All posts by Nivedita Menon

Culture, Identities, Politics, Right watch

Ambedkar’s Ideology – Religious Nationalism and Indian Constitution: Ram Puniyani  

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Guest Post by RAM PUNYANI

In order to gain larger legitimacy, RSS has been making claims of sorts. One of that which was made few months back was that Gandhi was impressed by functioning of RSS. Now on the heels of that comes another distortion that Ambedkar believed in Sangh ideology (Feb 15, 2015). This was stated recently by RSS Sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat. There cannot be bigger contrasts between the ideology of Ambedkar and RSS. Ambedkar was for Indian Nationalism, Secularism and social justice while the RSS ideology is based on two major pillars. One is the Brahmanic interpretation of Hinduism and second is the concept of Hindu nationalism, Hindu Rashtra.

Where does Ambedkar stand as for as ideology of Hinduism is concerned? He called Hinduism as Brahminic theology. We also understand that Brahmanism has been the dominant tendency within Hinduism. He realized that this prevalent version of Hinduism is essentially a caste system, which is the biggest tormentor of untouchables-dalits.

Continue reading Ambedkar’s Ideology – Religious Nationalism and Indian Constitution: Ram Puniyani   →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Education, Right watch

Ban-man on the prowl again: Malvika Sharad

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Guest Post by MALVIKA SHARAD on the recent call by Delhi University Students’ Union for a ban on the street play by Khalsa College theatre group, Ankur.

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Image courtesy rediff.com

One evening in 2013, a group of ‘street play seniors’ as we call them, visited us in the front lawns of my college, Lady Shri Ram College for Women. They were from various colleges across DU who had been actively involved in street theatre, and had been invited to give the newly formed street play team of that year, an introduction to the art form. Among those seniors was a dynamic young chap from Khalsa College, who reiterated several times that street theatre fills you with such immense courage that you end up doing things you never thought you would, for that courage comes from the sheer truth and brutal honesty that street theatre is based upon. He said that freedom of expression is taken to a whole new level when you perform amidst crowds, and state the truth looking directly into their eyes. A fire is born within you that cannot be extinguished, it burns brighter with every performance of the play. You become fearless in voicing your opinions and thoughts, so fearless that you don’t even realize how far you have pushed your own limits and emerged triumphant.

After a whole year dedicated to doing street plays in Delhi, I have learnt how right he was, that young student not much older than us. I find I have come out of my shell, shedding my inhibitions at a pace and scale I had never imagined. Torn chappals don’t bother me anymore, my sun-burned skin makes me look beautiful, I don’t flinch with embarrassment while sitting, sometimes lying, on the floor of the metro station out of sheer weariness, though co passengers stare at me with judgemental eyes, I can’t bring myself to stop romanticizing the mud and the dirt that hug me every time I wear my soiled street play kurta… But above all, I can articulate my thoughts properly now, I am not scared of speaking in public unlike the times when I was a meek docile person, cocooned in the comforts of home and parental pampering. I owe this change in my attitude and personality to street theatre, which taught me what it is to live confidently and fearlessly.

Continue reading Ban-man on the prowl again: Malvika Sharad →

Culture, Debates, Right watch

People’s Union for Democratic Rights Condemns Bans on Cow Slaughter

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Statement by People’s Union for Democratic Rights 
On March 16th 2015, the Haryana Government unanimously passed Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Bill with main opposition parties INLD and Congress supporting the Bill. The new bill passed by the Haryana Government bans cow slaughter and sale of beef and imposes a punishment of rigorous imprisonment of not less than three years extending up to 10 years and fines ranging from Rs. 30,000 to Rs. one lakh. The Haryana Government’s move comes just days after the President’s assent to Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill 1995 early this month. Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill 1995 not only banned beef but also extended the prohibition to slaughter of bulls and oxen. There was already a ban on slaughter of cows in Maharashtra since 1976.  The new amended act imposes a fine of Rs. 10,000 and a maximum prison term of five years for selling or even possessing beef.
What needs to be underlined here is that these bans on cow slaughter are not new; they were in existence in many of the states for many-many years. For example in Delhi, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, slaughter of cows and calves is totally prohibited. In Goa and Andhra Pradesh, ‘cow’ is defined to include heifer, or a male or female calf of a cow under the Goa, Daman and Diu Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act 1978 and Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Cow Slaughter and Animal Preservation Act 1977, respectively. In some states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Madhya Pradesh slaughter of bulls, bullocks and adult buffalos is permitted on ‘fit for slaughter’ certificate if the cattle is over 12 or 15 years of age, is not likely to become economical for draught, breeding or milk. Assam and West Bengal provides for slaughter of all cattle which includes bull, bullocks, calves, cows and buffalo on ‘fit for slaughter’ certificate. Meghalaya and Nagaland have no legislation to this effect.

Continue reading People’s Union for Democratic Rights Condemns Bans on Cow Slaughter →

Bad ideas

Tribute to Tahira Mazhar Ali: Kavita Panjabi

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Guest Post by KAVITA PANJABI

Kavita Panjabi honours the memory of a South Asian feminist from Pakistan who effortlessly produced an ” ‘us’ across generations, contexts and movements”, an ‘us’ across “Kolkata, Dhaka and Delhi, Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi.”

Begum Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan

Just read about Tahira Mazhar Ali passing away, feeling really sad, hence this short piece.

I met her only thrice, and it was like I carried her within me all these years.

The first time was in 2001 at a seminar organized by ASR in Lahore on the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bangladesh. She came up to chat after my presentation on the Mahila Atma Raksha Samity (MARS) and the Tebhaga women’s movement, excited. It had taken her on a nostalgia trip, and she said she remembered the MARS on a collection drive for the Bengal Famine in Lahore too; many, including she, had taken off the gold bangles they were wearing and contributed on the spot.  Continue reading Tribute to Tahira Mazhar Ali: Kavita Panjabi →

Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Justice for Hashimpura!

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hashmipura killing Poster (1)

Left watch, Politics

Remembering Nishith Bhattacharya, unsung revolutionary hero: Basu Acharya

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Guest pots by BASU ACHARYA

The morning of February 15th this year was exceptionally grim. The sun looked pale, its rays mangled, as if somebody had scratched its face with a scalpel blade of tempered steel. Ramakrishna Naskar lane, an obscure by-lane in Beleghata area of Kolkata, was suddenly bustling with unusual activity. A number of people, quite a few in fact, irrespective of the nature of the red flags they carry, had gathered before a modest dwelling; assembled to bid adieu (with clenched fists and the ‘Internationale’ on their lips) to an old man, an octogenarian, wrapped in a crimson cloth with a crossed hammer and sickle in white. Prof. NB, our very own Nishith-da, Comrade Nishith Bhattacharya was no more. Leaving his mortal remains for the pyre to consume and his comrades to weep over, he had left for the final voyage—journey ‘to the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’.

My association with Nishith-da dates back to the early years of the past decade when India, like many other ‘developing countries’ of the world, was passing through the initial days of the second information revolution. I, then an activist of a tiny student-youth organisation, met him on the book-fair ground at Maidan and asked scores of questions about Naxalbari and related topics. Most surprisingly, he, without a slightest mark of impatience on his face, answered each question with brutal accuracy and won my heart. From then onwards I was his admirer, also his disciple, who could even dispose of his own thumb—if asked. There are so many fond memories such as this, and as I scribble this piece, old thoughts crowd my mind and the panorama of our decade-long association appear before my eyes. But honestly speaking, it will be absolutely criminal if we limit a man of Nishith-da’s stature to any personal reminiscence. Rather, it is better to tell the story of his life and time in considerable length and as dispassionately as possible, for history should be impartial nay objective.

Continue reading Remembering Nishith Bhattacharya, unsung revolutionary hero: Basu Acharya →

Bad ideas, Feminism

#PadsAgainstSexism campaign at Jamia Milia, Delhi

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Sanitary pad with message against sexism on Jamia campus

19-year-old Elona Kastrati started the #PadsAgainstSexism campaign in her hometown of Karlsruhe, Germany.

“I thought about how society gets offended by a normal pad. I thought about it so much, the idea came to me to write quotes on them,” she says. So she did.

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Continue reading #PadsAgainstSexism campaign at Jamia Milia, Delhi →

Feminism, Sex

Politicians Say the Darndest Things: The Ladies Finger

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THE LADIES FINGER gives the finger to politicians and their charming attitudes towards women.

Yesterday in Parliament, Sharad Yadav, head of the Janata Dal (United) and member of the Rajya Sabha, tried to prove he was cool. During a debate on the Insurance Bill, he broke off to talk about south Indian women. What this had to do with the matter at hand is questionable, but here’s what the Indian Express reported from Parliament:

The women of the south are dark but they are… their bodies…”
At this point members sitting around him tried to bring him back to the topic at hand with cries of “Sharadji Bill”. But, Yadav was not finished yet and talked about the “dancing skills” of south India women.

Soon, Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’Brien frantically waved at Yadav to stop.

Want to bet that when he spoke of “dancing skills”, this is what he had in mind?

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But it didn’t end there.

Read the rest of this devastating take down at The Ladies Finger.

Feminism

Paying tribute to Meera Kosambi: Uma Chakravarty

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Image courtesy Permanent Black

Meera Kosambi, best known for her scholarship on Pandita Ramabai, passed away at the end of February. Uma Chakravarty, feminist historian, writes on FeministsIndia about the work of Meeratai, as she sternly admonished me to address her, when I casually called her Meera! I met her only once, a few years ago, and was enthralled through the lovely Maharashtrian dinner she had prepared, by her personal warmth and sharp intellect. ‘I dont like these Western ways of addressing older people’, she had said, ‘We have such lovely words of respect and affection, why not use them?’

Meeratai, you will live through your work. Salaam.

And here is Uma Chakravarty: 

Many years ago, before Meera Kosambi began to write on women in 19th Century Western India, a region that I wrote on in my work on Pandita Ramabai, the only Kosambi on my intellectual horizon was D.D. Kosambi, her father, who towered over the history writing scene.

So it was not surprising that when I first met her sometime in the 1990s, a lot of our conversation was about her father and also about her grandfather Dharmanand Kosambi because of my interest in Buddhism. Belonging to such an illustrious family it would have been difficult to carve a distinctive space for herself as Meera Kosambi certainly did.

Read the rest of this tribute here.

Debates, Feminism, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Indian feminists, ‘India’s daughter’, and sexual violence: The issues at stake*

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Today, on International Women’s Day I am proud to acknowledge the deeply contested terrain that we call feminism in India, in which no claim goes unchallenged, no issue is undisputed (and some might say, no good deed goes unpunished!) In which over the decades, every stand and every understanding on practically every issue, has been painfully rethought and reformulated in the face of intense questioning from newer claims and voices.

In the clamour of feminist responses both to Leslee Udwin’s documentary ‘India’s Daughter’, as well  as to the Indian state’s crackdown on it, some themes have emerged that reflect profound fault lines in our (feminist) understanding – not so much of sexual violence itself – but of what to do about it; how to act upon the knowledge of widespread misogyny and pervasive masculinist violence; how to acknowledge that sexual violence cannot be understood except as refracted through prisms of caste, class, Indian state militarism and… a list that will inevitably end in ‘etc’ regardless of how long it is; and in this particular case, above all, what sorts of representations of sex and sexual violence will further our ethical ambitions, and what others will undo decades of work.

In what follows, I will try to uncover some of these themes, on the explicit understanding that I do not claim to have resolved any of the debates, nor even to have highlighted all of them. This is a partial, personal attempt to make sense of the recurring ideas in a tumult of intelligent, concerned and strongly articulated opinions, in the course of which I will of course, make my own views explicit too.

First, perhaps I should state immediately that I saw ‘India’s Daughter’ and liked it very much. This is just to get it out of the way, because my opinion on the film is irrelevant to my belief that freedom of speech and expression ought to be a value that feminists defend at all costs. I did not hold such a strong view on freedom of expression in an earlier decade, but I do now, at the beginning of the 21st century, when it has become increasingly clear that the silencing of uncomfortable voices, even unto murder, has become the preferred mode of snuffing out debate globally.

Continue reading Indian feminists, ‘India’s daughter’, and sexual violence: The issues at stake* →

Bad ideas, Mirror Worlds

The only New York we see: Juhi Tyagi and Karn Kowshik

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Guest Post by JUHI TYAGI AND KARN KOWSHIK

When most tourists visit New York City, what they see is the New York that you see on TV – Times Square, Carnegie Hall, a Broadway Show and maybe a visit to the Legendary Soup Nazi. Our view of the City, though, was vastly different. As one of the authors visited New York for the first time, in the wake of cop killings of young black men in Ferguson, Staten Island and East NY, what we saw was the transformation of neighbourhoods into armed police camps, and a city torn by sharp racial divide.

Maybe our experience of New York was coloured by where we lived and spent most of our time. A tiny apartment on the same street as the 79th Precinct in Brooklyn; not far from where two NYPD officers were shot dead by a mentally unstable man in December 2014. In many of these neighbourhoods, the first piece of advice you got wasn’t about the coolest neighbourhood bar. It was: “On the streets, don’t run, don’t make sudden movements. If a cop stops you, keep your hands out of your pockets and don’t talk back. You don’t want to get shot.”

Continue reading The only New York we see: Juhi Tyagi and Karn Kowshik →

Capitalism, Centre watch, Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Violence/Conflict

The Land Ordinance (now Bill) is Bringing Back the Colonial Legacy: NAPM

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Statement from National Alliance of People’s Movements

The Real Battle is between Farmers and Land Grabbing Corporates and BJP, not between Bharat and Pakistan!

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Protest Against Land Ordinance, February 2015 Delhi

Image courtesy Joe Athialy

Forcible land acquisition has always been an issue of life and death for millions of people in India, not only farmers but also agricultural laborers and fish workers. With the Land Ordinance it has become a political hot potato. More than 350 people’s organizations gathered at Parliament Street on February 24th, with 25,000 people from Gujarat to Orissa to Assam, and from Himachal Pradesh to Tamil Nadu and Kerala. This show of strength has forced the political parties to take a stand on the issue, leading to heated debates and discussion on the floor of the Parliament. The Ordinance, now Bill, reflects the anti-farmer and anti-poor move of un-democratically amending the 2013 Act on Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation, killing its very spirit and purpose.

The Ordinance brought in by the NDA government just after the Winter session of the Parliament came to an end was an obvious imposition on the country’s common people, of the colonial legacy of a perverted vision of development through an unjust and undemocratic modus operandi. The Ordinance is an attempt to open up the land that is the life support, source of livelihood and shelter for India’s toiling masses, to wealthy investors, including big corporations and builders. Its intention is to forcibly divert India’s agricultural land at the cost of food security, giving a free hand with no ceiling to the private companies as well as private entities i.e. private trusts and expensive profit-making educational and health institutions. The intention is to benefit private interests in the name of public interest.
 Continue reading The Land Ordinance (now Bill) is Bringing Back the Colonial Legacy: NAPM →

Capitalism, Countryside, Politics

Massive protests against Land Acquisition Ordinance at Jantar Mantar

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For updates on the protest, visit Abki Baar Humara Adhikar

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Images courtesy Abki Baar Humara Adhikar

Everyday Life, Government, Law, Politics

Bus Porters’ Petition for Aadhaar – A Political Analysis: Tarangini Sriraman

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Guest post by TARANGINI SRIRAMAN

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Porters at ISBT  (Image courtesy DNA)

Barely six years into its introduction, the Aadhaar project, otherwise known as the Unique Identification (UID) project has been studied and critiqued extensively – its promises to strengthen welfare delivery, curb corruption, exorcise ghost beneficiaries from government databases, initiate financial inclusion and enhance intra-governmental coordination have been enthusiastically received in certain corporate and technocratic circles and skeptically, if not scathingly viewed in other academic and journalistic quarters. The liberties this far-advanced project has taken with individuals’ privacy and its failure to acquire a statutory basis (even as enrollment drives continue unabated) have justly attracted severe censure. And until recently, the surreptitiously mandatory nature of the project – where welfare entitlements were linked to the possession of numbers – was cause for alarm. The Supreme Court judgment in 2013 challenging this mandatory linkage between Aadhaar and subsidies/entitlements may have slowed down processes of the number’s proliferation as an exclusive proof.

However, since the new government at the Centre took over, newer uses and linkages are being imagined. How indispensable the Aadhaar will be to such schemes and entitlements only time can tell: cases in point the Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY) and the linkage of the Aadhaar with the passport. As new linkages appear in place of the old, the new government is urging all of us to walk boldly into the embrace of biometric identification that will, to a certain extent, at least, pervade public transactions (for some) and their very socio-economic chances of welfare support (for most others).  It was against this conceptual and empirical backdrop (so competently elucidated by the various scholars, lawyers and journalists following this project) that I decided, as part of my work on a larger book project, to speak with a migrant community in Delhi about their Aadhaar-related experiences – did they wish to get these numbers, if so why?

For these purposes, I picked a community of bus coolies or porters in North Delhi most of whom were migrants from different parts of the country and who stayed in a makeshift residence on the premises of the bus terminal. Continue reading Bus Porters’ Petition for Aadhaar – A Political Analysis: Tarangini Sriraman →

Debates, Law

The Genealogy of the Secular Discourse of Bangladesh – A Second Reading to Bangladesh History: Mubashar Hasan

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Guest Post by MUBASHAR HASAN

Even though, according to a series of Gallup and Pew Research polls, Bangladeshi society is now perhaps most illiberal in its history of existence, most informed readers know that a strong secular discourse led by a group of academics, creative writers and artists still continues to flourish and resisting the illiberalism to be the main discourse of the country.

After the independence, the 1972 constitution of the country have endorsed secularism, socialism and democracy as key founding principles among others. However, it is unclear to me as a Bangladeshi who is in his thirties whether these principles were propounded within the constitution with mass support or influential elite intellectuals who were close to the power-base asserted these values because they had the luxury to construct Bangladesh in paper the way they wanted to. May be the latter is true. If secularism was a value held close to the hearts of Bangladeshi masses, it does not make sense now why there is a huge mass support-base for the center-right party Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) or the growing shift to Islam by the ruling Awami League (AL).

In this article, I want to revisit the role of a group of intellectuals who were instrumental in shaping a secular discourse for Bangladesh when Bangladesh was known as the East Pakistan. I call my approach as a second reading to Bangladesh history simply because I haven’t come across any narratives that looks into the thought process of the key constructors of secular discourse in Bangladesh. In this lieu, I shall try to point out to the motivational forces of key actors behind the secular discourse of Bangladesh.  Continue reading The Genealogy of the Secular Discourse of Bangladesh – A Second Reading to Bangladesh History: Mubashar Hasan →

Capitalism, Government, Politics, Violence/Conflict

War and the Lightness of Being Adivasi – Security camps and villages in Bijapur, Chhattisgarh: PUDR

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Report produced by PEOPLE’S UNION FOR DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS

Between December 26th and 31st 2014, a PUDR fact-finding team visited 9 villages of Bijapur district, Chhattisgarh to ascertain reports of arrests, intimidation and harassment, including sexual abuse by security forces who are stationed there to fight the Maoists. Predominantly Adivasi villages, the residents of Basaguda, Kottaguda, Pusbaka, Lingagiri, Rajpeta, Timmapur, Kottagudem, Korsaguda and Sarkeguda, narrated the daily acts of violence and violations committed by armed personnel residing in security camps. Apart from documenting the continuance of ‘area domination’ by the security forces, the report draws particular attention to:

  1. The large number of ‘permanent warrants’ issued against the populace, of which a significant number is declared as ‘absconders’. A rough estimate indicates that as many as 15-35,000 people live under the threat and fear of these warrants in Bijapur alone.
  2. The lawless conduct of the armed personnel and Special Police Officers (SPOs) who routinely raid, beat, loot, detain and compel the Adivasi villagers to perform ‘begar’ (free labour) at the security camps. Instances of sexual torture were also noted.
  3. The impossibility of lodging FIRs against the security forces as against the rising number of arrests of villagers who languish in jails. Continue reading War and the Lightness of Being Adivasi – Security camps and villages in Bijapur, Chhattisgarh: PUDR →
Everyday Life, Violence/Conflict

Rohtak Gang Rape Reveals the Attitudinal Differences Disabled Face in India: Rupande Mehta

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Guest Post by RUPANDE MEHTA

By now it is all beginning to sound very familiar: A woman gang raped, her vital organs missing, stones and blades found in her stomach, other objects found in her anus and vagina and the doctor conducting the post mortem stating it was the most horrific case of his life. This case, however, has one additional parameter – the woman raped and killed was mentally challenged and being treated for her condition at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak, Haryana.

There is conflicting information on the mental condition of the woman raped and killed. While some reports state she was suffering mental retardation, others state her as condition as being psychiatric. Never mind that mental retardation is untreatable but the contradiction in reporting highlights a fact we all know – how widely misunderstood mental illness really is.

Mental illness is the most undertreated of all diseases around the world. There is an unspoken stigma around it and most sufferers usually do not want to talk about their “condition.” We have a difficult time grasping its severity and hence victims usually quietly suffer on their own until the situation often gets very serious. Many famous people have suffered mental illness and it has taken many of them years to come out and acknowledge their suffering. Few of them have fallen to their disease, the most notable recent case being that of Robin Williams who suffered from extreme depression. Other personalities who suffered mental illness include: Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of UK, Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, Beethoven, musical genius, Diana, Princess of Wales who suffered from bulimia, an eating disorder, and depression. Mental illness is the most unrecognized and, perhaps, one of the most damning diseases.

Continue reading Rohtak Gang Rape Reveals the Attitudinal Differences Disabled Face in India: Rupande Mehta →

Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Feminism

Shuddhikaran of Hindu Mahasabha by Lovers of Love in Delhi

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Well, they tried, and more power to them.

A shuddhikaran of that hate-filled, divisive, toxic organization (and others of the Hindutva brigade) would have considerably reduced pollution in the only vasudha we have, which is our kutumb, but the attempt was foiled by a compliant Delhi Police. However, Parliament Street Police Station was very shuddh indeed by the end of the day, its noxious atmosphere cleansed by the cosmic vibrations of music, dance and “marriages” among all sorts of human beings.

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Mehndi ceremony inside parliament Street Police Station

Image courtesy feminisminindia.com

This hilarious subversion of the idea of marriage, with which Hindu Mahasabha threatened lovers, is in fact a deeply political gesture against the institution of patriarchal, heterosexual marriage with all its violent hierarchies of age and gender, in which disobedient women and younger people are in the custody, much like prisoners in jail, of the patriarchs of the family, which include compliant women. There are no honour killings – these are custodial deaths, when families violently separate couples who chose to marry outside their caste or religious community, often killing one or both of them.

Continue reading Shuddhikaran of Hindu Mahasabha by Lovers of Love in Delhi →

Bad ideas

BJP and Sangh spokespersons reveal real reason for witch hunt against Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand

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[LINK TO SOLIDARITY STATEMENT BELOW]

If you saw the programme on IBN7 last night, vilifying Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, with BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra and Sangh spokesperson Rakesh Sinha at their asabhya virulent best, shouting down and intimidating mild Sandeep Pandey and shouting continuously throughout whatever feisty Priyanka Chaturvedi (Congress spokesperson) had to say (which was hard-hitting and unanswerable), you would know what the case against the two activists is really about.

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Of course, the charges against them are of corruption and embezzling of funds collected for Gujarat riot victims, but when Priyanka Chaturvedi pointed out that the case against them is dubious because Gujarat police and judiciary are not exactly exemplars of probity, given the assiduous stalking carried out by the Gujarat police on behalf of Modi’s man, of a young woman (whose family was paid off/ intimidated in classic Hindutva style, ending in the woman claiming gratitude for being stalked) they had no answer. (She could have added the blatant miscarriages of justice in cases of fake encounters and the Ishrat Jahan killing.) Continue reading BJP and Sangh spokespersons reveal real reason for witch hunt against Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand →

Bad ideas, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Vandalism – The Perfect Solution To Communalism! Nandini Rao

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Guest Post by  NANDINI RAO

Thank you, unknown-vandals-out-there.

For burning church altars to ashes; for desecrating sacred objects inside houses of worship, for tossing carcasses inside religious places; for converting, de-converting, un-converting or re-converting (as the case may be); for stealing objects from churches that are more valuable to their parishioners for their emotional significance rather than monetary value. For making people ask in hushed tones when and where the next attack is going to take place and what form it will take. For making the pastor conduct midnight mass on Christmas eve outside the church in Delhi, with the faithful offering their prayers in the freezing winter night, simply because they did not have a church to go to.

But most of all, thank you for frightening communities who follow different religions and worship different gods. As for those who do not believe in god or religion, thank you for making them worried about how the social fabric of this country is being pulled apart, thread by thread, through political machinations.

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Because by doing all of the above, the unknown vandals (they are, needless to say, not criminals, just harmless “vandals”) have made people stop in their tracks and think. They have made communities question law enforcement agencies that brush aside fears and doubts and try to minimise the crimes taking place in their houses of worship. They are compelling them to discuss and debate about forced versus consensual conversions to religions of one’s choice. They are making people of all communities and religions realise how they are being pitted against each other and used as pawns in devious political games. They understand that, in the bargain, it is the poor and the marginalised living on daily wages who are being exploited in the worst possible way. People are realising the importance of their vote and of the very real impact they can make and the change they can bring about, with the single act of pressing a button.

Vandalism has made people come together to hold meetings and consultations to chart out a course to resolve the crises. It has made them stand outside their churches on pavements and on roads, demanding justice and accountability from a state and administration that does not seem to be heeding their voices.

And most important of all, vandalism is teaching us (more than political speeches and advertisements) how one needs to keep on asserting till our voices are heard that we are all citizens in a secular, socialist and democratic republic. That as believers and non-believers, we may worship (or not worship) in varied ways and learn from the teachings of one holy book (or a multitude of books and philosophies), but as citizens, our Holy Book is only the Constitution of India and what it has defined for us, as Indians.

Continue reading Vandalism – The Perfect Solution To Communalism! Nandini Rao →

Bad ideas, Feminism, Right watch, Sex

Open Letter to Hindu Mahasabha – we’ll be there on February 14th!

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GET READY TO MARRY! 

To the National President, Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha

Dear Chandra Prakash Ji,

It has come to our notice that  you and your self-appointed brigade of protectors of ‘Bharatiya Sanskriti’ have openly vowed to undertake a massive programme on the 14th of February where you promise to marry off anyone who openly expresses their love, whether on the streets or on Facebook. Since you have taken on this gigantic task of marrying so many people on a single day, we would like you to answer some questions that have ‘unnaturally’ crept into our heads as a result of ‘westernization’.

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Will you marry a boy to a boy he likes, or a girl to a girl?  Will you acknowledge their love for each other, repeal section 377? Or will you send them to jail or Baba Ramdev? Continue reading Open Letter to Hindu Mahasabha – we’ll be there on February 14th! →