Category Archives: Centre watch

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Government, Law

Updated: Crazy internet censorship time in India, again

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Update: Please see bottom of the post for several updates.

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“Shivam!” Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama called this morning. “It’s 2006 all over again. They’ve blocked Typepad.” I instantly knew what this meant. They’ve done this at least twice before, the fellas at CERT-IN. In 2003, 2006 and now 2011.

Typepad.com is a blogging service, much like Google Blogger (Blogspot.com) or WordPress.com that this site, Kafila.org runs on. Now. Airtel users who go to Typepad.com find this:

Users of most ISPs can see this, but government-owned MTNL has ironically not caught up :) Continue reading Updated: Crazy internet censorship time in India, again →

Centre watch, Excavation, Government, Law, Violence/Conflict

You Fill in the Rest: Dilip D’Souza on the Godhra verdict

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Guest post by DILIP D’SOUZA

Here’s a crime: February 27 2002, 59 people killed when a train is set on fire in Godhra. 90+ people are arrested and accused of the slaughter. Bail is denied to them all. The trial takes nine years, the trial verdict acquits 63 of them, finds the other 31 guilty. The judge sentences 11 of those 31 to death, the other 20 to life in prison.

Here’s another crime: February 28 2002 (the next day), 69 people killed when a building called Gulberg Society is set on fire and its residents attacked in Ahmedabad.

You fill in the rest. How many arrested and accused of this slaughter? How many denied bail? How long does the trial take? How many are acquitted? How many are found guilty? How many are sentenced to anything at all? Continue reading You Fill in the Rest: Dilip D’Souza on the Godhra verdict →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Violence/Conflict

Sopore sisters, in death and life: Nawaz Gul Qanungo

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Guest post by NAWAZ GUL QANUNGO

In the May of 2006, Praveen “Five Police Station” Swami wrote in Frontline: ““Long live Pakistan,” chanted the hundreds of young men who, armed with axes and crowbars, had gathered to demolish Sabina Hamid Bulla’s home in downtown Srinagar on May 5. “We want freedom!” … Last month, residents of Srinagar complained to the police about two 30-second pornographic video clips that had been circulating through mobile phones. A 16-year old girl was then detained, who said she had been recruited by a prostitution ring run by Bulla. In an unsigned statement to the police, the girl said Bulla, to whom she is related, supplied her with drugs and cash for having sex with two State Ministers, a Border Security Force officer, 10 policemen and several well-known businessmen. … As thing stand, though, the Central Bureau of Investigation – which was, notably, given charge of the case before the protests began – has an enormous mission before it. First, it will have to persuade the girl, who was married off in April with some financial assistance from Bulla, to make a formal statement before a magistrate. Then, corroboration will have to be found to back the charges she has made – no small task, given the influence of the men who now face charges of rape.” [Frontline, May 20 – June 2, 2006.]  Continue reading Sopore sisters, in death and life: Nawaz Gul Qanungo →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Government

The myth of India’s Hajj subsidy: Muhammad Farooq

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Guest post by MUHAMMAD FAROOQ

Recently the Supreme Court of India upheld the constitutional validity of extending subsidy on air fare to the Hajj Pilgrims. This year Rs.280 Crores were reportedly spent by the Government of India to subsidise the air fare of one lakh pilgrims. This amounts to a subsidy of Rs.28000/- per pilgrim. The subsidy provided to the pilgrims has understandably generated a lot of debate within political and social circles in India. While the right wing political parties, when not in power, consider it as an unnecessary appeasement of Indian Muslims, the governments formed by any party have always seen it as a necessary expenditure to help Muslims perform their religious obligation of Hajj.

Since I have also performed my Hajj this year, I decided to do some quick calculations to check the veracity of the tall claims made by the GoI and the Hajj Committee regarding the subsidy amount (see box). The results were quite shocking. I checked with one of the service providers —‘makemytrip.com’— and it showed up the Saudi Airline’s fare of a little over Rs.26000/- for a return Delhi-Jeddah ticket with a gap of around forty days. It was amazing to find that the total airfare of Rs.26,000 for a hajj pilgrimage is even lower than the subsidy amount  of Rs.28,000 thousand which is allegedly paid by GoI to airlines to subsidise the “high cost” of the air tickets. Continue reading The myth of India’s Hajj subsidy: Muhammad Farooq →

Centre watch, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Talking to ULFA: Assam’s Peace Myths and Reality: Tanmoy Sharma

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Guest post by TANMOY SHARMA

Last week, when an eight member delegation of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) returned to Guwahati after the first round of peace-talks with the central government in New Delhi, the response in Assam is a mixed bag of emotions. Arabinda Rajkhowa, the ULFA chairman who led the delegation, while addressing the press, said that they had been assured of an honourable solution to the three decade long Assam conflict by the Prime Minister.  Earlier, on 10th February the ULFA made history by coming to the talks table in New Delhi for the first time with no firm pre set conditions on its agenda.  It is understood as of now, that no substantial talks would begin before the Assam assembly elections which are expected to be held in April-May this year.  However  this ‘familiarisation exercise’ of the centre with one of India’s most influential and violent separatist outfits at such a crucial time is a hugely significant move in contemporary history of  the insurgency-hit election bound Assam. Continue reading Talking to ULFA: Assam’s Peace Myths and Reality: Tanmoy Sharma →

Capitalism, Centre watch, Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Everyday Life, Movements, Politics

Anbulla kaadu (My beloved forest): Madhumita Dutta

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Thervoy Kandigai Industrial Complex. The Government issued orders alienating 1127 acres of poramboke land in favour of SIPCOT for formation of a new Industrial Complex in Thervoy Kandigai village of Gummidipoondi Taluk, Thiruvallur District. The land development work is in progress now.

From the website of Industries Department, Government of Tamil Nadu

What this “land development work” involves, and the price that will be paid in human and ecological costs is something that MADHUMITA DUTTA encountered recently.

“A forest that was once ours is now private, a land that was once green now stands barren, a forest where we played, where we wandered freely is now fenced, men in uniform now guard the forest which we protected for generations.”

Thervoy Kandigai. A small nondescript village in Gummidipoondi Taluk of Thiruvallur district, 50 kms north of Chennai.  Surrounded by dense shrubby forests, natural lakes, rice fields and undulating terrain with misty mountain range of Sathyavedu in Andhra as the back drop. This small dalit village of about 1000 families is in the eye of a storm.  A storm that can blow away the dreams of Tamil Nadu government to hand over hundreds of acres of land to French tyre company Michelin, a big ticketed investment worth Rs 4000 crore for the state.   Continue reading Anbulla kaadu (My beloved forest): Madhumita Dutta →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Government, Identities, Technology

On the fuzziness of Personal Identity: UIDAI and the national identity card of India: Taha Mehmood

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Guest post by TAHA MEHMOOD

I – The spread of Identity cards in Southasia:

An identity card virus seems to be spreading across south-Asia. The pathogen emerged long ago in 1971, when Pakistan established a paper based personal identity system. !971 was also the year when Pakistan was engaged with India in a military conflict which led to the creation of Bangladesh. In 1972, a year later, the Department of Registrations of Persons located at Colombo, Sri Lanka, was entrusted with the responsibility of issuing a national identity to citizens who were over sixteen years of age. In 1972 the name of the island was changed from Ceylon to Sri Lanka and Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran formed the Tamil New Tigers (TNT), which later became LTTE or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The state of Sri Lanka was at war with LTTE for the next three decades. Nothing new happened on the national identity card front for the next two decades. Continue reading On the fuzziness of Personal Identity: UIDAI and the national identity card of India: Taha Mehmood →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Excavation, Law

Ravinder Tyagi of Batla House (in)fame in yet another frame up!: JTSA

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This release comes from the JAMIA TEACHERS’ SOLIDARITY ASSOCIATION

10th February 2011

Ravinder Tyagi of Batla House (in)fame in yet another frame up!

Veteran of fake encounters must be suspended immediately!

It seems there is no end to Special Cell’s gallantry. One of its most celebrated and decorated heroes, Ravinder Tyagi, also the key architect of the Batla House ‘encounter’ has been found guilty of yet another frame-up of innocents as terrorists. The additional sessions judge Virendra Bhat yesterday absolved and acquitted seven men accused of terrorism in a case dating back to 2005; while pronouncing four officers of the Delhi Police guilty of manufacturing a fake story about an ‘encounter’. The Police had claimed to have recovered AK-47 assault rifles, fake currency and ammunition from the men they claimed were ISI agents—a brazenly false claim. Continue reading Ravinder Tyagi of Batla House (in)fame in yet another frame up!: JTSA →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Law

Md. Salman discharged from the 2008 Delhi Blasts Case

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Release from the JAMIA TEACHERS’ SOLIDARITY ASSOCIATION
5th February 2011

Show me the evidence, says Judge
The Prosecution is able to produce none!
Md. Salman discharged from the 2008 Delhi Blasts Case!

Md. Salman, arrested by the Uttar Pradesh ATS from Siddharthnagar on 6 March 2010, was accused of being a conspirator in the 2008 Delhi blasts. Today (5th February 2011), additional sessions Judge Ms. Santosh Snehi Mann threw out all charges against him— at the point of charge—in all five cases in Delhi bomb blasts for lack of any evidence that could prove that he had conspired to bomb various places in Delhi in 2008. Continue reading Md. Salman discharged from the 2008 Delhi Blasts Case →

Centre watch, Images, Movements

More photos from the Free Binayak Sen rally, Delhi, 30 January 2011

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Photographs by Koyel Lahiri, Antara Rai Chowdhury, Anil Tharayath, Joe Athialy and Amrita.

Some photographs post here, earlier.

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Centre watch, Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Empire/ Imperialism, Movements

Niyamgiri, You Are Still Alive

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This 17 minutes long film won the Vasudha, Environment Award at the International Film Festival of India in Goa, 2010.

Centre watch, Identities, Law, Left watch, Media politics, Politics, Right watch

Un-Indianizing Kerala: How to defend K K Shahina

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Like the unseasonal and tenebrous rain clouds that are hovering over Thiruvananthapuram in what should be a sunny, light-mist-adorned January, a pall of gloom, of impending danger, hangs around my everyday life in Kerala. This is not a general feeling. It is however shared by many of us who write and speak critically about the powers that be. The space to speak and write thus has been shrinking for a while now, but now there is a sense of dangerously teetering on the edge: the Indian state seems to be upon us, and with a vengeance. Continue reading Un-Indianizing Kerala: How to defend K K Shahina →

Centre watch, Empire/ Imperialism, Excavation, Frontiers, Government, Law, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Is the cat out of the bag?

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Veteran journalist Coomi Kapoor wrote this small snippet in the Indian Express yesterday. Hope it is only the beginning of more information on what this country’s intelligence agencies have been up to in the name of its citizens.

Centre watch, Law

Look who has faith in the judiciary!: Mahtab Alam

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Guest post by MAHTAB ALAM

Ilina Sen, wife of the human rights’ activist and people’s doctor, Binayak Sen, reacting over the judgment, which gave life imprisonment to Dr. Sen said, “My faith in the judiciary has been shattered”. “I am in a state of complete shock…in our stupidity we believed the judicial process would be fair,” she told media persons at a press conference in Delhi. Continue reading Look who has faith in the judiciary!: Mahtab Alam →

Capitalism, Centre watch, Everyday Life, Government, Law

Democracy and the Politics Around NREGA: Ruchi Gupta

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Guest post by RUCHI GUPTA

Subverting Democracy [1]

It took 47 days of a protest sit-in in Jaipur to make the State budge[2]. It’s notable that the objective of this protracted protest wasn’t to coerce the government for an extra share of State resources but to hold the government accountable to the Constitution and its own laws. The protest, “mazdoor haq satyagraha” was staged by workers employed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to demand enforcement of their constitutional right to earn minimum wage. Even now after some initial encouraging signs, the matter seems to have stalled. Continue reading Democracy and the Politics Around NREGA: Ruchi Gupta →

Centre watch, Law, Media politics, Right watch

Swami Aseemanand’s Confessions: It’s time for an apology?: JTSA

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This note comes from the JAMIA TEACHERS’ SOLIDARITY ASSOCIATION

Swami Aseemanand

Swami Aseemanand’s confession before the metropolitan magistrate of Tees Hazari Court has finally put the seal of legal validity over what had been circulating for months now, since the surfacing of the audio tapes seized from Dayanand Pande’s laptop. That Hindutva groups had been plotting and executing a series of bomb blasts across the country—including Malegaon (2006 and 08), Samjhauta Express (2007), Ajmer Sharif (2007) and Mecca Masjid (2007).

For the past several years however, dozens of Muslim youth have been picked up, detained, tortured, chargesheeted for these blasts—with clearly no evidence, except for custodial confessions (which unlike Swami’s confessions have no legal value). Report after report has proved that the Maharashtra and Andhra police willfully refused to pursue the Hindutva angle preferring to engage in communal witch-hunt—or as in the case of Nanded blast—where the evidence was so glaring as to be unimpeachable—weakening the prosecution of these elements.

Continue reading Swami Aseemanand’s Confessions: It’s time for an apology?: JTSA →

Centre watch, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Violence/Conflict

Anees Ahmed Ganai, 17

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And that’s only one of 115, only from one year of many years.

Centre watch, Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life, Violence/Conflict

Irom Sharmila is in love

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…which in these dark times is so life-affirming:

I can spot a Khushwant Singh, a Khalil Gibran and a Chetan Bhagat in the pile of books. “Most of these books have been gifted to me by my lover,” she says. This is the first I’ve heard of a man in her life. I hesitate, but Sharmila is clearly keen to talk about him. A Britisher based in Kerala, he got to know about Sharmila after he read Burning Bright, a 2009 book on the Manipuri struggle written by Deepti Priya Mehrotra and published by Penguin. “He wrote me a letter after he read the book. We have been exchanging letters since then,” she says shyly. Continue reading Irom Sharmila is in love →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Law, Violence/Conflict

The Logical Urges of Sedition

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[An edited version of this article by me has appeared in the November-December 2010 issue of Conveyor, a magazine published from Srinagar.]

On 22 October 2010, there was a public seminar in Delhi, titled “Azadi: The Only Way”. I did not plan to attend it as I had important work that day. However, a day before the event, it was announced that the keynote speaker would be none other than Syed Ali Shah Geelani. How could one not go to hear what the man of the moment had to say?

I reached late, when two speakers had already spoken, Kashmiri Pandits had already created a scene, even getting into a physical fight with some Kashmiri Muslims. As I entered the precincts of the Little Theatre Group auditorium, I met Delhi University student Suvaid Yaseen who showed me a small cut in his hand, caused by the fisticuffs with the Pandits. Some of the Pandits had been taken away by the Delhi Police and detained for a few hours, many others still inside the auditorium. The auditorium was full of cries of “Hum kya chahtay? Azadi!” To hear that in central Delhi rather than Srinagar’s Lal Chowk is a little incredible. But it had happened before, on 7 August, at Jantar Mantar, the only place in the capital of the world’s largest democracy where protest is allowed. At Jantar Mantar too, Pandits were being restrained by the Delhi Police. Continue reading The Logical Urges of Sedition →

Centre watch, Government, Law, Violence/Conflict

A Case of Conscience: Shiv Viswanathan writes to Manmohan Singh on the conviction of Binayak Sen

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This open letter by SHIV VISWANATHAN has been circulated by Communalism Combat

Dear Professor Manmohan Singh,

I hope you don’t mind the temerity of this letter. It is written as one scholar to another, one citizen to another. I know you are a PM and people like me may not be influential. However some things must be said and said clearly.

I was aghast to find that Doctor Binayak Sen has been given a life term for sedition. Let me put it simply. I think it is an appalling act of injustice and a betrayal of an ethical vision.  Continue reading A Case of Conscience: Shiv Viswanathan writes to Manmohan Singh on the conviction of Binayak Sen →

Centre watch, Law, Politics, Violence/Conflict

A Critique of Binayak Sen’s Judgment

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This note critiquing the judgement that setences Binayak Sen for life has been written by ILINIA SEN, SUDHA BHARADWAJ and KAVITA SRIVASTAVA

Raipur, 26 December, 2010

As you are aware the Second Additional District and Sessions Judge of Raipur Sh. B. P. Verma convicted Binayak Sen, Pijush Guha and Narayan Sanyal for rigorous life imprisonment on the 24 December, 2010. A ninety two page judgement was delivered by Judge BP Verma on the 24 December, 2010. What follows is a quick analysis of the facts of the case and the judgement that has finally been delivered. Continue reading A Critique of Binayak Sen’s Judgment →