PM IAS JULY 18 EDITORIAL ANALYSIS

Editorial 1 : On political representation of women

Context

In the recently concluded general elections in the U.K., a record 263 women MPs (40%) have been elected to the House of Commons. The South African National Assembly has around 45% women representation, while the U.S. House of Representatives has 29%. Universal suffrage was achieved in various parts of the world after prolonged political movements.

What about women representatives in independent India?

• India as a sovereign republic provided the right to vote for all its women right from the first general elections in 1952.
• While the right to vote was provided to all women since the commencement of the Constitution, the representation of women in the Lok Sabha and State legislative assemblies has been far from satisfactory.
• The percentage of women MPs in the Lok Sabha had been very low between 5% and 10% till 2004. It rose marginally to 12% in 2014 and currently stands at 14% in the 18th Lok Sabha.
• The representation in State Legislative Assemblies is even poorer with the national average being around 9%.
• The 73rd and 74th amendments of the Constitution in 1992/1993, provided for one-third reservation for women in panchayats and municipalities. However, attempts between 1996 and 2008 to provide similar reservation in the Lok Sabha and assemblies were unsuccessful.

How do women MPs fare worldwide?

• Women representation in parliament varies across different democracies.
•  It is a perennial issue to promote higher representation for women who constitute half the population in all countries.
• The important methods used across the world to ensure higher representation of women are (a) voluntary or legislated compulsory quotas for candidates within political parties and (b) quota in parliament through reservation of seats.
• Quotas within political parties provide more democratic choice to voters and allows flexibility to parties in choosing women candidates.
• Opponents of having a reserved quota in parliament for women argue that it would be seen as women not competing on merit.
• As the seats reserved for women would be rotated after each delimitation, it may also reduce the incentive for MPs to work hard to nurture their constituencies.
• As can be seen, countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan that have quotas in parliament fare poorer than countries with political party quotas.

What is the 106th amendment?

• As on April 2024, India ranks 143 in the list of countries in the ‘Monthly ranking of women in national parliaments’ published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a global organisation for national parliaments.
• The Trinamool Congress has the highest proportion of women MPs in the current Lok Sabha at 38%.
• The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and principal Opposition Congress party have around 13% each.
• Naam Tamilar Katchi, a State party in Tamil Nadu, has been following a voluntary quota of 50% for women candidates in the last three general elections.
• However, voluntary or legislated quotas within political parties are unlikely to yield the desired representation in our country.
• This is why the Parliament through the 106th constitutional amendment, in September 2023, provided for one-third reservation of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and State legislative assemblies.
• This would ensure a fair representation of women in legislatures that would increase gender sensitivity in parliamentary processes and legislation.
• It would also hopefully increase the number of women Ministers in the Centre and States.

Way forward

This reservation shall come into effect based on the delimitation exercise after the relevant figures of the first Census conducted after the commencement of this act is published. Hence, the Census which is overdue since 2021 should be conducted without any further delay to ensure that this reservation is implemented starting with the general elections in 2029.

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Editorial 2 : Of a gilded past and the future: Nalanda’s lost glory and new-found ambitions

Context

Nalanda is not just a name, it is an identity. Nalanda is the root, it is the mantra. Nalanda is the proclamation of the truth that knowledge cannot be destroyed even though books burn in a fire. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words at the inauguration of the new Nalanda University campus at Rajgir recently and his “golden age” references made us go back to the history books.

History

• Established by emperor Kumaragupta-I of the Gupta dynasty around 427 AD, Nalanda, a centre for learning, carved out its own niche with the support of the Pala kings, and later the monks of Nalanda, who were patronised by the Pithipatis of Bodh Gaya.
• Nalanda was way ahead of its times, a sacred spot for the spiritually inclined.

Aryabhata on the rolls

• At one time, Nalanda’s faculty included some of the most highly regarded names in Hinayana as well as Mahayana Buddhism; the latter sect started much after Hinayana but flourished for long, touching with its spirit Tibet, China, Japan and much of southeast Asia.
• The names of those associated with Nalanda read like a roll call of brilliance, even genius. Included in the list were Aryabhata, Harsha, Dharmapala, Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Chandrakirti and Silabhadra.
• Hiuen Tsang, of course, spent five years here during the reign of Harshavardhan in the 7th century, and wrote in detail about Nalanda’s meticulous approach in enrolling students, including rigorous admission tests.
• Its glory got an affirmative nod in the History of Bangladesh: Early Bengal in Regional Perspectives, edited by Abdul Momin Chowdhury and Ranabir Chakravarti with a foreword by Romila Thapar.
• They write: “It is well known Nalanda gained the celebrated status of a Buddhist site after Alexander Cunningham identified it with Bargon, based on the travel notes of Xuan Zang (Hiuen Tsang) followed by epigraphic records recovered from the site.
• This Chinese pilgrim left a detailed account of the monastic organisation.
• It is on record that a king of Sumatra requested a Pala king’s permission to endow a monastery at Nalanda. The ties between the Buddhists in eastern India and southeast Asia were strengthened at this time.

Khalji raids, and a denial

• Yet Nalanda has not been without its share of controversies.
• Several historians have recorded that Nalanda was ransacked by Bakhtiyar Khalji around 1200 AD and its treasure of books reduced to ashes.
•  In History of Medieval India, Satish Chandra writes: “A Khalji officer, Bakhtiyar Khalji, whose uncle had fought the battle of Tarain, had been appointed in charge of some of the areas beyond Banaras.
• He had taken advantage of this to make frequent raids into Bihar. During these raids, he had attacked and destroyed some of the famous Buddhist monasteries of Bihar, Nalanda and Vikramshila, which had no protector left.”
• Elucidating about the fall of Indian kingdoms one after the other to the Ghurid army, Habib wrote, “Bakhtiyar, an adventurer from Khilj, who had been twice declared unfit for enrolment in the army as a common soldier, harassed and conquered Bihar and about one-half of Bengal.”
• Such assertions were probably based on the writings of Minhaj-i-Siraj who wrote in Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, “He (Bakhtiyar Khalji) used to carry his depradations into those parts and that country until he organised an attack upon the fortified city of Bihar.
• He advanced to the gateway of the fortress of Bihar with two hundred horsemen in defensive armour, and suddenly attacked the place.”

Rediscovering Nalanda

• The fortified monastery which Bakhtiyar captured was known as Audand-Bihar or Odandapura-vihara. It was not Nalanda.
• Minhaj spoke instead of the ransacking of the fort of Bihar or Hisar-i-Bihar, he argued. Bakhtiyar did not go to Nalanda. It escaped the main fury of the Muslim conquest because it lay not on the main route from Delhi to Bengal but needed a separate expedition.
• Bakhtiyar instead probably proceeded from Biharsharif to Nadia in Bengal.
• Fellow historian Namit Arora reasoned that By the time of the Turko-Persian invasions, most Buddhist sites had already been abandoned, destroyed, or converted into Brahminical sites across much of India.
• Buddhist artifacts and texts were wiped out and Buddhism vanished from India’s public memory. Only in the 19th century did Indians rediscover Nalanda.

Conclusion

• With the opening of the Rajgir campus, scholars hope Nalanda will regain its glory.
• For the discerning, Nalanda continues to be an open book. You read, you interpret, you conclude. As Oscar Wilde said: The word is nothing; interpretation is everything.