Debates, Government, Law, Politics, Right watch

Towards BJP’s Hindutva Lite Template

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BJP’s Delhi campaign was not divisive by sanyog or coincidence. That is its prayog or experiment. Which it will take to other elections.

BJP’s Delhi campaign was not divisive by sanyog

Kitney aadmi thhe—how many were there?

A meme based on this famous monologue from the highly successful film, Sholay (Embers), from the early seventies, started trending when “David” Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), defeated “Goliath” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi’s recent Assembly elections.

No doubt this election’s result has put paid to the efforts of Home Minister Amit Shah to retain his image as “Chanakya” of Indian politics, at least for now. The result is despite BJP’s desperate attempts to win Delhi, as part of which pulled chief ministers, former chief ministers, cabinet ministers and more than 240 Members of Parliament to campaign in the city. Blame it on the high stakes battle that allegations surfaced that they had distributed cash and liquor ahead of the polls.

The result is for everyone to see.

The most toxic electoral campaign, perhaps ever, in which leaders of the ruling dispensation even provoked violence through their hate speeches, did not work. The BJP’s seat tally rose by merely five and a bloody nose.

( Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/Towards-BJP-Hindutva-Lite-Template)

Debates, Everyday Life, Identities, religion, Right watch

Winning Delhi Elections – AAP, Gandhi and the Ideology Wars

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What has Gandhi got to do with the recently concluded elections in Delhi? On the face of it nothing. But at another level, the election process, its campaign and its results – all invite us to revisit Gandhi’s stupendous moral-political project of cementing the Hindu-Muslim division with his own blood and his heroic failure. He could not prevent the Partition and ultimately fell to the bullets of a fanatic Hindu nationalist of the kind who are in power today.

I remember Gandhi today because gung-ho secularists (the political community that I inhabit, if very uncomfortably) are once again at their favourite occupation of daring Arvind Kejriwal and AAP to ‘prove’ their ‘anti-communal stance’ and all that it can mean today – as though they alone have the talisman to fight communalism. I am reminded of Gandhi because his was by far the most audacious  attempt to fight the communal menace but he too had no readymade answers to it.

Secular warrriors have been basically daring Kejriwal and AAP to do and say things that he had been avoiding doing or saying all these days. Just two instances – of the quotes below from two dear friends – should suffice to indicate what I mean.  The first is from Apoorvanand, writing in the Business Standard,

‘Voters in Delhi were confident that the AAP victory in the assembly elections wouldn’t so much as serve as an irritant to the BJP, let alone rock its boat, as the saffron outfit was firmly and safely ensconced in power. An efficient delivery boy is all the electorate wanted. In the Delhi voters mindset, an ideology-agnostic party that does not impede the BJP’s nationalist drive is tolerable.’

Continue reading Winning Delhi Elections – AAP, Gandhi and the Ideology Wars →

Culture, Debates, Government, Identities, Politics, religion, Right watch

Why Pakistan’s Islamists Don’t Want India’s CAA Repealed

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Of all reasons to oppose CAA, NPR and NRC, most worrying is the Islamists across the borders feeling enthused.

Anti CAA Protest in India

Seattle City Council, one of the most powerful city councils in the United States, recently made history. It became the world’s first elected body to pass a resolution asking the Indian government to repeal the CAA, stop the National Register of Citizens and uphold the Indian Constitution. It also sought ratification of United Nations treaties on refugees. The said resolution is being seen to be “leading the moral consensus in the global outcry against the CAA”.

Seattle is definitely not an exception.

Many concerned voices have spoken against the highly controversial discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019, which excludes Muslims [and Jews] and enforces a selective citizenship criteria based on faith. This new law effectively reduces the status of millions of Muslims in India to illegal migrants. A similar resolution was tabled by members of the European Union Parliament last month. It stands postponed right now, but that will be a short reprieve, for the members have resolved to take it up again shortly.

For the first time in independent India’s history the Indian diaspora—which is normally projected as pro-Prime Minister Narendra Modi and which does participate in rallies in his support—has been protesting against the bill along with Indian students studying in the West. These protests have been going on for close to two months in different cities and towns in different cities in the West.

Couple this development with the resistance within the country spreading to new areas and broadening to include more sections of society, as people gradually wake up to the CAA’s grim portents. Definitely, there is growing discomfort against the Modi-Shah regime. Perhaps it is a sign of desperation that in order to legitimise this law the government has been peddling half-truths even in Parliament. Prime Minister Modi quoted selectively from the Nehru-Liaquat pact to buttress his case. He used the same Nehru-Bordoloi letter to defend the CAA, which his party had earlier used to slam the Congress. Gopinath Bordoloi was the first Chief Minister of Assam after Independence.

( Read the full text here : https://www.newsclick.in/why-pakistans-islamists-dont-want-indias-caa-repealed)

Culture, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Delhi Elections and the Difficult Terrain of Antifascist Struggle

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Three incidents of firing in four days – two in Jamia Millia Islamia and one in Shaheen Bagh – quickly followed open calls to violence (‘goli maro saalon ko‘) by Union minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur and the demonization of Shaheen Bagh protesters by BJP MP Pravesh Verma (‘the protesters will enter your homes and rape and kill your daughters’ if Modi and Shah aren’t there). In the case of the Shaheen Bagh shooter, Kapil Gujjar, the Delhi Police (which has till date not managed to find out the JNU attacker Komal Sharma’s affiliation) was quick to link him to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) – an allegation expressly denied by his father. All these episodes, so obviously set up, basically aimed at provoking the protesters into committing some violence that the lapdog television channels would then play up, in their usual hysterical style (some of them may even have appeared on air in police uniform!), to vitiate the atmosphere.

On the very first shooting, one such channel did indeed keep doing precisely that till long after the identity of the shooter (in the clip above) had been clearly established. The clips were circulating almost instantaneously and you can hear the gunman shouting Delhi Police zindabad, and there was little chance of mistaking him for an anti-CAA protester. The channel knew exactly what it was doing and at whose behest but kept on at it till 9 o’clock at night.

Continue reading Delhi Elections and the Difficult Terrain of Antifascist Struggle →

Centre watch, Culture, Debates, Government, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Gandhi and the Hindutva Right

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From Nehru to Patel and Ambedkar, the saffron party has appropriated freedom-fighters or tarnished legacies. Gandhi, however, poses a different problem.

Why BJP’s Subjugation of Gandhi

Death ends all enmity’ (Marnanti Vairani) goes a maxim in Hinduism.

The story also goes that when Ravana was on death bed, Ram had even asked Laxman to go to him and learn something which no other person except a great scholar like him could teach him, declaring that though he has been forced to punish him for his terrible crime, ‘you are no more my enemy’.

It is a different matter that Hindutva supremacists — who are keen ‘to transform Hinduism from a variety of religious practices into a consolidated ethnic identity’ — are believers in the exact opposite.

For them, once the enemy is dead, the enmity flares up without any limits. They have no qualms that their adversary is no more to defend himself/ herself.

It has been more than five and half years that they are in power at the Centre and we have been witness to complete vilification, demonisation and obfuscation of many of their adversaries, all great leaders of the anti-colonial struggle. Of course, few were found to be ‘lucky’ enough that were promptly co-opted/appropriated by them, of course, in a sanitised form.

( Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/BJP-Subjugation-Gandhi-Legacy-Roadblock-Shaheen-Bagh

Capitalism, Centre watch, Debates, Government, Politics, Refugee crisis

CAA-NPR-NRC’s Impact on Urban Poor : National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU)

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Guest Post by National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU)

The National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU) unequivocally condemns the unconstitutional and anti-constitutional CAA-NPR-NRC being unilaterally imposed by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. The NCU is a network of activists, researchers, urban practitioners, lawyers, informal sector workers, collectives and individuals who, for the past two years have been involved with issues of urban class and caste inequalities and is continually monitoring this acutely dangerous social condition in our cities. Therefore, are working for an alternative paradigm of urbanization. These inequalities are brought to light when basic rights such as the right to housing, participation in governance mechanisms, right to livelihood and most importantly, equal right to the city, are denied to the urban poor.

India has been going through tumultuous times. The massive inequities in Indian cities are best highlighted by a recent Oxfam report. Shockingly, just 63 billionaires have more money than the entire budget of the government of India. This disparity is mirrored in asset holdings in cities. The difference between the top 10 per cent and the bottom ten per cent is 50,000 times in Indian cities! This is further accentuated by the huge informality that exists in urban India-93 per cent.This exposes the extreme vulnerabilities faced by urban population. Continue reading CAA-NPR-NRC’s Impact on Urban Poor : National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU) →

Debates, Law, Politics, Refugee crisis, Right watch

संशोधित नागरिकता-कानून, जनसँख्या-रजिस्टर एवं नागरिकता-रजिस्टर – एक तथ्यात्मक ब्यौरा : सप्तरंग व नागरिक एकता एवं सद्भाव समिति

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[संशोधित नागरिकता-कानून, जनसँख्या-रजिस्टर  (एन पी आर ) एवं नागरिकता-रजिस्टर (एन आर सी ) पर  निन्मलिखित परचा रोहतक ज़िले के दो संगठनों  – सप्तरंग  व नागरिक एकता व  सद्भाव समिति ने शाया किया है. जनहित में इस सामग्री का किसी भी रूप में प्रयोग किया जा सकता है। ये सारी जानकारी सार्वजनिक तौर पर उपलब्ध सरकारी या भरोसेमंद प्रकाशनों से ली गई है न कि अपुष्ट स्रोतों से। ]

भाग 1            

आसाम समझौता, नागरिकता-कानून में संशोधन एवं आसाम का नागरिकता-रजिस्टर

  1. नागरिकता कानून में संशोधन एवं नागरिकता रजिस्टर का विरोध एक कारण से नहीं हो रहा। यह दो कारणों से हो रहा है – उत्तर-पूर्व में अलग  कारण से और शेष देश में अलग कारणों से । दोनों तरह की आलोचनाओं का समाधान ज़रूरी है।
  2. उत्तर-पूर्व के राज्यों में इस का विरोध इसलिए हो रहा है कि इस के चलते अवैध रूप से देश में 2014 तक दाखिल हुए लोगों को भी नागरिकता मिल जायेगी जब कि 1985 में भारत सरकार के साथ हुए आसाम समझौते के तहत केवल 1965 तक आसाम में आए हुए अवैध प्रवासियों को ही नागरिकता मिलनी थी। (मोदी सरकार द्वारा पिछले कार्यकाल में प्रस्तावित नागरिकता संशोधन कानून का उत्तर-पूर्व राज्यों में भयंकर विरोध हुआ था। इस सशक्त विरोध के चलते मोदी सरकार ने 2019 में पारित कानून के दायरे से उत्तर-पूर्व के कुछ इलाकों को बाहर रखा है पर इस से भी उत्तर-पूर्व के स्थानीय संगठन/लोग संतुष्ट नहीं हैं। वे इसे वायदा-खिलाफ़ी के रूप में देखते हैं।)
  3. आसाम (और तब के आसाम में लगभग पूरा उत्तर-पूर्व भारत आ जाता था) में अवैध प्रवासियों की समस्या बहुत पुरानी है। इस के नियंत्रण के लिए पहला कानून 1950 में ही बन गया था। इस का कारण यह है कि भारत-बंगलादेश सीमा हरियाणा-पंजाब सीमा जैसी ही है। कहीं-कहीं तो आगे का दरवाज़ा भारत में तो पिछला बंगलादेश में खुलता है। भारत के नक़्शे के अन्दर कुछ इलाके बंगलादेश के थे तो बंगलादेश के नक़्शे के अन्दर स्थित कुछ ज़मीन भारत की थी। (इन इलाकों का हाल में ही निपटारा हुआ है।) बोली, भाषा, पहनावा एक जैसा होने के चलते कलकत्ता में पहले-दिन-पहला-फ़िल्म शो देखने के लिए बंगलादेश से आना मुश्किल नहीं था। ऐसे अजीबो-गरीब तरीके से हुआ था देश का बंटवारा।

Continue reading संशोधित नागरिकता-कानून, जनसँख्या-रजिस्टर एवं नागरिकता-रजिस्टर – एक तथ्यात्मक ब्यौरा : सप्तरंग व नागरिक एकता एवं सद्भाव समिति →

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