Honor killing in India

An honor killing or honour killing (also called a customary killing) is the murder of a member of a family or social group by other members, due to the belief of the perpetrators (and potentially the wider community) that the victim has brought dishonour upon the family or community. Honour killings are directed mostly against women and girls. The perceived dishonor is normally the result of one of the following behaviors, or the suspicion of such behaviors:

1. dressing in a manner unacceptable to the family or community,


2. wanting to terminate or prevent an arranged marriage or desiring to marry by own choice,


3. engaging in heterosexual sexual acts outside marriage, or even due to a non-sexual relationship perceived as inappropriate, and


4. engaging in homosexual acts. Women and girls are killed at a much higher rate than men.

Recently, there has been a spate of honor killings in the country and this has led the government to decide what laws should be put in place to stop this heinous crime. Also whether the Hindu Marriage Act should be reformed or not is being debated. So what is the definition of honour killing and what leads families to commit this heinous crime so that they can protect their family honour? Is this practice prevalent only in India or is it prevalent in other parts of the world also? What are the misconceptions regarding honour killing and what are the solutions to stop this crime from spreading? These are the questions that society find the answer…

In my opinion Honour killing is defined as a death that is awarded to a woman of the family for marrying against the parent's wishes, having extramarital and premarital relationships, marrying within the same gotra or outside one's caste or marrying a cousin from a different caste. Honour killing is different from the dowry deaths that are also a very common practice in India as, in the case of dowry deaths, the perpetrators of that action claim that they have not been given enough material rewards for accepting the woman into the family. In that case there is a lot of harassment from the in-laws and more times than one, it has been noted that the wife commits suicide rather than being killed by the in-laws, though it has to be said that she has been mentally killed, if not physically. We have had a tradition of honour killing. This tradition was first viewed in its most horrible form during the Partition of the country in between the years 1947 and 1950 when many women were forcefully killed so that family honour could be preserved.

Now, there are various reasons why people or family members decide to kill the daughter in the name of preserving their family honour. The most obvious reason for this practice to continue in India, albeit, at a much faster and almost daily basis, is because of the fact that the caste system continues to be at its rigid best and also because people from the rural areas refuse to change their attitude to marriage. According to them, if any daughter dares to disobey her parents on the issue of marriage and decides to marry a man of her wishes but from another gotra or outside her caste, it would bring disrepute to the family honour and hence they decide to give the ultimate sentence, that is death, to the daughter. Now as has become the norm, the son-in-law is killed as well. Sociologists believe that the reason why honour killings continue to take place is because of the continued rigidity of the caste system. Hence the fear of losing their caste status through which they gain many benefits makes them commit this heinous crime. The other reason why honour killings are taking place is because the mentality of people has not changed and they just cannot accept that marriages can take place in the same gotra or outside one's caste. The root of the cause for the increase in the number of honour killings is because the formal governance has not been able to reach the rural areas and as a result. Thus, this practices continues though it should have been removed by now.

There are various misconceptions regarding the practice of honor killing. The first misconception about honor killing is that this is a practice that is limited to the rural areas. The truth is that it is spread over such a large geographical area that we cannot isolate honor killings to rural areas only, though one has to admit that majority of the killings take place in the rural areas. But it has also been seen recently that even the metropolitan cities like Delhi and Tamil Nadu are not safe from this crime because 5 honor killings were reported from Delhi and in Tamil Nadu; a daughter and son in law were killed due to marriage into the same gotra. So it can be seen clearly that honor killing is not isolated to rural areas but also to urban areas and as already pointed out, it has a very wide geographical spread. The second misconception regarding honor killing is that it has religious roots. Even if a woman commits adultery, there have to be four male witnesses with good behavior and reputation to validate the charge. Furthermore only the State can carry out judicial punishments, but never an individual vigilante. So, we can clearly see that there is no religious backing or religious roots for this heinous crime.

What can we do to prevent such a thing from happening? Firstly, the mentality of the people has to change. And when we say that the mentality has to change, we mean to say that parents should accept their children's wishes regarding marriage as it is they who have to lead a life with their life partners and if they are not satisfied with their life partner then they will lead a horrible married life which might even end in suicide. Secondly, we need to have stricter laws to tackle these kinds of killings as this is a crime which cannot be pardoned because. Humans do not have the right to write down death sentences of innocent fellow humans.

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Female Foeticide Essay

Introduction

Female foeticide is the elimination of girl child after sex determination test from the womb. Girl child is killed before birth just to fulfill the wishes of old members in the family of getting boy baby first. All the process gone under familial pressure especially by husband or in-laws. General reason behind abortion becomes unplanned pregnancy however female foeticide becomes planned by the families. It is the age old practice to kill ever unwanted girl child in the Indian society.

People believe that boys are the key to continue their family lineage however they do not understand the most simple thing that girls are reasons to give birth to new entity in the world not boys.

Reasons of Female Foeticide

Female foeticide is an unethical act has been practiced from old age due to some cultural norms and socio-economic policies. Following are the reasons of female foeticide in the Indian society:

• The important reason of female foeticide is the preference of male child over girl child because son is the main source of income however girls are consumer. There is a misconception in the society that boys are always look after their parents however girls are to left them away.


• Old custom of dowry system in India has put a big challenge before parents which is the main reason to avoid girl child by the parents.


• Low status of women in the male dominated Indian society.


• Parents consider that boys would carry their name ahead in the society however girls are only to handle households.


• Legalization of abortion in India is another big reason for the illegal sex determination and termination of girl baby.


• Technological advancement in the health sector has given fire to the female foeticide.

Effective Measures to Control:

As we all know that female foeticide is a crime and social disaster for the future of women. We should notice the reasons for female foeticide in the Indian society and try to solve one by one on regular basis. Female infanticide or female feticide is mainly because of the sex determination. There should be legal stoppage to get control over it. All the laws should be strictly followed by the every citizens of India. And one should be surely punished if found guilty for this cruel practice. Permanent termination of license should be done if found practicing this. Marketing of medical equipments especially for illegal sex determination and abortion should be stopped. Parents should be penalized who want to kill their girl baby. Campaigns and seminars should be regularly organized to aware young couples. Women should be empowered so that they can be more attentive to their rights.

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Problems Associated with Education in Rural Areas in India

The concept and phenomenon of education based on school-going is of modern origin in India. Education in the past was restricted to upper castes and the content taught was also ascriptive. However, today, to lead a comfortable life in this fast-changing world, education is seen as the most influential agent of modernization.

The educational attainments in terms of enrolment and retention in rural India gen­erally correspond to the hierarchical order. While the upper castes have traditionally enjoyed and are enjoying these advantages, the Scheduled Caste and other backward castes children have lagged behind in primary schooling. Studies have revealed that chil­dren of backward castes are withdrawn from school at an early age, by about 8 or 9 years.

An important reason for withdrawal of children from school is the cost and work needs of poor households. Income and caste are typically correlated with lower castes having lower incomes and higher castes having better endowments in terms of land, income and other resources. Thus, one fact is certain that there is a clear divide in the villages, along caste lines, regarding access to schools.

The very poor children are enrolled in the municipal school because it provides a number of incentives such as lower expenditure on books, uniforms, fees, etc. The well-off children go to the private school, where English and computers are given more importance.

The tendency in favour of private schools in rural areas is influenced by people’s perception of private schools, as a means of imparting quality education in English medium. The poor rural girls, if not all, con­stitute a major junk of disadvantaged groups that are excluded from the schooling pro­cess, especially because they enter late into school and drop out earlier.



Parental illiteracy is another cause for lack of interest to become literates. Many rural children enrolled are thus first generation learners, who come from illiterate families thus, they have to single handedly grapple with school life, mastering language and cog­nitive skills without parental help and guidance.

Most of these illiterate parents do what­ever is possible to educate their children because education for them acts as a vehicle of social mobility. Moreover, education and the subsequent attainment of town jobs is often looked upon by many of these rural families, especially families belonging to lower castes, as a means to break out of their position in caste hierarchy.

The religious beliefs and practices of a community can also largely impact the overall attitudinal and behavioural profile of an individual or group. In the Indian context, reli­gion has a sway over people’s minds and exerts a great influence over their behaviour. The motivation and attitudes of the people towards education are also moulded, to a large extent, by their religious beliefs. The literacy rate for Muslims is notably lower com­pared to Hindus but not better than Christians and Sikhs.

Poverty among Muslims, who also happen to be one of the most economically back­ward groups, is the actual reason for their preference for madrasas (Islamic schools), because they are absolutely free and more flexible as compared to formal government schools. This seems to be the only option for poor Muslims, who often cannot afford to pay for the education.

1. Defects of Present System:

According to Amartya Sen, ‘Primary education in India suffers not only from inadequate allocation of resource, but often enough also from terrible management and organiza­tion. To him, management and organization of schools is still in a terrible State in India.

That means, there are three major defects in the present educational sys­tem. The first is the physical environment in which the student is taught, the second is the curriculum or the content, which he/she is taught, and the third is the teaching method or the teacher, who is teaching.

2. Physical Environment:

Today’s society clings to schools to such an extent that a co-dependent relationship is created between the broader and friendly notion of education and the manipulative real­ity of school. Education should not be limited to the sphere of the school.

It should have to encompass nearly every aspect of life. Schools should act as locations where the ideas of education are planted in the students and education has to become the foundation for how the students look at the world around them and how they interpret these things. Instead the present situation is that, the seeds of education are planted into the children in the schools but it does not go much further than the school system.

The public in general and rural people in particular, often think of schools as a place for teachers to instruct children on the ‘three Rs’—reading, writing and arithmetic. Schools are not con­sidered as places, where the students are taught many life skills that will help them suc­ceed in their future endeavors.

Access to school is no more a problem in most parts of India. Ninety eight percent of population has access to school within a walking distance of 1 km. The core problem is the unpreparedness of the school system for mass education. Classrooms in most pri­mary schools in rural areas are typically uninviting, with leaking roofs, uneven floors and scraggly mats to sit on.

Added to that, most of the schools do not have electricity, drinking water or toilets. In some schools, students of different ages are made to sit in one room. These students squat in passive postures, even regimented columns, with often the ‘brightest’ and the socially advantaged sitting in front. At a given time, a typical school could have at most two teachers trying to ‘police’ children of all five primary classes.

The best teaching that these teachers may undertake is to make the students copy or recite from the textbook. Sounds emanating from the school are normally distin­guishable from afar in the form of a ritual cacophonous chorus of children chanting their lesson, often shouting their guts out in a cathartic release.

Surprisingly, no normal sounds— of joyous laughter, creative play of words, singing or recitation of poems, ani­mated participation, excited discovery, or even the irrepressible curious questioning the characteristic of every child of that age are found in schools.

The major drawback in these schools is that in the mechanical race to achieve ‘schooling for all’ the government seems to have completely missed out on what constitutes ‘learning for all’. Here, greater emphasis is placed on establishing schools but not on what goes on inside a school.

The result is high enrolment figure and equally high dropout rate. The students enrolled are compelled to attend school regularly and take all the exams, and the result is a sizeable number of students fail and are compelled to repeat classes. These students ultimately give-up the hope, resulting in high resource wastage of the government, while at the same time inculcating a sense of despair among the students, thus, reducing the poten­tial of their human development.

The quality of education is the main issue. For a long time, the educationists had thought that the high dropout rate is because of parental poverty and disinterestedness rather than concentrating on the failure of the school system.

A paper by Jandhyala B. G. Tilak, titled ‘Determinants of Household Expenditure on Education in Rural India, which is based on the results of NCAER’s 1994 Human Development in India (HDI) survey, tries to clarify some of such myths that are associated with the education in rural India. The study mentions that the real household expenditures on education in India is not ‘virtually non-existent’, but is considerably higher.

Some of the observations made by this study are as follows:

1. First, there is a complete absence of ‘free education’ in India, regardless of a household’s socio-economic background, spending on education is very sub­stantial even at the primary school level.

2. Second, ‘indirect’ costs, such as books, uniforms and examination fees, are very high, even in government-run schools, including at the primary level. According to National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), in 1995-96, the average expenditure per student pursuing primary education in rural India in a govern­ment school was Rs.219, and for students going to local body schools, private-aided schools and private-unaided schools, it was Rs 223, Rs 622 and Rs 911, respectively.

3. Third, given the absence of a well-developed credit market for education, expenditure on education is highly (and positively) correlated with income.

4. Fourth, willingness to pay and ‘compulsion to pay’ (i.e., the need to compensate for a shortage of government spending on education) are two important factors.

5. Fifth, government spending and household spending on education are not sub­stitutes but complementary. An increase in government spending is associated with an increase in household spending (due to an enthusiasm effect, resulting from improvements in school facilities, number of teachers, etc.).

Conversely, a reduction in government expenditure leads to a decline in household spending on education. (Equivalently, the elasticity of household expenditure to govern­ment expenditure is found to be almost unitary, and positive.)

6. Finally, the provision of schooling in rural habitations, or the provision of such school incentives as mid-day meals, uniforms, textbooks, etc., are both associ­ated with the increased household demand for education.

3. Defects in Curriculum:

The second reason attributed to high dropout rate is ‘most out-of school children are unable to study because they have to work’. The recent study by PROBE has refuted this reason as myth. It says that only a small minority of children are full-time wage labour­ers, while the majority of those, who work do so as family labourers at home or in the fields. According to this study, it is not because the children have to work that they leave school, but because they leave school they work. Then why do children leave schools?

The present education system is teacher-centric. From times immemorial, education has been expensive, as it is related to gaining and transmitting knowledge in India. ‘Information,’ the foundation upon which knowledge rests was and still is in limited supply.

A teacher, together with a united set of books, is the knowledge base, which anchors the education process. The teacher is the active agent, communicating information to the students, who are the passive receptors of information. Learning by rote is the method most favoured because the information transmitted is largely disjointed and the student is not really quite sure what the motivation behind knowing all those disparate facts is.

Curriculum-makers in India feel that children need to know a lot more to catch-up’ with the others living in advanced countries. So, they try to include as much ‘informa­tion and ‘knowledge’ as possible in the curriculum. While it is true that this century has seen an explosion of technologies that help to store large information, the capacity to understand these facts and concepts does not grow equally fast among the children.

Therefore, a crucial aim of children’s education should be to promote concept formation and enhance their capacity for theory-building. All children are natural theory builders, and from very early in life, they begin to construct their own explanations for the world they observe. The educational system presents a contrasting experience to these chil­dren.

These outdated school systems do not allow for a child’s mind and personality to develop. Moreover, the knowledge imparted is not continuous and are disjointed frag­ments of information that are arranged in the form of different pieces in the syllabus.

The curriculum-framers, while arranging such information, ignore the fact that the natural learning process in children is far from linear, and that they process information about the world in a much more holistic and integrated manner. The content taught, therefore, cannot be determined by what has to be ‘covered’ in higher classes, but by the children’s ability to comprehend the concept at a given age.

In the Indian system of education, what is taught is crucially linked with how it is taught and, more importantly, with how it is assessed. The examination system here is so distorted that it actually discourages good classroom practices by forcing children to answer contrived meaningless questions, suppressing their own curiosity and expres­sion. It emphasizes on written questions based on trivial recall, and discounts all activity- based learning.

Another major drawback is that the curriculum prescribed in the textbooks to a great extent are found to be ‘irrelevant’ to the closer lives of rural people. The curriculum-makers, who come predominantly from urban middle-class background believe that the rural children need to be taught how to conduct their lives ‘properly’, and that only ‘positive’ situations from their lives must be depicted.

Thus, either highly pre­scriptive and moralistic lessons (about hygiene, cleanliness, hard work, etc.) or rather simplistic generalizations about the perceived ‘needs’ of the rural poor or over-idealized situations such as truly democratic panchayats, benevolent employers, well-equipped and functioning village hospitals, effective government schemes, etc., are described in the prescribed textbooks. They absolutely ignore the fact that the rural children, unlike those from protected urban homes, are much more conscious of the conflicts and com­plexities of life, which form a part of their reality.

They know very well that these lessons are contrived and untrue, but have no chance to critically question the contents that they must passively parrot. The village child is also far more knowledgeable about the natural world, and does not need to look at ‘pictures’ to count the legs of a spider, or to identify the eggs of a frog or the leaves of a neem tree.

Similarly, the teachers and other school authorities also neglect the fact that many rural children, especially the tribal children, are aware of rich bio-diversity around them. They become conscious only when some foreign companies pirate this information and patent it. Thus, in the name of relevance, most of the content taught in the schools is totally irrelevant to the prevailing situations of the rural children.

In recent years, there have been attempts to change the elementary school curricu­lum to make it more child-centred, joyful and activity-based. However, in most cases, there have been mere cosmetic changes accompanied by much ‘song and dance’, with no radical restructuring in the content and design. The education systems in this region are highly monopolistic and rigid, and are controlled by bureaucratic departments that are resistant to change.

Moreover, the people, who design school curricula have outdated notions about what constitutes ‘learning’, are burdened with the perceived demands of higher education, and are far removed from a typical average child of the country. They are also far too inflexible to learn from the experience of village teachers and field-based voluntary groups working in close contact with children. Some flexibility may be per­mitted in the curriculum for ‘those children’ in non-formal schools, but never in the highly guarded formal system for ‘our kids’.

4. Most Important Resource—The Teacher:

The protagonist of the educational system and the most important resource for quality education, the teacher, in reality has the feeblest voice in the matters of concern. The rural primary school teacher occupies the lowest position in the hierarchy. Apart from teaching, he/she is expected to bear the burden of many other assignments such as col­lecting census, propagating family planning programmes, conducting poverty surveys, etc.

The teacher in a village acts as the sole multi-purpose village functionary, and is expected to perform whatever function the government finds necessary at any time. This problem becomes most acute in the case of village schools, having a single or at most two teachers. For days together, the school may remain closed because the teacher has been summoned on ‘duty’, further discouraging children, who in the absence of support at home, need much more attention and extra time.

Another major problem that has come up in recent days is that, due to the ceiling on recruitments, there is insufficient number of teachers in many of these schools. A con­siderable proportion of available teachers do not have the requisite qualifications. Women teachers constitute only 31 percent of the total number of teachers in rural areas, which is supposed to be one of the causes for low literacy rate.

Lack of motivation on the part of teachers, who generally are academically low- qualified and have chosen this profession as a last resort, is a serious problem. Added to this, the teachers are burdened with unmanageable classes, irrelevant curricula, dismal working conditions, and lack of recognition of their efforts. Moreover, these teachers are lowly paid. The result is that the teachers tend to give up.

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Essay On Sachin Tendulkar

India is a cricket crazy country and there is a saying in India 'Cricket is my religion and Sachin is my God'. People in India are mad about Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar for he is the greatest ever One Day International player and one of the greatest Test Cricket player. The Master Blaster, holds several batting records, including the most Test centuries and the most one-day international centuries, and was rated in 2002 by Wisden as the second greatest Test batsman ever, after Sir Don Bradman.

He received the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, India's highest sporting honour, for 1997-1998, and the civilian award Padma Shri in 1999. Tendulkar was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1997.

Sachin was born on 24 April 1973 in Mumbai (then Bombay) into a middle-class family. His parents Ramesh and Rajni Tendulkar named him after his family's favourite music director Sachin Dev Burman. Sachin was sent to Sharadashram Vidyamandir School where he started his cricketing career under Coach Ramakant Achrekar. While at school, he was involved in a mammoth 664 run partnership in a Harris Shield game with friend and team mate Vinod Kambli. At the age of 14 Sachin became the youngest player ever selected for Mumbai in the West Zone Ranji Trophy league and tine legend was born.

Subsequently, b-e was selected for the Sportster Trophy for boys under 17. His scores of 15-8, 97 and 75 also won him the Man of the Series award and took his team (Dattu Phadkar XI) to victory. In 1988/ 1989, he scored 100 not-out in his first first-class match, for Bombay against Gujarat. At 15 years and 232 days he was the youngest to score a century on debut. He is, in fact, the only player to score a century while making his Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy and Irani Trophy debut.

Sachin played his first international match against Pakistan in Karachi in 1989, facing the likes of Wasim Akram, Imran Khan, Abdul Qadir, and Waqar Younis . However, his maiden Test century came in England's tour in 1990 . Tendulkar truly came into his own in the 1991-1992 tour of Australia that included a brilliant century on the fast and bouncy track at Perth.

Some other highlights of Tendulkar's cricket career include highlight number of Test centuries, overtaking Sunil Gavaskar's record 34) on 10 December 2005 vs. Sri Lanka in Delhi. He has played Test Cricket on 52 different grounds, the highest number ahead of Mhd. Azh_aruddirn 48) and Kapil Dev (47). He holds the record for the fastest to score 10 , 000 runs in the history of Test Cricket along with Brian Lara. Both of them achieved this feat in 195 innings.

Wisden named Tendulkar one of the Cricketers of the Year in 1997, the first calendar year in which lie scored 1,000 Test runs. He repeated the feat in 1999, 2001, and 2002. Tendulkar also holds the record for scoring 1,000 ODI runs in a calendar year. He has done it six times - 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2003. While not a regular bowler, Tendulkar has 37 wickets, in 132 tests.

Tendulkar's first ODI century came on September 9, 1994 against Australia in Sri Lanka at Colombo. Though it had taken Tendulkar 79 ODIs to score a century, to date, he has played more matches than any other cricketer. He has appeared on 89 different grounds and has scored the most runs as well as centuries. He is the first cricketer to cross l0,000-run mark in ODIs He is the only player to have over 100 innings of 50+ runs. He has the highest individual score among any batsmen in the world.

He is the only male cricketer to have ever scored 200 in ODI, the feat he achieved against South Africa in 2010. In 1998, Sachin made 1,894 ODI runs, which is still the record for ODI runs by any batsman in any given calendar year.

Today, several records remain etched on Sachin's name and most of them may remain on his name for ever. He is the highest run getter in ODIs and has scored nearly 44 ODI centuries, the most by any batsman.

He has achieved the highest number of Man of the Match awards (56) and most Man of the Series (14) awards. He is the first cricketer to get pass 16,000 runs. He has scored the most number of ODI fifties and is the only player to be in top 10 of ICC rankings for 10 years.

He is the first overseas player to play for English County Yorkshire. He is the only cricketer to receive Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Padma Shri and Arjuna Award. He has most number of international runs in all forms of the game and has been involved in six 200+ partnerships in One Day Internationals most by any batsman. On his name stands the record for most number of successive ODI appearances (185). He also has most number of Test appearances for India.

Tendulkar has the highest number of runs in World Cup matches 1,796 with a strike rate of 59.87. He has also won most number of Man of the Match awards in World Cup matches. He was the Player Of The Tournament in the 2003 Cricket World Cup for scoring 673 runs, the highest by any one in a single Cricket World Cup.

Sachin Tendulkar has endorsed more than 100 products in last 20 years. He has appeared in ads for Pepsi, ANZ Grindlays Visa, MRF, Britannia, Boost, Adidas, TVS, Visa, Aviva Life Insurance, Phillips, BPL Sanyo, Reynolds, Fiat Palio, Boost, Sunfeast, National Egg Coordination Committee, Airtel, Royal Bank of Scotland and many more. Sachin Tendulkar's ads are very popular, and his endorsements are still a safe bet for the advertisers.

A chronic back problem and Tennis elbow failed to deter him. He has come out stronger after every break. Sachin Tendulkar married Anjali Mehta, the paediatrician daughter of Gujarati industrialist Anand Mehta, in 1995, some years after they were introduced by mutual friends. They have two children, Sara and Arjun. Tendulkar sponsors 200 under-privileged children every year through Apnalaya, a Mumbai- based NGO associated with his mother-in-law, Annabel Mehta.

Sachin Tendulkar is considered one of the complete batsmen ever. He has all the shots in the book. Also, he is unarguably the biggest crowd puller and icon of the game. There were times in Indian households, when Sachin Tendulkar used to get out, people used to turn off their Television sets. Sachin has enthralled his legions of fans with many a great innings in more than twenty years that he has played cricket. But it is not just Sachin's willow that has enthralled cricket fans the world over, he has also made telling contributions with the ball.

Recognised by Sir Donald Bradznu and as his modern incarnation, Tendulkar has a skill a genius which only a handful has possessed. It was not a skill that he was simply born with, but one which was developed by his intelligence and an infinite capacity for taking pains. If there is a secret, it is that Tendulkar has the keenest of cricket minds he learns every lesson, picks up every cue, and dominates the opposing attack sooner or later. In fact, he enjoys devouring bowlers of the opposition the most.

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Brief Essay on the Traditional Value of Indian Culture

Traditional Indian values must be viewed both from the angle of the indivi­dual and from that of the geographically delimited agglomeration of peoples or groups enjoying a common system of leadership which we call the ‘state’.

The Indian’ state’s’ special feature is the peaceful, or perhaps mostly peaceful, coexistence of social groups of various historical provenances which mutually adhere in a geographical, economic, and political sense, without ever assimilat­ing to each other in social terms, in ways of thinking, or even in language.

Modem Indian law will determine certain rules, especially in relation to the regime of the family, upon the basis of how the loin-cloth is tied, or how the turban is worn, for this may identify the litigants as members of a regional group, and therefore as participants in its traditional law, though their an­cestors left the region three or four centuries-earlier. The use of the word ‘state’ above must not mislead us.

There was no such thing as a conflict between the individual and the state, at least before foreign governments be­came established, just as there was no concept of state ‘sovereignty’ or of any church-and-state dichotomy. Modern Indian ‘secularism’ has an admittedly peculiar feature: it requires the state to make a fair distribution of attention and support amongst all religions.

These blessed aspects of India’s famed tolerance (Indian kings so rarely persecuted religious groups that the excep­tions prove the rule) at once struck Portuguese and other European visitors to the west coast of India in the sixteenth century, and the impression made upon them in this and other ways gave rise, at one remove, to the basic constitution of Thomas Moore’s Utopia.

There is little about modern India that strikes one at once as Utopian: but the insistence upon the inculcation of norms, and the absence of bigotry and institutionalized exploitation of human or natural re­sources are two very different features which link the realities of India and her tradition with the essence of all Utopias.

Part of the explanation for India’s special social quality, its manifest virtues and compensating shortcomings, lies not in any prudent decisions by any men or groups of men, but in the traditional concept of the society in which praja (the subjects) and raja (the ruler) were the two principal elements, one might say, polarities; and part again lies in the fact that, though the ruler was a guardian of morals, the ’cause’, as it was put, ‘of the age’, the power of penance was immeasurably more vigorous than any service the state could perform-even granted the fact that the prerogative of corporal or capital punishment (danda) served also as a penance for the guilty, and granted, too, that it was in theory one of the king’s tasks to see to it that penances were actually performed.

Ideals were expressed in terms of ethics, and are related, some to people in general, and some, more specialized, to the principal classes, in particular the brahmans, whose inherited religious and magical powers, and responsibility for the spiritual and even material welfare of the state-, marked them out for respectful treatment, financial patronage, and, if they were suitably conscientious, cramping taboos. Special ideals were naturally developed for the raja, the key figure in leadership, whether he was a head of a clan, or an emperor.

The ‘twice-born’, to whom we shall return, reached, according to Manu (vi. 92), supersensory bliss by obeying a tenfold ‘law’, which was a mixture of moral and intellectual requirements Harita, who goes into greater detail, gives the constituents of sila (good conduct) as ‘ piety, devotion to gods and ancestors, mildness, avoidance of giving pain, absence of envy, sweetness abstention from injury, friendliness, sweet speech, gratitude for kindnesses, succoring the distressed, compassion, and tranquility’.

Dharma, a term we shall discuss, in its wider sense of a general moral ideal (it is also used of a ‘law’ as such), requires of every man truthfulness, abstention from stealing, absence of anger, modesty, cleanliness, discernment, courage, tranquility, subjugation of the senses, and (right) knowledge.

This attitude towards moral qualities and forms of behaviour introduces us to the fact that equilibrium rather than equality, peace rather than liberty, were the fundamental ideals. These notions can be interpreted partly as an escape from, and partly as an attempted insurance against the primeval chaos which was supposed to lurk in the background, the chaos which was believed to justify indirectly, and positively to require, the state itself.

Unseen benefits hereafter and prestige in this life were not to be attained merely by moral qualities and good behaviour. The quality of absolute ‘goodness’ consists also in the study of the Vedas, austerity, pursuit of knowledge, purity, and control over the organs of the body, performance of meritorious acts, and meditation on the soul.

These properly belong to brahmans or brahmanized classes, but the opposite, the state of’ darkness’, is demonstrated by covetousness, sloth, cowardice, cruelty, atheism, leading an evil life, soliciting favours, and inattentiveness, and these were not confined to the upper classes. A similar arrangement of ideals is found in the maxim that one falls from caste (i) by not observing what is laid down (in law or custom), (ii) by observing what is prohibited, or (iii) by not bringing the senses under control.

Civilized life required that all three sources of ‘fall’ should be eliminated-an object no individual’s power could achieve. The leading themes are well evidenced in that distinctively Indian, if non-brahmanical, sect, Jainism, which combines venerable age and longevity.

The ideal Jaina householder is characterized by spiritual virtues, namely a spiritual craving, tranquility, aversion from the world, devotion, compassion, remorse, repentance, and loving-kindness; and by social virtues, namely non­violence, abstention from unrighteous speech (of which lies and slander are illustrations), abstention from theft or unrighteous appropriation (including embezzlement), chastity, avoidance of covetousness, and non-attachment.

Since many Jainas have been commercially minded the significance of these virtues is apparent. How the social and personal intermingle is revealed in these standard characteristics of the Jaina householder: possessing honestly earned wealth, eulogistic of the virtuous, wedded to a well-guarded spouse who is of the same caste but of a different patrilineage, apprehensive of sin, following the customs of the locality, not denigrating others (particularly rulers), dwelling in a secure house (affording no temptations to in-dwellers or strangers), avoiding evil company, honoring elders, eschewing sites of cal­amities, eschewing occupations that are reprehensible according to family, local, or caste customs, economical and making a right use of his income, of controlled diet and balanced aims (following righteousness (dharma), wealth (artha), and physical pleasure (kama), the three Purusharthas or aims relevant to this life, in due proportion), charitable to monks and the afflicted, mindful of his dependants, and victorious over the organs of sense.

We find through­out that the most reprehensible misdeeds arc theft and adultery, and a com­mentary on Indian ethics could be woven on these items alone. Insistence that women must not be exposed to even a nominal risk of unchastely, the require­ment that marriage should sub serve the family’s interest and not primarily that of the spouses, and the disfavor in which anything resembling ‘court­ing’ before marriage is held, have developed an attitude towards women, and a level of expectation on the part of women themselves, which set special limits to Indian social behaviour and give a peculiar quality to Indian life.

Concern for the chastity of their womenfolk has, at least in the last millen­nium, been at the summit of every Indian family’s prime concerns, and when hatred boiled over, the females were the immediate targets. Obedience to rulers, as such, we do not find amongst the typical virtues: but it is inculcated elsewhere.

Avoidance of sin and social disgrace was a primary obligation, while duty to the ruler was secondary and dependent upon the first, for the ruler’s function was to facilitate such avoidance. Respect for the caste-system is implicit in the scheme outlined. ‘Honestly earned wealth’, ‘reprehensible occupations’ are terms referring to an established, if theoretical, apportion­ment of activities amongst the castes (jati). To search for social and political ideals anterior to the caste-system would be fruitless.

No Indian ideal could be inconsistent with dharma, ‘righteousness’. This word tends to bring cosmology down into touch with the mundane details of private law. One who follows his dharma is in harmony, and attains bliss, though it remains doubtful how far his contemporaries’ behaviour should guide him in his understanding of his dharnja.

Without dharma, in however etiolated a form, fertility, peace, civilized life are considered to be imperiled. Dharma is in one sense natural, in that it is not created or determined (though in practice in obscure cases its exponents determine what its sense is), and in another it is always to be striven for.

Dharma is unnatural in that to achieve it one must put forth uncongenial efforts of self-control, irrespective of popular reactions. If dharma (as contrasted with positive legislation) only in part re­sembles natural law it is nevertheless a code of moral obligations to which this, uninstructed nations innocent of brahmanical learning, cannot attain. Dharma, indeed, means duty (kartavyata), and the study of dharma in­volves a discovery of the duties of individuals, groups, and, among them, their political leaders.

For dharma, in the sense which predominates in politi­cal theory, is an abstraction of sva-dharma, the ‘own dharma’ of each caste and category of person as D. H. H. Ingalls, the Harvard scholar, has neatly put it, the ‘essentially isolationist society’ recognized a religious sanction be­hind an infinite variety of personal laws.

Perhaps the categorization and tendency to division was overdone in the writings, but they are faithful to the essential character of that society. Nominate the man, state his age, caste, and status, and one can be told what his dharma is. He deviates from it at his peril, his spiritual peril in any case, his physical or financial peril too if the king is as alert to deviations as he ought to be.

But this is not to suggest that dharma was a ‘natural law’ in the European sense: the ruler’s conduct could not be tested by reference to dharma and invalidated thereby, and, though it justified, it could not delimit his administrative authority.

Adharma (unrighteousness) is the forerunner of chaos. Man has a natural tendency to decline into chaos. In one myth chaos required the invention of kingship and the appointment of a semi-divine king. Dharma and kingship are thus inseparable. Dharma derives linguistically from a root meaning ‘to hold’. A loose hold is no hold.

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