Manan Ahmed Asif’s recent book Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India* has aroused considerable interest that goes beyond academic readers. Since the book deals with a matter that concerns not just our past but also how we imagine our future, we at Kafila decided to try out a symposium on it – on an experimental basis, since we do not generally carry book reviews as such. We will be serially publishing three reviews/ comments on the book, by DWAIPAYAN SEN, DILIP M. MENON and HILAL AHMED, over the next few days, in the hope of provoking some discussion.We also hope to get the author’s response to these contributions. This first piece is by DWAIPAYAN SEN. The second contribution by Dilip M. Menon can be read here. You can read the final piece by Hilal Ahmed here.
Loss of Hindustan – Manan Ahmed Asif
This book is the most recent addition to a growing tradition of precolonial history-writing that depicts India as a land of milk and honey before the coming of the colonial flood. Evidently, a European understanding of India as Hindu replaced an earlier, native understanding of India as Hindustan, rendered a home for all faiths. Such arguments are based on the close reading of Muhammad Qasim Firishta’s Tarikh-i Firishta, and its appropriation by scholar-administrators in the employ of the East India Company.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE BOMB-MAKING FACTORIES IN WEST BENGAL?
Image Courtesy: PTI
Are the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and its in-charge, Home Minister Amit Shah, at variance with each other? This question has acquired a new meaning as, within a year, there have been at least two occasions when the MHA has not supported Shah’s public claims on matters with a direct bearing on the internal security of the country.
Take the interview of Shah done by a news channel last October. He claimed in it that the law and order situation had “gone for a toss” in West Bengal. The state, he went to the extent of claiming, had “bomb-making factories” in “every district”. This explosive claim of the number two in the Union Cabinet was lapped by mainstream media and soon there were calls to impose President’s Rule in the state.
Arab Spring composite image, courtesy Middle East Eye ( and AFP, Reuters, Creative Commons)
It is interesting that though Marxism was born in Europe, it has found its most enduring habitat in the Global South, but this has meant very little in terms of its overall theoretical formation and structure. Thinking about this encounter of ‘Marxism’ and the ‘Global South’ – the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America – is a daunting task for the sheer range of experiences and questions it has thrown up. It has thrown up fundamentally new concerns as well as produced, in practice, some of the most grotesque outcomes. But the task is also daunting because despite the range of experiences that Marxism has gone through and has put us through, it has not so far given us any serious body of theoretical knowledge that reflects this experience. It has not given us anything like the way, say, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese and Sinhala Buddhism have produced their own versions of Buddhist philosophy. One could also perhaps say the same thing about Christianity in Europe, where – at least up to a point – its philosophy was elaborated and innovated or transformed by the best minds of their time.
मोटेरा स्टेडियम का नाम बदलना दुनिया के इतिहास में- ख़ासकर उपनिवेशवाद के ख़िलाफ़ संघर्ष कर आज़ाद हुए मुल्कों में, ऐसा पहला उदाहरण है, जहां किसी स्वाधीनता सेनानी का नाम मिटाकर एक ऐसे सियासतदां का नाम लगाया गया हो, जिसका उसमें कोई भी योगदान नहीं रहा हो.
Courtesy – नरेंद्र मोदी स्टेडियम. फोटो: रॉयटर्स
क्रिकेट का खेल भारत का सबसे लोकप्रिय खेल है. पिछले दिनों यह खेल नहीं बल्कि इस खेल के लिए फिलवक्त मौजूद दुनिया का ‘सबसे बड़ा क्रिकेट स्टेडियम’ एक अलग वजह से सुर्खियों में आया.
मौका था अहमदाबाद के मोटेरा स्टेडियम- जिसे सरदार वल्लभभाई पटेल स्टेडियम के तौर पर जाना जाता रहा है – के नए सिरे से उद्घाटन का, जो वर्ष 2015 में नवीनीकरण के लिए बंद किया गया था और अब नयी साजसज्जा एवं विस्तार के साथ खिलाड़ियों एवं दर्शकों के लिए तैयार था.
याद रहे कि पहले गुजरात स्टेडियम के तौर जाने जाते इस स्टेडियम का स्वाधीनता आंदोलन के महान नेता वल्लभभाई पटेल – जो आज़ादी के बाद देश के गृहमंत्री भी थे- के तौर पर नामकरण किया गया था, जब तत्कालीन गुजरात सरकार ने स्टेडियम के लिए सौ एकड़ जमीन आवंटित की, जिसका निर्माण महज नौ महीनों में पूरा किया गया था. (1982)
दरअसल हुआ यह कि जिस दिन उसका उद्घाटन होना था, उस दिन अचानक लोगों को पता चला कि अब यह सरदार वल्लभभाई पटेल स्टेडियम नहीं बल्कि ‘नरेंद्र मोदी स्टेडियम’ के तौर पर जाना जाएगा.
सबसे विचित्र बात यह थी कि इस नामकरण को बिल्कुल गोपनीय ढंग से किया गया. गोपनीयता इस कदर थी कि खुद समाचार एजेंसियों प्रेस ट्रस्ट आफ इंडिया या एएनआई आदि तक को पता नहीं था कि उसका नामकरण किया जाने वाला है.
जाहिर था कि पीटीआई या एएनआई जैसी संस्थाओं की सुबह की प्रेस विज्ञप्ति भी उसे सरदार वल्लभभाई पटेल स्टेडियम के तौर पर संबोधित करती दिख रही थी. यह अलग बात है कि अगली प्रेस विज्ञप्ति में अचानक नरेंद्र मोदी स्टेडियम का जिक्र होने लगा.
अब जैसी कि उम्मीद की जा सकती है कि इस नामकरण- जो दरअसल नामांतरण था- पर तीखी प्रतिक्रिया हुई. न केवल इसे सरदार वल्लभभाई पटेल के अपमान के तौर पर देखा गया बल्कि यह भी कहा गया कि एक पदेन प्रधानमंत्री का नाम देकर प्रस्तुत सरकार ने एक तरह से दुनिया में अपनी हंसी उड़ाने का ही काम किया है.
विपक्ष ने साफ कहा कि यह एक तरह से मोदी के पर्सनालिटी कल्ट को अधिक वैधता प्रदान करने का काम है. मिसालें पेश की गईं कि समूची दुनिया में भी ऐसी मिसालें बहुत गिनी-चुनी ही मिलती हैं, जो अधिनायकवादी मुल्कों में दिखती हैं.
Spot the difference between the two quotations below.
“The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.” – [Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848. Emphasis added]
Farmers’ protest at Delhi borders, image courtesy New Indian Express
“Hence, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.” – [Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1, Chapter 26, ‘The Secret of Primitive Accumulation’. 1867. All emphasis added]
Look closely at both, and if you have any doubts, you can return to the original texts from which these two passages have been extracted – the Communist Manifesto, by the youthful Marx and Engels, published in 1848 and Capital, Volume I, published in 1867. If the Communist Manifesto almost celebrates the ‘fact’ that capitalism has “rescued a considerable part of the population [i.e. the peasant] from the idiocy of rural life”, what does the text of Capital say? It underlines that precisely these people who had been thus ‘rescued’, “became sellers of themselves after they had been robbed of all their means of production“.
And if we take a step outside their context and read these lines in the context of contemporary India – from Singur and Nandigram to the ongoing saga of the epic farmers’ struggle – it is not difficult to see why the text of Capital insists that the history of their expropriation is written in “letters of blood and fire.” The big difference is that while literally millions perished in the storm of capitalist industrialization in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and simply disappeared into history; today, the peasants, farmers and indigenous people – all the so-called ‘pre-capitalist’ populations – are fighting back. There were no institutions of democracy, no language of struggle back then; it was the sheer exercise of naked power by the rising bourgeoisie that enforced the expropriation of agrarian and artisanal communities.
THE STATE LOOKS THE OTHER WAY ONLY WHEN RIGHT-WING FOOTSOLDIERS TARGET INNOCENT PEOPLE AND PROVOKE VIOLENCE.
A foreigner, returning from a trip to the Third Reich,
When asked who ruled there, answered:
Fear…
The Regime, Bertolt Brecht.
Those occasions on which judicial verdicts bring cheer are getting rarer. As everyone who supports gender justice rejoices over the victory of senior journalist Priya Ramani in the defamation case filed against her by ex-minister MJ Akbar, it is also time to get excited over another judgement passed in another court.
In an ambience in which dissent is increasingly criminalised, this judgement by a Delhi court, which grants bail to two people accused of posting “fake” videos related to the ongoing farmer movement, is also a breath of fresh air.
The prosecution argued that these videos—which seemed to express discontent among police officers against the government—could create disaffection against the government. Instead of agreeing, the judge hearing the case handed out a tutorial to the government as to when the law on spreading disaffection is actually to be applied.
The law, the prosecution was told, can be invoked only when there is a “call to violence”. The judge underlined that the law to punish sedition is an important instrument to maintain peace and order, and it cannot be invoked to quieten disquiet while pretending to muzzle miscreants.
Any student of law knows that the judge’s declarations resonate with two historic judgements delivered by the highest court of the country, namely the Kedarnath Singh vs State of Bihar ruling from 1962 and the Balwant Singh and Bhupinder Singh vs State of Punjab government case from 1995, which specifically emphasise that the charge of sedition can be used only when violence is invoked or where there are attempts to create disorder.
Dr Abhay Shukla, public health physician and health activist will be delivering the 8 th lecture in the ‘Democracy Dialogues Lecture Series’ on ‘Mass Psychology of Neofascism : The rationale underlying political ‘irrationality’ organised by New Socialist Initiative on Sunday, 21 st February, 2021 at 6 PM (IST)
If the ever-growing reality of Hindu Rashtra were one big Christmas, Kapil Mishra would be Santa Claus, and the members of his “Hindu Ecosystem” hardworking elves delivering the gift of religious hatred and bigotry, packaged in the seductive wrapping of Hindutva, to the masses, secretly but methodically.
On November 16 last year, Mishra, a former Aam Aadmi Party minister who is now with the BJP and has been accused of inciting the February 2020 Delhi carnage by the victims and activists, posted a tweet asking whoever was interested to fill in a form and join what he described as the “Hindu Ecosystem” team.
The form is straightforward – seeking such details as name, cellphone number, state and country of residence – but for one standout question. It asks the prospective footsoldier of the Hindu Ecosystem to state their “special area of interest” and, lest it wasn’t clear what that meant, gives a set of examples.
Recently, on fieldwork in a peri-urban panchayat in Kerala devastated by illegal large-scale granite quarrying, a local resident pointed us to what looked like a hillock. It was covered with vegetation — and flowers of a pleasant lilac — which made a very pretty sight — and to the naked eye, looked as solid as any other hillock in the peripheries of the Western Ghats. “This hillock,” he clarified, “is actually just a heap. It is the earth loosened by quarrying, heaped up here over a long time. Because it is overgrown by weeds, we think it is a verdant hill.” Far from being the latter, he said, it poses a serious danger to the neighborhood. “A spell of really heavy rain can bring it down and just imagine what will happen to the houses below?”
Widows and relatives of farmers who were believed to have killed themselves over debt, at Tikri border. Image courtesy Indian Express
Let me tell you what the Delhi Police knows. And I do not mean the abstract entity called Delhi Police. I mean every single IPS officer and every constable involved in carrying out the “toolkit investigation.”
They know that 22 year old Disha Ravi is not the Prime Mover along with the relatively recently formed Canada-based Poetic Justice Foundation (set up in March 2020) , in a plot to overthrow the Indian government. They know this because the IPS officers at least, can read English and a simple search would show them that the term “toolkit” in this context is basically used by organizers of street protests against autocracies the world over, for peacefully expressing mass dissent.
Here is one such article from 2013 called The Dissident’s Toolkit, in the context of the Arab Spring. The author Erica Chenoweth (soon to be honoured with an arrest warrant) explains:
Research shows, in fact, that demonstrations are just one of many tools that civil resistance movements can use to effect change. Successful movements are those that use a wide array of methods to pressure their state opponents while keeping their activists safe. The demonstration tactic we’re used to seeing is just one of many hundreds of tactics available to civilians seeking change — and successful campaigns for change must use more than just a single tactic.
Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti passed away yesterday aged 77. AYESHA KIDWAI who met and came to know him during the term of a residential fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute, Bellagio, writes a farewell. Ayesha has also translated some of Mourid Barghouti’s poems into Hindustani on Kafila. Link to the translations is given below.
Picture by Ayesha Kidwai
Late last night I was struck with concern for Mourid and how he was, and now I read that he passed away a few hours ago.
I hope you went without pain, my dear friend; the wry and generous bravery with which you loved should have given you that.
I hope that you got that moment, as you always sought in life, when you stepped out of the scene of your own passing and looked at it from afar and above. Only you would have found the one mourner or thing to mourn that sums up this grief that bores with such intensity into our souls.
Farewell, my friend, because when peace was never yours or Palestine’s, it is meaningless to wish for you to rest in peace.
I just hope that as you passed, you could think one final time of Radwa and Tamil and Palestine, and also once again the words of
your favourite poet Wislawa Szymborska.
When on January 26, 2016, Prof. M. Jagadesh Kumar, a professor of electrical engineering from IIT Delhi, assumed office as the new Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, no one really knew who he was. Although subsequent news coverage have unearthed a short-lived and rather unsavoury notoriety in the early 2000s, his administrative experience appeared to be scant, never even having served as a head of a department in any of the institutions he has served in), so news coverage of his appointment could make mention of only his prowess in the martial arts and his aspirations to nation-building in the university (which, as was eventually revealed, boiled down largely to a somewhat macabre fascination with large military hardware).
The five years of Kumar as Vice-Chancellor of JNU have done much to lift him from the obscurity he once enjoyed, but most of his new-found fame has been singularly unflattering. Met with a sustained opposition from the JNU Students Union and the JNU Teachers Association, Kumar has far from established himself as a capable, transparent, and non-partisan administrator committed to the highest standards of academic excellence. However, the poor press that has consistently dogged him throughout his tenure appears to have done nothing to weaken the extraordinary governmental support that he enjoys. So resolute is this backing, that it not only has it been able to claim the scalp of a senior bureaucrat in the MHRD back in 2019, it has now secured Jagadesh Kumar an unusual continuation in office until “his successor is appointed”, following the indefinite postponement of a meeting for the selection of his successor on January 7, 2020. Continue reading Exclusion Arithmetics in Higher Education -JNU as the NEP 2020 Pilot: Ayesha Kidwai→
Generic image of demonstration against mob lynching, courtesy ED Times
[In this column this time, I am reproducing a piece that I recently wrote at the request of some friends – as a popular pamphlet, meant primarily for election purposes. Therefore, while it draws on the work of experts in the field, it does not really address the academic reader.]
“Hinduize all politics and militarize Hindudom – And the resurrection of our Hindu Nation is bound to follow it as certainly as the Dawn follows the darkest hour of the Night!” – Hindutva’s founding ideologue Vinayak D. Savarkar’s message to Hindudom on his 59th birthday, 25 May 1941.
“Our arms stretched as far as America on the one side – that was long before Columbus ‘discovered’ America – and on the other side to China, Japan, Cambodia, Malay, Siam, Indonesia and all the South-East Asian countries and right up to Mongolia and Siberia in the North. Our powerful political empire too spread over these South-East areas and continued for 1,400 years, the Shailendra empire alone flourishing for over 700 years – standing as a powerful bulwark against Chinese expansion.” M. S. Golwalkar, [Second Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)], Bunch of Thoughts, Vikrama Prakashan, Bangalore 1968, p. 9.
“Emotions have more connection with the senses than with the faculty of reason; and therefore when principles are entirely lost sight of and emotions prevail, religions degenerate into fanaticism…They are no better than party politics…The most horribly ignorant notions will be taken up, and for these ideas thousands will be ready to cut the throats of their brethren.” – Swami Vivekananda, “The Methods and Purpose of Religion”, The Definitive Vivekananda, Rupa, New Delhi, 2018, p. 211]
STATEMENT BY WOMEN AGAINST SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND STATE REPRESSION
Demand the immediate release of Nodeep Kaur and Shiv Kumar and cessation of targeting of workers and peasants by the Haryana Police!
On January 12th 2021, the Haryana Police began firing at a workers’ rally in the Kundli Industrial Area. Firing at workers demanding unpaid wages, the police claimed that their demand amounted to extortion. Following the gunfire, when the congregated workers dispersed in all directions, a 24-year-old dalit worker, Nodeep Kaur, was caught by the police and brutally beaten. She was beaten by male police officers who targeted her genitals and then dragged her to the Kundli Police Station. She was then arrested and had two FIRs filed against her, FIR 25/2021 and 26/2021; one under sections 148, 149, 186, 332, 352, 384, 379B and 307 of the Indian Penal Code and the other under sections 148, 149, 323, 452, 384 and 506 with a wide range of charges including inciting a riot, causing hurt to a public servant, assault and criminal force, extortion, trespass, criminal intimidation and attempt to murder. Most shockingly, even after being taken into custody, Nodeep Kaur was mercilessly beaten by the police. She has sustained severe injuries on her body including her genitals amounting to sexual violence and torture in custody. She has been lodged in Karnal Jail, without adequate medical care or support, barely able to speak to her sister, one of the only persons she is allowed to meet. She has spent over two weeks in judicial custody. On January 25th, she was produced in court via video conference. The court ordered a medical examination over two weeks after she was beaten in custody. The family has not been provided the medical examination report. Meanwhile, another worker and Majdoor Adhikar Sanghatan (MAS) activist Shiv Kumar has also been arrested by the Haryana Police. This comes alongside the arrest of Mandeep Punia, a freelance journalist who had been extensively covering the Kisan Andolan for over two months, who covered issues of worker-peasant unity in the Kundli area and, most recently, had exposed the BJP-police nexus during the attack against the peasants at the border on January 29th 2021.
दिल्ली पहुँचने के बाद और 26 जनवरी से पहले, ऊपरी तौर पर सरकार ने किसान आन्दोलन की राह में कोई रोड़े नहीं अटकाए और किसान आन्दोलन को दबाने की रणनीति दबी-ढकी थी। परन्तु अब सरकार खुल कर किसान आन्दोलन को दबाने का प्रयास कर रही है। न केवल आन्दोलनकारियों का बिजली पानी बंद किया जा रहा है और उन पर पथराव प्रायोजित किया जा रहा है बल्कि आन्दोलन स्थल तक पहुंचने के रास्ते भी बंद किये जा रहे हैं। इन्टरनेट जो आज झूठी ख़बरों के साथ साथ जानकारी का भी मुख्य स्रोत बन चुका है, बल्कि आज जीवन की बुनियादी ज़रूरत बन चुका है उस पर भी आन्दोलन स्थलों के आसपास के इलाकों में रोक लगा दी गई है। यहाँ तक की आन्दोलनकारियों द्वारा कोई रूकावट न डाले जाने के बावजूद, रेलगाड़ियों के मार्ग परिवर्तन किये जा रहे हैं या रेल सेवा बंद की जा रही है जिस से न केवल आन्दोलनकारी किसानों या उन के समर्थकों को परेशानी हो रही है अपितु आमजन भी परेशान हो रहा है। ऐसा प्रतीत होता है कि सरकार किसान आन्दोलन से बिलकुल बेपरवाह है।
It is now about twenty-five years since the CPM in Kerala took the calculated risk of meeting neoliberalism half-way through an experiment in localising development. The People’s Planning Campaign drew eclectically on a range of ideologies, from Gandhian self-reliance to neoliberal self-help, not always in ways that were sufficiently self-conscious, but there can be little doubt that there was a conscious effort to build in some mechanisms, however minimal, to counter the possible ill-being that neoliberal responsibilized welfare could inflict.
(अक्सर लोग बातचीत में यह कहते पाये जाते हैं कि इस देश में सैनिक शासन लागू कर देना चाहिए. ऐसा कहते समय वे यह भूल जाते हैं कि उनके पड़ोसी देशों में यह सब होता रहा है और इसने उन देशों का जहाँ पीछे किया है वहीं लोगों के जीवन को भी संकट में जब-तब डाल दिया है. जिस देश ने अपने इतिहास का सबसे महान और बड़ा संघर्ष अहिंसा, लोकतंत्र और धर्मनिरपेक्षता जैसे विराट मानवीय मूल्यों से जीता हो. वहां हिटलर की बढ़ती लोकप्रियता चिंतित करती है.
क्यों हम हिटलर को पसंद करने लग गयें हैं, क्यों हम किसी तानाशाह की प्रतीक्षा कर रहें हैं ? जबकि यह भारत और मानवजाति के लिए किसी विभीषिका से कम नहीं होगा.
प्रस्तुत आलेख इसी परिघटना की पड़ताल करता है .)
( मुंबई के एक रेस्तरां का दृश्य, फोटो आभार REUTERS)
“History teaches, but it has no pupils.”
Antonio Gramsci, (१)
एक भारतीय प्रकाशक को इस मसले पर वर्ष 2018 में आलोचना का शिकार होना पड़ा जब बच्चों के लिए तैयार की गयी एक किताब जिसका फोकस विश्व के नेताओं पर था ‘जिन्होंने अपने मुल्क और अपनी जनता की बेहतरी के लिए जिंदगी दी’ उसमें हिटलर को भी उसने शामिल किया.
जानकार लोग बता सकते हैं कि ऐसी घटनाएँ- कम-से-कम यहां अपवाद नहीं हैं. अपनी मौत के लगभग 75 साल बाद हिटलर भारत में बार-बार ‘नमूदार’ होता रहता है.
एक स्पैनिश फिल्म निर्माता अल्फ्रेडो डे ब्रागान्जा- जो एक स्वतंत्र फिल्म निर्माता रहे हैं- और जिन्होंने कुछ साल पहले भारत में रह कर काम किया था, उन्होंने भारत में हिटलर की अलग किस्म की ‘मौजूदगी’ को लेकर एक फोटो निबंध तैयार किया था जिसमें बहुत कम लिखित सामग्री थी. वह हिटलर की उपस्थिति को लेकर इस कदर विचलित थे कि अपने इस निबंध की शुरूआत में उन्होंने पूछ ही डाला:
‘भारत हिटलर-प्रेम के गिरफ्त में है. हालांकि आबादी का बड़ा हिस्सा यह नहीं जानता कि आखिर ऐसा क्यों हैं, वे अपने निजी एवं पेशागत चिन्ताओं से परे सोचना भी नहीं चाहते कि क्यों भारत हिटलर से प्रेम करता है? क्या किसी लॉबी का हित इसके पीछे है.’ (2)
आज भारत में आलम यह है कि यहूदी विरोधी हिटलर की चर्चित रचना ‘माईन काम्फ’ (मेरा संघर्ष) को आप किसी किताब की दुकान में ‘डायरी ऑफ़ एन फ्रांक- जो उस यहूदी लड़की की आत्मकथा है जो खुद हिटलर की यहूदी विरोध की नीतियों का शिकार हुई थी, के बगल में देख सकते हैं.
हिटलर ने भारतीयों के बारे में काफी अपमानजनक टिप्पणियां की थीं और उसने भारत की आज़ादी के संग्राम का कतई समर्थन नहीं किया था. ‘डिअर हिटलर’ इस फिल्म पर- जिसमें यह दावा किया गया था कि ‘हिटलर भारत का दोस्त रहा है’ अपनी प्रतिक्रिया देते हुए एक लेखक ने हिटलर के चित्रांकन पर आश्चर्य प्रकट करते हुए तथा निराशा जताते हुए लिखा था :
“हिटलर ने कभी भी भारतीय स्वशासन की हिमायत नहीं की. उसने ब्रिटिश राजनेताओं को सलाह दी कि गांधी और आज़ादी के आन्दोलन के सैकड़ों नेताओं को वह गोली से उड़ा दे. बार-बार उसने ब्रिटिश साम्राज्यवाद के प्रति अपना समर्थन दोहराया. वह यही सोचता था कि वह (ब्रिटिश शासन) उतना सख्त नहीं रहा है. ‘अगर हम भारत पर कब्जा जमा लेते हैं’ उसने कभी धमकाया था, तब भारतीय लोग ‘अंग्रेजी शासन के अच्छे दिनों को याद करते फिरेंगे.’ (3)
At last, the Trump Presidency has crash landed and he is out of the White House. Now, we can all start dealing with ‘Trump trauma’ and shock. What did we live through over the past four years ? This is a planetary question. It is a question we are all grappling with because the world is now capitalist on a global scale and America is the leading power making that world. Post the Cold War we were all conscripted to be Americans and the ‘American Dream’ was declared the global dream. Even China bought into it in its own self interested and authoritarian way. They became so good at it that even Trump baulked. He wanted it back and declared : “Make America Great Again”. While we do not physically live in America, through the global media we are front-row spectators gazing into it, watching the theatrics of its leaders while grappling with its presence in our everyday lives. It has set the standards of ‘civilization’ by asserting a set of universals – democracy, progress, competition, individualism and free enterprise. These universals are the props of a mythic America, standing tall at the vanguard of the ‘free world’, and which reveals itself through the iconic hamburger, unthinking patriotism, voting in elections, the veneration of a masculine gun culture, Hollywood movies and mass consumption.
Rakesh Tikait (Image courtesy Twitter/ @iHShaheen at National Herald)
I have read several posts on social media the last few days where people are expressing apprehensions and even anger over all the excitement around Rakesh Tikait. Most of that anger stems from Bhartiya Kisan Union’s (BKU) irresponsible role in the 2013 sectarian violence in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts.
It’s been over seven and a half years since that madness engulfed West UP. We saw BKU split and many new factions emerged. The noticeable split was the breaking away of Gulam Mohammad Jaula, the biggest Muslim leader of BKU and often considered the late, Baba Tikait’s right hand man.
Interestingly, once Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhry lost their elections in 2014, many older Jats in the region were crestfallen. Many of them sobbed ‘Humne Chaudhry sahab ko kaise hara diya’. Many Jats (particularly of the older generation) were always upset with their younger generation for indulging in the violence of 2013. Secretly, between sobs they’d often say, ‘I hope it’s not too late before our youngsters realize where they’ve gone wrong’.
The directive issued by the Ministry of Education on the evening of 22 January announcing an extension for Prof. Jagadesh Kumar as Vice Chancellor till the time that the new incumbent is appointed, serves as yet another reminder of how consistently over the last five years, despite several representations backed by relevant Court Orders, the powers that be at the Centre have chosen to shut their eyes to the misdemeanours committed by the man heading JNU. The University Statutes and Act do not allow a second term for any Vice Chancellor and define the term of the Vice-Chancellor as five years only. The MHRD order does not award him a second term, and merely continues him in office until his successor is appointed. Yet, the Vice Chancellor on the 27th of January, called an emergency meeting of the Executive Council, at one hour’s notice and ‘reappointed’ all three Rectors, despite the fact that the tenure of the Rectors was not over. The JNUTA finds this disregard for the University Statutes shocking, as the VC cannot claim any knowledge that the new VC will not be appointed before the Rectors’ terms will be over. It strongly objects to the scant regard that the incumbent VC has for the Statutes of University he heads. Continue reading JNUTA REPORT ON THE UNIVERSITY 2016-2021 PART III – On Academic Programmes→
Behavioural psychologists say hatred and fear are two sides of the same coin. That explains the Hindu Right obsession with Gandhi and Godse.
Image Courtesy: India TV News
For now, the invidious project of the Hindu Mahasabhato set up a Nathuram Godse Gyan Shala in Gwalior has been shelved. Perhaps what terminated the ill-conceived venture was the sheer anachronism: while the country would mark Gandhi’s73rd death anniversary on 30 January, one section would be found singing paens to his assassin, Nathuram Godse. It would only have served to remind people of how an unarmed man was shot down on his way to a prayer meeting.
This killing was Godse’s so-called contribution and, according to leaders of the Mahasabha, marked his patriotism. The same Hindu Mahasabha has already launched a “Godse workshop”, where the members exhort Indians to “strive to follow his path”. It was also instrumental in installing his statue in the city which had invited opprobrium.
The killing of Gandhi has been shown to be part of an elaborate conspiracy hatched by the higher-ups in the Hindutva supremacist forces. Remembrance of Godse would have been a reminder of the five attempts on Gandhi’s life since the mid-thirties that involvedHindutva forces. There was even a sixth attempt, according to Chunnibhai Vaidya, a Gandhian from Gujarat. Justice Jinvanlal Kapur, who was entrusted with examining the conspiracy to assassinate the Mahatma had concluded in 1969, “All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 