It would appear that Dr.Mahathir’s memoirs have been published with two main objectives in mind: (i) To try to clean up the blemishes on his record, for example, unleashing Operation Lalang in 1987 and the assault on the judiciary in 1988; (ii) To try to stop at all costs, his nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim’s attempt to become the next Prime Minister.
His memoirs reveal that he is not one who respects the truthfulness of historical accounts. Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who said “Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it”?
“History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions.” (Voltaire)
SUARAM/K.Das’ “The White Paper on the October Affair and the Why? Papers” (1989) and my own “445 Days under the ISA” (1989) have set the record straight regarding Operation Lalang. Mahathir’s silly effort to pin the blame on the police and the former IGP’s gauche efforts to take credit for it belong to Malaysia’s growing stock of political fairy tales.
Remember “May day for Justice”?
Regarding Dr Mahathir’s assault on the Malaysian judiciary in 1988 when the Lord President was sacked and several Supreme Court judges suspended, he makes the vacuous claim it was all because the King had been annoyed at Tun Salleh Abas’ complaints about noisy building works near his house…
Only fools and buffoons would fall for such a caricature of history. The Malaysian judiciary has still not recovered from that rude assault by Dr Mahathir in 1988 which affronted judicial circles all over the world. Writing the Foreword to Tun Salleh Abas & K.Das’ “May Day for Justice” (1989), the Hon Justice Michael Kirby, CMG Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists said of the incident:
“Singled out for particular mention was the concern of the International Commission of Jurists about the campaign of attacks on the judiciary by the Prime Minister of Malaysia; the inducement made to the Lord President to resign his office quietly; the apparently biased constitution of the tribunal set up to enquire into his removal; the inclusion in the tribunal, as its chairman, of a judge who succeeded to the Lord President’s office; the unprecedented action of that judge in securing the removal and suspension of Supreme Court judges who provided a stay to allow the constitutionality of the tribunal to be tested in the Malaysian Supreme Court, and the ‘unpersuasive’ report of the tribunal following which the Lord President was removed.”
The assault on the Malaysian judiciary in 1988 was one of Dr Mahathir’s crudest attempts to cling to power when he was challenged by Tengku Razaleigh and showed that he does not respect, or does not understand the meaning of ‘the rule of law’. And he cannot run away from that responsibility nor can he erase that history. This dark episode in Malaysian modern history has been meticulously recorded by Tun Salleh Abas and K. Das in “May Day for Justice” published in 1989 by Magnus Books. The Tunku wrote in the Preface to “May Day for Justice”:
“Episode after episode in the book shows the spiritual corruption, the cynicism, the moral turpitude, the viciousness and the horrible ruthlessness which attended the exercise of falsely accusing him, hastily putting him before a Tribunal of questionable character and quickly removing him from office.
“I do not know how any honourable government can stay in office after this book has been published. It constitutes a denunciation which cannot be answered without confessing to the most dishonourable conduct in public life.”
All of this happened under Mahathir’s watch and the system of justice in this country has still not fully recovered from the crude assault. If not for that, he would not be so smug about casting libellous claims about his political opponent’s moral character. Sure, he need not tremble in fear of defamation suits by Anwar in the present system, but in the event of a new just government in Putrajaya and the rug is lifted from the dirt in his term in office, we will put right our history…
Coffee Table Amusement
It is a sign of the times that Mahathir’s memoirs should be released at a time when the government is making history compulsory for all Malaysian students:
“History is now strictly organized, powerfully disciplined, but it possesses only a modest educational value and even less conscious social purpose.” (J. H. Plumb)
In an age when information is so abundant and accessible, I have often said that history text books should not be prescribed for secondary school kids. They should be encouraged to read widely in order to encourage critical thinking. That being the case, Mahathir’s memoirs can best be relegated to the function of coffee table amusement. As the visionary William Blake has put it:
“A truth that’s told with bad intent,
Beats all the lies you can invent.”
Dr Mahathir would do well to live out the rest of his life free of self-deception, self-delusion and self-denial.
- Kua Kia Soong is the Director of SUARAM
Justice has at least two propensities; it settles what is right and empowers the weak against the powerful one. Ayodhya verdict ensures none of the sort. Still, most people in the country are happy about it, including a vast majority of Muslims, on the ground that it has assuaged a volatile situation in the country. The judgment has been found a win-win verdict and a way for getting rid off from a difficult communal situation. However, the judgment is constantly receiving criticism on its merit as a verdict of court of law. In the words of a well known constitutional expert Anil Dhawan it is a sort of judgment by a Panchayat and not by a proper court. The judgment has brought into focus all those old issues related to the historicity of Ayodhya and Rama, validity of the claim that some temple was forcible replaced by the Babri Masjid, authenticity of the ‘archeological’ proofs of demolition of a Hindu temple presented by the ASI, the crime of illegal demolition of the Babri Masjid and the like. The verdict has also exposed some of the weaknesses pertaining to the way the defenders of Babri Masjid fought their case in public and the court.
The legal order says the place where the deity of Ramlala is presently lodged belongs to it and the rest of the land should be apportioned to the three contending parties. The fallout of Ayodhya verdict is based more on matters of faith than on hard facts. The judgment appears more like a truce document than a legal order. It is an example of good arbitration than of a judicial decree. Indeed, the judges of Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court have pronounced a verdict in a highly sensitive case in which they imagined themselves “sitting on a heap of dynamite, powerful enough to destroy everything around”. One of them has even expressed this dilemma in the foreword of his noting. It seems that being scared of the explosive nature of the case in hand, all the judges inadvertently tended to appease the majority community by upholding its ‘faith and belief’, while giving some solace to the aggrieved minority by suggesting to parcel out one third of the disputed land in favor of the Sunni Central Waqf Board. The order speaks not of a dispassionate and objective treatment to the dispute but that of a psychological and emotional interpretation for the sake of peace and harmony in the country.
There can be no denying the fact that in the dark night of December 22, 1949, the mosque was “corrupted by surreptitious planting of idols under its central dome”, as the concerning FIR puts so, and Muslims were disallowed to pray there with the closer of its gates in the name of law and order. With the passage of time judicial permission was ensured for worship by one party in the premises of the mosque and Muslims were denied any access therein. This is also a stark fact of the contemporary history that the mosque was illegally demolished by a mob on a sunlit day in presence of global media, security forces and stalwart activists of Ramjanambhumi movement on the unfortunate day of 6th December 1992 in spite of the assurance of the state and central governments and supervision of the Supreme Court. This is also an undeniable fact that no temple was destroyed for constructing a mosque on the site of Babri Masjid, at the most it was constructed on the debris of some unidentified religious structure. The artifacts found by the ASI beneath the mosque, which the judges argued belonged to a Hindu temple, were testified by several experts in the honorable court to be most likely belonged to some Buddhist ruins. No precaution was taken for an authenticated gathering of these ‘evidences’ by the concerning experts appointed by then the NDA government.
The ASI report had been criticized by many archaeologists for “ignoring evidence such as animal bones, which would not have been found in a temple for Ram, and the existence of glazed pottery and graves which indicated Muslim residents”. This is also an explicit fact underlining the dispute that the ‘act of destruction’ of a Hindu temple of 11th century could not be proved by any evidence but only guessed or imagined on the basis of belief and hearsay. It has been accepted by almost all historians and legal experts even by those propounding the temple destruction theory that “one thing that is missing is the ultimate clinching evidence: a contemporary description of the forcible replacement of the temple with the mosque”. Even Tulsidas did not mention any such event although he lived by that era and composed the great epic on Ram. It is understood by many from his famous couplet ‘mangke khai, masjidaen soi’ (I beg for my daily needs and sleep in a mosque) that he even used to sleep in the premises of Babri Masjid. Unfortunately, the two judges avoided these facts in their derivation which led to the ruling that Babri Masjid was built after destroying a temple on the site. Ironically, in the present Ayodhya itself, there are 14 temples ‘believed’ to be the ‘actual’ birth place of Ram, believed to be so by hundreds of thousands of followers of these particular temples, and it is questionable how the court has chosen the central dome of Babri Masjid among them all for lodging Ramlala thereat. Seeing mockery of the historical and archeological facts, the renowned historian Romila Thapar rightly commented on the judgment that “it has annulled respect for history and seeks to replace it with religious faith”.
The history, archeology and other scientific evidences are diametrically opposite to the belief that the present Ayodhya is the same place where the mythological character of Ram had ever took birth. In 1970s, the ASI’s ‘Archeology Project on Ramayan’ aimed to scientifically prove the existence of Ayodhya at its current site fizzled out since no trace of human habitation could be proven beneath the city earlier to 700 BC, what to speak of a mega city like the mythological Ayodhya, presumably as big as the present Delhi. The archeological evidences gathered from this sacred city and the known history of the subcontinent only proves that there was a city called Saket during and before the Buddhist era, which subsequently lost glory and existence amidst an anti-Buddhist wave in the country and a small village around it called Ayodhya sprang up as a ‘real’ Ayodhya. Valmiki’s Ramayan specifically mentions that Ayodhya was a city where river Sarayu had flown from east to west, whereas in the present case the direction of the river is contrary to the epic sign. Due to this fact Sher Singh, an IAS officer and author of several books on Ayodhya, concludes that the real Ayodhya was located somewhere in the present Nepal. Some other scholars point out that it must be in the Kalinga region comprising the present Orissa. Well known scholar Jagnath Bajaj wrote a series of research articles in Navabharat Times locating the reign of king Dashrath and his dynasty in the historic Palestine. Srinivasan Shastri in his book ‘Rama, the Great Pharon of Egypt’ establishes that the epic Ayodhya was actually located around the remnants of a historical city Mepsis near the present day Cairo. Some scholars even went to the extent to conclude the very name ‘Egypt’ has been derived from the name of the grandfather of Ram named Ajapati. Some researchers even concluded that Cushites of Ethiopia are actually the descendants of Ram’s son Cush. In all, 8 places have been identified as the sites of ‘original’ Ayodhya which could perplex any independent observer in locating this ancient city with certainty. The difficulty in accepting a particular set of faith and belief in case of the birthplace of Ram also arises due to several stories around the deity. Father Kamil Bulke accumulated evidence on 300 versions of Ramkatha in his extensive research on the subject, many of them fantastically contradicting each other. The location of Ayodhya and the belief about the birthplace of its epic hero Ram seems to be superimposed over the centuries on Indian society along with all sorts of contradictions and fictitious ‘truths’. Amidst all these confusions and conjectures, it is really a wonderful discovery of Justice Dharam Veer Sharma that he precisely located the exact birth place of Ram who is supposed to have taken birth more than 1.7 million year back!
Babri Masjid has been seen as the test case for the secular ideals of the Indian Union but now onwards it will also stand as a test of its high principles of justice, equality and fraternity as well. It will decide whether the right will be the might in the country or the might will be the right. The judgment is about to set some perilous precedence for the future India. At the outset the verdict gives the message that any act of destruction and encroachment of any property by a violent mob just on the basis of claim of faith and belief would stand vindicated and condoned, bringing hundreds of mosques, churches, and other religious places and shrines under a direct threat being without any legal protection. The verdict also gives the feeling that semi-truths, hearsay and mythological interpretations would also find value in the sight of any court of law. It also sets the precedence of giving weight to extra-legal motives for any judgment such as peace, law and order situation, ‘national interest’, pleasure and happiness of the ‘major’ party of any litigation and so on. If India is to emerge as a super power in near future and lead nations on the path of progress and development it should care for its image how it deals with the question of justice and constitutional rule within its own precincts. Now the remedy and curative process rests on the Supreme Court where the contending parties are bound to have their final wrangle soon.
So long as the Muslim side is concerned, it appears from the whole episode that it did not tackle the dispute as scrupulously as it should have been. First of all the main litigant on its behalf is a government set up, the Sunni Central Waqf Board, which intervened in the matter very late and hence its litigation has been declared time barred by the honorable Allahabad High Court. Technically, it is no more a party in the present dispute unless the apex court accepts so. A government body cannot be depended upon in such cases of community issues. The earliest Muslim litigant Hashim Ansari is not prepared to move to the apex court for any further prayer. It is also a fact the best available lawyers could not be engaged and more frequently by the Muslim groups, presumably on the pretext of lack of resources. For historical debate on the controversy around demolition of any temple by Babar or on his behalf by Mir Baqi, forcibly replacing it by a mosque in the year 1528, the defenders of Babri Masjid had only refuted the allegation but did not labour for an independent contemporary evidence for strengthening the case. The case required a lot of research input which the VHP has sponsored for proving its case but AIMPLB, BMAC, etc just tried to rely upon the existing findings of secular historians and no organized and planned effort was made for better academic resources. Even a Muslim research institute which claims to sponsor such works initially published two books and one booklet around the controversy, however, it declined later on to publish further input on the subject saying it did not have sufficient funds for the same, although it is a known fact that hundreds of books have been published and sponsored by it since then. The pointer that the massive structure beneath Babri Masjid might be some Buddhist remains of Saket days could not be explored further. The Muslim side seemed over confident till the pronouncement of the verdict that its title and claim would be ‘surely’ vindicated by the high court. If the matter goes in the apex court in the same manner, perhaps the same outcome might come over there too. If Muslims are to convince the court and the nation about their valid claim they have to take it very, very seriously and with the provision for due research input and resources for efficient legal back up. Let us hope and pray for the best!
Never underestimate the power of an employee who feels wronged.
One of the striking ideals of the American experiment in democracy is that we should all be equal under the law, whether we are a middle-aged African-American woman struggling to make ends meet or a multi-billion dollar international corporation.
On March 29, that ideal will be on display when the United States Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case of Dukes v. Walmart. Walmart is of course well known. Dukes is Betty Dukes, a 61-year-old Walmart "greeter" from California who says she has been discriminated against on the basis of her gender.
And Dukes is not alone. Over a million other women who have worked at Walmart, most as hourly wage earners, are part of the Dukes' class action lawsuit.
But the Supreme Court will not be deciding the merits of their discrimination case. What's at stake is the very definition of what a class action can be. And that has everyone from the captains of big business, to the leaders of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, to civil rights lawyers very interested in the outcome.
Walmart's argument is that lawsuit shouldn't be allowed because a class action that covers so many women, working in different stores, in different states, in different jobs, is just too broad. Lawyers who support the company add that if there is discrimination at a particular store then the women who worked there could come together for a much smaller class action suit.
But lawyers supporting the women say that the only way to fight a corporate giant like Walmart is through strength in numbers. And the reason why the lawsuit includes so many individuals is because Walmart is so big and so many women say they've been denied opportunities just because of their sex. They say that if the case isn't allowed to proceed, the Supreme Court will be establishing that some businesses are too big to sue.
For most of her years at Walmart, Betty Dukes told us, she barely made a living wage, requiring her to share a home with her mother. She's an ordained Baptist minister, who often preaches at her local church. The case, which has been litigated for almost 10 years, has been a strain on Dukes. But she is the inspiration for the case that has been dubbed "Betty versus Goliath."
The women claim a statistical analysis of Walmart's pay and personnel records proves that women were promoted and paid less at every stage, in every region of the country. They gathered statements from employees -- including those from women who'd made it into management of the stores. Among the claims: One reported that a male manager told her "women should be home barefoot and pregnant and women weren't qualified to be managers because men had an extra rib." another stated that a senior vice president told her that she would not advance because she did not "hunt, fish, or do other typically-male activities" another was told that her male co-worker received a larger raise "because [he] had a family to support."
We wanted to hear Walmart respond directly to these questions, but after weeks of asking them for an on camera interview, they said no. (For me that raises another question, is Walmart too big to talk?)
Betty Dukes' lawyer, Brad Seligman told us, "Walmart's goal is very clear. They want to make it impossible for any large class action to be brought for the very simple reason that a company this large, a large class action is the only thing that's going to change them. "So yes Walmart is like a Goliath," Dukes added, "but I do not fear Goliath by any stretch of the imagination." She says she has faith that the justice system in the country will work for women like her. And when the Supreme Court meets to decide her fate, Betty Dukes says she plans to be in attendance. Dan Rather Reports airs Tuesdays on HDNet at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET. This episode is also available on iTunes.
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