political imperatives” and in case of the latter, the conversions might have taken place “on account of other factors”.
•Further, the Centre had argued that the religions allowed to be included as SCs were branches or off-shoots of Hinduism and Dalits who converted to Islam or Christianity “ameliorated their social status” by way of their conversion and “cannot claim to be backward” since untouchability is a feature of Hindu religion and its branches alone.
📰 Every healthy man is obliged to provide for his wife, children: SC
•A healthy man is obliged to provide through legal means, even by physical labour, for his wife and minor children, the Supreme Court has said in a judgment.
•A Bench led by Justice Dinesh Maheshwari said it was a basic canon of law “that it is the sacrosanct duty of the husband to provide financial support to the wife and to the minor children. The husband is required to earn money even by physical labour… If he is able-bodied, he cannot avoid his obligation, except on the legally permissible grounds”.
•The judgment was based on an appeal filed by a woman who failed to win her case for maintenance from her estranged husband in the Family Court and the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
•The woman had argued in the High Court that the lower court had denied her claim for maintenance on perfunctory grounds. The husband contended that she hadfailed to prove that she could not maintain herself. But the apex court said the purpose of maintenance was to prevent even the slightest possibility of an estranged wife facing destitution.
📰 A synthetic click
The chemistry awards show that it pays to rethink the fundamentals
•The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless, the last of whom features in a group of only five to have won the Prize twice. The three chemists have been awarded for pioneering ‘click chemistry’ or getting molecules that wouldn’t normally bond together to do so in an efficient and uncomplicated manner. The ‘click’ comes from an analogy Sharpless drew of molecules snapping together, like airline seatbelts fitting into their buckles. Historically, chemistry has sought to imitate nature. From medicine to fertilizer, the chemist has sought to make synthetic products that mimic natural molecules. The artificial synthesis of indigo, instead of extraction from plants, had disastrous consequences for colonial India’s economy. On the other hand, several molecules have been synthesised in ingenious ways to create drugs and medicines to kill bacteria and relieve pain. The flip side is that these processes are likely laborious, can create unwanted by-products, many toxic. Often, the number of intermediary steps is so great and complicated that the desired result is usually too expensive to be useful.
•Sharpless began the conversation, almost immediately after winning his first Nobel Prize, of creating molecular building blocks — like Lego blocks — that could snap together quickly and efficiently. The first breakthrough came when Meldal and Sharpless, independently of each other, discovered what has become the foundational stone of click chemistry, namely the copper catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition. Two kinds of chemicals — azides and alkynes — react very efficiently when copper ions are added, Meldal discovered in his Copenhagen laboratory, and form a very stable structure called a triazole. Previous attempts to join azides and alkynes were cumbersome, but the trick this time was copper. From then on, if chemists wanted to link two different molecules, all that was required was to introduce an azide in one molecule and an alkyne in the other. They then snapped the molecules together with the help of some copper ions. This has now become an industry standard. However, Bertozzi took click chemistry to a new dimension and showed that it could be used in living organisms. Copper is toxic to living cells, but she figured out a way to produce a copper-free click reaction, called the strain-promoted azide-alkyne cycloaddition, and showed it could be used to treat tumours. The awards demonstrate that it pays to rethink the fundamentals of a field and persevere at it for long enough to spark a revolution.
📰 Where the stars must not twinkle
Clean skies, high altitude and complete darkness are vital for India’s cutting-edge astronomical observatory in Ladakh’s Hanle village. Jacob Koshy reports on the challenges in having it declared an International Dark Sky Reserve, and the efforts to make residents stakeholders in the process
•Srinivasa Ramanujan was ‘discovered’ twice in the 20th century. The first was when English mathematician G.H. Hardy ‘discovered’ the genius mathematician in 1914; and the second was when Indian astronomers in India, led by R. Rajamohan, discovered an asteroid that was later named 4130 Ramanujan. It was the first time in 104 years that asteroids were discovered from India. Their instrument, the 45-cm Schmidt telescope, was housed on the Javadi hills in Kavalur, Tamil Nadu.
•This spot is today the Vainu Bappu Observatory and is run by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, and is among India's foremost observatories. It was chosen in the 1960s because it was an impressive 750 metres above sea level, located amid a forest and offered fairly unobstructed vistas of the night sky.
•But this wasn’t ideal. Kavalur’s geography put it in the path of both monsoonal clouds, during June-September and the returning, or northeast, monsoon in November, forcing the observatory to often shut down for months. Rainclouds absorb starlight and radiation from cosmic objects, preventing them from being caught on the telescopes of cameras. So IIA scientists began their search in the early 1980s for a place least affected by the monsoon.
•To be able to detect stars or traces of cosmic phenomena, such as supernovae or nebulae from light years away, astronomers must be able to catch the faintest slivers of their radiation that often lie outside the range of visible light. Such radiation is, however, easily absorbed by water vapour and so it helps to have a telescope high above ground where the atmosphere is drier. “A dry, high-altitude desert is in many ways the ideal location,” says Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of the IIA. “Such terrain is difficult and quite inaccessible. We commissioned several expeditions and teams to different parts of the Himalayas and finally Hanle, Ladakh was chosen.”
In the high ranges of Ladakh
•A largely smooth double-lane highway from Leh, the capital of Ladakh, to Hanle cuts through a valley scooped out of the mountains of the Ladakh range and the teal-coloured Indus. Army units and border check-posts punctuate the landscape that opens out into the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, where you can spot the occasional herd of the Tibetan wild ass and swarms of leaf warblers. As the road ascends, a smattering of hamlets, surrounded by pasture land, comes into view with herds of Changthangi sheep, the source of pashmina wool.
•Situated at 14,000 ft above sea level and a little over 250 km southeast of Leh, Hanle is a village of about 320 houses and a population of about 1,500, according to Paljor Therchin, the sarpanch of Hanle.
•Against the backdrop of a blue sky flecked with cottony clouds, two huge metallic capsules — one higher than the other — incongruously rise out of the hills. Next to them, satellite dishes, like ushers, point to the sky. From here, a tarred road spirals down about 900 ft to flat land where makeshift cabins and a small building serve as ancillaries to a giant, parabolic dish that is a complex of a thousand mirrors bathed white in sunlight, resting on criss-crossing steel frames of red and blue. Men, some perched, some dangling on the beams, weave out of the meshes of this honeycomb structure.
•Facing this are what look like seven concrete cannons, one in the centre and six surrounding it. Each has seven mirrors that together resemble a robot-contingent of photographers training their apertures at some uncertain blink-and-you-will-miss cosmic event.
•This entire set-up, laid out on the mountain called Digpa-Ratsa Ri, aka Mt Saraswati, comprises the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO). The multicoloured dish is the Major Atmospheric Cherenkov Experiment Telescope (MACE) built by a consortium of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. and the IIA. The dish, with a diameter of 21 m, is the second largest of its kind in the world and the only one at such an elevation. Its goal is to detect Cherenkov radiation from space.
•This is a special kind of light from gamma rays, or the most energetic sources of radiation, that can result from dying stars or several galactic events. The seven-telescope contingent, called HAGAR (High Altitude Gamma Ray), also looks at Cherenkov radiation, although at a lower range of energies. The metallic capsule, the highest of the observatories, is the Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT), the oldest and active since 2000. An optical-infrared telescope with a 2-metre lens is designed to detect light from the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum as well as that just below it, or the infra-red spectrum. The second capsule, situated slightly lower than the HCT, is the GROWTH-India telescope, a 70-cm telescope made by IIA and the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai that is equipped to track cosmic events that unfurl over time, such as afterglows of a gamma ray burst or tracking the path of asteroids. Because of the wide span of frequencies covered collectively, the IAO provides multiple vantage
points to observe a range of cosmic phenomena and investigate the mysteries of the universe. Telescopes with small diameters generally can track a greater swath of sky but those with larger diameters can peer deeper when trained towards desired locations.
•The flip-side of Hanle’s seclusion, making it ideal for astronomy, is the weather and climate. The altitude means that atmospheric oxygen is low, making one prone to mountain sickness.
•Among the recommended paraphernalia on a trip to Hanle are cans of oxygen cylinders. The desiccated air that helps the telescope catch ephemeral interstellar light translates to sub-zero winters for at least six months of the year. The summer months from April to September have cold, windy nights, and with no access to the electric grid, the eager stargazer must brave runny noses and chills.
•The IAO telescopes, however, can be controlled remotely via a satellite link. Whatever the weather, astronomers at the IIA’s Centre for Research and Education in Science and Technology (CREST), about 35 km from Bengaluru, can manoeuvre the HCT to face their desired spot of sky. The other instruments too are equipped to be remotely controlled. While the HCT is manned 24/7, those on site are required only for maintenance and not for using the telescopes. Researchers who want a shot at using the instruments must apply, in fact compete, for observation time made available in quarterly slots; the applications are scrutinised by scientific committees.
•“The available time is over-subscribed three times. Every astronomer, even when they have their own telescopes, applies to use these because of the quality of sky and the large number of viewable nights that the telescopes offer. It is their bread and butter,” says Subramaniam.
•In recent years, these telescopes have helped gain a better understanding of a system of Earth-sized planets orbiting the TRAPPIST-1 star, about 40 light years away from Earth, as well as gravitational waves that resulted from the collision of neutron stars from a billion years ago, she adds.
The play of light and dark
•While these sophisticated instruments and their images are manipulated by scientists, all that novice visitors have to do to realise they are in a special place is look up at the night sky. At least 300 nights a year, the clouds would have been swept away, and the vista looks as if some invisible, giant being had kicked up a sandstorm of stars. Contrary to the thumb rule that ‘the lights that twinkle are stars, those that don’t are planets’, the sky is studded with unblinking lights.
•Twinkling stars imply starlight is being bounced around by atmospheric gases, dust and water vapour, and therefore obscuring to us on land its origins. At Hanle, the thinner air and the elevation means starlight is relatively unimpeded until it descends into the lower, more polluted stretches below.
•“You don’t need your phone’s flashlight to navigate here. Close your eyes, clear out the artificial light, absorb the darkness, and open them. You’ll see everything,” says Dorje Angchuk. As chief engineer at IIA, Angchuk, a native of Leh and the person in-charge of the HCT systems, has made countless trips to Hanle in the last quarter century and been closely involved in the installation of IAO telescopes.
•In the last couple of years, he has curated an avidly-followed Twitter stream of night-sky photographs of Hanle. Over the last several months, particularly since Ladakh was marked out as a distinct Union Territory from Jammu and Kashmir, he has been in the thick of a project that will shape the future of Hanle.
Dark Sky Reserve
•“Light is the enemy,” says Pawan Kotwal, Principal Secretary in the Ladakh Administration, referring to the phenomenon of light pollution in which artificial light from cities and home electrification have obscured the natural night sky. Recent studies show that clouds, the biggest reflectors of sunlight, scatter artificial light from ground-based sources, amplifying light pollution.
•For astronomy, a discipline that hinges on the wisps of light, artificial sources of light are contaminants. Thubstan Rinchen, the officer in charge of MACE, said in an IIA-commissioned documentary that light from, say, the high beam of a vehicle at night would flood the sensors of the telescope. Separating this light from that collected as part of experiments is a cumbersome process and results in loss of scientific data.
•Hanle, as it currently stands, is largely shrouded in darkness. Disconnected from the electric grid, solar panels and a diesel generator are the only sources of electricity. Hanle only gets electricity from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. The freezing months, says Padma Lazo, who runs a homestay here, can see temperatures dip to minus 40°C, though cookstoves and dung provide heat. “We don’t need electricity all the time but better jobs and schools for our children would be welcome.”
•Ladakh’s recent Union Territory status, a government eager to expand economic opportunities via tourism and the Indian Army expanding its infrastructure development, lighting to bolster its defence at the India-China border which is not far away — all these are challenges in keeping light from seeping into Hanle.
•To strike a balance, the Ladakh government along with the IIA and India’s Scientific Ministries is laying the groundwork to have Hanle declared as an International Dark Sky Reserve by the International Dark-Sky Association. Since 1988, the U.S.-based non-profit has been advocating the cause of minimising light pollution and certifies places where night skies are least polluted as International Dark Sky Reserves or sanctuaries.
•“The average tourist visits for high roads, exotic landscape, and the Pangong Lake. Hanle is already in a wildlife sanctuary and developing it as such a reserve would encourage a newer kind of tourism, or astro-tourism,” says Kotwal. “The most important condition, however, is that it must have the support of the local community.”
•In the weeks ahead, amateur and professional astronomers have been roped in by the IIA and the local government to give talks on constellations to villagers. As many as 18 telescopes will be set up in village clusters, and homestay owners trained in elementary astronomy to guide astro-tourists. Villagers will also be given dark curtains to minimise outgoing light from residences. The roads will be installed with light delineators.
•Having been promised electrification in two years and funds from the government to improve their homes to homestays, residents of the village say they would be happy to comply with light restrictions. “That’s not a problem for us. However, more than residential lights, it’s the light from Army bases that are actually stronger. That should be managed too,” says Therchin, who is also a religious head at a nearby monastery.
•Kotwal and Angchuk say Commanding Officers of the units have “readily agreed to comply”.
