Category Archives: Debates

Countryside, Debates, Government, Politics, Right watch

Open Letter to the Prime Minister – Stop the Dilution of MGNREGA

6 Comments

We are publishing below an Open Letter written by concerned citizens to the Prime Minister opposing the dilution of MNREGA

Dear Prime Minister,

We are very disturbed by impending moves of this government to undermine the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the support it provides to crores of vulnerable rural families. We write this letter to seek your immediate assurance that these retrograde, anti-poor and anti-labour measures will be withdrawn, and that every attempt will be made by your government to implement the MGNREGA in its true spirit.

Based on recent public statements from Shri Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Rural Development, and other available information, we learn that the Central Government has initiated the following changes under MGNREGA:

  • Restriction of NREGA to tribal/backward districts of the country through an amendment to the Act.
  • Reduction of the minimum labour-material ratio from the current level of 60:40 to 51:49.
  •  Severely restricting the MGNREGA through a budget squeeze. There have been unprecedented communications by the Central Government to States capping MGNREGA expenditure for the rest of the financial year, undermining the fundamental principle of demand-driven employment.

These changes are inimical to the spirit of the Act and compromise its basic objectives. They will only benefit the contractor class and other middlemen, and severely undermine the employment generating potential of the MGNREGA. The changes are also being undertaken without any public consultation. The MGNREGA was passed unanimously by all parties and all members of Parliament. We fundamentally object to this critical social legislation being undermined through casual use of executive powers and even a parliamentary majority.

The illegal and unwarranted budget squeeze has led to widespread reports of employment rationing and acute delays in wage payments. Even as MGNREGA workers are struggling to be paid for work already done, the Central Government is sending the message that money is going to be further rationed.

The undersigned demand that your Government immediately revoke the above decisions and renounce any dilution of MGNREGA. We urge you to ensure that MGNREGA employment remains a legal right of every rural household across the country and that there is no dilution of any MGNREGA entitlements. The MGNREGA budget should be based on work demand, keeping with the spirit of the act, without any discretionary cuts. Continue reading Open Letter to the Prime Minister – Stop the Dilution of MGNREGA →

Debates, Feminism, Law

A Response to ‘Uniform Civil Code – the women’s movement perspective’: Rohini Hensman

7 Comments

Guest Post by ROHINI HENSMAN

Nivedita has done us all a service in kicking off a wider debate on personal laws than the ones which have been taking place within feminist groups. One of the most important points she makes is that we have correctly moved away from the demand for uniformity. Uniform laws need not be either gender-just or secular, which is what we are aiming for; indeed, patriarchal theocracies have extremely uniform family laws! She has also raised several other questions that need to be discussed. I look at some of them here in the hope of taking the debate forward.

Polygamy: Unless polyandry is also allowed, polygyny is not gender-just, and ought ot be opposed. The fact that the vast majority of Muslim women, who are directly affected by the existence of legally sanctioned polygamy, are opposed to it, makes this an obvious move for feminists. To support polygamy on the grounds that it offers more protection to second or third wives sounds like a perverse argument. If we accept it, we should also be demanding that polygamy be made legal in other personal laws! Second or third wives would surely be better protected by being able to sue their fake husbands for fraud and get hefty damages.

Contractualising all intimate relationships: Although legal recognition of stable non-marital relationships would be desirable, contractualising all intimate relationships may not be such a good idea. Continue reading A Response to ‘Uniform Civil Code – the women’s movement perspective’: Rohini Hensman →

Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Language, Politics, Right watch

On The Real Tragedy of Secular Modernity: Anand Vivek Taneja

11 Comments

This is a guest post by ANAND VIVEK TANEJA

anandpost

In the discussion around Aarti Sethi’s essay on Remembering Maqsood Pardesi some very important questions arose. As these questions are directly relevant to my work, but also to the larger concerns of the Kafila community, I decided to dwell on them at some length. As these reflections were written in response to the comments of one particular person, I address him directly in what follows below.

Dear Imtiaz,

In your comments on Aarti’s essay, you say the following things about my work:

The tragedy of secular moderns of India is their fascination with Islam… And it appears secular modern Hindus are too busy analyzing jinns of Delhi, which is really sad!

… what do I do with the knowledge of emerging liberal ideologues working for the empire writing enchanting texts about chattan baba or the jinns?

 

I think that your opening statement is profound. But to understand its true depth, we need to revisit the terms “secular”, and “modern”, as well as our understandings of “Hinduism” and “Islam.” As an entry point into these questions, I will address your (rhetorical) question about what one should, and can do with “enchanting” texts about jinns. Continue reading On The Real Tragedy of Secular Modernity: Anand Vivek Taneja →

Countryside, Culture, Debates, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Towards a Rational Literacy – Education and Beyond: Shivali Tukdeo

5 Comments

[Anyone who is familiar with the writings and positions of various Kafila authors will see, we do not subscribe to or share many of the views expressed by Shivali Tukdeo in this essay. Several of us have our own fairly strong critiques of the processes of colonial and post-colonial knowledge formation which condemned a whole host of practices, and the lifeworlds in which they were located, as “andhvishwas”. However there is also a simultaneous extremely interesting history of efforts at the inculcation of a “rational temperament” that used emergent discourses of science and modernity to question traditional hierarchies of caste and so on. Maharashtra is an especially vibrant locale for such experiments and their location within long histories of oppressed caste mobilizations. Recent violent assertions by the Hindu Right on the grounds of “tradition”, as evidenced in the tragic murder of Dr. Dabholkar, further complicate the terrain within which these questions arise. So we are carrying this essay as an offering and opening to what we hope will be a spirited conversation around reason, science and faith of all varieties – andh, kana and trilochan. AS]

This is a guest post by SHIVALI TUKDEO

In what can only be termed as an ultimate irony and deep embarrassment, the Maharashtra police allegedly resorted to relying on planchet tricks of a self-claimed god-man to investigate the brutal murder of Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, a rationalist and organiser of Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (ANS)—Committee against Eradication of Blind Faith[i]. The ‘supernatural intervention’ in this high-profile murder case is painfully damaging, no doubt; however, it is neither an isolated instance nor is it confined to the police department alone. As reportage in the aftermath of the case reveals, police departments routinely subscribe to such practices. Moreover, the widespread practice of offering prayers to Thirupathi before a space launch or the decision to conduct excavation based on a Sadhu’s dream aptly illustrate the powerful hold superstitions have. Such instances also point to the deep and long standing crisis in India’s education. Continue reading Towards a Rational Literacy – Education and Beyond: Shivali Tukdeo →

Capitalism, Debates

Of Dirt and Cleanliness – Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: Nityanand Jayaraman

21 Comments

Guest post by NITYANAND JAYARAMAN

108544214-defecation_6The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign) is powerful in its simplicity, and problematic for the same reason. The absence of complexity in the presentation of the campaign, and the inherent contradictions between Modi’s consumerist growth agenda and SwachhBharat’s objectives fuels my skepticism and raises many questions: Which parts of India will be cleaned, which not and why not? What will we do with the wastes we remove? Where will we put it?

If cleanliness is to be the result, dirt would have to be the starting point. In a 1966 classic called “Purity and Danger,” anthropologist Mary Douglas points out that “If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. . .It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order.”

Cleanliness is a loaded word particularly in the Indian context with a notion of caste that is fine-tuned around social and physical interpretations of pure and impure, clean and unclean. Cleanliness, in this context, can be achieved by keeping the clean and the unclean separate.  Continue reading Of Dirt and Cleanliness – Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: Nityanand Jayaraman →

Culture, Debates, Identities, Violence/Conflict

On Hasan Suroor’s “Islam and Its Interpretations”: Zeeshan Reshamwala

6 Comments

Guest post by ZEESHAN RESHAMWALA

Many Interpretations are Still Better Than One

[Hasan Suroor suggests in an op-ed that one of the causes of Islamist violence is the ambiguity of the Quran and the hadith, adding that perhaps it is time to develop an “authorised” version of the Islamic tradition. This article critiques Suroor’s assumption that it is possible to achieve a “pure” interpretation of a text, whether it be from a religious tradition or otherwise. In addition, it argues against Suroor’s tendency to imagine violence as a “medieval” phenomenon, and world-history as a deterministic forward-moving arrow.]

Hasan Suroor suggests that the problem of Islamist fundamentalism and the violence that follows in its wake can be solved by untangling the multiple interpretations of ambiguous Islamic texts. In his op-ed in The Hindu (29 September), “Islam and its Interpretations,”  Suroor points out this apparent paradox: that although on the one hand Muslims cite verses and hadith that provide injunctions against violence, on the other hand a more violent strain of believers (such as the Taliban) are also able to cite Quranic verses and hadith that justify their violence. The problem, he claims, does not lie completely with the manner in which Islamic texts are interpreted, but instead with the fact that the Quran is an extremely ambiguous text, arranged athematically, and whose meaning is often dependent on the context of each individual revelation. More so the hadiths, written down from the sayings of Mohammed, are of variable authenticity. The lack of a single authoritative version of Islamic texts, says Suroor, leaves the tradition “open for fanatics to distort at will.” Continue reading On Hasan Suroor’s “Islam and Its Interpretations”: Zeeshan Reshamwala →

Bad ideas, Debates, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Government, Identities, Images, Law, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Unwrapping the Soldier from the Flag – Kashmir after the Flood: Chirag Thakkar

16 Comments

Guest Post by Chirag Thakkar

Witnessing a culture of wounds trying to put itself together in times of a grave catastrophe is a difficult pursuit. For the archivist of State violence, the horror with which TRP-hungry television studios build a spectacle that is acutely wedded to a deep-rooted, pungent nationalism around catastrophe and relief in Kashmir, is frustrating. The insensitivity with which the Indian media has rubbed salt in the wounds of a people is appalling. One wonders if ours is a culture of calculated amnesia or of sightless apathy.
There is something very unique about the way in which we relate with the pain of the other. What is unique is the precision with which we reproduce perceptions about the masculine, hardened sons of soil – the security forces – and yet, at the same time, remain unmoved in failing to recognise the state of exception Kashmir has been in. What is also unique is how measured and stingy we are with our sympathy. Continue reading Unwrapping the Soldier from the Flag – Kashmir after the Flood: Chirag Thakkar →

Debates, Feminism, Law

Uniform Civil Code – the women’s movement perspective

44 Comments

The BJP has once again raised the issue of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) for all Indian citizens,  posed in a way that presents the BJP as ‘secular’ and pro-women, and opponents as communal or ‘pseudo-secular’ and anti-women. Since Independence, there has been very little change in the contours of the debate in the public domain, both within the BJP as well as among public intellectuals not necessarily aligned with the Hindu Right. The only change that has come about since the 1990s is that the UCC is now also posed as a ‘women’s rights’ issue and not only as a matter of national integrity, which requires the eradication of multiple legal systems. This new equation of ‘women’s rights’ with the UCC is at least partly a result of the interventions by the women’s movement in the debate in the 1990s. However, within BJP (and mainstream) discourse, it is assumed that only minority women need saving, for ‘we Hindus’ have already given ‘our’ women equal rights.

The women’s movement has developed this debate in complex and multiple directions over the decades, which this essay will briefly outline.

The debate over the UCC in contemporary India is produced by the tension between two notions of rights in the Fundamental Rights (Part III) of the constitution. The bearer of rights is both the individual citizen and the collectivity – the former is the subject of Articles 14 to 24 which ensure the individual’s rights to equality and freedom and the latter of Articles 25 to 30 which protect religious freedom and the educational and cultural rights of minorities [1]. It is from the latter that religious communities derive the right to be governed by their own ‘Personal Laws’. Since these Personal Laws cover matters of marriage, property inheritance and guardianship of children, and since all Personal Laws discriminate against women, the tension in Part III of the constitution can be read as a contradiction between the rights of women as individual citizens and those of religious communities as collective units of a democracy. Continue reading Uniform Civil Code – the women’s movement perspective →

Culture, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Identities, Language

A God by Any Other Name: Sumbul Farah

Leave a comment

Guest Post by SUMBUL FARAH

The move from ‘Khuda Hafiz’ to ‘Allah Hafiz’, which Shireen Azam sees as a move towards Arabisation of subcontinental Islam is problematized by Nandagopal Menon when he questions if ‘Arabised’ Islam is an Islam ‘we do not like’. Menon’s argument provides some important ways of thinking about cultural assimilation, territorially bounded nationalisms and notions of piety central to Islam. However, it misses out on the important point that the project of ‘correcting’ belief is often premised on an exclusivist understanding of religious interpretation.

To emphasize the ‘correct’ usage might well in be accordance with Islamic notions of ‘islah’ and piety but unless we stop and question as to who is it that determines ‘correctness’ we risk aligning ourselves with the hegemonic narratives within Islam. The issue underlying the usage of ‘Khuda’ versus ‘Allah’ is not that the Indian version of Islam is somehow more desirable than an Arabised one owing to some notion of cultural nationalism, which is premised on modern nation-states; it is a questioning of the processes through which traditionally acceptable usages and idioms become marked out as ‘incorrect’ in the light of a hegemonic narrative. Particularly in the context of Islam, there is a tendency to seek a return to a supposedly ‘pure’ version of Islam, which in turn, means privileging the Arabian interpretation of Islamic beliefs and practices. Continue reading A God by Any Other Name: Sumbul Farah →

Culture, Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Language, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics

#Hokkolorob – The Politics of Making Noise: Rajarshi Dasgupta

1 Comment

Guest Post by RAJARSHI DASGUPTA

We must not celebrate every time we see a movement. Movements can be very popular without being very meaningful, disturbing only the surface of society. Some can be pretty and harmless like candle light vigils; others dangerous and ugly like ‘love jihad’. Some want efficient governance like Hazaare; others regime change like Nandigram. For those tired with political apathy, it is of course good news that a spate of new movements is emerging thanks to new technologies and media coverage. But it is equally true that they seem to be going indifferent directions, without any common end. The picture is not clear. Who knows better than us how ‘change’ can be purely rhetorical? It is not difficult to imagine why people are weary of dramatic social unrest. They hardly fail to bring yet more conservative and unscrupulous sections to power. If we don’t want to get carried away, it is because of repeated disillusionments with the promise of change that everybody makes but nobody keeps. Politics is not, we better understand, about promise but manipulation, bargaining for daily needs, livelihood and resources, and so it should be. Movements may come and go like fashion, they are incidental to reality, which changes very slowly if at all. There is an institutional process of elections we have put in place, and it has proven to be resilient and reliable.

Bandh Bhengey Dao – Break All Bonds –
Lyrics and Music – Rabindranath Tagore & Asian Dub Foundation
From the Original Sound Track of ‘Tasher Desh’ a film adaptation by Q
of Rabindranath Tagore’s Joyous Anarchist Opera

Continue reading #Hokkolorob – The Politics of Making Noise: Rajarshi Dasgupta →

Culture, Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Language, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Freedom and the University – Reflections from a Teacher: Rimi.B.Chatterjee

4 Comments

Guest Post by RIMI B.CHATTERJEE. Photographs by RONNY SEN.

Graffiti on Jadavpur University Walls. Photograph by Ronny Sen
Graffiti on Jadavpur University Walls. Photograph by Ronny Sen

There has been a lot of noise about the recent agitation at Jadavpur University, and a lot of slanted media coverage. Allow me to set the record straight on a number of points.

Continue reading Freedom and the University – Reflections from a Teacher: Rimi.B.Chatterjee →

Culture, Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Images, Language, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Prose of Power and the Poetry of Protest – An Outsider’s Attempt to Make Sense of the ‘Kolorob’ in Kolkata: Uditi Sen

2 Comments

Guest Post by UDITI SEN

51288650-29337-hokkolorob
#Hokkolorob – Embodied

It’s been more than a week since tens of thousands of students marched in a rain drenched Saturday in Kolkata, in solidarity with Jadavpur University students and their fight for justice. Much has happened since to delegitimise this mammoth, genuinely popular and student-led march. A counter-march, the co-optation of the victim’s father by the ruling party, adverse propaganda in the press and fatigue and confusion amongst the protestors have been some of the dampening developments that followed the unexpected show of student power. True to their clarion call, hok kolorob (let there be clamour), the marchers made a lot of noise. A week later, as the numbers of protestors on the streets have dissipated as fast as they had congregated, it is perhaps time to step back from the euphoria of the gathering and the intimidation and murky co-optation of protest that followed, to reflect on the political meanings and potential of this uprising.

The march was not organised by any single political party, though many with experience or background in student politics of one ilk or the other, marched. The vast majority, however, were students who had never marched before and had no experience of politics. The question therefore arises, what, if anything is the unifying ideology of this body of protestors? What goals motivate them? Above all, the question that is doing the rounds the most, on social media, on mainstream news and on the streets is what are the politics of the protestors? The question of politics is seldom posed directly. Its ubiquitous presence, however, can be clearly read in the answers provided regarding the nature of the march, the motivations of the protestors and the identity of the marchers. Unsurprisingly, diametrically opposite sets of answers emerge from members of the ruling party, inside and outside Jadavpur University; and the people who took to the streets on Saturday. From the Vice Chancellor, the Education Minister and officially ordained leaders of the ‘youth’, such as Abhishek Banerjee and Shankudeb Panda, characterisations emerge that focus on indiscipline on campus, presence of Maoist and other outsiders and deep conspiracies. From students of Jadavpur University and their sympathisers, assertions emerge that this protest is about justice and not about politics. Both characterisations fail to capture what is at stake.

Continue reading Prose of Power and the Poetry of Protest – An Outsider’s Attempt to Make Sense of the ‘Kolorob’ in Kolkata: Uditi Sen →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Language, Law, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Terror, Performance and Anxieties of Our Times – Reading Rustom Bharucha and Reliving Terror: Sasanka Perera

Leave a comment

Guest Post by SASANKA PERERA

[ This post by Sasanka Perera is a review of  Terror and Performance by Rustom Bharucha (2014). Tulika Books, New Delhi. Kafila does not ordinarily post book reviews. An exception is being made for this post because we feel that the subject of terrorism, which has interested Kafila readers in the past, is an important one, and needs to be thought through with seriousness. We hope that this post initiates a debate on Kafila regarding terror, the state, performance, and the performances – serious, or otherwise – that typically attend to the discussions of terror, whether undertaken by the agents of the state or by non-state actors, commentators in the media, or by intellectual interlocutors. ]

When I started reading Rustom Bharucha’s latest book, Terror and Performance, it immediately became an intensely personal and gripping engagement. It was difficult to read in a single attempt as the mind kept wandering from one unpleasant moment in our recent annals of terror to another in some of which I had also become an unwitting part – mostly as a spectator. From the beginning, my reading was a conversation with Bharucha’s text through detours of my own experiences and an interrogation to a lesser extent. In 1986, as a young man when I went to the Colombo International Airport to pick up my father who was returning from the Middle East, I was shaken by a tremendously loud sound for which I had no immediate references. I had not heard such a sound before. People started running towards the sound. It was a bomb that had blown up an Air Lanka flight which had come from Gatwick. The Central Telegraph Office in Colombo was bombed in the same year. We learnt that everyone was running towards the sound and not away from it. Dry local political humor very soon informed us that people were trying to get inside the bombed out telegraph office hoping that they could get free phone calls to their relatives in the Middle East as they had heard phones were dangling from the walls with no operators in sight. That was long before mobile phones and call boxes. We were still young in terms of our experiences with terror. However, we soon had very viable references to what all this meant as the political narrative of Lanka unfolded with devastating consequences. But in 1986, when the kind of terror that was to follow in all its fury was still relatively new and quite unknown, we were acutely unaware of the dynamics of the actual act of terror and the structure of feeling it could unleash. This is why many of us in these initial years were naively attracted towards the epicenter of the act rather than being mindful to run away from it. But as the society grew in experience, people soon learned their lessons. Though an academic text in every conceivable way, I was reminded one could always find a few rare books of this kind which might personally and emotionally touch a reader in addition to whatever intellectual stimulation it might also usher in. Terror and Performance is clearly one such book. From the perspective of the writer, Bharucha himself recognizes this personal emotional engagement and investment early in the book. For him, “this writing demands stamina as it faces an onslaught of uncertainties and cruelties at the global level that challenges the basic assumptions of what it means to be human” (xi). It is the same kind of stamina that one also needs to read it as most of us in South Asia would be reading it squarely sitting in the midst of our own worlds of unfolding terror. This is why all those thoughts came gushing into my mind throughout the reading. I was not only reading Bharucha; I was also reading my own past.

Continue reading Terror, Performance and Anxieties of Our Times – Reading Rustom Bharucha and Reliving Terror: Sasanka Perera →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Right watch

Lift Jihad: Yusuf Khan Zishan

1 Comment

This picture by YUSUF KHAN ZISHAN is circulating widely on Facebook. Received @ Kafila from Janaki Rajan who writes:

I was in Hyderabad on that day – August 19th, the day of the Telengana Intensive Household Survey, when people with two wheelers volunteered to help those arriving by trains to reach their homes as autos and taxis were not permitted to to ply that day… a spontaneous idea..

securedownload

 

Culture, Debates, Education, Images, Language, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Violence/Conflict

A Letter to the Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University, Kolkata: Ahona Panda

14 Comments

Guest Post by AHONA PANDA

[Ek Je Cchilo VC / Once There Was a VC – Thanks to Utsavdan, and to Manik-da of Bishop Lefroy Road]

To

The Vice Chancellor,
Jadavpur University,

and the Education System of West Bengal.

Respected Sir,

I would like to return to this university a gold medal that it awarded me, then a girl of 21, in the year 2009. I’ve never worn that medal since my convocation, and it lies in the box it was awarded in. I was a student of the English department in this university, and went on to study at Oxford and University of Chicago. Continue reading A Letter to the Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University, Kolkata: Ahona Panda →

Bad ideas, Debates, Education, Government, Identities, Images, Mirror Worlds, Theory

Partha Chatterjee on Partha Chatterjee – An Interview with an Impostor: Partha Chatterjee

18 Comments
Partha Chatterjee (a)
Partha Chatterjee (b)

Guest Post by PARTHA CHATTERJEE

Continue reading Partha Chatterjee on Partha Chatterjee – An Interview with an Impostor: Partha Chatterjee →

Debates, Theory

Lessons from Scotland for South Asia: Satya Sagar

15 Comments

Guest Post by Satya Sagar

Though ‘No’ finally trumped ‘Yes’ and the United Kingdom stayed ‘united’ the recent referendum for Scottish independence holds several important lessons for both votaries of separatism as well as national unity everywhere.

It also raises many questions, chief among them being, on a planet run by corporations and shaped by tsunami-like capital flows, do terms like national ‘independence’, ‘unity’ or ‘sovereignty’ have real meaning anymore? An even more fundamental question would be whether the nation-state, in its current form, has any future at all or not?

Coming to the lessons first, among the most obvious is the fact that it is possible to hold a referendum on independence peacefully, without a single shot being fired or spilling a single drop of blood.This has been hailed as a triumph of democracy and rightly so too.  How many countries around the world, which call themselves democracies, can muster the guts to allow a section of their citizens to exercise their right to self-determination through a simple vote? Continue reading Lessons from Scotland for South Asia: Satya Sagar →

Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Government, Images, Metropolis, Movements, Violence/Conflict

From Jadavpur to Everywhere #Hokkolorob – Let There be Clamour

19 Comments
#HOKKOLOROB
#HOKKOLOROB

More then one hundred thousand students and their friends (according to Kolkata Police estimates) defied the rain to walk in protest yesterday against the assault on Jadavpur University by Kolkata Police, backed by an insensitive University Vice Chancellor and a cynical State Government. There were students, ex students, professors, students from Presidency University, and many other colleges in Kolkata and the neighborhood, there were many ordinary citizens, some who had never been university students, and many who had stopped being university students a long time ago.

Continue reading From Jadavpur to Everywhere #Hokkolorob – Let There be Clamour →

Culture, Debates

The Islam we do not like: Nandagopal R Menon

10 Comments

Guest post by NANDAGOPAL R MENON

Some recent posts on Kafila have identified a “movement of sorts” in South Asian Islam – A Short Memoir On the Arabisation of Islam in India and The Sheepification of Bakistan

Named ‘Arabisation’, this is a “remarkably dispersed” and “subtle” movement most readily evident in certain changes in quotidian linguistic choices, for example, Khuda Hafiz and Ramazan has or is being replaced by Allah Hafiz and Ramadan. This linguistic shift from Farsi/Urdu to Arabic is taken to index a “great cultural battle” under way in South Asian Islam – one that attempts “to ‘correct’ Islam as Muslims in the subcontinent have understood, practiced and lived it, and instead replace it with an Islam which is uniform, seemingly universal and which need not have any affiliation with our cultural and local identities and beliefs”. That ‘Arabisation’ is not something innocuous or laudable is clear, for it “conveniently ignores” – or undermines? – Islam’s “age-old assimilation in the Indian sub-continent”. The following are some thoughts provoked on reading these posts. This is not meant as a coherent response to any of the posts, but just an unsystematic attempt to think through some of the assumptions that condition the creation of concepts like ‘Arabisation’ in public discourse.  Continue reading The Islam we do not like: Nandagopal R Menon →

Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Government, Identities, Images, Movements, Politics

‘My Heart says Yes, but the Head says No’: Economizing Politics in the Scottish Referendum: Akshaya Kumar

3 Comments

Guest post by AKSHAYA KUMAR

I

About two months ago, while walking by the roadside in Glasgow, a middle-aged man handed me out a pamphlet. In an endorsement of UKIP, the pamphlet declared ‘Our government pays GBP 55 million a day in fees to the EU’ (emphasis added). It went on to inform that in return, the EU gives ‘us’ accounts riddled with fraud, no control over ‘our’ own borders – putting pressure on our health, education and welfare services – and a super-government that makes more than 70% of ‘our’ laws. The pamphlet intrigued me a fair bit, not in the least because as an international student in the UK, I wondered if my case was a bigger or smaller burden on the UK defined thus – their UK. But who are they? One might rubbish them as a deviant community, or one might consider them a threat to yet another definition of us – the liberals or suchlike. But what intrigued me was not the neatness of these boundaries, or the speculations about how many of ‘us’ and ‘them’ there are. I was intrigued by the language of the starkly political proposition. Let us tentatively assume that in the pamphlet, ‘us’ meant the citizens of UK and it constructs an antagonistic position vis-à-vis other national citizens who are entitled to living and working within the UK. Surely the two are politically distinguishable? Or are there too many of them living next to us, so they cannot exactly be identified as such? Continue reading ‘My Heart says Yes, but the Head says No’: Economizing Politics in the Scottish Referendum: Akshaya Kumar →

Culture, Debates, Feminism, Genders, Government, Law, Right watch

Temperance in the time of Rahu

12 Comments

So Onam is here again — despite the fact that several contradictory stars above  now form a malefic conjunction in the fate of poor Malayalis in Kerala. Indeed, rarely has a stranger gang dominated the starry heavens of our destiny: V M Sudheeran’s targeted gullet moralism that promises to close down a very large number of bars in Kerala and pave the way for total prohibition in the future, gangs of Hindu right wing youth and women forcing the government’s liquor outlets to close, policemen puffed up with jingoistic nationalism who hallucinate about Maoists in wake and sleep and declare social activists like Ajitha “dead”, CPM offspring who think that making foul, putrid public statements justifying murder is politics. All these are, well, rather drunk on self-righteousness and to be true, present a slightly ridiculous sight. Even the weather looks ridiculously inebriated – the sky alternates between bright sunny spells and horrid, harsh showers, crazily swinging between sunny smiles and bursts of tears. Continue reading Temperance in the time of Rahu →