Category Archives: Right watch

Culture, Government, Identities, Mirror Worlds, Right watch

Swat Flogging and Public Outrage: Beena Sarwar

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[This article was first published in Dawn 12 April 2009. It is reproduced here courtesy South Asia Citizens Web. The recent reports of the most spine-chilling instance of flogging of a young woman by Taliban goons unleashed a wave of indignation across Pakistan. This comment by Pakistani journalist Beena Sarwar is self-explanatory. For all the political illiterates and those given to anti-Muslim hate-speech in this country, this report and the innumerable discussions and posts on sites like Chowk, should indicate how much the Taliban and terrorism are hated and resisted by ordinary ‘secular’ people and women’s and human rights groups in Pakistan. They should indicate that ‘Islam’ and ‘being Muslim’ are themselves intensely contested ideas. But of course, we know that nothing can teach these hate-mongers anything, for they are the mirror-image of the Taliban. And as for us, as the old song goes: hum korea mein hum hain hindustan mein/ hum roos mein hain, cheen mein japan mein…And one might add: Pakistan mein bhi hain aur sare jahaan mein…

(There we are in korea and in hindustan/in russia we are, in china and in japan/and in pakistan too we are, we’re in the whole wide world…)

It is people like us there who must fight the Taliban, and people like them here who must fight the Hindutva fascists  – always, relentlessly…Even when in the minority and especially when the political parties and leaders desert en masse. – AN]

Demo against womans flogging, courtesy LA Times
Demo against woman's flogging, courtesy LA Times

In the “flogging video’s” undated footage shot with a cellphone in Swat (judging by the language and clothes) a man whips a woman in red, her pinned face down on the ground and encircled by men. The leather strap strikes her back as she cries out in pain.

The video, circulated on the Internet before local television channels broadcast it, caused a furore both in Pakistan and internationally. What caused the outrage? The public punishment meted out to a woman — or the fact that it was broadcast?

Continue reading Swat Flogging and Public Outrage: Beena Sarwar →

Right watch

Arise, awake, the people who run Facebook

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From: Nisha Susan
Date: Sat, Apr 11, 2009
Subject: Pink Chaddi vandalised and taken over Continue reading Arise, awake, the people who run Facebook →

Debates, Right watch

BJP without RSS?

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Right since the controversy over L K Advani’s remarks on Jinnah, there is a section of the ‘liberal’ Indian media which has argued that all the BJP needs to do is divorce/separate/delink itself from the RSS. It would then turn into a ‘normal’ right wing party. I remember this was a line taken up strongly by the Indian Express. The subtext of their editorial position was that there is a strong left tilt in Indian polity; Nehruvian socialist rhetoric remains ingrained; and a ‘non-communal’ BJP can provide the right balance. (Where they see the left tilt when few of us can or how much further right they still want to push India is an altogether different debate). In a chat with CNN IBN website readers, Ramchandra Guha takes up a similar position arguing what India needs is BJP without RSS. (and ‘a Congress without the dynasty and a modern and unified left’).

I do not understand Indian politics too well, nor have covered the BJP. There are others who have written about the relationship between the two in great depth. But from the little I have seen of them while reporting in a few Indian states, here is a simple thought – the BJP will not be BJP if it is detached from the RSS. To assume that BJP can remain a party without the RSS structure to back it or BJP can separate itself from the larger ‘parivaar’ seems to be based on a limited understanding of both the BJP and RSS. Continue reading BJP without RSS? →

Politics, Right watch, Sex

Apocalyse Now: A Swamp Rises to Swallow the Rock of the Faith

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From the outside it is hard to tell. The glory of Kerala’s mighty Catholic Church, it appears, has weathered many a tsunami. The communists tried in 1958; they tried in 2006-07 too. Each time, the Church brushed off the challenge, transmogrifying itself, almost miraculously, into a murderous majoritarian tsunami in defense of theism that swept away the Unbelievers into the depths of hell. Again, the Church proved that the malicious schemes of Syrian Christian dissenters, puny individuals, Education Ministers in communist-led ministries — Joseph Mundassery then, M.A.Baby now — shall be foiled by the hand of God. Thus in 2006-07 too, the power of Faith burgeoned, once again, into a tremendous cyclone which swept the Unbelievers’ dastardly designs off the face of our Fair and Promised Land,  Kerala. Continue reading Apocalyse Now: A Swamp Rises to Swallow the Rock of the Faith →

Everyday Life, Identities, Politics, Right watch

Cultural Policing in Dakshina Kannada: Vigilante Attacks on Women and Minorities

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[This summary comes to us from ARVIND NARRAIN (ALF) of a report brought out by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka (PUCL-K) in the wake of the attacks on women in Mangalore by cadres of the Hindu right-wing Sri Ram Sene.]

It was only after the continuous telecast of the images of the women who were subjected to an horrific assault by cadres of the Sri Ram Sene in a pub in Mangalore on January 24, 2009, that public attention gravitated towards what was happening in Mangalore. Self styled vigilante groups in Dakshina Kannada have begun to police social interactions between members of different religious communities such as boys and girls drinking juice together or sitting together on a bus merely because they come from different religious communities. Cultural policing also targets women in particular and lays down norms with respect to public spaces they can occupy and the clothes which they can wear. Cultural policing has as its primary target, young people. From Shefantunde (16) who was attacked for talking to a Hindu girl to a college student Shruti and Shabeeb for talking on a bus to Anishwita (23), Akeel Mohammmad (24) and Pramilla(22) for drinking a juice together, its the young which has come under vicious attack. Perhaps we also need to think of the young not just as victims but indeed as agents of social transformation who through their everyday acts of fraternal living are fulfilling the promise of the Indian Constitution and thereby imperiling the ideological agenda of those who see India differently. Cultural policing aims to punish all those who try to live out the meaning of the Preamble’s promise of ‘fraternity’ and is a fundamental attack on the very Constitutional order. The promise of fraternity held out in the Preamble is what is contested at its very roots by cultural policing. What cultural policing wants to produce are monolithic self-enclosed communities with no form of social interaction between them. It is antithetical to the idea of ‘We, the people of India’ and insists that India is no more one nation, but rather a collection of separate peoples. This Report documents how sixty years after independence, the vision of the framers of the Constitution is sought to be so completely repudiated by organizations which are bent on ripping out the heart of Indian Constitutionalism.

The full report is available on the Alternative Law Forum website and can be accessed here.

Government, Identities, Politics, Right watch

Fighter for a Great Yesterday

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Brand Advani: Perils of Rebranding

[It is for the first time in his nearly five year old tenure as PM that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a stinging attack on L. K. Advani – PM in waiting as far as the Sangh Parivar is concerned. Prime Minister was candid enough to remind about the “prominent role” played by Mr Advani in the Babri Masjid demolition, or how he presided over Gujarat riots and failed to prevent terror attacks on Parliament and Red Fort as Home Minister.]

1.

L.K. Advani, the ‘Swayamsevak’ from across the border, the hawk of the nineties or the rediscoverer of Jinnah wants to do a makeover. Not a day passes when we are presented with a new look of the old man who has already crossed eighties. Sudheendra Kulkarni, his speechwriter shared the understanding behind LKA’s rebranding mission. ‘Man of Eighties, Vision of Twenties’. If one day he is presented as an emotional patriarch who has no qualms in shading tears after seeing a movie the next day he is packaged as the man in his energetic twenties and shown raising dumbells at a gymnasium or the next day he is with a family in hospital which tried to committ suicide because of financial problems. Continue reading Fighter for a Great Yesterday →

Bad ideas, Frontiers, Right watch

Omid Reza Misayafi

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omid

Omid Reza Misayafi was a blogger.

That is not why he has lost his life in prison.

It’s because of what he wrote.

Identities, Right watch

Dalits in ‘Hindu Rashtra’

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The Gujarat Earthquake in the year 2001 and the consequent relief and rehabilitation programme was an eyeopener to the outside world regarding the deep seated caste bias in the Gujarati community apart from the much talked about bias against the minorities. There were reports that at places the relief and rehabilitation work bypassed the dalits and the Muslims.

Interestingly Babasaheb Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar had asked his followers to stop Hindu Raj becoming a reality at all costs. Continue reading Dalits in ‘Hindu Rashtra’ →

Law, Media politics, Movements, Right watch

Bloggers and Defamation

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Justice Balakrishnan, in refusing to quash criminal proceedings against a nineteen year old blogger, says that any blogger posting material on the web should be aware of the reach of the internet and hence also be willing to face the consequences of such action. This sounds fair enough, and it would seem that if bloggers are exercising their right to freedom of speech and expression, then they should be subject to the same norms as a newspaper or magazine would, including the possibility of legal action being taken against them.

This sentiment reminds me of Anatole France’s famous statement that the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. The quick equation of an individual blogger with the might of a newspaper or a magazine is a little troubling. Individuals do not have the same kind of power, money or reach to be able to defend themselves in the way that newspapers may be capable of. Continue reading Bloggers and Defamation →

Culture, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

SS Stormtroopers attack OBCs celebrating Shiv Jayanti

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(Apologies for posting a mere press release, but it’s something important and yet I don’t think it will be ‘interesting’ enough for the ‘national’ media to pick up. This is not to take sides at all, because there are no sides to take.)

RASHTRIYA SAMAJ PAKSH

PRESS RELEASE

Rashtriya Samaj Paksh, Shiv Jayanti meeting attacked by Shiv Sainiks in Mumbai

The Shiv Sena once again proves that it is a Brahmanical party by attacking OBC’s

Mumbai – February 23, 2009

A meeting that was organized by the activists of the Kurla unit of the Rashtriya Samaj Paksh (RSP) was attacked by Shiv Sainiks. The SS storm troopers, numbering 50, unleashed their fury on the meeting, shouting slogans, attacking the people and throwing chairs. The very fact that the Shiv Sainiks attacked Shiv Jayanti celebrations organized by the OBC (Other Backward Caste) activists, namely the Dhangar community (Shepherds) has once again exposed the Manuwadi – Brahmanical character of the Shiv Sena. Continue reading SS Stormtroopers attack OBCs celebrating Shiv Jayanti →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Everyday Life, Language, Left watch, Politics, Right watch, Sports, Technology

Healthy Debate

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From here.

Media politics, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Valentine’s day and protest in Bangalore, 2009

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A friend said that last week in Bangalore and the drama(s) around Valentine’s Day would make a wonderful PhD thesis if one had the time and the distance. Two things are of relevance here.

One, the spread of communal politics that is inherently violent and divisive is not new to our country. Moral policing forming a major part of it and translating primarily into the control of the everyday lives of women, control over the institutions that could keep the regressive ideas around religion and caste in place such as marriage have been the standard points of attack in many parts of the world and in India. To maintain the notion of the ‘other’ that these divisive forces base their politics and everyday activities, we should never meet or get to know the ‘other’. And thus the attacks on young people who had friends across communities. It is these incidents that have sometimes spiraled into well-planned, thoroughly executed, state-sponsored carnage of people from certain communities, namely the imaginary ‘other’. Continue reading Valentine’s day and protest in Bangalore, 2009 →

Culture, Everyday Life, Identities, Left watch, Politics, Right watch, Sex, Violence/Conflict

A Hundred Years to Valentine’s Day

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The Manglore-style of violence against women is clearly not the style of the politically powerful guardians of sexual morality in Kerala. But maybe the style is more or less redundant over here: there are very few pub-going local (or local-looking) women over here. How convenient for us women of Kerala that we Malayalees live in social arrangements that insist on sexual segregation in public spaces and institutions.

This is of course related to the particular history of gender and spatiality that unfolded between the mid-19th and 20th centuries in Kerala.Spatial categories have always underwritten caste and gender exclusion in Malayalee society. Take for instance, the derogatory term chanthapennungal (‘market women’) that refers to women who get their way through loud and vociferous argument – who work for their livelihood in market-space and reject feminine modesty. The chanthapennu is the very antithesis of taravattil pirannaval (‘she who was born in an aristocratic homestead’). Thus the woman whose daily life and labours involves traversing spaces outside the domestic and the familial is forever poised at the brink — she is who may, at any instant, collapse into being chantappennu.In traditional Malayalee society, family spaces were named by caste and constructed through caste practices and gender norms. For instance, the Brahmin home was referred to as Illam or Mana; the Nair homestead as Taravadu or Idam.In other words, a generalized notion of domestic space housing the family was absent.  Indeed, the observance of spatial regulations was often taken to be crucial in shaping feminine moral qualities found characteristic of the aristocracy — and hardly vice-versa.

Continue reading A Hundred Years to Valentine’s Day →

Genders, Right watch, Sex

Pink Panties – With Love to Muthalik

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Today is Valentine’s day and it is only befitting of the changing times that the Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik and his cohorts should receive huge consignments of pink chaddies. Responding to the call of the ‘Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women’, pink chaddies, we are told, “kept pouring into the Sene office all through the day. The parcels came mainly from Punjab, Rajasthan, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kerala”, according to reports.

V-day love pours in for Muthalik
V-day love pours in for Muthalik

Many of us who wanted to be part of the open and vigorous demonstration of love but couldn’t, would like to send many more panties to the members of this monkey gang (Ram’s sena was after all, Hanuman’s!). And wherever we are, we will drink in pubs and make merry. Muthalik, you will always remain in the hearts and minds of all the ahle-junoon-i-ishq. Har ghoont sharaab ke saath tujhe yaad karenge…Aakhir kaun hai is duniya mein tere siva, jise jalaane ke liye ek bosa-e-gul, ek chaddi ya ek ghoont sharaab bas kaafi hai? Hamaare halaq se utri har ghoont teri chita ki aag hogi goya…

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Genders, Images, Right watch, Sex

Will we overcome? Pramada Menon

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This is a guest post by PRAMADA MENON

Sundays are days for doing nothing much. Often I sit in front of the television and surf and watch many, many movies until all the story lines start merging into one. It’s fun because it does not require you to think. If one switches on a news channel, the chances are that you will start to splutter like mustard seeds in oil, since there is so much to splutter about – Nirmala Venkatesh, a member of the central government’s National Commission for Women, was put in charge of a three-member panel to investigate the attack on the women at a pub in Mangalore at 4pm in the evening. The way she sees it, Venkatesh is supposed to have said, women have the right to enjoy themselves but should also recognize societal limits. As part of her inquiry, she said, she plans to meet with the attackers, the bar owner and the families of the young women to see whether their parents
allowed them to go out to pubs every night at midnight. “My personal advice: Women should be very careful,” she said. “I can’t just roam after midnight.”

Continue reading Will we overcome? Pramada Menon →

Bad ideas, Government, Law, Politics, Right watch, Scams, Violence/Conflict

Dead Hence Guilty?

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“Governments have always lied. They naturally deny it, even long after it is abundantly clear that they have lied, trailing multiple red herrings, dismissing inconvenient evidence, implying that there is counter-evidence they are not free to produce. When a lie can no longer be credibly denied it is justified, usually by an appeal to the national interest. Governments of modern representative democracies are no different, even if they are more liable than dictators to be exposed.”
– Colin Leys, Quoted in Socialist Register, 2006

The National Capital Region (NCR) witnessed a police encounter on the eve of the republic day. Two young men who were supposedly carrying a big cache of arms and ammunition were killed on the spot. We were told that this duo was part of a larger LeT module, which wanted to wreak havoc in the capital.
The killings of the two young men did not cause much uproar.
The police officers appeared jubilant over this episode for foiling such attempt. To blunt any possible criticism of the incident a due enquiry was also ordered by the powers that be and has even promised that it would be completed in a stipulated time.

Continue reading Dead Hence Guilty? →

Right watch

The New Footsoldiers

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The Ideological and institutional Incorporation of Dalits  Into Hindutva maelstorm

There are many lower orders in the Hindu society whose economic, political and social needs are the same as those of majority of Muslims and they would be far more ready to make a common cause with the Muslims for achieving common ends than they would with the high caste hindus who have denied and deprived them of ordinary human rights for centuries.

Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar – Writings and Speeches Vol 8., P. 359

(“[U]ntouchability, is a kind of disease of the Hindus..it is a mental twist.. I do not know how my friend is going to untwist the twist which the Hindus have got for thousands of years unless they are all sent to some kind of hospital.’

Dr B.R.Ambedkar , 1954 , Quoted in Bhagwan Das, 95 :53).

Introduction

Dalits, or ex ‘untouchables’, comprising one-sixth of India’s population, a majority of whom still live at the bottom of the social hierarchy called caste system live a precarious existence. The plight of this section – which is routinely discriminated against and subjected to overt-covert violence of many forms – has of late been much discussed in the international fora as well. Continue reading The New Footsoldiers →

Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Hindutva Terrorism in Karnataka

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A Karnataka dacoit with links to a radical Hindu rightwing group has confessed to having carried out the Hubli district court bombing of May10, 2008.

The blast took place as the first phase of polling for the Karnataka Assembly elections was on – in a magistrate’s courtroom where cases against top SIMI leaders including Safdar Nagori were scheduled to be heard two days later.

(Dacoit with Hindu outfit links behind Hubli blast, Indian Express, January 13, 2009.) 

Does anybody remember the bomb blasts in Hubli (Karnataka, May 2008 ) courts last year when preparations were on for the coming state assembly elections? These blasts which took place on a holiday did not witness any casuality although they extensively damaged the court premises. But the most important part played by these blasts was the atmosphere it created in favour of the BJP.

As it always happens after any such mysterious sounding blasts, many innocents belonging to minority community were illegally detained and quite a few among them also were booked for their ‘role’ in the blasts. The police had promptly claimed that ‘sleeper cells belonging to LeT and SIMI’ had executed the blasts. Continue reading Hindutva Terrorism in Karnataka →

Left watch, Media politics, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Speech and silencing on the Right and Left

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Lasantha Wickrematunge, the courageous editor of Sunday Leader, a weekly newspaper from Sri Lanka, was recently assasinated by the Sri Lankan state. Relentless in exposing corruption and human rights abuses, he was fully aware of the price he would have to pay. In a stunning editorial that he appears to have written for publication in the event of precisely such an eventuality, and which was published after his death, he directly accuses the government of killing him:

“It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government’s sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.”

His words of farewell are defiant:

“If you remember nothing else, remember this: The Leader is there for you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual, dissident or disabled. Its staff will fight on, unbowed and unafraid, with the courage to which you have become accustomed. Do not take that commitment for granted. Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.”

Meanwhile, in Nepal, the premises of Himal media were attacked by people identified as Maoist activists. Today the ‘bourgeois’ media, tomorrow – dissenting Left voices…?

Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Law, Politics, Right watch, Scams, Violence/Conflict

Guantanamo and Illegal U.S. Detentions: Time for Real Change

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[On the seventh anniversary of Guantanamo Bay, 11 January]

The United States detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – seven years old on 11 January 2009 – have become emblematic of the gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the US Government in the name of fighting terrorism. Though the U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to close down the Guantanamo Bay, there are undoubtedly substantial challenges to closing. Every day that Guantánamo is kept open is another day in which hundreds of detainees and their families are kept in the legal shadows. Distressing to the individuals concerned and destructive of the rule of law, the example it sets – of a powerful country undermining fundamental human rights principles – is dangerous to us all. It would be no less dangerous, and no less unlawful, if the USA were simply to transfer the problem it has created at Guantánamo to another locations.

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Detainees at Guantanamo Bay

The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay isn’t the only prison where the United States is holding detainees from the ‘war on terror.’ At Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper in Iraq, and many more – some known and others secret – are used to detain those captured by the U.S. military. Camp Bucca alone has at times held 20,000 prisoners, most of whom live in groups of tents surrounded by wire. Most detainees are held unlawfully, without warrant or charge, and without recourse to challenge their detention. Even when Guantánamo is closed, the need to push for detainee human rights will continue.

Continue reading Guantanamo and Illegal U.S. Detentions: Time for Real Change →

Excavation, Government, Law, Politics, Right watch, Scams

Character builders of the nation

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‘Na Taala Toota na tijori, Phirbhi BJP Mukhyalaya se dhai karod chori.’
(Neither the lock was broken nor the safe, yet 2.5 crore Rs were stolen from the Party headquarters.)
– An SMS which was circulated widely in the journalist community.

What is the weight of Rs. 2.5 crore if one decides to have the whole amount packed in the denomination of Rs.1,000 notes ?

It is exactly 31 kilograms.

Please do not get surprised over my correct reply. I just wanted to share few details of the ‘theft’ at the headoffice of the main opposition party namely BJP which has appeared in different newspapers.

According to the treasurer of the party there is no cause of worry and once the ‘ankeshan” (auditing) is over then only something definite can be said about it. The latest news is that amount supposedly missing from the coffers has been reduced without any further explanation. Continue reading Character builders of the nation →