Category Archives: Violence/Conflict

Countryside, Excavation, Government, Identities, Law, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Kavita Srivastava’s report on last year’s Gujjar confrontation in Rajasthan

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[This detailed report was prepared by Kavita Srivastava, the Jaipur-based general secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties. Posting this here to make it publicly available as it is not on the PUCL website. Please note that this was a rough draft. ]


State Violence and Caste Confrontation in Rajasthan

I. Outline of the week long movement for ST Reservation by the Gurjars

Soon after independence the Bhil Meenas got reservations in the Districts of Dungarpur, Banswara, Chittorgarh and Udaipur. At the time of 1931 census the Bhil Meenas were over 20, 000, however today they have reduced to half they are only 10,000 in number.

This was an issue of contention for the Meenas as they felt that they also deserved to be STs so they decided to raise their voice against this injustice as they called it. Under the leadership of Lakshmi Narayan Jhirwal they organized themselves.

11th June 1952: Meenas organized a sammelan near Dudu (Jaipur) district for the inclusion of the Meena community in the Schedule list for reservation. The Gurjars supported this wholly. Continue reading Kavita Srivastava’s report on last year’s Gujjar confrontation in Rajasthan →

Government, Law, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Individuals at Risk

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At the heart of all peoples’ rights work is the individual – as the person at risk of human rights abuses, as the survivor, as the partner in the defense of rights, and as the activist speaking out, and working with and for other individuals. Individuals, as part of the political, social and cultural collective and spread over the length and breadth of the country, lie behind much of the activism of Indian social-political groups, working at local, grassroots and community levels in India today. They try to change lives by acting on their own or with other people and political groups making the same demand – an end to injustice in all its forms.

These individuals are increasingly at risk in India today. We have witnessed the killings at regular intervals of activists like Safdar Hashmi, Shankar Guha Niyogi, Satyendra Dubey, Sarita and Mahesh, S. Manjunath, Mahendra Singh and Chandra Shekhar in the past two decades. We have had a series of cases of arrest and detention of people like Dr. Binayak Sen and T. G. Ajay. At a time when the patterns of human rights abuses against rights activists are becoming widespread and showing signs of further deterioration, with the governments showing their apathy, we need to draw attention to the situation, point to the concrete failures of the governments to live up to their obligations, and plan on some concrete actions, so that the human rights activists can carry out their important work free from attacks, fear or reprisals. Continue reading Individuals at Risk →

Everyday Life, Metropolis, Violence/Conflict

Boutique Owner Brutally Tortures 13 Year Old Boy: (Don’t Worry, She’s Fine)

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In yet another shocking incident reflective of the declining standards of morality and respect for property rights amongst the young, a 13 year old boy was accused of stealing money from a shop.

However this story is special for the amazing presence of mind displayed by the boutique owner Pinki. With that special sixth-sense that only mothers are gifted with, Pinki intuitively realised that the boy had nothing to do with the stolen money whatsoever and immediately proceeded to beat him up. Not one to leave a job half done she then shaved his head, stripped him naked and as a final touch (reminiscent of her attention to detail as a fashion designer) inscribed “I am a Thief” on his stomach and back. The boy was then paraded naked in the market place.
Continue reading Boutique Owner Brutally Tortures 13 Year Old Boy: (Don’t Worry, She’s Fine) →

Debates, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Condemnation of Maoist and State violence in Orissa

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[We publish below a statement signed by some concerned citizens and intellectuals, on the Maoist violence in Nayagarh town in Orissa. This statement could also be considered as an invitation to a debate on the larger question on the place of violence in political and social movements. Continue reading Condemnation of Maoist and State violence in Orissa →

Culture, Everyday Life, Genders, Violence/Conflict

Mother

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Have you ever guzzled
the last drop of alcohol
and raped your mother?

This is what we do
when we read
the morning news
about a woman’s rape
and sip our tea
leisurely.

© 2006 Dan Husain

Government, Law, Politics, Violence/Conflict

State Repression In Chhattisgarh And Continued Detention Of Dr Binayak Sen

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STATEMENT OF CONCERNED CITIZENS AND PEOPLE’S ORGANIZATONS

A group of former bureaucrats, academicians, lawyers and social activists visited Chhattisgarh from 18 – 22 January 2008 in connection with the prolonged incarceration of Dr Binayak Sen. The team met the Governor and Director General of Police and also met Dr Binayak Sen in the central prison at Raipur. Some members of the group also visited areas in the districts of Bastar, Dantewada and Bijapur.

In the light of the information gathered, the team is of the opinion that the charges filed against Dr Sen under the IPC, CrPC and the Chhattisgarh Public Safety Act (CPSA) are unwarranted and unconstitutional. The CPSA enables the government to interpret the rendering of simple humanitarian acts as unlawful The Act defines “unlawful activity” so broadly that every act of vigilant citizenship can be construed as unlawful and anti-national. Thus it is clear that Dr Sen is being targeted in his capacity as General Secretary of People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Chhattisgarh. The reports produced by the PUCL have highlighted the anti-constitutional violence legitimized by the state through the Salwa Judum campaign.

Continue reading State Repression In Chhattisgarh And Continued Detention Of Dr Binayak Sen →

Empire/ Imperialism, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Rights-Free Zones

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‘O Father, this is a prison of injustice.
Its iniquity makes the mountains weep.
I have committed no crime and am guilty of no offence.
Curved claws have I,
But I have been sold like a fattened sheep.’
— Abdulla Thani Faris al Anazi, a Guantanamo detainee since 2002, arrested in Afghanistan, and turned over to the US forces by bounty hunters.
— Abdulla Thani Faris al Anazi, a Guantanamo detainee since 2002, arrested in Afghanistan, and turned over to the US forces by bounty hunters

11 January 2008 marks 6 years since the first detainees were transferred to Guantanamo Bay. The United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay is a rights-free zone, for the detention, treatment and trial of certain people in the ‘war on terror’. Here the Pentagon is authorised to hold non-US citizens in indefinite custody without charge; here detainees are barred from seeking any remedy in any proceedings in any US, foreign or international court; here if any detainee were to be tried, the trial would be by military commission — an executive body, and not an independent or impartial court. A memorandum from the Justice Department to the Pentagon advises that because Guantanamo Bay is not a sovereign US territory, the federal courts should not be able to consider habeas corpus petitions from ‘enemy aliens’ detained at the base.

Continue reading Rights-Free Zones →

Government, Law, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Human rights and public health are now the gravest threats to people’s safety

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Excerpts from Saikat Datta on the doctored case against Binayak Sen.

What is the basis of the Chhattisgarh police’s case against Dr Sen? The chargesheet against him says he is a Naxalite sympathiser. This conclusion was reached after his name came up when the police recovered three letters from suspected Maoist Piyush Guha, arrested at the Raipur railway station. These were written to Guha by another alleged Maoist, Narayan Sanyal, presently lodged in Raipur Jail. The police claim Guha, under custodial interrogation, confessed that Dr Sen acted as courier.

Dr Sen did meet Sanyal in jail on several occasions. But each time it was with due permission from the jail superintendent and a body search before and after his meetings. And even if we were to accept that Dr Sen smuggled the letters out, what exactly was “incriminating” in them? One letter deals with farmer-related issues, the letter writer’s health and so on. In another note, Sanyal is discussing issues relating to his case and the approach his lawyer has taken in court. In yet another, he complains of there being “no
magazines” to read in jail and terrible conditions in prison.

Activist-lawyers like Prashant Bhushan see the framing of Dr Sen on such flimsy evidence as “a message that clearly states that people must shut their eyes to violations of human rights of the marginalised or risk arrest”.

Continue reading Human rights and public health are now the gravest threats to people’s safety →

Debates, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Three Responses to Prabhat Patnaik – Praful Bidwai, Dilip Simeon, Manash Bhattacharjee

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[As part of the ongoing post-Nandigram debate, we publish below three more responses to Prabhat Patnaik’s earlier attack on non-CPM Left intellectuals. We publish them here for record and general interest and do not necessarily endorse all the comments. – Admin]

[Praful Bidwai’s piece was first published in Mathrubhoomi magazine. It was forwarded to us by way of Manju Menon with the following interesting prefatory comment:

“The West Bengal Coastal Zone Management Authority (WBCZMA) that recommended the change in status of Nayachar from CRZ I to CRZ III so that the chemical hub can be located here has as one of its members Smt Tamalika Panda Seth, the Haldia Municipality Chairperson. She is the wife of CPM MP Laxman Seth (“who was largely held responsible for the spiralling violence in Nandigram.”). She was made member of the
Authority when it was reconstituted in March 2005. She was elected as Chairperson when the CPM retained its power in Haldia in the 2007 civic polls.

The state Cabinet had approved the Nayachar site in its August 17 meeting. After this, it was only a matter of time before it prevailed over the WBCZMA! No amount of ‘scientific data’ can possibly stop the change of status of Nayachar from CRZ I to III.

‘Another case of regulatory capture’?”]

THE LEFT NEEDS RETHINKING, NOT ABJECT APOLOGIA

By Praful Bidwai

Prabhat Patnaik has done what no other intellectual allied to West Bengal’s Left Front has even attempted after Nandigram: namely, try to turn the tables on Left-leaning critics of the CPM by gratuitously attacking them for their ” messianic moralism” and their presumed
“disdain” for “the messy world of politics”.

His agenda goes well beyond defending the CPM or apologising for one of the most shameful episodes in the Indian Left’s history, involving the killing of peasants, devastation of thousands of livelihoods, sexual violence, and gross abuse of state power. It is to declare all criticism of the CPM’s policies and actions illegitimate and
misconceived, however sympathetic or inspired by radical ideas it might be.

The impact of Patnaik’s article will be to prevent rethinking within the CPM, which could produce course correction. Ironically for Patnaik, it will only strengthen the party’s neoliberal orientation and the “cult of development” that neoliberalism spawns, which he
rails against.

Worse, it will harden the West Bengal CPM’s readiness to brutalise peasants and workers (in whose name it speaks) in the interests of the rich and powerful, like the Tatas, Jindals, and the Salim group which is a front for Indonesia’s super-corrupt Suharto family.

Continue reading Three Responses to Prabhat Patnaik – Praful Bidwai, Dilip Simeon, Manash Bhattacharjee →

Culture, Violence/Conflict

Aswatthamma Lives – Radha R.

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[We are pleased to present this guest piece by Radha R, a poet and artist, who reflects on violence and other matters.]

1985 :
We were standing at the Bakery junction just behind the campus where the better -off amongst the designer students came alone or in select groups to gorge on buns at teatime… Freshly baked and still warm and soft, the baker slit them open swiftly and expertly with an extra sharp long thin knife roughly slapping in a whole 50 grams of yellow butter that dripped down the sides …
Post the curfew there was no one now standing at the junction .In this somewhat upmarket quarter there was little outward sign of that nightmare of violence…

“Do you know how they do it?” He whispered “With knives…”
He made a quick gesture of measurement with his hands… “This long…”
“The pillion rider behind the scooterist slashes open the sides of bystanders on the road who often do not realize as they run as to how badly wounded they are… Till it is too late… The sharp edge of the knife blade is lined with calmpose, you see…To numb”

Continue reading Aswatthamma Lives – Radha R. →

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

6th of December 1992 on 6th of December 2007

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What were you doing on December 6, 1992?

We remember with a great sadness that winter’s day on which the unthinkable came to pass…

Continue reading 6th of December 1992 on 6th of December 2007 →

Culture, Everyday Life, Identities, Politics, Violence/Conflict

That day 15 years ago

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Read Asad Mustafa on his memories of the day the Babri Masjid was demolished.

In many ways it is just like any other Lucknow winter day. Sun has come up and my mother is watching her pickles dry on the roof. Our neighbor, Shukla-ji’s daughter has come for a lazy winterBabri Masjid afternoon conversation with my mother and is oiling her hair. I am struggling with unsolved papers from previous years’ JEE tests. This year’s JEE is going to be my first big test in the real world.

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

Doing What States Do (Very Well)

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Arundhati Roy articulated in her interview last night on IBN7, the deep suspicions of the “deep state” that many of us have harboured in our collective anti-national (and now apparently anti-left) bosom. How convenient that the violent anti-Tasleema protests have deflected the anger of the left-secular folks from Nandigram to Islamic fundamentalism. Arundhati responded to a question about whether she was claiming there was a conspiracy, by saying, quite correctly, that there doesn’t need to be anything as crude as that. But we know, people on the street know – there’s something way too convenient in the timing. Or, as she put it elsewhere, quoting a Hindi film song, “yeh public sab jaanti hai.”

Imagine my disappointment as a political theorist to discover that we don’t need to make any intellectual forays into the complex ways in which states “see” and “do”. There was a conspiracy, and it worked out like the the script of a bad street play, in which the villains mutter and grimace and do bad things in the dark of the night, while the good folk get all confused by the sudden transformation of their peaceful locality by dawn. (Life is in fact a bad street play, a realization I came to long ago).

Continue reading Doing What States Do (Very Well) →

Culture, Debates, Language, Left watch, Media politics, Movements, Violence/Conflict

Arundhati Roy on Taslima Nasreen and Nandigram: Interview with Karan Thapar on IBNlive.com

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As we have been discussing both Nandigram and the situation that Taslima Nasreen has found herself over the last few weeks, I thought that it might be interesting to listen in on a conversation that Karan Thapar has had with the writer Arundhati Roy that takes on both these questions. This interview was broadcast today on CNN IBN.


Transcript of Arundhati Roy interviewed on the treatment of Taslima Nasreen by Karan Thapar on ‘Devil’s Advocate’, broadcast this evening on CNN-IBN

The transcript was published on Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 20:32, on the IBNlive.com website

A video of the interview is also available on the website.

———————————————

Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. How do India’s leading authors respond to the treatment given to Taslima Nasreen over the last 14 days? That’s the key issue I shall explore today with Booker Prize- winning novelist Arundhati Roy.

Karan Thapar: Arundhati Roy, let me start with that question. How do you respond to the way Taslima Nasreen has been treated for almost 14 days now?

Arundhati Roy: Well, it is actually almost 14 years but right now it is only 14 days and I respond with dismay but not surprise because I see it as a part of a larger script where everybody is saying their lines and exchanging parts.

Continue reading Arundhati Roy on Taslima Nasreen and Nandigram: Interview with Karan Thapar on IBNlive.com →

Capitalism, Countryside, Government, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

The Trojan Horse of Neo-liberal Capital in Kerala

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In mid-November, a pro-tribal outfit, the Adivasi Rehabilitation Council, demanded that the Kerala Government hand over to them, land leased to Hindustan Newsprint Ltd. The Adivasis had been given title deeds to this land in 2003, when A K Antony was chief minister, but it was never handed over. They dispersed after local revenue officials assured that this would be done.

But when nothing was done about it, the tribals regrouped and went into the land again, building little huts and vowing to start farming. Around November 26th, the 200-odd families were physically removed by truck-loads of CPM cadre.

J Devika on the need for a new perspective on Left politics:

When the CPM-led LDF coalition swept into power in the elections to the Kerala State Legislative Assembly in 2006, the victory was widely interpreted to be the individual triumph of V S Achuthanandan, who seemed to be nothing less than the personification of Principled-Opposition-to-the-State-and-Global-Capital. During the campaign, VS received the mantle of A K Gopalan, whose brilliant strategies of mass mobilization and militancy had made him the most admired and best-loved of all communists in Kerala. Throughout Kerala, life-size posters of a smiling VS proclaimed him Paavangalude Padatthalavan (NM – something like garibon ka masiha)

Continue reading The Trojan Horse of Neo-liberal Capital in Kerala →

Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Auschwitz of Our Times

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For If I Shall Not Burn
And You Shall Not Burn
If We Shall Not Burn
Then Who Will Dispel The Dark

-Nazim Hikmet

I

Whether anybody is familiar with a place called Auschwitz which is around 270 kms. from Warsaw, capital of Poland. It has been more than sixty years that the brick kiln structure there which housed detainees witnessed silent sufferings of lakhs of people who were put to death in myriad ways by the henchmen of Hitler. Continue reading Auschwitz of Our Times →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Identities, Language, Law, Left watch, Violence/Conflict

The Sword and the Monk’ s Cowl: Curfew in Kolkata

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“Instead of society having conquered a new content for itself, it seems that the state has only returned to its oldest form, to a shamelessly simple rule by the sword and the monk’s cowl. “

-Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

We live in strange times. Really strange times. Just as the news from Kolkata was getting better, it got worse again.The sudden spectre of ‘communal rioting’ has reared its head, as if from nowhere in West Bengal. The All India Minorities Forum, a little known entity led by a busy body called Idris Ali materialized yersterday on the streets of Kolkata demanding the deportation of the exiled Bangladeshi writer, on the grounds that she had once injured the sensitivities of Muslims. Crowds attacked police, pitched street battles continued, the Army was called in. Curfew was declared, and on television, Biman Bose, a CPI(M) and ‘Left’ Front hatchet man, declared – “… if her stay creates a problem for peace, she (Nasrin) should leave the state” (see NDTV report at the end of this posting)

Continue reading The Sword and the Monk’ s Cowl: Curfew in Kolkata →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Countryside, Excavation, Language, Left watch, Violence/Conflict

A little Biology, A little Arithmetic, A lot of Politics: Sudhanva Deshpande on Nandigram, again

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Dear Sudhanva,

*A Biology Lesson*
The discussion on Nandigram is heading in interesting directions across lists and blogs, (even as the Army walks the talk in Kolkata tonight) and I find this situation of accumulating discursive intensity actually very productive. Let a hundred rejoinders blossom, and a few good schools of thought contend. So I welcome your rejoinder and criticism of my text. And I for one, stand chastised by your incisive criticism of my posts (responding to your earlier writing) on the reader-list, and on Kafila.

Continue reading A little Biology, A little Arithmetic, A lot of Politics: Sudhanva Deshpande on Nandigram, again →

Bad ideas, Countryside, Left watch, Politics, Scams, Violence/Conflict

All those who do not sleep tonight

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Dear all, (apologies for cross posting on Reader List)

Sometimes I wonder whether, when I use the phrase ‘rentier cultural apparatchiki’ it actually describes faces, real people, or is it just an abstract category, that one deploys in anger and sadness.

Well, em, here are some faces, some names – people we meet, say hello to, read the books of, see the art of, watch the films of…

As the weather turns in Delhi, we will meet them more often, there will be soirees, readings, screenings, exhibition openings, so much fun in the winter whirlwind, and they will turn up – two by two, or one by one,
and in the silence between us will hang the heavy weight of the name of a place called Nandigram.

Read these names, read them carefully –

Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik, Utsa Patnaik, Shireen Moosvi, Jayati Ghosh, Indira Chandrasekhar, Rajen Prasad, Arjun Dev, D.N. Jha, Vivan Sundaram, M.K. Raina, C.P. Chandrasekhar, and Saeed Mirza.

Continue reading All those who do not sleep tonight →

Countryside, Debates, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Nandigram Redux: Reading Sudhanva Deshpande

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It is interesting to witness the spin doctoring of the CPI(M) come into play once again in the wake of the renewed violence in Nandigram, which in CPI(M) newspeak is now being called ‘a transition to peaceful conditions’ .

Recently, I have had the opportunity to read the seasoned voice of one of the leading ‘cultural’ lights of the Consolidated Promotors of India(Militant) in Delhi, Comrade Sudhanva Deshpande, on Nandigram Redux, on an extended posting made on Pragoti.org,

I urge you all to read Sudhanva Deshpande’s text as a window into the amazing felicity with which the Consolidated Promotors of India (Militant) constructs the edifice of its positions.

In this posting, I intend to subject Comrade Deshpande’s text to some close reading. I am writing this in order to respond especially to the work that Aditya Nigam is doing in keeping the question of Nandigram alive on Kafila.I have relied extensively on reports, news and analysis on an excellent archive-blog – Sanhati – for a great deal of the material for this posting. Continue reading Nandigram Redux: Reading Sudhanva Deshpande →

Countryside, Debates, Left watch, Violence/Conflict

Nandigram Burning: Thousands forced to flee, situation worsening

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[We publish below a joint statement on the Nandigram situation, issued by different organizations and individuals, including Medha Patkar, who was manhandled by CPM goons – AN]

* Thousands Forced to Flee from Nandigram, Activists Under Arrest

* Memorandum Submitted to Governor of West Bengal

* Dharna begins in Kolkata, Two Day Protest Fast to Commence Tomorrow

Nandigram is under fire and scare. On the festive days of Kalipuja, the light emerging from the land of Martyrdom is not of the lamps women would light in their ‘badis’ (houses) but from the burning houses, put on fire by cadres entering village after village and occupying land forcibly.

The reports coming from the land and the citizens as members of the Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee indicate that  at least 20,000 families are made to flee from their houses in Satangabari, Samsabad, and other villages which are either demolished or looted. We met Taslimadi in Kapasberia with Minudi, who have taken shelter in their relatives’ houses. But the tears in their eyes and choked voices brought to us the pain and anguish for being made destitute and homeless which could not be hidden. While thousands of families and more than a lakh people have shifted either to the schools and other public buildings, or to the open grounds where huge camps are set up by the committee where most of the people are being fed, if not left hungry.

Continue reading Nandigram Burning: Thousands forced to flee, situation worsening →