Culture, Debates, Feminism, Right watch

The Embarrassed Modern Hindu (Upper Caste Man)

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Perhaps the clearest statement on what exactly it is in Wendy Doniger’s work that bothers some people – and who these people are – is outlined in Jakob De Roover’s empathetic account of the imagined ‘Hindu boy with intellectual inclinations’ born in the 1950’s.  This boy grows up going to the temple, hearing stories about Bhima’s strength, Krishna’s appetite, Durvasa’s temper. If you were this boy,

Perhaps you rejoice when Rama rescues Sita, feel afraid when Kali fights demons, or cry when Drona demands Ekalavya’s thumb as gurudakshina.

The boy goes to school and learns about caste discrimination in Hinduism (that he had to go to school to learn about caste discrimination establishes his own caste position very clearly).  This makes

You feel bad about your “backward religion” and ashamed about “the massive injustice of caste.”

But

You sense that it misrepresents you and your traditions—it distorts your practices, your people, and your experience…Everywhere you turn, people just reproduce the same story about Hinduism and caste as the worst thing that ever happened to humanity: politicians, activists, teachers, professors, newspapers, television shows… Continue reading The Embarrassed Modern Hindu (Upper Caste Man) →

Capitalism, Countryside, Everyday Life, Violence/Conflict

Can there be a ‘socially responsible’ tea? Ashwini Sukhtankar and Peter Rosenblum

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Guest post by ASHWINI SUKHTANKAR AND PETER ROSENBLUM

Almost four years ago, we first traveled to Rungamuttee, a tea estate in the Dooars, so far north that it nuzzles the Bhutan border. The region has recently fallen prey to the craze of “tea tourism,” and the estates jostle for space with eco-green-homestay lodges that lure middle class families with the opportunity to play at a mythic British sahib-memsahib life, sitting on verandahs sipping tea while gazing out over vast reaches of picturesque monoculture, with rows of squat green bushes as far as the eye can see.

We were not unmoved by the beauty and the weight of history, but we were there to talk to workers and to understand what plantation life meant for them in the 21st century.

At Rungamuttee, we sat perched in red plastic chairs, almost brushing knees with a sinewy old man, also in a red plastic chair in the tiny “labour quarters” that he shared with his children and grandchildren.

The old man at Rungamuttee in his red chair

The old man at Rungamuttee in his red chair

He leaned forward and unfurled the frayed scroll in his hand. It was his “depot challan,” the document that he had been given when he showed up at the labour depot in Ranchi in 1955, and it told him that he had been assigned a job as a tea labourer in Jalpaiguri District, more than three days’ journey away. Continue reading Can there be a ‘socially responsible’ tea? Ashwini Sukhtankar and Peter Rosenblum →

Culture, Debates, Right watch

Terrorized By The Past: Janaki Nair

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Kafila normally does not carry guest posts that have appeared elsewhere, but I think JANAKI NAIR’s article from The Telegraph needs to be read widely – a scholarly, lively, feminist take on sexuality in Hindu traditions.

It is our good fortune that our knowledge of Hinduism does not come from the authorized versions that Dina Nath Batra and his Shiksha Bachao Andolan wish to propagate. Neither does our collective imagination remain reined in by his fantasies about the Indian past. This large and luxuriantly complex society, even when all else has been brutally taken from its wretched millions, has its imagination intact. And, we fervently hope, for some time to come. Therein lies the challenge to our desperately needed “historical temper”.

As an 18-year-old, I had read the sexually frank passages of the Rig Veda with wonder and amazement. In a small village called Sanehalli, Karnataka, where the performing arts have been vigorously patronized by Swami Panditaradhya, I recently watched, along with the people from surrounding villages, the Kathakali performance at the annual theatre festival, in which Shakuntala incrementally raised the decibel level and shouted “Anarya!” at Dushyanta, violating all norms of womanly behaviour and appropriate performance voice. There was thunderous appreciative clapping at the end. I have filed past, with lots of ardent devotees of Krishna, the brilliant murals at the Cochin Palace at Mattancherry, where Krishna does not waste a single digital extremity of his eight hands and two feet in pleasing his gopis (his two flute playing hands excepted). Ditto the Guruvayur Temple, whose sexually explicit murals are now, alas, being modestly covered in (NRI-sponsored) gold plate. The erotic sculptures at the Nellaiappar Temple at Tirunelveli, the great Chalukyan temples at Aihole Pattadakkal and Badami, all visited daily by hundreds of chattering and irreverent school children, continue to stand as testimony to what our illustrious forebears were also preoccupied with. One could go onad nauseum, about the little and great traditions of Indian mythology which are not only sexually explicit but bloodstained to boot. It is Wendy Doniger’s triumph that she brings us these complexities in just one book. Continue reading Terrorized By The Past: Janaki Nair →

Capitalism, Centre watch, Debates, Government, Politics

जनता की महालूट का तमाशा अनवरत जारी है ! : अनुराग मोदी

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Guest post by ANURAG MODI

हमारा विकास का मॉडल और हमारी राजनीति,  सविंधान कि मूलभावना के ही विपरीत है. सविधान में जहाँ, समाजवादी  गणराज्य की स्थापना, जिसमे हर नागरिक को आर्थिक, सामाजिक और राजनैतिक बराबरी के अधिकार होंगे, की बात है. हमारी राजनीति, यह भूल गई विकास के वैकल्पिक मॉडल के बिना न तो समाजवाद आएगा, और न ही राजनैतिक और सामाजिक और आर्थिक बराबरी स्थापित होगी. बल्कि, हम पिछले ६६ सालों से विकास की मृग-मरीचिका के पीछे भागते रहे, और देश के संसाधन की महालूट का तमाशा अनवरत ज़ारी रहा; जिसके चलते 1% लोगों के हाथों में देश के संसाधन से उपजी कमाई जमा हो गई. और देश की आम-जनता, विकास और राजनीति के हाशिए पर तमाशबीन बनी खडी रही.

यह स्थीति पिछले 10 सालों (2001-11) में और बिगड़ी है : कृषी प्रधान देश होने के बावजूद, 2,70, 940 किसानों ने  आत्महत्या कर ली; जितने लोग रोजगार में लगे हो उससे ज्यादा बेरोजगार हो; गैरबराबर बढी हो;शिक्षा, स्वास्थ्य, बिजली, पानी, सड़क, यहाँ-तक की राशन जैसी सामाजिक सुरक्षा के कामों से सरकार गायब हो गई- उसे निजी हाथों में दे दिया हो. Continue reading जनता की महालूट का तमाशा अनवरत जारी है ! : अनुराग मोदी →

Culture, Debates, Education, Politics, Right watch

CHS, JNU Statement on the Wendy Doniger Issue

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The following is the text of a statement issued by the Faculty of the CENTRE FOR HISTORICAL STUDIES, Jawaharlal Nehru University, protesting against the recent decision by Penguin India to withdraw and pulp all remaining copies of Wendy Doniger’s Hinduism. An Alternative History

We are outraged by the news that Penguin India has agreed to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s much acclaimed book The Hindus: An Alternative History and pulp all existing copies of the book in stock. Professor Doniger is one of the most respected Indologists in the world. She has spent a lifetime exploring the richness of India’s religious pasts, showcasing the creative interplay between multiple traditions — the Puranic and the Vedantic, the folkloric and the Brahmanic. Innovatively drawing on many disciplines, she has investigated the variegated world of Hindu mythology and theology, to explore what they say about order and chaos, morality and ethics, the good and the evil, the erotic and the non-erotic. Her reading of Hinduism has inevitably disturbed those who wish to sanitize and straitjacket Hinduism, and repress the multiplicity of traditions that constitute it. While welcoming all critical engagements with the book, the faculty of the CHS condemns any attempt to curtail the circulation of this book in any form.

The decision of Penguin India to sign an out-of-court settlement to withdraw Professor Doniger’s book is therefore an act of abandoning the basic ethics of publishing. What is most disturbing is the fact that Penguin Books — which had in the past a sturdy reputation of defending freedom of expression — has agreed to a settlement even without the Indian state or the Indian judiciary taking a position against the book. This decision will affirm the power of the forces of religious intolerance, encourage further attacks on authors who question the fundamentalist interpretation of the past, and subvert the right to freedom of expression. It will undermine further the rapidly eroding public space wherein critical debates and discussions can take place. This is a space that all who believe in democratic values — publishers included — need to preserve and defend.

Please note that individual names are not being listed in this statement as this is emanating from the entire faculty.

Thank you,

Professor Rajat Datta

Culture, Education, Politics, Right watch

Statement by Scholars in North American Universities on Withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s book

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This statement expresses the views of the individuals listed below and does not represent the views of the University of Chicago or any of its departments.

We, the undersigned, as students of South Asia, strongly condemn the withdrawal by Penguin Press India of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History from distribution in India. We believe that this work has been attacked because it presents a threat to orthodox Brahminical interpretations of Hinduism. We believe that this attack is part of ongoing attempts by upper-caste extremist Hindu forces to stifle any alternative understandings of Hinduism. As students in the United States, we are acutely aware that North American organizations of the Hindu right initiated the protests against Wendy Doniger’s scholarship. Hindu right wing organisations in India have worked in tandem with their North American counterparts to suppress alternative voices in India and too often violently. We are deeply concerned about the alarming increase in attacks on any academic study of Hinduism that does not fit these groups’ narrow and exclusionary vision of Hinduism which is part of their desire to create a Hindu India that excludes the religious minorities of Indian Muslims and Indian Christians. Continue reading Statement by Scholars in North American Universities on Withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s book →

Culture, Debates, Identities

Of Khap and AAP: Eight Myths about Culture and Caste : N. Balmurli

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Guest Post by N. Balmurli

Delhi chief minister Mr. Kejriwal’s claim that “khaps serve a cultural purpose” reproduces some popular myths about culture and caste. These myths predate AAP and have been put into place over the last few years by official and expert statements in public discourse such that they are now part of a “commonsense” of worldviews about caste and culture.

Consider two other statements made by political figures whose parties are at pains to show how retrograde AAP’s statements are.

Continue reading Of Khap and AAP: Eight Myths about Culture and Caste : N. Balmurli →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Language, Law

Demand to Reconsider and Revise Sections 153a and 295a of the Indian Penal Code to Protect Freedom of Expression in India: Concerned Academics and Public Intellectuals

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Statement by Concerned Academics and Public Intellectuals: Ananya Vajpeyi, Sheldon Pollock, Partha Chatterjee, Laurie Patton, Romila Thapar, David Shulman and many others

We the undersigned are appalled by the recent settlement reached between Dina Nath Batra for the Shiksha Bachao Andolan and Penguin Books India, to cease the publication of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin USA 2009; Penguin India 2010), and to withdraw and destroy remaining copies of the book on Indian territory. Continue reading Demand to Reconsider and Revise Sections 153a and 295a of the Indian Penal Code to Protect Freedom of Expression in India: Concerned Academics and Public Intellectuals →

Debates, Feminism, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Feminist Reflections on the Tragic Suicide of Khurshid Anwar

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN COLLECTIVELY WRITTEN BY THE PEOPLE WHOSE NAMES APPEAR AT THE END

In the aftermath of the suicide of Khurshid Anwar, friend and comrade to many of us, on December, 18th 2013, there has been a concerted attack by some democratic and secular people on ‘feminists’ who supposedly drove him to take this extreme step. The charge is that feminists did not support him when an accusation of rape was made against him by a young woman, and exacerbated the situation by their irresponsible handling of the issue.

As feminists, we feel it necessary at this trying time to recognize that this pitched battle is after all, taking place amongst allies in a bigger struggle for democracy and secularism, and to think seriously about how we can move ahead. Rather than being a definitive statement of any kind, this collectively written piece is an attempt to think through a very messy situation. Continue reading Feminist Reflections on the Tragic Suicide of Khurshid Anwar →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Education

Legal notice to Penguin Books India for violation of rights of readers

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Advocate LAWRENCE LIANG  has served this legal notice to Penguin Books, India, on behalf of Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Aarti Sethi. 

Under instructions from, for and on behalf of my clients Sh. Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Ms. Aarti Sethi, both residing at New Delhi, I serve upon you this legal notice for the following reasons and purposes:

  1. My client, Mr. Sengupta, is an artist and writer based in New Delhi with a longstanding interest in the comparative history of religions. Ms. Sethi is an anthropologist with a deep interest in Hindu philosophy. Both Mr. Sengupta and Ms. Sethi are avid bibliophiles, ardent supporters of freedom of speech and expression and have in the past been admirers of Penguin Books.
  2. My clients were delighted when YOU NOTICEE published Wendy Doniger’s  “The Hindus: An Alternative History” and as people who have closely followed the scholarly contributions of the said author they regard this book to be a significant contribution to the study of Hinduism. They consider Ms. Doniger’s translations of Indian classical texts and her work on various facets of Hinduism from morality in the Mahabarata to the erotic history of Hinduism as an inspiration for their own intellectual pursuits.
  3.  It has come to the notice of my clients that YOU NOTICEE have withdrawn publication of the book “The Hindus: An Alternative history” pursuant to an agreement entered between YOU NOTICEE and Shri. Dinanath Batra; O.P.Gupta, Sharvan Kumar and a few other busybody etcetera’s on the 4th of February 2014. YOU NOTICEE have further agreed not to sell, publish or distribute the book and also to pulp all unsold copies of the book. Continue reading Legal notice to Penguin Books India for violation of rights of readers →
Countryside, Culture, Ecology/Environment, Government, Identities

Adivasi-yagna, The Great Sacrifice – Tribal Communities for ‘Greater’ Hyderabad? R Uma Maheshwari

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This is a guest post by R UMA MAHESHWARI

The Andhra Pradesh ministers are fighting like the hooligans they show in Telugu films (one is reminded, in particular, of an old Telugu film aptly named Assembly Rowdy). The fight is all over, and about, investments in Hyderabad and elsewhere. As it is about money. The Parliament fight is with pepper sprays and knives. Back there, on the ground, in tribal villages in AP (yet to be declared as either Seemandhra or Telangana), absolutely unarmed Koyas, Kondareddis, and a few other tribal communities are opposing the construction of the Polavaram dam. And have been marking their protests with dharnas, rasta rooks and burning of effigies of leaders of all political parties. The former have some plum real estate and business interests to protect; the latter have their everything to fight for – homes, land and histories. Not for a while, in the entire debate and fighting over the state of either unification or creation of Telangana have any of these picketers in the Parliament have sought the opinions of the tribal people whose land is today a battleground for investment. One has no qualms of using the peculiar Sanskritic terminology, in the Vedic sense of sacrificial rituals, conducted by the wealthy and upper castes for their benefits, in the name of the ‘common good’. A Former Chief Minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, YSR, too, used the same Sanskritic term (in spite of his being a Christian) for the irrigation projects (or contractor businesses) he initiated (86 nos.) under jalayagam.  Today the sacrificial ritual continues, and it is a human sacrifice, of more than three hundred thousand tribal people (as it is the sacrifice of animals and birds and every visible or invisible organism), in return for the illusory real-estate-driven world called ‘Greater’ Hyderabad; what if it is going to be a “joint capital for ten years” (and who has seen what the world will look like after ten years, any way? Or what shape it will assume? But these are matters of philosophy and metaphysics, I guess, talking of who knows where we will be, what will be…). Continue reading Adivasi-yagna, The Great Sacrifice – Tribal Communities for ‘Greater’ Hyderabad? R Uma Maheshwari →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Right watch

This is not Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus – An Alternative History

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download

“This is not a pipe” (Rene Magritte)

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This is not Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus. An Alternative History

None of the following are, either. They are links from which you can download the entire text:

Epub version
pdf version 

 

 WENDY DONIGER: Finally, I am glad that, in the age of the Internet, it is no longer possible to suppress a book. The Hindus is available on Kindle; and if legal means of publication fail, the Internet has other ways of keeping books in circulation.

People in India will always be able to read books of all sorts, including some that may offend some Hindus.

And no, this is not a penguin, a notoriously brave bird!
chicken
Culture, Debates, Identities

Racism and the NE – Exclusion and prejudice: Arjun Rajkhowa

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Guest Post by Arjun Rajkhowa

I read with interest Lawrence Liang and Golan Nauluk’s piece in The Hindu (4 February 2014, ‘Cultural ignorance and prejudice’). They rightly point out the various gaps and fissures in our understanding of racism and its impact on those whose identities are often placed outside the “rubric of Indian nationhood”. They also suggest, insightfully, that the “complicated history of the northeast with its various self-determination movements and armed struggles requires a slightly different imagination of multicultural citizenship”.

Using this as a point of departure, I’d like to discuss another dimension of the “cultural difference” they foreground in their piece – the manner in which Indian nationhood is constructed in the northeast. Manifold exclusionary tendencies manifest themselves in northeastern politics and, for someone who is from the region, it is impossible to disentangle these from current discussions on racism. While it is important to interrogate the existence of prejudicial attitudes towards northeasterners in a city like Delhi, such questioning cannot be extricated from the larger context of the conceptualization of nationhood and identity within the northeast, for the two are closely imbricated issues.

Continue reading Racism and the NE – Exclusion and prejudice: Arjun Rajkhowa →

Culture, Education, Language, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

An Ice Age for Indian scholarship

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These are lonely times for scholarship in India.Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti( SBAS) has claimed yet another scalp in the form of the withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s book ‘The Hindus:An alternative history’ by its publishers Penguin,India. The author, while ‘angry and disappointed’ by this decision has said that she can understand the plight of her publishers who were fighting a criminal case and not a civil suit. It had serious implications for their physical safety. Fellow scholars and academics are upset and angry that the publishers have caved in.

The question we need to ask ourselves, however is about our own role in this whole affair. There were not too many voices of protest  when the same SBAS forced the Calicut University to remove a poem by an unknown poet from an English language textbook alleging that the poet was a ‘terrorist’. Its editors felt compelled to apologize as they were threatened with a probe into their possible involvement in a conspiracy network to jeopardize national security. Continue reading An Ice Age for Indian scholarship →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Identities, Mirror Worlds

Open Letter to AAP and the Public on Continuing Racism in Khirkee Village: Aastha Chauhan, Malini Kochupillai & Friends

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Guest Post by AASTHA CHAUHAN, MALINI KOCHUPILLAI, and several AFRICAN RESIDENTS OF DELHI

Dear Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, Mr.Yogendra Yadav and Aatishi Marlena,

Being witness to the events occuring in Khirkee this past month, we, a group of artists, architects, activists and local residents have felt  the need to frame an open letter addressed to your party, the AAP & the public. The media-frenzy associated with these events has been accompanied by the usual kind of misinformation and hyperbole. However, in the ensuing noise, the real stories of the underlying racism that afflicts our society and the negative repercussions of the raid on the African residents of the neighborhood, have been lost.  We hope this letter will clarify some facts and put across a few of our concerns.

Our intention is not to encourage confrontation, it is to propose solutions. Delhi is a tough place for all immigrants alike, how will we make this a more inclusive compassionate city? These are the larger questions. These were the issues we were hoping to tackle. Continue reading Open Letter to AAP and the Public on Continuing Racism in Khirkee Village: Aastha Chauhan, Malini Kochupillai & Friends →

Bad ideas

Modi and The Art of ‘Disappearing’ of Untouchability

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It is a story attributed to a famous Saint from Middle Ages – a votary of the idea of Brahma Satya, Jagat Mithya (Brahma is the Only Truth, Rest is All Illusion). Once this gentleman was walking with his Shishya (disciple) on a road and suddenly a elephant appeared from nowhere and rushed towards this duo. Abruptly ending his discussion on Maya (illusion) the Guru instructed his Shishya to just run away to save himself. When both of them were at a safe place, the exasperated Shishya asked the Guru, why did he ask him to run knowing well that everything else is an ‘illusion’. Without winkling his eyelid the Guru said ‘Gajopi Mithya, Palayanopi Mithya‘ (The elephant was also an illusion and our running away was also an illusion).

One does not know whether the famous sage had visited Gujarat or not but his influence seems palpable there at least among the ruling elite. If the Guru could ‘invisibilise’ the elephant calling it an illusion, here in Gujarat an age old problem like untouchability could be similarly ‘disappeared’ by terming it a matter of ‘perception’. Continue reading Modi and The Art of ‘Disappearing’ of Untouchability →

Bad ideas, Culture, Identities, Law, Politics, Right watch

Pulping Doniger Can Put Penguin in Peril

123 Comments

It was with great anger and sadness that many readers in India heard yesterday of Penguin Books India’s decision to enter into an out-of-court settlement with a group of busy-bodies led by one Dina Nath Batra of the so called ‘Shiksha Bachao Andolan’ (Save Education Movement) – one of the many poisonous heads of the RSS hydra – to recall and pulp all extant copies of Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus: An Alternative History” (Penguin India, 2009).

Dina Nath Batra (infamous for leading the campaign that led to the withdrawal of A.K. Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana from the Delhi University syllabus) and others, through their advocate, one Monika Arora, had filed a suit in a Saket, New Delhi against Wendy Doniger (whom they address, as ‘You, Noticee’) and Penguin Books on the grounds that Doniger’s book offends their religious sentiments. Continue reading Pulping Doniger Can Put Penguin in Peril →

Centre watch, Culture, Images

Kumar Vishwas – a Work in Progress in the Times of YouTube : Akhil Katyal

7 Comments

Guest Post by AKHIL KATYAL

kv

On the internet you can never really begin from scratch, that is to say, you can never really begin from a desired point in space and time, erasing all the befores.

One of the most difficult conversations about the form of the internet is that descriptive metaphors that work for some other mediums do not work for it. Things do not, for instance, easily die on the internet or age gracefully. In a manner of speaking, shelves do not gather dust here. A 2004 video takes no longer to load than a 2014 video; it is not stored behind or below it. The desire to order space and time online runs against the grain of this form, in the sense that, knowledge is not arranged as sequence on the internet, it is arranged as infinite sets of adjacencies. 

These sets of adjacencies are attempted to be given shape by algorithms that make you reach where you want to reach. But despite them, the non-sequential nature of knowledge on the internet is evident from the fact that any keyword search would always allow you to look for that keyword in a variety of ways – each way an attempted but always incomplete ordering, whether by significance, language, region, time, domain, web page location, level of adult content, reading difficulty, file types or license types. However, these algorithms never fully master the adjacencies that they seek to make legible to us. And adjacencies – of different videos, articles, photographs, memes – do not make for calm political stories, they make for political drama. Continue reading Kumar Vishwas – a Work in Progress in the Times of YouTube : Akhil Katyal →

Bad ideas

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ! Who Were Those ‘Bad Elements’ Mr Bhagwat?

2 Comments

‘Cat drinks milk with closed eyes and thinks the world is not watching it’

(Marathi Proverb)

 I.

Rare have been occasions in recent times that the RSS, with all its anushangik (affiliated) organisations on their toes, is engaged in dousing the fire in which it has caught itself unawares. Reason being the ‘interview’ of one of its own Pracharaks (wholetimer) turned terrorist named Swami Aseemanand which was published in a leading magazine named ‘Caravan’.(http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/believer).  According to the RSS, it is a ‘concocted’ one and has even issued a handwritten letter supposedly written by the interviewee ‘denying’ that any such interview occurred whereas the magazine has stood the ground and has even made transcripts of the said interview and its audio recordings public.

Perhaps with the ‘denial’ by the interviewee the matter should have ended there for the RSS, but this does not seem to be the case. And for reasons which is known to itself, it is trying to ‘clarify’ its stand on various aspects which came up during the interview and is trying to distance itself – once again – from Swami Aseemanand alias Naba Kumar Sarkar, a disciplined activist of the ‘Parivar’ for last more than three decades, who hails from a village in West Bengal. Continue reading Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ! Who Were Those ‘Bad Elements’ Mr Bhagwat? →

Law, Right watch

Will the new Bill benefit the freshly included disabilities? : Amita Dhanda

2 Comments

Guest Post by AMITA DHANDA

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2014 has got caught in the crossfire of different disability groups. Whilst one body of opinion holds that the Bill is regressive, incoherent and needs to be heavily reworked before it can be enacted; the other perspective is that the Bill may not be perfect but at least it provides something to those who are not included in the 1995 Act.  People propounding the something is better than nothing logic, also pertinently point out, that while persons with disabilities who are included in the 1995 Act can afford to wait, that luxury is not available to them.

Thus, the strongest case for passing a less than perfect legislation comes from persons with impairments which are not covered by the 1995 Act.   Significantly, the Bill of 2014 has changed the definition but other provisions, which need to be incorporated in theBill, to ensure that the freshly inducted persons with disabilities obtain all the entitlements (including job reservations) have not been included.  It is submitted that without those provisions being included the expanded definition is going to be of little benefit to the freshly included disabilities. Continue reading Will the new Bill benefit the freshly included disabilities? : Amita Dhanda →

Bad ideas

The Unending Amnesia Over Hindutva Terror

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image : Courtesy – http://www.abplive.in

 

 

..[A]seemanand’s description of the plot in which he was involved became increasingly detailed. In our third and fourth interviews, he told me that his terrorist acts were sanctioned by the highest levels of the RSS—all the way up to Mohan Bhagwat, the current RSS chief, who was the organisation’s general secretary at the time. Aseemanand told me that Bhagwat said of the violence, “It’s very important that it be done. But you should not link it to the Sangh.”

Aseemanand told me about a meeting that allegedly took place, in July 2005. ..In a tent pitched by a river several kilometres away from the temple, Bhagwat and Kumar met with Aseemanand and his accomplice Sunil Joshi. Joshi informed Bhagwat of a plan to bomb several Muslim targets around India. According to Aseemanand, both RSS leaders approved, and Bhagwat told him, “You can work on this with Sunil. We will not be involved, but if you are doing this, you can consider us to be with you.”

 

(Reportage : The Believer: Swami Aseemanand’s radical service to the Sangh, by LEENA GITA REGHUNATH | 1 February 2014, Caravan Magazine, http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/believer)

 

‘Law is an ass’ a phrase which was used by Charles Dickens in  ‘Oliver Twist’ in a completely different context today finds a deep resonance in this part of South Asia. And nothing illustrates this better than the predicament of what is popularly known as Hindutva terror. Continue reading The Unending Amnesia Over Hindutva Terror →

DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE