WHEN HAPPY NEW YEAR IS A PRAYER

So what were the most indiscreet, absurd, ridiculous and damfoolish statements of 2018? Not that anything this year can overshadow the all-time record set by Mulayam Singh Yadav. Remember his justification of rapes on the ground that boys will be boys? He exposed his Stone Age mentality again when he said, "We should avoid the use of computers and English in India".

The year that is passing did make an effort to keep up, ministers leading the pack. Anant Kumar Hegde said that Sanskrit would be the language of future supercomputers. Haryana minister Anil Vij added that Mahatma Gandhi's image on currency notes brought about devaluation. This was mild compared to a 2008 comment by party colleague Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. His piece of wisdom was: "Women wearing lipstick and powder are the same as J & K terrorists".

Religious rabidness being the fashion of the times, men in power took action that would otherwise have been irregular. The seasoned tactician Shivraj Singh Chauhan elevated five ordained sadhus to minister status and formally anointed them as Minister Babas. That his government fell in the election that followed is a different story. The fall also ended plans for sadhus and temple workers to collect metal for a 108-ft Statue of Wisdom a la the Statue of Unity in Gujarat.

Here are some other sayings of the year. Gujarat's Chief Minister Rupani said Narad Muni was the original Google. Rajasthan's Education Minister Devnani said cows exhale oxygen. Former Uttarkhand Chief Minister Nishank said: "Science is a dwarf in front of astrology. We speak about nuclear science today. But Sage Kanad (Kashyapa) conducted nuclear test one lakh years ago". Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh want us to know that "the idea behind yogic farming is to empower the seeds with help from positive thinking. We should enhance the potency of seeds by rays of paramatma shakti". The one and only Biplab Deb of Tripura took up a different topic. He said, "In Mahabharata Sanjaya was blind but he narrated what was happening in the battlefield. This was due to internet technology. Satellites existed during that period". (Sanjaya was not blind, by the way. His king Dhritarashtra was. Sanjaya had divya drishti with which he could see events far away).

The Mughal period of Indian history is something our patriots would like to wish away. But not all Mughal rulers were bad. According to Madanlal Saini, president of BJP in Rajasthan, "when Humayun was dying he called Babur and said, 'If you want to rule Hindustan, you must keep three things in mind -- respect cows, brahmins and women".

Bringing up the rear in 2018 was Kiren Rijiju, a minister who usually tries to strike a modernistic pose. According to him, "the population of Hindus in India is going down because they never convert people while minorities are flourishing". Rijiju is in the Home Ministry. Why doesn't he take steps to put a full stop to conversions? Why not also implement the Honourable MP Sakshi Maharaj's proposal that "every Hindu woman must produce at least four kids to protect Hinduism".

This year's Ignoble Prize for absurd, fatuous, ridiculous statements must of course go to the faceless terrorists who dominate the social media with their reckless threats and warnings. A Carnatic music singer was called a traitor because he was scheduled to sing compositions about "gods of religions other than Hinduism". Actor par excellence Naseeruddin Shah is being pilloried for criticising Hindutva extremism. This is a man who did not even care to know what was his religion until admission problems made him join Aligarh Muslim University. He became a fish out of water there, too. His "crime" this time is that he criticised certain aspects of politics in his country. Like Yashwant Sinha does. Like Arun Shourie does. Like Shatrughan Sinha does. Like Shashi Tharoor does. But criticism from them is okay because their names do not have a Naseeruddin in it. This is unacceptable.

Will India get out of intolerance is the question 2018 leaves behind. The answer will come loud and clear as 2019 gets into stride. Threats to citizens with different opinions will either become the rule of life or a thing of the past depending on how the votes go in a few months from now. We have only one India, an India of multiple faiths, multiple languages, multiple food and dress cultures -- Incredible India. Will the incredible retain its glory?

Happy New Year is not just a greeting this year but a prayer.

HOW AMBEDKAR MAKES US RICHER

"The Hindus wanted Vedas, and they sent for Vyasa who was not a caste Hindu. The Hindus wanted an epic, and they sent for Valmiki, an untouchable. The Hindus wanted a constitution, and they have sent for me". That was B. R. Ambedkar at his biting best. He went on to underline an existential misfortune of India: "The greatest tragedy of the Hindi belt is that the people of that region discarded Valmiki and installed Tulsidas". That was his way of saying that the impact of Ramcharitmanas was negative compared to that of Ramayana. Valmiki told a human tale without propagating any selective morality. Tulsidas turned that tale into a religious text with sanitised spiritual tenets for devotees to follow. Shrewdly Ambedkar showed why the Hindi belt was culturally different, and less tolerant, than the rest of India.

Ambedkar has become a message, as only Mahatma Gandhi has. After their passing, a difference between the two messages slowly developed. Gandhism has been largely contained within its symbolic value, while Ambedkarism has developed into a cult inspiring a growing movement for social and political advancement. The number of Ambedkar statues across India bears witness to it.

And why not, when his observations on various issues continue to strike us as unusually perceptive? Yet another collection of these comments is presented in the Navayana publication rather bafflingly titled, Ambedkar: The Attendant Details. It is a collection of reminiscences that bristle with sagacity, humour and sheer wisdom. We get peeps into many aspects of his life -- his poverty, his addiction to books, his illiterate wife's rustic ways, his Dalit admirers.

"Even though I had become a barrister", he recalls, "the thought of practising law in Bombay made me nervous. No solicitor would accept me as his junior. Finally I took up a job in a commerce college for 150 rupees per month. I faced opposition from various quarters. I gave 50 rupees to my wife for domestic expenses".

His wife Ramabai was a product of timeless traditions. She would walk two miles with a basket of dung cakes on her head, ignoring taunts by local women that the wife of Mr Barrister was carrying dung on her head. Mr Barrister for his part described Ramabai's unique method of financial management. "She would take 30 pieces of paper, put one and a half rupees in each and keep it tied up in a piece of cloth. She kept five rupees aside for contingencies. Come what may, she would never spend more than the contents of one paper packet in one day".

Ambedkar got married when he was 17. But he was Ambedkar and he went on with his education. He used to tell his followers to avoid early marriage so that they could focus on education. Books were his lifelong passion. A follower counted 8000 books in his house in 1938. When Ambedkar died 18 years later, there were 35,000 books. He would have books on the bed, on sidetables near it, on the floor, on his chest as he dozed off.

There was a rush of religious suitors when Ambedkar declared his intention to leave Hinduism. The Nizam of Hyderabad offered Rs 5 crore if he and his followers embraced Islam. The authorities of the Golden Temple explained to him about the equality that prevailed in Sikhism. Christians tried a trick. The British bishop of Bombay took the highfalutin position that there was no point in conversion without conviction. At the same time other bishops, all Britons, wooed him with promises of Jesus Christ's blessings. Ambedkar had no difficulty in turning away from the bishops because he knew that the caste system was a reality in Christianity, too. One of the most learned men of his time, Ambedkar knew that Buddhism was the right refuge for him.

Included in the book are excerpts from a diary kept by Devi Dayal, who looked after Ambedkar's books and sundry household tasks. The title of the diary proclaims its uniqueness: Daily Routine of Dr. Ambedkar. It tells you all about what Babasaheb ate for breakfast (toast, eggs and tea), how he carried newspapers to the dining table, marking items with a red pencil to be cut and preserved, how he could recall from memory which cutting was in which file kept in which cupboard. The Dalit feminist writer Urmila Pawar sums things up in her foreword by saying, "The more we see him in the round, the richer we become", a point that can be made about no leader alive today.

HINDUISM TRIUMPHS OVER HINDUTVA

This column has said more than once that the greatness of India lies in its majority community voting, not as Hindus, but as Indians. By far the most dramatic -- and comforting -- confirmation of this has been provided by the latest election results.

The drama is contained in basic population figures. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh constitute the heartland of Hindu India. In Rajasthan 89 percent of the population is Hindu, in Madhya Pradesh 90 percent and in Chhattisgarh 93 percent. By contrast only 80 percent of the people are Hindu in Uttar Pradesh, only 83 percent in Bihar. Which means that it is the states with the largest number of Hindus that have rejected the BJP. Remember that the BJP had raised its Hindutva pitch as electioneering progressed. The VHP added its bit by holding a massive rally in Delhi demanding Ram Mandir in Ayodhya rightaway. Simple, ordinary voters exercised their franchise to show their disapproval of this communal approach to politics. Their action strengthened India as well as Hinduism. Hindutva's politics of polarisation stood exposed.

The results shocked the party that had come to consider its triple strengths as invincible -- the brilliance of the Prime Minister's oratory, the win-anyhow philosophy of the party president, and the Machiavellian genius of the establishment's legal pundit cum finance minister. Each of them is unmatched in his field. But all of them shared a fatal weakness -- overconfidence that led them to believe they were always right.

They were often wrong. The Prime Minister was wrong in constantly denigrating Jawaharlal Nehru. The first prime minister of the country did make mistakes, but all the statue-building and oratory of the BJP cannot dent Nehru's historical importance as an architect of modern India. Party boss Amit Shah stooped lower still with his contempt for the snakes and mongooses, the dogs and the cats that teamed up against his party. Now that the snakes et al have been approved by the people, will the party chief concede that in the eyes of the citizens of this country, including the majority of Hindus, he is nothing more than an overrated manipulator?

Arun Jaitley is the brainiest of them all and therefore the damage he does goes deepest. He is the only BJP leader to whom Narendra Modi feels obligated. And for good reason. It was Jaitley who first proposed Modi for the chief ministership of Gujarat. It was Jaitley who defended Modi when Prime Minister Vajpayee himself was inclined to "punish" Modi for the Gujarat riots. It was Jaitley who proposed Modi for prime ministership over the objections of seniors like Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Sushma Swaraj. It's no surprise that Jaitley became the most powerful person in the Modi Government despite the fact that he could not win an election.

Every significant political move in the last four years carries the Jaitley stamp. It was he who thought up the Electoral Bonds, a devious way to channel funds anonymously to political parties. The Election Commission itself objected to it, but Jaitley didn't care. His drive to bring the Reserve Bank under the Government's control has been relentless. Urjit Patel's resignation was more shocking than Raghuram Rajan opting not to seek a second term because Patel had initially given the impression that he was pliant and obedient. Evidently even he found the Government's demands unacceptable. These demands boil down to accessing the Reserve Bank's assets for the Government's politically-motivated spending schemes. No other finance minister had taken liberties with the RBI's autonomy and assets. What Jaitley proved in the process was that he had no qualms about distorting even the foundational principles of the country's economic structure for political purposes.

Major policy initiatives of the last four years reflect the same authoritarian approach: Demonetisation that wrecked the lives of citizens in unprecedented ways, Goods & Services Tax that complicated the system instead of simplifying it, inaction on bad loans by banks that benefited party cronies. Arun Jaitley welcomed occasions to dwell on these issues, more than any other party leader. The frequency of his television interviews is an example. On all those occasions he justified every self-centred anti-people move with an air of grandeur that suggested that people who disagreed with him were mentally retarded.

Those people have now told the BJP that communal passions have no place in politics. Will the BJP pay heed, or will it turn vengeful? Power in Delhi is in its hands for another quarter. Power is a hydra-headed beast and a quarter year is a long time. Momentous days are upon us.

MANUFACTURING HUMANS TO ORDER

Is editing babies in the womb the next big thing? A Chinese scientist who claimed the first embryo-engineered birth said the babies he produced would get neither HIV nor Alzheimer's. The implication is that you can have children made to order as per your taste and preferences -- children with blue eyes and blonde hair, or with pointed nose and African curls, children who are not anti-nationals. The age of designer babies is upon us. Or should we call them superbabies?

It was at a conference on gene-editing that Chinese researcher He Jiankui said he had helped make the world's first genetically edited babies. He had altered embryos for seven couples and one had produced twins. He said his aim was to generate a trait that would ensure HIV-resistant babies. Fellow gene-editing specialists at the conference were the first to condemn him for doing what they described as monstrous and unconscionable.

Among the critics were China's own scientists. More than 100 of them issued a statement calling the birth of the edited babies "madness". China's health authorities ordered a "serious investigation" into the matter, followed by a ban on gene-editing. But how authentic is this official reaction? While most countries have banned gene-line engineering, China has promoted research in the area. It is known to have built the world's largest DNA database. China's political leadership is open about its eagerness to be the world leader on every front.

Besides, the concept of superbabies is not new. It has had its day in countries as different as Hitler's Germany and Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore. The Nazis had an active programme to encourage the birth of Aryan babies from "racially pure" couples. Hitler's ruthless bodyguard cum secret service called SS was in charge of the programme. They raised a special organisation for the purpose called Lebensborn, Fount of Life, in 1935. Pure Aryan women, even if unmarried, were encouraged to give birth anonymously. Orphans considered racially proper were adopted by the state while abortion was encouraged when babies were likely to be handicapped. Unfortunately, none of this helped Hitler in the end.

Singapore's approach was different. Lee Kuan Yew was alarmed when a trend of "qualified men" marrying "downward" surfaced in his island nation. It led him to warn that "levels of competence will decline, our economy will falter, and society will decline". It was a clear case of over-reaction, but the all-powerful Prime Minister proceeded with firm action. A platform called Social Development Unit was set up in 1988 and it arranged love cruises, tea dances and bowling clinics to encourage college-educated men and women to marry. An official of the Unit put it rather bluntly: "If you want to produce geniuses, you have to get a graduate man to marry a graduate girl". The Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore published a booklet titled "Living and Loving" urging young people to give dating a try. Did Singapore get a generation geniuses? No sign of it yet.

We should not hasten to criticise politicians who have these fancy ideas. For a long time now the scientific community has been working at gene editing and often with success. By 2015 the Harvard Medical School had developed a new technology for editing DNA. That year's May-June issue of the MIT Technology Review had a cover story with the title "we can now engineer the human race".

The customary attitude in this matter is that meddling with human genes is irresponsible, unsafe and morally wrong. Some say these experiments are premature. Some try to sound rational and say that gene manipulation is possible, but of no practical use. One scientist put it this way: " 'Can you do it' is one thing. The most important question is 'Would you do it?' Why would you want to do it? What is the purpose"?

Such questions were raised by Einstein, too, but the atom bomb was exploded, forcing the scientist to concede that politics was more difficult than physics. In the US a commercial biotechnology company was formed in 2011 with scientists' participation to let parents decide "when and how they have children and how healthy those children are actually going to be".

The die is cast. China knows it and will make every move to ensure its position up front. India also puts genetic engineering high up in the academic area, but only to get longer-lasting tomatoes and golden rice. It would be great if we could develop technology that produces humans with an aversion to using religion as a political tool.

POLITICS PROMOTES BAD MANNERS

When we say or do things that we should not say or do, it's bad manners. In this election season bad manners became the very norm of public life. How else can we explain an educated and experienced political leader saying that Narendra Modi, Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Ritambara are lower caste people and therefore know nothing about Hinduism, that Brahmins alone are learned? The comment was made by Congress leader C.P.Joshi, a PhD holder and professor of psychology who was cabinet minister under Manmohan Singh. It was an indication of the depths of rottenness to which politics has taken our country in just a few decades.

We had started off well. For two brief periods electoral democracy functioned in India with decorum and civility. The first was when Jawaharlal Nehru set the tone beginning with the first general election in 1951. Courtesy prevailed in politics. Backroom manipulators like S.K.Patil in Bombay and Atulya Ghosh in Calcutta plotted and conspired, but they had to stay within the code of public decency that was mandatory in Nehru's India.

The model of correctness in campaigning was V.K.Krishna Menon, a veteran of electoral politics in London where he had contested and won. The Cold War was at its height and powerful US-led anti-communist lobbies singled out Menon as their principal target. In the fiercest battle in which Menon faced Acharya Kripalani, editorials, speeches, leaflets and slogans vilified him in personal terms. But Menon stuck to his British-style campaigning, not even mentioning Kripalani by name, let alone attack him. His speeches were about policy, about war and the need for peace, about non-alignment, about India's role in the world. It was political politeness at its best. Menon kept winning until 1967 when S.K.Patil, now the unchallenged king of Bombay, introduced what was then a novelty -- the argument that Menon was not a Maharashtrian. Nehru was dead. India was changing.

The second golden age of electoral democracy was when T.N.Seshan reigned as Chief Election Commissioner (1990-96). All he did was to enforce the rules, but he did it with such authority and attention to detail that the electoral exercise in India became a marvellous spectacle that the world watched with awe. It was post-Emergency India and politics had become infested with time-servers, family retainers, profiteers and plain thugs. None of them had a chance against the enforcement juggernaut of the unflinching CEC. Seshan showed what one man could do ensure that democracy did not become a hydra-headed monster. In time Seshan retired. And the monster was set free.

Today candidates give money openly to constituents, an illegality Seshan had stopped. The Election Commission itself was recently caught favouring the ruling party more than once. These are indications that the sense of morality that ruled politics in an earlier era is gone. Small wonder that even language used by politicians has tuned vulgar.

Congress leader Kamalnath asking Muslim leaders to ensure that 90 percent of their people voted for his party was not vulgar; it was bluntly communal. His colleague Raj Babbar was vulgar when he referred to the fall of the rupee and said that the currency was "inching towards the age of Narendra Modi's respected mother". What was the point of that comparison? Bad manners for the sake of bad manners?

Giriraj Singh is known for boorishness. Choosing to be an extremist despite being a Union Minister, he makes notorious statements one after another. The worst was: If Rajiv Gandhi had married a Nigerian, would the Congress have accepted her as its leader? Even the BJP was ashamed and forced him to make some kind of apology. A man so uncultured keeps issuing warning to those who do not toe his Hindutva agenda, while poor Mani Shankar Aiyar looks doomed for describing the Prime Minister as "neech", an unwarranted term.

Donald Trump must have been impressed by Indian politicians, hence his reckless use of bad words against people he dislikes. A woman TV presenter was called "low IQ" who was "bleeding badly from a facelift". He called some opponents crazy, phoney and psycho -- language never used by a US president before.

This kind of politics is criticised even by professional criminals. Remember Daku Malkhan Singh, the Chambal Valley dacoit who struck terror in the region in the 1970s? He surrendered in 1962 and is leading a quiet life in his farm. He recently surveyed the political scene and said: "We were rebels, not dakus. Today's netas are crorepatis. They are hi-tech dakus".

Truer words were never spoken.