Category Archives: Politics

Capitalism, Everyday Life, Government, Metropolis, Politics

Notes from a Metro (Pun Unintentionally Intentional)

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Enter Delhi: The boy was about 13, perhaps less. He was riding a bike which was about three times his size. He swerved between the vehicles on the road at Karol Bagh, very much in the wrong in terms of which side of the road he ought to be on, and therefore also in terms of the traffic rules and regulations. But he could not care. I looked at him and wondered,

Dilli dilwalon ki hai – Delhi is a city of the large-hearted, of the daring, the bold and the courageous.

A few days later, one of the auto drivers remarked to me during a journey,

Kehte hai dilli dilwalon ki hoti hai. Lekin yeh jhoot hai. Sabhi log yahan paise ke peeche pade rehte hai aur har koi aapko lootne ki koshish karna chahta hai – It is a saying that Delhi is a city of the large-hearted. But this is false. Everyone here is behind money, and each person is out to loot/cheat you.

Continue reading Notes from a Metro (Pun Unintentionally Intentional) →

Debates, Genders, Law, Politics, Sex

Anand Jon wants to be tried in India – I would too, if I were him

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Fashion designer Anand Jon has been sentenced by a Los Angeles court to 59 years in prison for violent sexual assault on seven young women, some of them under-age. His defence tried to move for a mistrial on the grounds that one of the jurors had contacted Jon’s sister during the trial, but a new trial was not granted by the judge. The concerned juror delivered a “guilty” verdict along with the other 11 jurors in the case.

A month ago, his sister Sanjana had pleaded with the Indian government to extradite him as he would not get a fair trial in the US, being Indian. She claimed then, and did so again after the verdict on September 1, that Jon is a victim of racist discrimination.

Would Anand Jon have been acquitted of such charges in an Indian court? Almost certainly, yes. In a justice system in which alleged rapists are routinely acquitted for “lack of evidence” and proven rapists given a reduced sentence because of their youth and the promising life ahead of them, Sanjana is right to insist that he be tried in an Indian court. In an Indian court, the testimony of women who had willingly gone to his home on the promise of jobs in the fashion business, and then claimed they were raped, would be dismissed out of hand. Especially if the women are white. Gratuitous references to “western women” and their supposed attitudes to sex, pepper judgements and statements by officials on rape in India.

Continue reading Anand Jon wants to be tried in India – I would too, if I were him →

Debates, Genders, Identities, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Remembering Rajani and Re-Reading The Broken Palmyrah

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I am posting below a much longer version of an article that is published in Himal Southasian.  The Broken Palmyrah is out of print, but the entire book is on the UTHR(J) website.

Remembering Rajani and Re-Reading The Broken Palmyrah

September this year many will remember Rajani Thiranagama, a feminist, an activist, a Marxist, a scholar, a doctor and a teacher assassinated twenty years ago on September 21st, 1989.  Among the reasons for her assassinations was the publication of that profoundly grounded work, The Broken Palmyrah, which she co-authored with three other academics from the Jaffna University.  While we commemorate the life and work of Rajani at a time when the war has come to an end, in many ways the Palmyrah is still broken.  It is in this context that I return to that inspiring work, which has much to teach us, in particular for those of us belonging to the younger generations of activists after Rajani.  Inspiring, for despite the worst cruelties of war, it carried a message of hope, an analysis of possible ways forward and faith in the resilience of ordinary people. Continue reading Remembering Rajani and Re-Reading The Broken Palmyrah →

Countryside, Left watch, Politics

A People’s Uprising Destroyed by The Maoists: Santosh Rana

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[This is a guest post by SANTOSH RANA, one of the legendary leaders of the Naxalite revolt in 1967. Rana lead one of the important CPI(ML) groups that is active in the Jharkhand region. Here he writes of the Lalgarh and the Maoists. The post was written sometime ago. It gives a more nuanced picture of the different strands and phases of the movement, including the PCPA phase.]

Lalgarh lies in Jhargram sub-division of West Medinipur district of West Bengal. It is part of the Paschimanchal (western zone) of the state and is an extension of Chhotanagpur plateau. With its laterite soil of low water-retention capacity and Sal-Mahua forests, the area differs from the Bengal plains both geographically and culturally. It is indeed a part of the Jharkhand cultural region. Nearly 30 percent of the population are Scheduled Tribes (ST), 20 percent Scheduled Castes (SC) and the rest are communities like Kudmi-Mahatos, Telis, Kumbhars, Bagals, Rajus, Tamblis, Khandaits and others. The Kudmi-Mahatos are the biggest among the rest, who had been treated as ST till 1935 when they were de-scheduled. The Mahatos, Bagals and some other communities are actually semi-tribals who have been partly Sanskritised but still retain their tribal characteristics; now they are treated as Other Backward Classes (OBC). There are other OBC communities like Kumbhar, Tanti, Teli and others. But in West Bengal, benefits for OBCs started not only late but also unenthusiastically. Even today, there is very little reservation – only 7 percent, and that too in the government jobs only – given to the OBCs here. The OBCs are not given any reservation in higher education. The SC communities living in the region ( Bagdi, Dom, Jele, Mal and Bauri etc) are so backward that they are unable to get government or semi-government jobs through reservation. The tribals constitute 30 percent of the population Jhargram sub-division, but in local jobs, they are given only 6 percent reservations – the stipulated quota for the STs at the  state level.

Continue reading A People’s Uprising Destroyed by The Maoists: Santosh Rana →

Debates, Frontiers, Politics, Right watch, Theory

The Ghost of Jinnah, Advani and Jaswant Singh

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[That the BJP expelled Jaswant Singh for writing a book on Jinnah is hardly surprising, even if it represents really the most rotten part of contemporary India’s political culture from the Right to the Left: intolerance of intellectual differences. What is intriguing is that Jaswant Singh wrote the bookknowing well that this would be the end of his political career; even LK Advani could not survive his praise of Jinnah and even though he came back, he remains a pale shadow of his former self. So Jaswant never really had a chance. I have not yet read the book but have tried to follow those who have. While a more detailed analysis will have to wait, I am posting a piece I had written sometime ago as part of a larger academic paper which deals with Advani’s Jinnah episode and the seductions of secularism. – AN ]

Advani Meets the Ghost of Jinnah
On 5 June 2005, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Deputy Prime Minister, Lal Krishna Advani unleashed a storm within his party and its allied organizations of the Hindu Right. On that day, speaking at a function organized by the Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, Economic Affairs and Law (KCFREAL), Advani referred to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s speech in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947 and described it as ‘a classic exposition of a Secular State’ and Jinnah as a genuine secularist (Advani 2005). In this speech, sections of which Advani read out at length, Jinnah, the founder of the ‘Islamic state of Pakistan’ had said: ‘You are free, you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed; that has nothing to do with the business of the State…You will find that in the course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State’ (Jinnah 2005).

On the previous day, Advani had already fired his first salvo. He had visited the Qaid-e-Azam mausoleum where he made the following entry in the visitor’s book: ‘There are many people who leave an inerasable stamp on history. There are very few who actually create history. Qaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one such rare individual.’ And further, recalling Sarojini Naidu, underlined: ‘Sarojini Naidu, a leading luminary of India’s freedom struggle, described him as an ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity. His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, is really a classic, a forceful espousal of a secular state…’ (Sarwar 2005, Kapoor 2005). If there was any doubt in anybody’s mind that this was not just a polite entry in a visitor’s book, made in a formalistic way, Advani hastened to clear it in the speech that followed the next day.
Continue reading The Ghost of Jinnah, Advani and Jaswant Singh →

Everyday Life, Politics, Sports

Go, Fly A Kite !

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Dear all,

Here is the slightly longer, original version of a text by me on ‘Kite Flying’ (among other things) that appeared in the latest issue of Outlook, to mark the 15th of August. The version published in Outlook is titledFreedom on A String.
Apologies for cross posting on Reader List.
best
Shuddha
————————-

Go, Fly a Kite !

There is almost nothing about rituals of statehood that appeals to me. The speeches leave me cold and patriotic anthems are the worst, most ponderous form of music ever performed or invented. As for the pomp and circumstance of parades and other solemn but pathetic attempts at grandeur – they only repeat their lessons in how distant the apparatus of the state actually is from the lives of citizens. Continue reading Go, Fly A Kite ! →

Everyday Life, Metropolis, Politics

Of Bhoomiputra and Housing

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DSCN8740I was moving around Mumbai city on that weekend, mainly in the western suburbs. Several posters and banners were put up all over, announcing a call to a mass rally by Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray. Thackeray’s clarion call for that meeting was: “Housing for the bhoomiputra“. Bhoomiputra literally means son of the land. On an overt reading of the poster and slogan, one could conclude that the Sena is back to its advocacy of the sons of the soil theory which originally raised it to prominence in the 1960s. But when I attended the rally and noticed the people who attended it, I asked myself, so who exactly is this son of the soil that the Sena is talking about? Is it the Marathi manoos, the local underdog who the Sena argues has no social and economic space in his/her own city? If it is truly the Marathi manoos, then how do I interpret the presence of North Indian women, Bohra muslim women, perhaps even Dalit women, and many other women who I tried to mark but could not classify as either Hindu or Christian or any other particular else.  Hmmm …. Continue reading Of Bhoomiputra and Housing →

Debates, Everyday Life, Identities, Politics, Sex

Teachers and Academics Against 377

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University teachers, researchers and academics from all over India issued a strong statement in support of the recent Delhi High Court judgement decriminalizing consensual sex among adults and challenged the legitimacy of “religious leaders” to speak for the whole of society.

180 signatories from institutions and universities in Allahabad, Calicut, Peechi, Punalur, Thiruvananthapuram, Kottayam, Sonipat, Goa, Jammu, Nanded, Mumbai, Pune, Pondicherry, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Chennai, Chandigarh, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Shillong endorsed a statement that said:

Continue reading Teachers and Academics Against 377 →

Politics, Right watch

Savarkar’s Phoney Followers

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(Politics is a game of the impossible. The Sangh Parivar, which never enjoyed a smooth relationship with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar when alive, now wants us to believe that it is the true and the only heir to his legacy. It is a different matter that even Savarkar’s diehard followers do not seem amused with all their rope-tricks. The manner in which RSS-BJP handled the issue of memorial for Savarkar in faraway France indicates once again the floundering of their strategy.)

I

Gopinath Munde, senior leader of BJP, was in for a great shock the other day when he realised that his move to corner the ruling dispensation at the centre on the issue of Savarkar memorial had boomranged on himself and the party as well. In fact he had discussed the issue with his close associates and had informed senior leaders of the party about his plans. He had expected that by raising an emotive issue around ‘Swatantryaveer’ Savarkar on the eve of elections to the Maharashtra assembly, he would be able to score a point vis-a-vis the Cong-NCP coalition. Continue reading Savarkar’s Phoney Followers →

Identities, Images, Media politics, Politics

A Tale of Two Encounters – Dehradun and Batla House: Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group

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We publish below a statement from Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group, formed after the “encounter” at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi. For background information on this issue, see Some questions about the Delhi encounter; A little less melodrama, a lot more forensics; Shame is a revolutionary sentiment.

Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Group extends its heart-felt condolences to the family of Ranbir Singh, the youth who was killed in a police encounter in Dehradun last week. This encounter again brings to the fore the trigger happy ways of the Indian police who kill and torture for medals and promotions. We demand exemplary punishment for the guilty policemen. Continue reading A Tale of Two Encounters – Dehradun and Batla House: Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group →

Culture, Everyday Life, Law, Metropolis, Politics

Home, house

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I entered Yunus’s house. He was allotted 150 square meters of land to build his home. Parts of the house were done up with brick and cement. The roof was still kutcha, raw – in the process of construction. You could see the incompleteness of the roof from the opening around the right hand side from which rain likely comes into the house (as does sunshine). I asked Yunus,

Ghar mein barsaat ka pani aata hai kya? Baarish se pareshaani nahi hoti? Continue reading Home, house →

Empire/ Imperialism, Government, Politics

And that is why your neighbors don’t like you: Anurag Acharya

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Guest post by ANURAG ACHARYA, student from Nepal at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Peaceful coexistence among nations does not encompass coexistence between the exploiter and the exploited, the oppressor and the oppressed.

– Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

The 1800 km open border between India and Nepal has always been a matter of dispute between the two countries. While India has glorified the open border as its grace and gratitude towards a landlocked nation, Nepal has had to accept the miseries of sharing an open border with a bigger and powerful nation as a price for a trade transit. It goes without saying that whenever there has been a proposal or a debate within Nepal about the possibility of opening a trade route across the Himalayas to our north to tap the world’s largest market for Nepalese goods, it has attracted serious concerns from the South block. Bound by the unfair Indo-Nepal treaty of 1950 which prevents Nepal from independently conducting its international affairs and thwarts Nepal’s ambition to exploit the huge trade potential with China, an end to Nepal’s historical dependence on India has not materialized yet. While the treaty gives India a free hand to interfere in Nepal’s foreign affairs, citing its own domestic security, it has seriously impaired Nepal’s right to trade access, as a landlocked nation under the International Law. The treaty also stands in clear violation and entrenchment of a sovereign nation’s  right to conduct its external and internal affairs independently. However, weak diplomacy on Nepal’s part and unsympathetic attitude on the Indian side has ensured that Nepal stays dependent on India for all its exports and imports.

Continue reading And that is why your neighbors don’t like you: Anurag Acharya →

Bad ideas, Debates, Identities, Politics

Historic Mandate, Historic Turning Point or More of the Same? Gail Omvedt on Elections 2009

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Guest post by GAIL OMVEDT

The 2009 Lok Sabha elections in India were projected to be a historical turning point just as the 2008 Presidential elections in the U.S. were a turning point.  But the nature of that expected turning point was very different.

Five years ago, even two years before the elections, no one in the U.S. would have expected that a “Black” man with two Muslim names and one African name could have been elected President of the United States.  Yet it happened, and it happened not simply because Barack Husain Obama ran a brilliant campaign and is proving the most effective president in dealing with the economic and social crises besetting the world today, but also because of the racial transformation the U.S. has undergone in recent decades. Continue reading Historic Mandate, Historic Turning Point or More of the Same? Gail Omvedt on Elections 2009 →

Bad ideas, Debates, Everyday Life, Genders, Politics, Sex

“The Magic of the Human Spirit and of a Nation’s Passion”: Three Queers for the Delhi High Court!

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So – here we are folks, in a historic judgement this morning, Delhi High Court has read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to exclude consensual sex among adults. Congratulations to the group of tireless activists who have helped to bring this about, and congratulations to all of us who count ourselves as part of the queer community. Continue reading “The Magic of the Human Spirit and of a Nation’s Passion”: Three Queers for the Delhi High Court! →

Frontiers, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Violence/Conflict

When Pakistanis and Indians cheered for the same team

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Continue reading When Pakistanis and Indians cheered for the same team →

Bad ideas, Debates, Frontiers, Movements, Politics

Iran: Inquilab Zindabad?

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Once upon a time, only a hundred or so years ago, and earlier, Iranians were our neighbours. Many were friends, relatives – uncles, grandparents, ancestors, some were husbands, wives and lovers. And cities like Delhi, Lucknow, Murshidabad and Hyderabad spoke Persian better than they spoke English, or even Hindi. The distance from Tehran and Isfahan to Delhi, Lucknow and Lahore, or across the water from Bandar Abbas to Bombay or Karachi, in miles and in the imagination, seemed less than what we can even begin to understand today.

The Bengal renaissance had one of its points of origin in a Persian broadsheet called Mirat ul Akhbar published by Ram Mohan Roy in Calcutta. The first Iranian talking film and the last ‘Irani’ restaurant both have their origins in Bombay. The Sabk-e-Hindi, or the ‘Indian Style’ continued to adorn the more ornate fringes of Persian poetry in Iran. The miniatures painted in the ateliers of Delhi and Agra owed a great deal to the paints, brushes, colours and visions of visiting masters from Tabriz. The sitar and the sarod came from Iran, and stayed on. We shared jokes and stories, poets, prophets and pranksters, wine and spices, surnames (Kirmani, Rizvi, Mashadi, Yazdi) and clan histories, heresies and wisdom and a thousand other things that neighbours, friends, cousins and lovers share.

Continue reading Iran: Inquilab Zindabad? →

Bad ideas, Government, Politics

Corporates as Representatives

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A few weeks before the national elections, www.SmartVote.in organized an open house where people could meet candidates contesting from various parliament assemblies in Bangalore and ask questions to them. Captain Gopinath was contesting from the prestigious Bangalore South constituency. He was one among the favourite candidates – honest, accountable and upright. Many questions were fielded to him during the open house ranging from what he would do about corruption to how he would improve the conditions in the city. One of the questions raised to him was how would he ensure that people’s opinions were reflected in the passage of important bills. To this, he replied that he would constitute a special committee comprising of people such as Mohandas Pai of Infosys and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, among others, who he would consult on bills and legislation before casting his vote. He seemed to suggest that these persons’ opinions reflected those of the masses and hence, consultation would them would automatically imply obtaining views from the public. This both concerned and surprised me – how and why are corporates considered to be representing my opinion? Continue reading Corporates as Representatives →

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

Gaon chodab nahin

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Politics, Violence/Conflict

‘Only 35% Indians say freedom for Kashmir unacceptable’

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Believe it or not, that is one of the findings of a new survey on Kashmir, conducted in both India and Pakistan.

And some more disbelief here:

A majority of Pakistanis say Pakistan’s government does not provide support to militant groups that conduct attacks against civilians in India, while a majority of Indians tend to believe it is providing support. Continue reading ‘Only 35% Indians say freedom for Kashmir unacceptable’ →

Culture, Everyday Life, Metropolis, Politics

Spaces of Forgetting

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[Part of a Series. Introduction: For Movement]

Lisbon, June 2009

From the outside, it looks like a lovely building. Broad and imposing, with a certain faded but still palpable elegance. Like all buildings are at some point in their lives in all cities, it is surrounded by construction gates. The sign says that it is to become, like more and more buildings in more and more cities, luxury condominiums. I think of a friend’s words at a conference a few days before. In the contemporary, he said, inequality is made through making the city. The Portuguese word for “building” is edificio, from the Latin aedis, or dwelling, which itself comes from the Sanskrit inddhh – to burn. Aedis and facere [to make] together make aedificium, to build a dwelling around a hearth, around fire. The word is close to aedes, or temple. It also skirts around aedificare and hence the English “edify” – to improve spiritually. A lot is built in building a building. Continue reading Spaces of Forgetting →

Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Don’t do unto others, what they do to you

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Do I sound like a liberal simpleton when I criticize or condemn the violence that has been unleashed in Khejuri by the ‘people’ led by the Trinzmul Congress?

Offices belonging to the CPM have been razed to ground, burnt down and vandalized. Photographs of people tearing away grills from the windows of these offices and carrying them as ‘booty’ with smiling faces tell you that the same old story is being repeated. The plot remains the same; only the hunted have turned into hunters and the hunters of the past are now running for cover.

Roads to Khejuri are blocked, ministers and leaders of the CPM turned away, again by ‘the people’. The police as usual stands mute witness as they have been trained in this state not to go against the ‘will of the people’. How does it matter to them that now these people do not belong to the CPM, masters for last three decades? They have learnt to follow, not the law, but the party. And these days in Nandigram Trinamul is ‘The Party’. And the enemy territory of Khejuri has also been annexed. Victory is complete. Continue reading Don’t do unto others, what they do to you →