Identities, Movements, Politics

Rahul Gandhi and the Dalit votebank in Uttar Pradesh

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This article by me has appeared (.pdf) in the Economic and Political Weekly.

On 14 April this year party general secretary Rahul Gandhi launched the Congress’ biggest campaign to revive itself since 1989. The date was carefully chosen, Ambedkar Jayanti, because he is trying to win over dalit votes in Uttar Pradesh (UP). In 1989 the Congress’ support base in UP was made up of a rainbow coalition of brahmins, Muslims and dalits. The Congress has to woo these communities again to regain power in UP.

The brahmin community took to the now ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in small numbers in the 2007 Vidhan Sabha election primarily because there was no strong brahmin leader after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Atal Behari Vajpayee became politically inactive. Brahmins see in Rahul Gandhi a potential “brahmin” leader. The UP Congress president, legislative leader and Youth Congress president in the state are all from the brahmin community.

Muslim support is no longer enchained to the Samajwadi Party (SP) because their bete noire, the BJP, is powerless these days in both the centre and the state. As a result the Muslim vote is being fought for, as a three-way contest between BSP, SP and Congress. BSP head and Chief Minister Mayawati’s stratagem is to therefore change her party’s core support base constructed out of the “brahmin-dalit” alliance into a Muslim-dalit alliance.

The dalits, wooed away en masse by the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati duo of the BSP for years, would be the hardest to win back for the Congress. In fact, a year ago the very idea would have sounded ludicrous. But today, Mayawati’s angry reaction to the Congress’ bid to woo dalits is indication that the Congress may be winning over dalits. How is this happening? Continue reading Rahul Gandhi and the Dalit votebank in Uttar Pradesh →

Law, Media politics, Mirror Worlds

A Media Simulated Ecstasy?

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Amidst the blood lust evident in the mass media in the run up to and especially the aftermath of the judgement on Kasab, comes a slight relief in the form of the following story in The Telegraph, Calcutta.  Sociologist Andre Beteille, not particularly known for his radical and loony views, said “It appears that people want vengeance — not justice,” underlining that  “the media’s role is crucial in whipping up passions. I’m not really surprised”.

A photograph and some extracts:

Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam outside the court after the death sentence was delivered on Thursday. (PTI)
Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam outside the court after the death sentence was delivered on Thursday. (PTI)

May 6: Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam was asked outside court this afternoon: “Sir, what’s your score?”
Nikam figured out the question in a split second, beamed like a gladiator and replied with a chilling echo of Ab Tak Chhappan: “Thirty-eight death penalties and over 600 life terms.”

Clap, clap, clap….

The crowd, not entirely made of journalists, could not resist the temptation to celebrate. Crackers were burst, drums beaten, cheers whooped, effigies hanged and mock funerals held in an outbreak of exultation. “Death to Kasab! Hang him! Hang him!” they cried; Nikam waved heroically and flashed more Vs — the prize fighter who’d delivered the knockout punch for India…

Frontiers, Government, Identities, Politics

An election in Nottingham

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This is a guest post by AMAN BHARTI on the elections in UK

I had nipped out during my lunch break to post my voting ballot. The route back took me past Nottingham’s speaker’s corner, where for the first time ever, I saw some speakers. They appeared to be two of the three main political party candidates.

Intrigued, I joined the small crowd for my first experience of local electioneering. A desi chap in his shalwaar-kameez (or is that only what women wear?), sleeveless jacket and one of those Ahmad Shah Masood caps (I know they are called something, but I forget what) was just about to ask a question. In broken, accented English, he talked about the Muslim community suffering due to anti-terror laws, and asked which party would bring in “transparency and accountability” in the exercise of anti-terror laws, and adhere to the European courts’ views on individual human rights?

The brown faces in the audience cheered loudly. The white faces were conspicuously (and a little worryingly) silent. Continue reading An election in Nottingham →

Frontiers, Politics, Violence/Conflict

The City Turns Red – Kathmandu on May Day

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When Maoist Newa state in charge Hitman Sakya asked the assembled crowd at Khula Manch to silently honor martyrs, the moment turned somber. The leaders stood with their heads down on the stage, and on the ground, all one could see were thousands and thousands of fists raised up. There was pin-drop silence.

A bit later, members of the Maoist cultural wing sang and danced. The lyrics were deeply political, hitting out at the NC, UML and India, projecting the Maoists as the only people’s party, and wooing the security forces by showing uniformed personnel shaking hands with Maoists ‘to build a new Nepal’. The crowd was enthralled. Continue reading The City Turns Red – Kathmandu on May Day →

Government, Left watch, Politics

Kathmandu Siege – They Are Here

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Kathmandu’s elites cannot seem to understand who these people are. But talk to the cab driver, waiter, vegetable seller, small shopkeeper, slum dweller or construction worker and you will get an idea of who may dominate the streets from Saturday.
There has been coercion in the process of mobilisation. But the Maoists have essentially tapped into the three core contradictions of Nepali society – ethnicity, class, and space (Kathmandu versus the rest). They have deployed their cadres; capitalised on the rage of those on the periphery; and channelised popular discontent against inflation, power cuts, corruption and insecurity, for which Madhav Nepal has been projected as solely responsible. Continue reading Kathmandu Siege – They Are Here →

Ecology/Environment, Everyday Life

The Oblique Strategies of Trickster City

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It’s midnight: An aspiring model cooks up a batch of Fem Bleaching Cream; an actor rehearses his dialogues to the sounds of manic laughter, “Oh tell them all it is I who is God,”; a fourteen year old feigns sleep as his father looks on, wondering what has prompted his son to abandon his studies and look for work; a woman throws her abusive husband to the floor and whips him with his belt.
In the morning, a young man will awaken at the crack of dawn and walk down to the slaughterhouse; an empty street shall bear witness to a middle aged woman’s defiant declaration, “I will work. I don’t care what you think! I don’t care what the world thinks.” The muezzin will call the faithful to prayer.  A bulldozer will plow through the heart of this twenty five year old settlement: clearing space for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, altering these lives forever.
In February 2006, the residents of Nangla Maanchi, a working class settlement of migrants in Delhi, were confronted by a signboard: “This land is the property of the government. It should be vacated.” By August that year, Nangla was bulldozed to make way for an “athlete’s village” to house this year’s Commonwealth Games.
Continue reading The Oblique Strategies of Trickster City →
Bad ideas, Debates, Law

The ban on SIMI and Indian democracy

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Dr Shahid Badar, national president of Students Islamic Movement of India, recently decided not to contest any more the ban on SIMI, his stated reason being:

“to put an end to this mindless, futile, unequal, unethical and unjust exercise in which the Government has shamelessly used the Judiciary to achieve its ends of casting a shadow of criminality on the entire muslim community.  I have therefore chosen not to contest the declaration of the central govt.”

This is the full text of the affidavit filed by him before the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal.

Continue reading The ban on SIMI and Indian democracy →

Frontiers, Identities, Media politics

Madhuri and Zeenat

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I recieved a mail today about the  deafening silence on the 24X7 newsbreakers regarding La affaire Madhuri and it got me thinking.

Is it not a bit strange that an OB van is not stationed permanently at the Vikaspuri residence of Ms Gupta? How is it that her milk man, her vegetable seller, the retired army major/ or a school principal or an old acquaintance who lives a few houses away have not been interviewed 200 times in the last two days?

How is it that archival shots of Ms Gupta driving away in her car, or recent shots of her being led away  in hand-cuffs, pan shots of her house from across the road, shots of authentic looking documents, of the schools she went to, of interviews with her old parents asking them how does it feel to be parents of a traitor? etc., etc. are not being run in a 24 hour loop? Continue reading Madhuri and Zeenat →

Debates, Media politics, Politics

Swami & Friends: JTSA’s response to Praveen Swami

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The story so far…

Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association was  formed after the so-called “encounter” at Batla House in 2008, in which two students of Jamia Millia Islamia were killed. You may remember posts on kafila at the time, questioning the credibility of police accounts of the “encounter” and criticizing the unethical nature of media coverage:

A little less melodrama, a lot more forensics;

The Jamia Nagar encounter: Curiouser and curiouser;

Shame is a revolutionary sentiment;

Some questions about the Delhi encounter.

In April this year, JTSA, which has been demanding an independent probe into the encounter, issued a statement after the post mortem reports of Atif Ameen and Md. Sajid were made public, revealing that the two boys were not  killed in cross fire as Delhi Police claimed:

Batla House ‘Encounter’: Whom is the JP Trauma Centre Shielding?

On April 25, 2010, Countercurrents published another statement by JTSA, titled Praveen Swami’s Not so Fabulous Fables, which began thus:

“If there is one infallible indicator of what the top Indian Intelligence agencies are thinking or cooking up, it is this: Praveen Swami’s articles. Each time the security establishment wishes to push a certain angle to this bomb blast or that, Swami’s articles appear magically, faithfully reflecting the Intelligence reports. After the Batla House ‘encounter’, he launched a tirade against all those who were questioning the police account of the shootout labeling them all ‘Alices in wonderland’. He went so far as to identify ‘precisely’ how Inspector Sharma was shot by claiming that “abdomen wound was inflicted with [Atif] Amin’s weapon and the shoulder hit, by Mohammad Sajid”.

And no sir, Swami’s conclusion was not based on post mortem reports of the killed, fire arm examination report or ballistic report but on this innocent fact: “the investigators believe that…” He certainly brings in a whole new meaning to ‘investigative journalism’. Swami however felt no need to pen an article when the postmortem reports of Atif and Sajid revealed that they had been shot from close range and that neither of them sustained gunshot wounds in the frontal region of the body—an impossibility in the case of a genuine encounter. Was it because the police and the Home Ministry chose to remain quiet after the revelations—hoping that the storm would quietly blow over?“
Praveen Swami wrote an injured response via a letter to Annie Zaidi, which too was published on Countercurrents.
And now read on, as JTSA responds to Swami.

Continue reading Swami & Friends: JTSA’s response to Praveen Swami →

Politics, Violence/Conflict

Heading for a Bloodbath: Rohini Hensman

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This post by ROHINI HENSMAN is an article  published on the Outlookindia.com website on April 22, 2010.

To people desperately trying to avert a bloodbath in the forest belt, the recent PUDR statement on the massacre of 76 CRPF jawans in Dantewada caused considerable consternation, and Sumanta Banerjee’s response to it even more so. According to the PUDR statement,

‘As a civil rights organization we neither condemn the killing of security force combatants nor that of the Maoists combatants, or for that matter any other combatants, when it occurs’.
Sumanta Banerjee objected to the equating of Maoist violence and state violence, saying that
‘these soldiers, by being cannon-fodders of the Indian state, however tragic it might be, suffered the fate that – I’m sorry to say – they deserved…To come back to the latest incident of the Maoist attack on the CRPF camp in Chhattisgarh…. if we accept it as a part of a civil war, such killings are inevitable (just as the CRPF killings of Maoists) in a violent system that has been institutionalized by the Indian state. The difference between the CRPF violence (involving ‘false encounters’, raping of tribal women, burning their homes, etc.) on the one hand, and the Maoist violence on the other (which means attacks on oppressive landlords and the police and para-military forces like the CRPF which come to the aid of the landlords) – has to be distinguished by civil society groups’
Both the statement and the response assume that a civil war is already in progress, and therefore the killing of combatants is not illegal.

Continue reading on outlookindia.

Culture, Debates, Media politics, Scams

Tharoor-Pushkar Soap and Tabloidization of the Media: Vineetha Mokkil

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This is a guest post by VINEETHA MOKKIL.

The Shashi Tharoor-Sunanda Pushkar tango has unleashed many demons. They woke up the country’s finance minister and party colleagues from a willful sleep. They are set to end Lalit Modi’s glitzy reign as IPL chief. The Tharoor-Pushkar coupling also let loose a spectre of another kind. It infected the electronic and print media with an epidemic of tabloidisation of unprecedented proportions. As soon as the first whiff of the story permeated the air, the strain of tabloid journalism that has been seeping into the Indian media scenario for over the last 15 years found the perfect setting to multiply and mutate and infect dailies, magazines and television channels across the board.

Newspapers and television channels which claim to occupy higher ground than lowly tabloids played out the entire episode like a soap opera. Headlines went overboard with the ‘wink-wink, nudge-nudge’ game. (Sample these: ‘Tharoor Unleashes Attractive Weapon,’ ‘Minister’s External Affair,’ ‘Got A Girl, Named Sue’). Sensationalism reigned supreme as columnists and hyper-ventilating television anchors marched in, flying high the flag of yellow journalism. Biased, personal opinion was paraded as fact. Unnamed sources came crawling out of the woodwork, spilling secrets of all sorts about the lead players.
Continue reading Tharoor-Pushkar Soap and Tabloidization of the Media: Vineetha Mokkil →

Bad ideas, Frontiers, Politics, Violence/Conflict

‘Boycott of Israel would not serve any useful tactical purpose’: Amitav Ghosh

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The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) and Pakistanis for Palestine amongst others have appealed to the novelist Amitav Ghosh to decline the Israeli Dan David Prize he is being given jointly with Margaret Atwood.

The BRICUP open letter to Ghosh reads:

It’s surprising to have to raise Israeli colonialism with a writer whose entire oeuvre seems to us an attempt to imagine how human beings survived the depredations of colonialism. Gosh, even the Dan David judges like the way you evoke ‘the violent dislocations of people and regimes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’.

Those making him this appeal have reminded him of his rejection of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2001.

Give below is Ghosh’s response to the appeal: Continue reading ‘Boycott of Israel would not serve any useful tactical purpose’: Amitav Ghosh →

Politics

Batla House ‘Encounter’: Whom is the JP Trauma Centre Shielding?

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Statement by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association

Days after the startling revelation of the post mortem reports of Atif Ameen and Md. Sajid, which conclusively nailed the lie of the Delhi Police claims that the two boys were killed in cross fire, the security establishment has swung into damage control to ensure that no further information is made public. It is to be recalled that the post mortem reports could be made public only through the persistent efforts of RTI activist and Jamia student, Afroze Alam Sahil and the resolute resistance offered by the teachers and students of Jamia as well as other civil rights activists.

While the post mortem reports have made it amply clear that both Atif and Sajid have been shot from close range and possibly in captivity (as illustrated by the injury marks made by blunt force); the reports also raised several questions: Continue reading Batla House ‘Encounter’: Whom is the JP Trauma Centre Shielding? →

Politics, Sex

An Open Letter to the Democratic and Progressive Groups and Individuals in Aligarh Muslim University and Other Universities in India to Demand Justice for Dr.Siras

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To sign this statement, click here

The unforeseen death of Dr Srinivas Ramachandra Siras (Reader and Chair of Modern Indian Languages at Aligarh Muslim University) and the circumstances surrounding it have thrown us into a web of shock, despair and great concern. As an academic community, there are a number of questions that we need to ask and address.

The role of the Aligarh Muslim University authorities in this incident has been nothing short of condemnable. The invasion of Dr Siras’ privacy, the subsequent authoritarian impulse to suspend him and the complete lack of sensitivity by the administration has been outrageous. It has created anxiety about our vulnerability to the exercise of arbitrary powers. The use of such surveillance is not simply a threat to our freedom to make life choices (and sexual choices); it also leads to “self-discipline” due to fear of transgressing majoritarian norms. Continue reading An Open Letter to the Democratic and Progressive Groups and Individuals in Aligarh Muslim University and Other Universities in India to Demand Justice for Dr.Siras →

Media politics, Politics

Happy Ambedkar Jayanti

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The Congress Party will use the occassion of Ambedkar Jayanti tommorow to reach out to UP’s Dalits. Commenting on this, NDTV  says, “Mayawati, who knows a thing or two about appropriating the Dalit legacy, is going on the offensive as well.”

Appropriating? Hello! You mean to say Rahul Gandhi is a Dalit and Mayawati a half-Italian, one-fourths Parsi and one-fourth Kashmiri Pandit, trying to pass off as an Allahbad Brahmin and collecting Dalit votes on the side?

Of course there will be other memorable celebrations, but they won’t be as ‘news-worthy’.

Capitalism, Everyday Life, Identities, Left watch, Politics

Peeing in Peace and the Revival of Labour Activism in Kerala

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The city of Kozhikode in northern Kerala has seen many a spectacular public protest by women since the 1930s. Recently, it witnessed a truly unique protest which hopefully reveal the shape of things to come. This was over the denial of safe toilet facilities to women, especially the large numbers of underpaid and overworked women employees in the city shops.The issue was successfully raised by the action committee organized by Penkoottu,an organisation of women workers in the city–  which included many  organizations including the feminist group Anveshi,the Muslim women’s organization Nisa, some activists of the Mahila Congress, and independent activists. Continue reading Peeing in Peace and the Revival of Labour Activism in Kerala →

Debates, Politics

Response to Rohini Hensman: Soumitra Ghosh

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SOUMITRA GHOSH is with the National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers. This post came as a response to Rohini Hensman’s recent post Getting Indian Democracy Right

Is India a democracy? This question has to be seen in context of the complex and plural character of the present Indian state and several other state like formations(for instance the Maoist People’s Sarkar in the liberated zones, the parallel administration run by the Nagas, areas and times where and when the extreme hegemony of one or the other mainstream political party or the feudal landlords substitutes the process of law—and others). There is also the fallacy whether India is a nation-state in the way other nation-states(for instance, China, USA, England) are, and whether the concept of a monolithic Western-type at all democracy applies in the Indian context (and if so, how far?). However, the question Rohini tries to raise deals more perhaps with our ethical constructs of democratic values than the character of the Indian state. If it is the former we enter the realm of ethical a-priories, which I too share: democracy is something that as a political process tolerates pluralism and leaves some space for minority dissents against dominant majorities. To take the democracy debate further and to include the Indian state in it will mean a different discourse, in which I am not going for the time being.

Continue reading Response to Rohini Hensman: Soumitra Ghosh →

Excavation, Left watch, Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Maoists issue a statement, the media plays it down

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The CPI (Maoist) has issued a statement after the killing of the CRPF men in Dantewada. You would imagine that the statement should be all over the media. If you Google you will find it here and there, and if you’ve been reading the papers I won’t blame you for missing it. It’s buried in the inside pages today, and only the Hindustan Times yesterday had put it on its front page. This is not surprising considering that after the CRPF killings the media has gone into war mode. It’s war out there, they’re saying again and again. Anchors are shouting, news-magazines are declaring war and calling the Indian state impotent and the top editors are saying it’s a turning point, ab bas bahut ho gaya, now let’s just shoot ’em dead. What, no air strikes? get real guys.

Continue reading Maoists issue a statement, the media plays it down →

Politics

Thai tyrants use violence to cling to power: Giles Ungpakorn

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This is a guest post by Giles Ungpakorn, Thai academic and social activist, formerly Associate Professor at Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. He fled to the UK after facing lese-majeste charges in Thailand for his book A Coup for the Rich.

More images of Thai military crackdown on unarmed pro-democracy protesters

Abhisit’s Democrat Party, the Military and the Bureaucratic Elites, can only cling to power through violence and lies. As they use armed troops and tanks against pro-democracy demonstrators in Bangkok for the 5th time in forty years, the tyrants hope that a blanket of censorship throughout Thailand will allow them to do their dirty work in secret. But their censorship is not working and the assembled masses of pro-democracy Red Shirts are resisting. On the 10th April 2010 the army shot dead 17 unarmed Red Shirt protesters and a Japanese camera man in Bangkok in an attempt to crush a peaceful demonstration. Yet Abhisit Vejjajiva continues to lie. He claims that soldiers “only shot into the air” when they were threatened. Many reports from foreign journalists, and the deaths of 18 people, indicate that the soldiers fired live ammunition directly into the crowd.

Continue reading Thai tyrants use violence to cling to power: Giles Ungpakorn →

Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

A search that depressed me

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[Thinking about recent political developments in Lanka, here is a recent poem by Mahendran Thiruvarangan, who lectures at the University of Jaffna — AK]

A search that depressed me

Searching
in those semi-arid paddy fields,
the cleavages of the silent hills, no longer luscious,
the dried up river,
the never-ending rows on the ballot sheet.

No sickles, no hammers, the sky blackened without stars,
green, blue, yellow, white, brown — all could paint our walls
with faces of new-born patriots and traitors,
the missing red,
gone with the wasted blood,
the Left,
left forever?

Bridges bombed and broken,
the tree long lost its roots,
the violent tsunamis,
patriotisms and nationalisms,
homelands and motherlands,
the ship is out of sight,
the crew all dead and missing,
sleeping in new camps,
with strange bedfellows who praise gods and demons.

The unhappy farmer of Tissamaharama,
the manacled Tamil prisoner from the thickets of the Wanni,
the withered tea-plucking woman in Talawakkele,
the homeless fisherman on the Eastern coast,
the evicted Jaffna Muslim,
the unspoken Malays, Burghers and Telugus,
disconnected,
throttling each other in battles misfought.

Cracks everywhere,
the wall crumbles.


DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE