Category Archives: Politics

Government, Identities, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Freedom of Conscience and Attacks on Christians

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The idea that fundamental rights are enjoyed by all, without any distinction of race, sex, language, ethnic origin, nationality and religion, is a basic principle of democracy and international human rights law. Violent attacks on the Christian minorities in different parts of the country are an assault on the very notion of democracy and universal human rights. Despite the country’s obligation to respect and protect the right to freedom of conscience and religion, the wave of killings, beatings, sexual assaults, looting, destruction of property, and displacement have created a climate of fear and insecurity, particularly among the Christians. Representatives of Christians and minorities are exposed to the grave risk of communally motivated verbal abuse and physical attacks.

Worst, the governments of Orissa and Karnataka continued to deny the extent of violence prevalent, and failed to face up to their minimum responsibility of securing the life of their people. If India has to live up to any human rights standards, it must show a clear political will to combat attacks on Christians: speaking out strongly, and at all levels of governance; publicly acknowledging the seriousness of the issue; and the need to take concerted action. This is not ‘hooliganism’ or ‘anti-social’ activity, motivated by some hooligans and anti-social elements. It is a violent, and apparently a communal attack, carried out by organized groups. Crimes which are communally motivated must be effectively and thoroughly investigated and prosecuted as such. Treating communally induced violence and brutality on an equal footing with cases that have no communal overtones would be to turn a blind eye to the specific nature of the acts that are particularly destructive of fundamental rights.

Continue reading Freedom of Conscience and Attacks on Christians →

Identities, Law, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

“India’s Anti-Christian Violence Unparalleled Among World Democracies”

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As Maoists confirm that they were behind the murder of Laxmananda Saraswati and give their reasons, two notes below from Madhu Chandra of the All India Christian Council.

Hi Friends,

Hindutva forces – Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bajrang Dal knew very well that the Maoists have killed their Swami Lakshmanananda on August 23 but intentionally denied it and alleged Christians so that they could do what they have done to Dalit Christians of Orissa.

Orissa Government who runs on mercy of BJP and Hindutva forces believes the allegation and allowed the religious ethnic cleansing of Christians in Kandhamal district of Orissa. Continue reading “India’s Anti-Christian Violence Unparalleled Among World Democracies” →

Government, Politics, Violence/Conflict

“Gentle persuasion” in Kashmir

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Some intelligence agencies have also warned of a low-poll percentage. But a senior police official said: “One cannot wait for the perfect situation in Kashmir.” According to him “gentle persuasion” in rural and border areas will help improve turnout. “After all, it is not a crime to ask people to vote. In several countries, voting is mandatory,” he argues. [George Joseph, Sakaal Times]

What an admission, what a giveaway! Indian democracy never went beyond Lakhanpur anyway. Nationalists and the weak hearted, please be ready to shut your eyes and ears for the next two months. The Indian state is planning to show its ugliest face in the Valley. Get ready, get ready.

Identities, Politics

Your Dera Ghazi Khan, and mine

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Dera Ghazi Khan by Bex Summer (Via Flickr)

In Mehrauli, the Khattars insisted that after noting down the damage, in lakhs, that the blasts caused to their shops, the second most important detail was that they were from Dera Ghazi Khan.

Dera Ghazi Khan? Oh, in Multan you know, we are all from there, 300 families. Yes, yes, after Partition, in the Sarai area of Mehrauli, we’ve always lived here, forever…

And then I see the subject line of a thread on a Sindhi mailing list: “Capital be shifted from Islamabad to Deira Ghazi Khan/ Bahawalpur/ Raheemyar Khan.” Continue reading Your Dera Ghazi Khan, and mine →

Bad ideas, Identities, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Shiver… down the spine: My tryst with the e-messengers of terror

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Guest post by SHAHINA K K

[This is the fuller version of an article published today in the Hindustan Times. This longer version is crossposted from the e-discussion group, Greenyouth. The specific article referred to – ‘Bombs Defused in Newsrooms’ was crossposted in Kafila ]

Since 14th September 2008, writing has become a laborious exercise for me. It was all of a sudden that words turned heavy, staring at my own convictions, political thinking and journalistic vigor. It was on a gloomy Sunday (the day after the bloody Saturday on which the life of twenty odd people had been taken away by some body called Indian Mujahideen)that things turned upside down. It’s difficult to describe my terrible sense of shock when it came to my notice that a part of the email sent by perpetrators of the Delhi blasts laying claim to the deadly bombs on the day, had been written by me! It was lifted verbatim from a piece of mine (‘Bombs defused in News rooms’) which appeared in the media watchdog portal, The Hoot. Newspapers had given extensive quotes wondering at the ‘journalistic character’ and ‘impeccable English’ of those who prepared the mail. Even when everybody calls it plagiarism I was not spared because my name carries the identity of a community which is put in the dock for all that happens dreadfully around us. I wrote about what the media does, how it deals with the unending episodes of terror strikes juxtaposing with the violence by Hindu extremists and how flagrantly they fail in the ‘balancing’ act! Continue reading Shiver… down the spine: My tryst with the e-messengers of terror →

Bad ideas, Politics

The Greatest VP debate since – like ever!!!

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Good morning, Good evening, to people across the globe. In our attempt to cater to our world wide audience at Kafila; we have decided – in collaboration with several heavily funded political lobbyists – to bring you a semi-realtime commentary on the first and only vice presidential debate in what promises to be the USA’s most interesting election since – like ever.

Much has been written about Sarah Palin – especially since her somewhat surprising comments on a whole variety issues – most recently her interviews with Katie Couric of CBS news. You can access two parts here and here.  Much was also made of her famous “We can see Russia from Alaska” comment.

Continue reading The Greatest VP debate since – like ever!!! →

Debates, Government, Politics, Violence/Conflict

“Gandhi would be in your jail”: Protests against CSPSA at Berkeley

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Justice and the Law
Director-General of Police Vishwaranjan of Chhattisgarh faces protesters in Berkeley / FDRI Seminar on Indian Democracy: Justice and the Law

The Center for South Asia, University of California Berkeley and Foundation for Democratic Reforms in India jointly organized a seminar (September 27, 2008) on Indian Democracy where the Director General of Police of Chhattisgarh was a speaker. Continue reading “Gandhi would be in your jail”: Protests against CSPSA at Berkeley →

Capitalism, Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Government, Movements, Politics

Bye Bye Reliance: Pen Tehsil Says No SEZ!

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In our continuing concern with the strange times that seem to have befallen our cities, lets not lose sight of the historic battle underway in the countryside. In the first instance of its kind, the referendum on the Maha-Mumbai Special Economic Zone being set up by Reliance has unambiguously returned the verdict of the farmers of Raigad- no SEZ in Pen! As Sanhati notes, the Tata’s 1500 crore investment in Singur sounds like loose change when compared to the one lakh crore that Reliance is planning to sink into 10,000 hectares. 22 villages in the Pen Tehsil voted against the acquisition of their lands at the paltry sum of 10 lakhs per acre. Unsurprisingly, Reliance Industries Limited has said the referendum is “not genuine”:

Continue reading Bye Bye Reliance: Pen Tehsil Says No SEZ! →

Debates, Left watch, Politics

Prachanda in New York: Ahilan Kadirgamar

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Guest post by AHILAN KADIRGAMAR

Maoist leader and the first Prime Minster of Republican Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, more commonly known as Prachanda, was in New York these last few days.  I heard him speak at the Asia Society and at the New School for Social Research, where he fielded questions from the audience.  The webcast of Prachanda’s address to the UN is here.

Prachanda opened his speech at the Asia Society, by saying it is like a sweet dream to be in New York. Continue reading Prachanda in New York: Ahilan Kadirgamar →

Identities, Politics, Violence/Conflict

On Being Muslim: Shahrukh Alam

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Guest post by SHAHRUKH ALAM

This afternoon, I saw on TV, the ticker advertising a Special Feature. The programme was going to be aired later in the day and was called “Young, Educated Killers”.  And for the next few seconds, I wondered who the title might be referring to: not the ‘encounter specialists’, surely? The economists who frame policies for the new, resurgent India, perhaps? People on the National Disaster Management Commission, possibly? Or since it was of topical interest, The Board of Directors for Lehman Brothers? Or even Patent attorneys for multinational Pharmaceutical companies? But then the visuals came on and I have to admit I was most embarrassed at having thought such dark thoughts about the aforementioned good people. Continue reading On Being Muslim: Shahrukh Alam →

Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

“Shame is a revolutionary sentiment”: Sadanand Menon

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According to their own admission, the Delhi Police bought these in bulk
According to their own admission, the Delhi Police bought these in bulk!

A few days ago in a comment on Shuddha’s little forensic exercise, I had drawn attention to the pernicious communal stereotyping evident in the widely circulated pictures of the three arrested terrorists Continue reading “Shame is a revolutionary sentiment”: Sadanand Menon →

Capitalism, Debates, Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Graziano Transmissioni and the Cheer-Leaders of Capital

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CLASS STRUGGLES IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY INDIA

‘The chief executive officer of a Greater Noida-based gear manufacturing company [Graziano Transmissioni India Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of an Italian TNC] was lynched to death inside factory premises on Monday, allegedly by a group of dismissed workers.’

‘“Around 125 dismissed workers armed with iron rods barged into the factory and went on rampage. They broke computers and machinery and smashed windowpanes. When Lalit tried to pacify them, they assaulted him with rods,” board of director Ramesh Jain told Hindustan Times.’ See report here

‘Companies in the area are known to employ contract labour in large numbers, though the law clearly states that such workers can be used only for non-core functions and not on the shop floor.’ says another report.

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They’d never had it so good. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the party had gone on. Continue reading Graziano Transmissioni and the Cheer-Leaders of Capital →

Politics, Theory, Violence/Conflict

Nationalisms, Militarization and the Politics of War in Sri Lanka: Ahilan Kadirgamar

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Any discussion of Sri Lanka at the moment can not avoid discussion of the war.  And at the heart of discussions on the war in Sri Lanka, is the question of what will come after the war, at least after an end to the war in its conventional mode with defeats faced by the LTTE on the battlefield.  It is indeed important to grasp that the current state of anxiety is not only about the war but also what will come after the war.  From the London based Economist to Tamil activists in and outside Sri Lanka, this has become the central question.  I write this article as a dissenting Tamil activist and as a member of that diverse set of Tamil activists both inside and outside Sri Lanka, who chose to stand independent of the LTTE, but whose politics nevertheless at the moment is dispersed from the Left to the Right, across a whole range of issues from class, nationalism, caste to gender.  In thinking about the outcomes after the war, just as we could not predict the direction of the war prior to its resumption, we can not predict the outcomes after the war, which are part of the dynamic of war; it drastically changes the political landscape.  But we nevertheless take positions on the war; on either side or against the war.  And those positions are explicitly political, they are underpinned by a politics, whether they are pro-war or, as has been less commonly acknowledged that of anti-war.  Indeed, an anti-war position itself can be arrived at from different political positions, from a pacifist stand to that of political expediency depending on the military fortunes of one actor or another.  It is such politics of war that I intend to explore here in relation to the dynamics of nationalisms and militarization in Sri Lanka.

Continue reading Nationalisms, Militarization and the Politics of War in Sri Lanka: Ahilan Kadirgamar →

Bad ideas, Culture, Politics

Saluting a Lone Survivor: Manash Bhattacharjee

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[This guest post by MANASH BHATTACHARJEE is a tribute to writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. – AN]

Solzhenitsyn writes,
the paper is burning, his writing goes on,
a cruel dawn on a plain of bones.
– Octavio Paz

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) will write no more. He died of heart failure on Monday, the 4th of August, in his home near Moscow. On this occasion, one remembers his 1970 Nobel Prize speech, where Solzhenitsyn had described his terrifying and lonely escape from death and oblivion with poignant candour: Continue reading Saluting a Lone Survivor: Manash Bhattacharjee →

Capitalism, Debates, Government, Left watch, Politics, Scams, Violence/Conflict

The red mongoose in solemn procession: Samkutty Pattomkary

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[This guest post by SAMKUTTY PATTOMKARY responds to the ongoing debate in Kafila on the Chengara issue. -AN]

Reading through the discussions on Chengara in kafila, some thoughts I felt I need to articulate as follows.

It comes out vividly through the Chengara struggle that a large section of people remain alienated from social and political powers in the so-called democratic society of Kerala. Why is it not possible for the ‘class proponents’ to see and engage themselves in working towards solving the issue politically? Continue reading The red mongoose in solemn procession: Samkutty Pattomkary →

Debates, Identities, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Is Hindu right wing behind Indian Mujahideen, ask Muslim groups: IANS

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September 17th, 2008 – 9:56 pm ICT by IANS –

Mumbai, Sep 17 (IANS) Terming the Indian Mujahideen, which has claimed
responsibility for the serial blasts in Ahmedabad and New Delhi, as
fictitious, several Muslim organisations and clerics have demanded
investigations into the possible role of the Hindu right wing in the
terror attacks.In a statement issued here Wednesday evening, 21 Muslim
organisations challenged Indian Mujahideen leaders to come out in the
open and prove their actions.

Continue reading Is Hindu right wing behind Indian Mujahideen, ask Muslim groups: IANS →

Government, Law, Media politics, Politics

AFSPA – 50 Years of a Law

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Come September 2008, and the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) is now fifty years old in our country. It is a law in force in large parts of the northeast that gives armed forces special powers in a locality declared as ‘disturbed area’. However, while AFSPA is considered necessary by the state and army officials to protect the state against internal disturbances, to uphold the integrity of nation, to fight against terrorism and insurgency, and to protect sensitive border areas, it is being vehemently opposed and discarded by human rights groups, women’s organizations and political groups, as it is seen as facilitating grave human rights abuses, impunity, rape and torture, and silencing of democratic dissent. The Act has long been challenged internally through country-wide campaigns, coalitions, self-immolation, fast until death, and naked protests. It is also regularly referred to internationally, for example in the recently concluded UN Human Rights Councils’ Universal Periodic Country Review or in the previous Human Rights Committee, as an issue of serious concern.

Continue reading AFSPA – 50 Years of a Law →

Government, Identities, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Maveli won’t be let into Chengara

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This is Onam week in Kerala — a festival that recalls the days of Maveli, the wise asura king dethroned and exiled by Vamana, the avtar of Vishnu, at the behest of jealous gods. It is also an intensely-family time for most people, given that upper caste ‘family’ values are pervasive. Amidst high voltage commercialised Onam, the people at Chengara starve. The trade union blockade has been renewed, and the CITU has brought in women and has extended the blockade 24 hours. And CPM cadre have now started ‘occupying’ the houses of the Sadhujana Vimochana Munnani activists — ostensibly to reveal the ‘truth’ — that some of them indeed possess some land and a house! Strange, indeed. By this logic, the women who the trade unions have deployed in the blockade shouldn’t be ‘workers’ at all, in the light of their middle class dress codes, body language, gold ornaments and apparent reluctance to squat on the road (they sit primly on rows of chairs)!

Continue reading Maveli won’t be let into Chengara →

Capitalism, Debates, Left watch, Politics

Breakthrough in Singur?

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Dear all,

(Adapted from a recent post made on the Reader List)

Kafila has in the past discussed the debacle of Nandigram in West Bengal and more recently, Singur.

For the past several days, a peaceful agitation on the Durgapur expressway near the Tata Motors Factory site in Singur in West Bengal has protested against the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and the West Bengal Government’s decision not to engage with the demands of the farmers and others who did not voluntarily accept the paltry compensation offered to them by the WBIDC for the loss of their land or their livelihoods.

At the close of last night, the Governor of West Bengal, Gopal Krishna Gandhi announced that a solution acceptable to all (the protesting farmers at Singur and the Government of West Bengal) has been found, and that Ms. Mamata Bannerjee of the Trinamool Congress (one of the key protagonists of the Singur protest) would announce that the agitation at Singur would be suspended.

This is good news, as it demonstrates that hitherto unwilling and insensitive governments that try to ride roughshod over people in the interests of capital can be made on occasion to listen to organized and peaceful  expressions of peoples’ dissent. The CPI(M) led Left Front Government of West Bengal seems to have learnt at least some lessons from the fallout of its earlier shameful and anti-democratic conduct in Nandigram. This is welcome. It can only be hoped that the CPI(M) leadership takes stock,  learns to listen more to people, and indeed to many from amongst their own cadre who have been unhappy about the way in which their party brokered unfair land deals for Capital.

The people of Nandigram had based their struggle on what they had learnt from the earlier phase of the Singur situation. It appears today that the people of Singur have benefited from the restraint shown by a government and ruling party chastened by its mismanagement of the situation in Nandigram. The people of Singur owe their current sense of respite to a great extent to the people of Nandigram and their struggle.

Though it may be premature to call this ‘breakthrough’ a victory for peasants and working people, it is certainly reason to believe that not every struggle conducted by ordinary people over land, resources and livelihood is doomed to failure. This news should raise the hopes of all those committed to protest against unjust land aquisition and transfer moves – be they in Orissa, Haryana, Kerala, Goa, Kashmir or elsewhere.

See a PTI report in the Hindu that gives more details of the agreement.

regards,

Shuddha

Debates, Media politics, Movements, Politics

Singur, Mediotics and an NGO Called Indian Express

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[Note: Television was often referred to as the the idiot-box. For very sound reasons. It produced idiocy on a regular basis. It still does. But in these days, this is no longer the monopoly of the televisual media. Newspapers too are doing pretty much the same. Let us call this specific form of media-generated idiocy, rampant among media persons, mediocy and the phenomenon, mediotics. Those affected by it will then be mediots.]

I know that someone will immediately step in to correct me to say that Indian Express is not an NGO. But if one looks at the completely illiterate use of the term made by the Indian media, then anything that is not ‘governmental’ is ‘non-governmental’ and can, hence, be called an NGO. Except that for the large mass of ignoramuses peopling the media i.e. mediots, this is a safe term to describe an animal that you cannot identify. Continue reading Singur, Mediotics and an NGO Called Indian Express →

Debates, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Qatl ki Raat – Watchout Tomorrow

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Tonight is the Night of the Long Knives – or Qatl ki Raat as they say in Hindustani. Indeed, it is not the night of the long knives of Nazi vintage – for that was carried out by Hitler against his own SA (the Nazi paramilitary organization), in one desperate power struggle. This is our very own CPI-M’s equally desperate power struggle – but directed outwards towards the struggling Dalit families in Chengara. Continue reading Qatl ki Raat – Watchout Tomorrow →