Editorial 'SHARING SOVEREIGNTY' in Law Animated World, 15 August 2009 issue. Volume 5: Part 2, No: 15

SHARING SOVEREIGNTY

Courtesy: Reliance Industries Ltd. British North Sea Oil Platform; Courtesy: Wikipedia
on acceptable lines and satisfactory terms between the States and the Union is quite essential if even the quasi-federalism as existing now in our country is to survive and continue without calamitous crises. It is to be regretted that once Pakistan was a certainty, our constitution framers, in an over-reaction, adopted a basically centralist constitution ignoring the federal sentiments prevailing among other sections of the people of India. As a result of the current constitution, the States are left with nothing but sand and small stones to feed their mouths with all major minerals allotted to the Union share. All the residual powers which were originally intended to reside in States were taken away to strengthen the Union. And Article 297 vests all powers over the territorial waters and resources thereof exclusively in the Union and the Apex Court has also opined that natural gas in any form is an exclusive central subject, even overriding the item 25 of the States List. There is nothing akin to American federalism where Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas up to 3 nautical miles is the exclusive preserve of the State of Texas. The dispute over the natural resources in territorial waters is raging in Britain too and no wonder if the Scottish demands for independence over North Sea Oil disputes alleging that England is depriving her of billions of pounds of oil and gas revenues, to the tune of £2300 per a Scot per year, and that Scotland would be happier and better developed if freed from the clutches of the Union, also crop up in our country in no distant future though it is not sure how democratically our Union would deal with such demands. The present controversy about the Krishna Godavari Basin Oil and Natural Gas reserves and the injustice being done to the State of Andhra Pradesh in not paying any royalties and not allocating needed volumes of gas for its industries and domestic supply purposes is but an indication in that direction ...

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Editorial, 'MACAULAY'S MEN', in the 31 July 2009 issue of LAW

MACAULAY’S MEN

Even Thomas Babington Macaulay, an avowed imperialist, who worked for the creation of “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect,” through the introduction of English education in India, was careful to state the compulsion: “We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language.” And he considered English better suited than Arabic/Sanskrit for the purpose and proceeded – that resulting in the formation of the English educated baboodom in India as faithful servant of the British Rule. We know what enormous sufferings and humiliations we had to undergo in the struggle for our independence and how thousands of freedom fighters had sacrificed their tan-man-dhan for the cause. Since no self-respecting country or nation can/would ever develop without shedding the colonial/foreign domination trappings and all the developed countries have so progressed due to literature and education prospering in their own mother tongues, it was presumed that once we become free, our national languages will take the place of English and that would be a sure way to success of our collective striving for social justice and all-round development. But, alas, that has not come to be because of the machinations of Macaulay’s Men entrenched in the country’s elite – that despite the constitutional mandates to promote Hindi and other regional languages and ‘restrict’ the use of English. Now it is sad to note that in making an unwarranted observation recently, hinting that if the kids are not taught in English medium, they would eventually be not fit even for clerical jobs, even our superior judges have degraded themselves. They ought to have remembered at least Gandhiji’s outburst: “To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them. The foundation that Macaulay laid of education has enslaved us. … It is we, the English-knowing men, that have enslaved India…” if not the more reasoned and widely accepted opinions of Tagore, Zakir Husain, Radhakrishnan, and so many other eminent persons who guided our country’s ‘tryst with destiny’. §§§