First World War: Personnel from the Indian Subcontinent
Lord Parekh Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Parekh (Lab)
My Lords, next year we commemorate the centenary of the First World War, which until 1939 used to be called the Great War. The Government, the British Library and various organisations have provided a syllabus of a wide range of activities that should be undertaken, and adequate resources for this. I welcome this, but have two reservations. First, I am not sure that those organisations are entirely clear about what they are commemorating. Commemorating the war: what can that mean? Do they mean our victory in the war or remembering those who died? We need to be clear about what exactly we are commemorating. Secondly, how should we be commemorating? Are we proceeding along the right lines?
On the first question, the war needs to be placed in a context. We need to ask how the war started. How did it become a world war, so that it was not just an ordinary war but had to be given a special name: the Great War or, after 1939, the First World War? What were we doing in the war? How did we use the war to break up the Ottoman Empire? How did the Germans intervene in the war in order to urge the Ottomans to declare jihad against Britain and France, while we in turn asked the Arabs to revolt against the Ottoman Empire and change the geography of the Middle East, as it is now? In short, we ought to understand the origins of the First World War and draw important lessons. It was a horrendous war which resulted in enormous tragedy and pain, as seen in the letters and poetry that grew out of it.
We could use the event to exorcise the fascination with war that has sadly been an important part of our psyche. We have more statues devoted to military generals and heroes than many other countries. It is about time that we asked ourselves whether there are some elements of our national psyche that need to be addressed more carefully than we have done so far.
Secondly, we need to commemorate the fact that the war was a collaborative effort. We were able to survive, maintaining our liberties and prosperity because of the enormous contribution of the Commonwealth troops. Indians alone contributed substantially: 1,250,000 Indians were involved, of whom about 72,000 died, 12,000 won medals and about 11 won the Victoria Cross. We must also not forget that about 200 Army nurses died, of whom more than 50% were Indians. Many of the Indian soldiers fought in a climate which was not at all familiar to them, in the European theatres of war. Many of them spent weeks in freezing, waterlogged trenches.
Since the war was a collaborative effort, in which others countries helped us, it is important to highlight the fact that this is not peculiar to the First World War. The situation was only slightly different in the Napoleonic wars. You need only to walk down the Royal Gallery and see the fresco on the right, which depicts Nelson’s death. In that picture, you see a black gentleman and an Arab, showing that even during the Napoleonic wars, countries other than our own contributed. Those are the two things that I would like to see commemorated.
How do we commemorate? Obviously, exhibitions, lectures and information packs for schools are all important, but I suggest three things in particular as relevant to commemorating the Indian contribution. First, the Indian community here should be involved in the planning and execution of the various projects, because the whole thing seems to be operating over their heads. Secondly, we should commemorate in such a way that the multi-ethnic character of Britain is highlighted and our people are able to feel at ease with it. In those areas where large numbers of ethnic minorities are concentrated, it might be useful to devote greater attention than we have done to commemorating the Indian contribution to the First World War so that Indian kids grow up knowing that they were part of this country’s history long before they arrived, and white kids grow up recognising that Indians are not simply arrivals after the Second World War but have also been making an important contribution.
We should also use the occasion to consolidate consciousness of the Commonwealth in our schools and the Commonwealth as an international institution, because the Commonwealth played an extremely important part. If we are lucky, in emphasising the Indian contribution we might also be able to bring the Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis together and create, here in Britain, the kind of harmony that should obtain, but sadly does not, in the subcontinent itself.
Arab Spring
Lord Parekh Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Parekh (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield for securing this debate and introducing it with such wisdom. We need to remember that the Middle Eastern countries are negotiating several transitions: not just one from authoritarian regimes to democracy but from a pre-industrial to an industrial society, from a hierarchical to an egalitarian society and from a thoroughly and dogmatically religious to a moderately religious or secular society. The transition to democracy has to be seen in this wider context. Sometimes democracy gets blamed for things for which it is not responsible, because it has to pick up the pieces that the other transitions have provoked.
In this context, there is one important historical lesson to bear in mind, which I call the paradox of democracy. Wherever democracy has appeared, in the first few years you always tend to have this kind of discrimination against religious or ethnic minorities. I cannot think of one example to the contrary. There are two related reasons for this. First, with the rise of democracy, long-suppressed groups that have been denied their legitimate rights begin to claim them; once they have claimed them, the majority, which is not in the habit of conceding them, is forced to grant them, which leads to a certain amount of resentment.
However, there is also a deeper cultural process. When there is democracy, you require a sense of community, which has to be given an identity and defined in a certain way. The majority therefore has a tendency to claim the ownership of the country. I saw that in the case of India, where the Hindus will say, “This is our country, isn’t it? Muslims are simply here to live on our sufferance”. This happens in many places, where the majority begins to claim proprietary rights over a country; when it begins to do that, it defines the identity of the country in majoritarian or religious terms, with the result that religious minorities become the first casualty.
We need to remember the inner dynamics of what goes on. When discrimination takes place, as it is taking place in the aftermath of the Arab spring, it takes place either against other religions or against sects within one’s own. A classic example of the latter is what we saw in Bahrain. In 2011, the Government instituted the state of national safety law, under which the security forces detained and tortured thousands of Shia protestors. They destroyed Shia mosques and thousands were dismissed from public and private sector jobs. In Egypt, it has not taken that kind of form; by and large, it has been directed against Coptic Christians. Even there, it has been much more muted; nevertheless, it takes place.
In my remaining two minutes, I do not want to detail what goes on in different countries but to ask what we can do to address the problem. The first point to bear in mind—and here I introduce a note of slight disagreement with the right reverend Prelate—is that we should not single out a particular religious community. When the bishop said that as a Christian we would expect him to be concerned with Christians, I thought that, on the contrary, as a Christian I would not expect you to be concerned with Christians, who take all religious communities in their stride. I thought that the ecumenical state was inherent in Christianity. Of course, I understand what the bishop is saying, but I wanted to emphasise that singling out a particular religious minority, as we have tended to do, makes it a target in the eyes of the local community and makes our motives seem suspicious. We come to be seen not as genuinely concerned with religious minorities and their freedom but rather with one particular group.
Secondly, we need to bear in mind that these countries require a sympathetic understanding. In some cases, minorities may be discriminated against not because they are religious but because they were in league with the previous authoritarian regime or with outside powers, or are in command of resources and therefore resented not as a minority but as a particular class. Sometimes there are genuinely religious reasons why this is happening; the important thing therefore is to understand each situation in its own terms and not simply to generalise.
The third important thing to bear in mind is that Governments have limits, and we should work through NGOs in our own country as well as in the countries that we are trying to address. It is also important to bear in mind that religious conflicts by and large are never sui generis; they are never entirely religious in origin but have political and economic causes. The best way in which to solve them, as in the case of Lebanon, is through constitutional mechanisms, such as giving minorities adequate representation in the institutions of the state.
Finally, it is also important that, in so far as religious leaders have an important say, we find some way in which to get them together and get them to talk. I sometimes wonder why the Ditchley Park experiment, which we have tried in some situations, has not been tried in relation to foreign countries. I have attended a couple of sessions there with about 20-odd people from different walks of life who are interested in a common problem. They stay for three days, work and knock their heads together and arrive at some kind of mutual understanding. It ought to be possible to get religious leaders from Middle Eastern countries to travel to Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire to meditate together on problems of common interest. All this will work only if our own record is honourable. By and large, it is, but sometimes it is not. Unless we can say that we have treated our religious minorities with equality and justice, be they Muslims or others, we will not be able to lecture other countries.
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Lord Parekh Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Parekh
My Lords, I oppose the amendment not because I disagree with its principle or disapprove of it, but because I believe that it is trying to go about achieving it in the wrong way.
The basic premise is that there is still a small amount of the practice of untouchability in Indian society in Britain and that it must be countered. I agree entirely. However, by using caste as a general category, you are going to catch too much at one end and too little at the other. The fact that there is untouchability is not only corroborated by some of the reports that have recently come out, but I myself discovered it in 1986 when I was deputy chair of the Commission for Racial Equality. I received a letter, sent from Birmingham, written by an Indian gentleman who said that his doctor had refused to examine him physically when he came to his home because he was an untouchable. In those days we used to have domiciliary visits, which sadly have stopped now. We wrote to the doctor and it turned out to be true. The doctor was reprimanded and I would like to hope that the practice had stopped. Of course, it does not stop just like that but a warning had gone out to the medical fraternity. This was in 1985 or 1986, and even after that there have been many cases of untouchability and therefore discrimination does occur. It needs to stop.
However, untouchability is only the egregious, extreme form of the caste system, because the system covers everybody. Although caste does not mean anything to me personally, you cannot be a Hindu without belonging to a particular caste, full stop. Talking about abolishing the caste system is extremely problematic because it could mean getting rid of the category, getting rid of the hierarchy among the categories or getting rid of the principle of heredity which determines the caste. Where do you start? I suggest that caste as a category of discrimination is therefore not in the same league as race, religion or any of the other protected categories. If we were to introduce this, there would be four major difficulties and I want to alert the House to them.
First, there will be frivolous complaints based on caste. I do not know how many of your Lordships are students of sociology or have Indian friends. However, let us say that I belong to a caste—whatever that may mean, since I have married outside my caste and my children have married outside their caste, race and religion. Nevertheless, technically I was born in the caste of goldsmiths because my father used to make gold and silver ornaments, so I am a goldsmith. Supposing that someone were to apply for a job in the university where I am a professor who happens to be a blacksmith, a shoe smith, a Brahmin or God knows what, and I do not appoint him because he is not terribly good. Supposing that he were go to the court and say, because I would be doing this not as a Lord but as a Professor, “Professor Parekh refused to appoint me on the grounds that I belong to a different caste”. We would belong to different castes, although he is not an untouchable. Since every Indian who is Hindu carries the caste mark with him, every action that he does with respect to another can be subsumed under one or another form of caste discrimination, so the first difficulty is that you will have an enormous range of frivolous complaints with no way of arguing for or against.
Secondly, once you take away the untouchability bit, there is no evidence of any kind to show that caste discrimination takes place. With respect to the untouchables, they do not have horns or carry any distinct mark of being untouchables. Sometimes, their surnames are a giveaway if you know Indian society but a large number of them—I have worked with them and I greatly admire them—have changed their surname so that it is not a giveaway. When somebody applies for a job, how would you therefore recognise that he is an ex-untouchable? That would be the second problem.
The third difficulty that one would have is that, as the Minister rightly said, we will be introducing the category of caste in our domestic legislation and once you do that, problems begin to arise. How do you define caste? Sociologists have tried for 200 years, ever since the Portuguese invented the word caste. It is not an English but a Portuguese word; when they came to India, they found that we were classified in a certain way and called it caste. In India, caste is very much in flux thanks to globalisation, urbanisation and so on, and in Britain it is even more so. Castes are therefore difficult not only to define but to distinguish. Once one introduces this kind of indeterminate, inherently nebulous category in law, one invites difficulties. One could easily pave the way so that in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time there might even be a pressure of the exact kind we have now, where people might be saying, “Let’s have a question on caste in the census”.
If my grandchild were to ask me today or 10 years from now, “Grandpa, what caste do I belong to?”, I would not know what to say. A category as indeterminate as that does not deserve to be enshrined in domestic legislation. For these and other reasons I would be opposed to the amendment, while making it absolutely clear—so that I am understood outside this House—that untouchability exists. It is an abominable practice; people are sometimes discriminated against and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, at a meeting he organised, produced people who were able to give evidence.
Take for instance a bus driver who happens to be a Brahmin or whatever, and there is a person who works on the buses who he would not want to team up with because the guy is supposed to have a surname that indicates he may be an untouchable. It exists in small pockets in those places where people are recognisable. It is not a pervasive phenomenon, but even if it is not pervasive, it is still not acceptable. The point is that it is only one extreme form of caste. By introducing caste as a general category in this way one is trying to catch too much and will end up catching too little.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon
My Lords, I speak in favour of this amendment. I am particularly concerned about the level of misinformation and ignorance used in the other place to argue against legislation. The Minister in the other place made a statement, which was repeated today, that caste is a problem in the Sikh community as well as among Hindus. It is not only inaccurate, but frankly insulting to the Sikh faith. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, totally condemned the whole system of caste. Opposition to discrimination based on caste, birth, gender, race or religion or social status is an essential pillar of Sikh teachings. Sikhism emphasised equality of respect and opportunity for all members of our one human family centuries before these concepts were accepted in the West.
The Sikh gurus repeatedly taught the absurdity of caste, in which the shadow of a person of lower caste was said to pollute the food of a higher caste. Guru Nanak urged them to forsake all notions of caste and ritual purity and look to the inner worth of individuals. That tireless campaigner for human rights, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, from whom we have just heard, commenting on the egalitarian teachings of Sikhism at the time of my maiden speech, rightly emphasised Sikh opposition to caste, quoting Guru Nanak’s observation that in his mother’s womb no man knows of caste. Let us get it right. The concept of caste is a hierarchical division of Hindu society into the Brahmins, the top or priestly caste, with Khatris or warriors below, followed by those in commerce and then at the bottom Sudras, cleaners or scavengers. Caste has two essential components: a hierarchy of importance and a notion of ritual purity. Both are rejected in Sikh teachings. When a person converts to Sikhism he or she is required to renounce any former allegiance to caste. By definition one cannot be a Sikh and have a caste.
Guru Nanak warned us about the negative cultural practices that over the years attach themselves to our different religions and distort underlying ethical teachings. It is true for all faiths and it is certainly applies to caste which has little to do with the ethical imperatives of Hinduism. As far back as the 1930s many leading Hindus condemned the iniquity of caste. While Gandhi felt education was the answer, Dr Ambedkar felt education was not enough and legislative action was also necessary. Later, as author of the Indian constitution, Dr Ambedkar successfully included prohibiting discrimination on grounds of caste.
Coming back to this country, we too find ourselves in a debate over combating the evil of caste by education or by legislation. In this debate we have had some widely improbable figures on the number of Dalits in the UK. No such playing with figures is necessary. Whatever the numbers, that which is evil remains evil and Dalits are fully entitled to protection against discrimination, whatever their number.
Many—most—Hindus reject caste discrimination, but without firm action its negative influence could continue for years. It has no place in our more enlightened 21st century, and those who suffer its worse effects should, like those who suffer racial discrimination, be protected by law. Here it is necessary to add that, contrary to misinformation being circulated, legislation will not require people to associate themselves with a particular caste, just as protection against religious discrimination does not require anyone to affiliate themselves to a particular religion.
In conclusion, I should like to emphasise my comment made when we previously discussed this issue. I firmly believe that without the debilitating influence of caste the uplifting ethical teachings of Hinduism will be much more to the fore. It is for these reasons that I support the retention of our amendment.
International Women’s Day
Lord Parekh Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Parekh
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, for securing and introducing this debate, which she has done marvellously. As we celebrate International Women’s Day, I want to introduce a note of caution. It is quite common to talk about “the woman”, which leads one to think that all societies think of women in more or less the same way. Coming as I do from India and as a student of developing societies, I suggest that it would be a great mistake to homogenise or essentialise the woman. The woman comes in many roles: she comes as a mother, as a daughter, as a wife and also as a companion. In some civilisations, woman as a daughter is not much valued and is disposed of in arranged and other marriages. Woman as a mother, however, is the subject of enormous power and considerable authority. This is what happens in India. So if one looked at women simply from the standpoint of what happens to daughters in arranged marriages, one would be inclined to think that women do not enjoy equality. However, this makes it very difficult to explain why India or Sri Lanka or other developing countries had women Prime Ministers long before we did and long before any western country. If women were treated as inferior or unequal, why should India, for example, have more women in the highest positions, as vice-chancellors in universities or as Cabinet Ministers? The explanation is that, as I said earlier, the woman can be seen in many different roles, and as long as she is seen as the mother figure she wields considerable power and authority. Women, while suffering from inequality at one level, enjoy equality at another and the picture becomes much more complex.
The other point to bear in mind is that, for some reason that I do not have time to explore, the equality of women in our civilisation—certainly after the war—has gone in hand with sexualisation of the woman, and this has created all kinds of problems. On the other hand, in non-western societies it has gone hand in hand with desexualisation because if a woman is seen as the mother then, obviously, she is not seen as an object of sexual desire. In India, a woman in a position of authority has to conceal her sexual charm if she is going to carry any kind of authority, as has happened to every Prime Minister or happens to women in any other position of authority. Here the opposite tends to happen, with the result that cultural historians and sociologists have introduced a new concept called “erotic capital”. The argument is that having charming, good-looking, beautiful women under a certain age in positions of authority generates the business a certain amount of capital and brings good will and customers who are attracted by the ambience. That sort of thing has gone hand in hand with the sexualisation of the body and the woman in the context of equality. This relationship is contingent. It need not have happened but it has happened. It has been a source of considerable worry, and those of us who are extremely anxious to fight for equality for women in all spheres—natural, spontaneous equality in ordinary relations, not just equality of rights—would have to engage in a deeper cultural critique to make sure that a woman is not understood in this way.
Having got rid of this general point, which has been exercising me for some time, I want to concentrate on what happens in our own country. The following percentages of women in positions of power in our society are striking: Members of Parliament, 22%; the House of Lords, 21.7%; the Cabinet, 17.4%, but the figure keeps changing; local authority council leaders, 12%, but local authority chief executives, 23%; senior ranks of the judiciary, 13.6%; heads of professional bodies, 33%; university vice-chancellors, 14%; academics in general, including lecturers, senior lecturers and readers, 35%; professors, 20%; editors of national newspapers, 5%; directors of FTSE 100 companies, 16%; elected mayors, 13%; senior management in the Civil Service, 31%, but Permanent Secretaries, 16%; heads of primary schools, 71%; heads of secondary schools, 38%; and heads of independent schools, 11.9%.
I have given those figures because I want to draw four important conclusions from them. First, if a position happens to be elected, the chances of women being underrepresented are considerable. Secondly, there is no difficulty at the bottom level of a profession because women are represented there in proportion to their presence in the population. As you go higher up to the middle level, there does not seem to be much of a problem either, but there is suddenly a narrow pyramid at the top. Thirdly, there is underrepresentation at the top in the private sector compared to the public sector. Fourthly, women’s representation is very poor and they are only just beginning to break through in new areas such as TV journalism or as editors of national newspapers. This tells us where we need to concentrate. Although it is striking that progress is being made in all those areas, we still have a long way to go.
Why is this the case? Whether in elected bodies or people at the top, why is this kind of inequality persisting after all the attempts? My own study tells me that four or five factors play an important part. First is of course the conscious or unconscious bias of males in positions of power. They, for all the kinds of reasons that I mentioned earlier about the way in which female equality is understood, feel uncomfortable or threatened by female presence. There is also the question of women themselves feeling slightly diffident and therefore not displaying, or playing to, their strengths as well as they could. Thirdly, there is the culture of the organisations, which, being male-dominated, sets certain norms, and women feel intimidated or unwelcome in those organisations. Fourthly, there is the question of family responsibility. In spite of all the talk, it is women who carry the family, with the result that women are not to be seen in many branches of the medical profession, with which I am familiar. For example, women generally tend to avoid those courses in medicine or those areas of employment where they might be required at any time or where there could be an acute emergency. There are therefore a large number of women in ophthalmology, but there are very few in general surgery or acute medicine.
The fifth and final point to bear in mind is that the male historically has been the standard of reference and, therefore, the criterion by which to decide how an organisation should be structured, who should be appointed and who should not be. As a result, for example, in many cases a male on an appointment panel would say: “This particular candidate is not decisive or partisan enough, because that is what an organisation requires”. The result is that women, who are not generally pushy, partisan or aggressive and are more concerned to compromise, tend to be under- appreciated and not appointed.