Into the brave new age of irrationality

Much has been written and said about the assault on liberal arts under way in India since the new political era dawned. But the real assault is on science and rationality. And it has not been difficult to mount this attack.

For long, India has as a nation proudly claimed to be a society of belief. And Indians like to assert that faith is a ‘way of life’ here. Terms such as modernity, rational thinking and scientific analysis are often frowned upon, and misdiagnosed as disrespect to Indian culture.

Freshly minted spokesmodel

In recent years, we have entered a new era. I call it the Era of Irrationality. The new Chief Minister of Tripura, Biplab Kumar Deb, is the freshly minted spokesmodel of this bold, new era.

There appears to be a relay race among people in public positions, each one making an astonishingly ridiculous claim and then passing on the baton. Mr. Deb’s claim that the Internet existed in the times of the Mahabharata is the latest. But there have been several other persons before that: Ganesh was the first example of plastic surgery, Darwin’s theory of evolution is hokum because nobody has seen monkeys turning into humans, and that Stephen Hawking had said that Vedas have a theory superior to Einstein’s E = mc2.

Such statements have made us the laughing stock of the global scientific community. But more importantly, they also undermine the significant scientific achievements we have made post-Independence.

We cannot even dismiss these as random remarks by the fringe, the babas and the sadhus. These claims are often made by public officials (it’s another matter that the babas and sadhus are now occupying several public offices). The assault on rationality is a consequence of a concerted strategy of political forces. As rational thinking thins, the same political forces fatten.

We Indians have never really adopted the scientific temper, irrespective of our education. It’s evident from our obsession with crackpot sciences such as astrology and palmistry in our daily lives. However, in the past four years, the belief in pseudo-sciences has gained a political fig leaf as have tall, unverifiable claims on science.

The cultivation of scientific temper involves asking questions and demanding empirical evidence. It has no place for blind faith. The ruling political dispensation is uncomfortable with questioning Indians. But at the same time, it also wants to come across as a dispensation that champions a 21st century modern India. Therein lies a catch-22 situation.

So, they have devised a devious strategy to invest in the culture of blind belief. They already have a willing constituency. Ludicrous statements like those mentioned above — made by leaders in positions of power with alarming frequency — go on to legitimise and boost the Era of Irrationality.

An unscientific society makes the job of an incompetent ruler a lot easier. No questions are asked; not even basic ones. The ruler has to just make a claim and the believers will worship him. Rather than conforming, a truly rational community often questions disparity, exploitation, persecution on the basis of caste, religion or gender. It demands answers and accountability for such violations, which are often based on irrational whims. Hence rationality must be on top of the casualty list followed quickly by the minorities, Dalits, women, liberals. For the ‘Irrationality project’ to succeed, the ruler needs a willing suspension of disbelief on a mass scale.

Science v. technology

The vigour with which the government is making an assault on the scientific temper only confirms that it is actually frightened of it. This is the reason why authoritarian regimes are often intolerant of those who champion the spirit of science, but encourage scientists who will launch satellites and develop nuclear weapons — even as they break coconuts, chant hymns and press “Enter” with their fingers laden with auspicious stones.

These ‘techno-scientists’ are what I call ‘the DJs of the scientific community’. And they are often the establishment’s yes-men and yes-women.

The founders of the Constitution were aware of this. Hence the words “scientific temper” and “the spirit of inquiry and reform” find place in the Constitution, along with “secular” (belatedly), “equality” and “rights”. To dismantle secularism, dilute equality and pushback rights, it is imperative to destroy a scientific temperament.

The indoctrination against the scientific temper begins very early in our lives. It starts in our families and communities where young minds are aggressively discouraged from questioning authority and asking questions. An upper caste child for example may be forced to follow customs, which among others include practising and subscribing to the age-old caste system. The same methodology is used to impose fixed gender, sexual and religious identities. As a result, we are hardwired to be casteist, majoritarian and misogynist.

The final step in the ‘Irrationality project’ is to inject with regularity, preposterous, over-the-top claims about the nation’s past. It effectively blurs vision of the present.

The world is busy studying string theory, the god particle in a cyclotron, quantum mechanics. But we are busy expanding our chest size with claims of a fantastic yore.

A pattern of impunity: on the SC/ST Ac

The problem with the SC/ST Act is the failure of the criminal justice system to recognise its own casteist biases.

For India’s Dalits and Adivasis, May 1 this year was a ‘May Day’ in more ways than one. It was May Day, the day to commemorate the labour movement (the vast majority of them do belong to the working classes), and also ‘mayday’ in the maritime sense, an occasion to broadcast their distress over a life-threatening emergency.

Dalit and Adivasi rights organisations observed May 1 as ‘National Resistance Day’. The immediate trigger was the Supreme Court order of March 20 on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (hereafter SC/ST Act). Protest meetings held across the country had three demands for the government: neutralise the Supreme Court order through an ordinance that would reinstate both the SC/ST Act and the SC/ST Amendment Act, 2015, in their original form; include both these laws in the Ninth Schedule to protect them from judicial review; and release all the Dalits arrested on April 2 when a ‘Bharat Bandh’ was observed to protest this Supreme Court order.

The Mahajan case

A lot has already been written on why the Supreme Court order is prejudicial to the cause of justice for victims of caste atrocities. But the underlying case that triggered the controversial judgment hasn’t received enough attention. It might be instructive to briefly consider the facts of this case, Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v. the State of Maharashtra.

The dispute arose in 2007, when Bhaskar Gaikwad, a storekeeper in a government college in Karad, Maharashtra, wrote to the State government highlighting alleged illegalities committed by Satish Bhise, the college principal. Mr. Gaikwad is from the Scheduled Caste (SC) community, Mr. Bhise is a non-SC person.

In April 2008, Mr. Gaikwad stated in his annual confidential report (ACR) that he had brought to light certain irregularities in the procurement of materials for the college. When Mr. Gaikwad’s reporting officer, Kishor Burade (also a non-SC person), saw it, he allegedly entered false information in the ACR about Mr. Gaikwad’s performance as well as some casteist remarks about his character. Mr. Bhise, too, allegedly made mala fide comments against Mr. Gaikwad in the ACR.

When Mr. Gaikwad became aware of these remarks in his ACR, he filed a first information report (FIR) against Mr. Bhise and Mr. Burade under the sections of the SC/ST Act that penalise a non-SC person for giving a public servant false information that could harm a SC person. Since the accused were Class I officers, the police applied for sanction to prosecute them.

Subhash K. Mahajan, who was then the Director-in-charge, Technical Education, Maharashtra, wrote to the investigating officer denying sanction for prosecution, even though he did not have the authority to make that call.

Following Mr. Mahajan’s refusal to grant sanction for prosecution, the police in 2011 filed a C-Summary report on the case, which means that the case is “neither true nor false”. Mr. Gaikwad claims that he was not informed of this fact by either the police or the courts for more than four years, even though they were required by law to do so.

When he finally found out about the C-summary report in early 2016, he filed another FIR, this time against Mr. Mahajan, charging him with knowingly shielding persons accused of a crime against an SC person. This too is an offence that attracts the provisions of the SC/ST Act.

In August 2016, the defendant (Subhash Mahajan) approached the Bombay High Court asking for the FIR to be quashed on the grounds that the charges against him were false and frivolous. The High Court not only refused to quash the case but also ruled that “there are sufficient safeguards in the Act itself which guarantee protection against frivolous and false prosecution”.

The defendant then filed an appeal against this decision in the Supreme Court.The apex court, instead of concerning itself solely with the merits of Mr. Mahajan’s appeal, dramatically expanded the ambit of the case, noting, “The question which has arisen in the course of consideration of this matter is whether any unilateral allegation of mala fide can be ground to prosecute officers who dealt with the matter in official capacity and if such allegation is falsely made what is protection available against such abuse.”

In the name of protecting innocent non-SC persons from being victimised by false complaints under the SC/ST Act, it laid down three guidelines that nullify key provisions of this law: it removed the bar on grant of anticipatory bail; even though the Mahajan case only concerns public servants, it ruled that where the accused is a non-public servant, the police may make an arrest only after approval by a senior superintendent of police; and it held that before registering an FIR, the police may conduct a preliminary inquiry to ascertain the veracity of the complaint.

Setback for SC/STs

Taken together, the three changes neatly reverse the original mandate of the SC/ST Act: instead of immediately registering an FIR and investigating the accused, the police would now immediately doubt the Dalit and investigate her complaint for veracity, and what’s more, they are required to do so by law.

One might assume that special guidelines to curb false allegations would be sparked by a case where false allegations have been proven. But that is not quite the case here. The apex court’s judgment does not engage exhaustively with the allegations made by the original complainant, Mr. Gaikwad, against the defendants, Mr. Bhise, Mr. Burade and Mr. Mahajan.

In fact, Mr. Gaikwad has presented three fresh applications to the Supreme Court: one to prosecute Mr. Mahajan “for filing a forged English translation of the original Marathi FIR”; one seeking recall of the March 20 order on several grounds, “including fraud on the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India by not filing the full text of the FIR”; and one “seeking calling of original records from the Hon’ble Bombay High Court”. These applications were tagged and listed along with the Central government’s review petition.

By far the most disturbing aspect of the court’s order is the idea that poor conviction rates and high acquittal rates suggest a high number of false cases. Can we apply this logic, say, to the acquittals of all the accused in the Kilvenmani massacre (Tamil Nadu, 1968, 44 Dalits killed), Tsunduru massacre (Andhra Pradesh, 1991, eight Dalits killed), Bathani Tola massacre (Bihar, 1996, 21 Dalits killed), Laxmanpur-Bathe massacre (Bihar, 1997, 58 Dalits killed), Shankarbigha massacre (Bihar, 1999, 23 Dalits killed), to mention just a few of the most infamous instances of mass acquittals? Do these acquittals mean that the cases against the accused were false? Or do they suggest a pattern of bona fide impunity for crimes against the Scheduled Castes?

The SC/ST Act and the SC/ST Amendment Act hold enormous significance for Dalits not because they have been effective in protecting them from caste injustice; not at all. If they are cherished despite their poor conviction rates and shoddy implementation, it is because their very existence is a testament to Dalit agency in a heavily casteist society, and a powerful affirmation of the community’s faith in the Indian Constitution.

The problem with this law is not its supposed misuse but the inability of India’s criminal justice system to recognise its own casteist biases. It is, after all, a matter of common sense that in a society seeped in caste, no institution can claim immunity from casteist prejudices or mindset. Sadly, the judiciary has been reluctant to acknowledge the social matrix of jurisprudence in India, which is caste.

The dispute arose in 2007, when Bhaskar Gaikwad, a storekeeper in a government college in Karad, Maharashtra, wrote to the State government highlighting alleged illegalities committed by Satish Bhise, the college principal. Mr. Gaikwad is from the Scheduled Caste (SC) community, Mr. Bhise is a non-SC person.

In April 2008, Mr. Gaikwad stated in his annual confidential report (ACR) that he had brought to light certain irregularities in the procurement of materials for the college. When Mr. Gaikwad’s reporting officer, Kishor Burade (also a non-SC person), saw it, he allegedly entered false information in the ACR about Mr. Gaikwad’s performance as well as some casteist remarks about his character. Mr. Bhise, too, allegedly made mala fide comments against Mr. Gaikwad in the ACR.

When Mr. Gaikwad became aware of these remarks in his ACR, he filed a first information report (FIR) against Mr. Bhise and Mr. Burade under the sections of the SC/ST Act that penalise a non-SC person for giving a public servant false information that could harm a SC person. Since the accused were Class I officers, the police applied for sanction to prosecute them.

Subhash K. Mahajan, who was then the Director-in-charge, Technical Education, Maharashtra, wrote to the investigating officer denying sanction for prosecution, even though he did not have the authority to make that call.

Following Mr. Mahajan’s refusal to grant sanction for prosecution, the police in 2011 filed a C-Summary report on the case, which means that the case is “neither true nor false”. Mr. Gaikwad claims that he was not informed of this fact by either the police or the courts for more than four years, even though they were required by law to do so.

When he finally found out about the C-summary report in early 2016, he filed another FIR, this time against Mr. Mahajan, charging him with knowingly shielding persons accused of a crime against an SC person. This too is an offence that attracts the provisions of the SC/ST Act.

In August 2016, the defendant (Subhash Mahajan) approached the Bombay High Court asking for the FIR to be quashed on the grounds that the charges against him were false and frivolous. The High Court not only refused to quash the case but also ruled that “there are sufficient safeguards in the Act itself which guarantee protection against frivolous and false prosecution”.

The defendant then filed an appeal against this decision in the Supreme Court.The apex court, instead of concerning itself solely with the merits of Mr. Mahajan’s appeal, dramatically expanded the ambit of the case, noting, “The question which has arisen in the course of consideration of this matter is whether any unilateral allegation of mala fide can be ground to prosecute officers who dealt with the matter in official capacity and if such allegation is falsely made what is protection available against such abuse.”

In the name of protecting innocent non-SC persons from being victimised by false complaints under the SC/ST Act, it laid down three guidelines that nullify key provisions of this law: it removed the bar on grant of anticipatory bail; even though the Mahajan case only concerns public servants, it ruled that where the accused is a non-public servant, the police may make an arrest only after approval by a senior superintendent of police; and it held that before registering an FIR, the police may conduct a preliminary inquiry to ascertain the veracity of the complaint.

Setback for SC/STs

Taken together, the three changes neatly reverse the original mandate of the SC/ST Act: instead of immediately registering an FIR and investigating the accused, the police would now immediately doubt the Dalit and investigate her complaint for veracity, and what’s more, they are required to do so by law.

One might assume that special guidelines to curb false allegations would be sparked by a case where false allegations have been proven. But that is not quite the case here. The apex court’s judgment does not engage exhaustively with the allegations made by the original complainant, Mr. Gaikwad, against the defendants, Mr. Bhise, Mr. Burade and Mr. Mahajan.

In fact, Mr. Gaikwad has presented three fresh applications to the Supreme Court: one to prosecute Mr. Mahajan “for filing a forged English translation of the original Marathi FIR”; one seeking recall of the March 20 order on several grounds, “including fraud on the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India by not filing the full text of the FIR”; and one “seeking calling of original records from the Hon’ble Bombay High Court”. These applications were tagged and listed along with the Central government’s review petition.

By far the most disturbing aspect of the court’s order is the idea that poor conviction rates and high acquittal rates suggest a high number of false cases. Can we apply this logic, say, to the acquittals of all the accused in the Kilvenmani massacre (Tamil Nadu, 1968, 44 Dalits killed), Tsunduru massacre (Andhra Pradesh, 1991, eight Dalits killed), Bathani Tola massacre (Bihar, 1996, 21 Dalits killed), Laxmanpur-Bathe massacre (Bihar, 1997, 58 Dalits killed), Shankarbigha massacre (Bihar, 1999, 23 Dalits killed), to mention just a few of the most infamous instances of mass acquittals? Do these acquittals mean that the cases against the accused were false? Or do they suggest a pattern of bona fide impunity for crimes against the Scheduled Castes?

The SC/ST Act and the SC/ST Amendment Act hold enormous significance for Dalits not because they have been effective in protecting them from caste injustice; not at all. If they are cherished despite their poor conviction rates and shoddy implementation, it is because their very existence is a testament to Dalit agency in a heavily casteist society, and a powerful affirmation of the community’s faith in the Indian Constitution.

The problem with this law is not its supposed misuse but the inability of India’s criminal justice system to recognise its own casteist biases. It is, after all, a matter of common sense that in a society seeped in caste, no institution can claim immunity from casteist prejudices or mindset. Sadly, the judiciary has been reluctant to acknowledge the social matrix of jurisprudence in India, which is caste.

LEAD A pattern of impunity: on the SC/ST Act

For India’s Dalits and Adivasis, May 1 this year was a ‘May Day’ in more ways than one. It was May Day, the day to commemorate the labour movement (the vast majority of them do belong to the working classes), and also ‘mayday’ in the maritime sense, an occasion to broadcast their distress over a life-threatening emergency.

Dalit and Adivasi rights organisations observed May 1 as ‘National Resistance Day’. The immediate trigger was the Supreme Court order of March 20 on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (hereafter SC/ST Act). Protest meetings held across the country had three demands for the government: neutralise the Supreme Court order through an ordinance that would reinstate both the SC/ST Act and the SC/ST Amendment Act, 2015, in their original form; include both these laws in the Ninth Schedule to protect them from judicial review; and release all the Dalits arrested on April 2 when a ‘Bharat Bandh’ was observed to protest this Supreme Court order.

The Mahajan case

A lot has already been written on why the Supreme Court order is prejudicial to the cause of justice for victims of caste atrocities. But the underlying case that triggered the controversial judgment hasn’t received enough attention. It might be instructive to briefly consider the facts of this case, Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v. the State of Maharashtra.

Karl Marx, 200 years later

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, the author of Das Kapital and the leading spirit of the International Workingmen’s Association (known as the First International). In the words of Oscar Wilde, the Irish playwright and writer, “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” If this statement is true in the case of only one thinker in the history of ideas, that person would certainly be Marx.

If Marx had not decided to change the world, he would have been remembered today only as a name on a gravestone in Highgate cemetery in London. Thus, there is no question why a thinker like Marx was at the same time a great influence on the most important thinkers of the twentieth century and a victim of a terrible misunderstanding for all those who made a revolutionary prophet out of him.

Not of gulags, killing fields

For over a century the fate of Marx’s thought was tied to that of Marxism. Even today, three decades after the fall of the Soviet empire, many still blame Marx for the cruel atrocities that happened around the world in the name of Marxism.

However, to think and to repeat that Marx is responsible for the Stalinist gulags or the killing fields of Pol Pot in Cambodia would be nothing but pure nonsense. No doubt, he would have been one of the first victims of Stalin, Pol Pot or any communist dictator. As such, the responsibility for the horrors of communist totalitarianism would be on the shoulders of no other ideology than Marxism-Leninism, which turned the materialist and historicist philosophy of Marx into a revolutionary eschatology and in many cases into a thermodynamics of terror. As Voltaire says majestically, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Despite what happened in the past hundred years in the communist countries, Marx remains an important thinker and a central figure of the modern canon around the world. In other words, he should be read closely, with precision and patience. As such, any loosely philosophical approach or iconic view of Marx would turn the critical edge of his analysis of modernity and capitalism into wrong principles of a wrong struggle.

This is not to say that Marx provides us with all the answers to all our problems. Marx knew it himself and that is, most probably, one of the reasons why his writings were so complex and so antithetical. On the one hand, Marx is a philosopher who believes in the autonomy of human beings, since he affirms that human beings make their own history, that the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves. On the other hand, he is obsessed by the Hegelian idea of making a total system, dominated by the universal law of social transformations in history. It was precisely this second Marx, the theorist of historical materialism, who was elevated by Engels, Lenin, Stalin and many others as a prophet of a secular religion called socialism. But, the great mistake of several generations of Marxists was to consider Marx’s philosophy of history as a readymade revolutionary recipe for action.

Raymond Aron, the French sociologist of the 20th century, once said: “It is really no more difficult to present Marx’s leading ideas than those of Montesquieu or Comte; if only there were not so many millions of Marxists, there would be no question at all about what Marx’s leading ideas are or what is central to his thought.”

As a matter of fact, Marx’s critical attitude in regard to the economic, social and political realities of his time was far from being just a medical prescription for future revolutions.

On the contrary, for Marx thinking rigorously and critically was an important matter. Marx walked almost daily to the British Museum to study the works of classical philosophers and economists rather than spending his time with the masses on the streets of London or Paris. The British Museum was the place where he was able to get away from the everyday debates of revolutionaries and ideologues and find a sanctuary where he could examine the social and economic causes of human misery.

Marx and Marxists

“I am not a Marxist,” Marx is said to have said, and it’s appropriate to distinguish Marx the philosopher and the economist from Marx the ideologue. Marx would have certainly never approved the statement of the Russian revolutionary, Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov, that “Marxism is an integral world outlook”. The truth is that Marxist revolutionaries such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc. adapted those ideas of Marx which suited best the needs of their revolutions and bureaucratic powers.

After 1917, the mythological charisma of Lenin followed by Stalinism inflicted on the communist parties around the world prevented any objective assessment of Marxian philosophy. For more than seven decades, in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, any allusion to Marx the philosopher and the author of the Manuscripts of 1844 would had provoked indifference or for the most only a bitter laughter.

When Soviet communism fell apart towards the end of the 20th century, nobody could say what would be the destiny of Marx beyond the demise of Marxist regimes. For a long period of time Marx was read and practised as the founder of a new faith. For some his church continues living on the ruins of the political and economic system he inspired. For others who suffered the communist regimes or simply believed in an anti-communist crusade, Marx continues to be a dangerous mind who should be banned from our schools and universities.

But now that the statues of Marx were torn down bitterly and indistinctively as those of Lenin and Stalin, what really remains of him for future generations of readers? The answer could be: a critical mind with the great intellectual courage of a Socratic gadfly who continues to defy our way of thinking and living in a market-driven world. If that is the case, then we should celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of a major thinker of human history who has found his place in the pantheon of great philosophers next to Kant, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel.

A post-colonial reckoning: on the Windrush scandal

Britain’s approach to immigration from the Caribbean and South Asia is in the political spotlight

On Wednesday, the anger and emotion felt by some MPs during an intense debate in the House of Commons on the Windrush scandal enveloping the British government was palpable. “What we are not talking about so much is race,” said Shabana Mahmood, an opposition Labour MP for Birmingham, who sought to drive home the impact Britain’s tough immigration regime had on its diverse population. “Try making an application, as a British national, to the Home Office with a name that is demonstrably South Asian in origin. I promise that the protection of a British passport will not help one little bit. People will have visited upon them casual humiliation upon humiliation. The system will treat them as if they were dirt on the bottom of its shoe, and that is not good enough.”

David Lammy, a black Labour MP pointed to the painful legacy of empire and slavery: “I remind the House that I am here because you were there. I say ‘you’ metaphorically. The Windrush generation are here because of slavery. The Windrush story is the story of British empire.”

The British government’s hopes of containing the scandal over the treatment of Caribbean and other Commonwealth nationals has failed miserably. To recap: the Windrush generation were migrants from the Commonwealth Caribbean who came to Britain before 1973 (1971 legislation no longer gave them automatic settlement after that date). Along with others from the Commonwealth, they and their families were encouraged to Britain to help meet acute labour shortages, whether in the National Health Service (NHS) or beyond. During Wednesday’s debate, one of the MPs reminded his colleagues why Brixton, a trendy part of south London, had become a hub for Caribbean migrants: “They settled in Brixton to be near the job centre because they wanted to work.” Toughening of immigration rules has led to them being penalised and wrongly treated as undocumented illegal immigrants. Shocking stories of families being separated, unable to return to Britain from holidays abroad, denials of life-saving treatment have abounded in recent weeks. While the stories have mostly centred on those from the Caribbean, there are fears that migrants from across the Commonwealth will inevitably have been impacted. “The scandal also includes those who came from many other Commonwealth countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and countries in West Africa,” said Diane Abbott, Labour’s spokesperson on home affairs.

The government — while apologising for the treatment of the Windrush generation and promising acting including compensation — has attempted to treat it as an aberration that had no link with its wider immigration policies. It has tried to make the case that its obsession with cutting migration targets and dealing with illegal migration had nothing whatsoever to do with what had happened. “Measures over many years to tackle illegal immigration are of course a good thing, and we stand by those measures,” insisted Britain’s new (and first ever ethnic minority) Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, who took over earlier this week, as the government sought to contain the crisis. While pointing out that it could easily have been one of his family members who had come from Pakistan to have been impacted, Mr. Javid said it had nothing to do with the pursuit of a “compliant environment” to tackle illegal immigration.

Yet these efforts to separate have proved fruitless amid further revelations around the treatment of people legally in Britain or attempting to get to its shores. Last week it emerged that at least a hundred, and potentially more, Indian doctors who had been recruited by NHS trusts up and down the country to fill sorely needed positions, mostly in emergency medicine, had been unable to take up their positions because of visa issues. The Evening Standard, edited by former Treasury head George Osborne, revealed that Prime Minister Theresa May herself had rejected calls for an easing of the visa rules for non-EU doctors.

A separate row is brewing over the treatment of foreign students.

Foreign students

For many years now the British government has been attempting to deport foreign students (and others) based on allegations that they had committed fraud to obtain the English-language qualifications to stay in the U.K. After a 2014 BBC investigation found evidence of fraud at one testing centre, thousands who had gained their qualification via that route at different test centres were accused of fraud, despite what one judge described as “multiple shortcomings and frailties” of the state’s evidence and the “plausible and truthful” statements of students.

Sanam Arora, the chair of the National Indian Students and Alumni Union U.K., which has been campaigning on behalf students who have faced accusations of fraud believes a “significant population” from India has been impacted. “Our strong suspicion is that thousands could have been wrongly deported or facing difficulties.” She notes that the government’s “deport first, appeal later” strategy, which came into effect around the time students began to face these difficulties, meant there was little recourse open to the students. While she recognises the ambitions of Britain to curb illegal migration, she notes that that the burden of proof — and blame — was swiftly placed on the shoulders of the students rather than the Home Office-approved system that had allowed the fraud to happen. The same applied to past attempts to cull “bogus colleges”, she notes, where rather than treating students as the victims, they were treated by the government and British media as “bogus students”. “The policies of this government are lacking in empathy and concern for the welfare of students,” she says.

Separately, a burgeoning group of South Asians are campaigning against what they believe is a misuse of a clause in legislation to prevent the settlement of criminals. The clause is being used to deny IT professionals, doctors and others long resident in the U.K. the indefinite leave to remain because of minor errors in their tax returns. Hundreds are believed to be impacted.

“I feel vindicated in many ways,” says Lord Karan Bilimoria, a crossbench peer who has been campaigning against the toughening immigration regime, particularly as it pertains to students, for many years now. “I certainly believe that since 2010 the government’s immigration policy has got it very wrong. The word hostile is being used and the atmosphere is blatantly hostile. You just have to look at the catalogue of their policies and the impact it has had.”

Change afoot?

“I do not believe that the term ‘hostile environment’ is in tune with our values as a country,” insisted Mr. Javid in Parliament, referring to the now notorious phase once used by Ms. May. His mollifying words have done little to convince campaigners, however, that fundamental change is on its way. For the first time perhaps, the sturdy thread connecting Britain’s colonial past and legacy, its approach to immigration and its profound human impact, that for decades had been deemed invisible by mainstream politics, has caught the sunlight.

THE POLL SERVIVORS

It is arguable whether the debate over the so-called illegal immigration across the industrialised world has focussed attention on systemic shortcomings and genuine violations. But surely, the controversy has typified the inability of governments to manage the political fallout from the current phase of globalisation and trade liberalisation. This is especially true of the EU, which has enshrined the free movement of people as a fundamental principle. Consequently, the 2004 expansion of the bloc into the countries of the erstwhile Soviet Union afforded nations in Western Europe cheap immigrant labour and compliance with better standards. But the process also gave a fillip to xenophobic parties of the extreme right across the region, threatening to halt immigration. Similarly, populist parties in Britain fuelled public anger over the dynamics of closer integration to target EU migrants during the 2016 referendum. The country’s two mainstream parties, although committed to remaining in the bloc, could hardly counter the trend. The lessons from the Windrush scandal are too fundamental to miss.