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In a significant verdict, the Madras High Court made it “abundantly clear that pedigree based on caste will have no role to play in the appointment of Archaka (temple priest)” if the person so selected to the post was well-versed, properly trained and fully qualified to perform pujas and other rituals as per the requirement of the Agama Sastra applicable to the temple concerned.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh said the Supreme Court had, in Seshammal & others versus State of Tamil Nadu (1972), held that the appointment of an Archaka to a temple would be a secular function, and only the performance of religious service by those priests would be an integral part of the religion. In that verdict, the apex court had clearly differentiated between a secular and religious function.
Therefore, the prescription provided by the Agamas gain significance only when it comes to the performance of the religious service.
Ex consequenti, any person belonging to any caste or creed can be appointed as an Archaka provided he is a well-versed and an accomplished person in the Agamas and rituals necessary to be performed in a temple,” the judge wrote, while disposing of a writ petition.
In order to substantiate his conclusion, he further relied upon the 2002 Supreme Court verdict in N. Adithayan versus Travancore Devaswom Board, in which the customary claim for performance of rituals only by Brahmins or Malayala Brahmins, in particular, was negatived.
The court ruled that the rituals could be performed by any trained person qualified to perform the puja in an appropriate manner.
If traditionally or conventionally, in any temple, all along a Brahman alone was conducting pujas, it may not be because a person other than the Brahman is prohibited, but because those others were not in a position and, as a matter of fact, were prohibited from learning, reciting or mastering Vedic literature, rites or performance of rituals and wearing sacred thread by getting initiated into the order.
Editorial
The main chapter of how Hindutva sees the past (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
The revived contestations over history — from the Gyanvapi mosque case to the renewed demonisation of Aurangzeb — confirm that Hindutva conflates its ideas of religion and culture with those of nation and state.
Nationalism and statehood are by definition indivisible, whereas religion and culture take on multiple manifestations. Culture of course contributes to national identity; yet, culture alone cannot mould the nationalism of a country, leave alone that of a plural land such as India. Indeed, an India confident in its own diversity could celebrate multiple expressions of its culture.
Hindutva sees culture differently. As the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s longest-serving chief M.S. Golwalkar wrote, culture “is but a product of our all-comprehensive religion, a part of its body and not distinguishable from it”.
For the Hindutvavadis, India’s national culture is Hindu religious culture, and cultural nationalism cloaks plural India in a mantle of Hindu identity.
Since Hindutva’s conception of nationalism is rooted in the primacy of culture over politics, the Hindutva effort is to create an idea of the Indian nation in which the Hindu religious identity coincides with the cultural. In this process, Indian history, following the Muslim conquests of north India, has become “ground zero” in the battle of narratives between the Hindutvavadis and the pluralists.
When, with the publication of my book, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India, I spoke critically of 200 years of foreign rule, the voices of Hindutva, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, condemned 1,200 years of foreign rule.
To them, the Muslim rulers of India, whether the Delhi Sultans, the Deccani Sultans or the Mughals (or the hundreds of other Muslims who occupied thrones of greater or lesser importance for several hundred years across the country) were all foreigners.
If they looted or exploited India and Indians, they spent the proceeds of their loot in India, and did not send it off to enrich a foreign land as the British did.
The Mughals received travellers from the Fergana Valley politely, enquired about the well-being of the people there and perhaps even gave some money for the upkeep of the graves of their Chingizid ancestors, but they stopped seeing their original homeland as home.
Laying the foundation for a future-ready digital India (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Ministry of Electronics and IT has been actively organising consultations on the proposed “Digital India Bill” to build conceptual alignment on a new law that will replace India’s 23-year-old Information Technology (IT) Act.
The goal is to upgrade the current legal regime to tackle emerging challenges such as user harm, competition and misinformation in the digital space.
The Union Minister of State for Electronics and Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said that the first draft of the Bill should be out by the end of June.
This is a much-anticipated piece of legislation that is likely to redefine the contours of how technology is regulated, not just in India but also globally.
Changes being proposed include a categorisation of digital intermediaries into distinct classes such as e-commerce players, social media companies, and search engines to place different responsibilities and liabilities on each kind.
The current IT Act defines an “intermediary” to include any entity between a user and the Internet, and the IT Rules sub-classify intermediaries into three main categories: “Social Media Intermediaries” (SMIs), “Significant Social Media Intermediaries” (SSMIs) and the recently notified, “Online Gaming Intermediaries”.
SMIs are platforms that facilitate communication and sharing of information between users, and SMIs that have a very large user base (above a specified threshold) are designated as SSMIs.
However, the definition of SMIs is so broad that it can encompass a variety of services such as video communications, matrimonial websites, email and even online comment sections on websites.
The rules also lay down stringent obligations for most intermediaries, such as a 72-hour timeline for responding to law enforcement asks and resolving ‘content take down’ requests. Unfortunately, ISPs, websites, e-commerce platforms, and cloud services are all treated similarly.
Consider platforms such as Microsoft Teams or customer management solutions such as Zoho. By virtue of being licensed, these intermediaries have a closed user base and present a lower risk of harm from information going viral.
Treating these intermediaries like conventional social media platforms not only adds to their cost of doing business but also exposes them to greater liability without meaningfully reducing risks presented by the Internet.
Explainer
Understanding the Wagner mutiny (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of Russia’s Wagner Private Military Company, staged a short-lived mutiny against the country’s defence establishment on June 24, pushing Vladimir Putin’s Russia into an unprecedented internal security crisis.
Mr. Prigozhin said he was not staging a coup and stayed away from directly attacking the Kremlin. But he demanded the ouster of Russia’s top defence brass and launched a “march of justice”, with a convoy of armed men and armoured vehicles, towards Moscow.
Mr. Putin opted to resolve the situation through talks but the fact that a feud between his Ministry of Defence (MoD) and a favourite, powerful warlord came to the brink of an open civil war speaks more of chaos rather than order in Moscow.
Mr. Prigozhin has called off his rebellion, but has left open several unaddressed issues which could continue to haunt the Kremlin.
The crisis erupted on Friday (June 23) night when Mr. Prigozhin released a video on Telegram, accusing the defence leadership of ordering strikes on Wagner and killing many of his forces.
Hours later, he released another video claiming that his forces have taken over Russia’s Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, the largest city in southern Russia that sits just 100 km from the Ukrainian border.
“Our men die because you treat them like meat,” he said in the video, attacking Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who is also in charge of Mr. Putin’s Ukraine campaign.
Short videos of Wagner troops and tanks on the streets of Rostov flooded the Internet. Mr. Prigozhin said Wagner would start a “march of justice” towards Moscow.
Immediately, a convoy of his forces started moving along the main highway connecting Rostov to Moscow. During the “march”, Wagner forces shot down six Russian helicopters and a command centre plane, killing 13 servicemen, according to local reports.
Roads and bridges were damaged when the Russian troops tried to stop Wagner. A jet fuel depot in the city of Voronezh, north of Rostov, caught fire when it was hit.
As the whole world was warily watching the situation in Russia, by Saturday night, the Belarus government announced that Mr. Prigozhin would turn back.
By that time, the convoy had crossed Yelets in Lipetsk Oblast, some 200 km south of Moscow. Mr. Prigozhin released another video confirming what the Belarus government said. “It’s over,” he stated.
Text
The role of organic intellectuals in challenging capitalist hegemony (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The concept of the ‘organic intellectual’ was introduced by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in Prison Notebooks, a series of essays written during his imprisonment by the Italian fascist regime in 1926.
The concept is one of the most important components in understanding Gramsci’s “philosophy of praxis”. For Gramsci, revolutionary practice, that which can successfully challenge the foundations of capitalist society, was possible only through a sociological understanding of the complex nature of the relationship between class power, ideology, organic intellectuals, hegemony and the state in capitalist society.
Intellectuals are an important component in the functioning of capitalist society as well as for a revolution due to their capacity to influence people.
While the general understanding was that intellectuals were scholars who engaged with philosophies and mingled only with the cream of society, Gramsci discussed their role in educating the masses.
Organic intellectuals are those specific intellectuals who could help build awareness among the masses, as they are intellectuals who rose to the professional standing from a social class that typically does not produce intellectuals and yet remained associated with that class, unlike traditional intellectuals.
In his observation of modern states, Gramsci recognised that after the mid-nineteenth century, the state did not rule and control the public through coercion and force.
Instead, it had cultivated consensual support throughout civil society, which he described as hegemony. Hegemony as a concept was inspired by Italian political thinkers who employed the term to describe the gradual building of consensus and favour across the nation for the ruling class instead of relying exclusively on the exercise of coercion.
Hegemony was the consensual domination of the masses by a social class which successfully expanded its influence and leadership across civil society.
Army, law, police and other forms of control and threat were only employed during a crisis of command when spontaneous consent from the masses failed.
By trying to keep this consent intact, the state could no longer be separated from civil society. The state became a combination of political and civil society and functioned as an ethical educator that moulded a specific way of life for its citizens.
Therefore, the backing of educational and religious institutions, media persons, and groups that influenced civil society became essential to maintain power.
World
Wagner mutiny shows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a ‘strategic mistake’: NATO chief (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said the weekend mutiny by mercenary troops in Russia showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a “mistake”.
We are monitoring the situation in Russia. The events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter, and yet another demonstration of the big strategic mistake that Putin made with his illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine.
He spoke while on a visit to Lithuania — which will host next month’s NATO summit — a couple of days after the Wagner mercenary group’s aborted revolt against the Kremlin.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said the mutiny showed that Russia is an “unstable and unpredictable state”. Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told a meeting of the bloc’s Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg that Wagner’s aborted mutiny shows Moscow’s war in Ukraine is splintering Russian power, and wared of the risk of instability in the nuclear-armed behemoth.
Mr. Borrell warned that “certainly it’s not a good thing to see that a nuclear power like Russia can go into a phase of instability. It’s also something that has to be taken into account.
The most important conclusion is that the war against Ukraine launched by Putin and the monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is biting him.
Sri Lanka to restructure its domestic debt amid challenges (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Sri Lanka will shut down its banks and financial sector for five days beginning Thursday, ahead of an extraordinary weekend debate in Parliament on the government’s plan to restructure its domestic debt.
The move comes a year after Sri Lanka decided to suspend servicing its foreign debt, to combat a devastating economic meltdown — the country’s worst since Independence.
The government subsequently entered an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and secured a nearly $3 billion package from it, while agreeing to restructure both its foreign and domestic debt that the Fund estimated at about $41 billion and $42 billion, respectively, as of March 2023.
In May, the IMF pointed to “tentative signs of improvement” in Sri Lanka, while underscoring the need for timely restructuring agreements with the island’s creditors ahead of the Fund’s first review scheduled in September.
Spelling out the government’s plan to state-owned French media during his recent visit to Paris, President Ranil Wickremesinghe said Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring programme will be presented to the Cabinet.
It will go to Parliament on Friday, before the public finance committee, and Saturday and Sunday, it will be debated in Parliament and will be approved by Parliament. Thereafter, we can start the rest of the negotiations with our creditors.
Sri Lanka was looking at obtaining a longer timeframe to repay its loans, as well as “some form of reduction”, Mr. Wickremesinghe said, hinting at a haircut. Sri Lanka’s negotiations with bilateral creditors are ongoing.
On May 9, a total of 17 countries joined an “official creditor committee”, co-chaired by India, Japan, and France, to discuss Sri Lanka’s request for debt treatment.
The committee includes Paris Club creditors as well as other official bilateral creditors. China attended the meeting as an observer and is yet to formally join the committee.
India has repeatedly emphasised creditor parity among bilateral lenders — Japan and the Paris Club have echoed the sentiment — while China has demanded that multilateral creditors be brought into the same process.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how private creditors, who hold the largest chunk of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt by way of International Sovereign Bonds, will participate.
Mitsotakis back as Greek Premier after poll victory (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis embarked on Monday on his second term as Greece’s Prime Minister with a vow to accelerate institutional and economic reforms, after voters handed him a huge election victory for the second time in five weeks.
Crediting Mr. Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party for bringing economic stability to the erstwhile EU debt laggard, voters gave the conservatives their widest winning margin in almost 50 years.
Holding 158 seats in the 300-seat Parliament, Mr. Mitsotakis was sworn in as Greece’s Prime Minister after officially receiving the mandate to form a government from head of state, President Katerina Sakellaropoulou.
Among his campaign pledges is pouring money into the country’s public health system — which was stretched to its limits by the COVID-19 pandemic — and improving railway safety following the deaths of 57 people in a February train collision that was Greece’s worst rail disaster.
The 55-year-old former McKinsey consultant and Harvard graduate, who steered the EU nation from the pandemic back to two consecutive years of strong growth, had already scored a resounding win in an election in May.
But having fallen short by five seats in Parliament of being able to form a single-party government, Mr. Mitsotakis refused to try to form a coalition, in effect forcing 9.8 million Greek voters back to the ballot boxes.
Business
S&P retains FY24 India growth projection at 6% (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
S&P Global Ratings retained India’s GDP growth forecast at 6% saying India will be the fastest-growing economy among Asia-Pacific nations.
The GDP growth forecast for the current and the next fiscal has been kept unchanged from the forecast made in March partly on account of domestic resilience.
“We see the fastest growth at about 6% in India, Vietnam, and the Philippines,” S&P Global Ratings said in its quarterly economic update for Asia-Pacific.
The medium-term growth outlook remains relatively solid. The Asian emerging market economies remain among the fastest growing ones in our global growth outlook through 2026, Asia-Pacific chief economist at S&P Global Ratings.
S&P said retail inflation is likely to soften to 5% this fiscal from 6.7%, and the RBI is expected to cut interest rates only early next year.
The inflation and rate hike cycles have peaked. But we expect the RBI to cut rates only in early 2024, as it wants to see consumer inflation moving to 4%. S&P has lowered the growth forecast for China to 5.2% from 5.5% for 2023.