Education as a battlefield

It has been obvious for a long time that the Sangh Parivar takes history teaching very seriously. From rewriting school textbooks in BJP-ruled states, to running millions of schools, to campaigning for the elimination of Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana from the history syllabus of Delhi University, it has done its best to ensure that children and young people are taught only the Hindutva version of history. And this approach has, arguably, paid dividends. The split Allahabad High Court verdict in the Babri Masjid property title case is a striking illustration of how their version is completely swallowed by some judges, and even where this is not the case, dominates the discourse and influences the judgment.

To their credit, anti-communal activists have worked hard to combat the rewriting of history and clampdown on academic freedom that is such an important part of the Hindutva project. Historians and teachers of history have struggled bravely to defend the standards of writing and teaching in their subject. The problem, however, as anyone who has tried to convince someone wedded to Hindutva ideology that the mythological Ram could not have been born on the exact spot where the Babri Masjid used to stand would know, is that no amount of logic or evidence can shake this person’s absolute belief in the preconceived narrative. Such people seem incapable of thinking logically about evidence and using their reason to come to their own conclusions. One might say that they are, in a sense, mentally challenged. But this is not a congenital disability. The inability to think for themselves is an acquired disability, one that has been inflicted on them in the course of their previous education.

Unfortunately, anti-communal activists have not made an adequate intervention in education in this broader sense. There has not even been a sustained discussion of what such an intervention might consist in, or how it could be carried out. What follows is an attempt to start such a discussion.

 The problem of identity

How is it possible that atrocities which produce existential horror in some of us can be carried out by others without any remorse? It is worth examining first why we recoil from the ghastly crimes committed in the Gujarat carnage of 2002. There is certainly a moral and ethical element in this revulsion: the belief that raping and killing helpless people is morally wrong. But there is something more elemental and instinctive too: an identification with the victims whose humanity is thus being violated. Presumably, this is lacking in the perpetrators, otherwise they themselves would recoil from what they are doing and stop doing it. But they do not see themselves as sharing a basic human identity with the victims. The universal element of human identity is missing from their psyche.

Babies respond with love to anyone who loves them, regardless of the person’s ethnicity, religion, nationality and so on, so this is not a condition with which anyone is born. We cannot here explore the psychological process by which it is induced, but only note that the primitive bond binding all of us to the rest of humanity has somehow been snapped. If learning is seen as a process that takes place throughout life, from birth to death, then they have learned to suppress the part of themselves that identifies with their victims; they have learned to suppress their own humanity. This could have taken place at home, at school, or in the community to which they belong, or in all these contexts.

One can break down identity, somewhat schematically, into three levels. The first is the universal level, the human identity we share with all other human beings. The second is the plethora of particular facets of identity – ethnicity, religion, gender, class, nationality and so on – that we share with some people and not others. Finally, there is the individual level: the myriad experiences and relationships we have had and actions we have engaged in from birth onwards, which make each one of us different from everyone else, even an identical twin.

For the Sangh Parivar, Hindu-ness (Hindutva) is the only important component of identity. Universal human identity has no place, and other particular facets of a person’s identity – like gender, caste or class – are subordinated to the Hindutva component. In their view, Hindus are indeed stratified by gender, caste and class, but their Hindu-ness overrides these differences, so that an upper-caste, upper-class Hindu man supposedly has more in common with a lower-caste, working-class Hindu woman than either would have with non-Hindus who share their gender, caste and class. Indeed, non-Hindus are seen as having less in common with Hindus than some species of animals such as cattle. Absorbing the Hindutva identity involves denying the humanity of non-Hindus and therefore also one’s own humanity, since one has to deny what one has in common with the ’other’. And once both one’s own humanity and the humanity of the other have been denied, any atrocity against the other can be seen as legitimate.

At the same time, there is no notion of the individual level of identity. This accounts for the inability of those who subscribe to the ideology of Hindutva – or, indeed, to any fundamentalist or fascist ideology – to consider the evidence and think logically about their beliefs. Those beliefs have been given to them by others who embody the collective Hindutva identity, and they are unable to question those beliefs, no matter how absurd they might be, because there is no ‘I’ who can think for herself or himself. Confronting those beliefs with logic or evidence is like banging your head against a brick wall: you make no headway. And there is a good reason for this. There is a gaping hole where that ’I’ should be, and since the collective Hindutva identity is the only stable identity of this person, questioning those who embody this identity is akin to committing psychological suicide.

The most serious drawback of the lack of a notion of individuality is that it makes the whole notion of criminal justice incomprehensible to those who suffer from this defect. A crime that was supposedly committed by someone centuries ago can be avenged by killing people of the same religion now, even though there is no way these victims can in any way be responsible for that real or imagined wrong. Even if we suppose that the burning of Coach 6 of the Sabarmati Express was carried out by Muslims – and to date there is no conclusive proof that it was – the mass rape and murder of Muslims who could not possibly have had anything to do with it as ’revenge’ for that tragedy is another example of this mode of thinking. Narendra Modi’s statement about ’action’ and ’reaction’ is a typical example of the ideology of collective guilt and collective punishment that is so characteristic of fascism: the ’action’ might have been done by a few individuals, but the ’reaction’ can target everyone down to the tiniest infant from the same community, because they are collectively guilty and have to be punished collectively.

In short, where a normal individual has a rich, multi-layered and multi-dimensional personality, the fascist/fundamentalist has an impoverished, one-dimensional personality. This condition is not innate; it has to be induced, which is one reason why the Sangh Parivar has taken the trouble to set up so many schools. Once a person has grown up with such a truncated personality, it is very difficult indeed to encourage the suppressed dimensions and layers to develop; starting early, with young children, is far more promising. And since what happens in homes (except our own) is beyond our control, an intervention in education is the best way to try and ensure that children develop well-rounded personalities.

 A universal human identity

A child brought up in an inclusive home would automatically tend to identify with human beings from other cultures, at least to the extent of being appalled when they are treated with cruelty. One way of reinforcing this identification in them, as well as helping it to develop in other children whose home environment is not conducive to the growth of universal human identity, would be to teach children about the major United Nations human rights instruments, beginning, perhaps, with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This would help them to see themselves as repositories of universal human identity with universal human rights, which they share with all other children and human beings. As they grow up, they can be introduced to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other conventions, and learn something about the background to their development.

There are some politicians in Third World countries who maintain that the whole idea of universal human rights is alien to our cultures, but this simply untrue. In India, for example, such an idea underlies the teachings of the Buddha, who opposed caste distinctions millennia ago, most explicitly in speech to Vasettha [1]. The related claim that the notion of human rights is an imperialist invention is also contradicted by the important role played by women and men from the Third World in the drafting of the Universal Declaration (Sahgal 2011). There is a basis in reality for the notion of a universal human identity in our shared anatomy and physiology, our human brains that enable us to perceive and understand the world, and the experience of birth and infancy shared by those who are lucky enough to survive these life-events, which may not easily be recalled yet remain somewhere in our psyche. Sensitively-told stories and films can also encourage children to identify and sympathise with those who are in one way or another different from them.

Guarding against the stereotyping and abuse of minorities is only one of the benefits of an education of this sort. Children come into contact with other forms of discrimination and abuse even in their own homes and communities. UNICEF’s Global Report Card on Adolescents 2012 (Sinha 2012) revealed that 57 percent of boys and 53 percent of girls aged 15-19 thought that wife-beating was justified: a horrifying statistic. Such beliefs translate into actual domestic violence in the future, and no doubt reflect what actually goes on in all too many homes in the present. Teaching children that cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment is abhorrent and that all human beings must be treated in a manner that respects their humanity would help to eradicate such backward attitudes and criminal behaviour. Indeed, many children themselves are the victims of violence, both at home and at school, and are often told that they deserve it and that it is for their own good. Combating such beliefs can help to avert the psychological consequences of such violence, including child abuse when these children in turn grow up and become parents, and depression, even suicide, if the violence is turned inwards.

The success of the campaign to boycott firecrackers made by child labour, carried out through many thousands of schools (Satyarthi n.d.), shows that schoolchildren are quite capable of identifying and empathising with children who are less privileged than themselves. Indeed, the ability to identify with others and empathise with their suffering is central to the definition of humanity itself [2]. Ethical imperatives to love others as you love yourself, or treat others as you would want to be treated yourself, depend on it, and a society lacking this principle lacks a solid moral foundation, no matter how religious it might be.

 Particular collective identities

Many studies have shown that the need for love and a sense of belonging is extremely strong in human beings; ‘the psychological literature indicates that belonging represents a core human need and that individuals seek social acceptance and belonging through both interpersonal attachments…and social groups’ (Pickett and Leonardelli 2006, p.57). This need cannot be satisfied by a collective as huge and abstract as the whole of humanity; indeed, as Benedict Anderson has argued, even the nation is only an imagined community, in the sense that no one knows (even by sight) every other member of it. Smaller face-to-face collectives are needed in order to satisfy the need for love and belonging, and this constitutes the driving force for the formation of particular collective identities. Belonging to these collectives demands conformity with collective norms, and often these norms include respect for a certain hierarchy within the collective and obedience to authority figures. For those who have invested heavily in one particular collective identity, maintaining that collective becomes a priority, and one way of doing this is to prevent its members from developing bonds with others outside the collective or being part of any other collective.

Yet it should be obvious that everyone has different facets of identity – gender, religion, ethnicity, language, caste, class, age, and so on – that would allow him or her to belong to a variety of collectives. There are also other collectives, such as friendship groups, neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces and unions, which potentially can cut across most of these divisions. It should be evident that for any individual, belonging to several such groups – especially ones in which she or he is accepted and respected – would best satisfy the need for a sense of belonging. This would also provide the possibility of exit from one collective if it becomes too oppressive, because the desire for love and belonging can be satisfied by others. But that is precisely what threatens the absolute control desired by those who dominate an oppressive collective, which may, for example, be based on religion. For them, narrowing down the collective identity of members of the group to just that one dimension is a condition for maintaining dominance. Other facets of identity, like gender, age and caste, are forcibly subordinated to the one that is sought to be reinforced; obedience and conformity are promoted. Members are prevented from interacting with people outside the group either by physical constraints on their actions (including the barbaric ‘punishments’ meted out to young people who fall in love with someone outside the group) or by intensive propaganda, which predisposes them to avoid anyone outside the group.

These methods of controlling a collective by restricting the interaction of its members with those who are outside the group and narrowing their identity to just one of its particular facets by denying their real diversity is not peculiar to Hindutva; it is shared by other fascist and fundamentalist groups. ‘The ultra-nationalist and fascist movements of the twentieth century have deployed elaborate technological resources in order to generate spectacles of identity, capable of unifying and co-ordinating an inevitable and untidy diversity into an ideal and unnatural symmetry’ (Gilroy 1997, p.305). Unfortunately, those who are excluded and/or oppressed by such policies – for example, Dalits and Muslims in the case of Hindutva – sometimes try to fight back by asserting their own identity, but in a correspondingly narrow fashion: adopting caste as an identity in the case of Dalits, religion in the case of Muslims. This adoption of identity politics may benefit those who seek to control a certain constituency, but also, paradoxically, reinforces the very collective that is oppressing it, by creating obstacles to the development of multi-demensional identities. A much more radical challenge is necessary, and here, again, education provides one way in which it can be achieved.

Even very young children can learn that the same person can belong to different groups depending on which facet of their identity is being considered. If they are asked to group themselves in different ways – boys and girls, those born before a certain date and those born after it, those who are shorter than a certain height and those who are taller, religion, language, and so on – it will soon be apparent to them that collective identities can divide the same group of people in different ways, and none of these collective identities completely subsumes their own. It will make them aware of the diversity that exists within each particular collective, as well as their bonds with those outside it. The class itself forms a collective that can and should cut across many of these divisions, which is why multi-religious, multi-lingual and co-educational schools are preferable. If teachers make it a point to encourage mutual respect and empathy for all the children, regardless of their background, the class would be an example of an inclusive collective that children can strive to recreate later in life. Even if teachers do not take up this task, the very fact that the children are in a diverse environment allows them to create friendship groups that cut across narrow definitions of identity. [3]

Further discussion about the collectives themselves would reveal differences between them: age changes constantly, height tends to change up to a certain age; sex and gender are relatively immutable; one is born into an ethnic, religious and linguistic community; and inequality is an inherent aspect of caste and class identities. How mutable or unchangeable are these identities? To what extent does the variety of collective identities add colour and richness to a society, to what extent do they presuppose and reinforce inequality and social injustice? Older children can be encouraged to take up these questions through their study of the social sciences and humanities.

 Individuality

There is a common belief that individuality and individualism are the same thing, but the two concepts have quite distinct meanings. The need for a sense of individuality – one’s uniqueness as an individual – is an attribute of all human beings across cultures, although ‘the manner in which the need is satisfied may be constrained by cultural norms’ (Pickett and Leonardelli 2006, p.58). Even in cultures where individuality is sytematically suppressed, it is not likely that anyone would be happy to know that he or she is substitutable in every way and in every relationship, like a cog in a machine. Nor is individuality incompatible with collectivism: quite the contrary. Individuality develops only through the loving or respectful attention of others, and this demands a collective within which such relationships flourish. Conversely, the individuality of its members can contribute to an egalitarian and democratic collective; in such a context, individuality and the collective have a reciprocal and mutually reinforcing relationship.

Individualism, on the other hand, is an ideology that elevates the interests of the individual above those of any collective, and thus presupposes a conflict between individualism and collectivism. Where the collective is authoritarian and oppressive, individualism plays a positive role, disrupting relationships of domination and subordination, obedience and conformity. However, where there is an attempt to build a different kind of collective based on solidarity, individualism, which pits each individual against all others, is an obstacle. Thus individualism could be a force in the demise of feudalism and rise of capitalism, but it is not helpful in the creation of a more caring society. While authoritarian collectives crush individuality directly, an individualistic society, paradoxically, does not foster the growth of individuality; with everyone putting his or her own interests first, who has time to foster the individuality of anyone else?

The most important contribution of the recognition of individuality is its implication that identity is not solely something given to us by birth or from outside, but something we create for ourselves through our actions and interactions with other people. Even if we have little control over what happens to us, it gives us some control over who we are, instead of assuming that everything is decided for us by others. One corollary is that we have to take responsibility for what we do (or fail to do) wherever it is in our power to take some other course of action; and to recognise, likewise, that other individuals are responsible for their own actions (or failure to act), but only if it is in their power to take some other course of action. (We include speech here as a form of action.) From this point of view, it becomes patently absurd to blame present-day Muslims for what happened hundreds of years ago, or to ‘punish’ innocents for what they have not done; indeed, it becomes evident that persecution of innocents for what they have not done is itself morally wrong, and is in fact a crime. The widespread condemnation of the Special Investigation Team’s ‘appalling conclusion’ that even if Narendra Modi did say something about allowing Hindus to ‘vent their anger’ against innocent Muslims it would not constitute an offence (Times of India 2012) is evidence that morality is still alive in India.

Children can be encouraged to develop a sense of individuality in a variety of ways: by writing essays about themselves, by having their individual achievements recognised and appreciated, and by being treated with respect as persons. Older children can also be involved in a discussion of moral and ethical behaviour from a standpoint that acknowledges an individual’s moral responsibility for his or her own actions (including speech).

 Developing a well-rounded personality

Ensuring the development of all these levels and dimensions of identity would create a strong and well-rounded personality. The particular and individual levels would ensure that one’s conception of universal human identity would not be ethnocentric but truly universal, encompassing only what all human beings share in common. The individual level would ensure that even where a particular collective identity is shared with others, each individual might have a different interpretation of that identity: there are different conceptions of what it means to be a Hindu, a Muslim, or an Indian. And the universal level would remind us that despite all our diversity, we share a common human identity, and therefore must feel for the sufferings of our fellow-human beings.

 The ability to find out and think for oneself

Anyone who has cared for or taught small children would be familiar with their boundless curiosity and endless questions that are sometimes a challenge to the scientific or philosophical capacities of the carer or teacher. This curiosity needs to be fostered and not crushed if they are to grow up into adults who are capable of finding out and thinking for themselves instead of accepting unquestioningly whatever they are told by authority figures. If asked, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ an adult whose scientific knowledge is limited would do well to say, ‘I don’t know, but let’s find out,’ rather than evading the question or pretending it is silly. Such responses are critical if children are to grow up into adults capable of rational inquiry into the world around them. And although it can become tiresome, whenever asked, ‘Why should (or shouldn’t) I do this?’ it is worth answering honestly and simply enough for the child to understand (‘Otherwise you may get ill,’ ‘You would hurt yourself,’ ‘You would hurt someone else,’ etc.) The standard authoritarian response – ‘Because I say so’ – should be avoided at all costs. This is, perhaps, even more important than the answer to factual questions, because on it depends the development in children of the capacity to make moral judgments. If their only conception of doing the right thing is obedience to those in authority, how would they resist if at some future date political leaders order them to do hideous and unspeakable things like raping, torturing and murdering helpless people?

Unfortunately, obedience and conformism are traits that are more likely to be encouraged in schools than critical thinking and creativity; indeed, it is often the case that critical thinking in particular is seen as worthy of punishment. In the first place, this displays a lack of respect for the child as a person. In our culture, it is often reiterated that children should respect parents and teachers, and there would be nothing wrong with this if the respect were mutual; but one rarely, if ever, hears the injunction that parents and teachers should respect children equally. This forces children who insist on their autonomy into being rebels, while those who conform, gradually lose their capacity to think for themselves, and become easily manipulable adults. Loss of the capacity to think for oneself, and hence to make moral judgments, becomes especially lethal when combined with narrow, one-dimensional identities; ‘identity as “sameness” can be and has been manipulated for political reasons (for example, by fascisms) which contrive to create uniformity and to subordinate the individual to the group through the use of technology, myth and spectacle’ (Gilroy 1997, p.313).

Freedom of expression and academic freedom are necessary conditions for the development of critical thinking and creativity. Freedom of expression is not an absolute: lies about an individual (libel and slander) and inciting violence against a group or community (as occurred during the Rwandan genocide and Gujarat carnage) are completely unjustifiable and ought to be illegal. But there are many other circumstances where one person or group may be very unhappy about what another person or group is saying or writing, and in such cases, the remedy should be to refute or criticise what is being said rather than prevent it from being said at all. It is true that there may be borderline cases where it is not clear whether they fall into the categories of libel/slander and incitement to violence or not. The Danish cartoon representing the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist is arguably such a case, since it could be seen as saying that Islam is a terrorist religion, and therefore all Muslims are terrorists and deserve to be treated as such. But in most cases of ‘hurt sentiment’, no one’s security is put at risk by the cartoon, book, painting, article, film, etc. In such cases, the only legitimate response should be critique.

It is a sad fact that some of the groups opposing the Sangh Parivar are equally hostile to intellectual freedom. The Muslim ideologues opposing Salman Rushdie’s presence (even via videoconference) at the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2012 offer one example. One may or may not like The Satanic Verses, but it would be hard to argue that it represents a threat to anyone’s life. For those who hate it and its author, the most appropriate response would be to write devastating reviews of it, let readers read the reviews and decide whether they want to buy the book or not, or, if they have read the book, decide whether they agree with the reviews or not; ‘We may detest certain opinions, but we should resist attempts to suppress them…The response to words should be words and words in the form of argument, not abuse’ (Massie 2012). But these ideologues do not want people to have the freedom to decide for themselves; they want to tell people what they may or may not read, what they may or may not think.

Another example is the pandemonium in parliament when various Dalit and non-Dalit members demanded the deletion of a cartoon referring to the slow pace of the drafting of the Indian Constitution by Ambedkar from a Class XI textbook. The cartoon, drawn in 1949, depicted Ambedkar with a whip riding a snail entitled ‘Constitution’, and Nehru, also with a whip, looking down at the snail from behind. It was entitled ‘Snail’s Pace’, and was included in one of the National Council of Educational and Research Training (NCERT) textbooks published in 2006. Following the furore, Prof. Suhas Palshikar, Head of the Department of Politics at Pune University, and Yogendra Yadav, social scientist, resigned as chief advisors of NCERT. The office of the former was subsequently vandalised by four activists of the Republican Panthers of India. In an interview, he explained that the purpose of including the cartoon was ‘to encourage students to develop an opinion instead of getting readymade answers,’ suggesting that they might well conclude that the cartoonist was wrong to expect the Constitution to be drafted more quickly (Thite 2012). A Dalit intellectual condemned the attack as an insult to Ambedkar’s vision, pointing out that ‘Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar himself was a hardcore supporter of liberty of thought. It was because of his reverence for the freedom of speech and thought that he specially incorporated Article 19 in the Constitution of India, which assured citizens the right to think and express their thoughts’ (Narke 2012).

What is especially tragic about this particular attack is that the new textbooks, while far from perfect, were intended to push ‘students to think for themselves. The idea was to raise questions that would encourage critical thinking among them’ (Nigam 2012). In this case, it is a fact that the cartoon was published while the Constitution was being drafted, and represented an opinion that the process was taking too long. Students were not being told that it took too long – if anything, evidence was provided that the task was a huge one, and if carried out in a democratic fashion with plenty of discussion, was bound to take a long time; they were being asked to look at the evidence, think about it, and come to their own conclusion. But if the very fact that the cartoon was included is seen as offensive, leading to its purging from textbooks, what happens to other historical facts that are seen as offensive by the Sangh Parivar, such as the overwhelming evidence that beef was eaten widely in India during Vedic times? What happens to arguments by secular activists that while we should respect the sentiments of people who worship the cow, ‘to take offence to the objective study of history just because the facts don’t suit their political calculations is yet another sign of a society where liberal space is being strangulated by the practitioners of communal politics’ (Puniyani 2001)? If a cartoon which provides evidence that some people thought Constitution-drafting was taking too long has to be deleted because it offends some Dalits, shouldn’t evidence of cow-slaughter and beef-eating in Vedic times also be deleted from historical writings because it offends the Sangh Parivar?

Indeed, as a result of the outcry over the cartoon, politicians of all parties called for the deletion from the textbooks of everything that might cause offence to anyone, and a supposedly secular Congress-led government that had clamped down repeatedly on freedom of expression was only too happy to oblige. Clearly, the main beneficiaries of such a reversal of efforts to encourage students to think for themselves would be the Sangh Parivar. And ideologues of Muslim, Dalit and other groups who also oppose intellectual freedom when ‘the facts don’t suit their political calculations’ are guilty of collusion with the Sangh Parivar when it comes to this part of its agenda.

This brings us to the practical question of how democracy activists can intervene in education to foster in children well-rounded identities and the ability to think for themselves. One route is to set up schools striving to achieve these goals, just as the Sangh Parivar has set up schools with the opposite agenda. It is one indication of the failure of the Left to tackle the ideology of Hindutva in any serious fashion that it has never made this part of its programme. Even if funds are limited and only a few schools can be set up, these would constitute a model for others to follow. An alternative strategy is to intervene in the mainstream education system by shaping curricula and textbooks, teaching methods and teacher training. In one way this is more difficult, because the field is so vast, but in another way it is easier, because it does not require the same scale of funding. The two strategies are not mutually exclusive; both can be used to tackle the ideology of Hindutva at its roots.

Rohini Hensman

References

Gilroy, Paul, 1997, ‘Diaspora and the Detours of Identity,’ in Kathryn Woodward (ed), Identity and Difference, Sage Publications, London, California and New Delhi

Massie, Allan, 2012, ‘Salman Rushdie and the Jaipur Literary Festival: the zealots have triumphed again,’ The Telegraph, 25 January, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/allanmassie/100059953/salman-rushdie-and-the-jaipur-literary-festival-the-zealots-have-triumphed-again/

Narke, Hari, 2012, ‘Attack an insult to Dr Ambedkar,’ Mumbai Mirror, 13 May, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=TU1JUi8yMDEyLzA1LzEzI0FyMDA0MDE=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

Nigam, Aditya, 2012, ‘Cartoons All! Politicians and Self-Seekers,’ Kafila, 14 May, http://kafila.org/2012/05/14/cartoons-all-politicians-and-self-seekers/

Palihawadana, Mahinda, 1989, ‘Identity and Divisiveness,’ (Paper presented at a seminar at Marga Institute, Colombo, 6-8 December)

Pickett, Cynthia L. and Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, 2006, ‘Using Collective Identities for Assimilation and Differentiation,’ in Tom Postmes and Jolanda Jetten (eds), Individuality and the Group: Advances in Social Identity, Sage Publications, London, California and New Delhi, pp.56-73

Puniyani, Ram, 2001, ‘Beef eating: strangulating history,’ The Hindu, 14 August, http://www.hindu.com/2001/08/14/stories/13140833.htm

Sahgal, Geeta, 2011, ‘Who Wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?’ 50.50 inclusive democracy, 9 December 2011, http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/gita-sahgal/who-wrote-universal-declaration-of-human-rights

Satyarthi, Kailash, n.d., ‘Social Responsibility: Whose Business is it?’ Global March Against Child Labour, http://www.globalmarch.org/cpcolumn/lcsr.php

Sinha, Koutenya, 2012, ‘57% of boys, 53% of girls think wife beating is justified,’ Times of India, 25 April, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-25/india/31398208_1_domestic-violence-spousal-violence-centre-for-social-research

Thite, Dinesh, 2012, ‘Democracy is losing space gained thanks to the Constitution’, Mumbai Mirror, 13 May, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=TU1JUi8yMDEyLzA1LzEzI0FyMDA0MDA=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

Times of India, 2012, ‘SIT’s Howler: Supreme Court should halt undermining of the purpose of setting up of an SIT,’ 11 May, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ETNEW&BaseHref=ETM/2012/05/11&PageLabel=14&EntityId=Ar01403&ViewMode=HTML

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