Tag Archives: Shaheen Bagh

Democracy, Education, Everyday Life, Government, Movements, Politics, Right watch

When Vermin Stare Back – Cockroach Janta Party and the Possibility of Reversal: Viraj Kafle

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This is a guest post by VIRAJ  KAFLE

For years, a particular grammar was offered to the young.

It taught them to recognise an internal enemy — Muslims, left activists, social justice advocates, critics of the regime — and to treat their presence as contamination by measuring them against a narrow standard of productivity and usefulness. This grammar operated by sorting populations according to their perceived contribution to a narrowly defined productive order. It marked as contaminants those bodies and capacities that appeared to drain resources, require adjustments, or fail to generate efficient returns.

What was once directed primarily at designated communities has now begun to expand. Continue reading When Vermin Stare Back – Cockroach Janta Party and the Possibility of Reversal: Viraj Kafle →

Culture, Debates, Democracy, Politics, Right watch

Fascinating Hindutva Lite

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After the ascent of Hindutva Supremacists at the Centre, avowedly secular parties also seem to be falling prey to it under mass pressure for short-term electoral gains.

Politics is a strange beast.

It looks incredulous how at times it helps Satans being metamorphosed into Saints and biggest murderers of hapless communities emerging as the defenders or ‘heartthrobs’ of their ‘own people.’

Perhaps it is a sign of this weirdness that Donald Trump’s vitriolic speeches targeting Haitian immigrants – that they eat pets — have not appeared incredulous to a large section of the US population, which is 79% literate, as the records show. Finally, Haitian groups themselves had to approach the courts to expose “racial animus against Haitian immigrants” over the years.

Interestingly, while the strongest democracy in the world is in the midst of a manufactured controversy around pets, the biggest democracy in the world, is witnessing another fabricated controversy around Laddoo – a spherical sweet from the Indian subcontinent — thanks to the intervention of what can be called as ‘new converts’ to Hindutva Lite politics. ( Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/fascination-hindutva-lite-among-opposition-parties)

Capitalism, Centre watch, Culture, Debates, Politics, Religion, Right watch

Unpacking Religious Nationalism

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Review of ‘Religious Nationalism – Social Perceptions and Violence : Sectarianism on Political Chessboard‘- Ram Puniyani (Media House 2020)

“Blatant dictatorship – in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule – has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by different means.

Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves.”

(How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt)

The contrast had never been so sharper.

Continue reading Unpacking Religious Nationalism →
Everyday Life, Government, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

The Violence in Delhi, Politics and ‘Heroism of the Ordinary’

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What is there to say? What can one say that has not already been said umpteen times before – during earlier rounds of communal violence elsewhere – and in Delhi this time?

The political class, true to its character, has revealed as it has so many times in the past, that when it comes to matters like communal violence, it is simply paralyzed – perhaps with the exception of the Left in states where it was strong enough to impact things.  For all its failures in other respects, this was one where the Bengal Left, for instance, too had in the past shown great promptness in nipping such possibilities in the bud. Most often this was done, not by relying only on the administrative power of the state, but with  the entire party machinery moving into action. Kerala too has had a similar record. But those instances apart, especially in states of the Northern or Western India, there hasn’t been much to write home about. What entering the political domain does to you is illustrated so starkly by the fate of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its utter capitulation to what it imagines to be the ‘Hindu sentiment’.

Continue reading The Violence in Delhi, Politics and ‘Heroism of the Ordinary’ →

Culture, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Delhi Elections and the Difficult Terrain of Antifascist Struggle

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

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

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