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Modern Political Shibboleths

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Israel, Middle East

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When Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union as a “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” in an October 1939 radio broadcast, the British prime minister might as well have been describing the future state of Israel. Outwardly European in many ways, the tiny Jewish state remains far closer socio-culturally to its Middle Eastern neighbours much like it plays football in Europe while sitting in Asia. Officially, Israel is a secular state although with interesting caveats that explicitly emphasise its Jewish identity. Similarly, the Jewish State is a democracy but more so for its Jewish citizens than others.

It is not as if these contradictions of the Middle East’s only functional democracy are new or were just noticed. Several factors contribute to the recent focus on the apparent weaknesses of the Israeli polity: the receding of the immediate, existential threats faced by the new state; the removal from power of the founding generation of socialist Zionists; and the growth of a segment of Israeli society that is more traditional and religious. An external source of alarm has been the Jewish Diaspora, particularly in America, whose numbers and financial contributions to community causes gives them a loud voice, that have felt increasingly alienated from the Jewish homeland as a result of its policies.

There is, however, no need to panic just yet unless, of course, we are hidebound by doctrinaire definitions of ideas. Israel’s intriguing strains of democracy, secularism, and identity are indeed correlative to the country’s history and socio-political circumstances but are not as unique as they are sometimes portrayed to be. In fact, Israeli politics falls well within the normal behavioural parameters of nations and states that are presently unfashionable thanks only to the vicissitudes of public politics.

Let us take the example of secularism in Israel. Although the state recognises Islam, the Druze, and Bahá’í as well as ten sects of Christianity apart from Judaism. Nonetheless, a menorah has the pride of place on the country’s sigil and the weekend falls on the Sabbath; government buildings are decorated for Hanukkah and the national anthem, the Hatikvah, is replete with Jewish motifs; public institutions such as El Al, the national airline, and the Israeli Defence Forces observe kashrut, and Hebrew, the language of Jewish scripture and the bearer of its culture, is the national language.

In essence, Israel is as secular as any liberal democracy. Whether it is France, the United States, or some other example, even liberal democracies cleave fiercely to their heritage, which, for historical reasons, has seen religion in a paramount position. Where Israel goes beyond other secular democracies is in its policing of the boundaries between religions. For example, the state allows Jews from anywhere in the world to return to the Holy Land and obtain citizenship without question. This, however, is not entirely remarkable because dozens of countries offer jus sanguinus citizenship and have leges sanguinus; Israel is not unique in this respect even though the ethnocentricism may be politically offensive to some.

Israel also officially recognises only Orthodox Judaism, and marriage, divorce, and inheritance is based on halakha. Marriage between the different denominations of Judaism are not recognised, nor are inter-faith marriages with Jews. However, the state accepts any marriage that occurs outside Israel’s borders and it is estimated that some 10 percent of marrying couples travel abroad, usually to Cyprus, for their big day.

These policies have come under fire from secular activists for fostering a strong presence of religion in Israeli public life and for being at odds with democratic principles. The Diaspora, a large portion of whom are Reform or Conservative, are also incensed with their official status in the eyes of the Chief Rabbinate that considers them as sufficiently Jewish to make aliyah but not for religious purposes. The Knesset’s purpose for having such laws, however, is to maintain the Jewish character of the Israeli state the value of which is often forgotten in debates over abstract notions.

It is easy to overlook the necessity of a Jewish state, especially as outsiders. The world of academic discourse and international politics, albeit using a vocabulary of liberal pluralism, still bears a strong majoritarian accent of European historical experience. Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, and as such, must bear the responsibility of preserving its ancient culture. Christian and Muslim states have the luxury of flirting with various social movements and ideologies and the sheer number of their sovereignties, not to mention the faithful masses, ensures that there remains a traditional core or anchor. On the other hand, Jews are more susceptible to attenuation through inter-faith marriage, conversion out of the fold, or atheism – a problem compounded by the fact that Judaism has stringent procedures for those who wish to embrace it.

Another necessity of a Jewish state is that there must always be a place that can serve as a safe haven for international Jewry. The fact remains that anti-Semitism still thrives the world over if with a little more discretion, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. On the brighter end of the spectrum, Emancipation removed any lingering doubts that Europe was first and foremost a Christian realm and Jews would perennially remain die Ewigen. The uglier face of the same phenomenon is the Shoah during World War II. It becomes incumbent upon Israel, as the world’s lone Jewish state, to defend that identity of its tribes that have made them such targets.

Israeli democracy can serve no role that is different from its secularism – it must be as inclusive and equitable as possible without in any way endangering the core identity upon which the state itself was demanded and built. Israel extends universal adult suffrage to all its citizens and does not bar any profession to certain faiths or ethnicities. There are non-Jewish members in the Knesset, the civil service, and even the military. Activists do, however, point to the discrimination in building permits and resource allocation between Jewish and Arab citizens. From the Israeli perspective, however, this has to do with retaining demographic control over the holy city of Jerusalem (and other religious sites in Judea and Samaria) and falls under the broad rubric of preserving the national heritage. Besides, Arabs had denied Jews access to their religious sites when the area was occupied by Muslims.

As abstractions, democracy and secularism are laudable principles perhaps. Yet the reality of Israeli circumstances demand that they serve only as beacons rather than absolute mandates. Much is made of Israel as an innovative country of startups and the technologically gifted. As true as that may be, the country also serves as an example for innovation in counter-terrorism, legal frameworks, and social policy to countries that do not enjoy the luxury of nearly monolithic cultures and live under constant threat.

By carping about the ostensible failures of Israeli democracy and secularism, critics appear devoted to how we might best serve these ideas rather than the more important question of how these ideas may best serve society. The Western one-size-fits-all model of development – be it material or social – clearly does not hold. Interestingly, the flow of immigrants from cultures that are substantially different from European and American societies has resulted in similar fissures in the West and has led to several leaders (David Cameron, Angela Merkel, and Nicolas Sarkozy) announcing the death of multiculturalism. It is worth bearing in mind that Israel, on the other hand, has lived with these fissiparous tendencies since its inception.

As Israel celebrates its 70th year of existence, it is time to reflect on the trials and tribulations the tiny state has undergone in that period. Only the local context will inform us whether the Jewish state has succeeded in living up to its promise, not hoary theories of political systems.

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Towards an Idiocracy

27 Saturday May 2017

Posted by in Book Review

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ExpertiseNichols, Tom. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 272 pp.

There are few books – at least contemporary ones – I would insist that one must read, but Tom Nichols’ The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, a spectacular survey of the most corrosive social malady of our time, is undoubtedly one of them. In an era in which another’s ignorance has not only become as good as one’s knowledge but there is outright hostility towards any kind of proficiency, The Death of Expertise comes as a much-needed, calm, and unbiased analysis of today’s warped public sphere.

Every generation inevitably complains about the one following it. The “deterioration” in values, the “abandonment” of customs and traditions, the pursuit of “newfangled” ways and questionable goals have always attracted the sharp remarks of older generations. As Seneca the Younger reminds Lucilius in one of his Moral Epistles (#97), these are the vices of mankind and not of a certain age. Nichols’ issue is not with this recurring generation gap. Rather, The Death of Expertise addresses the contemporary normalisation of ignorance in civil society and hostility, not just rejection, towards experts and their research. The United States is a country that is obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance, Nichols argues, where people are proud of not knowing things and to reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy.

In studying this postmodern turn, Nichols, a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, looks at American society but his observations can, in an increasingly globalised world, easily be applied to several countries with only a few minor local adjustments.

Nichols sees four reasons why the reservoir of latent hatred for experts has burst its banks in the past couple of decades. First, universities have started treating students as customers rather than informed members of a future body politic; two, the internet has made possible the lightning spread of spurious data and arguments; three, the media has abandoned its post as the sentinels of society; and four, experts have become increasingly unaccountable, insular and defensive.

India does not suffer from the same problems American universities are facing – yet. There have thankfully been no demands for safe spaces or trigger warnings from Indian students in the humanities so far. Additionally, lack of privatisation in education has not allowed the profit motive to dictate Indian curricula yet. Rather, the primary concern is the politicisation of the university and the student body. Not only does this manifest itself in cheap displays such as that of hosting beef festivals or expressing solidarity with separatist terrorists that are further sensationalised by the media but the political slant in the curriculum itself. The abdication of the Right from politics after independence allowed the Left to capture key institutions in India. Decrying moral science in schools, education became about Leftist values. Critical thinking, that most important of skills we hope to pick up in our 12+4 years of schooling, was the first victim.

This is not to say that college goers have become dumber over the years. Nichols cites the example of a 1943 survey in which only six percent of incoming freshmen could name the original thirteen colonies; India was/is probably not much different. What has changed, thanks to greater penetration of the state and the internet, is our awareness of it. It also speaks to our failure as a society to harness technology to prepare a better informed citizenry.

It is not fair to blame the internet for the death of expertise, and Nichols admits to as much. Critics of the Gutenberg printing press worried that “printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery.” They were not entirely wrong. Though the printing press enabled the spread of literacy and the easy dissemination of knowledge, it also produced tracts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and taught people to confuse words with facts that diluted that same knowledge. The internet is the printing press at the speed of fibre optics. Nichols argues that the speed and reach of the internet changes the process by which we consume information. Furthermore, the lack of gatekeepers to the material available together with the inability to think critically makes for a deadly combination. As Nichols notes, as Wikipedia has evolved, it has sought to emulate a peer review process akin to professional journals. Whatever flaws the academic process has – and there are many – it remains a relatively reliable source of getting accurate information. Moreover, the sheer volume of websites available makes it difficult for a well-intentioned autodidact to sift through the chaff and arrive at credible information that has been put together cogently and argued logically.

It has also been shown that reading information on a screen changes the way we read. Rather than read horizontally, our eyes make an ‘F’ pattern down the page. Essentially, this means picking up the headlines and maybe a couple of sentences beyond but not engaging with much of the article. The purpose of most readers today is to pronounce judgement on the author rather than engage with the topic under consideration.

As Nichols argues, “the Internet has accelerated the collapse of communication between experts and laypeople by offering an apparent shortcut to erudition. It allows people to mimic intellectual accomplishment by indulging in an illusion of expertise provided by a limitless supply of facts… This is erudition in the age of cyberspace: You surf until you reach the conclusion you’re after.”

Confirmation bias is something that affects not just lay people but even experts: we all like to be right and the evidence that tells us so is irresistible. However, experts have been trained to recognise this failing and their work is subjected to peer review to additionally screen for such biases but laypeople on the internet have neither safety nets. History is not done merely by referencing a couple of primary sources any more than one knows sailing because he read Moby Dick. Expertise is more about years of diligent practice and methodology more than it is about the simple accumulation and recall of facts on demand.

The third pillar of society that has given away is the media. World over, not just in India, people have less faith that the media are reporting news honestly and accurately. Most news outlets have become commentary portals rather than houses of old-fashioned journalism. In India, the media has completely lost credibility due to its servility to political parties of one persuasion and the habit of “manufacturing news.” Social media, for all its ills, is seen as a David to the media’s Goliath and this emotional loyalty gives credibility to even the most spurious of anonymous claims floating around on these sites.

Whether it is due to government regulations on speech, unseen financial and access strings, or personal advancement, the media’s partisan character has irredeemably damaged its reputation among laypeople. Journalism is one of the most important institutions in a democratic society and this erosion of trust has consequently skewed Indian democracy and society. Half the time, the vicious arguments over food, language, sport, Kashmir, customs, minorities, or economics is actually not over those issues but over something far more fundamental. In this cacophony, the public sphere can only limp forward.

This is just one part of the rot in the fourth estate. In the pursuit of profit, even sensible editors are pressured into casting headlines as click-bait and looking for the sensational angle to every story. Thus, a missing lamp-post becomes a caste conflagration, a heat wave becomes a communal innuendo, and celebrities’ musical genitalia take precedence over matters of policy and substance. As long as this business model is rewarded over long form essays, it is difficult to fault media houses alone for sensationalism.

Finally, Nichols turns his gaze on to the experts. Despite being a professor himself and presumably of the class the masses would term as elite, Nichols is unsparing in his criticism of his colleagues. Yes, experts can get it wrong sometimes, Nichols admits, they should certainly be held more accountable than they are today. Yet the public also needs to be able to understand the difference between an expert getting something wrong once or twice and the hundreds of times the same expert has got something right. The one-in-a-million stories of a teen finding an accurate diagnosis on Google while his doctor gets it wrong makes headlines but the ten thousand other times the same doctor made a correct diagnosis is forgotten. To demand that level of perfection from anyone is asking to be disappointed.

Experts do sometimes branch out beyond the scope of their expertise, commenting on fields of study that bear little relation to what they do. This is a human folly, the irresistible urge to proffer an opinion, especially when asked for one. Pace the inter-disciplinary trend, it would behoove experts to mind the fences and tend to their own field when asked about topics unfamiliar to them academically.

What is important is that experts ask normal citizens to trust them and have confidence that mistakes will be rare, that experts will learn from the rare mistake they make and constantly improve themselves. On the other hand, an amateur with slick fingers on a keyboard may occasionally be able to trump an expert but he would be hard-pressed to give a repeat performance.

People must also be discerning what information they consume. When an argument is presented, it is vital not only to look at the inherent logic but also the data, its sources, and the track record and credentials of the person making the argument. Part of the problem is that laypeople are uncomfortable with ambiguity – they prefer answers rather than caveats. Except in exceptionally rare occasions, expertise only comes in shades of grey.

The Death of Expertise is a tour de force that has implications beyond just the sad state of public awareness and the failure of some of our prized institutions. Nichols uses plenty of data, anecdotes, and arguments to make a persuasive case that the public sphere stands on a precipice. Readers will find Nichols’ mustering of psychology an important peg in his analysis of what ails modern discourse. Ultimately, he is more hopeful than I that we can step back from the edge.

Although The Death of Expertise does not address this issue and its author remains committed to the status quo of the present systems of government, it is our duty to ask ourselves again if democracy is indeed the best possible system of government. The theory sounds great but in practice, we are unsure if everyone is willing to be sufficiently informed to be a useful member of the pubic sphere. If not, why must the rest force this choice upon them? Perhaps, like Athens, a multi-tiered democracy might be an option worth exploring for political theorists; perhaps the Great Reform Act of 1867 was overly progressive. The more we force everyone to become part of an informed electorate, the more we may end up feeling the sensation Roman senators felt when Julius Caesar introduced Gauls into the Senate.

But this is the opinion of an expert. And he could be wrong.

This is an Indian Democracy, Kaul*!

20 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in India, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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Every few months, India gets into a tizzy about freedom of expression. The recent drama on Jawaharlal Nehru University’s campus, the pulping of Wendy Doniger’s book on Hinduism, the mob violence at Dadri, the smearing of black paint on Sudheendra Kulkarni, a writer, the antics of fringe groups like the Sri Ram Sene, and other events have occupied the headlines and television studio airtime in their turn. Less honoured have been the riots in Malda, the shuttering of Bombay’s Avadhnama, the censorship of Vishwaroopam, and a long list of other incidents.

As anyone following the freedom of expression debate in India knows by now, Article 19(2) of the Indian constitution introduces seven criteria which may limit expression. One factor that complicates the debate further is that the implementation of these laws have not been uniform over the years – an MF Hussain is met with sympathy while a reprint of the Danish Jyllandsposten cartoons is met with riots and media outcry. Despite this hypocrisy, a precious few free speech advocates are of the opinion that all restrictions should be done away with and India should adopt a Brandenburg v. Ohio standard of free expression, referring, of course, to the landmark 1969 case in the United States Supreme Court.

In principle, this sounds excellent. In practice, however, India is a far more complicated beast to govern. The evolution of the Brandenburg benchmark occurred over centuries of not just juridical but also political and social evolution. The values enshrined in that decision not only reflected those held by the American people but also were capable of being enforced by the American state. The United States was aided in part also by circumstance: they had the luxury of starting tabula rasa, without any historical baggage, the distance and strict immigration laws ensured a certain homogeneity pace the melting point myth, and the participatory nature of their democracy was allowed to increase only gradually.

India’s leaders at independence, however, chose to rush headlong into democracy with universal adult suffrage. Its leaders at the founding – at least those who held sway – preferred abstract theories to the exhausting reality of the new republic. The price of this decision would be borne by future generations of Indians every day of their lives. This is not to say that India should abandon democracy – it is too late for that now. Once the masses have tasted power, they are loathe to give it back. However, it does mean that Indians approach the implementation of other ideals concomitant with democracy with more caution as the country inches forward towards prosperity, liberty, security, and stability.

But first, what is democracy? Etymologically and historically, it has come to mean a system of government in which rulers are chosen by the people for fixed intervals. There is no commitment to Liberalism, even implicitly, in such a system. The checks and balances that have evolved in most democracies to protect minorities from the excesses of the majority came from cultural values over time and were institutionalised via other non-electoral avenues. Universal suffrage has had no role in the creation of a system of civil liberties. India’s leaders did not understand that a liberal democracy – and, by implication, free speech – cannot take root in a society that has not first become free and liberal-minded; only those who have drawn poorly from history can suppose otherwise.

A stable liberal democracy presupposes a people assured of their identity as a society as well as individuals within that society. People divided by opinions on public policy may equally find themselves in the majority or minority but are not so  in perpetuity. Yet those who see divisions based on ethnic or religious markers do not experience similar fluctuations. This dynamic explains the formation of democratically-minded nation-states along rather singular ethnic, religious, and even linguistic lines.

Liberty and MisesIndia’s continued governance by Anglicised elites after independence brought to power a group who had no sense of their own history and hence their own strengths and limitations. Adding a democracy based on universal suffrage to the mix when India’s national identity was inchoate at best, as the politics surrounding Partition amply demonstrated, was a recipe for disaster. This was compounded by separate law codes and reservations in education and employment for certain communities. Over time, aided by changing demographics, demands from these special communities have become more economic and political in their nature. No longer were the provisions seen as catalysts towards equality but as permanent and rightful dispensations. It should be no surprise, then, that the natural core majority resents this situation because it militates against their sense of fairness.

The weakness of Indian liberal democracy, then, stems from the failure of the nation-building project that has left large sections of society uncertain about their identities and rights. As Karl Marx had argued that socialism would develop as the high point of industrialisation and capitalism, pluralism and multicultural stability can arise only as the high point of core majority stability. It is folly to assume that the demonisation of the majority is the way to achieve this.

Another weakness of Indian liberal democracy comes from the failure of its institutions. For decades after independence, they were ravaged by the Congress for political reasons and have lost the trust of the citizens. Traditionally, liberalism has been closely related to democracy because both aimed at restricting the power of the absolute state. This went hand in hand with the increasing rule of law and social trust. Seen closely, however, modern democracy increased only political liberty but not social liberty. This, it can be argued, is the contribution of a robust judiciary that took both the constitution and contemporary community standards into account. Attorney-General v De Keyser’s Royal Hotel Limited, Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commissioner, A and Others v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Eweida v British Airways plc, Roe v Wade, Donato Casagrande v. Landeshauptstadt München, and other cases have defined the scope of civil liberties and pushed against more restrictive executive and legislative practices. In contrast, Indian courts have generally served the narrow political interests of the governing elite and done little to gradually expand civil liberties in India. To be fair to the judiciary, other factors prohibited such a role too.

Democracy and FDRWhy was the spread of universal suffrage so slow? There were two reasons: one was that the overwhelming majority was illiterate, ignorant, and incapable of forming an informed opinion on state matters. The second was the belief that only those with property were sufficiently vested in the community to truly consider its best interests. The expansion of democratic rights, therefore, coincided with the expansion of secondary education. With the changing nature of the economy, intellectual contribution and conscription joined property as criteria by which investment in the nation-state was measured. India’s early governments deserve some blame for failing to raise functional literacy rates quickly but it is also true that the education of hundreds of millions of people was going to take some time. Despite lacking the prerequisites for a democracy, let alone a liberal democracy, Indian leaders of the day rushed headlong into a bold yet ultimately ill-timed social experiment. Had successive governments governed wisely and without favouritism between various social groups, the impact on the country’s liberal evolution might yet have been mitigated.

In the age of globalisation, European multiculturalism has come under threat; unable to assimilate newcomers into the European ideal, the Union is facing a crisis as the continent’s core majority opposes the influx of refugees and even increased economic aid to the financially weaker members of the Union at the expense of the more prosperous member states. This is a tension India has lived with since its inception and watching the reaction of a mature polity such as Europe over the past few years only dampens hope in the Nehruvian idea of India even further.

[DIVERSION] The internet has also produced pressures nation-states were not designed to handle. With the rise of multinational activism and communications, ever more people are participating in political processes without necessarily any stakes in local communities. Democracy presumes civic participation in its institutions; that is the price of membership for receiving the economic and social goods of the state. Instead, contemporary democracy has lost all tethering to any sense of obligation or duty and is merely a one-way relationship for the redistribution of wealth and favours. In many cases, these disproportionately benefit those who have made no contribution to the prosperity of the whole.

This might also be an argument for the return to a certain elitism in democracy as the number and complexity of issues before a government increase dramatically in the 21st century, allowing those with greater knowledge, experience, and skin in the game to contribute more meaningfully to national and global discussions. [/DIVERSION]

Above all, governance must be about stability and order. Activists have the luxury of preaching a one-point agenda, however noble, but the state machinery must consider the overall picture before implementing policy. Let us, for example, consider the ramifications of implementing a Brandenburg standard free speech law overnight in India: the very next cartoon about Islam’s prophet will give rise to angry mobs visiting havoc upon cities and towns. If the plight of the Rohingyas in Burma could inspire the Azad Maidan riots in Bombay in 2012 for no fault of the Indian state, there is no reason to expect more sanity from the community now.

The activist argument would be to crack down on the rioters and arrest and prosecute those responsible for violence. However, when India is over 500,000 policemen short and over 90 per cent of the police force works over eight hours a day, law and order is bound to suffer. Furthermore, many of these policemen may stand by in sympathy. The training and sufficient arming of the force is also necessary. While the government works to improve the police force, not to mention the jails and judiciary, countless crores  and lives would have been lost in damages. Will free speech activists compensate for the losses incurred?

All systems have prerequisites and boundary conditions. The digital age already poses sufficient challenges to nation-states that blind adherence to shibboleths need not compound. Indians have never discussed whether they prefer a Singaporean or even Japanese style democracy to a Western democracy and perhaps that should be first on the agenda before a model is copy-pasted from elsewhere. Either way, India would still need to substantially upgrade its state capacity and reforms would have to keep those limitations in mind. India certainly has problems with its democracy as well as its free speech provisions – unequal application, state capacity, unprepared citizenry – but to demand a swift imposition of a standard radically alien to the cultural context is simply myopic and an invitation to unrest.

*: The title of this post is a reference to Yes, Prime Minister, Series 2, Episode 5: Power to the People, in which Sir Humphrey Appleby chastises Bernard Woolley for suggesting that every person has a right to power in a democracy. SK Kaul is the prime minister’s private secretary in Ji, Mantriji, a Hindi re-make of the BBC original.

This post appeared on FirstPost on February 22, 2016.