Hamlet in Monsoon : 05/07/20

Thursday 7 May 2020

A K ANTONY, ANIL AND THE DEFENCE BETRAYAL

Questions On a Defence Portal

Anil K Antony, according to business sites, is a Venture Architect, Technology Evangelist and Social Entrepreneur. He is the Executive Director of Cyber India (www.cyberindia.org), a think tank in cyber security and surveillance technologies and the Vice President and a member of the board of trustees of Navoothan Foundation (www.navoothan.org), a non-profit focusing on healthcare and empowerment of women.

It doesn’t end there-Anil is the son of former Union Minister for Defence, A K Antony, and he is the Convener of the digital cell of the Congress. Something very curious happened after the emergence of the Sprinklr controversy in Kerala. Anil K Antony’s name was taken off the website of Cyber India.

But any number of internet searches will tell you he is its executive director. Cyber India has its primary office in California, and it has offices in New Delhi and Bengaluru.

Cyber India website

Why his name was taken off?

Just going to the site of Cyber India will reveal the truth: four high-placed Americans are there on the board of Cyber India. They are: General Wesley K Clark
Retired four-star general, US Army., Former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, NATO., and Former Democratic U.S. Presidential Candidate (2004 Primary). James Lee Witt, Former White House Cabinet member, Michael McNerney, Founder of Efflux, and N MacDonnel "Don Ulsch.

Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr. is a retired general of the United States Army. He graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master’s degree in military science. He spent 34 years in the U.S. Army, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Wesley Clark

Clark commanded Operation Allied Force in the Kosovo War during his term as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000.

Clark joined the 2004 race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination as a candidate in 2003, but withdrew from the primary race in 2004, after winning the Oklahoma state primary, endorsing and campaigning for the eventual Democratic nominee, John Kerry. Clark leads a political action committee, “WesPAC”, which he formed after the 2004 primaries and used to support Democratic Party candidates in the 2006 midterm elections. Clark was considered a potential candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but, on September 15, 2007, endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. After Clinton dropped out of the presidential race, Clark endorsed the then-presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama.

Clark served as a co-chairman of Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group, and is on the board of directors of BNK Petroleum. Between July 2012 and November 2015, he was an honorary special advisor to Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta on economic and security matters.

James Lee Witt, Former White House Cabinet Member and Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President Bill Clinton, has strong relationships and is respected across the aisle, by both Democrats and Republicans.

Anil Antony

Witt was born in Paris, Arkansas, and was raised in Dardanelle, in Yell County, Arkansas. He and Clinton met as boys in Little League.[He founded a construction business in 1968. At 34, he was elected County Judge of Yell County. Witt was re-elected to the post six times and was recognized by the National Association of Counties for his work. Witt was a charter Board Chairman of Child Development Inc., which works to advance Head Start programs.

In 1988, shortly after being reelected county Judge, an administrative position he had held for ten years, Witt was appointed by then-Governor Bill Clinton to be the head of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services.

James Lee Witt

There he reorganized the state’s emergency management process. Clinton subsequently moved the new Fire Protection Services Program to OES, including the board and the grant program, which was administered in conjunction with the state Insurance Department.

When Clinton was elected President, he appointed Witt to head FEMA, for which Witt was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 1993. In 1996, FEMA was given cabinet rank.

Michael McNerney, Co-founder and CEO of Efflux Systems, a cybersecurity startup focusing on post-breach analytics and incident response.

Michael is a technology entrepreneur and military veteran with a primary focus on cybersecurity. He currently works as the Chief Operations Officer of cybersecurity insurance startup Arceo. Previously, he led the threat intelligence business at Arbor Networks and was the Co-founder & CEO of Efflux Systems, a cybersecurity startup focused on advanced network analytics (acquired by Arbor Networks).

McNerney

Mike has also served as a Cyber Policy Advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he drafted and negotiated key pieces of federal legislation through the congressional process and worked with the defence industry, internet service providers and tech companies to develop cybersecurity programs. Prior to that position, Mike worked in the U.S. State Department, where he pioneered rule of law and economic development programs in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Mike is an affiliate at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Chair & Co-founder of Technology for Global Security, and a Board Member of Vets-in-Tech. He graduated from the University of California, Davis, and earned his J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law.

Don Ulsch has decades of experience in the fields of cyber forensics, cybercrime, national security, cyber risk, regulatory compliance and stress testing, cyber geopolitics, and cyber insurance. He is Principal, MacDonnell Ulsch Cyber Advisory LLC, Guest Lecturer on Cyber Warfare, US Military Academy at West Point.

He provides executive cybersecurity risk management advisory and strategic research services to clients on cyber warfare, cyber espionage, cyber insurance, and defensive measures to reduce the impact of cyber attacks from hostile nation-states and transnational organized crime. The Firm’s clients include law firms with cybersecurity and privacy practices, Artificial Intelligence and cyber security companies, as well as Fortune companies.

Ulsch

As a consultant, he served as Chief Executive Officer at Cyber 20/20 Inc., a technology company specializing in Machine Learning and Deep Learning enabled cyber threat hunting. Cyber 20/20 provides advanced Artificial Intelligence cyber threat hunting capabilities to the US military and US national security organizations, and to the commercial sector.

Previously, he was Senior Managing Director of Cybercrime and Cyber Insurance at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and was the Chief Executive Officer at ZeroPoint Risk Research LLC. He has conducted cyber investigations in 70 countries and was the past co-chair of the American Bar Association Privacy Committee.

These four people are big shots in the US.

And, the Chairman of Cyber India is former Chattisgarh Governor Shekhar Dutt. He was Defence Secretary for one year while A K Antony was the Defence Minister. Prior to that, he was Joint Secretary of the Department of Defence Production. In July 2007, Dutt retired as Defence Secretary and was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor for a two-year term. On 23 January 2010, he assumed the office of the Governor of Chhattisgarh, the post to which he served till his resignation on 18 June 2014. Antony was Defence Minister during 2006-2014.

Executive Director of the firm, Vishal Verma is a Senior General Partner at Edgewood Ventures, LLC. and their group companies. Edgewood is an investment fund focusing on the United States and India. Another team member Srinivas Moramchetty has close to 2 decades of experience in Information Technology and IT Regulatory Compliance and holds a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Shekhar Dutt

Cyber India was known as a start-up ventured by Anil Antony. The company, according to its site, is a platform for some of the pioneering organizations and individuals working in the field of cybersecurity solutions, collaborating with a common mission of keeping our digital landscape secure. Cyber India team provides strategic insights, technological solutions, training and educational programs, and policy solutions, and acts as a knowledge resource to private and public sector organizations including the defence sector, with the primary motive of enhancing our cyber readiness and resilience at any level – be it local, regional, or national.

So, according to them, they act as a knowledge resource to even the defence sector.

I am not casting doubts here that they are able to provide defence solutions, because A K Antony was the Defence Minister or Anil Antony came into contact with Wesley Clark, the NATO Commander through the defence channel. I am not alleging that Indian defence data leaked through Cyber India to the US.

But Anil Antony and his father A K Antony should answer the nation, why they are in the company of US defence personnel. And why Anil’s name has been withdrawn (maybe temporarily) as executive director.

I hope leaders like Shashi Tharoor will train their guns against Cyber India. Data is not only important, but they are also sacrosanct.

Great Works Written in Lock Down

Lock Down brings to mind great works written in jail.

Prison literature is a fully formed genre. While locked up many people find the reflexive outlet of writing a way to pass the monotony. Others find that they feel they must write to express some wrong, either against themselves or others. While imprisonment has been the cause of great works, such as The Gulag Archipelago of Solzhenitsyn, this list will focus on those works actually composed within prisons or jails.

1. Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy

“While I was thus mutely pondering within myself, and recording my sorrowful complainings with my pen, it seemed to me that there appeared above my head a woman of a countenance exceeding venerable…”

When it comes to literary works composed in prison there is no choice but The Consolation of Philosophy for the first place, to my mind at least. Ever since it was published the work has been influential. Translated from Latin into English by King Alfred, Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth I, the book serves as a warning to those in power. Boethius was at the pinnacle of power in Rome after the collapse of the Western Empire. Unfortunately he fell foul of Theodoric the Great and was imprisoned. This sudden change in fortune is what prompted Boethius to write this philosophical dialogue between himself and the Goddess Philosophy. Boethius feels aggrieved that he has had everything taken away from him. Philosophy leads him by questioning to consider whether anything outside of himself was ever truly his to begin with. I’ll admit not everyone finds Philosophy’s words all that consolatory but it remains a foundational text for Western civilization.

2. Le Morte d’Arthur: Thomas Malory

“Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is right wise King born of all England.”

England has a rich history of Arthurian mythology which has inspired writers for hundreds of years. While imprisoned Thomas Malory wrote, using French sources, the most famous version of Arthurian legend. We are not entirely sure of the biography of Malory, there are several competing candidates for the identity of the author, but we know from the work itself that it was composed in prison. Le Morte d’Arthur has given the world some of the best known images of Arthur, such as the pulling of the sword from the stone and the Lady of the Lake, her arm covered in shimmering samite.

3. Prison Epistles: Paul

“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Paul was the first, and most influential, Christian theologian. He started out as a persecutor of Christians but, after an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul became one of the most vocal supporters of Christianity. His letters proved so important to Christian theology that they were incorporated into the canon of the New Testament. While Paul was spreading faith in Jesus as the messiah he caused much consternation. After a confrontation in Jerusalem Paul was arrested and held in prison. Here he wrote several important letters to Christian communities – The Colossians, the Ephesians, the Philpians and one letter to Philemon. There is some scholarly debate over whether Ephesians and Colossians are genuine Pauline epistles but are still held by most Christians as part of the canon. Paul’s letters were later closely read by Martin Luther and Pauline theology was a major driving force behind the Catholic/Protestant schism.

4. Letter from Birmingham Jail: Martin Luther King Jr

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas…”

We can be glad that King did pause to answer his critics because the letter he wrote from jail, where he was held for protesting without a permit, is a ringing vindication of the rights of all people. Bonhoeffer, as a profound theologian, can sometimes speak in terms whose meaning eludes us. This letter talks to everyone; Christian or not. King’s letter was written in response to eight local clergymen who published a letter, A Call for Unity, which called for African-Americans to press their case for equal rights through the courts and not by demonstrations. Dr King responds calmly and, in a fairly brief space, sets out all the reasons that it is impossible for a man of conscience to allow injustice to continue. This is the best document for understanding the greatness of King’s leadership. If I were subjugated by such injustice would I be able to meet it with such reason, determination, and forgiveness? But it is not just a call to those suffering discrimination personally, we must all be responsible for guaranteeing the rights of others.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

5. Letters and papers from prison: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer had the many chances to lead an easy life. He was born into middle-class comfort in 1906 Germany. He might have followed his father in medicine or pursued music. Instead Bonhoeffer studied theology and did pastoral work in Harlem to become a pastor. When the Nazis took political power they also forced cooperative into positions of power. Bonhoeffer and other liberal churchmen form their own communion. He had many chances to move abroad and avoid persecution but, after intense internal debate, he chose to be in Germany for the duration of the war. Bonhoeffer was arrested in 1943 and held until just 23 days before the end of the war, when he was hanged. During his imprisonment Bonhoeffer wrote widely and this collection of his letter and papers contains much that is worth studying even if the finer details of Christian theology are not your cup of tea.

6. The Travels of Marco Polo: Rustichello de Pisa

7. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Ludwig Wittgenstein

“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in Silence.”

It is tempting to do just that with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophical works of the 20th century, and so is well deserving of a place on this list. It is also undoubtedly a work which requires multiple readings to start to come to grips with. Wittgenstein started makes notes for the Tractatus while a soldier in the First World War. He completed it while held prisoner by the Allies at the end of the war. Part of the difficulty in reading the Tractatus is Wittgenstein’s style; he uses short declarations and sub-clauses to state his views, with very little in the way of argument.

8. The History of the World: Walter Raleigh

Raleigh, we may take it from the statement above, would not be welcomed by academic historians today but his unfinished history of the world is a masterpiece. Raleigh traces the history of the world from creation to the third Macedonian war in 168BC. The book serves to show how again how a man’s mind, though his body is held captive, can travel over time and space. Raleigh never finished his history though he was released, and was later beheaded. His history includes this meditation on death.

“O eloquent, just and mighty death… thou hast drawn together all the far stretching greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words Hic Jacet [Here Lies].”

9. De Profundis: Oscar Wilde

While Lovelace found love set him free it was, for Wilde, love which led to confinement. After a serious of trials relating to his relationships with Lord Alfred Douglas and other men Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labor for gross indecency. While held in prison in Reading Wilde composed a long letter to Douglas which was later published posthumously as De Profundis. The work starts with an account of Wilde and Douglas’ relationship and how damaging it has been to Wilde. The tone is not accusatory but self-revelatory. The letter then turns towards the realizations that prison has forced on Wilde. Wilde ends with his plans for the future for, though we know his life would be cut short, he has learned-

“I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.”

10. To Althea, from prison: Richard Lovelace

Nor iron bars a cage;”

These are the much quoted first lines of the final stanza of Richard Lovelace’s poem ‘To Althea, from prison.’ Richard Lovelace was one of the dashing young cavalier’s of the English civil war and is classed with the metaphysical poets. Sent to prison for presenting a royalist petition in support of pro-royalist bishops he used the time to compose this, his most famous poem. Written to, a possibly fictional, lover the poem expresses a theme common to much of the literature composed in jail; you cannot imprison the human mind. Despite the walls around him he can imagine his beloved and so he ends the poem with the lines-

“If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.”

11. Gita Rahasya: Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Shrimadh Bhagvad Gita Rahasya, popularly also known as Gita Rahasya or Karmayog Shashtra, is a 1915 Marathi language book authored by Indian social reformer and independence activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak while he was in prison at Mandalay, Burma. It is the analysis of Karma yoga which finds its source in the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred book for Hindus. According to him, the real message behind the Mahabharata’s Gita is to act or perform, which is covered in the initial parts rather than renounce, which is covered in the later parts of the epic Gita. He took the Mimamsa rule of interpretation as the basis of building up his thesis.

This book consists of two parts. The first part is the philosophical exposition and the second part consists of the Gita, its translation and the commentary.

The book was written by Tilak in pencil with his own handwriting while being imprisoned at the Mandalay jail from 1908 to 1914. The more-than-400 pages of script was written in less than four months and is hence in itself considered as “remarkable achievement”. Although the writing was completed in the early years of his term, the book was only published in 1915, when he returned to Poona. He defended the ethical obligation to the active principle or action, even violent action including killing, as long as that was selfless and without personal interest or motive.

12. Paradise Lost Translation: Milovan Djilas

Three hundred and fifty years after it was first published, John Milton’s epic revolutionary poem about the fall of man, Paradise Lost, continues to find relevance around the world, with research revealing that new translations in the last 30 years outnumber the previous three centuries’ output combined

First published in 1667, the blank verse Paradise Lost tells “of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit / Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste / Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, / With loss of Eden.” Milton’s Satan is cast out from heaven with his rebel angels, “Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie / With hideous ruine and combustion down / To bottomless perdition, there to dwell / In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire”. He goes on to tempt Adam and Eve, and to bring about their expulsion from Eden.

JESUS AND ASCENSION IN THE WASTE LAND

T S Eliot and Indian Wisdom

“April is the cruellest month, breeding

lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

memory and desire, stirring

dull roots with spring rain.”

Thus begins the trend setting poem, The Waste Land, by T S Eliot.The deeply religious person that he is, Eliot probably wrote, April is the cruellest month, because, Jesus was crucified in April.

But for us who have suffered another pandemic, April is cruel in another sense too.
In the northern hemisphere, April is classically associated with spring- “breeding lilacs out of the dead land” is a very heavy, depressed way to describe the blooming of flowers. He sees the same things as everyone else, but there is no joy there. A sense of loss and longing, of being rooted in the past, and spring, re-awakening memories of things that have passed.

He further says:

“Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. ”

It means, winter was better than spring. He is giving us an insight into a mind that doesn’t revel in these things as might be expected. An old literature teacher once put it thus: when your arm is numb, you don’t feel it. But when the blood flows again, and the pins and needles come, suddenly you know about it. It’s not (emotional) numbness that hurts; it’s the return of feeling. Anyone who has dealt with long-term depression can probably feel the connection to what Eliot is describing here. April is the cruellest month because the life and colour of spring throws one’s depression into stark relief and forces painful memories to surface.

Scholars have said he is invoking Chaucer here.

TS Eliot, by opening the poem with this line about April is ironically playing off of the opening line of The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, whom he considers as the first true English poet.

Chaucer’s poem, “The Canterbury Tales” begins thus:

“What that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the root

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which virtue gendered is the flour”

We would read this in modern times as, “When that April with his showers sweet, The drought of March has pierced to the root, And bathed every vein in such liquor, Of which virtue engendered is the flower.”

So, in The Waste Land, he is linking his poem to the great past and the founder of English poetry, Chaucer, but in the process, he is separating April from the notion as the month of Spring renewal of life; this renewal of natural life is opposite to the deadness of hope and spirit, as the “Waste Land” now begins and speaks.

April is the cruellest month from the perspective of those who have died; even more, from the perspective of those buried and in hell, viewing with regret heavenly spring time. While the winter helped them forget what they lost, April made them see this all too clearly.

The title of this first of five sections is “The Burial of the Dead” which also suggests that this section is about those who have died. Tere are lines which suggest that they are in their graves, covered with warm snow over winter.

Psychiatrists have said that this is a psychiatric speculation. April is when life rebirths, yet it is also the month of the year when the suicide rate peaks among major depression and disorder patients. This is quite paradoxical but completely suits Eliot’s description of the month. It is also known that Eliot’s wife suffered from depression. Depression is not a mild disorder and its progress bears little resemblance to ‘silent implosion’.

There is an argument that says while he was echoing Chaucer, he was referring to his friend from Paris, Jean Verdenal, who may have died in April, in WW1. There is an association between the lilacs in the poem and a later non-poetic reference to his friend carrying lilacs. More mundanely, spring brings warmth after barren winter but not the fruits of the earth, the crops that are reaped in autumn. This critique suggests that the poem was essentially about personal grief rather than societal decay. Given the state of Europe then, the interpretation of the poem focusing on social decay, is precious.

April is cruel because Jesus was crucified; but it is also the month in which he resurrected.

But did Jesus die at the cross?

In the Fourth Gospel, it is said, two men performed the Office of the Embalming, winding it in linen clothes. The women provided spices and ointments.Both Mathew and Luke say that the Body was taken safely by disciples to a secret hilly place, for embalming. So, the fact is, Jesus didn’t die on the Cross;it is there in The Bible itself. Do you apply ointments to a dead body?

Jewish custom doesn’t allow the crucified to hang on the Cross over night. In the letter of the Esseer, in The Crucifixion, emphasis is given to Jesus’ wound on his side. Nicodemus the Physician knew Jesus was not dead because, if Jesus had died, the wound would not have bled for such a long time. Nicodemus sent Joseph of Arimathea, the influential, to Pilate, and he himself went to collect proper drugs, pretending he wanted to embalm the body.

The wound above the hip was lower down than what is generally believed. No vital organs were damaged.The spear pierced only the skin.His feet was not pierced, as it was not the custom at crucifixions.The earth quake that happened then, electrified Jesus’ nerves. I want to underline the information that Joseph was sent to Pilate. For What? Of Course, to facilitate the rescue operation.

At the time of Jesus, the Tau Cross, in the shape of, ’T’, was used. The Christians think Jesus carried the entire cross, believing the myriad paintings. It was not so.The victim carried only the Platibulum or the cross arm, weighing about 110 pounds or 50 kilograms, to the place of execution.The Stipes, or upright post was permanently fixed there, and the Platibulum was placed in a notch at the top of the Stipes.The victim was never nailed on the palms, the nails were driven between the small bones of the wrist, radial and Ulna. Luke the physician, in his gospel, says, at Gethsemane, Jesus’ sweat became drops of blood. In modern medicine, this is called, Hematidrosis.Under emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can burst.

The crucifixion usually ended with crurifracture, the breaking of the bones of the legs, which prevented the victim from pushing himself upward. The legs of the thieves were broken, but Jesus was spared, thus giving him a chance to survive. The line in the gospel of John, And immediately there came out blood and water, specifies Jesus didn’t suffer suffocation.

The bodily ascension of Jesus to heaven, in Mark and Luke is disproved by Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (15:5:50): Now this I say, Brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. The two disciples present, Mathew and John, doesn’t mention, ascension.

If there is resurrection, there is no sacrifice through death. If Jesus resurrected, he fails in comparison with the sacrifice of Prometheus, who stole fire for the entire humanity from Olympus. A martyr resurrects only in the minds of the humanity. It is better to think Jesus didn’t resurrect, but, he survived.

If Jesus escaped from the cross, what happened to him? He lived in India, in Kashmir. It is another story.

The Waste Land ends thus:

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

The poem, thus, ends in India. It leaves eurocentrism, the philosophy of decay, and finds solace in Hinduism. This is from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The three Sanskrit words mean Restraint, Compassion and Charity.

Lord Brahma, the Creator in the Hindu Trinity, instructs Devas to show restraint (in enjoying pleasures), Asuras to be compassionate, and mankind to be charitable. Mankind has the qualities of both Asuras and Devas, and so mankind should follow all three instructions. If these three instructions were actually followed , so many wars could have been averted. If mankind had embraced self-control and compassion, we wouldn’t be warring all the time.

Shanti means peace. It is uttered thrice in Shanti mantras invoking the first utterance in the universe, OHM.

Ohm Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.

In Defence of Manu Statue in Rajasthan High Court

Manu Statue Should be There in All Courts

There was an article in Live Law,titled,Caste and The Statue of Manu in Rajasthan High Court,written by Anurag Bhaskar,who is said to be a law lecturer.The article argued that the statue of Manu should be removed from the Rajasthan High Court premises.

The statue of Manu in the premises of Rajasthan High Court's Jaipur bench— according to Hindu mythology, the progenitor of mankind and the author of the Manusmriti, which codifies the rights and duties of various social groups — has seen its share of skirmishes. On October 8, 2018, two women from Aurangabad in Maharashtra — Sheela Bai Pawar, 35, and Kanta Ramesh Ahire, 32 — were arrested along with their associate Dawood Shakeel Sheikh, 30, for smearing it with black paint.

The two were taken into custody and booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code for hurting religious sentiments, among other charges. They were then sent to Jaipur Central jail, 5 kilometres away, before being granted bail on October 22.

Pawar, Ahire and Sheikh are members of the Republican Party of India-Kharat, a breakaway faction of the Republican Party of India (Athawale).

That day, one of the two sari-clad women clambered on to the statue’s pedestal with a can of black paint, stretched out her arms and sprayed all over Manu’s torso. The other woman, standing on the ground, aimed for Manu’s legs.

Yogesh Salve, another member of the RPI-Kharat who accompanied the two women and Sheikh to Jaipur, asked then:"How can one expect justice if the statue of Manu, a person whose views on women and Dalits were discriminatory, is placed in the court?"

For the past three decades, though it was never formally inaugurated, this statue of Manu has seen several battles — big and small, in courts and outside.

It all began on February 10, 1989, when Padam Kumar Jain, then president of the Rajasthan Higher Judicial Officers’ Association, wrote a letter to then chief justice N M Kasliwal, asking for permission to install a Manu idol on the court premises as part of a “beautification project”. The permission was granted on March 3.

Sandeep Sumahendra, son of the late Sumahendra Sharma, the Rajasthani artiste who worked on the statue, says, “It took my father around two and a half months to build the statue. Until then, there was no other Manu statue, so nobody had any idea what Manu looked like. My father designed it on the basis of his imagination and after reading Manu’s works. Like many of my father’s works on display in Jaipur, including one of Lady Justice at the district and sessions court, this Manu statue is made of cement.”

Sumahendra, who was a student then, remembers how the statue was jinxed from the start. “On the day of the planned inauguration, a large crowd had gathered inside the campus. I remember making a hurried exit with my father as we didn’t want to be part of any controversy. Then acting chief justice Milap Chand Jain was supposed to inaugurate the statue, but it was never done.On July 28, 1989, in a full court meeting of the Rajasthan High Court, the judges unanimously decided that the statue would be removed. But just as it was about to taken down, VHP leader Acharya Dharmendra and others filed a PIL against the move.

“Hate was brought to India by the British, along with Islamic and Communist ideology. There is no mention of hate and discrimination in the philosophy of Manu, and therefore, the burning of Manusmriti is like setting fire to all of humanity,” said Dharmendra.

“It was a great idea to have a Manu statue inside the High Court as he was the first person anywhere in the world to draft a law. Those who oppose him are ignorant of Manu’s philosophy. He never mentions the word ‘Dalit’ anywhere,” he added.

Vibhutibhushan Sharma, former president of the Rajasthan High Court Bar Association who was later made a member of the manifesto committee of the Congress for the Rajasthan elections, said, “When the statue of Manu was installed in the High Court, it wasn’t for any particular caste. Manu is regarded as the first person to have come up with a written law. If there is any downside to that law, it is open to amendments as is done in our Constitution. The statue shouldn’t be associated with any caste.”

In August 1989, while hearing Dharmendra’s petition, the High Court stayed the removal of the statue and ordered that future hearings will be before a bench of more than two judges, including the chief justice.

That’s where the matter lies now. Many in judicial circles refer to the case as the oldest writ petition pending in the High Court.

“Throughout the 1990s and the 2000s, Dalit leaders such as Kanshi Ram and Ramdas Athawale came to Jaipur and protested against the statue.

A K Jain, who appeared as a lawyer for Dalit groups during the last hearing of the case in 2015, recounts the commotion that day. “The court was more of a battleground. Almost 300 to 400 Brahmin lawyers, including office bearers of different bar associations of Jaipur, got together. As I started reading lines from the Manusmriti that are offensive to Dalits, these lawyers started protesting and we were hardly able to speak,” said Jain.

That was the last time this writ was listed for hearing.

Ambedkar had burned Manusmriti in 1927.

The statue of Manu is there as the first codifier of Hindu law,which is part of Indian culture.Ma nu has always criticised by feminist groups,for the statement,Na Sthree Swathanthryam Arhathi ( The woman desn't deserve Fredom).

There had been such contextual statements gainst women by great writers in the world,including Plato,Aristotle,Shakespeare to Sri Narayana Guru and Changampuzha Krishna Pillai in Southern India.European culture abound in statements against slaves and women.In the Sivasathakam of Narayana Guru,there are atleast 20 slokas that can be termed anti women.He has said women are there to attract and destroy men.Changampuzha wrote,women are the roots of gloabal calamity and the hell of fire.

Aristotle said,"Man is to woman is,Master is to Slave".

There is no role for women in Plato's Republic.

It is notorious that Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries SC combined pride in its democratic institutions with slave ownership and male dominance. In general, these latter institutions were matter neither for pride nor for apology. They were taken for granted. Both were indeed ubiquitous in the world the Athenians knew. It is also notorious that Aristotle was an apologist of both slavery and male supremacy.

Aristotle says that if there are whole nations of natural masters and other nations of natural slaves, slave wars are justified. This, he says, is what explains the claim by the Greek poets that "Greeks should not enslave Greeks”— they think Greeks should enslave barbarians, who are natural slaves ( Politics) .

In Politics,Chapter 12, after the discussion of business expertise has been completed, Aristotle returns to the subject of household rule, and takes up the question of the proper forms of rule over women and children. As with the master’s rule over the slave, and humanity’s rule over plants and other animals, Aristotle defines these kinds of rule in terms of natural hierarchies: “[T]he male, unless constituted in some respect contrary to nature, is by nature more expert at leading than the female, and the elder and complete than the younger and incomplete”.

This means that it is natural for the male to rule: “[T]he relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled” . And just as with the rule of the master over the slave, the difference here is one of reason: “The slave is wholly lacking the deliberative element; the female has it but it lacks authority; the child has it but it is incomplete”.

Aristotle places the rule of male over female in the household in the context of the husband over the wife.Female children who had not yet been married would have been ruled by their father. Marriage for girls in Athens typically took place at the age of thirteen or fourteen.

It had also been the case in Manu's India-females were married early,and were ruled by men.Aristotle gave women no role in politics.

Aristotle has very little to say about what women’s virtues look like, how they are to be achieved, or how women should be educated. But it is clear that Aristotle believes that as with the master’s superiority to the slave, the man’s superiority to a woman is dictated by nature and cannot be overcome by human laws, customs, or beliefs.

Shakespeare in Hamlet said,Frailty,thy name is Woman!

Swadessbhimani Ramakrishna Pillai,an Editor in Kerala in the 1910-1912 period had wrote an editorial which said the dalits doesn't have the right to study alongwith the Hindu elite in the same class room,since their brain hasn't developed to match the elite.The dalits are just buffaloes in comparison with the elite,who are horses,he wrote.But Pillai is in the good books the Marxists and pseudo secularists,becuase he wrote a pamphlet on Marx,in 1912 which was actually a copy of Lala Hardayal's article,which was published in the Modern Revciew,four months ago.

Pillai's statue is still there in the Kerala capital.

Since Manu is the first law giver,his statue should be there,not only in the court premises of Rajasthan,it should be there in all the court premises in India.

If you want to remove it you can-but remove statues of Aristotle,Plato,Shakespeare and the like before you do it;burn their books,while you burn Manusmrithi.

Hamlet in Monsoon