Left watch, Politics

West Bengal State Women’s Commission Condemned

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[We are publishing below a statement released by a number of intellectuals and concerned citizens, regarding the openly partisan role played by the West Bengal State Women’s Commission in the Rizwanur Rehman case.]

We are distressed to read the statement of the West Bengal State women’s Commission after its visit to Priyanka Todi whose husband Rizwanur Rahman was found dead on the railway track after he had fixed an appointment with the APDR friends regarding his harassment at the hands of the Kolkata Police who were acting in blatant violation of all legal and civil norms at the behest of Priyanka’s father Ashok Todi . Todi wanted her daughter to walk out of the marriage and had mobilized Kolkata police to terrorize Rizwan and his friend Sadiq who was witness to their marriage. The couple was called to the Lal bazaar Thana and was told by the police that Priyanka should go to her parents and they would ensure that she returned after a week. This was not to happen. She was forced to go her father but all efforts of Rizwan to talk to her after this period failed. Desperate, he contacted the APDR .

One must remember that Sadiq, who was witness to their marriage, was threatened by police . He had to go into hiding. Priyanka had gone to her parents on 8 September. Rizwan wrote a detailed account of his harassments at the hands of the Kolkata Police and gave it to the APDR. On 21 September, he talked to the APDR people and it was decided that they would meet in the afternoon. This meting was also not to take place. He was found dead on the Railway tracks. Prasun Mukherji, the Kolkata police Chief declared immediately without waiting for the customary autopsy report that it was a transparent case of suicide. He blatantly justified the illegal intervention of the police in a perfectly legal marriage between tow adults Priyanka and Rizwan, claiming that it was natural for the father of the girl to get upset over such marriage, as it was a marriage between unequals. After all, Ashok Todi is a man of more the 200 crores and Rizwan was only a Muslim of modest earning!

Continue reading West Bengal State Women’s Commission Condemned →

Capitalism, Debates, Ecology/Environment

The ‘Solidarity Economy’ – Off the Beaten Track

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In the beginning of this year, Ecuador became one more of the South American countries to turn Left. The new Left-wing President, Rafael Correa called, soon thereafter, for a “new socialism of the twenty-first century”. The last few months have witnessed sharp conflcits between the President, backed by a popular struggle the corrupt right-wing oligarchy that pervaded the system. We reproduce below two recent articles, one by Roger Burbach and another, in the nature of a report by Kintto Lucas, which indicate some of the fascinating new directions that Ecuador is set to now move along.

Sometime ago we had posted in Kafila, an interview of Bolivian President Evo Morales, which was remarkable for two things: (1) Morales’ reference that when he met Cuba’s Fidel Castro, the latter told him to follow Hugo Chavez and not him; that is to say, adopt the democratic road to socialist transformation. This is a commitment that many of the new regimes in the South American continent, backed by powerful mass struggles, are now displaying. The Ecuadorean struggle for and the Leftist victory in, the new Constituent Assembly is a further indication of this new direction. The second important point was Morales’ insistence that ‘we’ (the indigenous people) live in an entirely different relationship with ‘Mother Earth’. Thus: “We say the “Mother Earth,” because the earth gives us life, and neither the Mother Earth nor life can be a commodity. So we’re talking about a profound change in the economic models and systems.” Of course, this is something that neither the Indian ruling elites nor their Leftist counterparts can ever understand, drunk as they are on the heady brew of Capital and Consumption – even if that will lead the world to its rapid end. The likes of the CPM leaders – the Buddhadebs and Bimans for example – would in the end like to claim that “see we reached the end before you”, rather than dare to chart out a different path. It takes real courage – and of course the existential perspective of an ‘indigenous’ leader – to say that we want a radical break form this destructive model.

The news from Ecuador is important in both these respects. It is a different vision of ‘socialism’ – not a vision that wants capitalism to first destroy the planet before socialism can begin its work (for what?!) So, the Ecuadorean government now talks of ‘socialism’ as a shared economy and one moreover, that will be based on the protection and preservation of the oil wealth and bio-diversity of the country rather than its sale for global consumption.

ECUADOR: Support Grows for Letting Sleeping Amazon Oil Lie
By Kintto Lucas

QUITO, Aug 23 (IPS) – The innovative offer by the government of Ecuador to refrain from exploiting its largest oil reserve, in exchange for international compensation for nature conservation, is attracting increasing support. While oil prices are soaring, Quito is adopting the civil society initiative calling for the Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) oil reserve, the country’s largest, to remain untapped. The ITT reserve is located in Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, in the Amazon region provinces of Pastaza and Napo.

Continue reading The ‘Solidarity Economy’ – Off the Beaten Track →

Left watch, Politics

Class Struggles in West Bengal

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Slavoj Zizek mentions in one of his essays that the precise moment at which the Revolution in Iran against the Shah’s brutal regime began, can be traced back to one incident: The refusal of a lone pedestrian to obey the command of the policeman on a busy street. The moment at which this pedestrian refused to obey the command, the symbolic chain of impenetrability of the order was broken, and it suddenly became clear that commands could be disobeyed. More and more people joined in disobeying the command. Increasingly greater numbers joined in protests against the order. In another context, Louis Althusser would call such a situation ‘overdetermined’ – a situation where a whole range of different conflicts and discontents ‘merge’ or ‘fuse’ into an explosive situation. That is what determines, according to Althusser, a revolutionary or insurrectionary situation.

Something of this kind happened in West Bengal, sometime towards the end of 2006 when Singur erupted into a mass struggle. But the crucial turning point, of course, came with Nandigram. The ‘Nandigram effect’, which could not have been possible without Singur but which took the logic of Singur to an insurrectionary level, made one thing clear: The CPM-police-government-vested interest nexus could be broken; that it was not invincible. Almost within a few weeks of Nandigram, as Vaskar Nandy explained in a talk in Delhi University last April, the Nandigram effect had pervaded the tea gardens ruled by a powerful nexus of vested interests of the CITU, police and the industrialists. The virtually invisible local revolts against this cadre-raj drove away the self-appointed leaders breaking these nexuses irreparably.

Continue reading Class Struggles in West Bengal →

Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Saffron Terror

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Nanded, in Maharashtra, is a town with a significant population of different faiths – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist. Nanded could well have become a new metaphor for secularism as practised in the Subcontinent, but this was not to be. Instead, Nanded has come to represent the emergent danger of a violent new brand of Hindu militancy, with due support from a section of the state machinery. A place that was once witness to the final days of Guru Gobind Singh, Sikhism’s Tenth Guru, has today metamorphosed into an epicentre of violent Hindutva. Indeed, Nanded represents the build-up of the violent fundamentalist Hinduism of the past half-century. The town has been witness to a new spate of acts that can be inarguably dubbed ‘terrorism’.

The inner workings of this new form of Hindutva were on show recently in two, evidently accidental, explosions in Nanded within a span of nine months, in April 2006 and February 2007. These blasts, which killed four people, took place at the houses of activists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena. The arrival of Nanded on India’s ‘terror’ map was followed by media investigations into similar previous incidents, which also showed the involvement of Hindu youth in terrorist actions.

The new element here is the increasing similarity between Hindu militancy and ‘terrorism’ of other hues. Continue reading Saffron Terror →

Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Suspend All Military Support to Myanmar Junta

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yangon demonstrations

There has been a flood of reports of alleged brutal killings, disappearances and arrests as the military in Myanmar stamped out the anti-government protests of the last week. At least 1,000 people have been arrested in Yangon alone, the majority of them monks. Arrests are also reported from towns and cities across the country. This is in addition to at least 150 other persons arrested in August at the onset of the protests. Numerous key figures in the National League for Democracy, the main opposition party, and other activists are among those arrested. However, it remains extremely difficult for anyone to confirm details about who has been arrested, where they are held, why and under what circumstances. This uncertainty is partly as a consequence of restrictions on internet and phone use.

Continue reading Suspend All Military Support to Myanmar Junta →

Debates, Politics, Theory

‘Secularism has become another religion’ – Etienne Balibar

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[French Marxist philosopher, Étienne Balibar was in Delhi recently, where he delivered a series of lectures. A former student of Louis Althusser, Balibar has over the last few decades, worked towards the articulation of a critical Marxism – one that is at once liberated from the shibboleths of old modernist certainties and yet does not give up on the idea of a possible emancipatory project of a world beyond capitalism. Balibar’ later philosophical work has been more and more engaged with the contemporary political problems of France and Europe.

Balibar is critical of hardline French secularists for their xenophobic intolerance of issues concerning French citizens of Arab and African descent. In the 2007 French presidential election, he was among the two hundred intellectuals who expressed support for the candidature of Marie-Ségolène Royal of the Socialist Party. Professor Emeritus of Moral and Political Philosophy at Université de Paris X – Nanterre, and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, Balibar gave a series of lectures in New Delhi last week. S. Anand of Tehelka joins Nivedita Menon, Reader in Political Science at the University of Delhi, and Aditya Nigam, Fellow at the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, in discussing with Balibar the overlap of racism, Islamophobia and secularism in a global context. The interview is published in the current issue of TEHELKA.]

etiennebalibar

Menon: You have written about the race riots in 2005 in the French banlieues, the suburbs, as a ‘revolt of the excluded’ and have linked it to the contradictions of globalisation. What were the dynamics of these riots?

Balibar: I am surprised these events provoke such curiosity in places as far away as Chicago and New Delhi since I think these riots were extremely banal in the sense that they are a type of urban disorder that has repeatedly taken place all over the world for a long period, owing to similar issues of “difference”. Perhaps the French were exceptional in thinking that the typical effects of the redistribution of populations created by globalisation, involving race and class factors, would not affect France. There’s also been extreme reluctance on the part of French commentators, not only of the Right but also the Left, to use race and racial categories.

Continue reading ‘Secularism has become another religion’ – Etienne Balibar →

Capitalism, Ecology/Environment, Empire/ Imperialism

Interview with Evo Morales

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Democracy Now!

By way of Liberation News Service

[Interview with Bolivian President Evo Morales. Here he talks about some interesting question relating to the new possibilities of democratic transformation, the problems of leadership, and global warming – among other things. Some Excerpts:]

AMY GOODMAN: The Bolivian Supreme Court recently asked the government to start extradition proceedings for the former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who lives here in the United States in Miami. They also asked for an order for him not to be allowed to go to another country, but to be sent back to Bolivia. What is the former president guilty of and whether he thinks the United States will extradite him.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: First of all, the United States cannot, should not receive, protect delinquents from any part of the world. It is unconscionable that the United States, a democratic country, would be protecting international criminals like Posada Carriles. The process has to do with two issues: first of all, human rights, and second of all, for economic damages done to the state. So people who massacre peoples, that violate human rights and do economic damage to countries and their economies have to go to jail. The United States shouldn’t be sitting there waiting for a process to be put into motion, but rather should kick these people out so that they can be submitted to justice.

I hope the United States respects these norms and respects the decision of our Supreme Court. But here, we have an experience. The last military dictator was sent to jail. And since that time, in Bolivia, no member of the military dares to threaten a coup d’etat. Likewise, any democratic government that violates human rights, that massacres people or that does economic damage to the state should also be subject to these sorts of processes, and their leaders should be put in jail, so that they never dare to do it again either.

Continue reading Interview with Evo Morales →

Government, Law

The Righteous Anger of Our Hon’ble Lords

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A treat to the eyes and ears this! The screaming headlines in the newspapers today: “Angry SC talks of Prez Rule as DMK shuts TN” (The Times of India). “SCs new anger Benchmark: We can get the state government sacked” (The Indian Express).

Rewind to 1992. 6 December. A bewildered country watched aghast as a mob led by the soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister, Home Minister and other important personages – including the chief minister of a certain state where an old monument was located, demolished the monument. This was done after the motely crowd of ministers-to-be and chief minister et al gave their commitment to the honourable Supreme Court that they will not demolish the monument. Remember. This was not a peaceful bandh but an act that changed the face of India forever and led to some of the worst carnages in our post-independence history. Were the hon’ble lordships angry? Did they demand the dismissal of the Kalyan Singh government – or threaten it? And did they decide to take any action against the Advanis and Joshis?

Fast forward a decade. Gujarat 2002. February 27-28 onwards – not one day but for months on end…a series of carnages that reduce December 1992 to child’s play. This is not so very long back But did the conscience of the judiciary lead it to demand – or simply threaten – the dismissal of the Narendra Modi government? The fact that the DMK is a strong ally of the UPA government has been invoked this time but at that time, the state government was led not by an ally but the leading party of the ruling NDA coalition.

I hold no brief for the DMK or any other party for that matter but am simply puzzled…and this could be a crime these days. But one word may not be out of place. The honourable judges may ban the written word and jail the Mid Day journalists or anybody else who dares to challenge the undemocratic writ of the courts, but who can jail those thousands and lakhs of spoken words that are being uttered daily about this same matter – undermining the authority of one of the most august institutions of our democracy. Who can jail that mall owner businessman in Vasant Vihar who recently told a friend of mine that he really was not worried about the judiciary because he knew that its judgement in a certain case would go in his favour?

Debates, Government, Law

Perils of Arbitrariness – MSS Pandian

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The Central Educational Institution (Reservation and Admission) Act, 2006, which provides for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in institutions of higher learning, is in a state of deep freeze. The Union Government’s desperate promises to expand the educational infrastructure in these institutions, to increase the number of seats so that the number of open quota seats will remain the same, and to address the issue of creamy layer, has failed to convince the Supreme Court. After a court battle of five long months, a Supreme Court Bench has finally refused to vacate the stay on the Act imposed in March 2007.
The Supreme Court’s objection to the Act is quite straightforward and seemingly reasonable. It posed to the Union Government, what is the basis on which the figure 27 per cent had been arrived at. The Union Government failed to come up with any credible answer and the Supreme Court, as one would expect, stuck to its position. In other words, Supreme Court wants no legislation to be arbitrary but be based on defendable rational basis.
Continue reading Perils of Arbitrariness – MSS Pandian →

Government, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

“IB’s bearded ‘jihadi’ moulvis trapping Muslims “

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[Evidence is piling up – of a whole range of so-called encounters to actual ‘terrorist’ acts, conducted by police, intelligence agencies and their undercover agents. Different groups and organizations have been gathering evidence, meticulously documented, that shows clearly how police have gone about ‘fighting terrorism’ and in effect (if not by intent) actually created an atmosphere of terror for the minorities. Every time such a suggestion is made, predictably, there are howls from certain quarters. So we think this extremely important and silent work of documenting will eventually help to uncover the nefarious ways of these agencies. Often these are carried out in cahouts with the organizations of the Hindu Right. How many times have we not wondered about so-called terrorists who come out of a railway station, take a taxi to go and either blow up Akshardham temple or the Ayodhya ‘Ram Mandir’! What if their train was late? what if, they did not get a cab on time. What if….But does it really matter, with a gullible and all to complicit media to blow up police versions as ‘serious terrorist plots’? Here then, is a small story from The Kashmir Times. The characters mentioned in this story are not unfamiliar to those who follow how they were first recruited as ‘mukhbirs’ or informers and when they refuse to play along, they become ‘terrorists’ – exactly the way the ex-surrendered Afzal Guru was made into the ‘terrorist ‘who, even the Supreme Court felt should be hanged to satisfy the ‘collective conscience of the nation’ even though no evidence could be produced against him. So, much for the “world’s largest demcracy”. – AN ]

NEW DELHI, Sep 21: Next time, you confront a long bearded Maulana with some sob story extorting young men to take to ‘Jihad”. Beware! He could be an intelligence mole, hunting for fodder to the canon of “war on terrorism”. A former informer of Delhi Police’s Special Cell and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) now cooling heals in Delhi’ Tihar Jail is spilling beans.

Continue reading “IB’s bearded ‘jihadi’ moulvis trapping Muslims “ →

Debates, Government, Politics

Persecution and Resistance: The Struggle for Human Rights

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A well-known activist of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), and a medical doctor Binayak Sen gets arrested in May 2007 in Chhattisgarh state, under the provisions of the controversial black laws, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 (CSPSA), and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 having been amended in 2004 and made more stringent after the collapse of POTA. In August 2007, a woman activist Roma, working among the women, tribals and dalits of Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh under the aegis of Kaimur Kshetra Mahila Majdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti and the National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers is arrested and charged under the National Security Act. A young Oriya poet and literary editor Saroj Mohanty, who is also an activist of the Prakrutik Suraksha Sampada Parishad, an organization supporting the struggles of the people of Kashipur, who for the past 13 years have successfully opposed the entry of large bauxite mining companies in the region, was picked up by the police in July 2007 at Rayagada, Orissa, on charges of dacoity, house trespass and attempt to murder. Two activists – Shamim and Anurag – of Shramik Adivasi Sanghathana and Samajwadi Jan Parishad, which are working amongst tribals in Betul, Harda and Khandwa districts of Madhya Pradesh, were served externment notices in June by the Harda District Magistrate under the State Security Act.

Continue reading Persecution and Resistance: The Struggle for Human Rights →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Identities

Kaurnanidhi knows his Ramayana Well – MSS Pandian

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MSS PANDIAN, well known scholar, writes on DMK, Ram and the BJP. 
 

For M Karunanidhi, DMK chief and Tamil Nadu chief minister, Lord Ram is not a historical persona but a figment of human imagination. He has not only invited BJP leader L K Advani for a public debate on Ram’s historical status but also – as if turning the knife into the wound – has advised him to read Valmiki’s Ramayana with all the care it deserves. It is common knowledge in Tamil Nadu that Karunanidhi knows his Ramayana well.

Karunanidhi’s remarks have provoked Advani and his cohorts to breathe brimstone and fire. But they have not succeeded one bit in turning the Hindus of Tamil Nadu against Karunanidhi. Their desperation is evident when Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, BJP spokesperson, claimed during a press meet that Karunanidhi has lost his head. Perhaps, he meant Karunanidhi’s followers too.

But for a minuscule fraction of rationalists, the majority of the cadres and sympathisers of the DMK are practising non-Brahmin Hindus. They regularly visit temples, worship, and go on pilgrimages. If they stand by Karunanidhi despite his open disavowal of Ram, they have their own reasons. For one thing, there is nothing novel in Karunanidhi’s comments on Ramayana. From the days of the Self-respect Movement founded by Periyar E V Ramasamy in the 1920s, Ramayana and Ram have been subjects of vigorous public debate in Tamil Nadu.

Read the full story in Times of India

Capitalism, Countryside

Shantibangh in Lohandiguda

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Finally, it was an uneven scrawl in the cryptic shorthand of a court stenographer that almost ruined Sudaram Nag’s monsoon crop. “Sudaram Nag, 50 yrs, Takraguda, Bastar. Section:107.116(b), 03-08-07.” it said; communicating to Sudaram Nag, a 50 year old rice farmer in the Bastar District of Chhattisgarh that he was hereby summoned to present himself at the Magistrate’s Court on 3 August 2007 to show cause as to why proceedings may not be initiated against him for a breach of peace under section 107.116(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) . Since early this year, more than 60 of Sudraman’s neighbours and fellow villagers have spent more time at the courts in Jagadalpur than tending to their fields and harvests. Their crime? Protesting against the blatant rigging of gram sabha hearings initiated to acquire 2161 hectares of fertile agricultural land for Tata Steel Limited’s greenfield steel plant in the district.

Continue reading Shantibangh in Lohandiguda →

Government, Law

“The questioning of the arrested persons is on now”, he said

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Every now and then, some “terrorist” or another is arrested. Never an alleged terrorist, but a proclaimed one. Every now and then there is a blast that kills dozens. We never know who commits these attacks. We never will. A man has been sentenced to death this morning for an attack on the Red Fort. What a circus this is, and what an audience we are. Two news reports below. The first one will affect your reading of the second one. Continue reading “The questioning of the arrested persons is on now”, he said →

Culture, Language

Aini Apa

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It turned out that she was being rash. I am referring to Ismat Chughtai’s summation of Qurratulain Hyder following the publication of the latter’s second novel in the early nineteen fifties. Ismat had asserted that “the star that had emerged on the literary horizon with all the promise of becoming a Sun dazzled so strongly in one place that it lost all its splendour.” Chughtai wrote this before ‘Housing Society’, before ‘Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya na Kijo’ and above all before ‘Aag ka Dariya’ were written. She also wrote this before Hyder’s gradually expanding sweep harmonized the dichotomies of History and Past, Civilisations and personal identities, stream of consciousness and feminism and nostalgia into a meta-historical plane where no Urdu writer has ever reached.

Through many a desolate month of the English winter the County library at Oxford provided me nourishment and succour by allowing me access to Qurratulain Hyder’s novels and short stories. Reading works like ‘Roshni ki Raftar’ and ‘Patjhar ki Aawaaz,’ titles which resounded with movement when all around me was depressingly still, I was doubly reassured. My own nostalgia for a warm home was echoed by the nostalgia for the lost world that resounds in all her works. Continue reading Aini Apa →

Government, Identities, Right watch, Scams

Hashimpura RTI replies expose State patronage of Impunity

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[Courtesy: Vrinda Grover, Hashimpura Legal Advisory Committee.]

On 24th May 2007, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the communally motivated Hashimpura PAC custodial killings, victim families and survivors filed 615 RTI applications in Lucknow.

613 RTI applications were filed at the office of the D.G.P. at 1 Tilak Marg, Lucknow. Shri D.C.Pandey, DIG, who is the Public Information Officer (PIO). The survivors and families of the victims asked the State why the accused PAC men charged by a Delhi Sessions Court for the murder of 42 Muslim men, continue to be in active service of the PAC? Was any departmental inquiry initiated against them? Was any disciplinary action taken against them? Or were they rewarded with promotions in rank and emoluments? Were the 19 accused PAC men ever suspended from service? What were the grounds on which they were reinstated? They asked for copies of the annual Confidential Report (ACR) of each of the accused persons to be made available.

In reply to these RTI applications some information has been made available. The A.C.R. of the accused PAC men reveals that mass custodial killing of Muslims does not even invite a negative comment in the Report. To the contrary the ACR noting for the year 1987 gives the PAC accused a glowing
and congratulatory report. The career prospects of the accused were in no way hurt by the fact that the CBCID was enquiring into their role in the brutal killings of over 42 innocent Muslims. Further documents obtained through RTI disclose that they were suspended very briefly and then quickly reinstated in service on flimsy grounds. The attitude and approach both of the State and the Police Department sends a clear signal encouraging State impunity.

Continue reading Hashimpura RTI replies expose State patronage of Impunity →

Debates, Identities, Politics, Right watch, Theory

Of ‘Nation’ and Other Modes of Belonging

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It might be appropriate to begin this piece with the story of an old man from the ‘East’. No, this ‘East’ is neither the East of the Orientalists, nor indeed the Biblical ‘East’ (as in the ‘three wise men from the East’). This old man hailed, rather, from Eastern part of the north Indian province of Uttar Pradesh (UP) – a purabiya as ‘easterners’ are referred to in spoken Hindi. This man, Mata Badal, belonged to some village in the Awadh region and worked as a gardener in the house in Dehra Dun where we grew up. (The tale of Dehra Dun, once part of Western UP and now the capital of the newly formed state of Uttarakhand itself reveals one more dimension of the reconfiguration of Indian identity in the last two decades.) Every other year Mata Badal used to take leave to go to his des (literally country or homeland). He would tell us that he did not like life here in this pardes or foreign land, where he had had to come in search for livelihood. As children we used to laugh at his ‘ignorance’: how silly of him, we often thought, that he does not even know that his desh is the whole of India.

What I did not realize then but have begun to feel increasingly now is that his des was emphatically not merely a linguistically fallen form of the purer, Sanskritik, desh. I realize now that it probably embodied a different mode of being and idea of belonging. Outside this des, he continued to live like an exile. It is also interesting and worth underlining that it was not merely his notion of belonging but also of all those who would refer to him as an ‘Easterner’ – for implicit in the notion of the purabiya is the idea of the frontier or horizon, beyond which what is East does not matter. Even ‘Calcutta’ (Kolkata), which for instance became the subject of so many folk songs of separation for the inhabitants of Eastern UP (as male members from those parts went off to Calcutta in search of jobs), did not figure, till very recently, within the lived geography of Western UP inhabitants. The concept of a national identity, embodied in the more Sanskritik term Desh, remained, I believe, largely fictive or at any rate, not quite relevant to the rhythm of daily lives of millions of people all over India.

Continue reading Of ‘Nation’ and Other Modes of Belonging →

Government, Politics

Mayawati Intervenes, Sends Out New Signal

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In a refreshingly swift intervention in the affair concerning Roma’s arrest, the UP chief minister Mayawati has ordered the revocation of the cases under the National Security Act and she was released soon thereafter. Mayawati has also called for an explanation in this regard, from concerned police officers of Sonebhadra district. This is unimaginable in contemporary India, across the political spectrum from the Right to the Left. Rarely has such a prompt intervention been undertaken by those tempered in the logic of power and ‘institutions’. As a matter of fact, experience shows that, even in the best of cases, such complaints – even uproar – about the misuse of power, are routinely pushed through a mesh of bureaucratic ‘rules and regulations’ in a manner that leaves you wondering, in the end, whether there is really any desire on the part of the political leaders concerned to address the issue at hand.

Mayawati’s decision has been welcomed by Medha Patkar and other organizations and activists like Tahira Hasan of Tehrik-e-Niswan and Roop Rekha Verma of Sanjhi Duniya. It is worth remembering that while Medha Patkar has been supportive of struggle over land, elsewhere in the state, she has been quite forthright in welcoming this move. Jansatta reporter Ambarish Kumar, quotes Tahira Hasan and others to the effect that this step by Mayawati shows that she has decided not to go the Mulayam Singh way, for such a thing would have been unimaginable in his rule. Kumar also reports that CPI(ML) Liberation leaders have also welcomed this decision. This is important because, a large number of those killed or arrested by the police in these areas of UP, have actually been activists of the CPI(ML) Liberation and not ‘Maoists’ – who hardly have any presence in the region.

Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Deoband Muftis Criticize Fatwa Against Taslima

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[A report from khabrein.info by the Staff Reporter, Khabrein. Did anybody see this report filed in the mainstream media? Maybe we missed it. Barkha Dutt sure did not see the placard-wielding protestors protesting against the attack and subsequent fatwa against Taslima Nasreen. Do we by ignoring such voices of internal opposition and by arrogating all secular wisdom to ourselves, really advance the cause of  ‘secularism’, Ms Dutt? We wonder. Extracts from the report:]

Clerics at world renowned seminary Darul Uloom Deoband (waqf) have denounced fatwa against controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen saying that the fatwa in itself was illegal. Prominent muftis of the madrasa Maulana Khursheed Alam, Asst. rector of the seminary Mufti Ehsan Qasmi, Mufti Muhammad Arif and Maulana Abdullah Jawed said that in a democratic and secular country like India a fatwa like the one that sought beheading of Taslima Nasreen was not based on a sharia law.

A cleric in Kolkata had issued a fatwa or a death warrant Friday against Taslima Nasreen if she did no leave India. “Anybody eliminating her would be given Rs 100,000 and unlimited rewards if she does not leave the country immediately. She has insulted Islam and continued to create problem in this country,” said Syed Noor-ur-Rehman Barkati, the shahi imam of Tippu Sultan Mosque in Kolkata. He went on to say that “We are forced to issue such a warrant because the government is not making use of the constitutional provisions and driving her out of the country”.

Read the full report here.

Countryside, Government, Law, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

Roma’s Arrest, Land Mafias and the Indian Police State

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Even as semi-literate journalists and supposed pundits in the Capital celebrated the 60 years of the “world’s largest democracy”(incidentally the greatest and most grotesque cliché of our times), away from the “watchful eyes” of the media, other less savoury stories have been playing themselves out. Brave and self-effacing women activists like Roma, have been arrested under the National Security Act and have now been labeled as ‘Maoist’, according to a report in the Jansatta (Ambarish Kumar, 17 August, “Manavidhikar Karyakarta to Ab Naxali Banane ki Muhim”). This is no small and isolated happening. It is, in a microcosm, the story of what this ‘largest democracy’ is all about. The ultimate weapon of a desperate police force (widely used all across the length and breath of the country) of ‘labeling a dog mad before killing it’ is being brought into play to deal with peaceful struggles of ordinary people.

For those who have any idea of the activities of activists like Roma, this is a lie of the most blatant sort. Roma has been long active in organizing the tribals and landless Dalits, and especially, of late, landless women to fight for their property rights. Roma’s struggle has been fought under the banner of Dr Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Savitri Bai Phule, Birsa Munda and Rani Lakshmibai and has never resorted to any kind of violent means. Nonetheless, her arrest, along with Shanta Bhattacharya and Malati, in Sonbhadra district of UP, shows that even such non-violent and constitutional struggle is becoming impossible in large parts of the country today. It is the state and the police that are producing Maoists by the hour. It is not without reason that former Prime Minister VP Singh had to proclaim in utter exasperation that he too wants to become a Maoist. It is the utter cynical contempt with which the state, the judiciary and the media have treated a long and peaceful struggle against land acquisition – the Narmada Bachao Andolan – that sends out the signal, loud and clear that the only language that the state and the cohorts of corporate capital understand is that of the gun.

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Bad ideas, Culture, Law, Left watch, Right watch

The Attack on Taslima Nasrin in Hyderabad

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Dear All (apologies for cross posting on Kafila.org and the Sarai Reader List)

The recent attack on Taslima Nasreen has again shown how fragile the freedom of expression is in India today. It breaks whenever a sentimental reader or viewer has their ‘sentiments challenged’. Are all these worthy gentlemen who go about obstructing screenings and readings suffering from some early childhood trauma that makes it difficult for them to countenance growing up and acquiring the ability to listen to contrary point of view? How long are we to be held hostage to their infantile suffering?

What is worse is the fact that the people who attacked her, and have made public threats to kill her – activists and elected representatives belonging to MIM, a leftover of the Nizam’s hated Razakars, were arrested and then let off on bail. So, the message that the state sends out to these goons is – “threaten to kill, be taken to a police station to have a cup of tea, have your picture taken, be splashed in the media, go home and make some more threats.”

see – http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=90746

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