Playback of a golden voice

In this country of almost a billion and a quarter you might find some people who have not heard of Mohammed Rafi. In such a scenario, My Abba: A Memoir, a book on the great singer written by his daughter-in-law Yasmin Khalid Rafi in its stream of conscience kind of technique, connects one to his life like no other book. Yasmin is writing about someone she idolised and loved, like only a daughter can. When she talks of him, a jumble of memories comes rushing back and surrounds her—the songs she liked, the music directors who worked with Rafi Saheb, his simplicity, his generousness, his love for his family, his insecurities, his inability to be flamboyant, the metamorphosis that transformed him into a great performer the moment he set foot on the stage. Continue reading Playback of a golden voice

1984: Gauri Gill

This pamphlet, titled 1984, has been released by GAURI GILL

GAURI GILL writes: This pamphlet contains photographs of the ongoing impact of the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom in New Delhi – taken by me for Tehelka magazine in 2005 (after the release of the Nanavati Commission report) and Outlook magazine in 2009 (to mark the 25th anniversary of the event); in Trilokpuri, Tilak Vihar and Garhi, as well as at protest rallies in the city. The captions that appear below them are as they were inscribed in the media then. Last month, I decided to ask some artist friends, who were living in Delhi at the time, or have since or prior, or see themselves as somehow participants of the city, to write a small comment alongside each photograph. It could be about the image or a more general observation related to the event; it could be abstract, poetic, personal, fictional, factual or nonsensically true in the way that were Toba Tek Singh’s seminal words on the partition. Continue reading 1984: Gauri Gill

Why censorship is the greatest threat to India: Michael Edison Hayden

Guest post by MICHAEL EDISON HAYDEN: An editorial published earlier this month in India Today bemoans India’s willingness to placate religious fundamentalists through artistic censorship. The author, Peter V. Rajsingh, makes the familiar point in “Censorship a slur on India’s ethos” that religious zealots have become “purveyors of infantilising values of Victorian colonial missionaries”. What he says is true, but India’s real problem with censorship extends far beyond removing images of bare breasts from movie screens. There is possibly no issue today – including the vile treatment of women and the relentless threat of terrorism – that poses a greater threat to the happiness and security of Indian citizens than that of censorship. And I believe that it is extremely important for those of us who live here, and love this country to comprehend the weight of this situation before it is too late. Continue reading Why censorship is the greatest threat to India: Michael Edison Hayden

Chit-funded media

With the Sarandha chit fun scam in West Bengal, a side-effect has been the going bust of its media investments. Seema Guha, Delhi bureau chief of the recently shut down Bengal Post writes in The Hoot:

The executive editor Ranabir Roychowdhury and several of the core journalist team were known to us, but none of us had ever heard the name of Sudipta Sen, the owner. We in Delhi were far away, but our colleagues in Kolkata too did not know anything about him, except that he was a real estate tycoon with a land bank of 100 acres or more. He was also into chit funds. It was much later that we came to know that this was his main business, our money was basically derived from the collections Saradha made from the poorest people in Bengal and other eastern states. He had business in the north east as well as in Odisha. [Read the full article]

On the social fabric in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat: Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

This is an excerpt from the chapter, ‘The Enemy Within’ in NIIANJAN MUKHOPADHYAY’s book, Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.

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Stage set for a Vishwa Hindu Parishad function next to the Pirana shrine in Ahmedabad, 2011. Photo via twocircles.net

From the label of “Master Divider” in India Today in January 2003 to the tag of “The Great Polariser” in the Outlook in July 2012 — Narendra Modi’s image remained static: self-declared champion of one community of people. But the strain Gujarat faced in the course of his tenure has increased manifold. Wherever I travelled in Gujarat, there was a clear distinction between “us” and “them”. This difference was articulated by several Hindus every time the conversation veered in this direction. In contrast, counterparts among Muslims denied this. The disagreement with the hypothesis stemmed not from a belief and perception that they faced no discrimination but because of a “fear” that accepting such a viewpoint could be interpreted as levelling an allegation that they were being targeted — a risk no Muslim is willing to take after the post-Godhra violence.

Continue reading On the social fabric in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat: Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

Dismiss the Delhi Police Commissioner

It is surreal watching leaders from Sushil Kumar Shinde to Sushma Swaraj make tough statements, one after another, on television. Statements about taking strong measures, the latter even demanding, as is her wont, death sentence to rapists. I felt like asking, do you even realize what the people are angry about? Do you even know what is at issue here? Who will you hang? Case after case, even after December 16, it is being revealed, suffers from the same problem: the refusal of the police to even register a case! What is the meaning of this high histrionics then, when you do not even have a culprit to punish? I am not even raising the question of the ethics of death penalty because that is a redundant question at the moment. Except for the raving right wingers who – like Sushma Swaraj and Shinde – have to make some song and dance about the issue merely for effect, no one else really believes that at the moment there is any issue other than the criminality of Delhi Police. Continue reading Dismiss the Delhi Police Commissioner

The Bastar Land Grab: An Interview with Sudha Bharadwaj

This intervew with SUDHA BHARADWAJ of Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha was conducted by JUSTIN PODUR in Raipur on 5 March 2013

JP: As a lawyer and an activist, how do you see the relationship between legal work and activism?

SB: I see myself primarily as a trade unionist. I joined the union movement over twenty years ago, and it was the union that made me a lawyer. They felt that workers needed a good lawyer in their fight with the corporations. Our union is one of contract workers and has been striving to overcome divisions in the working class. Here, workers have a close connection with the peasants. So, we believe that working with the peasants is part of unionism.

When I got to the High Court, I found that all the people’s organizations were in a similar situation. The laws that give you rights are poorly implemented. When you fight, the status quo has many legal weapons, launches malicious litigation, etc. So we have a group of lawyers now (Janhit), and we work on group legal aid, not individual legal aid. The idea is that if you help a group, that can bring about some kind of change, create some space. I’ve also gotten involved with the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), for which I am the General Secretary in Chhattisgarh. Continue reading The Bastar Land Grab: An Interview with Sudha Bharadwaj

Debating the Attack on Presidency University: Pratyay Nath

Guest post by PRATYAY NATH.

This piece is in response to Waled Aadnan’s post on Kafila titled ‘Because Presidency is an Idea – All You Need to Know about What Happened at Presidency University’ (dated 15 April 2013). Mr. Aadnan’s well-written and succinctly argued piece is not an isolated voice; it echoes a dominant way of thinking that has been noticeable among the various protests against the recent incident of vandalism in the Presidency University (erstwhile Presidency College). Let me begin by stating, like many others already have, that the vandalism that happened in Presidency on 10 April 2013 should be condemned in the harshest of terms. My discomfort lies in some of the ways in which these condemnations are being articulated in the public domain over the past few days. I would suggest that the majority of the protests emanate from a sense of hurt delivered to the idea of eliteness of the educational institution in question, which cannot unfortunately be supported because it tries to detach this incident from the broader socio-political forces of our times by sensationalising the issue.  Continue reading Debating the Attack on Presidency University: Pratyay Nath

Another rape, still more incompetence: Time to teach Delhi Police a Lesson?

A five year old girl is now in a critical condition in a Delhi hospital after being brutalized and raped by a neighbour. The Delhi police, which has dealt with the situation with its characteristic incompetence, first refused to file an FIR when her parents went to the police station, and then, tried to bribe the girls parents with two thousand rupees so as to ‘hush them up’. Subsequently,a young woman who tried to protest against the behaviour of the police at the Dayanand Hospital were the girl was initially taken for treatment was slapped by a policeman, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, in full public view. His actions have been recorded on video. It is believed that the policemen who tried to bribe the victim’s parents and the policeman who slapped the young woman have been suspended.

But can the suspension of a few individuals address what is obviously a deep rooted culture of misogyny and class prejudice (what else is it but class prejudice – would a policeman in a thana, say in an affluent South Delhi colony be able to offer two thousand rupees as ‘hush money’ to parents of an assaulted child with the same ease with which they could in Gandhi Nagar in East Delhi) within the Delhi Police? Is more severe and strict action that goes right to the top and to the source, not necessary in order to send a signal that this kind of behaviour within the police force cannot be tolerated? Must Delhi’s police commissioner not be compelled to resign, for his abysmal failure in terms of dealing with sexism and for failing to address the contempt for citizens who are not affluent that is now clearly endemic to the Delhi Police’s work culture?

Continue reading Another rape, still more incompetence: Time to teach Delhi Police a Lesson?

Spin Doctors, Propagandists and the Modi Make-over

Elsewhere on Kafila, we have published a 7000 word long response by Madhu Kishwar to Zahir Janmohamad’s open letter to her which appeared on 15 January, followed by Zahir Janmohamad’s response. Perhaps a few things need to be stated here clearly with respect to her ‘response’. It seems to me to violate every tenet of reasoned debate and argument and is replete with name calling and stereo-typing of not just the secularist ‘other’ [who is her real other, not the Muslim] but even of the adversary she is arguing with. So if Zahir is a  Muslim, he has to be X, Y, Z and has to be believing in A, B, C. Everything starts and ends in bad faith. But then that is what distinguishes Madhu Kishwar from others. She is in her element especially in relation to those whom she disagrees with. With her there can be no disagreement – you have to be sneered and jeered at, irrespective of whether you are a Medha Patkar or an Aruna Roy. I suppose these are matters of personal style and I shall not dwell on them further.

Let me rather, turn to some of the more substantive issues raised in Madhu’s response. Zahir has answered most of them but it seems to me that a couple of vital questions still remain. Even here, though, a caveat is necessary. I have great admiration for Madhu Kishwar’s battle in defense of the rikshaw pullers in Delhi and have often said so openly to her as well as others. However, I do know that it is possible to talk to her when only we agree, which is very rare. On matters that we disagree about, I have decided that I do not want to enter into any kind of an argument with her. In any case, large parts of her ‘response’ are like Modi’s PR handouts, served to us without any sense of critical examination. Therefore, what follows below is not my reply to her but my reactions to a set of allegations she has raised about whosoever is opposed to Narendra Modi – all lumped together in a breathtaking move of reductio ad absurdum, first as secularists , who are reduced to Leftists/ NGO activists and finally to Congress-supporters (because, she says in her Modinama1, the Congress has been equally responsible for all the riots till date). I therefore, lay my cards on the table at the outset: I am an inveterate Modi-hater (and a Congress-hater as well, if that makes sense to anyone in her dichotomized universe) and Kafila is a forum with a certain, if very broad, politics that, at the minimum rules out being pro-Modi. Continue reading Spin Doctors, Propagandists and the Modi Make-over

बंगलादेशी जनउभार और भारत की मुर्दाशान्ति: किशोर झा

Kishore Jha is a development professional and is working in the field of children’s rights for the last two decades. This piece was originally published on the NSI blog.

सन २०११ में भ्रष्टाचार के खिलाफ अन्ना आन्दोलन में उमड़े हजारों लोगों की तस्वीरें आज भी ज़ेहन में ताज़ा है। उन तस्वीरों को टी वी और अख़बारों में इतनी बार देखा था कि चाहें तो भी नहीं भुला सकते। लोग अपने-अपने घरों से निकल कर अन्ना के समर्थन में इक्कठे हो रहे थे और गली मोहल्लों में लोग भ्रष्टाचार के खिलाफ नारे लगा रहे थे। इंडिया गेट से अख़बारों और न्यूज़ चैनलों तक पहुँचते पहुँचते सैकडों समर्थकों की ये तादात हजारों और हजारों की संख्या लाखों में पहुँच जाती थी। तमाम समाचार पत्र इसे दूसरे स्वतंत्रता आन्दोलन की संज्ञा दे रहे थे और टी वी देखने वालों को लग रहा था कि हिंदुस्तान किसी बड़े बदलाव की दहलीज़ पर खड़ा है और जल्द ही सूरत बदलने वाली है। घरों में सोयी आवाम अचानक जाग गयी थी और राजनीति को अछूत समझने वाला मध्यम वर्ग राजनैतिक रणनीति का ताना बाना बुन रहा था। यहाँ मैं आंदोलन के राजनितिक चरित्र की बात नहीं कर रहा बल्कि ये याद करने की कोशिश कर रहा हूँ कि उस आंदोलन को उसके चरम तक पहुचाने वाला मीडिया अपने पड़ोस बांग्लादेश में उठ रहे जन सैलाब के जानिब इतना उदासीन क्यों है और कुछ ही महीने पहले बढ़ी आवाम की राजनैतिक चेतना आज कहाँ है? Continue reading बंगलादेशी जनउभार और भारत की मुर्दाशान्ति: किशोर झा

The urban-rural divide in Modi’s Gujarat

Christophe Jaffrelot gives us perspective on why Gujarat’s development numbers don’t look as impressive as Gujarat’s economic growth – it’s about Modi’s neglect of the rural:

Modi’s policy, over the last 10 years, has benefited the urban middle class more than anybody else. If Gujarat ranks only 11th out of 23 states in terms of the human development index, it’s because groups in rural Gujarat continue to lag behind. Indeed, Gujarat is a case of social polarisation with the new rich in the cities and most of the groups that are at the receiving end concentrated in the villages. There, the number of families below the poverty line has jumped from 23.39 lakh in 2000 to 30.49 lakh in July 2012, according to the rural development commissioner. Unsurprisingly, 9 lakh of the 11 lakh houses without electricity, according to the Gujarat 2011 census, are in rural areas. In terms of education, the excellent report of the NGO, Pratham, shows that rural Gujarat was lagging behind states like Haryana.

Dalits and Adivasis (11.3 and 16.5 per cent of the state population, respectively) are particularly affected. For instance, the percentage of tribal underweight children (0-5 years old) is much higher in Gujarat than the tribal average at the national level (64.5 per cent compared to 54.5 per cent). The under-five mortality rate of tribal children is also much higher. Similarly, the percentage of Dalit participation in the NREGA programme is three times less in Gujarat (7.83 per cent) than in India at large (22.67 per cent). In fact, development has meant socio-economic polarisation, because Gujarat is a typical case of growth without development for all. The Gujarat chapter of the India Human Development Report of 2011 concluded that “the high growth rate achieved by the state over the years has not percolated to the marginalised sections of society, particularly STs and SCs, to help improve their human development outcomes”. [Full article here]

More on Gujarat from Kafila archives: Continue reading The urban-rural divide in Modi’s Gujarat

A conversation that didn’t take place in Juhapura: Madhu Purnima Kishwar and Zahir Janmohamed

On 15 January, Kafila published an open letter to MADHU PURNIMA KISHWAR by ZAHIR JANMOHAMED. Three months later, Kishwar has sent us a response. Given below her response are comments by Zahir Janmohamed.

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Dear Zahirbhai,

My apologies for the delay in responding to your “Open Letter” addressed to me through Kafila on January 11 2013.

Unlike most of those upset at my articles on Gujarat, you have been remarkably measured in your tone and tenor and also respectful in questioning my observations. However, the content of your letter annoyed me no end. I kept postponing my response in the hope that my annoyance at the absurdity of your chargesheet would subside over time. I honestly did not want to give you an angry or discourteous response so that the dialogic mode you established remained undisturbed.

However, as I began processing the enormous load of material I had gathered from Gujarat, my annoyance kept increasing at your jaundiced viewpoint. Therefore, I thought of letting the series of articles I am writing answer some of your questions. I had made it a point to ask all the questions you raised from Gujaratis I interviewed. At the end of my first series on Gujarat I would have written to ask you if you got your answers. Continue reading A conversation that didn’t take place in Juhapura: Madhu Purnima Kishwar and Zahir Janmohamed

We are all Hari Sadu: Veena Venugopal

VEENA VENUGOPAL writes: Saw the ad about the horrible boss? The one in which the employee comes in with a new idea and in return he gets a load of sarcasm? And even when the boss likes the idea, he reveals it with an air of impudent superiority. Seen that one? What was it called? Hari Sadu?

Well, no. This ad is for a new brand of cookies; Gold Star, it is called. A male “attendant”/“peon”/“employee” comes in to a plush white room and serves a plate of cookies to Amitabh Bachchan. On biting into one, he realizes these are not his regular cookies. “Arre suno,” he calls because come on, he isn’t expected to know the name of all the people who serve him cookies at home. The employee admits they are new. “Maine socha ki…” (I thought…) he says at which Bachchan rolls his eyes and says, “aaj kal aap sochne bhi lag gaye?” (you have even started thinking now?). But then he realizes he likes the new ones and instructs the man, “ayenda yeh sochna band karo,” (please stop thinking in the future). Continue reading We are all Hari Sadu: Veena Venugopal

Because Presidency is an Idea – All You Need to Know About What Happened at Presidency University: Waled Aadnan

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Guest post by WALED AADNAN: On 10th April, 2013, an unprecedented incident happened at Presidency University (erstwhile Presidency College), Kolkata. Now, unprecedented is a strong term when it relates to Presidency College, because it has, over its 196- year- long history,  seen much. It has been broken in by rioting mobs in 1926; in the 1960s and 70s, it was the so-called headquarters of the Naxal movement in Bengal; it has nurtured Indian Nobel Prize and Oscar winners and consistently over its history. It has been one of India’s elite colleges and a hotbed of left-wing politics.

Continue reading Because Presidency is an Idea – All You Need to Know About What Happened at Presidency University: Waled Aadnan

Mining in Goa and Odisha and the CPI, Then and Now: Hartman de Souza

Guest post by HARTMAN DE SOUZA. The article was written a few days before April 12, the CPI’s day of solidarity with Odisha mine workers.

When the Goa State Committee of the erstwhile Communist Party of India (CPI) and its national secretary, our very own Comrade Christopher Fonseca, tells you that April 12th will be observed all over India as a day of solidarity with the Adivasi people of Odisha struggling for seven years to save more than 4000 acres of their ancestral lands from falling to mining conglomerates as rapacious as their Goan counterparts, ageing leftists in the village bar are not too sure whether they should laugh or just weep.

Perhaps one needs to paint the larger picture to highlight the irony that lurks in the shadows.

There was a time it needs to be said, when the CPI ran a long, hard and lonely battle in Goa, led by Comrade George Vaz who it is hard to believe was once Comrade Fonseca’s mentor. He was a short, somewhat portly, soft-spoken, widely-travelled man fluent in at least four languages. Not many Goans would know that Comrade Vaz ran a free kitchen in his home at Assenora open to anyone in need of a simple, nourishing meal, or that some of us who now want to weep in our glasses have eaten there several times…

Continue reading Mining in Goa and Odisha and the CPI, Then and Now: Hartman de Souza

Sign this petition to abolish death penalty in India

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL lists some reasons why death penalty should be abolished in India:

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Inconsistency: Three people, Harban, Kashmira and Jeeta were sentenced to death for a crime in which they played similar roles. But they met different fates. Kashmira Singh’s petition to the Supreme Court was accepted and his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Harbans Singh was recommended by the court for clemency from the President. Jeeta Singh’s petition was dismissed and he was hanged.

Flaws: In August 2012, 14 retired judges wrote to the President of India, pointing out that the Supreme Court had wrongly awarded the death sentence to 13 people. They called the execution of two wrongly sentenced prisoners in 1996 and 1997, “the gravest known miscarriage of justice in the history of crime and punishment in independent India”.

Bias: “I thought I should get all these (capital punishment) cases examined from a normal citizen’s point of view in terms of the crime, intensity of the crime and the social and financial status of the individuals who were convicted and awarded capital punishment. This study revealed to my surprise that almost all the cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.” APJ Abdul Kalam.

To sign their petition to the Prime Minister of India, go here.

On the Supreme Court of India’s rejection of the mercy plea of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar: PUDR

Press statement put out by the PEOPLE’S UNION FOR DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS on 12 April 2013.

PUDR strongly denounces the Supreme Court’s dismissal this morning of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar’s plea for commutation of the death sentence awarded to him to life. The issues at stake in this dismissal are multiple, that of clemency, death penalty, miscarriage of justice and precedence.

Bhullar was sentenced to death in 2003 for carrying out a bomb blast outside the Delhi Youth Congress office which killed nine people in 1993. He has been deemed mentally unstable. The High Court’s decision of upholding the death sentence was not a unanimous decision. After he was given the death sentence by the Supreme Court, he appealed to the then President of India for clemency in 2003. The President, after a lapse of over eight years, dismissed his mercy plea in 2011. Bhullar had sought commutation of his death penalty to life sentence by the Supreme Court on the ground that there was inordinate delay by the President over his plea for clemency. Continue reading On the Supreme Court of India’s rejection of the mercy plea of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar: PUDR

Lethal Lottery: A study on death penalty in India, 1950-2006

Do you know why Aadhaar is NOT compulsory: Ram Krishnaswamy

This is a guest post by Ram Krishnaswamy For the last three years activists opposing Aadhaar/UID have argued that it can lead to communal targeting, can aid illegal migrants, can invade privacy, is unconstitutional, does not have parliamentary approval, is illegal, etc. Yet all such objections and more have been successfully stonewalled by UIDAI and UPA leaders.

Further, Aadhaar is not compulsory and so such allegations are considered invalid. The middle and upper class Indians have remained silent about the UID debate, as it does not affect them in the least. The long lines of persons stretching before UID enrollment centers must be proof, then, of the popularity of this concept.

Nandan Nilekani and UIDAI Director General R.S Sharma have repeatedly told the nation that UID, now called Aadhaar, is not mandatory. Yet, over a period of time, they say, it could become ubiquitous, if service providers insist upon it compulsorily, in order to receive their services. To quote UIDAI Chairman, Nandan Nilekani, “Yes, it is voluntary. But the service providers might make it mandatory. In the long run I wouldn’t call it compulsory. I’d rather say it will be come ubiquitous.”

Continue reading Do you know why Aadhaar is NOT compulsory: Ram Krishnaswamy

DU’S 4-year degree course: Reforms at reckless speed

(This piece has been  published by the Times of India in its Delhi City section on 14 April, 2013. We are reproducing it here, given the importance of the issue involved. It is  somewhat disappointing that it is being treated as a local , internal issue by the media. What we read there are uninformed reports and stories which do not give us the real picture of the academic scene of  DU. 

Please read and react. We are looking for solidarities of all kinds, Apoorvanand)

The unnecessary and yet frantic haste with which Delhi University is introducing a new Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) brings to mind the advice that autorickshaws often offer on their bumpers: Jaldi mat kar, der ho jayegi (Don’t hurry, or you will be late!). Given the longstanding need for reforms in Indian higher education, the FYUP could be worth examining as a possible option. It could also pilot test the XIIth Five Year Plan strategy for “re-crafting undergraduate education” through FYUPs. But the reckless speed of implementation at DU threatens to wreck all positive potential and derail the national reforms process. At stake here is the future of every college-aspiring Indian, not just the quarter million who will apply to DU this June. Continue reading DU’S 4-year degree course: Reforms at reckless speed

DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE