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By:

Someshwar Gurumath

17 December 2024 at 9:53:55 am

Manu: Still Alive in the Hearts of Millions

The ancient Dharmashastra, repeatedly caricatured and selectively invoked, has become a permanent fixture of modern India’s political and ideological battles. AI generated image Many people who might have seen Rakshith Shetty’s Sapta Sagaradaache Ello will remember the heroine’s famous dialogue: “Manu, you are my ocean.” How beautifully appropriate this sounds today! Our esteemed Indian academicians, CJP protestors, our beloved youth icon Rahul Gandhi Ji, and our Nishu Ji seem to have taken...

Manu: Still Alive in the Hearts of Millions

The ancient Dharmashastra, repeatedly caricatured and selectively invoked, has become a permanent fixture of modern India’s political and ideological battles. AI generated image Many people who might have seen Rakshith Shetty’s Sapta Sagaradaache Ello will remember the heroine’s famous dialogue: “Manu, you are my ocean.” How beautifully appropriate this sounds today! Our esteemed Indian academicians, CJP protestors, our beloved youth icon Rahul Gandhi Ji, and our Nishu Ji seem to have taken this dialogue rather seriously. For them, Manu is not merely a name from an ancient Smriti; Manu is an inseparable companion. They memorize Manu during their protests, they eat with Manu, they sleep with Manu, they wake up thinking about Manu, and whenever there is a discussion on Hindu society, Manu suddenly appears like an old family friend. Yes, it is so true. Manu is their ocean! In fact, one wonders whether Manu himself might have forgotten the Smriti written by him thousands of years ago. But his beloved followers and esteemed lovers certainly have not. They have worked tirelessly to keep him alive in their hearts, speeches, protests and debates. Lucky Manu! He could never have imagined such devoted admirers. “Manu, you are my ocean.” Apparently, they took the dialogue very seriously. Today, these beloved hardcore fans and Abhimani Sangh of Manu have coined a magnificent new title: “Manuvadi.” The funniest part? They apparently never apply it to themselves, despite keeping Manu permanently in their hearts. Instead, they run a full-time Manu Award Distribution Centre: Manuvadi Modi, Manuvadi Sanghi, Manuvadi author, Manuvadi director and the list keeps growing. Manu has become the new Indian Booker; everyone is busy identifying his “followers”! At this rate, a Manuvadi certificate may soon become more prestigious than a degree. Our esteemed Booker Prize winners, too, keeps Manu comfortably alive in public discourse, while invoking Aryan-Manu narratives that critics may see as perfectly suited to Western academic tastes. Manu truly has an extraordinary afterlife. Manu Came Later Our Shastrarthas have always evolved through discussion. After all, vāde vāde jāyate tattvabodhaḥ—through debate comes the understanding of truth. So let us, with the same spirit, resist the temptation to critique Nishu Ji for what may well be the most brilliant question of the year. One hopes her own Manu Abhimani Sangh will recognize this historic contribution and perhaps institute an annual award in her honour. Her question was: “When women had no right to education during the time of Manusmriti, then from which college did Saraswati get a PhD?” What a question! And more importantly, is this not also the time to answer it? After all, Manu is alive, right? But let us temporarily put the humour aside and actually examine the question through the inconvenient little thing called chronology. The Manu smriti is generally dated by scholars to roughly the period between the 2nd century BCE and the 3rd century CE. Saraswati, however, is not a character who suddenly received admission into Hindu civilization through Manu smriti. She is already present in the Rigveda, where Saraswati appears as a sacred and divine figure associated with speech, inspiration and knowledge. The Mahabharata too contains an established conception of Saraswati as a goddess of knowledge and the mother of the Vedas. So, the question perhaps needs to be turned around. If Saraswati was already being revered in the Vedic tradition centuries before the composition of the Manusmriti, why should her existence be made dependent upon what Manusmriti says about women’s education? The goddess did not need a PhD certificate from Manu. She was already the one to whom knowledge itself was being offered. Misplaced Criticism People, including many well-known personalities, continue to critique Manusmriti and quote selected shlokas from it even after nearly eight decades of constitutional law. Manusmriti certainly contains passages that can be subjected to historical and ethical criticism. But should one ancient Smriti be treated as though it were the complete constitution of an entire civilization? Even Ambedkar, who was a severe critic of Manu, did not reduce the entire Dharmashastra tradition to Manusmriti alone. He recognised Yajnavalkya as an important authority and described him as an authority nearly as great as Manu. The point is not to turn Ambedkar into a supporter of Manusmriti, but to recognize that the historical tradition itself was far more diverse than the modern political caricature. So, did Indian women simply lose their intellectual and spiritual agency because Manu existed? The historical record does not allow such a simple conclusion. India produced extraordinary women such as Akkamahadevi, Sule Sankavva and Aydakki Lakkamma in the Vachana tradition, Andal, Helavanakatte Giriyamma, and Mirabai in other regional traditions, and countless women saints, poets, scholars, educators and freedom fighters. Their existence does not prove that discrimination against women never existed; it certainly did. But it does challenge the convenient equation that every restriction experienced by an Indian woman was automatically created by Manu. Nor was India ever governed by one Smriti in one uniform manner. Shivaji Maharaj’s political world cannot be reduced to Manusmriti. The Mysore Wodeyars governed within a much larger world of temple traditions, customs, administrative practices and diverse communities. Swami Vivekananda himself engaged with Manu in a nuanced manner while repeatedly taking us back to the Vedas and Upanishads and invoking women such as Gargi and Maitreyi. The Nayanmars, Alvars, Vachanakaras, Dasaru traditions, Bhakti saints, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs and Veerashaiva-Lingayats all represent intellectual and spiritual worlds that were never governed by ‘Manu.’ And there is another simple question. Throughout world history, Crusades were fought in the name of Christianity. But has there ever been a “Manusmriti Crusade” fought in the name of Manu to impose Manusmriti upon another civilization? Where is the army that marched under Manu’s banner? Where is the empire built to spread his Smriti? Yet thousands of years later, Manu is repeatedly presented as though he personally marched across India enforcing every verse attributed to him. Manusmriti can certainly be criticized. Its difficult verses deserve serious examination, not blind defense. But criticism becomes intellectually weak when an ancient Dharmashastra is transformed into the single explanation for the entire history of Indian society. Perhaps the real question is not whether Manu is alive. Perhaps the question is who keeps bringing him back to life? After all, Manu may have written his Smriti thousands of years ago. But his modern admirers have ensured that he remains permanently employed. Manu, you are their ocean! Reading Beyond the Caricature Manusmriti’s prescriptions on women — from honour and property rights to restrictions on autonomy and learning — invite a reading beyond political caricature. If Manu is going to be repeatedly summoned into every discussion about Hindu society, perhaps it is time to actually read what Manu says about women. Not the Manu created by political slogans, social-media posts or selective quotations, but the Manu who actually appears in the text. And here we encounter something rather inconvenient for both his hardcore critics and his modern Abhimani Sangh: Manusmriti presents a considerably more complicated picture than either side sometimes admits. Take Chapter 3. Manusmriti 3.51 says that a father should not accept even the smallest payment for his daughter, describing the man who takes such payment out of greed as a seller of his offspring. Verse 3.52 condemns male relatives who appropriate or live upon a woman’s property. In other words, strīdhan is recognized as belonging to the woman, and relatives are warned against exploiting it. Then comes the famous declaration in 3.55: women are to be honored and adorned by fathers, brothers, husbands and brothers-in-law. Verse 3.56 goes even further: “Where women are honored, there the gods are pleased; where they are not honored, no sacred rite yields rewards.” Verse 3.57 connects the happiness or suffering of women with the prosperity or destruction of the family. These are not modern additions written by twentieth-century defenders of Manu; they are verses found in the text itself. The text also gives importance to the welfare of women within household life. Manusmriti 3.114 instructs the householder to feed women, including pregnant women and unmarried girls, among those who should receive hospitality. Such passages hardly fit the convenient caricature of a text that has nothing to say except how to subordinate women. But here we must also be intellectually honest. Manusmriti is not a modern feminist document, and pretending that it is would be as misleading as pretending that it contains nothing except hatred of women. Chapter 9 contains some of its most controversial prescriptions. Verse 9.3 states that the father guards a woman in childhood, the husband in youth and her sons in old age, concluding that a woman does not possess svātantrya, usually translated as independence or autonomy. Verses 9.14–18 contain still more troubling generalizations about women, including claims about desire, anger, dishonesty and their relationship to Vedic ritual and learning. Verse 9.18 explicitly states that women do not perform certain rites with Vedic mantras. These passages cannot honestly be wished away, and they deserve serious historical and ethical examination. But that is precisely why the discussion should become a Shastrartha, rather than a political slogan. Why select only the verses that support one’s predetermined conclusion? Why quote 9.3 and ignore 3.55–57? Why discuss restrictions without discussing strīdhan? Why present Manu as though he were the only voice in the entire Dharmic tradition? So let us neither worship Manu nor manufacture a monster out of him. Let us read him. Let us question him. Let us criticize what deserves criticism and acknowledge what deserves acknowledgement. After all, if Manu is going to remain alive in our political conversations, perhaps the least we can do is allow Manu himself to speak. The Perennial Villain There is another curious irony in the modern Manu industry. India has changed dramatically since the world described in the Dharmashastra texts. The Constitution guarantees equality before the law and prohibits discrimination on grounds including sex. Women vote, contest elections, become judges, scientists, professors, entrepreneurs, soldiers, journalists and chief executives. Modern criminal law, including the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, operates through a statutory legal framework rather than through the authority of Manusmriti. Whatever one's opinion of Manu, he is certainly not sitting in a courtroom today deciding the punishment for a crime. Yet Manu continues to occupy an astonishing amount of intellectual real estate. The irony becomes even greater when we look at the everyday life of the very people who insist that Manu is still restricting Indian women. A girl goes to school because her father spends money on her education. Her brother supports her. Her husband later shares the economic responsibilities of the household. She enters a university, earns a degree, takes a job, travels independently, appears on television, writes articles, makes films, votes, protests and publicly declares that Manu has denied her freedom. And then comes the delicious contradiction: the woman who has benefited from centuries of social change, constitutional democracy, modern education and the sacrifices of her own family is still expected to discover her oppression primarily in a text written nearly two millennia ago. Indian cinema has occasionally produced an even more amusing version of this contradiction. The heroine is educated, employed, mobile, outspoken and financially independent. She travels across cities, rejects unsuitable men, chooses her career, falls in love on her own terms and occasionally lectures the audience about patriarchy. Yet somewhere in the script, Manu must still be summoned as the eternal villain. It is almost as though the character cannot complete her journey to freedom unless Manu first appears as the villain standing at the railway station. This is not to deny that historical texts should be examined critically. They should. Nor should constitutional freedom be confused with ancient social arrangements. Modern India is based on principles that are fundamentally different from those of ancient Dharmashastra society. The point is something else: if Manu no longer constitutes the operative legal authority of the Indian Republic, why does he remain so indispensable to certain modern ideological narratives? Perhaps because Manu has become more than a historical figure. He has become an intellectual industry. For some academics, activists and ideological commentators, Manu is an extraordinarily convenient character. He is old enough to carry every accusation of patriarchy, caste and social oppression, yet distant enough that he cannot appear on a television debate to answer back. Every contemporary problem can be traced backwards to him, every disagreement can be converted into another paper on him, and every new political controversy can resurrect him. Manu therefore becomes an academic renewable resource. The more he is condemned, the more relevant he becomes. And this is where our Manu Abhimani Sangh becomes truly fascinating. They keep Manu alive in their arguments, their classrooms, their essays, their conferences and their protests. They say they are fighting Manu, but Manu keeps returning. They cannot seem to let him die. Why? Because Manu has become their ocean. Like the heroine of Sapta Sagaradaache Ello, who declares, “Manu, you are my ocean,” some of Manu's most determined critics seem to have discovered the same strange relationship. They return to Manu again and again. They build careers around him. They write about him. They organise debates around him. They construct ideological identities around him. They call everyone else “Manuvadi” while ensuring that Manu himself remains permanently at the centre of public attention. Perhaps the greatest irony, then, is that the people most determined to bury Manu may be the very people who have kept him alive. And if Manu is indeed their ocean, one uncomfortable question remains: what happens to the Manu Abhimani Sangh when the ocean finally stops producing waves? Perhaps that is precisely why Manu still lives—not merely in their arguments, but in the hearts of millions.

India waits to lasso diamantaire Mehul Choksi

Quaid Najmi
Apr 14, 2025
5 min read

Mumbai: India rubbed its hands gleefully as the Belgium Police honoured its request to arrest the absconder diamantaire Mehul Chinubhai Choksi – more than seven years after he, along with his nephew Nirav Deepak Modi - allegedly duped the Punjab National Bank of nearly Rs. 13,800-crores.

 

The scam involving the ‘Mehul Mama-Nirav Bhanja’ erupted in Jan 2018, after the PNB lodged a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

 

By then the kin, along with many of their family members, winked and slipped out of the country, leaving a rattled India rubbing its palms in disappointment.

 

A political-cum-financial storm raged, embarrassing the Bharatiya Janata Party government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi a year before the Lok Sabha elections.

 

Multiple agencies launched a multi-pronged probe into what became the biggest banking scam in the past quarter century – and almost four times bigger than the stock market-cum-banking fraud the late Big Bull Harshad Mehta had inflicted on the Indian economy 33 years ago (in April 1992) – when it was just opening up.

 

In Belgium

According to official reports, Choksi was living with his Belgium citizen-wife Preeti in Antwerp, a global diamond hub, presumably for the past 18 months on a ‘residency permit’ acquired through questionable means, for medical reasons.

 

Earlier, he shot to the headers (June 2021) while being taken in a wheelchair to a court by the Dominican Republic's Police on charges of sneaking into the small country in the Caribbean Sea, North America.

 

Interestingly, as the Antigua & Barbuda government initiated the process to cancel his citizenship acquired through an investor visa, Choksi had suddenly gone ‘missing’ till he surfaced in the Dominican Republic.

 

The April 2025 action by Belgium followed a request by India’s CBI and the financial frauds specialist Enforcement Directorate (ED) to nab Choksi as the InterPol had revoked his Red Corner Notice in 2023.

 

Mama and Bhanja

‘Mama’ Choksi is the founder-owner of Gitanjali Group while ‘bhanja’ Nirav’s Firestar plus other companies – and the duo, with some PNB officials hand-in-glove – conspired to make a ‘mamu’ of not only PNB, but other banks, as it subsequently tumbled out.

 

After making a quiet exit, Choksi was detected living in the verdant Antigua & Barbuda Isles (West Indies), then attempted entry to the Dominican Republic, was sent back to Antigua & Barbuda and then went to Belgium where he was nabbed on Sunday.

 

Similarly, Modi was found sauntering on the streets of London and nabbed in March 2019. He remains in jail there since India's extradition is still pending.

 

However, India is keeping its fingers crossed that it may finally lay hands on Choksi, bring him to India and face trial in the PNB scam, though it may take time.

 

Born in Mumbai (1959) and educated in Gujarat, Choksi, 66, and wife Preeti have three children.

 

The Rs. 13,800-crore PNB scam

In the modus operandi revealed after India’s second-largest PSU bank PNB admitted it was scammed, Choksi and Modi used fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoU) to get overseas credits or loans from Indian banks.

 

The PNB first informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) of the fraud and then lodged a criminal complaint with the CBI in Jan. 2018, plus another CBI complaint in Feb, that led to a FIR against Modi and Choksi and their companies.

 

The ED entered the scene to probe the allegations of money-laundering through the LoUs – which they allegedly misused to avail short-term business finances from foreign branches of Indian banks.

 

The probe said that the duo were availing the LoUs from the PNB’s Brady House Branch from March 2011, and over the next six-seven years, managed to get a whopping 1,200-plus LoUs like a breeze with the help of some friendly bankers within.

 

Post-scam, the gold-diamond companies Gitanjali Group and Firestone Group with multiple operations in India and abroad have largely wound up, while some personal assets of the mama-bhanja have been auctioned to recover a part of the dues.

 

ED's plea to declare Choksi fugitive stuck for seven years

Even as absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi, a key accused in the Punjab National Bank loan fraud case, has been arrested in Belgium, the ED's plea to declare him a fugitive economic offender has been pending before a court in Mumbai for nearly seven years.


Choksi, 65, and his nephew diamantaire Nirav Modi are the prime accused in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB bank loan fraud case. Choksi was arrested in Belgium following an extradition request by Indian probe agencies, official sources said on Monday.


The Enforcement Directorate had filed the application in July 2018, seeking to declare Choksi an FEO and confiscate his assets under provisions of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act.


However, the matter has witnessed repeated delays owing to a barrage of applications filed by the accused in the PMLA court and the Bombay High Court alleging procedural lapses in the Enforcement Directorate's plea.


"The court is kept busy with frivolous applications, and hearing on our application to declare him (Choksi) an FEO has been adjourned for the past seven years,” an ED officer had said after the hearing was once again deferred this February.


"The court should have continued the hearing and taken a decision on the future course of action once the application was moved," the officer had said.

He had urged the court to take note of the repeated filing of similar applications and to not entertain them.


Choksi's lawyer had informed the court that the accused was undergoing treatment for suspected cancer in Belgium and intended to file an application in connection with his health.


Under the FEO Act, an individual can be declared a Fugitive Economic Offender if a warrant has been issued against him for an offence involving Rs 100 crore or more and he has left India while refusing to return. Once declared an FEO, the person's property can be confiscated by the investigating agency.


Choksi had challenged the ED's application in the Bombay High Court, alleging that the agency "had not followed proper procedure before filing the application and, hence, it stands vitiated".


However, in September 2023, the High Court dismissed his plea, ruling that the ED had adhered to the prescribed format under the FEO Act. It also vacated a stay on the special court's proceedings.


Despite this, the hearing on declaring Choksi FEO could not commence, with Choksi continuing to file applications before the special court through his lawyers.


While most of these pleas have been dismissed, a few remain pending. His latest attempt to stall proceedings through a plea to recall the notice issued on the ED's FEO application was rejected in December 2023.


According to ED officials, Choksi left India under suspicious circumstances in early January 2018.


Shifting stance

Choksi's counsel has argued that the ED kept shifting its stance on the material grounds for declaring him an FEO and that the suspension of his Indian passport made it impossible for him to return for investigation.

The court, however, rejected this argument, stating that the notice was issued based on accurate information and not based on "wrong facts or mistaken assumptions".


ED claimed the accused left the country under suspicious circumstances in the first week of January 2018.


Nirav Modi has already been declared as an FEO by the special court. He has been lodged in jail in London since 2019.

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