Category Archives: Violence/Conflict

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Identities, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

We, or our Nationhood, Redefined.

8 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, filmmaker Anand Patwardhan was invited by the Editors’ Guild to deliver its annual lecture. Patwardhan’s speech, titled We or our Nationhood Redefined, was marked by his characteristically cool tone, systematically reassembling facts that have a tricky habit of leaking from national memory. Facts like the twentieth century’s worst genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler and his programme of racial cleansing has a respectable and massive following in India in the form of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. That the RSS has at least 50,000 branches across the country with over 40 million members, and runs a network of 18,000 schools across India. That one such child, recruited from the age of 8 from a relatively poor family, is Prime Minister Modi; and another is Party Chief Amit Shah. That just before the recent reshuffle, 5 Chief Ministers and 17 of the 23 Cabinet-level senior ministers were current or former RSS members. That the assassins of Gandhi are really the RSS, not the lone lunatic Godse who merely carried out what others dreamed about. That RSS’s poisonous communal agenda was roundly condemned by Sardar Patel, of whom PM Modi has promised to build the world’s tallest statue. Or more obscure but equally revealing facts, like the letter written by RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras from jail during Emergency, praising Indira Gandhi and especially her programme of sterilisation of Muslims. And those truly mind-boggling-in-their-irony facts, like the widespread involvement of the RSS in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, when the BJP cynically says “1984” every time somebody says “2002”.

On a day when the Nanavati Commission has termed the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat as a purely communal reaction to Godhra, and cleared then Chief Minister Modi’s government of any wrongdoing, or even inaction, it is critical we re-read Patwardhan’s speech, to remind ourselves exactly what we are up against if we believe in a non-communal, non-divided, heterogenous India. As Patwardhan put it, given the history of the RSS in this subcontinent, if a Modi didn’t exist, he would have to be invented. Read more.

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Excavation, Frontiers, Media politics, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

The Class Politics of Blasphemy in Pakistan: Fatima Tassadiq

5 Comments

Guest Post by FATIMA TASSADIQ

The brutal murders of Shehzad and Shama, a Christian couple in the village of Kot Radha Kishan in Kasur district on 4th November, spawned predictable outrage in the press and social media. The rush of horror, the diagnoses and prescribed course of action against such violence involved the familiar paternalistic discourse of the ‘illiterate masses’ whose ‘ignorance’ evidently leaves them particularly vulnerable to the manipulation of the much maligned mullahs. Such a narrative serves the dual function of reducing religious violence to the faceless masses while at the same time reaffirming the educated urban upper class as the rightful custodian of Islam and Pakistan. This construction conveniently ignores the role played by the state and the elite in producing religious violence and feeds the class-based blind spots that exist in our understanding of what constitutes religious extremism.

Continue reading The Class Politics of Blasphemy in Pakistan: Fatima Tassadiq →

Everyday Life, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

There is hatred in the air yet again: Preeti Chauhan

8 Comments

Guest Post by PREETI CHAUHAN on the recent communal tension in Noor e Illahi area of Delhi.

It was around 9 pm on Tuesday, November 11th, I was heading to my parents’ home to go with my sister for an interview the next morning, when my cellphone rang, my sister was asking me frantically where I was. I replied a bit anxiously but with irritation, ‘Kya hai? Pahunch jaaungi thodi der mein’. She said don’t come, turn back. I asked why, ‘yahan dange hone waale hain, saari dukaanein band ho rahin hain’, my sister replied. In those two-three seconds my heart skipped many beats, a strange fear about the safety of my family gripped me. I could for the first time feel what it is to live in fear of communal riots. I called up my close relatives who were out of home to ask where they are. There was such an uncertainty as to how will my sister go for the interview tomorrow? Would I be able to reach home tomorrow morning? Would my vehicle be attacked if I decide to go home now?

In those three- four minutes the world seemed to have taken a terrifying turn for me. Mundane, everyday things, everyday routes suddenly turned hostile and suspicious. I could feel the agony and fear so very close. Then there was a sudden burst of anger that I felt against the communal forces that are so hell bent on creating communal trouble everywhere in Delhi. I had not read the newspaper the whole day yesterday and hadn’t watched TV but just before I was leaving home my spouse told me that my native place is in the news and it was then that I had read about the communal tension and curfew in Noore-illahi. It’s the area, the vicinity of my childhood, adolescence and my adulthood too. It’s the area of the weekly bazaar for us, the Eid bazaar as well from which we had returned at 1 am at times. Noor Chicken is where Noor Jahan furniture once stood if I remember correctly; it belonged to the family of one of my classmates in school. I hear today that Noor Chicken’s owner and his son was badly beaten and the son is rumored to have succumbed to injuries. I shudder to think if he is my primary school classmate Shahnawaaz… Continue reading There is hatred in the air yet again: Preeti Chauhan →

Everyday Life, Feminism, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Crime and Consent: Vrinda Grover

1 Comment

VRINDA GROVER analyses the recent Delhi High Court judgement on the rape and consequent death of a 65 year old woman, acquitting the accused because the woman was ‘menopausal’ and making a curious distinction between ‘forceful’  and ‘forcible’ intercourse.

In a recent judgment in Achey Lal vs State Govt of NCT Delhi, the Delhi High Court on October 30 set aside the conviction of the appellant for rape and murder. What has provoked discussion are the observations, inferences and conclusions of the court. Briefly, the facts as reported in the judgment are: on December 31 2010, a house maid, aged about 65-70 years, was found dead, with her clothes disheveled to expose her body. The accused, Achey Lal, 45 years old, was present in the room in an intoxicated condition. The husband of the deceased deposed that the accused had come at 8 am that day to his house with a quarter bottle of alcohol and when it finished, the husband left, while the accused stayed on with his deceased wife. The cause of death, according to the doctor who conducted the post mortem, “was asphyxia due to aspiration of gastric contents consequent upon forceful sexual intercourse, which was sufficient to cause death in the ordinary course of nature”.

Read the rest of the article in The Indian Express.

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Feminism, Genders, Images, Right watch, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Resist the Sangh Parivar’s Hatred of Love: Nayanjyoti and Subhashini

3 Comments

Guest Post by Nayanjyoti and Subhashini

In late October, the youth wing of the Sangh Pariwar among others vandalised a café in Calicut on the pretext that lovers ‘date’ each another sitting in this café. When many young men and women in Kochi gathered together to protest by expressing their love in public, they got beaten up by various right wing groups and the police in response. The students and youths in different regions of the country gathered in solidarity of this protest going by the name of ‘Kiss of Love’. At the same time, as the news spread rapidly through the media and social networking site, a polarization continues to develop in the society, even among the individual activists and similar organizations, for and against the form of this movement.

Continue reading Resist the Sangh Parivar’s Hatred of Love: Nayanjyoti and Subhashini →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Government, Identities, Metropolis, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

On The Recent Communal Disturbances in Trilokpuri: People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism

3 Comments

Guest Post by People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (P.A.D.S)

NOVEMBER 2, 2014

(Members of P.A.D.S. have been interacting with and visiting residents of Trilokpuri ever since the communal disturbances started on Oct 23. Along with many other citizens we are involved in efforts to re-establish peace and in providing legal aid to those wrongfully arrested. This statement is based on the experiences of P.A.D.S members.)

The inhabitants of Trilokpuri, a densely populated neighbourhood of working people in Delhi, went through a harrowing week after Diwali night on 23 October. A brawl around two places of worship that night proved to be the first event. Although the situation appears to have settled down that night, some motivated planning and mobilisation must have taken place that night itself, because the next day it was a full scale communal clash. Armed mobs from outside the locality are reported to have joined the rioting that involved brick throwing. Firearms were also used and two boys suffered critical bullet injuries.  Inhabitants are emphatic that the police fired into the crowd. The police first denied firing at all. Its latest claim is that it fired only in self defense. One apparel show room owned by a Muslim resident was gutted. Police intervened in force only two days after the clashes started. It turned the neighbourhood into an occupied war-zone. More than fifty men and minor boys were arrested randomly, many picked up forcibly from their houses amid verbal abuse and physical violence. Road intersections were barricaded and entry and exit points were closely monitored. Drones were used in surveillance and houses systematically searched. Essential supplies were in short supply. Daily wage earners, contract workers, and self employed who could not go out lost their source of livelihood. Seriously wounded and ill had no access to medical aid. While the entire neighbourhood suffered in one form or another, inhabitants of three blocks in particular, nos 15, 27 and 28, and attached  jhuggi clusters, mainly occupied by citizens who are Muslims bore the brunt of police action.

Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Communal Hatred the Mahapanchayat Way – A Report From Bawana, Delhi: Mohit Pandey

3 Comments

Guest Post by MOHIT PANDEY

An All India Students Association  team visited Bawana on Sunday (November 2, 2014), met local people, witnessed the Mahapanchayat and the developments around it. This report is based on that visit.

Long standing communal tension in Bawana (at the outskirts of Delhi) took a vicious inflammatory turn, when a Mahapanchayat was called on 2nd November to provoke hatred against the Taziya (Moharram procession) in Bawana. Since Bakrid, the blatant lie of ‘cow slaughter’ in the JJ Colony (nearby Bawana) was used as a pretext to mobilize the whole Hindu community against Muslims. India’s ruling party BJP, as well as an entire battery of RSS backed Hindutva outfits were involved in the campaign to divide Hindus and Muslims of the poorest classes.

Our observations about the Mahapanchayat are as follows :

  • People were mobilized from Bawana and many places close to Bawana, from both Haryana and Delhi.
  • The agenda of Mahapanchayat was to prevent the Taziya procession in Bawana. But residents of the JJ Colony told us that the Muslims of the colony had already agreed, in a meeting on 28th October where leaders from both communities and the ACP were present, to limit their procession to the JJ Colony itself. If the issue of the route of the Taziya procession had already been settled, why did the police even allow the mahapanchayat to be held? Continue reading Communal Hatred the Mahapanchayat Way – A Report From Bawana, Delhi: Mohit Pandey →
Everyday Life, Excavation, Images, Language, Violence/Conflict

Thirty Years On (from November, 1984): Jaspreet Singh

1 Comment

Kafila normally never publishes poems. But sometimes, we make an exception. Because poetry give voice to memory in ways that prose can’t always. And because we must never forget November, 1984.

Guest Post by Jaspreet Singh

30 YEARS ON

One hears that the grass has grown again

and old domes have been plated

with gold. Children of ashened fathers

have acquired autos and crystals, and Lutyens’

stones have bloomed

Continue reading Thirty Years On (from November, 1984): Jaspreet Singh →

Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Organized Fundamentalist Hindutva Forces trying to Instigate Communal Tension in Bawana, Delhi

Leave a comment

Pressurize the Administration to immediately intervene and stop the communal Mahapanchayat on 2nd November!

Organized Hindutva forces are again trying to instigate communal polarization and spread terror in Bawana area of North-West Delhi in the last few days. They have called for a ‘Mahapanchayat’ at 4 pm on Sunday, 2nd November 2014 to oppose the Taziya procession taken out for Moharram in the area, calling it supposedly a ‘terror procession’.

Only three-four policemen loiter in the area tonight on 1st November, while the administration, including the Lt. Governor and Police Commissioner, has been alerted in the afternoon itself  by various pro-people forces and local people on the rabidly communal ‘parcha’ that has been circulated in the area. This parcha explicitly gives a ‘call for Bawana’ to stop the supposed terror procession and ‘show of arms’, ‘display of strength’, disruption of peace and other baseless allegations on the Muslim community.

The situation of communal tension in Bawana is not spontaneous, but is being instigated by organized Hindutva forces, much like Trilokpuri in the past week. Earlier, on 2nd-6th October, just before Eid celebrations, the ‘Hindu Krantikari Sena’ outfit of the RSS tried to make a case out of imaginary ‘cow slaughter’ and instigate terror and communal tension among residents of Bawana JJ Colony and nearby Bawana village. They had also put up communal posters then calling for a gathering in Bawana Gaushala on 5th October. Continue reading Organized Fundamentalist Hindutva Forces trying to Instigate Communal Tension in Bawana, Delhi →

Everyday Life, Violence/Conflict

Sophie Joseph’s Sikh Neighbours: John Dayal

4 Comments

Guest Post by JOHN DAYAL

My aunt and God-mother Sophie Joseph had lived in Delhi a long time, and as a young woman, was witness to the communal frenzy art the 1947 Partition of India.

She would also tell stories of heroism, and greed. Many Hindus saved lives, in return for all the cash they could carry, or for rights over the house that would soon be vacated. Others saved their neighbours out of love. Many lived to cross the borders not because the Armymen protected them, but because the neighbours risked their lives to save them from other marauding neighbours. Sophie, then in her teens, remembered all this. She was no heroine and her lower middle class family was not the stuff of which role models are made, but they were happy they connived in the saving of lives.

That lives could be saved if there was courage of conviction was a lesson she learnt. Her lesson would come in handy almost thirty five years later, save many more lives of other neighbours.

Continue reading Sophie Joseph’s Sikh Neighbours: John Dayal →

Culture, Violence/Conflict

Boycott the Israeli embassy sponsored performance of the Maria Kong Dance Company in Delhi: INCACBI

3 Comments

Statement from The Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel 

Don’t let apartheid onstage!

Protest against the ‘Israel in India’ initiative!

Boycott the Israeli embassy sponsored performance of the Maria Kong Dance Company at Kamani Auditorium, New Delhi, November 4, 2014

On 4th November, 2014, the Maria Kong Dance Company will perform at the Kamani Auditorium as part of the “Israel in India” initiative, with support from the Israeli embassy in India. This is part of the 8th Delhi International Arts Festival, organised by the Prasiddha Foundation with the support of organisations including the ICCR.

The festival aims to “serve as a significant platform for cultural diplomacy” and “provide a common ground for interaction between the artists and the mass audience”. Is a common ground possible between the Israel and Indians of conscience, whether artists or citizens? Is “cultural diplomacy” possible with Israel when it has attacked Gaza so brutally earlier this year, and held its people to ransom for years? Since Israel does not respect international law and recognize the Palestinian people’s right to freedom, equality and justice, the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (InCACBI) demands that Israel be boycotted from the Indian cultural arena.

Continue reading Boycott the Israeli embassy sponsored performance of the Maria Kong Dance Company in Delhi: INCACBI →

Debates, Metropolis, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Jis tann lãgé soee jãné – Delhi, November 1984, 30 Years After: Gauri Gill

Leave a comment

Guest Post and Photographs by Gauri Gill

[30 Years ago today, Delhi, and some other cities in India saw the beginning of days of organized massacre of Sikhs, ostensibly as a response to the assasination of Indira Gandhi. In memory of that dark time, we present a documentary text-photographic project by Gauri Gill. Gauri revisits the survivors of the 1984 violence in Delhi, and invites artsits, writers, and others to consider their memories of that dark time. An earlier version of this project by Gauri Gill was uploaded on Kafila in April 2013 by Shivam Vij. We are posting an updated version of the project, with fresh material, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the November Pogrom. ]

In 2005, when I heard Nirpreet Kaur relate her story, she had to have a psychologist present in the room. For us, it was too much to fully absorb. I did not know what to do with the weight of her words. We urged her to write a book, I hope she does someday.

Continue reading Jis tann lãgé soee jãné – Delhi, November 1984, 30 Years After: Gauri Gill →

Everyday Life, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Witness Account of the Trilokpuri Clashes on October 25, 2014: A.M

Leave a comment

AM, a journalist,  writes on Sabrang. Excerpts below and link to the whole piece at the end.

I with a colleague of mine reached East Delhi’s Trilokpuri by 12:00 pm on Saturday. News about alleged clashes had reached us late on Friday night. We were told that the clashes had broken out at around 8:00 pm on Friday but no one was visibly injured. Bricks and empty beer bottles were hurled to and fro interspersed with occasional gunshots. The police reached the area and restored calm. Heavy police presence in the area restored confidence and sent people back into their homes. This is what we had heard.

When we reached the spot on Saturday afternoon at around 12:00 pm, both of us happened to walk right into a mob which had assembled on the main road. Then they started hurling bricks into the air, upped with roaring jubilation and thrill. All at a physical enemy that was not visible. Terrified and taken by surprise, we ducked and ran over to a nearby car parked by the curb. We crouched behind it for over five minutes till we could run farther down to a relatively deserted and safer stretch next to a mother dairy kiosk. That was only one of the many such walk-ins we had and had walked in and out of…

This senseless and directionless fury, we realised, was being whipped up for the fun of it. And, as journalists, we sensed individual families had gathered ammunition, mainly bricks and beer bottles, over the night for a final showdown on Saturday morning. A couple of hours later, my colleague followed a rag picker collecting in a sack bricks strewn over various roads. He saw the rag picker climb into a house and he heard him saying, “Chalo bhai, aaj ke raat ka intezaam ho gaya hai.”…

The atrocities started when policemen began arbitrarily searching houses and rounding perpetrators in the absence of clean evidence or proof. Almost 1000 persons were actively involved in the stone throwing and no one knows which blocks they belonged to and where they had walked to to participate in the violence. Police, clueless and worked up, therefore, randomly began banging on closed doors and shoving their lathis into houses to drive fear and establish control over residents. Most of these houses, however, happened to be in Muslim dominated areas especially in Blocks 14 and 27. The Indian Express reported that “the police have arrested 44 people — 32 Muslims and 12 Hindus” on charges of rioting as listed in the FIRs. This despite Trilokpuri comprising 80 per cent Hindus ( Balmikis) and 20 per cent Muslims. Lopsided statistics and arrests say much about what was happening on the ground…

I was witness to how the Delhi police, had brazenly, in view of  journalists, albeit without cameras employed anarchic, illegal arrests, communal and extrajudicial tactics to impose what they call ‘law and order’- a phrase which constantly equivocates with us, we who lie on the “clean” side of law and those who live outside its underbelly.

READ THE WHOLE ACCOUNT HERE.

Centre watch, Genders, Metropolis, Movements, Violence/Conflict

On a Long Road to Justice: Simin Akhter

Leave a comment

This is a Guest post by Simin Akhter, with inputs from Kamal Pant, Naina Singh and Vikas – 16 December Kranti

(Notes from the ongoing protests in the child sexual abuse case against Toddlers International Playschool, Rohini)

In a heinous and unfortunate show of power and violence, a two and a half year-old girl was raped by a male attendant at Toddlers International playschool (Rohini). Though the parents could manage to file an FIR, the management has threatened them with dire consequences. The principal has been openly shielding the accused, Amit Kumar, despite prior complaints of inappropriate behaviour by aggrieved parents and was allegedly shameless and audacious enough to tell the parents, ‘The police have been fed too well enough to open their mouths’! It also came to light during the protest yesterday that a similar FIR was filed two years back too but no police records could be found for the same; no wonder!

Almost 30 other girls have been detected with a certain strain of bacterial urinary infection, indicating the said two-year old is not the only victim. Many other children have been suffering from mouth-ulcers and a general loss of appetite too, reflecting also on the general lack of health and hygiene practices in the school. A group of parents, grandparents and concerned citizens, mostly young women and men, from in and around Rohini have got together for a relay protest but parents of other victims have not been forthcoming with formal complaints. Needless to say, the greater the delay in filing the complaints, the more legal intervention will get delayed.

Continue reading On a Long Road to Justice: Simin Akhter →

Feminism, Media politics, Right watch, Sex, Violence/Conflict

The ‘new and improved’ Love Jihad formula, unethical media and ‘social science’ votaries

8 Comments

Caught on the back foot by the humiliating backfiring of their fantastical Meerut scenario of ‘gangrape and forcible conversion’, in which the role of the BJP as well as of sundry Hindutvavaadi organizations in breaking up a consensual Hindu-Muslim relationship have been thoroughly exposed, the Hindu Right appears to have arrived at a new formula. This formula has made its appearance in several spaces – in comments on Kafila (some of which have been passed, many more deleted; mostly pseudonymous or anonymous, and in varying degrees of abusiveness); on the social media and in personal blogs; and more respectably, in newspapers, in signed op-eds and articles, the most recent of them by the perennially amusing Madhu Kishwar.

The formula is patented across these sites and involves all or several of the following claims:

a) Hindutvavaadi groups are not the only ones to fear ‘Love Jihad’ – the Church in Kerala and the Akal Takht have also expressed their anxieties about this campaign. So there must be some fire generating all the smoke.

b) So real is the danger that the claims have been investigated by the police, as directed to do so by courts.

c) Hindutvavaadi groups have no objection to inter-faith marriage, what they object to is the cheating of Hindu women into marriage in a well orchestrated campaign by Muslim men who trap them in polygamous marriages only to convert them and produce several children, thus raising the Muslim population.

d) What is happening in India is only a small part of the Global Islamic Terror Machine’s global campaign to use non-Muslim women as sex slaves, to prostitute them, or to seduce them in order to convert them. The recent exposure of a pedophile ring in the UK run by Pakistani men is treated as proof of the existence of such a globally coordinated campaign in which all Muslims are suspect – from Al-Baghdadi of ISIS to your classmate.

e) As irrefutable proofs, three links are generally circulated: a) a programme of IBN7 that ‘exposes Love Jihad’, and b) two videos of young women who supposedly speak about being victims of Love Jihad.

Madhu Kishwar in her article asserts all of these claims produced by the RSS Myth Machine, although she is probably not yet aware of the last item – which I will address at length in conclusion. Continue reading The ‘new and improved’ Love Jihad formula, unethical media and ‘social science’ votaries →

Bad ideas, Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Excavation, Feminism, Left watch, Movements, Violence/Conflict

A Reply to Ranabir Samaddar on Jadavpur: Uditi Sen

9 Comments

Guest Post by UDITI SEN

Prof. Ranabir Samaddar of the Calcutta Research Group has recently published a screed (in the DNA Newspaper) against the #Hokkolorob movement  initiated by the students of Jadavpur University which has found resonance with students and young people all over West Bengal and elsewhere in India. Samaddar, who seems to have lost the ability to recognize the many intersections of solidarity between students, young people in metropolitan as well as non-metropolitan contexts, women, young workers, accuses the movement of what he calls ‘elitism’ and a disconnect with realities on the ground.

Uditi Sen responds.

It is settled then. With this latest denunciation (by Ranabir Samaddar, in DNA, see link above) of the student movement at Jadavpur, we finally have a verdict we can trust. Student politics is not what it used to be. The glory days of the 60s are long gone and the protesting young today fail to live up to the authentic radicalism of their elders. Those were the days, indeed. Those were the days when student politics, organised under the banner of the organised left took up real issues, such as those of the peasants and workers and did not distract themselves with inequities closer to home. Such as, why women ‘comrades’ were expected to cook and clean and provide for their men, who led the vanguard. Such as why even the most progressive politics, when speaking of the rights of peasants, meant the rights of male peasants. Those indeed were the days of glory, which we should remember and seek to emulate, when the leaders, usually dadas, had no answers when a peasant woman asked, ‘“Why should my comrade beat me at home?” (See Samita Sen’s Toward a Feminist Politics: The Indian Women’s Movement in Historical Perspective)

Continue reading A Reply to Ranabir Samaddar on Jadavpur: Uditi Sen →

Bad ideas, Culture, Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Language, Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

“Haider” – Hamlet in Kashmir: Suhas Munshi

3 Comments

This is a guest post by SUHAS MUNSHI

The challenge of telling stories of a conflict is its victims. Each, traumatized in their own way, needs their own story. The narrator is bound to fail not only those he didn’t include but those who didn’t see their stories recreated faithfully. Had Basharat Peer set himself the task of faithfully adapting the violence done to Kashmiris he would have had to script a pornographic narrative for the screen. Some of the bile directed at him from Kashmiris comes from a dissatisfaction of not depicting the true extent of the brutality of the Indian army and rendering its casualties adequately pitiful. An opinion piece written on the movie in ‘The Parallel Post’ titled ‘Setting the wrong precedent’ condemns torture scenes in the movie as having actually undermined the actual extent of army atrocity in Kashmir. The piece goes on to say, ‘army excesses wane out by the time movie reaches its climax.’

However, the only service that a story teller from Kashmir could do to art and to humanity is to depict the people living there, especially the victims, as humans; as people, just as they are found anywhere else in the world, and not continue to peddle the cliché of the valley being a dehumanized pastoral paradise. Accusations of betrayal, conceit and condescension are being hurled at Basharat Peer, the writer, when he has got, for the first time ever, the words ‘plebiscite’, ‘half-widows’ and the rousing call of ‘Azadi’ in a script, through a movie, on mainstream cinema. Continue reading “Haider” – Hamlet in Kashmir: Suhas Munshi →

Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life, Language, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Violence/Conflict

I am a Muslim, an Atheist, an Anarchist: Salmaan Mohammed

22 Comments

Guest Post by Salmaan Mohammed

[ Salmaan Mohammed, a twenty five year old philosophy student was arrested in Thiruvananthapuram on 19 August 2014 for sedition, and for allegedly dishonouring the national flag and national anthem. The complaint against him originated as a response to his refusing to stand while the national anthem was played in a cinema during a screening. Salman is currently out on bail, but still faces the prospect of a life term in prison if he is found guilty of sedition by the judicial process. We at Kafila have been in touch with Salman and he has recently sent us a translation of an audio interview he did after coming out of prison on bail so that the world outside Kerala (and those who do not read or speak Malayalam) can understand what he has been thinking.]

Continue reading I am a Muslim, an Atheist, an Anarchist: Salmaan Mohammed →

Education, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Letter to the Chancellor of Jadavpur University: Concerned Citizens and Academics

1 Comment
To
Sri Keshari Nath Tripathi, Governor, West Bengal.
Dear Shri Tripathi,
We, the undersigned academics and concerned citizens, are writing to you with grave concern, about the situation in Jadavpur University, as you are also the Chancellor of the University.We have read in newspapers, seen on television, or read through social media posts, enough to understand that the following serious problems occurred.

First, in late August, a young woman, a student of Jadavpur University, brought in a charge of sexual harassment against some hostel students. This was handled extremely badly by the Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University, who seems to have advised her to stay at home, and to have rebuffed attempts by the victim and her friends to get speedy justice.

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

Marginalized Sections Living Under Fear – A Letter to NHRC

1 Comment

[We are reproducing below a letter to the NHRC Chairperson by Teesta Setalvad, Secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace, Mumbai]

October 6, 2014
To the Chairperson Mr Balakrishnan, National Human Rights Commission.

Dear Sir,

There are extremely disturbing reports about the climate of abject fear that the poor and marginalised communitoies of JJ Colony, Bawana are living in, following recent incidents. Prominent residents of Delhi have carried out an independent fact finding into allegations of cow slaughter and the systematic intimidation of local Muslims. The team consisting of Dr. Mrigank (Delhi Committee, Indian Federation of Trade Unions, IFTU), Poonam Kaushik (Gen. Secy. Pragatisheel Mahila Sangathan, PMS), Rajeev (Convener, Progressive Democratic Students’ Union, PDSU) visited JJ Colony Bawana.

This report available here.

We urge Sir that the National Human Rights Commission carries out a suo moto inquiry into the incident and especially inquires into the following;-

From the above Report (see below) the observations made are :

1. That the allegations that there is plan of cow slaughter is bogus. There is no possibility of hiding the cows. And no cows were found.

2. That there is intimidation of Muslims and they are living amidst fear. The police protection is not enough.

3. That the organizations like Hindu Krantikari Sena are not spontaneous organizations. It is clears from the fact that among the main organizer was the nephew of BJP MLA. Also total inactivity of BJP MP is a clear indication.

4. That there is total communal harmony in JJ Colony and even today they are together. Continue reading Marginalized Sections Living Under Fear – A Letter to NHRC →

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 →