Culture, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Right watch

Exploring Possibilities for Critical Alliances Between Animal Rights and Bahujan Politics: Krishnanunni Hari

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Guest post by KRISHNANUNNI HARI

This essay emerged as a response to the following question that was raised during a Q&A session that I had run on social media:

“How does one tackle people who amalgamate veganism with upper caste vegetarianism?”

The immediate answer to this is that veganism avoids all animal products and all forms of animal ab/use, and hence cannot be amalgamated with vegetarianism and its caste baggage.

Such an answer, however, ignores crucial cultural issues that determine how Animal Rights (AR) and veganism are perceived, co-opted or taken forward in Indian society.

Vegetarians, contrary to what Right wing Hindutva will have us believe, comprise less than 40% of the country’s population.  Jains, most Sikhs and Brahmins and some rich urban forward castes make up the vegetarians in India1. Vegetarianism in India is connected to social power and caste hegemony, unlike its counterpart in the West, where it is an ethical lifestyle and a social justice movement.

Continue reading Exploring Possibilities for Critical Alliances Between Animal Rights and Bahujan Politics: Krishnanunni Hari →

Feminism

Medical Termination of Pregnancy during the Covid pandemic – Statement by concerned citizens

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Statement by medical doctors, public health workers, researchers and feminists concerned with issues of reproductive health, rights and justice.

In the case of Sama vs Union of India and Ors, the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi ruled that the Union of India and Government of NCT Delhi

 …shall work in tandem to make sure that no barriers are faced by pregnant ladies and their family members residing in hot spots during the lockdown.”  (High Court of Delhi, W.P.(C)2983/2020 & CM APP Nos 10345-46/2020, dated 22/04/2020)

While this is a welcome move, we urge that access to safe abortion is specifically recognized and appropriate services extended to women seeking abortion.

 It is completely understandable, and correct, that all non-emergency procedures be suspended at hospitals in these times of Covid-19.  Thus, not only elective plastic surgery procedures, but surgeries such as that for inguinal hernia, or thyroid adenomas, have to be postponed. This is for two reasons: first, to prevent exposure of people to Coronavirus in hospitals and second, to reduce the demand on health systems, overwhelmed in the Coronavirus pandemic.

The situation with Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) is however unique, and cannot be classified as a “non-emergency” procedure worthy of postponement. Continue reading Medical Termination of Pregnancy during the Covid pandemic – Statement by concerned citizens →

Feminism, Government, Right watch

Over 1100 Feminists Condemn Crackdown on Women Activists in Delhi

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Issued on 3 May, 2020

Over 1,100  feminsts across religion, class, caste, ethnicity, ability, sexuality and genders

DENOUNCE false narratives that try to link anti-CAA protests with the violence in Delhi.

DENOUNCE false narratives that try to link anti-CAA protests with the violence in Delhi.

DEMAND an immediate stop to targeting of Muslim women activists
under the shadow of the Covid 19 lockdown.

SEEK ACTION against actual perpetrators of violence, not peaceful protestors.

STAND FIRM with the conscience keepers of the nation

We, the undersigned, strongly condemn the brazenly malicious attacks, arrests and intimidation by the Delhi Police of Muslim women, students and activists, as well as other citizens who have spoken up against the unconstitutional moves of the present ruling dispensation. Media reports that about 800 + anti-CAA protesters have been detained or arrested since the Covid 19 lockdown, which means they have had little or no access to lawyers and legal aid, and their families given no information of their whereabouts for extended periods after they were in custody. The impunity with which the Delhi Police is carrying out this sweep under direct orders from the Home Ministry is facilitated by the reduced media, public and legal scrutiny under the lockdown.

Continue reading Over 1100 Feminists Condemn Crackdown on Women Activists in Delhi →

Capitalism, Debates, Everyday Life, Left watch

Remembering Marx in Lockdown Times – Beyond the “Corona” Paradigm: Maya John

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Guest post by MAYA JOHN

On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Karl Marx, the greatest intellectual of the millennium, it is best to steer clear of hero-worshipping. Instead, let us commemorate Marx’s ideas by re-enacting his way of knowing things. Much can be drawn from his writings wherein we can see Marx reinvigorating the revolutionary agenda at a time of deep despair and defeat. Reflecting and writing after the failed revolutions of 1848, Marx provided an introspective critique of unfolding conditions in his essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852). Closely examining the events of the successful coup and assumption of dictatorial powers by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in republican France in 1851, Marx was the only contemporaneous political thinker to liken the ascendancy of Louis-Bonaparte to that of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, who seized power in revolutionary France through the coup of 18 Brumaire (7 November 1799).

Continue reading Remembering Marx in Lockdown Times – Beyond the “Corona” Paradigm: Maya John →

Centre watch, Debates, Government, Politics, Right watch

Why Activists Want Prisons Decongested

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The Supreme Court also wants to reduce the Covid-19 risks posed by overcrowded jails, but there is little progress so far.

Navlakha and Teltumbde

Late in March, Sirous Asgari, a materials science and engineering professor from Iran, who is at present detained by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had warned about the “inhumane” conditions at the ICE facility that could turn it into a hot spot of Covid-19 fatalities.

April has made his worst nightmares come true. Asgari, who has a history of respiratory problems, has been infected by the Novel Coronavirus, which causes the Covid-19 disease. The news created international outrage last month. Not only the Iranian foreign ministry, many United States lawmakers and human rights groups also demanded his release, but it was not to be.

At the facility in which Asgari is still lodged (though he has been exonerated of all the charges he faced in the United States), people are usually detained for no more than 72 hours, but the Coronavirus outbreak has delayed deportations. People like him are simply caught up in the system. Asgari can leave the United States and resume work in Iran—where the viral epidemic has already claimed more than 60,000 lives—because he simply isn’t being taken before a judge.

Asgari’s plight reminds of another incarceration, this one in an Indian jail; that of Anand Teltumbde, who has been arrested in the Bhima-Koregaon case. On 26 April, noted activist-filmmaker Anand Patwardhan had, in a Facebook post, expressed deep concern about the health of 70-year-old Teltumbde, who also suffers from respiratory problems.

( Read the full text here : https://www.newsclick.in/Prisons-during-lockdown-needs-to-be-decongested)

Capitalism, Debates, Government, Images, Left watch, Movements, Politics

The Many Debts We Owe to Lenin

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‘The workers’ and peasants’ government… calls upon all the belligerent peoples and their government to start immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace.

By a just or democratic peace, for which the overwhelming majority of the working class and other working people of all the belligerent countries, exhausted, tormented and racked by the war are craving [we mean] an immediate peace without annexations – that is, without the seizure of foreign lands, without the forcible incorporation of foreign nations and without indemnities.’

The ‘just and democratic peace’ sought by the workers and peasants government never arrived.

It was on 26 th October 1917 when Lenin, the 47 year old leader of this nascent Government, read out the Bolshevik Decree on Peace. This appeal fell on deaf ears.

The many players and participants in the first World War,  the imperial powers fighting for a re-division of the world, which had already claimed millions of lives, refused to put a halt to their killing machines and the war continued for more than a year, adding menacing figures to the tally of the dead as well as the wounded. Students of history tell us that this ‘War to End Wars’ as it was termed then culminated in the deaths of more than nine million combatants and seven million civilians as a direct result of the War and the resulting genocides and related 1918 influenza pandemic causing another 20-50 million deaths worldwide.

Otis Historical Archives, modified, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emergency_hospital_during_Influenza_epidemic,_Camp_Funston,_Kansas_-_NCP_1603.jpg, CC 2.0, modified

Looking back one knows that if this decree on peace had been positively responded, few more million deaths in the ongoing war could have been avoided and deaths due to the pandemic of Spanish Flu ( 1918) could have been contained more effectively. Experts can tell you how the trenches of the western front proved ideal for spread of the virus as “[t]renches were flooded much of the time. Blood and bodily remains from people and animals that had been blown to pieces, along with faeces and rotting food, formed the pathways and shelters for troops going to and returning from, the front.”

The World War I which eclipsed all previous wars by its scale of destruction finally came to an end in 1918. Continue reading The Many Debts We Owe to Lenin →

Capitalism, Education, Politics, Right watch

The Pandemic as pretext – Murdering the university in India: Ayesha Kidwai

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Guest post by AYESHA KIDWAI

The recommendations of the UGC panels are circulating on WhatsApp (See Appendix at the end of this article). If these are indeed what is going to be presented at the full UGC meeting, then there is no doubt in my mind that the pandemic is a pretext to get rid of the university altogether, to move it notionally online, to make education the tool for surveillance, and to change the way that all educational institutions function. If the recommendations are accepted, then 25% of the syllabus in any course henceforth will have to be completed online, all universities will have to form virtual classrooms, through an MHRD dedicated portal, develop e-learning syllabi, and change their degrees. What this will mean for academic jobs henceforth is obvious, but what it will entail for the content of education is far worse.

Continue reading The Pandemic as pretext – Murdering the university in India: Ayesha Kidwai →

Capitalism, Debates, Everyday Life, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Part II – The Virus, the Muslim and the Migrant: Forced labour and data capitalism

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THIS IS THE SECOND PART OF A THREE PART POST, THE FIRST PART OF WHICH CAN BE READ HERE.

Forced labour and data capitalism are the low end and high end of Coronacapitalism. Let us examine each of these.

Forced labour

The gut-wrenching picture of migrant workers who managed to reach Bareilly, being sprayed with disinfectant by people protected by hazmat suits themselves, provoked such widespread outrage in India and negative publicity in the foreign media, that the Health Ministry issued a hasty statement that this should not be done.

Spraying of chlorine on individuals can lead to irritation of eyes and skin and potentially gastrointestinal effects such as nausea and vomiting. Inhalation of sodium hypochlorite can lead to irritation of mucous membranes to the nose, throat, respiratory tract and may also cause bronchospasm, the advisory said.

Workers at Bareilly bus terminus being sprayed with chemicals

But this brutality and callousness towards workers and the poor emanates from the very top of this regime – the signal is sent from there, as to who matters and who doesn’t. The difference in treatment is stark and unapologetic.  For example, during the lock-down, on April 18th,  even as thousands of workers walked long distances home because no transport was arranged for them, precisely in order to prevent them from leaving the states in which they were stranded, the Uttar Pradesh government organized 250 buses to bring back students from the state studying in Kota, Rajasthan.  As of April 24th, special flights and hospital beds are being prepared by the government to bring back Indians stranded abroad. Continue reading Part II – The Virus, the Muslim and the Migrant: Forced labour and data capitalism →

Capitalism, Countryside, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Government, Left watch

The Limits of Public Health Management: Time to Rethink Development in Kerala

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One of the effects of the pandemic in Kerala, like in most other parts of the world, is that the government’s narrative muffles all other narratives, and this is not just about the containment of the pandemic. Here the government’s narrative about the pandemic enjoys far greater legitimacy than elsewhere, and with good reason. It is true that Kerala’s greater successes in dealing with the pandemic are unique and commendable; however, to think that therefore, the government is right on everything else is probably a huge mistake. Continue reading The Limits of Public Health Management: Time to Rethink Development in Kerala →

Culture, Debates, Education

‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ : Team Umang Library

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Guest Post by Team Umang Library

Remembering Great Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan
on his hundredth death anniversary                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (Watch the video on Youtube uploaded by Umang Library:
First Part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rehg3WtiBKc
Second Part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1I1NaWoajY

Srinivasa Ramanujan Facts: 40 Facts on Self-Taught Mathematical Genius

Photo Courtesy : https://factslegend.org/

It was the year 1913 when Srinivasa Ramanujan, then an ordinary clerk in Madras Port Trust, drafted letters to Prof G H Hardy, then a leading mathematician at Cambridge University, containing his mathematical theorems.

The rest as we know is history.

Continue reading ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ : Team Umang Library →

Education, Movements, Right watch

National Protest Day on April 25th against state attack on student activists: Young India against CAA-NRC-NPR

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Young India against CAA-NPR-NRC calls for  National Protest Day on 25th April, 2020.

Stop the attack on Student Activists During Pandemic!

Drop UAPA Charges!

Raise Your Voice!
Physical Distancing- YES!
Solidarity of Student-Youth- YES!

India Is Starving without Food, Ration and Money in Lockdown but the Govt is Busy in Framing Student Activists Falsely!

People of India are suffering massively due to the lockdown without proper plan by the govt. Millions of poor are starving. Workers and students are stranded in different cities without proper food, ration and money.

Doctors are without gear!
Workers are without food!
Health facility is collapsing! Continue reading National Protest Day on April 25th against state attack on student activists: Young India against CAA-NRC-NPR →

Culture, Government, Right watch, Scams

Migrant Workers, COVID- 19 and our Collective Indifference: Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha and Mursed Alam

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Guest post by ANINDYA SEKHAR PURAKAYASTHA and MURSED ALAM

Critical opinions described India as the ‘Republic of Hunger’or as the ‘Republic of Caste’ and now the post-Corona plight of countless migrant workers makes us want to describe it as the Republic of Indifference. Lakhs of migrant workers along with their family members are stuck at different corners of the country, unfed, mistreated and uncared. Recent images of migrant workers flocking to Bandra station in Maharashtra, with hopes of resumption of train services taking them home and the subsequent police action to disperse them was watched and commented by all of us. Most reactions were emotive and anguish ridden but that have little impact on the ground situation in which these migrants are forced to live during this lockdown. It is true that some NGOs and various philanthropic organizations and governmental aids have to a certain extent catered to their needs but their misery demands more than mere empathy or selective mercy. They need concrete action on the ground. It is astounding to see the Government of India announcing the lockdown on 25 March without having any concrete action plan for these countless migrant workers. This completely betrays the government`s indifference to their sufferings. As if we take them and their sufferings for granted. Earlier some migrants were packed off in over-crowded buses with no money and in Delhi migrant workers were stranded in a bus station in large numbers, rendering them more vulnerable to the infection threat. By all means the COVID 19 crisis has once again proved that they are the Rejects of India. They are mere numbers, and we club them under one official category of “Migrants”, they are not human beings, a mere category of the Reject, who are left out to fend for themselves. We, armchair intellectuals and the moneyed class securely ensconced in our comfort zone, guaranteed of our salaries and jobs, passed off social media comments. The self-appointed radical fringe among us called for the closure of all other activities like educational studies as migrants are suffering but all these predictable reactions boiled down to nothing when it comes to forcing the government to come down to the street and adopt concrete steps to mitigate the traumas of these suffering faces who are away from homes and family.

Continue reading Migrant Workers, COVID- 19 and our Collective Indifference: Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha and Mursed Alam →

Education, Government

Letter from JNUSU to Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal, MHRD, regarding academic issues

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Letter to MHRD from Jawharlal Nehru University Students’ Union

Subject: Regarding issues of evaluation, academic backlog, and scholarships in JNU in view of the lockdown

Respected Sir,

The situation that humanity as a whole is faced with at this current juncture is as you know, unprecedented. Following the forced shut down of schools and educational institutions due to the outbreak of COVID-19, formal academic engagement across the world has ground to a halt. The UNESCO in this regard went on to state in a press release on the 26th of March that over 1.5 billion children and youth in 165 countries were affected by school and university closures[1]. While the situation that citizens in general and students in particular are faced with collectively is certainly unprecedented, one must however take into account its differentiated impacts, and how without a uniform and substantive policy framework in place this could lead to increasing dropouts, furthering of gendered gaps in the educational outcomes, and the further entrenchment of marginalisation of historically deprived sections of the society from spaces of learning.

As you yourself have acknowledged in the past, the Jawaharlal Nehru University is one of the premier institutes of higher education in this country. As such, the University is home to over 8,500 students hailing from all over India and indeed from across the world. It is in this regard that as the duly elected representatives of the student community in JNU, we have found recent news reports regarding the formalisation of academic engagement, classes, and examinations via online means such as e-mail, WhatsApp, etc to be extremely distressing due to a number of reasons which we shall attempt to elaborate on to some degree below. Continue reading Letter from JNUSU to Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal, MHRD, regarding academic issues →

Capitalism, Debates, Refugee crisis, Right watch, Theory

Fascism, the Revolt of the ‘Little Man’ and Life After Capitalism – Manifesto of Hope III

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A representational image of a Hindutva demonstration, courtesy Sabrang.

[This the third instalment of a series on ‘Life After Capitalism – A Manifesto of Hope’. Earlier parts can be accessed Part I here and Part II here. Part IV can be accessed here.]

Yesterday was V. I. Lenin’s 150th birth anniversary and just the other day I read a report of a survey that claimed that 75 percent of Russians think the Soviet era was the best time in the country’s history. A great tribute to Lenin on this occasion, one would imagine, whatever may have been the reasons for socialism’s collapse. If you could put this response in Russia to nostalgia for a time gone by, it comes as an even bigger surprise that a recent poll in the United States of America, conducted by an outfit called YouGov and funded by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (a clearly anti-communist outfit) found that 70 percent of the millennials (between the age of 23 and 38 years in 2019) favoured socialism. Earlier in February 2019, Jochen Bittner, political editor of the German weekly Die Zeit wrote in the New York Times on ‘Why Socialism is Coming Back in Germany?’

Continue reading Fascism, the Revolt of the ‘Little Man’ and Life After Capitalism – Manifesto of Hope III →

Capitalism, Debates, Everyday Life, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

The Virus, the Muslim and the Migrant: Part I – Comvid 14

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PART I OF A THREE PART POST

The term Comvid 14 is gratefully borrowed from Tony Joseph who defined it in a Facebook post as Communalvirus (Comvid 2014), the incubation period for which could be as long as six to seven years. Over fifty percent of infected people remain asymptomatic carriers, the rest going into paroxysms of hate and violence, many also gravitating towards TV newsrooms, according to him.

Suffocating mythologies produced by Hindu supremacism blanket India today.

So first of all, a loud, ringing zindabad to all the courageous journalists, citizen reporters and social media activists whose determined work relentlessly exposes fake news, and counters genocidal journalism in India.

Suchitra Vijayan explains the term “journalism as genocide”:

Rwandan cultural anthropologist Charles Mironko analyzed confessions of a hundred genocide perpetrators. His work confirms the thesis that hate messages in the media had a direct effect on the dehumanization of the population that was subject to persistent slander. Several months of this behavior, in the absence of credible reporting, conditioned the population to hate, and kill.

It is all the dogged fact-checking and on-the-ground reporting that continues to let in the light, through the crack, the crack in everything –  as Leonard Cohen sang; the words that Gautam Navlakha referred to just before he surrendered to the National Investigating Agency, on the orders of the Supreme Court.

This is India today – the violent Hindu Rashtra of Savarkar and Golwalkar’s dreams, under the direct control of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.  And this Hindu Rashtra is built on predatory capitalism – a toxic cocktail, far deadlier than the biological virus that now haunts us.

Just as the pandemic is inflected in its effects differently in different global contexts, the three features of the crisis in India – the virus, the Muslim and the migrant – relate in a way that is specific to ‘here’. The virus has enabled and strengthened predatory capitalism here as it has globally, but it has also reproduced itself through Hindu supremacism, generating two monstrous mutations – Comvid 14 and Coronacapitalism.

And we who will fight and resist both? What of us, how are we to combine, come together, connect to other stories the virus tells us, find our way to other lanes down which it leads us? How will we find and inhabit  those fissures and chinks in which green things can grow, and solidarities, and compassion and hope?

But first, the two monstrous mutations – one in this part, the second in the next. Continue reading The Virus, the Muslim and the Migrant: Part I – Comvid 14 →

Capitalism, Government, Right watch

मज़दूरों के नाम खुला पत्र: #MigrantLivesMatter

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मज़दूरों के नाम खुला पत्र

प्रवासी माइग्रेंट शार्मिक सहयोग (माइग्रेंट वरकर्स सॉलिडैरिटी) :

सरकारों और पूंजीपतियों द्वारा कोरोना महामारी के दौरान लॉक डाउन में फंसे मजदूरों के साथ किए जा रहे अमानवीय, ज़बरजस्ती और दमनात्मक व्यवहार के ख़िलाफ़!

साथियों,

केंद्र सरकार द्वारा 19 अप्रैल को एक मानक संचालन प्रोटोकॉल (एसओपी) आदेश जारी करके राज्यों और केंद्र शासित प्रदेशों में फंसे श्रमिकों के आने जाने को लेकर उठाया गया कदम, श्रमिकों के अधिकारों पर कुठाराघात है।  आइए, हम सब मिलकर पूंजीपतियों और सरकरो के खिलाफ जो कोविड -19 महामारी के बहाने मज़दूरों का और ज्यादा शोषण करना चाहते हैं, का मिलकर प्रतिवाद करे ।

सरकार द्वारा जारी यह आदेश किस बारे में है? 19 अप्रैल को गृह मंत्रालय द्वारा जारी इस सर्कुलर के मुताबिक़ फैक्ट्रियों में उत्पादन जारी रखने के लिए, जो श्रमिक जहां है उसको उस राज्य में कहीं भी ले जाया जा सकता है। लेकिन मजदूरों को अपने घर वापस जाने की इजाजत नहीं है। इस आदेश का सीधा मतलब है कि हम मज़दूरों के पास सरकार के आदेशों का पालन करने के अलावा कोई चारा नहीं है। लेकिन पिछले अनुभव बताते हैं कि स्थानीय प्रशासन और पुलिस की मिलीभगत से मज़दूरों को जबरदस्ती काम करने के लिए मजबूर किया जाएगा। पहले से ही इस तरह की खबरें सामने आनी शुरू हो गई हैं। ऐसे में, क्या यह कहना गलत नहीं होगा कि भारत में कोरोना महामारी से निपटने के बहाने बंधुआ मजदूरी लागू करने की कोशिश की जा रही है? Continue reading मज़दूरों के नाम खुला पत्र: #MigrantLivesMatter →

Capitalism, Politics, Right watch

Coercive Measures of Governments and Capitalists against Stranded Migrant Labour – Open letter to workers: Migrant Lives Matter campaign

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Migrant Workers Solidarity is a network for the rights of India’s migrant workers, presently engaged in providing relief and related updates to workers stranded in COVID-19 lockdown.

Comrades and Friends,

The steps taken by the Central Government on the movement of stranded labour within the states and union territories by issuing a Standard Operating Protocol (SOP) is a death knell for the rights of workers. Let us unite against those taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to trap us workers more than ever before.

What is the circular about? This circular issued by the MHA on April 19 is making it legitimate that workers can be moved around within the state we are in for the production of the maaliks to continue. We are being told we can’t return to our own states. This circular means that we workers do not have any choice except for abiding by the orders of the government. Experience shows that we will be coerced to work with the maaliks getting the support of the local administration and police. And that coercion has already begun! Would it be wrong to say that the measures being taken against the Covid-19 pandemic is the beginning of slave labour in India? Continue reading Coercive Measures of Governments and Capitalists against Stranded Migrant Labour – Open letter to workers: Migrant Lives Matter campaign →

Government, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Statement by concerned citizens against state crackdown for anti CAA protests

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Statement by concerned citizens against witch-hunting of students and activists for anti CAA protests

The country right now is reeling through a grave crisis as a result of the novel Corona Virus and nearly a month long lock-down. We are all being asked to stay home and stay safe in order to break the chain of the deadly virus. We are shocked to know that in this midst of such a grave situation, the Delhi Police has arrested two students of Jamia Millia Islamia and several activists from localities of North-East Delhi who had participated in peaceful protests against the CAA. Even as we write this, more students and activists are being called for questioning and interrogation by the police on a daily basis.

In a twisted fairy tale that the Delhi Police is trying to weave, these activists are now being implicated in cases related to the communal violence in Delhi that took place in February. A riot in which the minorities suffered the maximum damage, both in terms of lives and livelihoods, has now become a pretext for the Delhi Police to further witch-hunt activists, most of whom also come from the minority community. Continue reading Statement by concerned citizens against state crackdown for anti CAA protests →

Culture, Debates, Education, Genders, Language

NLU Jodhpur alumni and students protest homophobic teaching materials

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Current VI semester undergraduate students of the University pursuing the ‘Sociology – III Law and Society’ course, at the National Law University Jodhpur were sent outright homophobic content purportedly as essential reading (details of the readings are in the letter below). The material presented outdated notions of homosexuality. When the faculty member was challenged via email by a student, she said she had shared it to encourage debate and present one side of the prevailing views on homosexuality. However, the material was sent without providing any such context. The faculty committed that she would be sending updated material presenting sociological developments on the subject in the coming few days. However, instead of doing so, she delegated her responsibility to the student who had written to her, a move that can only be interpreted as reprisal.

The interim student body wrote to the Vice Chancellor on the issue. 150 alumni members also wrote to the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and General Council of NLU-J asking for disciplinary action against the faculty member, an external resource person to teach the subject, and review of the course curriculum.

This is the letter

Dear Dr. Saxena and Members of the General Council,

We, the undersigned alumni of National Law University, Jodhpur, much to our consternation, have learnt that current VI semester undergraduate students of the University pursuing the ‘Sociology – III Law and Society’ course were sent outright homophobic content purportedly as essential reading by Dr. Asha Bhandari, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Member, Academic Council, on April 11, 2020. On a perusal of the content, it is evident that the material sent by Dr. Bhandari is unscientific, uncritical, based on outdated notions of homosexuality, perpetuates dangerous stereotypes, and legitimizes prejudice against the LGBTIQ community. As you would all agree, this is unacceptable in any institute of learning, much less in one that prides itself on being a premier national law school.

Continue reading NLU Jodhpur alumni and students protest homophobic teaching materials →

Capitalism, Debates, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Agony of COVID-19 and the Lockdown – Who is Afraid of ‘Class’? Maya John

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Guest post by MAYA JOHN

This essay is the second part of a two-part series on Society in the Time of Covid 19. The first part appeared in Kafila on 5 April and can be read here.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas…Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845)

The Bolshevik slogans and ideas on the whole have been confirmed by history; but concretely things have worked out differently; they are more original, more peculiar, more variated than anyone could have expected. – V.I. Lenin, Letters on Tactics (1918)

रहिमन विपदा हू भली, जो थोरे दिन होय /  हित अनहित या जगत में, जान परत सब कोय

Crisis of a few days is better/ For it reveals who is friend and who is foe. – Khanzada Mirza Khan Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana, ‘Rahim’      (1556 – 1627)

Looking at what transpires each day of this epidemic coupled with lock-down, people appear to be plucked out of heterogeneous circumstances and placed in the homogenous time of “Corona”, putting all things in abeyance. The battered housewife whose alcoholic husband grows restless with every day; mourning relatives who’ve lost a loved one and struggle to make it to the last rites; the live-in ‘maids’ whose workday begins at the crack of dawn; the municipal worker who continues to de-clog our sewer lines to prevent the chance of reverse flow in our commodes; the young, newly-wed construction worker who’s anxious about his wife in the village; the tired nurse who fears she’s contracted the wretched infection; among many other circumstances of life are part of this moment, the epidemic-cum-lock-down. The coupling of epidemic and lock-down has created confusion for some people in terms of which of the two is deadlier. For many this is an unprecedented, exceptional time. But for others this moment is not new but rather a repetition of the similar course of life, with the addition of just another fear. Many are puzzled by how, among all the life-threatening contagious diseases and illnesses in circulation, “Corona” gained prominence.

Continue reading Agony of COVID-19 and the Lockdown – Who is Afraid of ‘Class’? Maya John →

Culture, Debates, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Brutalising Labourers, Jailing Dissidents

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A medical emergency is no pretext to impose a political emergency.

A medical emergency

How many policemen in civil clothes are required to deliver a mere summons to an editor of a web journal 700-k away in an age of email and WhatsApp? The recent action of the Uttar Pradesh police, where it sent a posse of 7-8 policemen, in civil clothes, in a black SUV with no number plates, to Siddharth Varadarajan’s residence in Delhi to deliver a summons has prompted this question.

Definitely the police did not bother to ponder over how Varadarajan, editor of The Wire, will present himself to the authorities during a lockdown which has brought trains, flights and even private transport to a standstill.

The manner in which the issue has unfolded has caused an international uproar with 3,500 jurists, scholars, actors, artists and writers condemning Uttar Pradesh Police’s actions against The Wire, and saying that a “medical emergency should not serve as the pretext for the imposition of a de facto political emergency.”

How Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s government will respond remains to be seen, but the story in The Wire on the Tablighi Jamaat, which also noted that “Indian believers” responded late to the viral epidemic obviously provoked the powers-that-be into action. The episode has brought into sharp focus the priorities of the government during the epidemic, which it is supposedly fighting a “war” against.

( Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/Brutalising-Labourers-Jailing-dissidents)

DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE