Capitalism, Government, Politics, Right watch

A Chance for Social Change Like Never Before: Shankar Gopalakrishnan

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Guest post by SHANKAR GOPALAKRISHNAN

For those who don’t like Modi-Sangh politics, February 10th was a day of joy. When this note was drafted a month ago, the provisional title was “This is No Time for Despair.” But last Tuesday has not only dented Modi’s invincible image – it has also dented the sense of being besieged. Since May 2014, almost every progressive force in the country has been on the defensive. The AAP’s politics and the popular tsunami that drove it to power have shattered this gloom.

But the key question at this point – is the eventual defeat of the NDA in an election the only goal? I argue that here that that is just the beginning. The end of this period – which, notwithstanding February 10th, is obviously some time away – will offer a space that has not existed in Indian politics in decades. Whether that space gets used or not will depend on how the struggle develops in the interim period.

The potential of this period is rooted in three basic flaws that the current ruling coalition (between big business and the Sangh) suffers from. First, its key forces are fundamentally myopic and delusionary in character. Second, it is internally contradictory – the two pillars of this formation will undercut each other in organisational (not just political or rhetorical) terms. Finally, it embodies a peculiar combination of organisational strength and political weakness. Continue reading A Chance for Social Change Like Never Before: Shankar Gopalakrishnan →

Bad ideas

Mumbai’s Docklands – Cutting the Cake: Hussain Indorewala

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Guest Post by HUSSAIN INDOREWALA

In the early 1970s, a conservative government in the UK set up a study group for the London Docklands. Its report, which focused primarily on exploiting the commercial potential of the docklands, was torn up and thrown out by local community groups and the local boroughs. Later, in 1974, a strategic-planning authority called the Docklands Joint Committee (DJC) was set up to plan the area. This committee included, along with central and local government representatives, the Port of London Authority and trade unions; it was also associated with the Docklands Forum, which was a group that represented various sections of the public, including “militant community groups.”[i] The DJC along with the Docklands Forum adopted a radically new approach to planning: it instituted a bottom-up process, working with communities entailing a “delicate, even tentative, negotiated style of planning.” The planner was now the “servant of the public” and the “large-scale, top-down, professionally oriented planning” was replaced with its opposite.[ii] Significantly, the DJC came up with a comprehensive plan – the London Docklands Strategic Plan of 1976 – that was based on the preservation of manufacturing, creation of social housing, and social programs for residents of the area. So progressive it seemed, that it never got realised. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK, drowning any little hope that remained.

Continue reading Mumbai’s Docklands – Cutting the Cake: Hussain Indorewala →

Everyday Life, Violence/Conflict

Rohtak Gang Rape Reveals the Attitudinal Differences Disabled Face in India: Rupande Mehta

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Guest Post by RUPANDE MEHTA

By now it is all beginning to sound very familiar: A woman gang raped, her vital organs missing, stones and blades found in her stomach, other objects found in her anus and vagina and the doctor conducting the post mortem stating it was the most horrific case of his life. This case, however, has one additional parameter – the woman raped and killed was mentally challenged and being treated for her condition at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak, Haryana.

There is conflicting information on the mental condition of the woman raped and killed. While some reports state she was suffering mental retardation, others state her as condition as being psychiatric. Never mind that mental retardation is untreatable but the contradiction in reporting highlights a fact we all know – how widely misunderstood mental illness really is.

Mental illness is the most undertreated of all diseases around the world. There is an unspoken stigma around it and most sufferers usually do not want to talk about their “condition.” We have a difficult time grasping its severity and hence victims usually quietly suffer on their own until the situation often gets very serious. Many famous people have suffered mental illness and it has taken many of them years to come out and acknowledge their suffering. Few of them have fallen to their disease, the most notable recent case being that of Robin Williams who suffered from extreme depression. Other personalities who suffered mental illness include: Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of UK, Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, Beethoven, musical genius, Diana, Princess of Wales who suffered from bulimia, an eating disorder, and depression. Mental illness is the most unrecognized and, perhaps, one of the most damning diseases.

Continue reading Rohtak Gang Rape Reveals the Attitudinal Differences Disabled Face in India: Rupande Mehta →

Debates, Everyday Life, Images, Metropolis, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Are Jibran Nasir and his friends Game Changers in today’s Pakistan? Fawzia Naqvi

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Guest Post by FAWZIA NAQVI

One cold Karachi Night

On the night of February 1st, Jibran Nasir Pakistan’s leading activist and a handful of peaceful protesters sat on a road in Karachi near the Sindh Chief Minister’s house for more than 24 hours, demanding the arrest of terrorists responsible for the January 30th Shikarpur attack which killed 65 Shias during Friday prayers, and demanding action against banned sectarian organizations. There were only 20 protesters, their average age 25, outnumbered it seemed by riot police with water cannon and batons at the ready.

Protest in Karachi against Terrorism and Secterian Violence
Protest in Karachi against Terrorism and Secterian Violence

Continue reading Are Jibran Nasir and his friends Game Changers in today’s Pakistan? Fawzia Naqvi →

Capitalism, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Government, Politics

AAP Victory and the Challenges of a New Politics

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Let me say it once again, the AAP victory cannot be understood outside the post-ideological moment. I have argued earlier on Kafila (here and here), that one of the key features of AAP was its post-ideological character – one that moved relentlessly beyond many verities of 20th century ideologies and binaries like state versus market, or religious/communal versus secular and so forth. To reiterate, this formation represents the spirit of the moment that is itself post-ideological.

At Ramlila maidan, courtesy New Indian Express
At Ramlila maidan, courtesy New Indian Express

But it is also time perhaps, to underline that post-ideological does not mean post-political. At least, not any longer. There is no doubt that a politics of AAP is gradually and clearly coming into view – but it is a politics whose edifice is being built from the bottom up. It does not derive from any settled ideological blueprint that comes ready-made – a blueprint around which a politics is then sought to be constructed. That was the project of all 20th century ideologies, which had already divided the world into neat camps and made the divisions into permanent battle lines. Ideologies became repositories of Truth – universal and unchanging, taking away from politics the very contingency and fluidity that defines it. Ideology, in other words, was fundamentally anti-political. In parenthesis, it may be relevant to point out that that is why, perhaps, Marx himself celebrated the Paris Commune by underlining that the workers “had no ideals to realize, no blueprints to which the world must conform”; they merely had to set free the new forces that were challenging the old order. Socialism in the 19th century was not yet an ideology in that sense. Continue reading AAP Victory and the Challenges of a New Politics →

Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Feminism

Shuddhikaran of Hindu Mahasabha by Lovers of Love in Delhi

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Well, they tried, and more power to them.

A shuddhikaran of that hate-filled, divisive, toxic organization (and others of the Hindutva brigade) would have considerably reduced pollution in the only vasudha we have, which is our kutumb, but the attempt was foiled by a compliant Delhi Police. However, Parliament Street Police Station was very shuddh indeed by the end of the day, its noxious atmosphere cleansed by the cosmic vibrations of music, dance and “marriages” among all sorts of human beings.

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Mehndi ceremony inside parliament Street Police Station

Image courtesy feminisminindia.com

This hilarious subversion of the idea of marriage, with which Hindu Mahasabha threatened lovers, is in fact a deeply political gesture against the institution of patriarchal, heterosexual marriage with all its violent hierarchies of age and gender, in which disobedient women and younger people are in the custody, much like prisoners in jail, of the patriarchs of the family, which include compliant women. There are no honour killings – these are custodial deaths, when families violently separate couples who chose to marry outside their caste or religious community, often killing one or both of them.

Continue reading Shuddhikaran of Hindu Mahasabha by Lovers of Love in Delhi →

Bad ideas

BJP and Sangh spokespersons reveal real reason for witch hunt against Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand

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[LINK TO SOLIDARITY STATEMENT BELOW]

If you saw the programme on IBN7 last night, vilifying Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, with BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra and Sangh spokesperson Rakesh Sinha at their asabhya virulent best, shouting down and intimidating mild Sandeep Pandey and shouting continuously throughout whatever feisty Priyanka Chaturvedi (Congress spokesperson) had to say (which was hard-hitting and unanswerable), you would know what the case against the two activists is really about.

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Of course, the charges against them are of corruption and embezzling of funds collected for Gujarat riot victims, but when Priyanka Chaturvedi pointed out that the case against them is dubious because Gujarat police and judiciary are not exactly exemplars of probity, given the assiduous stalking carried out by the Gujarat police on behalf of Modi’s man, of a young woman (whose family was paid off/ intimidated in classic Hindutva style, ending in the woman claiming gratitude for being stalked) they had no answer. (She could have added the blatant miscarriages of justice in cases of fake encounters and the Ishrat Jahan killing.) Continue reading BJP and Sangh spokespersons reveal real reason for witch hunt against Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand →

Bad ideas, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Vandalism – The Perfect Solution To Communalism! Nandini Rao

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Guest Post by  NANDINI RAO

Thank you, unknown-vandals-out-there.

For burning church altars to ashes; for desecrating sacred objects inside houses of worship, for tossing carcasses inside religious places; for converting, de-converting, un-converting or re-converting (as the case may be); for stealing objects from churches that are more valuable to their parishioners for their emotional significance rather than monetary value. For making people ask in hushed tones when and where the next attack is going to take place and what form it will take. For making the pastor conduct midnight mass on Christmas eve outside the church in Delhi, with the faithful offering their prayers in the freezing winter night, simply because they did not have a church to go to.

But most of all, thank you for frightening communities who follow different religions and worship different gods. As for those who do not believe in god or religion, thank you for making them worried about how the social fabric of this country is being pulled apart, thread by thread, through political machinations.

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Because by doing all of the above, the unknown vandals (they are, needless to say, not criminals, just harmless “vandals”) have made people stop in their tracks and think. They have made communities question law enforcement agencies that brush aside fears and doubts and try to minimise the crimes taking place in their houses of worship. They are compelling them to discuss and debate about forced versus consensual conversions to religions of one’s choice. They are making people of all communities and religions realise how they are being pitted against each other and used as pawns in devious political games. They understand that, in the bargain, it is the poor and the marginalised living on daily wages who are being exploited in the worst possible way. People are realising the importance of their vote and of the very real impact they can make and the change they can bring about, with the single act of pressing a button.

Vandalism has made people come together to hold meetings and consultations to chart out a course to resolve the crises. It has made them stand outside their churches on pavements and on roads, demanding justice and accountability from a state and administration that does not seem to be heeding their voices.

And most important of all, vandalism is teaching us (more than political speeches and advertisements) how one needs to keep on asserting till our voices are heard that we are all citizens in a secular, socialist and democratic republic. That as believers and non-believers, we may worship (or not worship) in varied ways and learn from the teachings of one holy book (or a multitude of books and philosophies), but as citizens, our Holy Book is only the Constitution of India and what it has defined for us, as Indians.

Continue reading Vandalism – The Perfect Solution To Communalism! Nandini Rao →

Debates, Government, Law

Shahid Lives, Shahids Never Die

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Tafawut ast mun-I-shunidam-I-man-o-to, Tu bastan-dar, o, man fatahe-bab me shunidam

(What you and I hear are different : you hear the sound of closing doors, but I of doors that open)

– A Persian couplet that Maulana Abul Kalam Azad choose to use while addressing a gathering of Muslim Youth at the Aligarh Muslim University in 1949.

I

It was the mid of 2008 when I first heard about Shahid Azmi.

Friend/journalist Ajit Sahi had written a series of articles in ‘Tehelka’ about the fraudulence of the police in framing innocent Muslim men, which had caused enough consternation among the chattering classes. As Ajit had revealed Shahid had played an important role in making the story happen. Apart from facilitating meeting with victims of system, he had himself provided many facts relevant to the story.

And the name kept cropping in. I read an interview of Shahid where he discussed the challenges faced by lawyers like him who dared to take up inconvenient cases which at times put the police people on the defensive. I was still not aware of the many twists and turns in his life – his spending prime years of his youth behind bars as an innocent victim of TADA – or his classes at the prestigious TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) where he use to enthuse students in magical ways. Continue reading Shahid Lives, Shahids Never Die →

Debates, Everyday Life, Language, Law

A Daughter’s Plea For A Better Way to Die: Gowri Parameswaran

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This is a guest post by Gowri Parameswaran on behalf of her mother Sulochana

“Life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant” wrote Joan Didion in her book The Year of Magical Thinking. Didion wrote about her attempts to cope with her husband’s death and her reference was to the moment of his passing. I had picked up the book in JFK and had completed it by the time I reached Chennai. I needed the sustenance that the book seemed to offer; I was coming to see and take care of my mother (Amma we called her) who had been admitted to the hospital with decompensated lungs for the third time in two months. Her heart was too sluggish to pump her blood through the arteries and the fluid had backed up into her lungs; her lungs were decompensated. I remembered the ominous prognosis that one book on Heart Failure had spelled out about this turn of events in her health – that this was a seminal indication that the heart had reached the end of the road. She seemed so normal when I left her in October. The doctor had pronounced her heart healthy under the circumstances.

“Life changes in the instant,

The ordinary instant”. Continue reading A Daughter’s Plea For A Better Way to Die: Gowri Parameswaran →

Bad ideas, Feminism, Right watch, Sex

Open Letter to Hindu Mahasabha – we’ll be there on February 14th!

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GET READY TO MARRY! 

To the National President, Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha

Dear Chandra Prakash Ji,

It has come to our notice that  you and your self-appointed brigade of protectors of ‘Bharatiya Sanskriti’ have openly vowed to undertake a massive programme on the 14th of February where you promise to marry off anyone who openly expresses their love, whether on the streets or on Facebook. Since you have taken on this gigantic task of marrying so many people on a single day, we would like you to answer some questions that have ‘unnaturally’ crept into our heads as a result of ‘westernization’.

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Will you marry a boy to a boy he likes, or a girl to a girl?  Will you acknowledge their love for each other, repeal section 377? Or will you send them to jail or Baba Ramdev? Continue reading Open Letter to Hindu Mahasabha – we’ll be there on February 14th! →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Everyday Life

Fact-Finding Committee on Lay Offs at Tata Consultancy Services Releases Report

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The following is the text of the report released by the Fact Finding Committee that investigated the issue of lay-offs at the Tata Consultancy Services. The committee, which released its report on 6 February in Chennai, consisted of the following members:

Fact finding committee press conf , Chennai
Fact finding committee press conf , Chennai

Mr. BRP. Bhaskar, Senior Journalist and Human Rights Activist, Thiruvananthapuram;

Dr. M.Vijayabaskar, Assistant Professor, MIDS, Chennai;

Adv. Bobby Kunhu, Legal Expert, Salem;

Ms. Chandrika Radhakrishnan, Software Professional and Labour Rights Activist, Chennai

Continue reading Fact-Finding Committee on Lay Offs at Tata Consultancy Services Releases Report →

Countryside, Identities, Violence/Conflict

Adivasis in Assam – Extermination without a Camp: Suraj Gogoi and Prasenjit Biswas

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Guest Post by SURAJ GOGOI AND PRASENJIT BISWAS

Repeated genocides in Assam and justification and rationalization of the same can be seen as the severest form of crime against humanity that one can imagine. It is the most reprehensible form of hatred that is committed and perpetually pushed under the carpet. Located in the foothills of Bhutan, the villages where 81 or so Adivasi persons were exterminated in the recent killings by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction) is no less than a genocide. Apparently the motive for such killing is attributed to Adivasi villagers helping the army and police in busting camps of Bodo militants. Seemingly they turn out to be the easy targets for insurgent firepower.

The adivasis, therefore, remain in a state of being exterminated. If camps mark the predicament of a modern fragmented society, one might say that the Adivasis are permanently thrown into shelters and camps as internally displaced. An estimated 2.75 lakh people of Adivasi origin are settled in about 250 camps across Udalguri and Chirang. They are decamped before the act of being camped and by the very act of remaining in the state of being camped they are rightless and defenseless. Herein we find a sense of perennial othering which subverts any democratic attempt to empower them with right and dignity. They are othered in a state of displacement and pushed form their settlements to an uncertain destiny. This continual displacement completes the fate of marginality. The process marks an inner othering of the marginalized that actualizes fragmentation of mainstream social identities of Assam. Continue reading Adivasis in Assam – Extermination without a Camp: Suraj Gogoi and Prasenjit Biswas →

Bad ideas

Modiji suniye, jo Dilli ka mood hai, vohi desh ka mood hai!

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Image courtesy Kumar Sundaram

Everyday Life, Politics

My elections days, 2015: Sivamohan Sumathy

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Guest Post by SIVAMOHAN SUMATHY

campaigning, exciting, tense, nervous, delirium-invested, holding training sessions on the verendah for the immediate neighbouhood, as nobody but appa had voted in any previous presidential election, strangely agreeing with appa on politics for once, passing on all the wild gossip about the mr family, nightmare riddled pre election nights, sleeplessness, inducing drinking, exhilarating, liberating, cautionary, educating vasuki’s children about the elections ( they are keenly interested), near addiction to fb and quarellling with totally unknown friends on it, while another plethora of unknown persons writing in to befriend me, baila sessions, holding candle lit vigils for assassinated journalists, being connected to the universe on election night through thiru, who was on every tweet, every note, every social bleep, planning, writing, tasking for the future, doubts, setting off crackers, taking to singing, questions, pondering profound political questions on the nature of the state, reforms or revolution, gramsci’s historic bloc, not stopping at paradigm shift as most liberal commentators have done with this over used and abused term, not bothering with muslim bashing in europe over charlie whatever, in fact, just a wee bit short of visionary.

no paradigm shift,
no revolution, it is toward …….

they cut the jak tree down in our backyard,
the day after elections.
the parrots displaced again.

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Government, Left watch, Metropolis, Politics, Right watch

An Election of Hope Versus Fear

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Yes it’s a simplistic dichotomy, but there is really no better way to describe the current Delhi elections. On the one hand, a little ragtag army of Davids behind “Mufflerman”, as his faithful supporters affectionately call him, a person in baggy sweater and sneakers, one you wouldn’t look at twice if you passed him on the road.

Mufflerman Business Standard

  Kejriwal

On the other hand, a massively funded, aggressively confident Goliath, openly backed by the corporate bodies and full-page ads, riding a  national “Wave” higher than most Tsunamis, topped by the 56-inch chest of “Modiman”, even if recently modestly covered by a 12-lakh rupee vest.

56-inch Modi78c0d4d3-be9e-4afb-b034-1247529df720wallpaper1

On the one hand, a fearful and awed media establishment donating PR for free to the seemingly invincible King of Gujarat, and on the other, an aam aadmi, a volunteer-cadre run campaign and a palpable vibe of trust and openness on the ground. I know I know, some will say it’s all ‘perception management’ and PR, but barring the googly of the 2 crores party donation thrown at the opportune moment, if Mufflerman’s party was any cleaner, it could have given Lalita ji’s Surf a run for its money. Whatever the result on the 10th (and there is reason to be hawk-eyed about the possibility of tampering as Nivedita Menon’s post has urged), how does anybody not get what a miracle this alone is, in a political economy with a black economy of a size that is higher than the GDPs of most smaller countries? Perhaps this is in fact about hope and fear after all, however clichéd that sounds.

Continue reading An Election of Hope Versus Fear →

Politics

BJP’s bravado on exit polls – do they know something about EVMs that we don’t?

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BJP says exit polls will fall flat on counting day – I wonder where this confidence comes from. Are they counting on the fact that in many booths, whatever party voters selected, their votes were registering in the BJP’s account? After the murkiness of Lok Sabha results especially in Banaras, with EVMs found in officials’ homes before election day and 3 lakh duplicate voters on the lists, the Election Commission’s ‘clarifications’ raising more questions than they answered, such possibilities no longer seem paranoid.

(The Election Commission said that in Banaras it found 6.47 lakh duplicated names, all of which are repeated at least once across the state. The official said, however, that these are not all necessarily fake entries in the rolls. They could be people who share a name. “For instance, a ‘Rajesh, son of Ramesh’, might be found several times in UP,” he said. “We are in the process of checking whether these people are same or different.”

The question is, when the process was to compare both the voter’s as well as his/her father’s name with other voters, how were 6.5 lakh duplicate names found in a constituency with 17 lakh voters?)

But my point in this post is not about electoral rolls, and a growing suspicion among many that the EC is not entirely un-compromised.

My point is that Electronic Voting Machines are extremely problematic from the point of view of exercising the democratic right to vote (not to mention costs) and have been given up by many ‘advanced’ countries after trying them out for some years. Whatever happens in this particular election, it is time for Indian citizens to think seriously about whether EVMs should be retained. Continue reading BJP’s bravado on exit polls – do they know something about EVMs that we don’t? →

Debates, Government, Media politics, Politics

Challenging the West’s Narrative on Sri Lanka’s ‘Victory for Democracy’: Devaka Gunawardena

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Guest Post by DEVAKA GUNAWARDENA

Of the many pieties that have been promoted in the Western media in the aftermath of Maithripala Sirisena’s victory over incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa in the recent Sri Lankan presidential election, none has been more cherished than the notion that Sri Lanka is now on board with “democracy.”[1] This claim is counter-posed to Sri Lanka’s recent cozy relationship with China and other authoritarian countries. A new Cold War is supposedly being fought, with Sri Lanka’s election reduced to its strategic relevance to policy makers.

At the same time the dominant narrative promoted by Western media and diplomats has been conveniently ignored in other places where it is considered politically unfeasible to support democracy. The same diplomats and officials that criticized the previous Rajapaksa regime have often argued that equally if not more repressive governments in places such as the Middle East are “on the path to democracy.” This claim temporizes the same political expectations that have been applied to Sri Lanka. Continue reading Challenging the West’s Narrative on Sri Lanka’s ‘Victory for Democracy’: Devaka Gunawardena →

Government, Media politics

चुनाव दिल्ली का:बाज़ी मात नहीं!

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अब यह बात नई नहीं रह गई है. लेकिन है इतनी निराली भारतीय चुनावी राजनीति में कि दुहराने में हर्ज नहीं. दिल्ली के आम जन ने अपना पक्ष चुन लिया है. उसके बारे में खुलकर बोलने में उसे झिझक भी नहीं. आम आदमी पार्टी या झाडू छाप .अब वह किसी छलावे और भुलावे में आने को तैयार नहीं. उसे राजनीति में असभ्यता बुरी लगी है.

उसे यह बात नागवार गुज़री है, जैसा मेट्रो स्टेशन ले जाते ऑटो वाले ने कहा, “दूसरे देश से बुला लिया 26 जनवरी को और केजरीवाल को न्योता नहीं दिया! फिर कहा कि अगर निमंत्रण चाहिए तो हमारी पार्टी में आओ.”

वह बहुत पढ़ा-लिखा नहीं, लेकिन इतना उसे पता है कि आज तक भारतीय संसदीय राजनीति में यह बदतमीजी नहीं की गई.

आपका हो तो 13 दिन का भी होकर भूतपूर्व प्रधानमंत्री हो जाता और दूसरा 49 दिन के बाद भी भूतपूर्व मुख्यमंत्री के लायक शिष्टाचार का हक़दार नहीं! Continue reading चुनाव दिल्ली का:बाज़ी मात नहीं! →

Media politics, Right watch

Statement protesting arrest of Shirin Dalvi, Editor, Awadhnama

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We, members of the Mumbai based human rights group Hum Azaadiyon Ke Haq Mein  are disturbed at reports of the multiple cases lodged against Shirin Dalvi, the editor of Awadhnama, Mumbai, and her arrest by Thane district police on January 28, for publishing a news-item on the Charlie Hebdo issue and one of the covers of the magazine on January 17, 2015. We are also shocked at the reports of the continual harassment of Shirin Dalvi.

Responding to readers’ views, she issued a clarification denying any intention to hurt religious sentiments and tendered a public clarification the very next day. However, cases have been registered against her in different police stations in Mumbra and Rabodi (Thane district), Malegaon and Mumbai on charges of violating Sec 295 of the Indian Penal Code (outraging religious feelings by insulting a religion with malicious intent).

While she has sought, and obtained, anticipatory bail in one set of cases from Mumbai Additional Sessions Court judge S D Tekale on January 23, she was arrested in Mumbra, Thane district, and granted bail the same day on Jan 28.

The Mumbai based human rights group Hum Azaadiyon Ke Haq Mein is disturbed at the attempts made to defame her character. Baseless statements appeared in several Urdu newspapers that a colleague had tried to dissuade her from using the Charlie Hebdo cover but the colleague identified was actually not even in office on that day and had resigned a few days ago. Other attempts to defame her included statements that she had joined the RSS women’s wing and was a ‘follower’ of Bangladeshi writer in exile Taslima Nasreen!

Shirin Dalvi is a respected journalist with more than 20 years of experience in Urdu journalism. She is perhaps the only woman editor in Urdu journalism in India, has written on issues concerning women’s rights and politics and is well-known for her literary skill and learning.

The manner in which she is being hounded bodes ill for free debate and discussion and for peaceful resolution of controversy. Besides, the incident is also being used as a pretext to ratchet up polarized public opinion, which is a dangerous game and detrimental to freedom of speech and expression in a democratic society, besides causing immense personal harm and a threat to her life and safety.

We request those who have filed cases against her to accept her clarification in the right spirit with which it has been given and to withdraw all the cases against her.

We also demand that Shirin Dalvi be provided necessary protection forthwith.

sd/-
Hasina Khan
Dr. Ram Puniyani
Adv.Irfan Engineer – Director, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
Javed Anand – General Secretary, Muslims for Secular Democracy
Sukla Sen
Ammu Abraham
Sameera Khan
Nasreen Fazalbhoy
Mario D’Penha
Divya Taneja
Kamayani Mahabal
Geeta Seshu
Brinelle D’souza – Tata Institute of Social Science
Teesta Setalvad, Editor, Communalism Combat
Rukmini Sen, Hillele Combat TV
Veena Gowda
Anjali Kanitkar
Saaz Shaikh
Rohini Hensman
Chhaya Datar
Susan Abraham
and members and organisations of Hum Azaadiyon ke Haq Mein

Bad ideas, Government, Language, Media politics, Right watch, Scams

Beware BJP’s Filthy Campaign and Desperate Bid to Steal the Elections!

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Avam characters

As the AVAM drama unfolds and much more detective work remains to be done, some other disturbing news has also started trickling in. A journalist friend got a mail from an official yesterday, who confided to this journalist:

Dear Sir,
We would like to bring to your notice that our volunteer Mr. XYZ (name withheld for obvious reasons) has attended the preparation of Electronic Voting Machine on 31st January & 1st February and he noticed some discripencies in the EVMs of Booth No. 26, 47A, 75 & 87.
Whichever button he was pushing the vote was being casted in favour of BJP only.
However, after his objection the EVM machines were replaced.

We of course, do not know how many such machines there are.

Meanwhile, another friend – an academic – sent this mail, which tells us something of the sense he got from a tour around Delhi areas – along with his deep suspicion that once again, through some machinations, the elections may be stolen:

This is just to tell you that I accompanied two journalist friends to go on an election tour of Delhi (targetting trader bases with BJP support) and most of the people that we talked to openly supported AAP. Attitudes to Modi ranged from indifference to criticism for blabbering away and not doing anything to plain abuse. Many have started identifying the BJP as a “syndicate” party i.e. as a party of rich businessmen. Above all people think that the 49 day government was a period they felt empowered – and they compare it to the lack of any improvements under Modi for the last 8 months!

This still does not let me lose my belief in the worst: But it gives me a warm feeling when I keep my fingers crossed!

Continue reading Beware BJP’s Filthy Campaign and Desperate Bid to Steal the Elections! →

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