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

भदरसा के जलने में प्रशासन की अहम भूमिका: रिहाई मंच

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This release in Hindi about recent communal violence in the Bhadarsa area of Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh comes to us from the RIHAI MANCH. Please help us translate this into English by translating just one paragraph in the comments

Jannatunisa

फैजाबाद, 9 नवम्बर 2012। रिहाई मंच के जांचदल ने दशहरा के दौरान हुयी साम्प्रदायिक हिंसा से प्रभावित भदरसा गांव का दौरा किया। जांच दल ने पाया कि भदरसा में हुयी हिंसा पूरी तरह सुनियोजित थी जिसे साम्प्रदायिक तत्वों और प्रशासन की मिलीभगत से अंजाम दिया गया जिसमें मीडिया की भूमिका भी संदिग्ध थी। जांच दल ने यह भी पाया कि प्रशासन की तरफ से आगजनी से पीडित परिवारों से घटना के साक्ष्य जबरन मिटवाए जा रहे हैं जबकि पीडि़तों को न तो उचित मुआवजा मिला है और ना ही एफआईआर दर्ज किये गये हैं। जांच दल ने प्रेस काउंसिल द्वारा गठित शीतला सिंह जांच आयोग से भी भदरसा जाने की मांग की है। Continue reading भदरसा के जलने में प्रशासन की अहम भूमिका: रिहाई मंच →

Frontiers, Identities, Movements, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

“We may weep but we will stay”: Women resist evictions in Palestine: Kalyani Menon Sen

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Guest post by KALYANI MENON SEN

Umm Nabil’s settler-occupied house is painted with Israeli symbols. (Photo: Aruna Rao)

Umm Nabil al Kurd is 82 years old. She is tiny and frail – her hands tremble as she takes the mike. But her voice is steady as she describes how she lost her home.

“We came to Jerusalem from Haifa as refugees in 1948” she says. “The Jordanians allotted us our house. We have lived there for 60 years – my children were born there. It was small and broken when we moved in – we extended it and improved it as our family grew. We planted a garden. When my son got married and the grandchildren came, we built a separate unit for him at the back of the main house. We built with our own money, with our own hands. Then, two years ago, the Israelis came with the police and told us to leave. They said the house was theirs. They pushed me to the ground, called me filthy names, turned their dogs on me. They threw out our furniture and moved into the house. We went to court but the judge said we were occupying the house illegally – he told us to pay 100,000 shekels as rent for the years that we had lived in the house. We had to pay – my husband would have been imprisoned if we did not. We are still fighting the case – the next hearing is in July but I don’t know if we will ever get the house back.” Continue reading “We may weep but we will stay”: Women resist evictions in Palestine: Kalyani Menon Sen →

Politics, Violence/Conflict

Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance II – Living the Occupation

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Planning to visit Palestine? Good news, Indian citizens don’t need a visa to enter Palestine. One small thing though. Palestine is occupied, and you cannot enter Palestine except through Israeli border control. The occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) have no control over their external borders.

Entry to Ayda refugee camp in the West Bank, established in 1950. The key is the symbol of the Right of Return of Palestinians. (Photo AN/NM) 

Whether you fly in through Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, or enter by road from Jordan or Egypt – it’s an Israeli visa that is required – there is no such thing as a visa to Palestine. Indeed, from the point of view of the occupying state, there is no Palestine, only Palestinian Territories – that is, West Bank and Gaza, the two green bits in the fourth map reproduced in the previous post. (There are also no Palestinians, according to Israeli state classifications – there are Israelis and there are bureaucratically differentiated Arabs, as we’ll see below). Continue reading Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance II – Living the Occupation →

Capitalism, Everyday Life, Movements

Maruti Suzuki Workers Union Release – Dharna and Strike on 7th and 8th November

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Onwards to the Dharna and Hunger Strike of 7th and 8th November !!

The Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU: Reg. no. 1923) has decided to hold a protest dharna in the form of a two-day hunger strike on 7th and 8th November 2012. Our family members, relatives and well-wishers and organizations have staged regular protests across Haryana and given memorandum to all the ministers in the state but to no avail. We were not allowed to unite and express our side of the story and our indignation atbeing falsely implicated in the unfortunate incident of 18th July 2012.

Continue reading Maruti Suzuki Workers Union Release – Dharna and Strike on 7th and 8th November →

Debates, Government

Gujarat vs. Himachal Pradesh: Rahul Verma

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Guest post by RAHUL VERMA

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal at an election rally in Mandi. PTI photo

Even though Hiamchal Pradesh voted on November 4, Gujarat has been hogging all the limelight. The election in Gujarat is only in the third week of December. Gujarat captures our political imagination as a ‘role model state’ whereas Hiamchal Pradesh is just in our tourism agenda as a top holiday destination. It is hard for anyone to notice Himachal as a political entity among the big brothers like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. The irony is that some smaller states like Manipur and Nagaland still manage to get  some attention because of violent manifestations of political choices in these states. Himachal Pradesh is absent from our discourses as the state is just ‘small’ and ‘beautiful’. However, the great turn around in Himachal over last two decades demands that India at least recognizes the “Himachal Pradesh model of development”. Continue reading Gujarat vs. Himachal Pradesh: Rahul Verma →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Countryside, Everyday Life, Identities, Movements

Petition – End the Scourge of Manual Scavenging

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This statement is based on a Seminar attended by representatives of Safai Karamchari Andolan, Republic Trade Union of India, Centre of Indian Trade Unions, Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front; Advocates, Doctors and Health Activists; Faculty and Students of MIDS, IIT-M, New College, ACJ, MSE, Madras University among others. The discussion was one among many incidents happening across the country to support the struggle for abolishing manual scavenging and rehabilitation of manual scavengers.

Others who would wish to endorse this statement may please use the link attached along with this post (from change.org) to sign it.  http://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/end-the-scourge-of-manual-scavenging-now.

More than a million people (mostly Dalit women and children) in India are still being ordained by the caste-ridden social order to clean the refuse of society with their bare hands. They are systemically forced to sell their labour-power, at a minimal price, to perform this inhuman task – what is termed as “Manual Scavenging”. People from particular Dalit communities, cutting across region and religion, are vulnerable to early death due to fatal infections, disease and exposure to toxic gases that manual scavenging entails. Further, age old casteism, continues to stigmatize and humiliate manual scavengers suppressing them to the status of “lesser humans”. Continue reading Petition – End the Scourge of Manual Scavenging →

Bad ideas, Politics

Friends of Palestine Respond to InCACBI Call to Boycott the Cameri in Delhi

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On Sunday evening, November 4th, about 60 friends of Palestine — theatre persons, writers, artists, film makers, academics, students and activists — gathered outside Delhi’s Siri Fort auditorium, the venue for the Israeli state-sponsored performance by The Cameri Theatre. Their form of protest was an unusual one.  All of them wore T shirts which said, in bold black letters on white, No to Israeli Apartheid. There were no slogans or placards. Instead, they stood around the entrance, distributing leaflets and talking to theatre goers about the boycott. A few theatre goers actually responded and did not go in. A couple even joined the protest. One woman, who took a T shirt to wear inside, found a different form of discrimination being practiced in the auditorium; the Israeli theatre goers were let in, but the Indians had to wait. She read the leaflet in her hand, came out to join the protestors. Read more

Bad ideas, Government, Politics

लोकतंत्र के ईश से दूर होते नीतीश : मनीष शांडिल्य

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नीतीश कुमार और मीडिया दोनों एक-दूसरे को बहुत प्रिय हैं. (यहां मीडिया से तात्पर्य मुख्यतः बिहार के मुख्यधारा के बड़े अखबारों से है.) नीतीश कुमार बतौर मुख्यमंत्री मुख्यधारा की मडिया पर बिहार का खजाना लुटाते हैं और बदले में मीडिया अपना युगधर्म भूलकर उनकी झूठी-सच्ची तारीफ में लगा रहता है, उनके पक्ष में तर्क-कुतर्क गढ़ता है, अखबार संदर्भ-बेसंदर्भ उनकी बड़ी-बड़ी तसवीरें छापते हैं. वैसे नीतीश कुमार और मीडिया के बीच के मधुर रिश्ते की और भी दूसरी बड़ी वजहें भी हैं, लेकिन उनकी चर्चा फिर कभी. फिलहाल इस रिश्ते का जिक्र इस कारण क्योंकि पिछले दिनों नीतीश अखबारों के पहले पन्नों पर दिखाई तो दे रहे थे, मगर कुछ दूसरे अंदाज में उनकी तस्वीरें छप रही थीं.

मामला कुछ यूं था. बिहार को विशेष राज्य दिलवाने की मांग (या कहें जिद) के लिए जन-समर्थन जुटाने जब इस बार नीतीश कुमार बिहार भर की ’अधिकार-यात्रा’ पर निकले तो जनता-जर्नादन को अपने अधिकारों की भी याद आ गई. (लिखत-पढ़त में यह उनकी सरकारी यात्रा नहीं थी!) मिथिलांचल इलाके से इस यात्रा के दौरान आम लोगों, खासकर नियोजित शिक्षकों ने अपने मांगों के समर्थन में नीतीश कुमार का ध्यान खींचना शुरू किया. गौरतलब है कि इस मंहगाई में नौकरी करते हुए भी मात्र छह-सात हजार मासिक पाने वाले ‘सरकारी’ शिक्षकांे को बिहार में कई महीनों से वेतन तक नहीं मिल रहा था. अब जनता का तो अपना तरीका होता है (कहीं-कहीं बहकावे में भी आ जाती है, कहीं-कहीं जनता की भीड़ में शरारती तत्व भी घुस जाते हैं), वह कहीं काला झंडा लहराने लगी तो कहीं मंच की ओर चप्पल दिखाने-उछालने लगी. उपेक्षा और परेशानियों से उपजे लोगों के आक्रोश ने खगड़िया जिले में रौद्र रूप धारण कर लिया. और खगड़िया के बाद ही नीतीश कुमार अखबारों में उस अंदाज में दिखाई देने लगे, जिस बदले रूप का ऊपर जिक्र है.

Continue reading लोकतंत्र के ईश से दूर होते नीतीश : मनीष शांडिल्य →

Bad ideas, Debates, Identities, Violence/Conflict

Why is Naipaul Being Honoured?: Girish Karnad

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This is the text of GIRISH KARNAD‘s speech at the Mumbai Literature Festival, as compiled by Outlookindia.com from various sources.

On Friday afternoon at the Tata Literature Live! festival in Mumbai, playwright Girish Karnad surprised audiences with an unexpected and spirited critique of Nobel laureate Vidia Naipaul. Naipaul was awarded the Landmark and Literature Alive’s Lifetime Achievement Award on October 31. Karnad was originally supposed to talk about “his life in theatre” in his session, but instead launched into a scathing critique of Naipaul and the conferral of the award to him

This is what he said at the festival:

At the Mumbai Literature Festival this year, Landmark and Literature Alive have jointly given the  Lifetime’s Achievement Award to Sir Vidia Naipaul.

The award ceremony held on the 31st of October at the National Centre of the Performing Arts coyly failed to mention that Naipaul was not an Indian and has never claimed to be one. But at no point was the question raised. Continue reading Why is Naipaul Being Honoured?: Girish Karnad →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Metropolis

New Delhi: A heritage zone at 80!

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In 1988 Lutyen’s Delhi, was declared a heritage zone by prohibiting building activity within the 26 square kilometre area out of the 43 Sq. Km. area that falls within the civic control of New Delhi Municipal Committee (NDMC). A move has now been initiated to get the entire area declared a World Heritage site.

The very logic of an area being declared a Heritage Zone should preclude any interference with the layout and design of the entire zone. Non-interference also means that, future building and development activity, if at all permitted, has to conform to the original parameters of design, materials, fittings and fixtures used, building techniques, landscaping and the kinds of trees planted in the heritage zone.

Even before the 1988 freeze on construction, there was a master plan for Delhi and it clearly identified the Lutyen’s Bungalow Zone as an area where high rises were not to be permitted.

The actual violations began when this rule was selectively relaxed beginning with permission given in the mid 70s to construct the high rise Sagar Apartments on Tilak Marg. High rises like Asha Deep and Dakshineshwar on Hailey Road followed shortly thereafter. Continue reading New Delhi: A heritage zone at 80! →

Capitalism, Countryside

Emami’s Bitter Harvest

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In August this year, I moved to Ethiopia to cover the growth of Indian investment in Africa. As many of our readers may know, a flurry of reports by groups like Human Rights Watch and the Oakland Institute have implicated Indian companies in what they call “land grab” in Africa. While it is too early for me to pronounce any sort of verdict on the modalities and support for large-scale land investments in Ethiopia and elsewhere in the continent; one of my early reports suggests that things havent quite worked out as some Indian companies expected. 

Indian companies which invested in controversial deals involving hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Ethiopia have found themselves out of their depth in a fast-growing African economy that is still in the process of building critical transport and irrigation networks.

Documents related to one such transaction reveal how Emami Biotech, a subsidiary of the Rs.2,200-crore Emami Group, pulled out of a Rs. 400-crore, 40,000-hectare, bio-fuel plantation only a year after the project was announced.

Indian companies are the second largest investors in the Ethiopian economy with approved investments worth nearly $5 billion.

While a majority of the businesses are small manufacturing and trading enterprises run by business families long settled in East Africa, the big money has come with the recent entry of large Indian investors.

A number of Indian companies have signed agreements to lease more than 4,40,000 hectares of land across Ethiopia, 1,00,000 hectares of which has been granted to a single Bangalore-based company, Karuturi Global Ltd. International. Rights organisations and NGOs have characterised the deals as instances of land grab and have accused the government of forcibly resettling pastoral communities.

Read the rest here:

Bad ideas, Debates, Metropolis

दिल्ली बनाम बम्बई

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भारत के दो महानगरों राष्ट्रिय राजधानी दिल्ली और बम्बई को यूनेस्को द्वारा विश्व धरोहर की सूची में नामांकित करने की तैयारियां चल रही हैं, कुछ मित्रों ने दिल्ली या बम्बई की बहस शुरू कर दी है जो वास्तव में पूर्णत: अनर्गल बात है.

में दिल्ली बनाम बम्बई के पचड़े में पड़ने के बजाये ये सवाल पूछना चाहता हूँ के ऐसा क्यों है के 65,436,552 की कुल आबादी और 6,74,800 वर्ग किलोमीटर के कुल क्षेत्रफल वाले फ्रांस में 35 स्थान, नगर, इमारतें प्राकृतिक स्थल आदि ऐसे हैं जो विश्व धरोहर की सूची में शामिल किये गए हैं मगर इस सूची में भारत का नाम केवल 29 बार ही आता है.

जो सवाल पूछना ज़रूरी है वो यह के सिर्फ दिल्ली या/और बम्बई ही क्यों? जोधपुर, जयपुर, अजमेर, इंदौर, उज्जैन, भोपाल, बनारस, इलाहबाद, लखनऊ, पटना, वैशाली, हैदराबाद, विदिशा कालिंजर, मदुरै, कांचीपुरम कलकत्ता और मद्रास क्यों नहीं ?, आप ने नोट किया होगा के बम्बई कलकत्ता और मद्रास के नए नाम में इस्तेमाल नहीं कर रहा हूँ और दिल्ली को भी देहली नहीं लिखा है. यह जान बूझ कर किया जा रहा है दरअसल विरासत कहीं अतीत में जड़ हो गयी कोई चीज़ नहीं है और इसलिए नाम बदलने की समस्त परियोजनाएं विरासत से छेड़ छाड करने की निन्दनीय प्रवर्ति का ही हिस्सा हैं. Continue reading दिल्ली बनाम बम्बई →

Ecology/Environment, Mirror Worlds

Gurgaon Glossaries: Prasad Shetty, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Khandolkar

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This guest post by PRASAD SHETTY, RUPALI GUPTE and PRASAD KHANDOLKAR is research work in progress for Sarai Reader 09 @ Devi Arts Foundation, Gurgaon

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When a new city settles, new systems are made, new vocabularies get invented, new relations are formed, new methods are devised, new networks are forged, new enterprises are produced, and new life is led to settle the ruffles. This work is a compilation of such systems, vocabularies, relations, methods, enterprises and networks that get formed to shape and settle the city.

CLU:

‘Change of Land Use’ is a town planning provision that is generally a part of town planning acts of various states across India. This provision allows land use changes in the statutory plan. This provision is made to allow governments to respond to unforeseen requirements of the future, where some lands need to be used differently from the planned use. Continue reading Gurgaon Glossaries: Prasad Shetty, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Khandolkar →

Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life

Chai, Autos and Sher Shah Suri: Shoaib Danyal

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Guest post SHOAIB DANIYAL

Nothing good comes of having your status as capital snatched from you by Delhi. As a Calcuttan I know the pain. Of course, my city’s had it relatively easy when you consider the fate of Sasaram in Bihar. That’s where Afghan warlord (what a useful phrase: right from Bihar in the 16th century to the US invasion in the 21st) Sher Shah Suri had his capital, as ruler of Bengal and Bihar, before he overthrew Humayun and moved shop to the Purani Qila in Delhi. Unlike the Afghan warlords of today though, Sher Shah was a pretty impressive ruler. He introduced the rupiya. which was the predecessor of the modern rupee. More interestingly, he introduced a small denomination coin called the dam which probably gave rise to the English phrase “I don’t give a damn”. The administrative set-up introduced by him was so impressive that Akbar copied liberally from it and Sher Shah’s ideas therefore ruled India for centuries after the man’s death. Continue reading Chai, Autos and Sher Shah Suri: Shoaib Danyal →

Centre watch, Government, Violence/Conflict

Allah Baksh, a people’s obituary: JKCCS

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This release was put out yesterday by the

JAMMU & KASHMIR COALITION OF CIVIL SOCIETY

On 24 October 2012, the news of the death of former Deputy Inspector General [DIG] Allah Baksh broke out. Politicians, government officials, business groups, and certain elite sections of the Kashmir valley shamelessly competed with each other in offering condolences.

It is a shocking phenomenon which JKCCS condemns as Allah Baksh was notoriously known for his involvement in the 21 January 1990 Gaw Kadal massacre when he was the Deputy Superintendent of Police [DSP]. The Gaw Kadal massacre was one of the first massacres in the post-1990 armed conflict in which reportedly more than 50 civilians were killed. For this massacre an FIR was registered against the dead and surviving civilians [3/1990 Police Station Kralkhud] but no one was held accountable for the massacre itself.

Continue reading Allah Baksh, a people’s obituary: JKCCS →

Politics

Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance I – Nakba and Sumoud

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[In September 2012, Aditya Nigam and I had the incredible good fortune to visit Palestine. This post is the first of a series in which we reflect on our experience and what we learnt there. We stayed in Ramallah, visited and interacted with colleagues at Birzeit University and spoke at a conference organized by Muwatin, a research institute based in Ramallah. We met  a large number of inspiring people who pushed the frontiers of our minds, and we came away humbled and moved by the dignity of a people living through the brutal occupation of their lands by the  Zionist state of Israel, with limitless courage and sense of humour intact.

Deepest gratitude to Rema Hammami of Birzeit who drove us around Jerusalem, and whose inimitable commentary gave us a live historical sense of  her country.

Words are inadequate to thank our friends Magid Shihade and Sunaina Maira, whose passionate love of Palestine and determination to help us make the most of our brief stay there, expanded our horizons continually.]

On the 15th of May 1948, the state of Israel was born, dispossessing Palestinians who had lived on that land for centuries. Fleeing terror and genocide in Europe, and anti-semitism globally, Jews from all over the world poured into Palestine.

Why Palestine? Why was Palestine given to the Jews as their home? And whose property was Palestine, that it could be given away? Why were people who had never done any harm to the Jewish people made to pay the price for European anti-semitism? It was Germany and Italy and Poland that had in fact, run concentration camps; it was any number of other countries of Europe that could boast of centuries-old histories of violent anti-semitism. Why were not parts of these countries carved out to make a country for the people they had wronged?

Maps showing the gradual obliteration of Palestine by Israel

Continue reading Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance I – Nakba and Sumoud →

Centre watch, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Boycott Zionazi Apartheid at Delhi International Arts Festival!

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[Posted below is a statement by artistes, writers and the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The statement is self-explanatory. However, as we shall be explaining in a series of posts on Kafila soon, Zionism in Israel has perfected the most hated techniques of their own twentieth century tormentors, the Nazis, against the people of Palestine. Worse still, it has given these techniques a veneer of ‘normalcy’ – and every ‘cultural exchange’ with Israel only helps further normalize this most despicable form of colonial occupation.  ‘Settlements’, in this game of occupation, become the mode of annexing more and more of the Palestinian territory through settling of civilian Jewish populations in what still remains of Palestinian areas. – AN]

Call to boycott The Cameri Theatre at the Delhi International Arts Festival 2012

The organizers of the Delhi International Arts Festival (DIAF) — the Prasiddha Foundation, the Hindustan Times and the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) — have invited The Cameri Theatre from Israel to perform at Siri Fort on November 4th as part of the Festival’s celebration of “the spirit of Delhi”.

The Cameri Theatre serves as an official propaganda tool for the State of Israel — a state that occupies Palestinian lands and practises apartheid policies on the Palestinian people. The Cameri theatre is complicit in the Israeli Occupation of Palestine because it chooses to perform in the illegal settlement of Ariel. Ariel is one of the largest settlements in the occupied West Bank, located on expropriated agricultural Palestinian land. The construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land violates international law, and amounts to a war crime.

The apartheid wall with watch tower - photo taken during a visit in September
The apartheid wall with watch tower – (photo AN/NM) taken in September

Illegal Ariel contaminates Palestinian water and agricultural lands. Illegal Ariel is surrounded by walls and fences, and closely guarded by soldiers and armed security personnel. A theatrical performance in this illegal settlement is, by definition, a performance to an exclusively Israeli audience. Palestinians living even in the nearest village are physically excluded from attending. By performing in such circumstances, the Cameri profits from and legitimizes Israel’s illegal colonization policies, and becomes an accomplice to these crimes.

Continue reading Boycott Zionazi Apartheid at Delhi International Arts Festival! →

Countryside, Government

What Development Means: Dilip D’Souza

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This guest post by DILIP D’SOUZA is an excerpt from his book, The Curious Case of Binayak Sen

On a recent trip to the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, I visited a village called Bamhni. The Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS; People’s Health Collective, a rural hospital) of Ganiyari runs an outreach clinic there. Every Tuesday, one or two JSS doctors and a small team of health workers get into a Mahindra Bolero SUV in Ganiyari and drive an hour-and-a-half to reach Bamhni.

I spent much of the day with an even smaller JSS team that reaches out even beyond this outreach clinic. The area we were in is part of the Achanakmar Wildlife Sanctuary, which has existed since the mid-70s. As happens with several Indian wildlife reserves, this one has several villages located inside its boundaries. In 2009, Achanakmar was declared part of Project Tiger, the more stringent Indian effort to save that splendid animal. More stringent, that is, in the conditions it spells out for villages in designated sanctuaries. When Achanakmar joined Project Tiger, the residents of Bamhni and several other villages were told they would have to move out of the “core zone” of the sanctuary, so as to leave the tigers an area where they would be undisturbed. Continue reading What Development Means: Dilip D’Souza →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Government, Law, Media politics

Why is the media not asking hard questions on the deportation of Fasih Mehmood?: JTSA

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This statement comes from the JAMIA TEACHERS’ SOLIDARITY ASSOCIATION

In September, we brought out a report, Framed, Damned, Acquitted documenting 16 cases where trials of terror accused had resulted in acquittals for not only lack of evidence but obviously concocted evidence. Each of these cases was accompanied by a section on how media had publicly tried and ‘executed’ these unfortunate men when they were first arrested—to abandon them or bury their stories in the inside pages when they were later acquitted. The release of the report had generated a genuine interest in the media—and one may dare say, an introspection of the media’s own role as the handmaiden of the investigative agencies. Continue reading Why is the media not asking hard questions on the deportation of Fasih Mehmood?: JTSA →

Bad ideas, Identities, Politics

विशालतम लोकतंत्र का संकीर्णतम इतिहास: धीरेश सैनी

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(रामचंद्र गुहा की पुस्तक ‘इण्डिया आफ़्टर गांधी’ के हिंदी अनुवादों की धीरेश सैनी द्वारा की गई समीक्षा, समयांतर के अक्टूबर 2012 अंक में प्रकाशित)

रामचंद्र गुहा की बहुप्रचारित किताब `इंडिया आफ्टर गांधीः द हिस्ट्री ऑफ दी वर्ल्ड्स लार्जेस्ट डेमोक्रेसी` का हिंदी अनुवाद पेंगुइन बुक्स ने दो खंडों (`भारतः गांधी के बाद` और `भारतः नेहरू के बाद`) में प्रकाशित किया है। बकौल गुहा, उनका `संपूर्ण कैरियर `इंडिया आफ्टर गांधी` लिखने की एक वृहत (और तकलीफदेह) तैयारी रही है।` यह बात दीगर है कि उन्होंने इस तकलीफदेह तैयारी को बतौर `दुनिया के विशालतम लोकतंत्र का इतिहास` प्रस्तुत करते हुए `ऐतिहासिक किस्सागोई का पुराना तरीका अख्तियार` किया है। किताब के कवर पर इस बात का जिक्र है कि यह `एक `व्यापक शोध के बाद किए गए लेखन का नतीजा है जिसे रामचंद्र गुहा ने अपनी मखमली भाषा में रोचक तरीके से लिखा है।` सुशांत झा द्वारा किया गया अनुवाद भी किस्सागोई और भाषा की रोचकता को बरकरार रखता है। जाहिर है कि इतिहास की किताब का महत्व उसकी किस्सागोई की मखमली भाषा की रोचकता से ज्यादा उसमें कहे गए तथ्यों और उनके विश्लेषण और कहने से छोड़ दिए गए जरूरी तथ्यों पर ही निर्भर करता है। 1947 से छह दशकों के सफर को विभिन्न भागों और अध्यायों के जरिये तय करने वाली इस किताब का हर अध्याय उथलपुथल, हिंसा और दूसरे झंझावतों के बीच `एकीकृत भारत` के अस्तित्व को लेकर निरंतर आशंकाओं (प्रायः पश्चिमी जगत की) का उल्लेख करता है और उसका समापन प्रायः इस `खुशी` के साथ होता है कि देखो दुनिया वालो, यह फिर भी `साबुत` खड़ा है। Continue reading विशालतम लोकतंत्र का संकीर्णतम इतिहास: धीरेश सैनी →

Bad ideas, Law

Delhi University Restrained for Alleged Admission of Infringement: True Lies? Amlan Mohanty

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Cross posting an intervention  by Amlan Mohanty from SpicyIP since it provides us with a very insightful analysis of the recent injunction obtained in the DU photocopy case. It also refers to  an anonymous link to communication which indicates what the real intent behind the case is.

Delhi University Restrained for Alleged Admission of Infringement: True Lies?

This afternoon, in response to my post announcing a petition relating to the OUP-Delhi University copyright dispute, we received a comment informing us that an order had already been passed against Delhi University a few days ago.
There was also a link to an e-mail allegedly sent to various publishers informing them of this order. The e-mail appears to have been sent from the lawyers representing the publishers. Unfortunately, this was posted anonymously in our comments section so we are unable to verify its authenticity. However, if it is in fact genuine, it raises an entire gamut of interesting questions that the future of this case will hinge upon.

DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE