Empire/ Imperialism, Excavation, Frontiers, Identities, Violence/Conflict

22 Years after Kunan and Poshpora, Rethinking Kashmir: Abhijit Dutta

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Guest post by ABHIJIT DUTTA; all photographs by the author unless otherwise mentioned

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It looks like any other village in Kashmir.

You go past a wooden bridge, past open fields winter-barren and wet with rain. Past mountains with snow on their chin. Past wistful looking poplars. Past a brook with clear water. Past grumpy apple trees gnarled like a grinch.

Then the road narrows, and homes – of timber and brick – come into view. Some have fences, unpainted wood. Heaps of hay, dung cakes, piles of dried leaves left to smoke. Ditches and dykes choked with snowmelt. Leafless walnut trees and brunette willows. The chinars, wild redheads just months ago, now old and arthritic. There is a government school on the right, a madrassa on the left. A few houses of stone, fewer of concrete, tin roofs over all.

Before you walk any further, the village ends. The next village is Poshpora. Like Kunan before it, it looks like any other village in the valley. The two villages are so close that people no longer call them by their individual names. Everyone knows this two-in-one village as Kunan Poshpora. Continue reading 22 Years after Kunan and Poshpora, Rethinking Kashmir: Abhijit Dutta →

Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Identities, Law, Violence/Conflict

India Slept Through a Revolution in Bangladesh: Richa Jha

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Guest post by RICHA JHA

Dhaka, Bangladesh. 18th February 2013 -- A woman shouts on a microphone. -- A demonstration for the death penalty to be given to war criminals, is continuing at Shahbag crossroads, and has reached its fourteenth day,.
Dhaka, Bangladesh. 18th February 2013 — A woman shouts on a microphone. — A demonstration for the death penalty to be given to war criminals, is continuing at Shahbag crossroads, and has reached its fourteenth day,.

This morning, I changed the ‘sleep’ in the heading of this article to ‘slept’. I woke up to the news that Bangladesh’s nearly twenty days long mass uprising was now getting a structured exit. The most moving and visually spectacular part of the Shahbag movement was coming to an end. India, of course, slept through most of it. The past tense, suddenly, paints our selective insularity in even starker shades. Continue reading India Slept Through a Revolution in Bangladesh: Richa Jha →

Debates, Government, Identities, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Shahbagh: The Forest of Symbols: Naeem Mohaiemen

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This is a guest post by NAEEM MOHAIEMEN

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© Syed Latif Hossain

There is a particular way of lensing mass movements, when we are observing from within immediate tactics. In a fast moving situation, with opponents and allies squared off, the first thing to shrink is the space for internal critique. Professor Azfar Hussain uses the term “critical solidarity” for his approach to Shahbagh. A critique that seeks to help the movement, but also a critique some are not ready to hear yet.

For the last sixteen days, Bangladesh has been in an intense new political phase. The ground has shifted and been recast by the scale of the Shahbagh movement. The flash point was the sentencing of the “Butcher of Mirpur” (a war criminal who collaborated with the Pakistan army in 1971). But, by now, the demands have expanded to a call for a ban on the main Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, or even Islamist politics altogether. Older leftist thinkers like Badruddin Umar are daring to ask questions of the hallowed place of “state religion” in the constitution. Younger bloggers are urging all to make it clear that the movement is about war criminals, not religion. But of course, with war criminals conflated with the Jamaat-e-Islami, and that party eager to present themselves as standing for “Islam,” category errors will happen. Continue reading Shahbagh: The Forest of Symbols: Naeem Mohaiemen →

Bad ideas, Excavation, Frontiers, Identities, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Footprints on a Timeline: Gayatri Ugra

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Guest post by GAYATRI UGRA; photographs by JAYANT UGRA

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“I travel so that people will lose track of me. Then I write, so they can find me again.”

I read these lines by Pierre Foglia, and I know nothing else about him. I do know more about why I travel: to retrace lost tracks. And why I write: not for people to find me but for me to find my own self. The last journey I made was just that. A long walk back into my past, and from there to the present in Kashmir, a living, growing, tense reality that I had to visit.

Facebook never served a better cause than ours when we planned our trip last June. On the spur of a moment of nostalgia, I posted this message on my page: “A family holiday in Kashmir. Any takers? All we need now is a travel agent and a motivator.” I could not have anticipated the response: so many of us wanted to come, hoped to come. My brother Gopal took up the task of making travel plans, reservations, bookings for accommodation, and ultimately made it happen for the eight of us that finally went. Continue reading Footprints on a Timeline: Gayatri Ugra →

Centre watch, Debates, Everyday Life, Genders, Government, Law, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Sex, Violence/Conflict

People’s Watch Over Parliament: Bekhauf Azadi Campaign

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  • Protestors at the ‘Freedom Parade’ Rally of the Bekhauf Azadi Campaign, New Delhi, 26 January, 2013

Guest Post by Bekhauf Azadi (Freedom Without Fear) Campaign.

People’s Watch Over Parliament: February 21, 1st Day of the Budget Session, Jantar Mantar
Gather in large numbers – 12 PM onwards at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi.
Are Our Lawmakers Ready to Listen to the Voice of the Movement Against Sexual Violence?

Continue reading People’s Watch Over Parliament: Bekhauf Azadi Campaign →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Empire/ Imperialism

Why India Needs the Death Penalty

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poltu-hangman-gandhi-india

So, The Law has been taking its Own Course, without any help from the political bankruptcy of the Kangress party. The Law took its Own Course and hanged Ajmal Kasab before a Parliament session and co-incidentally Afzal Guru before another Parliament session. The Law’s Own Course is stranger than the river Kosi which changes direction at will (actually, even the Kosi river changes directions because of corruption in the unnecessary embankments the Bihar government builds). Continue reading Why India Needs the Death Penalty →

Capitalism, Ecology/Environment, Everyday Life, Identities, Politics

Dalit and Adivasi Women Warriors Question Caste and Gender Oppression: Sujatha Surepally

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Posted at Round Table India

SUJATA SUREPALLY shares her impressions from the first National Dalit and Adivasi Women’s Congress held on February 15-16, 2013, at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

We live in nature! We die in Nature! It’s our life, if you occupy our land where should we go and how do we live? Whose land is this?

dayamani

The hall is echoing with the furious voice of Dayamani Barla, veteran Adivasi activist from Jharkhand. She is trying to unite people against mining in Jharkhand, around 108 mining companies are waiting to destroy Adivasi life in the name of mining, first they come for coal, next they say power houses, it continues, we are pushed out and out further. How do we live without our land? Spectacular speech for an hour, pin drop silence all around, everyone is identifying with her pain and agony. At the end of it, what is she is trying to convey?

Humko Jeene Do! Let us live our own life! If this is called development, we care a damn about it!  Blanket statement. [Continue reading]

Bad ideas, Frontiers, Genders

Dear Sisters (and brothers?) at Harvard

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Letter from  Indian feminists VRINDA GROVER, MARY E JOHN, KAVITA PANJABI, SHILPA PHADKE, SHWETA VACHANI, URVASHI BUTALIA and others, to their siblings at Harvard

We’re a group of Indian feminists and we are delighted to learn that the Harvard community – without doubt one of the most learned in the world – has seen fit to set up a Policy Task Force entitled ‘Beyond Gender Equality’ and that you are preparing to offer recommendations to India (and other South Asian countries) in the wake of the New Delhi gang rape and murder. Not since the days of Katherine Mayo have American women – and American feminists – felt such a concern for their less privileged Third World sisters. Mayo’s concern, at that time, was to ensure that the Indian State (then the colonial State) did not leave Indian women in the lurch, at the mercy of their men, and that it retained power and the rule of the just. Yours, we see, is to work towards ensuring that steps are put in place that can help the Indian State in its implementation of the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee, a responsibility the Indian State must take up. This is clearly something that we, Indian feminists and activists who have been involved in the women’s movement here for several decades, are incapable of doing, and it was with a sense of overwhelming relief that we read of your intention to step into this breach. Continue reading Dear Sisters (and brothers?) at Harvard →

Government, Identities, Right watch

Prof VK Tripathi and the fight for Schools in Juhapura: Zahir Janmohamed

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Guest post by ZAHIR JANMOHAMED

A school in Juhapura. Photo credit: Atish Patel
A school in Juhapura. Photo credit: Atish Patel

On Tuesday, February 19, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation ratified its budget and elected to build the first municipal school in Juhapura, the largest ghetto of Muslims in Ahmedabad. Juhapura was incorporated into the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation five years ago and many residents wondered why the AMC took so long to build a school to serve Juhapura’s 350,000 residents. At the forefront of this struggle is IIT Delhi physics professor VK Tripathi. It was during a chance meeting with a sandwich shop owner in Washington DC that Professor Tripathi first learned about Juhapura. Continue reading Prof VK Tripathi and the fight for Schools in Juhapura: Zahir Janmohamed →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Empire/ Imperialism, Law

Punishment by Procedure: Saurav Datta

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Guest post by SAURAV DATTA

“An advocate, by the sacred duty which he owes to his client, knows in the discharge of that office but one person in the world- the client, and no other…to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to himself, is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties…..Nay, separating even the duties of a patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them if need be to the wind, he must go on reckless of the consequences…” – Lord Brougham, “Law and Other Things”, Cambridge University Press (1937)

“Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides continually run.” – Walt Whitman,“You Felons on Trial in Courts”

“Nothing rankles more in the human heart than a brooding sense of injustice.” Justice Brennan’s words keep on ringing in my ears when I see the manifestly violent injustice meted out to Mohammad Afzal- the Courts tore to smithereens his inalienable right to a fair trial. The Parliament attack case was the first litigation I had been part of – I was a student intern in the chambers of Ms. Kamini Jaiswal, who was briefing Mr. Ram Jethmalani. I got to see and understand the case from the closest of quarters, and that maybe that exacerbates my indignation at this egregious miscarriage of justice. Continue reading Punishment by Procedure: Saurav Datta →

Bad ideas

One Billion Rising for Soni Sori: 8th March 2013 and till she is free.

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We Rise Because We Refuse To Support State Violence On Women. 

We Rise Because Rape And Violence Against Women Under Any Circumstances is Unacceptable.

We Rise On This International Women’s Day To Demand Freedom for Soni Sori & Punishment For Her Perpetrators.

  Continue reading One Billion Rising for Soni Sori: 8th March 2013 and till she is free. →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Government, Law, Violence/Conflict

Capital Punishment – An Agenda for Abolition: Yug Mohit Chaudhry

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This is (a slightly modified) text of the second Shahid Azmi Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Indian Law Institute on 9 February 2013 by advocate YUG MOHIT CHAUDHRY. The lecture and its topic had been scheduled days in advance, but co-incidentally, Mohd. Afzal Guru was hanged in the morning of the day of the lecture. The Shahid Azmi Memorial Lecture has been instituted by his friends, comrades and students, who want to keep alive the memory of his inspiring work. Advocate was shot dead in his office on 11 February 2010, at the age of 32. At the time of his murder, Shahid was fighting several terrorism cases, including of those falsely accused in the Malegaon blasts and the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.You can read tributes to Shahid Azmi in Kafila archives by Mahtab Alam, Arvind Narrain and Saumya Una, and Susan Abraham.

In Furman v. Georgia (1972), where the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, Justice Marshall said that if citizens were fully informed about how people are sentenced to death, they would find capital punishment shocking, unjust and unacceptable. However, research on the death penalty and public awareness of the exact nature of the death penalty have been the most neglected areas in the abolition campaign in India. The last three challenges to the constitutionality of the death penalty in India were rejected by the Supreme Court, inter alia, on the grounds that there is no empirical data to support the abolitionists’ claims. Unfortunately, the situation has not changed at all, and even now there is hardly any research on this subject. Therefore, the highest priority in any abolition campaign is to produce empirical research on the death penalty. That, and doing our utmost to stop each proposed execution and, failing that, to make it as difficult as possible for the state to carry out an execution, adopting all legal, political and social means at our disposal.   Continue reading Capital Punishment – An Agenda for Abolition: Yug Mohit Chaudhry →

Bad ideas

Diabolic designs and demonic actions : Review by Anand Teltumbde

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Indian history is fraught with ruling-class intrigues, which tend to keep the lower classes in a perennial state of confusion. The very fact that this history comes to us in a mythologised form is itself the biggest intrigue, obscuring as it does information about how the vast, diverse masses of the Subcontinent lived through the millennia. Reading Indian history, thus, becomes an exercise in speculation. If it provides one kind of insight for one group, it is capable of being interpreted equally plausibly in the opposite way by another. What eventually reaches the people is a partisan viewpoint at best and bewilderment at worst – a condition under which the ruling classes thrive.

 In this context, two books by Subhash Gatade, a committed intellectual and leftist activist, are significant additions to the works of the fast-diminishing community of scholars who continue their work with unstinting commitment in these confusing times. Continue reading Diabolic designs and demonic actions : Review by Anand Teltumbde →

Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Identities, Violence/Conflict

I love the winter in your eyes: Uzma Falak

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Guest post by UZMA FALAK

Winter of my eyes
took flight
Did you see?
These are not the same eyes
colors of which you would patiently decipher
sitting under the sun
for hours
gray dreams refusing to dissolve
in waters of Lethe. Continue reading I love the winter in your eyes: Uzma Falak →

Bad ideas, Frontiers, Genders

What is wrong with this picture? Carole Vance

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Guest post by CAROLE VANCE

Two faculty members at Harvard, associated with gender studies, convene a Policy Task Force, designed to “to offer recommendations to India and other South Asian countries in the wake of the New Delhi gang rape and murder” and in this semester “to produce a working paper that advises on the implementation of the recommendations from the Verma Committee”.   This is not a student initiative, though a meeting with students is scheduled to invite their input, along with that of the larger Harvard community. Continue reading What is wrong with this picture? Carole Vance →

Bad ideas, Frontiers, Genders

Unintended consequences of feminist action: Prabha Kotiswaran

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Guest post by PRABHA KOTISWARAN

Taking off from the debate here on the Harvard Task Force, I’d like to flag some  disagreements among feminists on law reforms. There are many strains to this debate – I will only engage with a few.

No feminist, whether of Indian origin or not, whether primarily located in India or not, is insecure about feminists/lawyers around the world working on rape in India. Circuits of feminist scholarship and activism become so inter-disciplinary and transnational that maintaining and policing turf (if at all that were possible) is an utterly useless endeavour. Continue reading Unintended consequences of feminist action: Prabha Kotiswaran →

Law, Media politics, Technology

Arindam Chaudhuri promises to get Kafila page unblocked

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The webpage http://kafila.org/2011/06/22/arindam-chaudhuri-silchar has been blocked by Internet Service Providers in India. Some users will see a blank page (like above) and others will see a note that the page has been blocked on the orders of the Department of Telecommunications.

Until Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama.com informed me, I had no clue that  India’s unjust and arbitrary internet censorship regime had finally affected Kafila. Medianama published on Friday 15 February a list of 78 URLs that the Department of Telecommunications had ordered ISPs to block. 73 of them were webpages critical of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), whose Arindam Chaudhuri has a long history of complaining about the Internet. Continue reading Arindam Chaudhuri promises to get Kafila page unblocked →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Law, Violence/Conflict

On bloodlust: notes towards four imminent executions: Rijul Kochhar

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Guest post by RIJUL KOCHHAR

[This June 19, 1993 photo shows Veerapan aides Simon (front row, second from left) and Madaiah (fourth from left) among other landmine blast accused. Courtesy The Hindu/PTI.]
[This June 19, 1993 photo shows Veerapan aides Simon (front row, second from left) and Madaiah (fourth from left) among other landmine blast accused. Courtesy The Hindu/PTI.]

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

~A.E. Housman

ज़िन्दगी और मौत ऊपर वाले के हाथ हैं जहापनाह, उसे ना आप बदल सकते हैं न मैं, हम सब तोह रंग-मंच की कठपुतलियाँ हैं, िजनकी डोर उपरवाले की उँगलियों मे बंधी हैं: कब, कौन, कैसे उठेगा, कोई नहीं बता सकता.

~Anand (1971)

I write in an evening shrouded in anticipation, but it is an anticipation of death.

Continue reading On bloodlust: notes towards four imminent executions: Rijul Kochhar →

Bad ideas, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Talk Hindutva, Sell Narcotics?

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Curbing Freedom of Press: The Karnataka Way

ImageA 10-member group allegedly assaulted a staff member of Kannada daily Karavali Ale at Kulai here on Wednesday night.According to B.V. Seetaram, director and chairman of Chitra Publications, which publishes the paper, Harish Putran (36), office assistant, was attacked when he was waiting near Vishnumurthy temple to catch a bus back home.He was hit with iron rods and wickets and chased by the attackers, Mr. Seetaram said. Mr. Putran managed to save himself by hiding behind a shop.

Mr. Seetaram suspected the involvement of a rightwing group in the attack. He said Karavali Ale published a report on Wednesday alleging the rightwing group’s involvement in the sale of narcotics in the city. Copies of the newspaper were burnt and some vendors were threatened against selling the Wednesday’s edition, he said.Mr. Putran has been admitted to a private hospital. A complaint has been filed with the Surathkal police.

(Karavali Ale employee attacked : Staff Correspondent, The Hindu – Mangalore, February 7, 2013)

It has been a ‘happening’ week. Celebrations around one billion rising held in different parts of the world.Soni Sori acquitted in four cases. Dr Sunilam and two of his associates getting bail from Jabalpur high court after spending three months in Bhopal jail. More than two hundred intellectuals, activists writing to President of India about the manner in which Afzal Guru was hanged.  Interestingly in the melee of news certain troubling developments in south of Vindhyas have not got enough attention they deserve. And they concern the curbing of media by majoritarian elements with due connivance of the people in power. Continue reading Talk Hindutva, Sell Narcotics? →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Empire/ Imperialism, Government, Law, Violence/Conflict

PUCL statement on the President’s rejection of the mercy pleas of four Veerappan associates

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Press release put out on the evening of 16 February by the PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES

CHENNAI: The PUCL strongly condemns the rejection by the President of India of the commutation petitions of Simon, Meesakara Mathayan, Bilavendran and Gnanaprakasam. Equally condemnable is the action of the Prison Authorities of Belgaum Central Prison, Karnataka who in the morning of 13.2.2013 merely intimated orally to the convicts of the rejection of their mercy petitions without giving them the written orders of rejection. In sharp contrast, signed acknowledgements of receipt have been obtained from all 4 convicts! Continue reading PUCL statement on the President’s rejection of the mercy pleas of four Veerappan associates →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Politics

Who’s afraid of the Karachi Literature Festival?: Ayesha Siddiqa

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Guest post by AYESHA SIDDIQA

Photo via Dawn.com

Here we are seemingly in an age of intellectual freedom, burgeoning media industry and literature festivals. There are numerous festivals held all over South Asia celebrating books new and old, bringing people together for exchange of ideas. But these festivals seem to be wrapped in their own politics. In some cases, certain cliques that want to encourage a peculiar perspective dominate the show. I understood this through my interaction with the Karachi Literature Festival. Continue reading Who’s afraid of the Karachi Literature Festival?: Ayesha Siddiqa →

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