Spiritual Aphorisms

I have listed these aphorisms for a detailed critique in my as-yet-unfinished book.  Please add to these if you think I have missed any important one:

1. Live in the Present.
2. Do not depend on anything/anyone for your happiness.
3. There is no "I", ego is an illusion / there is only flux.
4. Don't be attached / Have no desires.
5. You are not the body.
6. The mind is a limited / dangerous tool.
7. What is true cannot be expressed in words.
8. You are always free, you only need to realize it.
9. Appearance is not reality / The world is an imagination.
10. We are all one.
11. Do not judge anyone, or yourself.
12. Condemn the act, not the actor.
13. You are not the mind, you are pure Awareness.
14. Be spiritual, not religious.
15. Love unconditionally.
16. Be free of others' expectations.
17. In deep sleep, the "I" and the "world" are no more.
18. Bliss is your natural state.
19. Live from the heart, not from the mind.

The case of the trivial appeal

Earlier articles on Justice Delivery in India here and here.

In India, and to a similar extent in Pakistan, the Supreme Court frequently handles cases about relative trivia: child custody battles, bail for a crime related to trespassing, and so on.

There is no finality in Indian courts.  A criminal trial or a civil case starts in the "lower court", then there is the "Court of Sessions" (or District court), then the High Court, a "bench" of the High Court, and then the Supreme Court, then a "Bench" of the Supreme Court.  Even after the Supreme Court delivers its verdict on a case, one can file a "review petition", a "curative petition", appeal to the "President", appeal to the Supreme Court against what the President says.  Frequently the Supreme Court will ask the litigant to again approach a lower court, and the merry-go-round starts again.

The laws in India are framed so broadly ("any", "whatsoever", "notwithstanding"), ambiguously ("public morality", "decency", "abetment", "incitement"), and subjectively ("hurting of sentiments", "outraging of modesty", "emotional cruelty"), that any lawyer worth his salt can question a judgment on a "point of law", a requirement if your case is to reach the Supreme Court.

Moreover, the High Courts of the country routinely diverge in their interpretations of the letter of the law.  It is all good fun for the lawyers:  Find a High Court judgment that contradicts some other High Court judgment on a similar matter (and it is not that difficult to do that, believe me), and rush to the Supreme Court.

Frequently the judgments in Indian courts offer no rationale, they are merely propositional, and while seeming to dispense justice, do anything but.

For example, there was recently a case when a salaried man petitioned the Punjab and Haryana High Court to intervene because the government has been delaying his salary payment every month.

The High Court, justly I believe, summoned a high bureaucrat to explain the conduct of the government, generalizing the issue since this issue obviously affected a large set of people.  But then, a "bench" of the High Court set aside its own Court's order and stated (emphasis mine):

Admittedly, during the pendency of the writ petition, the benefits claimed by the petitioner had been given to him. We are, therefore, of the view that when the grievance of the petitioner stood satisfied, the Single Judge should not have broadened the scope of the writ petition on the ground that the State of Punjab as well as statutory bodies had not been making payments in several other cases.

As the petitioner has already been granted relief, his writ petition is disposed of. The order dated March 12, 2013,by the Single Judge summoning the Chief Secretary, Punjab, is hereby set aside. Consequently, the appeal preferred by the State of Punjab is allowed."

Now I respectfully (since disrespectfully disagreeing with an Indian Court makes one a criminal) disagree with the Court's "view".  To my limited common sense, the earlier order "broadening" the scope was eminently sensible.  Just because a kidnapped child is returned later does not mean the original crime of kidnapping stands nullified.  Just because the man got his salary eventually doesn't mean the government's delay can be condoned.

In any case, the "bench" doesn't offer any justification for its view.  Just its view.  And obviously there is no punishment given to the errant government.  Quite typical.  Is this justice which can satisfy a reasonable, rational man?

So, since the laws, the process and the judgments are all wishy-washy, our courts are clogged with reviews and revisions and appeals of trivial matters.  The law can be said to be in the hands of the "lawyers" since, in the vast majority of cases, they can continue to appeal till eternity and delay any final judgment.

If you can afford a lawyer indefinitely, you can afford anything in India.

I have an inkling why the state and the judiciary are loath to change this dysfunctional system.

It is because the more law is in the hand of the lawyers, the more a case can remain in a "pending" state, and the more a rich and powerful person can evade a conclusive judgment against his interests.  A poor man cannot afford a High Court or Supreme Court lawyer, and cannot travel every few weeks to the state or the national capital.  But a rich man can hire a good lawyer, and be assured of fiddling with paperwork while Rome burns.

This system is to the massive advantage of a corrupt state and a corrupt crony capitalist class.  They want this system of never-ending appeals to continue so that they can, with impunity and with ruthlessness, loot the country and flout whatever little spirit of law remains in our badly designed Constitution (more on that some other time).

The more one can spend money and evade rules which apply to others, the more unjust is a society and the more cynical its poor people.

India is dysfunctional by design and carefully kept that way.  The more things change, the more they remain the same.  The basic structure of our institutions is non-democratic and colonial.

The "problems" of India: Corruption, lack of transparency, paid media, non-democratic party politics, non-existent justice, are boons for the privileged.

That is why things will not change in a hurry.  Lokpal ain't happening in a hundred years.

Some Notes on Gender Politics in India

In economic terms, and keeping aside exceptional circumstances, sexual affection and intimacy is a female resource which males compete for. (cf Baumeister, Vos, 2004)

Competition is a fact of life, and cannot be wished away.

Rape, being non-consensual by definition, is therefore a looting of this resource.

Females, as is well-known by ethologists and sociobiologists, bestow this resource on worthy males.  (Worthiness being defined by various parameters.)

Females are the decision makers when it comes to decisions of sexual pairings.  Males compete, females choose.

Female consent to sexual interaction is an affirmation of the male's value.  In the prolonged absence of female consent, a male will feel his self-esteem eroding.

In India, vast sections of population are still to embrace an open sexual market.  In those sections, decisions about sexual pairings are made by the community or the family.  It is not necessary that the decision is only made by the father.  Usually senior women are also involved.  In fact, matchmaking, and the related gossip, is normally attributed to women in many North Indian societies.

Even in these "arranged" marriages, there is obvious competition for a "worthy/powerful" male and for a "beautiful" female.

Beauty is mostly genetic, but power is a social construct, especially in modern human societies where raw physical power is not of much consequence.

Economics and politics is a struggle for gaining more power at the expense of other competitors.

If this struggle is severely rigged, what can we speculate about the state of mind of the weaker competitors?

Here we must distinguish between competition, and fairness.  A fair competition is where two men run a race, and the faster man wins.  An unfair competition is where two men race, and one of them is given a head-start.

I posit that a healthy society needs a preponderance of instances of "fair competition".  If a society has too many instances of unfairness, then it will naturally lead to the losers losing all respect for the "system", for "law", and so on.

The females need not worry about the fairness of the sexual competition, as long as they (or their families) are allowed to freely choose the winner.

However, the vast majority of males are intensely interested in the process of this competition and its fairness.  Because their self-esteem, their access to sexual resources, and their status in society depends on it.

The females need to start getting worried, when instead of the winners, the losers start laying hands on them. Then some draconian laws are called for. (!)

...

I posit that India has good competition within the classes, but there is an alarming lack of mobility between the classes.  If the classes are broadly considered: the poor (blue collar), the salaried (white collar), and the capitalist/politicians (silver spoon), then it is quite obvious that inter-class mobility is a rare event in India.  So much so that it is considered newsworthy (an autowallah's daughter clearing the Chartered Accountancy exam, or a salaried man entering politics (Mr Kejriwal), etc.).

The poor don't know how to get a salaried job (salaried desk jobs in the government or in the MNCs, are available only to those who have had a certain upbringing and educational opportunities and coaching, etc.).

The salaried don't know how to get into capitalism/real-estate/politics (it is clear that this arena is available only to those with family ties, history of granting favors, or a ruthless lack of ethics which the middle class folks find hard to digest/internalize).

Coupled with this economic class division is the existence of various other class divisions: racial, caste, religious, ...

(As an aside, an elopement in India (except in cases where the union is banned due to the couple being close cousins or from different religions etc.) necessarily happens between a man of lower status and a woman of higher status.  If the man is higher status, he can just marry the woman.  The elopement can be elaborated as: the man being able to convince the woman of his worthiness, while being unable to convince the larger community, and the community regarding the woman as an emotional fool.  In a more individualistic society where individual decisions trump community thinking, the woman will marry the man, and probably live to regret.  In India, not so.)

Keeping aside child abuse, and looking at adult behavior only, I further posit that rapes within classes (intra-class-rapes) are rare.  Most rapes are inter-class.  A laborer raping a middle-class housewife or a student, a politician raping a journalist or a schoolteacher, a middle-rung actor raping his maidservant, and so on are plausible.  A politician raping a businesswoman?  Unheard of.  A salaried man raping his colleague?  Similarly unheard of.  (Let's not consider the "rape because he promised to marry and now doesn't" kind of nonsense).

The higher-male-lower-female rape is an assertion of one's so-called right to have sex with every woman of the lower class.  "How dare she deny?"  The lower classes don't usually resist, but every once in a while they do, when the violation becomes too egregious, or the insult too demeaning.

The lower-male-higher-female rape is the current focus of Indian educated classes and the intelligentsia.  Rapes of Dalits and poor villagers by Zamindars and suchlike have been happening for hundreds of years in India, but it hasn't ever raised many eyebrows.  The rape of a middle class woman by a low class male is considered a fit case for swift retribution and violent justice.

Now, consider the notion that these low-class males live highly subjugated and moreover, in a hopeless and fatalistic state of mind, born of a pervasive sense of unfairness in the society.  No matter how hard they work, they can never imagine eating at a fancy restaurant, they can never anticipate watching a film in a multiplex while eating popcorn, their children will never go to IITs or medical schools, their parents will never get good healthcare, and so on.

If there is a great number of these frustrated, psychologically-impotent, unfairly-treated, resentful males in a city, then that is a powder keg waiting to explode.  That is the real danger.

They beat up bar-going women because they themselves can't afford to go to such bars, they beat up Romeos giving valentine's day cards because they themselves can't afford those cards and rose-bunches and because even if they do, the women will reject them summarily, they molest women on buses because they stand no earthly chance of ever touching their breasts in a consensual way.

The lasting solution to the problem of looting, social unrest and sexual assault is to ensure that the economic system is not unfair, that it does not make hundreds of millions feel like suckers and having no chance at a better life.  Draconian punishments will not deter these men, because the roots of their acts of violation run deeper.

An unfair society is an unsafe society.

The capitalist/political class can use state-provided Z-Plus security and appoint private guards, but the middle class will continue to live in fear.

The lasting remedy for an unsafe society is fairness and enforcement of existing laws on all citizens equally.  Not more, and more draconian, laws which will again be selectively enforced on the weak.

An atmosphere of pervasive unfairness compels an otherwise normal man to act violently and dishonestly towards his fellow humans.  We can hang that man, but we can also choose to look a little deeper at the atmosphere.

Notes on Nature, Intellect and Happiness

What survives is the fittest, not necessarily the happiest.

Happiness can be an indication that one is doing something wholesome.  Wholesomeness being evaluated by one's genetic and cultural heritage.

In troubled times, seeking happiness may be detrimental to reproductive fitness.  If in a war, all of a community decide to stay home and have hot stew, their genes will not survive.

Times are always troubled, one way or the other.  Peace, sanctuary, calm and contentment is by its nature, not sustainable, because organisms in these states will be trod upon by other organisms who are warring, exploratory, violent and ambitious.

The "natural" goal of an organism is fitness, survival and propagation.

Happiness is not a goal of nature, but of the minds of a subset of the human population.  This subset recoils against brutality, anxiety, competition, stress.  (We will not go over why this subset so recoiled.)

This subset is thereby less fit for survival, in an objective sense, than its complement.

When this subset tries to advocate happy living to the masses, the masses are not amused.

The masses need coping with failure, not contentment with failure.  Because the masses understand (at a collective level) that contentment is only possible for a subset.  As an analogy, that only one member of the family can be lazy.

Achievement of certain natural goals can make one feel happy, but the process and the journey of achieving those goals is generally grueling.

The journey, being a long and not generally altogether a happy one, is therefore not undertaken by organisms seeking happiness in the short term.

Such organisms are curious misfits in the natural order of things.  They may exalt themselves as transcendental, but that might be a compensation for the feelings of inadequacy.

As human awareness and intellect continues to achieve new heights, it is becoming alarmingly difficult to feel that one has to undertake a journey to happiness.  Why?  Because the beliefs and restrictions which kept one on the narrow path of the journey are demolished by an evolved intellect and awareness.

We no longer accept authority, faith, a promise of a better future if only we live a certain way.  We have seen through the fallible humanity of the greatest gods and statesmen, the illogic of the most intricate belief systems, the hollowness of the most hallowed ideals and theories.

History is no longer hagiography.

And therefore, increasingly more people are unwilling to sacrifice their present for the future.  This sacrifice requires faith.  That faith is no more.

In the absence of a path, or a goal, the mind seeks something here and now.

The quandary of the modern human is this: the awareness of time is more insistent than ever, but the intellect demolishes everything which is supposed to hold one steady through the times.  Both these effects are the consequence of an ever evolving brain.

Hence, boredom is the natural state of the modern man.  Boredom is an awareness of duration without anything interesting enough to fill that duration.  The more vacuous a stimulation is, the shorter the time it proves somewhat useful.  The longer it takes for something to provide joy, the more it requires putting aside oneself and believing in something "bigger".

Methods were always available to stupefy one's intellect and to dilate one's perception of time.  Then one could enjoy looking even at a blade of grass, and be joyous when a star came over the horizon.

Drugs, attention manipulation techniques, music and dancing, love and belonging, all accomplish one thing: they diminish the intellect and awareness of time to a level that one can find the present quite fulfilling.

After a certain level, an intellect is ill-suited to a joyous life on earth.  One can try various devices to stay somewhat amused, but then adaptation happens and the intellect sneers at those devices after seeing through them.

An evolved intellect, after say 20 years of formal education, sees no moral or urgent sense in following the natural goals of genetic fitness, survival and propagation, because, it has developed too great a distance between itself and the organisms's "inner voice", the genetic imperative.

The questioning intellect considers a sacrificial journey to a promised future a fraud, and finds the present infantile.

Birth rate necessarily has to decline in advanced societies, and boredom has to increase.

As civilization continues to advance, we are, more and more ... freaks of nature.

Hands-off Justice Delivery

An earlier post on Disincentives to Bad Litigation.

There are various models of justice dispensation.  India, like many modern states, has adopted the Adversarial System.  If one files a suit or a complaint, the court allows the warring parties to argue and the judge finally decides based on the merits of the arguments.

Unfortunately in India, due to the already strained system of law and other historical-cultural factors (more on this later), the judiciary has misused this principle to epic proportions.  It is the norm, and not the exception, for judges to NOT read the petition or an application and decide on an issue.  The norm is for the courts to ask someone: "So what do you have to say about this?"

If you submit an application, or a complaint, to the court, the court will check it for technical correctness (court fee, the margin being wide enough, double spaced typing, and so on) and issue "notice" to the "respondents".  It will not verify, except if the respondents are biggies, if the petition has any worthwhile content.  The "maintainability" of a petition is in most cases limited to checking its legal maintainability (for example, whether a bail application in the High Court has earlier been filed in the Sessions court), not whether its content makes any sense.

So, here's what happens in Indian courts:  A person is aggrieved.  He wants to petition the court.  For technical and legal correctness (the rules of which are labyrinthine and sometimes even anecdotal, instead of formalized), he has to engage a practicing lawyer.  The lawyer files the petition.  The court "admits" it.  Almost universally, the court then sends "notice" to the respondents named in the petition without so much as looking at what the petition contains.

The respondents then file a reply.  The court then asks the petitioner to file a "rejoinder".  Then, if one is lucky, in a few years the lawyers get a few minutes to convince the judge to read a few choice sentences or paragraphs of the hundreds if not thousands of pages in the case file.  The judge decides the case, and then later writes a judgment in which the large mass of the writing is to paraphrase what each party has argued, and in the end give a one or two line judgment.  Most of the judgments of lower Indian courts end with this statement: "I find no weight in the arguments of the respondent hence the petition is allowed," or "The petition is without merit.  Dismissed.  No order as to costs."

Alas, even this is an ideal scenario.  Most cases get a bunch of intermediary applications (IA) arguing one little technical point or the other.  Again, a notice is issued to the "respondent" to reply to the application.

I think this can justly be called "hand-off justice delivery".  The judges don't read anything on their own.  The judges only sit and listen and read when the lawyer asks them to go to page x, para y.  The lawyer presents the case law (selectively of course).  The judges are sometimes surprised to learn of a certain historical case, but they in no event will thumb the case law themselves to figure out the history or current status.

The judges are not interested, and nor have the time for, reading the petitions and applications.  They do not have the time to go through case law.  That job, and bread-and-butter, is for the lawyer community and the clerks and the typists.

I know an Indian lawyer whose modus operandi is only far too common, unfortunately.  Suppose he is engaged by a defender to respond to a petition.  Before responding to each point, he asks his clerk to type a response denying each and every sentence in the original petition.  "It is wrong and denied that x.  It is wrong and denied that y."  The "x" and "y" are taken verbatim from the original petition.  The substantive rebuttals can wait.

I repeat, the judges don't read the petitions but routinely shift the burden of the work to the respondents.  Even for applications whose illogic or conclusion is obvious, a few months have to pass necessarily because of the to-and-fro between the lawyers: Notice, Time to file reply, Reply, Time to file rejoinder, Rejoinder.

And obviously, there is generally no cost imposed for filing frivolous IAs.  Because "frivolity" is not for the judge to judge.  How can the judge decide on the frivolity of the application if he doesn't even read it?

This kind of charade in the courts suited the British well.  After all, why bother with listening to or reading of the arguments of a slavish and illiterate and smelly and emotional populace?  The judges listened only to the big-shot lawyers, who spoke in British English and usually got their training in London.  It was all good fun.

Judges and Lawyers formed a fraternity in that era.  And that continues to this day in India.

In the Supreme Court of India, I know for a fact that on a "date" when the judge is supposed to give a reasoned order or instruction about the case, thick files dense with documents and arguments are thumped to the other side without so much as a glance at their contents.  Some curt order is given granting more time to the respondents or suchlike.  Hearings on a thick file sometimes last 2 minutes.

The judges do not bother themselves with the details of the case or even of reading through the basic prayers  in the application (prayer = what is being asked for) asked for before issuing "notice".  It is probably too much work for them.  Let the respondents, and the lawyers that they engage, worry about the prayers.

If you get an unassertive lawyer who doesn't know how to outshout his opponent and make the judge read the relevant parts of your supposedly well-reasoned arguments, you will not get justice in India.

In the same vein, if someone counts (for Indian courts) the pages of documents unread by anyone except by the writer, that astronomical number will raise the very Gods from their slumber.