The Hindu
August 01, 2009
Ensure that no place of worship is built on roads, court tells Centre
Legal Correspondent
File affidavit on the steps taken, Bench tells Centre
We will take up the issue with States,
says Solicitor-General
“If there is any violation, officials must be held responsible and punished”
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre to take up with the State governments and ensure that there was no unauthorised construction of temples, churches, mosques and gurdwaras on public streets/public places.
A Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Mukundakam Sharma asked Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam to file an affidavit on the steps taken in this regard by the Centre and posted the matter for further hearing to September 29.
The Bench was hearing an appeal filed by the Centre against a May 2006 Gujarat High Court order that directed all municipal corporations in the State to demolish places of religious worship causing obstruction on roads and other places. The Centre had then intervened when the situation in Vadodara and other cities in Gujarat became tense after violence and the Army staged a flag march in the riot-affected areas.
During the resumed hearing on Friday, Mr. Justice Bhandari told the Solicitor-General that a larger question was raised in this matter. He said: “As far as the existing religious places are concerned, we can understand that demolition or removing them may create some law and order problem. But why don’t you consider preventing such constructions in future across the country?”
Consensus of States
Mr. Subramaniam said: “The entire matter is being looked into at the highest level. It requires the consensus of all the States. We will certainly take it up with the States and try to bring about a consensus.”
Mr. Justice Bhandari said: “Ensure that no temple, church, mosque or gurdwara is constructed in public streets/public places. If there is any violation, you hold the officials responsible and they must be punished for their lapse.”
The Bench granted time with a direction to the Centre to file an affidavit on this issue.
The Centre, in its appeal, said it was concerned about the safety of the citizens and the law and order situation. The order was passed without even conducting a prima facie examination of the veracity of the contents of a newspaper report and without any pleadings on record. Temples or mosques, demolitions would have major fallout on communal harmony. The unauthorised constructions could be removed without offending the sensitivities of any group.
Intrinsically sensitive
The Centre made it clear that it was not justifying the existence of unauthorised constructions, more so if they were encroachments on public land.
However, the removal of religious places was intrinsically sensitive, and must be subjected to scrutiny and classification before demolition.
The Centre maintained that it was only interested in ensuring that the law and order situation in Gujarat did not go out of hand.
|
July 31, 2009
Will the Malegaon blast case accused get way with murder?
The Hindu
August 01, 2009
Court scraps MCOCA in Malegaon case
Staff Reporter
Anti-Terrorism Squad has obtained a stay on the order
Mumbai: In a major blow to the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) court on Friday revoked the application of MCOCA in the Malegaon blast case of September 29, 2008.
However, the ATS has obtained a stay on the order, ATS chief K.P. Raghuvanshi told The Hindu. “We have obtained a stay of four weeks. We are going to challenge the order in the High Court,” he said.
The operative part of the order states that the case will be transferred to the sessions court (in Nashik), Mr. Raghuvanshi said.
Advocate Shrikant Shivade who represents the alleged mastermind Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit told The Hindu that all the 11 accused in the case have been discharged from MCOCA.
“If the court comes to the conclusion that MCOCA is not applicable, then all the accused can be discharged even if they have not applied for bail,” Mr. Shivade said.
He said the court’s order was in response to two bail petitions of accused Purohit and Ajay Rahirkar.
MCOCA was applied in the case on the basis of two charge sheets against Rakesh Dattaram Dhawde, for his involvement in the Nanded and Parbhani blasts.
At the time of taking cognisance of the charges under MCOCA, Mr. Shivade had held that the two charge sheets were filed after the Malegaon blast.
Secondly, cognisance on one of the charge sheets was taken after the application of MCOCA in the Malegaon case on November 20, 2008.
The prosecution had refuted this argument.
August 01, 2009
Court scraps MCOCA in Malegaon case
Staff Reporter
Anti-Terrorism Squad has obtained a stay on the order
Mumbai: In a major blow to the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) court on Friday revoked the application of MCOCA in the Malegaon blast case of September 29, 2008.
However, the ATS has obtained a stay on the order, ATS chief K.P. Raghuvanshi told The Hindu. “We have obtained a stay of four weeks. We are going to challenge the order in the High Court,” he said.
The operative part of the order states that the case will be transferred to the sessions court (in Nashik), Mr. Raghuvanshi said.
Advocate Shrikant Shivade who represents the alleged mastermind Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit told The Hindu that all the 11 accused in the case have been discharged from MCOCA.
“If the court comes to the conclusion that MCOCA is not applicable, then all the accused can be discharged even if they have not applied for bail,” Mr. Shivade said.
He said the court’s order was in response to two bail petitions of accused Purohit and Ajay Rahirkar.
MCOCA was applied in the case on the basis of two charge sheets against Rakesh Dattaram Dhawde, for his involvement in the Nanded and Parbhani blasts.
At the time of taking cognisance of the charges under MCOCA, Mr. Shivade had held that the two charge sheets were filed after the Malegaon blast.
Secondly, cognisance on one of the charge sheets was taken after the application of MCOCA in the Malegaon case on November 20, 2008.
The prosecution had refuted this argument.
A Book Interview on Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present
Violent Gods
A ZNet Book Interview
July 31, 2009 By Angana Chatterji
A Book Interview on Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present; Narratives from Orissa
Can you tell ZNet, please, what your new book, "Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present; Narratives from Orissa" is about? What is it trying to communicate?
‘Violent Gods'is an exploration of Hindu nationalism in India today. It details the mobilization of Hindu militant organizations as an authoritarian movement manifest throughout culture, polity, state, and economy, in religion and law, and class and caste, on gender, body, land, and memory... across the nation. The book explores that ways in which Hindu cultural dominance is manufacturing India, an emergent empire, as a ‘Hindu-secular'/Hindu majoritarian state.
As a woman of postcolonial India, of Hindu descent, ‘mixed' caste heritage, the book is a journey in speaking with history. In freeing itself from British dominion in 1947, the Indian nation was shaped, in great part, by the will of the Hindu majority. Hindu cultural dominance has substantially defined what constitutes the ‘secular' and ‘democratic' in India today. Accountability demands that those of us with privilege in relation to ‘nation' speak up, intervene. Telling a story of Hindu dominance in India is an intervention, ‘telling' is a call to action.
Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the content come from? What went into making the book what it is?
This book maps what I have witnessed -- the architecture of civic and despotic governmentality contouring Hindu majoritarianism and nationalism in public, domestic, and everyday life. It chronicles the sustained and unchecked violences against minority Christian and Muslim communities, Adivasis (tribals) and Dalits (former ‘untouchable' groups), and women, as well as sexual identity groups and children.
The book is a genealogical exploration of Hindu nationalism in India, with an ethnographic focus on Orissa, in eastern India, where Hindu nationalism's terror has been prevalent since the 1990s, and where planned riots against minority peoples were carried out in 2007 and 2008. The research was conducted between 2002-2008 in urban and rural settings across Orissa in 66 villages, 11 towns, and four cities. The book records spectacles, events, public executions, the riots in Kandhamal of December 2007 and August-September 2008, as we witness the planned, methodical politics of terror unfold in its multiple registers.
In writing the book, I have made eighteen research trips to Orissa, and engaged in advocacy work on the issue. In 2005-2006, I convened the Orissa People's Tribunal on Communalism, which was targeted, and its women members threatened with violence, by Hindu militant groups. See Human Rights Watch:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/07/12/does-rss-have-any-moral-standards
The book is situated at the intersections of Anthropology, Postcolonial, Subaltern, and South Asia Studies, and asks questions of nation making, cultural nationalism, and subaltern disenfranchisement. As a Foucauldian history of the present, this text asserts the role of ethical knowledge production as counter-memory. Through situated reflection, experimental storytelling, and ethnographic accounts, it excavates Hindutva/Hindu supremacist proliferations in manufacturing imaginative and identitarian agency for violent nationalism.
What are your hopes for "Violent Gods"? What do you hope it will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?
At the release of the book in Orissa in April 2009, I was asked if the book would provide solutions for undoing Hindu militancy and dominance in India. Books, if we are so fortunate, complicate matters further. I remain hopeful that "Violent Gods" will energize discussion, debate, contemplation about India's present and future, the role and violence of majoritarian states and groups globally, about privilege and subalternity, security, rights, and entitlements, about freedom and dissent. I remain hopeful that the many and powerful subaltern voices and narratives in the text will compel reflection.
The learning and advocacy that led to the book has engulfed and motivated me since 2002, and facilitated shifts in my thinking, empowered me to act, to take risks as an intellectual and activist. And, for people with prolific courage that supported its writing, with their stories, their lives, at risk of reprisal -- I am grateful.
In India, we witnessed the ethnic cleansing of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in 1984, genocidal violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, calculated and sustained brutality against Christians in Orissa in 2007 and 2008, and the continued subjugation of Indian-administered Kashmir. On and on... We need to think, act, change. NOW.
"Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present" by Angana P. Chatterji, from Three Essays Collective, released March 2009. More information at:
http://www.threeessays.com/titles.php?id=40
To look inside the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Violent-Gods-Nationalism-PresentNarratives/dp/8188789453/ref=ed_oe_h
A ZNet Book Interview
July 31, 2009 By Angana Chatterji
A Book Interview on Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present; Narratives from Orissa
Can you tell ZNet, please, what your new book, "Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present; Narratives from Orissa" is about? What is it trying to communicate?
‘Violent Gods'is an exploration of Hindu nationalism in India today. It details the mobilization of Hindu militant organizations as an authoritarian movement manifest throughout culture, polity, state, and economy, in religion and law, and class and caste, on gender, body, land, and memory... across the nation. The book explores that ways in which Hindu cultural dominance is manufacturing India, an emergent empire, as a ‘Hindu-secular'/Hindu majoritarian state.
As a woman of postcolonial India, of Hindu descent, ‘mixed' caste heritage, the book is a journey in speaking with history. In freeing itself from British dominion in 1947, the Indian nation was shaped, in great part, by the will of the Hindu majority. Hindu cultural dominance has substantially defined what constitutes the ‘secular' and ‘democratic' in India today. Accountability demands that those of us with privilege in relation to ‘nation' speak up, intervene. Telling a story of Hindu dominance in India is an intervention, ‘telling' is a call to action.
Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the content come from? What went into making the book what it is?
This book maps what I have witnessed -- the architecture of civic and despotic governmentality contouring Hindu majoritarianism and nationalism in public, domestic, and everyday life. It chronicles the sustained and unchecked violences against minority Christian and Muslim communities, Adivasis (tribals) and Dalits (former ‘untouchable' groups), and women, as well as sexual identity groups and children.
The book is a genealogical exploration of Hindu nationalism in India, with an ethnographic focus on Orissa, in eastern India, where Hindu nationalism's terror has been prevalent since the 1990s, and where planned riots against minority peoples were carried out in 2007 and 2008. The research was conducted between 2002-2008 in urban and rural settings across Orissa in 66 villages, 11 towns, and four cities. The book records spectacles, events, public executions, the riots in Kandhamal of December 2007 and August-September 2008, as we witness the planned, methodical politics of terror unfold in its multiple registers.
In writing the book, I have made eighteen research trips to Orissa, and engaged in advocacy work on the issue. In 2005-2006, I convened the Orissa People's Tribunal on Communalism, which was targeted, and its women members threatened with violence, by Hindu militant groups. See Human Rights Watch:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/07/12/does-rss-have-any-moral-standards
The book is situated at the intersections of Anthropology, Postcolonial, Subaltern, and South Asia Studies, and asks questions of nation making, cultural nationalism, and subaltern disenfranchisement. As a Foucauldian history of the present, this text asserts the role of ethical knowledge production as counter-memory. Through situated reflection, experimental storytelling, and ethnographic accounts, it excavates Hindutva/Hindu supremacist proliferations in manufacturing imaginative and identitarian agency for violent nationalism.
What are your hopes for "Violent Gods"? What do you hope it will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?
At the release of the book in Orissa in April 2009, I was asked if the book would provide solutions for undoing Hindu militancy and dominance in India. Books, if we are so fortunate, complicate matters further. I remain hopeful that "Violent Gods" will energize discussion, debate, contemplation about India's present and future, the role and violence of majoritarian states and groups globally, about privilege and subalternity, security, rights, and entitlements, about freedom and dissent. I remain hopeful that the many and powerful subaltern voices and narratives in the text will compel reflection.
The learning and advocacy that led to the book has engulfed and motivated me since 2002, and facilitated shifts in my thinking, empowered me to act, to take risks as an intellectual and activist. And, for people with prolific courage that supported its writing, with their stories, their lives, at risk of reprisal -- I am grateful.
In India, we witnessed the ethnic cleansing of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in 1984, genocidal violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, calculated and sustained brutality against Christians in Orissa in 2007 and 2008, and the continued subjugation of Indian-administered Kashmir. On and on... We need to think, act, change. NOW.
"Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present" by Angana P. Chatterji, from Three Essays Collective, released March 2009. More information at:
http://www.threeessays.com/titles.php?id=40
To look inside the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Violent-Gods-Nationalism-PresentNarratives/dp/8188789453/ref=ed_oe_h
July 29, 2009
Report on Andhra court order "that the state cannot fund any pilgrimages"
The Times of India
State can’t fund pilgrimages: High Court
TNN 23 July 2009, 04:38am IST
HYDERABAD: Just two months before the Haj season is to begin, a verdict of the AP High Court on Wednesday, which held that the state cannot fund
any pilgrimages, sent the YSR government into a tizzy.
Responding to two PILs challenging the government’s order allocating Rs 2 crore for Christians to undertake a pilgrimage to holy sites including Jerusalem, the division bench comprising Chief Justice Anil Ramesh Dave and Justice Ramesh Ranganathan set aside the GO No 29 issued on July 21, 2008. While petitioners Satish Agarwal and G Raghava Reddy wanted the GO to be quashed on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, the second PIL wanted similar facilities to be extended to Hindus going on a pilgrimage to Mansarovar, etc.
The bench, however, made it clear that though the petitioners questioned only the state sponsorship of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, their order was not limited to it. “Our order covers every religion. We will not allow the tax-payers money to be spent on such activities,” the Bench ruled.
Legal sources told TOI that this order would jeopardise AP’s Haj plans. In fact, after the Bench gave its verdict, additional advocate general A Satya Prasad had submitted to the court that Haj falls within the purview of the Haj Committee Act 2002, which is a central Act. “Hence, the court cannot pass an order without hearing the Centre on the issue,” he said. However, the Bench said it would consider this matter during further hearings.
For this year’s Haj, the state has been allotted a quota of 6,222 pilgrims with another 150 on the waiting list. Some lawyers were of the view that the HC order would not affect the Haj. “The subsidy given for the pilgrimage to Mecca is a central subject and therefore it cannot be affected,” said Shafeeq Rahman Mahajir, a lawyer specialising on minority issues. The Centre spends about Rs 400 crore every year on pilgrims going on Haj from India.
But, state government legal sources said the HC order had wider ramifications. “While the state does not directly fund the Haj as such, it shortlists the pilgrims every year, and looks after all their arrangements including their boarding and lodging at the Haj House in Hyderabad. The state spends up to Rs 50 lakh every year in providing these facilities. Now, as per the HC order, we will not be able to do it,” said sources.
Realising the gravity of the issue, the government sought a written copy of the order by Wednesday evening itself so that it can mull further action, including going in for an immediate appeal in the Supreme Court. “However, the court informed us that the order will be ready only by tomorrow evening or the day after,” Satya Prasad said.
State can’t fund pilgrimages: High Court
TNN 23 July 2009, 04:38am IST
HYDERABAD: Just two months before the Haj season is to begin, a verdict of the AP High Court on Wednesday, which held that the state cannot fund
any pilgrimages, sent the YSR government into a tizzy.
Responding to two PILs challenging the government’s order allocating Rs 2 crore for Christians to undertake a pilgrimage to holy sites including Jerusalem, the division bench comprising Chief Justice Anil Ramesh Dave and Justice Ramesh Ranganathan set aside the GO No 29 issued on July 21, 2008. While petitioners Satish Agarwal and G Raghava Reddy wanted the GO to be quashed on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, the second PIL wanted similar facilities to be extended to Hindus going on a pilgrimage to Mansarovar, etc.
The bench, however, made it clear that though the petitioners questioned only the state sponsorship of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, their order was not limited to it. “Our order covers every religion. We will not allow the tax-payers money to be spent on such activities,” the Bench ruled.
Legal sources told TOI that this order would jeopardise AP’s Haj plans. In fact, after the Bench gave its verdict, additional advocate general A Satya Prasad had submitted to the court that Haj falls within the purview of the Haj Committee Act 2002, which is a central Act. “Hence, the court cannot pass an order without hearing the Centre on the issue,” he said. However, the Bench said it would consider this matter during further hearings.
For this year’s Haj, the state has been allotted a quota of 6,222 pilgrims with another 150 on the waiting list. Some lawyers were of the view that the HC order would not affect the Haj. “The subsidy given for the pilgrimage to Mecca is a central subject and therefore it cannot be affected,” said Shafeeq Rahman Mahajir, a lawyer specialising on minority issues. The Centre spends about Rs 400 crore every year on pilgrims going on Haj from India.
But, state government legal sources said the HC order had wider ramifications. “While the state does not directly fund the Haj as such, it shortlists the pilgrims every year, and looks after all their arrangements including their boarding and lodging at the Haj House in Hyderabad. The state spends up to Rs 50 lakh every year in providing these facilities. Now, as per the HC order, we will not be able to do it,” said sources.
Realising the gravity of the issue, the government sought a written copy of the order by Wednesday evening itself so that it can mull further action, including going in for an immediate appeal in the Supreme Court. “However, the court informed us that the order will be ready only by tomorrow evening or the day after,” Satya Prasad said.
Religious and 'culture' policing of anything on film and TV continues
The Times of India
Saif tenders apology for trimmed beard in Love Aaj Kal
PTI 29 July 2009
read more
http://tt.ly/1N
Saif tenders apology for trimmed beard in Love Aaj Kal
PTI 29 July 2009
read more
http://tt.ly/1N
Allahabad High Court calls to investigate missing files relating to the Ayodhya dispute
Frontline, Volume 26 - Issue 16 :: Aug. 01-14, 2009
AYODHYA
Missing links
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
in Lucknow and New Delhi
The Allahabad High Court directs the CBI to look into the case of 23 missing files relating to the Ayodhya dispute.
SUBIR ROY
Bir Bahn Sadh, 93, and wife Kanchan, 84, with a photograph of their son Subhash Bahn Sadh at their residence in Lucknow. There are contradictory claims about Subhash Sadh’s death.
THE history of the Babri Masjid-Sri Ramajanmabhoomi dispute is replete with legal cases and governmental inquiries. Many of these cases and inquiries have exposed the awful goings-on in the name of faith. Yet another chapter has been added to this sordid saga with the July 15 order of the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow Bench directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to look into the case of 23 missing files relating to the Babri Masjid-Sri Ramajanmabhoomi dispute.
The court has asked the CBI to complete the investigation in two months and file an interim report on August 24. It also stated that the agency could register fresh cases on the subject if found necessary. If the developments relating to the missing files are anything to go by, the CBI will have to implement the latter directive vigorously, for they involve the alleged murder of a government official, accusations regarding conspiracies to prevent important facts from coming to the notice of the judiciary, and, of course, culpable political and bureaucratic apathy.
The story of the missing files broke rather dramatically in the Lucknow Bench on July 7 when Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary Atul Kumar Gupta submitted a letter from Home Secretary Javed Ahmed, which stated that 23 listed files relating to the Sri Ramajanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid had been missing from the Home Department. “The files are to be seen in the registry, but are not physically available,” the letter said.
It further stated that the files were last taken by Subhash Bahn Sadh, an Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Communalism Control Cell of the State Home Department, who died in an “accident” nine years ago. Sadh was injured in an “accident”, which happened at New Delhi’s Tilak Bridge railway station on May 1, 2000, and died the next day at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in the city. The OSD had apparently taken the files or their copies to present them before the Justice Liberhan Commission, which had called for copies of all files pertaining to the Ayodhya dispute.
The Liberhan Commission submitted its final report on June 30, 2009, nearly 17 years after it was formed and seven days prior to the Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary’s dramatic revelation in the High Court. According to the records of the Delhi Police, which inquired into Sadh’s fatal “accident”, the officer had slipped from the train, fallen on the tracks, bled profusely and died on May 2, 2000.
But there are contradictory perceptions about the accident and Sadh’s journey to Delhi. In fact, the versions of senior Home Ministry officials of the State in 2000 and at present are at variance with each other. If one were to go by the letter submitted by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary on July 7 to the High Court, Sadh must have taken the original files with him. But according to a statement given by K.B. Aggarwal, Special Secretary in the Uttar Pradesh Home Department, to the Delhi Police on July 6, 2000, there were no orders to Sadh to carry any files to Delhi.
In fact, Aggarwal is quoted in an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court by T.N. Mohan, Deputy Commissioner at the Delhi Police Headquarters in 2000. Mohan’s affidavit says that the search memo of Sadh after the accident did not record the recovery of any files or documents, either in original or in the form of a photocopy.
The search memo records the recovery of some papers such as visiting cards and tickets. A.L. Verma, the Secretary to the Justice Liberhan Commission, is also on record as saying to the team of the Delhi Police that inquired into the “accident” that Sadh had not been specifically summoned to present any files. V.K. Mittal, Principal Secretary (Home) in 2000 and currently Vice-Chancellor of Bundelkhand University, told Frontline that he was in Delhi when the “accident” took place and that he had visited Sadh in hospital. Mittal said that he had been informed at that time that if Sadh was carrying original files, “the photocopies would be in our possession, and that if he was carrying photocopies, then the originals would be with us”. But the present contention of the Uttar Pradesh Home Department is that the files have gone missing following Sadh’s death.
According to Anupam Gupta, who was counsel for the Commission between 1999 and 2007, Justice Liberhan had repeatedly asked, in many of the Commission’s sessions, for all files pertaining to the Ayodhya dispute. A number of officials in the Uttar Pradesh Home Department (who did not wish to be identified) told Frontline that Sadh was a kind of coordinator between the Commission and the State government and he used to be present at almost all the sittings of the Commission.
They also maintain that Sadh could have chosen to respond to Justice Liberhan’s repeated demands for files by taking a few along with him on that fatal trip.
GLITCHES IN THE STORY
There are glitches in the story even if one were to accept the above contention. According to Sadh’s father, Bir Bahn Sadh, his son was carrying a small bag that could hardly contain two or three files apart from his clothes and other essentials for the trip. “I had seen him as he was packing for that fateful trip. There was no question of my son carrying as many as 23 files in that bag,” the 93-year-old, ailing Bir Bahn Sadh told Frontline emphatically. He is convinced that his son was murdered as part of a well-laid-out conspiracy and the files went missing as part of the same operation. “I travelled through the night from Lucknow on May 1, 2000, and reached Delhi on May 2. When I visited my son in the hospital, he was conscious and told me that he had signed the no-objection papers for surgery himself. Even then the Delhi Police did not take any statement from my son. This omission too was certainly part of a conspiracy,” said Bir Bahn Sadh.
Bir Bahn Sadh does not mince words while pointing out those whom he suspects as the brains behind the conspiracy: “The governments in Uttar Pradesh and at the Centre in 2000 were run by the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] and it is the leadership of that party which is behind the conspiracy.”
AFP
In New Delhi on June 30, Justice M.S. Liberhan submits the Commission Report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as Home Minister P. Chidambaram looks on. The report came nearly 17 years after the Commission was formed.
Lalji Tandon, veteran BJP leader and Lok Sabha member from Lucknow, responded to Bir Bahn Sadh’s statement as one that attempts to politicise a human tragedy. “It is not fair to bring in such dimensions to a case of this nature,” he told Frontline. He also pointed out that Bir Bahn Sadh’s claim of a conspiracy behind his son’s “accidental death” had been scrutinised by an appropriate judicial authority and put aside as baseless.
Tandon’s reference, obviously, was to the petition that Bir Bahn Sadh had moved in the Delhi High Court in June 2000, stating that his son had been pushed out from a running train as it slowed down at the Tilak Bridge station. The High Court directed the Delhi Police to investigate Sadh’s death and file a report by August 22, 2000. According to Sadh’s advocate Randhir Jain, the reinvestigation report was never filed by the Delhi Police. Jain told Frontline that he persisted with his appeal to the judiciary, and the High Court directed once again, in January 2002, that the CID should reinvestigate the case.
“In a larger conspiracy involving various agencies starting from the police to the Uttar Pradesh government, the murder of a valuable officer and a good friend of mine remains wrapped under layers of untruth. And the media play ball with them without making even a half-hearted attempt to unravel the massive cover-up,” Jain told Frontline, hardly trying to conceal his emotions.
According to Jain, the police investigation was haphazard and casual. “They said that Sadh fell from the train. But not a single fellow passenger was questioned. The accident story was based on the statement of a vendor who apparently saw Sadh falling from the train, but again this too is not corroborated by a sufficient number of other witnesses. None of the officials that Sadh was supposed to meet on his official trip was questioned by the police,” Jain pointed out.
He is not at all hopeful that the present, renewed attention on Sadh’s case, which has come about on account of the revelation regarding the missing files, will lead to any significant outcome. “Once again, there will be a lot of politicking on the issue. The present Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party [BSP] government would raise some hue and cry against the BJP and try to win back the confidence of the Muslim minorities, but beyond that I cannot see any tangible movement towards the truth,” Jain said.
The intrigues associated with the missing files are not confined to Sadh’s mysterious death and the conflicting perceptions about the documents in his possession. At another level, the missing files story stands out as the epitome of political and governmental apathy. The sequence of events that led to the admission of the Uttar Pradesh government in the High Court about the missing files had been going on for as long as seven years.
The sequence, in fact, started as early as July 11, 2002, when the High Court ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to present files containing certain specific documents demanded by Zafrayab Jilani, counsel for the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC). Jilani had asked for seven specific documents, which included the original of a 1949 telegram reportedly sent by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the Uttar Pradesh administration seeking immediate removal of the Ram Lalla idols that had been forcibly installed in the Babri Masjid.
RANJEET KUMAR
MEMBERS OF THE Muslim United Front staging a dharna demanding that the Liberhan Commission report be made public, in Patna on July 5.
Other documents sought by Jilani included the original of the communication between the District Magistrate of Faizabad and the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh in September and December 1949. The correspondence sought by Jilani apparently also contained a letter from the 1949 Faizabad District Magistrate, K.K. Nair, expressing his inability to remove the idol or to stop the “bhajan-kirtan” undertaken by Hindu sadhus in the precincts of the Babri Masjid.
Now, the letter submitted by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary on July 7 does not state emphatically that the missing files do contain the documents sought to be presented before the High Court. All that it says is that these documents may be in these files. However, the letter of the government to the court does list the broad subject tags of the files. This list indicates that the documents sought by Jilani and ordered to be presented before the court could be in the files. The very first subject tag in the list refers to the “filing of an affidavit in the U.P. Govt in 1951” that the “disputed premises was a mosque and there has never been a temple of Lord Ram at Ayodhya”. The other subject tags in the missing files include the ones referring to “the alleged conspiracy to destroy the Babri Masjid through bomb explosion” as well as the one pertaining to “the acquisition of land in Ayodhya” in 1991 by the Kalyan Singh government.
It is indeed a moot question whether these files would alter the course and the final outcome of the Ayodhya case pending before the judiciary for almost 60 years. According to senior officials in the Home Ministry, who do not wish to come on record, these documents had no bearing on the legal issues pending before the court as they essentially relate to the title deeds of the land and property under dispute.
Talking to Frontline, Jilani, however, countered this argument by pointing out that the official correspondence of the period would facilitate and strengthen the findings that the court may arrive at through the scrutiny of land and building records. “To that extent,” he said, “the documents ordered to be presented to the court have tremendous relevance.”
It remains to be seen how the multiple tracks in the missing files case will develop in the days to come. One thing, however, is certain. The new CBI investigation ordered by the High Court as well as the fresh cases that may be filed as the inquiry progresses will certainly add colour and size to the long judicial history of the Ayodhya dispute, which has remained in the country’s courts since January 16, 1950, when one Gopal Singh Visharad filed a suit before the Faizabad court seeking an injunction to offer prayers inside the Babri Masjid, where the deity of Ram Lalla had been installed. •
AYODHYA
Missing links
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
in Lucknow and New Delhi
The Allahabad High Court directs the CBI to look into the case of 23 missing files relating to the Ayodhya dispute.
SUBIR ROY
Bir Bahn Sadh, 93, and wife Kanchan, 84, with a photograph of their son Subhash Bahn Sadh at their residence in Lucknow. There are contradictory claims about Subhash Sadh’s death.
THE history of the Babri Masjid-Sri Ramajanmabhoomi dispute is replete with legal cases and governmental inquiries. Many of these cases and inquiries have exposed the awful goings-on in the name of faith. Yet another chapter has been added to this sordid saga with the July 15 order of the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow Bench directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to look into the case of 23 missing files relating to the Babri Masjid-Sri Ramajanmabhoomi dispute.
The court has asked the CBI to complete the investigation in two months and file an interim report on August 24. It also stated that the agency could register fresh cases on the subject if found necessary. If the developments relating to the missing files are anything to go by, the CBI will have to implement the latter directive vigorously, for they involve the alleged murder of a government official, accusations regarding conspiracies to prevent important facts from coming to the notice of the judiciary, and, of course, culpable political and bureaucratic apathy.
The story of the missing files broke rather dramatically in the Lucknow Bench on July 7 when Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary Atul Kumar Gupta submitted a letter from Home Secretary Javed Ahmed, which stated that 23 listed files relating to the Sri Ramajanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid had been missing from the Home Department. “The files are to be seen in the registry, but are not physically available,” the letter said.
It further stated that the files were last taken by Subhash Bahn Sadh, an Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Communalism Control Cell of the State Home Department, who died in an “accident” nine years ago. Sadh was injured in an “accident”, which happened at New Delhi’s Tilak Bridge railway station on May 1, 2000, and died the next day at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in the city. The OSD had apparently taken the files or their copies to present them before the Justice Liberhan Commission, which had called for copies of all files pertaining to the Ayodhya dispute.
The Liberhan Commission submitted its final report on June 30, 2009, nearly 17 years after it was formed and seven days prior to the Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary’s dramatic revelation in the High Court. According to the records of the Delhi Police, which inquired into Sadh’s fatal “accident”, the officer had slipped from the train, fallen on the tracks, bled profusely and died on May 2, 2000.
But there are contradictory perceptions about the accident and Sadh’s journey to Delhi. In fact, the versions of senior Home Ministry officials of the State in 2000 and at present are at variance with each other. If one were to go by the letter submitted by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary on July 7 to the High Court, Sadh must have taken the original files with him. But according to a statement given by K.B. Aggarwal, Special Secretary in the Uttar Pradesh Home Department, to the Delhi Police on July 6, 2000, there were no orders to Sadh to carry any files to Delhi.
In fact, Aggarwal is quoted in an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court by T.N. Mohan, Deputy Commissioner at the Delhi Police Headquarters in 2000. Mohan’s affidavit says that the search memo of Sadh after the accident did not record the recovery of any files or documents, either in original or in the form of a photocopy.
The search memo records the recovery of some papers such as visiting cards and tickets. A.L. Verma, the Secretary to the Justice Liberhan Commission, is also on record as saying to the team of the Delhi Police that inquired into the “accident” that Sadh had not been specifically summoned to present any files. V.K. Mittal, Principal Secretary (Home) in 2000 and currently Vice-Chancellor of Bundelkhand University, told Frontline that he was in Delhi when the “accident” took place and that he had visited Sadh in hospital. Mittal said that he had been informed at that time that if Sadh was carrying original files, “the photocopies would be in our possession, and that if he was carrying photocopies, then the originals would be with us”. But the present contention of the Uttar Pradesh Home Department is that the files have gone missing following Sadh’s death.
According to Anupam Gupta, who was counsel for the Commission between 1999 and 2007, Justice Liberhan had repeatedly asked, in many of the Commission’s sessions, for all files pertaining to the Ayodhya dispute. A number of officials in the Uttar Pradesh Home Department (who did not wish to be identified) told Frontline that Sadh was a kind of coordinator between the Commission and the State government and he used to be present at almost all the sittings of the Commission.
They also maintain that Sadh could have chosen to respond to Justice Liberhan’s repeated demands for files by taking a few along with him on that fatal trip.
GLITCHES IN THE STORY
There are glitches in the story even if one were to accept the above contention. According to Sadh’s father, Bir Bahn Sadh, his son was carrying a small bag that could hardly contain two or three files apart from his clothes and other essentials for the trip. “I had seen him as he was packing for that fateful trip. There was no question of my son carrying as many as 23 files in that bag,” the 93-year-old, ailing Bir Bahn Sadh told Frontline emphatically. He is convinced that his son was murdered as part of a well-laid-out conspiracy and the files went missing as part of the same operation. “I travelled through the night from Lucknow on May 1, 2000, and reached Delhi on May 2. When I visited my son in the hospital, he was conscious and told me that he had signed the no-objection papers for surgery himself. Even then the Delhi Police did not take any statement from my son. This omission too was certainly part of a conspiracy,” said Bir Bahn Sadh.
Bir Bahn Sadh does not mince words while pointing out those whom he suspects as the brains behind the conspiracy: “The governments in Uttar Pradesh and at the Centre in 2000 were run by the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] and it is the leadership of that party which is behind the conspiracy.”
AFP
In New Delhi on June 30, Justice M.S. Liberhan submits the Commission Report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as Home Minister P. Chidambaram looks on. The report came nearly 17 years after the Commission was formed.
Lalji Tandon, veteran BJP leader and Lok Sabha member from Lucknow, responded to Bir Bahn Sadh’s statement as one that attempts to politicise a human tragedy. “It is not fair to bring in such dimensions to a case of this nature,” he told Frontline. He also pointed out that Bir Bahn Sadh’s claim of a conspiracy behind his son’s “accidental death” had been scrutinised by an appropriate judicial authority and put aside as baseless.
Tandon’s reference, obviously, was to the petition that Bir Bahn Sadh had moved in the Delhi High Court in June 2000, stating that his son had been pushed out from a running train as it slowed down at the Tilak Bridge station. The High Court directed the Delhi Police to investigate Sadh’s death and file a report by August 22, 2000. According to Sadh’s advocate Randhir Jain, the reinvestigation report was never filed by the Delhi Police. Jain told Frontline that he persisted with his appeal to the judiciary, and the High Court directed once again, in January 2002, that the CID should reinvestigate the case.
“In a larger conspiracy involving various agencies starting from the police to the Uttar Pradesh government, the murder of a valuable officer and a good friend of mine remains wrapped under layers of untruth. And the media play ball with them without making even a half-hearted attempt to unravel the massive cover-up,” Jain told Frontline, hardly trying to conceal his emotions.
According to Jain, the police investigation was haphazard and casual. “They said that Sadh fell from the train. But not a single fellow passenger was questioned. The accident story was based on the statement of a vendor who apparently saw Sadh falling from the train, but again this too is not corroborated by a sufficient number of other witnesses. None of the officials that Sadh was supposed to meet on his official trip was questioned by the police,” Jain pointed out.
He is not at all hopeful that the present, renewed attention on Sadh’s case, which has come about on account of the revelation regarding the missing files, will lead to any significant outcome. “Once again, there will be a lot of politicking on the issue. The present Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party [BSP] government would raise some hue and cry against the BJP and try to win back the confidence of the Muslim minorities, but beyond that I cannot see any tangible movement towards the truth,” Jain said.
The intrigues associated with the missing files are not confined to Sadh’s mysterious death and the conflicting perceptions about the documents in his possession. At another level, the missing files story stands out as the epitome of political and governmental apathy. The sequence of events that led to the admission of the Uttar Pradesh government in the High Court about the missing files had been going on for as long as seven years.
The sequence, in fact, started as early as July 11, 2002, when the High Court ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to present files containing certain specific documents demanded by Zafrayab Jilani, counsel for the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC). Jilani had asked for seven specific documents, which included the original of a 1949 telegram reportedly sent by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the Uttar Pradesh administration seeking immediate removal of the Ram Lalla idols that had been forcibly installed in the Babri Masjid.
RANJEET KUMAR
MEMBERS OF THE Muslim United Front staging a dharna demanding that the Liberhan Commission report be made public, in Patna on July 5.
Other documents sought by Jilani included the original of the communication between the District Magistrate of Faizabad and the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh in September and December 1949. The correspondence sought by Jilani apparently also contained a letter from the 1949 Faizabad District Magistrate, K.K. Nair, expressing his inability to remove the idol or to stop the “bhajan-kirtan” undertaken by Hindu sadhus in the precincts of the Babri Masjid.
Now, the letter submitted by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary on July 7 does not state emphatically that the missing files do contain the documents sought to be presented before the High Court. All that it says is that these documents may be in these files. However, the letter of the government to the court does list the broad subject tags of the files. This list indicates that the documents sought by Jilani and ordered to be presented before the court could be in the files. The very first subject tag in the list refers to the “filing of an affidavit in the U.P. Govt in 1951” that the “disputed premises was a mosque and there has never been a temple of Lord Ram at Ayodhya”. The other subject tags in the missing files include the ones referring to “the alleged conspiracy to destroy the Babri Masjid through bomb explosion” as well as the one pertaining to “the acquisition of land in Ayodhya” in 1991 by the Kalyan Singh government.
It is indeed a moot question whether these files would alter the course and the final outcome of the Ayodhya case pending before the judiciary for almost 60 years. According to senior officials in the Home Ministry, who do not wish to come on record, these documents had no bearing on the legal issues pending before the court as they essentially relate to the title deeds of the land and property under dispute.
Talking to Frontline, Jilani, however, countered this argument by pointing out that the official correspondence of the period would facilitate and strengthen the findings that the court may arrive at through the scrutiny of land and building records. “To that extent,” he said, “the documents ordered to be presented to the court have tremendous relevance.”
It remains to be seen how the multiple tracks in the missing files case will develop in the days to come. One thing, however, is certain. The new CBI investigation ordered by the High Court as well as the fresh cases that may be filed as the inquiry progresses will certainly add colour and size to the long judicial history of the Ayodhya dispute, which has remained in the country’s courts since January 16, 1950, when one Gopal Singh Visharad filed a suit before the Faizabad court seeking an injunction to offer prayers inside the Babri Masjid, where the deity of Ram Lalla had been installed. •
'Lashkar-e-Shivba' Hindutva suicide squads a la Lashkar-e-Taiba
[A 2002 report from The Times of India on 'the formation of 'Laskar-e-Shivba' - Hindu suicide squads moddled on Laskar-e-Toiba should interest readers.]
The Times of India
First suicide squad was set up in Pune 2 years ago
TNN 18 November 2002, 12:59am IST
|
PUNE: Retired lieutenant-colonel Jayant Chitale is not the first Puneite to think of establishing Hindu suicide squads to fight terrorism unleashed by Islamic fundamentalists. The Lashkar-e-Shivba was formed two years ago with similar intentions. It primarily aimed at countering Lashkar-e-Taiba.
While the organisation is in tatters today, its founder and self-proclaimed commander-in-chief Vilas Tupe is bitter about his failed venture. ‘‘My experience of raising Hindu militant squads and sending them to Jammu and Kashmir was so bitter that I would like to forget it,’’ he said, while speaking to The Times of India. A small-time city builder now, Tupe wishes to forewarn Chitale that his attempt is doomed without money and political patronage.
Incidentally, Tupe is know for attempting to attack Osho Rajneesh with a knife in the 1980s. Tupe says he undertook the attack ‘‘because Rajneesh was a CIA agent.’’ Talking about his anti-terrorism venture, he said he was inspired to form his outfit after the attack on innocent Amarnath pilgrims in 2000. ‘‘We decided to reach those places from where bullets were being fired against Hindus and give a befitting reply to the terrorists,’’ he said. While he was planning to counter terrorism in Punjab in a similar manner, then director-general of Punjab police Julieo Ribero had suggested arming villagers and creating Gram Suraksha Dals, Tupe said. ‘‘We went to Punjab, met Ribero and offered ourselves for these Dals.
We even received training for three months at the BSF camps,’’ he claimed. However, the initiative failed as the Union home secretary objected to it, Tupe said. Tupe said after he announced the forming of Lashkar-e-Shivba, he received an overwhelming response from nearly 2,500 youths from Sangli, Satara, Kolhapur and Ahmednagar districts. Of these, 150 were shortlisted and trained after which ‘‘we left for Jammu to visit terrorist-infested districts’’.
The plan, however, was aborted after a month as we had no money or political support. Meanwhile, Lt Col Chitale, who has established the Hindustan Atma Ghatki Pathak (Hindustan suicide squad) said on Thursday that his squad was not specifically a Hindu squad. ‘‘We are forming Hindustan suicide squads and over 10 per cent of our volunteers are Muslim and Christians,’’ he claimed.
The Times of India
First suicide squad was set up in Pune 2 years ago
TNN 18 November 2002, 12:59am IST
|
PUNE: Retired lieutenant-colonel Jayant Chitale is not the first Puneite to think of establishing Hindu suicide squads to fight terrorism unleashed by Islamic fundamentalists. The Lashkar-e-Shivba was formed two years ago with similar intentions. It primarily aimed at countering Lashkar-e-Taiba.
While the organisation is in tatters today, its founder and self-proclaimed commander-in-chief Vilas Tupe is bitter about his failed venture. ‘‘My experience of raising Hindu militant squads and sending them to Jammu and Kashmir was so bitter that I would like to forget it,’’ he said, while speaking to The Times of India. A small-time city builder now, Tupe wishes to forewarn Chitale that his attempt is doomed without money and political patronage.
Incidentally, Tupe is know for attempting to attack Osho Rajneesh with a knife in the 1980s. Tupe says he undertook the attack ‘‘because Rajneesh was a CIA agent.’’ Talking about his anti-terrorism venture, he said he was inspired to form his outfit after the attack on innocent Amarnath pilgrims in 2000. ‘‘We decided to reach those places from where bullets were being fired against Hindus and give a befitting reply to the terrorists,’’ he said. While he was planning to counter terrorism in Punjab in a similar manner, then director-general of Punjab police Julieo Ribero had suggested arming villagers and creating Gram Suraksha Dals, Tupe said. ‘‘We went to Punjab, met Ribero and offered ourselves for these Dals.
We even received training for three months at the BSF camps,’’ he claimed. However, the initiative failed as the Union home secretary objected to it, Tupe said. Tupe said after he announced the forming of Lashkar-e-Shivba, he received an overwhelming response from nearly 2,500 youths from Sangli, Satara, Kolhapur and Ahmednagar districts. Of these, 150 were shortlisted and trained after which ‘‘we left for Jammu to visit terrorist-infested districts’’.
The plan, however, was aborted after a month as we had no money or political support. Meanwhile, Lt Col Chitale, who has established the Hindustan Atma Ghatki Pathak (Hindustan suicide squad) said on Thursday that his squad was not specifically a Hindu squad. ‘‘We are forming Hindustan suicide squads and over 10 per cent of our volunteers are Muslim and Christians,’’ he claimed.
July 28, 2009
Indian Immigrants in the US See Politics through their own racialisation
The Economic and Political Weekly, 25 July 2009
Making Sense of the Second Generation
by Svati P Shah
Second generation Indian immigrants are participating in American politics through the prismatic lens of their own racialisation, and should be understood as political agents through that framework. But one should not deploy this context as a rationale for supporting conservative and fundamentalist groups operating in the US.
http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13744.pdf
Making Sense of the Second Generation
by Svati P Shah
Second generation Indian immigrants are participating in American politics through the prismatic lens of their own racialisation, and should be understood as political agents through that framework. But one should not deploy this context as a rationale for supporting conservative and fundamentalist groups operating in the US.
http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13744.pdf
Save Ancient monuments from encroachment - SAHMAT
[recieved on 28 July 2009]
SAHMAT
29 , Ferozeshah Road , New Delhi -110001
Telephone-2 3070787,23381276
e-mail: sahmat(at)vsnl(dot)com
29.7.2009
Press Statement
We are deeply disturbed by attempts being made by interested quarters to take over several historically important and protected monuments in different parts of the country, in clear violation of The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, on the excuse of offering worship there. Many of the monument are parts of the precious legacy of the country and under the rules framed under the Ancient Monuments Act, there can be no installation of worship wherever it had ceased.
We call upon the PM, who is also in-charge of the ministry of Culture to initiate immediate action to save these monuments from encroachment. We also call upon the Chief Minister of Delhi to rein in all such elements who are aiding and abetting the violation of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958. We also call upon the authorities to initiate immediate steps to evict the encroachers and to take all steps to ensure the protection of all listed monuments. This should set a model for official action against law-breakers irrespective of the religious community or ritual concerned.
Irfan Habib, Ram Rahman, Amar Farooqui, D. N. Jha, Prabhat Shukla, Arjun Dev, Sohail Hashmi, Zahoor Siddiqui, Shireen Moosvi, Suraj Bhan, Suvira Jaiswal, Archana Prasad
Released to the press
Ashok
for
SAHMAT
SAHMAT
29 , Ferozeshah Road , New Delhi -110001
Telephone-2 3070787,23381276
e-mail: sahmat(at)vsnl(dot)com
29.7.2009
Press Statement
We are deeply disturbed by attempts being made by interested quarters to take over several historically important and protected monuments in different parts of the country, in clear violation of The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, on the excuse of offering worship there. Many of the monument are parts of the precious legacy of the country and under the rules framed under the Ancient Monuments Act, there can be no installation of worship wherever it had ceased.
We call upon the PM, who is also in-charge of the ministry of Culture to initiate immediate action to save these monuments from encroachment. We also call upon the Chief Minister of Delhi to rein in all such elements who are aiding and abetting the violation of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958. We also call upon the authorities to initiate immediate steps to evict the encroachers and to take all steps to ensure the protection of all listed monuments. This should set a model for official action against law-breakers irrespective of the religious community or ritual concerned.
Irfan Habib, Ram Rahman, Amar Farooqui, D. N. Jha, Prabhat Shukla, Arjun Dev, Sohail Hashmi, Zahoor Siddiqui, Shireen Moosvi, Suraj Bhan, Suvira Jaiswal, Archana Prasad
Released to the press
Ashok
for
SAHMAT
Central Govt should stop all funding of religious pilgrimages; Follow welcome order by Andhra high court
Excerpts from a recent op-ed by the veteran journalist BG Verghese Deccan Herald, 28 July 2009
" one must welcome a judgment of the Andhra high court staying a state government order providing financial assistance to Christians desirous of going on pilgrimage to Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Nazareth. The proposal was a clear case of communal vote banking and an abuse of public funds on a par with the increasing subsidies being given to Haj pilgrims and those undertaking the yatra to Kailas-Mansarovar.
It is time the UPA government put an end to such flagrant competitive communalism that goes against the Constitution and the commitment to secularism. Provide facilities within reason, yes. Subsidies - essentially the buying of community votes – no.
Finally, the country needs to come down heavily on such unacceptable traditions as neck-deep burial of children to cure their disabilities during total solar eclipses, as happened in Gulbarga last week, and a series of ‘honour killings’ for marriage within the same gotra in Haryana. Leaving social reform to time alone is a poor answer. "
" one must welcome a judgment of the Andhra high court staying a state government order providing financial assistance to Christians desirous of going on pilgrimage to Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Nazareth. The proposal was a clear case of communal vote banking and an abuse of public funds on a par with the increasing subsidies being given to Haj pilgrims and those undertaking the yatra to Kailas-Mansarovar.
It is time the UPA government put an end to such flagrant competitive communalism that goes against the Constitution and the commitment to secularism. Provide facilities within reason, yes. Subsidies - essentially the buying of community votes – no.
Finally, the country needs to come down heavily on such unacceptable traditions as neck-deep burial of children to cure their disabilities during total solar eclipses, as happened in Gulbarga last week, and a series of ‘honour killings’ for marriage within the same gotra in Haryana. Leaving social reform to time alone is a poor answer. "
Madhya Pradesh: VHP and Bajrang Dal raid on Bhopal church
The Telegraph
July 27 , 2009
VHP raid on Bhopal church
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Bhopal, July 26: Bajrang Dal and VHP activists today stormed a church during Sunday service, saying people were being forcibly converted, before being persuaded to leave by police who didn’t book them.
The raid on Assemblies of God Church in the heart of Bhopal ended a lull in attacks on Christians in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, which has seen over 100 such incidents during the party’s reign that began more than five years ago.
Bajrang Dal leaders claimed that missionaries at the church, in the Bittan Market area and only 100 metres from the Habibganj police station, were trying to “forcibly convert” two women.
But Kunti, one of the women at the centre of the allegation, denied the claim, saying she had only come for prayers. She said since most of her family members had converted to Christianity, she decided to start attending Sunday service.
Vinita, the other woman, also denied the allegation and accused the attackers, numbering around 20, of being ignorant of “customs”.
“They (Bajrang Dal-VHP) do not seem to know anything about customs and traditions. I usually come to the church for prayers on Sunday and will continue to do so. We have nothing to do with religious conversions,” Vinita said.
The Bajrang Dal, however, insisted a special ceremony had been organised for the conversion of the two, prompting an angry rebuttal from a senior church official.
Abraham George, the secretary of Assemblies of God Church, said: “They entered raising slogans that conversions were taking place in the church. It is clear they know nothing about Christianity and Sunday service. In BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, we seem to have lost our right to religion.”
July 27 , 2009
VHP raid on Bhopal church
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Bhopal, July 26: Bajrang Dal and VHP activists today stormed a church during Sunday service, saying people were being forcibly converted, before being persuaded to leave by police who didn’t book them.
The raid on Assemblies of God Church in the heart of Bhopal ended a lull in attacks on Christians in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, which has seen over 100 such incidents during the party’s reign that began more than five years ago.
Bajrang Dal leaders claimed that missionaries at the church, in the Bittan Market area and only 100 metres from the Habibganj police station, were trying to “forcibly convert” two women.
But Kunti, one of the women at the centre of the allegation, denied the claim, saying she had only come for prayers. She said since most of her family members had converted to Christianity, she decided to start attending Sunday service.
Vinita, the other woman, also denied the allegation and accused the attackers, numbering around 20, of being ignorant of “customs”.
“They (Bajrang Dal-VHP) do not seem to know anything about customs and traditions. I usually come to the church for prayers on Sunday and will continue to do so. We have nothing to do with religious conversions,” Vinita said.
The Bajrang Dal, however, insisted a special ceremony had been organised for the conversion of the two, prompting an angry rebuttal from a senior church official.
Abraham George, the secretary of Assemblies of God Church, said: “They entered raising slogans that conversions were taking place in the church. It is clear they know nothing about Christianity and Sunday service. In BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, we seem to have lost our right to religion.”
July 27, 2009
July 26, 2009
Mind Your Language-- Bahuguna Joshi-Mayawati Spat
Mind your language
Bahuguna Joshi-Mayawati Ugly Spat
Ram Puniyani
After the 2009 General Elections UP is seeing the struggle for Dalit votes. While Rahul Gandhi could make substantial inroads into UP, Mayawati was humbled quite a bit due to the election results. Before the elections there was a popular impression that BSP will romp home with bigger electoral percentage, after the elections this image stood shattered as Rahul Gandhi’s efforts to establish a rapport with dalits in particular looked to be working to the advantage of Congress. Infuriated by this Mayawati intensified her vitriol against Congress by saying that Rahul’s steps to identify with dalits at social level is all Natakbaji (drama) just for political purpose. She also dragged Mahatma Gandhi’s name and his work to connect up with dalits in the same category, a drama bereft of any substance or for real benefit of dalits.
Then came the unfortunate and condemnable statement from the state Congress Chief, Rita Bahuguna Joshi (July 2009) about the deteriorating law and order situation in UP, where the rampant atrocities, rape in particular, against dalit women are compensated by giving 25-50 thousands. She questioned if money is all what matters in such cases, then women have to ask Mayawati how she herself would feel if she was given a crore of rupees as a compensation of rape. The utter insensitivity, crudity and anti women nature of the remark deserves a severe reprimand coming from any body, more so from a woman, and that too holding such a high position in the hierarchy of the ruling party.
What followed was also equally condemnable, she was arrested under the charges related to anti Dalit atrocities and her house was burnt. Mayawati asserted that it is an insult of dalits. Quite an opportunist twist to a highly condemnable remark! The remark is against the gender sensitivities, and Mayawati gave it an anti dalit twist to gain sympathy and to ensure that the dalit vote bank is retained-won back, from the inroads made by Congress.
One recalls that similar comments were made by Mayawati herself about the Mulayam Singh’s Government to pay compensation to rape victims. She had directed similar comments to female kin’s of Mulayam Singh. Unfortunately her comments did not come under the scanner of critical media and people’s gaze.
Rape has been an ugly and dangerous weapon of the male dominated society against the women, in forcing them to subjugation, to enforce the patriarchal aggression against women. Times and over again it has been used, in history and currently also it is being used with that purpose. Different social commentators have looked at it from their political angles. One recalls the incident when Kalyan Subedar’s daughter-in-law was brought to Shivaji as a gift. Shivaji returned her with full honors, something which is worth appreciating. To this incident Hindu Mahasabha leader and Hindutva ideologue Savarkar criticizes Shivaji, as to why he forgot that many Hindu women were molested by Muslim, rulers, why he did not follow the policy of retaliation in this case. Savarkar adopted similar attitude to the women victims of partition tragedy and said Pakistani women should be subjected to similar treatment, a policy of tit-for-tat should be adopted.
Communal ideology is the most concentrated expression of patriarchal norms of society. One is puzzled as to how come women themselves are indulging in such a language totally seeped in the male dominated language, patriarchal psychology?
At one level it is surprising, the insensitivity of some women to use such a language. One has to remember the transformation process of gender relations is not a linear one. During this phase of transition the political forces working for status quo, working for restoring the caste and gender hierarchy of feudal times, communalize the social space due to which such a language becomes the dominant language. The result is a section of women themselves become the victim of this mindset or such a language.
During the initial period of the rise of women’s movement, it had to break a popular myth that women themselves are the enemy of women. This was based on the observation of active participation of women relatives in the matters of dowry or bride burning. The dominant role of mother in law or sister in law in subjugating the position of daughter in law. There have been painful instances during communal violence in Mumbai 92-93 and Gujarat carnage when a section of women helped ‘their’ men in violating the modesty of women from other community! Especially Gujarat carnage is full of these tragic incidents when some Hindu women played this ugly role. Gujarat carnage will also be remembered for the absurd remark of BJP associate George Fernandes’ comment as to what is the big deal if rape is taking place in Gujarat; it is an old phenomenon anyway!
One can understand this from the point that the male dominated discourse is the dominant language of society and that’s how Rita Bahuguna Joshi and Mayawati despite being women themselves resort to such expressions in pursuance of their political agenda of coming to power or retaining the power. This also shows the state of affairs of law and order in UP, this also shows the communalized mind set of women themselves. Communal issue is not just an issue related to diverse religious communities. At core it is an attempt to suppress the rights of equality of women and dalits in society. Interestingly in case of Mayawati, both these hierarchies have mixed up and she is shifting form one to the other suppressed identity to pay back Bahuguna Joshi and is resorting to caste instead of gender, which is the issue in this case.
The issue of gender equality is the core issue, along with the annihilation of caste, which needs to be addressed by the social movements. The awareness of these issues needs to be broadened to different layers of society, including women themselves of course, to make the transition to a just society and to avoid such ugly repetitions of such a dirty language.
Bahuguna Joshi-Mayawati Ugly Spat
Ram Puniyani
After the 2009 General Elections UP is seeing the struggle for Dalit votes. While Rahul Gandhi could make substantial inroads into UP, Mayawati was humbled quite a bit due to the election results. Before the elections there was a popular impression that BSP will romp home with bigger electoral percentage, after the elections this image stood shattered as Rahul Gandhi’s efforts to establish a rapport with dalits in particular looked to be working to the advantage of Congress. Infuriated by this Mayawati intensified her vitriol against Congress by saying that Rahul’s steps to identify with dalits at social level is all Natakbaji (drama) just for political purpose. She also dragged Mahatma Gandhi’s name and his work to connect up with dalits in the same category, a drama bereft of any substance or for real benefit of dalits.
Then came the unfortunate and condemnable statement from the state Congress Chief, Rita Bahuguna Joshi (July 2009) about the deteriorating law and order situation in UP, where the rampant atrocities, rape in particular, against dalit women are compensated by giving 25-50 thousands. She questioned if money is all what matters in such cases, then women have to ask Mayawati how she herself would feel if she was given a crore of rupees as a compensation of rape. The utter insensitivity, crudity and anti women nature of the remark deserves a severe reprimand coming from any body, more so from a woman, and that too holding such a high position in the hierarchy of the ruling party.
What followed was also equally condemnable, she was arrested under the charges related to anti Dalit atrocities and her house was burnt. Mayawati asserted that it is an insult of dalits. Quite an opportunist twist to a highly condemnable remark! The remark is against the gender sensitivities, and Mayawati gave it an anti dalit twist to gain sympathy and to ensure that the dalit vote bank is retained-won back, from the inroads made by Congress.
One recalls that similar comments were made by Mayawati herself about the Mulayam Singh’s Government to pay compensation to rape victims. She had directed similar comments to female kin’s of Mulayam Singh. Unfortunately her comments did not come under the scanner of critical media and people’s gaze.
Rape has been an ugly and dangerous weapon of the male dominated society against the women, in forcing them to subjugation, to enforce the patriarchal aggression against women. Times and over again it has been used, in history and currently also it is being used with that purpose. Different social commentators have looked at it from their political angles. One recalls the incident when Kalyan Subedar’s daughter-in-law was brought to Shivaji as a gift. Shivaji returned her with full honors, something which is worth appreciating. To this incident Hindu Mahasabha leader and Hindutva ideologue Savarkar criticizes Shivaji, as to why he forgot that many Hindu women were molested by Muslim, rulers, why he did not follow the policy of retaliation in this case. Savarkar adopted similar attitude to the women victims of partition tragedy and said Pakistani women should be subjected to similar treatment, a policy of tit-for-tat should be adopted.
Communal ideology is the most concentrated expression of patriarchal norms of society. One is puzzled as to how come women themselves are indulging in such a language totally seeped in the male dominated language, patriarchal psychology?
At one level it is surprising, the insensitivity of some women to use such a language. One has to remember the transformation process of gender relations is not a linear one. During this phase of transition the political forces working for status quo, working for restoring the caste and gender hierarchy of feudal times, communalize the social space due to which such a language becomes the dominant language. The result is a section of women themselves become the victim of this mindset or such a language.
During the initial period of the rise of women’s movement, it had to break a popular myth that women themselves are the enemy of women. This was based on the observation of active participation of women relatives in the matters of dowry or bride burning. The dominant role of mother in law or sister in law in subjugating the position of daughter in law. There have been painful instances during communal violence in Mumbai 92-93 and Gujarat carnage when a section of women helped ‘their’ men in violating the modesty of women from other community! Especially Gujarat carnage is full of these tragic incidents when some Hindu women played this ugly role. Gujarat carnage will also be remembered for the absurd remark of BJP associate George Fernandes’ comment as to what is the big deal if rape is taking place in Gujarat; it is an old phenomenon anyway!
One can understand this from the point that the male dominated discourse is the dominant language of society and that’s how Rita Bahuguna Joshi and Mayawati despite being women themselves resort to such expressions in pursuance of their political agenda of coming to power or retaining the power. This also shows the state of affairs of law and order in UP, this also shows the communalized mind set of women themselves. Communal issue is not just an issue related to diverse religious communities. At core it is an attempt to suppress the rights of equality of women and dalits in society. Interestingly in case of Mayawati, both these hierarchies have mixed up and she is shifting form one to the other suppressed identity to pay back Bahuguna Joshi and is resorting to caste instead of gender, which is the issue in this case.
The issue of gender equality is the core issue, along with the annihilation of caste, which needs to be addressed by the social movements. The awareness of these issues needs to be broadened to different layers of society, including women themselves of course, to make the transition to a just society and to avoid such ugly repetitions of such a dirty language.
July 25, 2009
State Must Ensure That Protected Monuments Dont Get Used For Prayers! Is anybody listening?
The Telegraph
25 July 2009
Qutb barge-in for prayers
CITHARA PAUL
New Delhi, July 24: A group of 200 barged into mosques on the premises of three protected monuments in south Delhi, including the Qutb Minar, this afternoon and offered Friday prayers against the rules.
Prayers are not allowed at mosques or temples inside monuments protected by the Archaeological Survey of India “unless prayers were already being held there when the ASI took the monument over”, ASI Delhi circle chief K.K. Mohammad said.
“What happened today was unfortunate and can have a national ramification. What if similar demands are made by Hindus and Buddhists over the Ajanta, Ellora or Elephanta caves?” Mohammad said.
Today, a single group entered the three mosques one after the other, brushing aside the two security guards at each. It prayed for 10 minutes at the Qutb Minar, for another 10 minutes at Jamali Kamali — the tomb of Sufi saint Shaikh Fazlullah — and then for a longer time at the Rajakibawali monuments. Here, ASI officials and police arrived and persuaded them to leave. A case has been registered.
Mohammad said crowds had invaded mosques at heritage monuments and prayed there earlier too, in places such as Hyderabad and Bihar apart from Delhi. “We had brought the issue up but the police took no notice.”
25 July 2009
Qutb barge-in for prayers
CITHARA PAUL
New Delhi, July 24: A group of 200 barged into mosques on the premises of three protected monuments in south Delhi, including the Qutb Minar, this afternoon and offered Friday prayers against the rules.
Prayers are not allowed at mosques or temples inside monuments protected by the Archaeological Survey of India “unless prayers were already being held there when the ASI took the monument over”, ASI Delhi circle chief K.K. Mohammad said.
“What happened today was unfortunate and can have a national ramification. What if similar demands are made by Hindus and Buddhists over the Ajanta, Ellora or Elephanta caves?” Mohammad said.
Today, a single group entered the three mosques one after the other, brushing aside the two security guards at each. It prayed for 10 minutes at the Qutb Minar, for another 10 minutes at Jamali Kamali — the tomb of Sufi saint Shaikh Fazlullah — and then for a longer time at the Rajakibawali monuments. Here, ASI officials and police arrived and persuaded them to leave. A case has been registered.
Mohammad said crowds had invaded mosques at heritage monuments and prayed there earlier too, in places such as Hyderabad and Bihar apart from Delhi. “We had brought the issue up but the police took no notice.”
Sri Ram Sene chief Muthalik arrested for inciting violence in Mysore
ibnlive.in.com
SRS Chief Muthalik held for Mysore riots
UNI, Jul 25, 2009
ARRESTED AGAIN: Police sources say Muthalik has been held on charges of making an inflammatory speech.
July 25, 2009
Belgaum: Mysore Police have arrested the International Secretary of extreme right-wing Sri Rama Sena (SRS) Pramod Muthalik on charges of delivering an 'inflammatory' speech in the aftermath of the group clashes involving two communities in the city during April this year.
A team of policemen from Mysore arrived in the city on Friday and arrested the pro-Hindu outfit leader.
They immediately took him to Mysore where he would be produced in a court later on Saturday.
Police sources said Muthalik was held on charges of making an inflammatory speech at Kyatamaranahalli in Mysore, which witnessed two violent incidents in April and earlier this month.
While one person was killed in police firing in the April incident, three were killed in violence this month.
The main accused behind the incident of desecration of a religious school in the troubled area, arrested a few days ago by the police had revealed that he was 'inspired' by the speech made by Muthalik after two places of worship were desecrated during the April riots.
Muthalik had been in the eye of storm recently after his followers attacked a pub in Mangalore and beat up girls who were in it. SRS Chief held for Mysore riots.
"There's a prima facie case against him (Muthalik) and we have evidence of his involvement in defiling a madarsa. The FIR is available here and there is no requirement of a warrant for arrest. The police officer is competent to arrest without a warrant in a cognizable case and after his arrest, Muthalik will be officially brought before judicial court"
— Mysore Police Commissioner, Sunil Agarwal to CNN-IBN
o o o
The Times of India
Sri Ram Sene chief Muthalik arrested for inciting violence in Mysore
PTI 25 July 2009, 02:28pm IST
|
MYSORE: Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik was arrested in Belgaum for allegedly making an inflammatory speech here last month. (Watch)
He was arrested on Friday night for allegedly making an inflammatory speech and inciting violence in the city, police said.
Violence sparked off in the city on July 2 over desecration of a madrassa and the communal clashes that followed claimed three lives.
Meanwhile, the city police took one Fayaz, a resident of Udayagiri locality, into custody for distributing pamphlets with alleged inflammatory contents.
Muthalik was first arrested by the Belgaum police on January 27 in connection with a case for distributing pamphlets with provocative slogans in Davanagere on January 4.
After he was granted bail in the case, a police team from Manglore re-arrested Muthalik on January 28 in connection with the attack on a pub.
SRS Chief Muthalik held for Mysore riots
UNI, Jul 25, 2009
ARRESTED AGAIN: Police sources say Muthalik has been held on charges of making an inflammatory speech.
July 25, 2009
Belgaum: Mysore Police have arrested the International Secretary of extreme right-wing Sri Rama Sena (SRS) Pramod Muthalik on charges of delivering an 'inflammatory' speech in the aftermath of the group clashes involving two communities in the city during April this year.
A team of policemen from Mysore arrived in the city on Friday and arrested the pro-Hindu outfit leader.
They immediately took him to Mysore where he would be produced in a court later on Saturday.
Police sources said Muthalik was held on charges of making an inflammatory speech at Kyatamaranahalli in Mysore, which witnessed two violent incidents in April and earlier this month.
While one person was killed in police firing in the April incident, three were killed in violence this month.
The main accused behind the incident of desecration of a religious school in the troubled area, arrested a few days ago by the police had revealed that he was 'inspired' by the speech made by Muthalik after two places of worship were desecrated during the April riots.
Muthalik had been in the eye of storm recently after his followers attacked a pub in Mangalore and beat up girls who were in it. SRS Chief held for Mysore riots.
"There's a prima facie case against him (Muthalik) and we have evidence of his involvement in defiling a madarsa. The FIR is available here and there is no requirement of a warrant for arrest. The police officer is competent to arrest without a warrant in a cognizable case and after his arrest, Muthalik will be officially brought before judicial court"
— Mysore Police Commissioner, Sunil Agarwal to CNN-IBN
o o o
The Times of India
Sri Ram Sene chief Muthalik arrested for inciting violence in Mysore
PTI 25 July 2009, 02:28pm IST
|
MYSORE: Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik was arrested in Belgaum for allegedly making an inflammatory speech here last month. (Watch)
He was arrested on Friday night for allegedly making an inflammatory speech and inciting violence in the city, police said.
Violence sparked off in the city on July 2 over desecration of a madrassa and the communal clashes that followed claimed three lives.
Meanwhile, the city police took one Fayaz, a resident of Udayagiri locality, into custody for distributing pamphlets with alleged inflammatory contents.
Muthalik was first arrested by the Belgaum police on January 27 in connection with a case for distributing pamphlets with provocative slogans in Davanagere on January 4.
After he was granted bail in the case, a police team from Manglore re-arrested Muthalik on January 28 in connection with the attack on a pub.
Book Review of 'Partha S Ghosh's - The Politics of Personal Law in South Asia'
The Economic and Political Weekly, July 18 - July 24, 2009
Between the Religious and the Secular
Sanghamitra Padhy
The Politics of Personal Law in South Asia: Identity, Nationalism and the Uniform Civil Code by Partha S Ghosh (New Delhi: Routledge, 2007)
Full Text at: http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13612.pdf
Between the Religious and the Secular
Sanghamitra Padhy
The Politics of Personal Law in South Asia: Identity, Nationalism and the Uniform Civil Code by Partha S Ghosh (New Delhi: Routledge, 2007)
Full Text at: http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13612.pdf
‘Bihari Menace’ and Bombay's chauvinists
The Economic and Political Weekly, 29 July 18 - July 24, 2009
A Class Analysis of the ‘Bihari Menace’
by Awanish Kumar
Migrants from Bihar are accused of taking over urban areas and jobs, most recently in Mumbai. Bihar has come to represent a cultural symbol of backwardness, “dirtyness” and trouble, which is almost impervious to “development”. This article attempts to understand the class and caste locations of these prejudices and analyses the reasons why Bihar and Biharis are the target of such singular chauvinism.
http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13707.pdf
A Class Analysis of the ‘Bihari Menace’
by Awanish Kumar
Migrants from Bihar are accused of taking over urban areas and jobs, most recently in Mumbai. Bihar has come to represent a cultural symbol of backwardness, “dirtyness” and trouble, which is almost impervious to “development”. This article attempts to understand the class and caste locations of these prejudices and analyses the reasons why Bihar and Biharis are the target of such singular chauvinism.
http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13707.pdf
Gandhi’s Hinduism and Savarkar’s Hindutva
The Economic and Political Weekly, July 18 - July 24, 2009
The present national crisis of violently conflicting communal identities represents a choice between the inclusiveness of Gandhi and the exclusions of Savarkar.
by Rudolf C Heredia
full text at: http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13731.pdf
The present national crisis of violently conflicting communal identities represents a choice between the inclusiveness of Gandhi and the exclusions of Savarkar.
by Rudolf C Heredia
full text at: http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13731.pdf
July 24, 2009
Goa cemetery: A place for the dead, irrespective of caste, community, creed, religion
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6718542.ece
The Times
July 18, 2009
Crematorium-cum-cemetery proposed to deal with India’s dead
by Rhys Blakely in Mumbai
Death may be the great leveller, but in India the fate of expired citizens has never been straightforward.
Each religious group — from high-caste Hindus with their sandalwood funeral pyres to the Zoroastrian Parsis and their Towers of Silence, where corpses are hoisted to be picked clean by vultures — has its own death rites. Many of the ceremonies are ancient, but as India’s population grows, the space to perform them is running out.
This week an official in Goa, the holiday state beloved of British backpackers, proposed a solution: a vast publicly funded crematorium-cum-cemetery, the first to be open to every Indian, regardless of religion or caste.
“Tensions among different groups are escalating as we run short of land and rival groups compete with each other to carry out their traditions,” Ramakant Khalap, the chairman of the Goa Law Commission, which was created to simplify legal processes in the state, told The Times. “We need to step forward and ensure that the dead — irrespective of caste, community, creed, religion — find a place under the open sky if they expire in Goa.”
Mr Khalap has in mind a “serene and scenic” park devoted to the departed, which he hopes will become a tourist attraction. He expects to get official approval for the plans next week.
The site would be loosely modelled on the Arlington National Cemetery in the United States, where more than 300,000 people are buried.
The plans come as India, which accounts for 17 per cent of the world’s population but only 3 per cent of its land, faces a crisis over how it disposes of its dead.
More than 80 per cent of Indians may be destined for cremation, but space will still have to be found to bury more than 200 million Muslims, Christians and Dalits (Untouchables) over the next 70 years.
A shortage of graveyards is stirring resentment. In the capital, Delhi, a lack of Muslim burial grounds became a big issue in this year’s general election. Families were angry that graves were having to be reused frequently. In Gujarat, Dalit communities often complain of graves being dug up.
Cremation presents its own problems. The Ganges river is chronically polluted, partly because of the disposal of millions of partially burnt Hindu bodies in the sacred waterway.
Environmentalists are calling for “green” cremation ovens, which reduce bodies to ash, to replace the traditional open-air wooden pyres.
India’s Parsi community also faces a crisis. The vultures they depend on to pick clean the bodies of their dead are on the verge of extinction, killed off by pesticides. A captive breeding programme has been suggested as a possible solution.
In Goa, Mr Khalap said that the annual influx of 1 million tourists into the state, which has a population of only 1.5 million, had added to the region’s challenges. “Deceased foreigners can be very problematic,” he said. “Knowing what to do with them has been very difficult. Soon, at least, we will have somewhere to put them.”
The Times
July 18, 2009
Crematorium-cum-cemetery proposed to deal with India’s dead
by Rhys Blakely in Mumbai
Death may be the great leveller, but in India the fate of expired citizens has never been straightforward.
Each religious group — from high-caste Hindus with their sandalwood funeral pyres to the Zoroastrian Parsis and their Towers of Silence, where corpses are hoisted to be picked clean by vultures — has its own death rites. Many of the ceremonies are ancient, but as India’s population grows, the space to perform them is running out.
This week an official in Goa, the holiday state beloved of British backpackers, proposed a solution: a vast publicly funded crematorium-cum-cemetery, the first to be open to every Indian, regardless of religion or caste.
“Tensions among different groups are escalating as we run short of land and rival groups compete with each other to carry out their traditions,” Ramakant Khalap, the chairman of the Goa Law Commission, which was created to simplify legal processes in the state, told The Times. “We need to step forward and ensure that the dead — irrespective of caste, community, creed, religion — find a place under the open sky if they expire in Goa.”
Mr Khalap has in mind a “serene and scenic” park devoted to the departed, which he hopes will become a tourist attraction. He expects to get official approval for the plans next week.
The site would be loosely modelled on the Arlington National Cemetery in the United States, where more than 300,000 people are buried.
The plans come as India, which accounts for 17 per cent of the world’s population but only 3 per cent of its land, faces a crisis over how it disposes of its dead.
More than 80 per cent of Indians may be destined for cremation, but space will still have to be found to bury more than 200 million Muslims, Christians and Dalits (Untouchables) over the next 70 years.
A shortage of graveyards is stirring resentment. In the capital, Delhi, a lack of Muslim burial grounds became a big issue in this year’s general election. Families were angry that graves were having to be reused frequently. In Gujarat, Dalit communities often complain of graves being dug up.
Cremation presents its own problems. The Ganges river is chronically polluted, partly because of the disposal of millions of partially burnt Hindu bodies in the sacred waterway.
Environmentalists are calling for “green” cremation ovens, which reduce bodies to ash, to replace the traditional open-air wooden pyres.
India’s Parsi community also faces a crisis. The vultures they depend on to pick clean the bodies of their dead are on the verge of extinction, killed off by pesticides. A captive breeding programme has been suggested as a possible solution.
In Goa, Mr Khalap said that the annual influx of 1 million tourists into the state, which has a population of only 1.5 million, had added to the region’s challenges. “Deceased foreigners can be very problematic,” he said. “Knowing what to do with them has been very difficult. Soon, at least, we will have somewhere to put them.”
Report on 2 day meet on fostering secular values: the role of literature and media
The Hindu
25 July 2009
Writers urged to be secular
Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: In a communally-sensitive country like India where religion plays a crucial role, writers should be secular and work towards putting the nation and religion at a safe distance from each other.
This was the unanimous view of participants, who attended the just concluded two-day seminar on “Strengthening communal harmony and fostering secular values; the role of literature and media”.
The seminar was hosted by six city-based non-governmental organizations - Odisha Samskruti Academy, Common Concern, Citizens Initiative, NAWO, ODAAF and Prasanti.
Spread over six sessions that included deliberations on the issues and poetry recitation, it received rave response from the writers and intellectuals.
Kedar Mishra, seminar convener and chairperson of Orissa Samskruti Academy, explained the objectives of the meet.
Rajiv Bhargab, political scientist and director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Social Development Studies, who interacted with the gathering during the inaugural session, was of the opinion that national integration gets threat when the number of people having no trust in secularism rises.
The nation must have the final authority over religious matters, he felt.
Nation must come first for the citizens and not the religion, he emphasized and urged the writers and the media to sensitise people about their role in maintaining the secular fabric and national integrity of the country.
Delhi-based poet and professor of public administration Bishnu Mohapatra and Orissa’s noted social commentators Pritish Acharya, Sudhir Patnaik and Abhiram Biswal also deliberated during the session that was chaired by Professor Jatin Nayak of Utkal University.
Lively deliberations
The concluding day’s sessions were lively with presentations by three prominent intellectuals and writers of the nation – Allahabad-based Dalit Resource Centre director Professor Badri Narayan, All-India Secularists’ Forum secretary Ram Puniyani and noted columnist Bibhuti Patnaik. Their deliberations were focused on the role of literature in containing communalism and vice versa.
Himansu Mohapatra was in chair. Twenty-five participated in the poetry recitation session.
25 July 2009
Writers urged to be secular
Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: In a communally-sensitive country like India where religion plays a crucial role, writers should be secular and work towards putting the nation and religion at a safe distance from each other.
This was the unanimous view of participants, who attended the just concluded two-day seminar on “Strengthening communal harmony and fostering secular values; the role of literature and media”.
The seminar was hosted by six city-based non-governmental organizations - Odisha Samskruti Academy, Common Concern, Citizens Initiative, NAWO, ODAAF and Prasanti.
Spread over six sessions that included deliberations on the issues and poetry recitation, it received rave response from the writers and intellectuals.
Kedar Mishra, seminar convener and chairperson of Orissa Samskruti Academy, explained the objectives of the meet.
Rajiv Bhargab, political scientist and director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Social Development Studies, who interacted with the gathering during the inaugural session, was of the opinion that national integration gets threat when the number of people having no trust in secularism rises.
The nation must have the final authority over religious matters, he felt.
Nation must come first for the citizens and not the religion, he emphasized and urged the writers and the media to sensitise people about their role in maintaining the secular fabric and national integrity of the country.
Delhi-based poet and professor of public administration Bishnu Mohapatra and Orissa’s noted social commentators Pritish Acharya, Sudhir Patnaik and Abhiram Biswal also deliberated during the session that was chaired by Professor Jatin Nayak of Utkal University.
Lively deliberations
The concluding day’s sessions were lively with presentations by three prominent intellectuals and writers of the nation – Allahabad-based Dalit Resource Centre director Professor Badri Narayan, All-India Secularists’ Forum secretary Ram Puniyani and noted columnist Bibhuti Patnaik. Their deliberations were focused on the role of literature in containing communalism and vice versa.
Himansu Mohapatra was in chair. Twenty-five participated in the poetry recitation session.
Madhya Pradesh: Congress leader stands up for Bajrang Dal activist
Indian Express
Congress leader stands up for Bajrang Dal activist
by Milind Ghatwai
Jul 24, 2009 at 0325 hrs Bhopal:
A Congress MLA has taken up cudgels on behalf of a Sangh Parivar activist allegedly involved in riots in Mahidpur town of Ujjain. One of the most vocal politicians in the state, Kalpana Parulekar on Thursday claimed Bajrang Dal leader Pankaj Yadav was innocent and was himself a victim of police atrocities in jail. The police said Yadav faced a string of criminal cases and was involved in communal riots that rocked Mahidpur this March. He was arrested on March 6.
Parulekar wrote to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan alleging that Yadav was beaten up on March 11 by cops in the presence of then Ujjain SP Manmeet Singh Narang. “It makes no difference to me that he is a member of the Parivar. I am only highlighting police atrocities,” she said.
“I have no issue with Sangh Parivar leaders. The only reason I approached the Congress MLA because she is very vocal,” Yadav said. But the BJP is embarrassed. “I still can’t believe he approached her. He is very much a part of the Parivar,” said Ujjain (rural) president Madan Sakhla.
Congress leader stands up for Bajrang Dal activist
by Milind Ghatwai
Jul 24, 2009 at 0325 hrs Bhopal:
A Congress MLA has taken up cudgels on behalf of a Sangh Parivar activist allegedly involved in riots in Mahidpur town of Ujjain. One of the most vocal politicians in the state, Kalpana Parulekar on Thursday claimed Bajrang Dal leader Pankaj Yadav was innocent and was himself a victim of police atrocities in jail. The police said Yadav faced a string of criminal cases and was involved in communal riots that rocked Mahidpur this March. He was arrested on March 6.
Parulekar wrote to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan alleging that Yadav was beaten up on March 11 by cops in the presence of then Ujjain SP Manmeet Singh Narang. “It makes no difference to me that he is a member of the Parivar. I am only highlighting police atrocities,” she said.
“I have no issue with Sangh Parivar leaders. The only reason I approached the Congress MLA because she is very vocal,” Yadav said. But the BJP is embarrassed. “I still can’t believe he approached her. He is very much a part of the Parivar,” said Ujjain (rural) president Madan Sakhla.
Gujarat High Court dismisses the petition seeking a stay to investigate Modi's role in 2002 riots
BBC News, 24 July 2009
Court backs Gujarat riot probe
A court in the Indian state of Gujarat has rejected a bid to delay a probe into the role of the chief minister in communal riots in 2002.
More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the riots which began after 60 Hindus died in a fire on a train.
The cause of the fire has never been clearly established.
Hindu groups alleged that it was started by Muslim protesters, but an earlier inquiry said it was an accident.
Justice DH Vaghela ruled that the probe against the chief minister and 62 others should not be delayed.
The rejection of the petition means that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) is now free to summon Mr Modi and his colleagues and question them about their role at the time.
The petition was filed in June by a former legislator of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJO), Kalubhai Maliwad, who is also listed for investigation.
The SIT's remit is to investigate the riots which followed the killing of 59 people in a fire on a train at Godhra after a skirmish with locals at the railway station.
A former member of the Indian Parliament, Ehsan Jaffri, was also killed in the rioting in Ahmedabad. His widow, Zakia Jaffri, had filed a different petition alleging that the chief minister and 62 of his colleagues and officers were involved in the riots.
In the past the Supreme Court has criticised the government of Gujarat for failing to protect its Muslim citizens.
Mr Modi's supporters have always said he could have done little under the circumstances to prevent the violence.
Last year, a commission of inquiry set up by the state government exonerated Mr Modi over the riots.
Court backs Gujarat riot probe
A court in the Indian state of Gujarat has rejected a bid to delay a probe into the role of the chief minister in communal riots in 2002.
More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the riots which began after 60 Hindus died in a fire on a train.
The cause of the fire has never been clearly established.
Hindu groups alleged that it was started by Muslim protesters, but an earlier inquiry said it was an accident.
Justice DH Vaghela ruled that the probe against the chief minister and 62 others should not be delayed.
The rejection of the petition means that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) is now free to summon Mr Modi and his colleagues and question them about their role at the time.
The petition was filed in June by a former legislator of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJO), Kalubhai Maliwad, who is also listed for investigation.
The SIT's remit is to investigate the riots which followed the killing of 59 people in a fire on a train at Godhra after a skirmish with locals at the railway station.
A former member of the Indian Parliament, Ehsan Jaffri, was also killed in the rioting in Ahmedabad. His widow, Zakia Jaffri, had filed a different petition alleging that the chief minister and 62 of his colleagues and officers were involved in the riots.
In the past the Supreme Court has criticised the government of Gujarat for failing to protect its Muslim citizens.
Mr Modi's supporters have always said he could have done little under the circumstances to prevent the violence.
Last year, a commission of inquiry set up by the state government exonerated Mr Modi over the riots.
July 23, 2009
Delhi high court’s judgment on Section 377 is good for all minorities
The Telegraph, July 9, 2009
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090709/jsp/opinion/story_11202656.jsp
GOOD FOR ALL MINORITIES
The Delhi high court’s judgment on Section 377 of the IPC marks a progressive reinterpretation of Article 15, writes Tarunabh Khaitan
Words are magic things often enough, but even the magic of words sometimes cannot convey the magic of the human spirit and of a Nation’s passion.
(Jawaharlal Nehru, quoted in the Naz Foundation case, paragraph 129)
The brouhaha over it notwithstanding, the least surprising thing about the Delhi High Court’s verdict in Naz Foundation vs Union of India is the result of the case: that law has no business in the bedroom of consenting adults engaging in an activity that harms no one. Even the mere words of Article 14 (right to equality) and Article 21 (right to life and liberty) of the Constitution and existing jurisprudence under these Articles would have sufficed to reach this result. When faced with this issue in the last couple of decades, constitutional courts worldwide have almost invariably given the same answer. Given the liberal, secular and egalitarian Constitution of India, it is the opposite result that would have surprised constitutional lawyers. The magic of the human spirit and of a nation’s passion lie not so much in the result of the judgment as in its progressive reinterpretation of certain constitutional provisions, especially that of Article 15, even though it was not strictly necessary to reach this result.
Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds such as religion, race, caste and sex. Until recently, it had remained a largely sterile provision, subsumed entirely by the general guarantee of equality under Article 14 and rarely given the distinct importance that it deserves. Four key innovations under Article 15 in this judgment have given it a new lease of life. If confirmed by the Supreme Court, these innovations will provide unprecedented constitutional protection from discrimination to all vulnerable minorities — including Muslims, Christians, women, tribals, Dalits, gays and disabled persons. It is odd, then, that some of those who are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this interpretation are also the ones who most vociferously want to see it overturned.
The high court has held that “personal autonomy is inherent in the grounds mentioned in Article 15”. It is autonomy that allows us to form relationships and pursue the projects that give our lives meaning. Systematic discrimination diminishes the quality of all our lives by denying us access to an adequate range of valuable options, in all the things that matter most in our lives: housing, jobs and partners. Thus, the first important innovation in the case was to include those grounds “that are not specified in Article 15 but are analogous to those specified therein ... those which have the potential to impair the personal autonomy of an individual”. Therefore, even though grounds such as disability and pregnancy are not specified in Article 15, they now have its protection. Notice that the high court had already held that “sex”, a specified ground, includes “sexual orientation”. Therefore, opening up the scope of Article 15 to other analogous grounds like disability was not crucial for the result of the case. Yet, given this ruling, all autonomy-related grounds can now claim the special protection of Article 15.
The second innovation under Article 15 is the incorporation of “strict scrutiny” as the appropriate standard of review. Until recently, all that the State needed to prove is that the challenged measure is “reasonable”. This is a deferential, rather than a strict, standard of review. But the high court has now read seemingly conflicting Supreme Court precedents harmoniously to clarify that although “the principle of strict scrutiny would not apply to affirmative action under Article 15(5) ... a measure that disadvantages a vulnerable group defined on the basis of a characteristic that relates to personal autonomy must be subject to strict scrutiny”. In simpler terms, it will be much harder to justify discrimination against a vulnerable minority (Dalits, Muslims, women, and so on) protected by Article 15 than used to be the case. Again, the discussion on strict scrutiny was not important for the result in this case. The high court was clear that “a provision of law branding one section of people as criminal based wholly on the State’s moral disapproval of that class goes counter to the equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 15 under any standard of review.” The main benefit of this higher standard of review will be reaped in future cases by all vulnerable minorities.
The third important constitutional innovation under Article 15 is the pronouncement by the high court that it provides protection from discrimination perpetuated not only by the State (‘vertical’ protection) but also by a private individual (‘horizontal’ protection): “In other words, it even prohibits discrimination of one citizen by another in matters of access to public spaces.” Again, given that a central law was in question, this case was concerned only with vertical discrimination. But by stating that the protection of Article 15 is horizontally applicable as well, the high court has widened the scope of an earlier Supreme Court judgment, which granted horizontal protection only to women (Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan, 1997). Now, every Muslim or Dalit citizen who is denied housing by a landlord on the ground of his or her religion has a constitutionally enforceable claim against the landlord. Recently, the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion, Bangalore, in an open letter to the minister of minority affairs, demanded an effective equal opportunities commission to combat discrimination in the private sector. The Naz Foundation judgment makes that demand a constitutional imperative.
Finally, the judgment recognizes that discrimination includes not just direct discrimination, but also indirect discrimination and harassment. This is another key demand in the CSSE open letter. Indirect discrimination occurs when a superficially non-discriminatory measure has a disproportionate impact on a vulnerable group. A housing society that only lets to vegetarians has a disproportionate impact on certain religious and caste groups. Under this interpretation, such indirect discrimination is prohibited by Article 15.
These constitutional innovations make no difference to the actual result in the Naz case. The judges could have reached the same result by a sterile ruling that relied solely on the words of the Constitution. However, they chose to invoke its spirit and have crafted a remarkably progressive jurisprudence on anti-discrimination law. If these interpretations are accepted by the Supreme Court, Article 15 is set to become one of the key constitutional guarantors of personal autonomy for vulnerable minorities.
It may seem that this judgment does not obviously benefit Hemanshu, who is Hindu, English-educated, male, able-bodied, north Indian, straight, Hindi-speaking and upper-caste. But should Hemanshu lose his legs in an accident, or get posted in a non-Hindi speaking or non-Hindu-majority area, he too will be protected. The court has recognized that pluralist societies rarely have permanent majorities or minorities. The Constitution stands for the principle of minority protection, whoever they might happen to be. This should be noted by the ulema and the archbishops who seem to have failed to envision a fellowship of the disenfranchized in their response to the court’s judgment.
The author is a lecturer in constitutional law at St Hilda’s College, Oxford
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090709/jsp/opinion/story_11202656.jsp
GOOD FOR ALL MINORITIES
The Delhi high court’s judgment on Section 377 of the IPC marks a progressive reinterpretation of Article 15, writes Tarunabh Khaitan
Words are magic things often enough, but even the magic of words sometimes cannot convey the magic of the human spirit and of a Nation’s passion.
(Jawaharlal Nehru, quoted in the Naz Foundation case, paragraph 129)
The brouhaha over it notwithstanding, the least surprising thing about the Delhi High Court’s verdict in Naz Foundation vs Union of India is the result of the case: that law has no business in the bedroom of consenting adults engaging in an activity that harms no one. Even the mere words of Article 14 (right to equality) and Article 21 (right to life and liberty) of the Constitution and existing jurisprudence under these Articles would have sufficed to reach this result. When faced with this issue in the last couple of decades, constitutional courts worldwide have almost invariably given the same answer. Given the liberal, secular and egalitarian Constitution of India, it is the opposite result that would have surprised constitutional lawyers. The magic of the human spirit and of a nation’s passion lie not so much in the result of the judgment as in its progressive reinterpretation of certain constitutional provisions, especially that of Article 15, even though it was not strictly necessary to reach this result.
Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds such as religion, race, caste and sex. Until recently, it had remained a largely sterile provision, subsumed entirely by the general guarantee of equality under Article 14 and rarely given the distinct importance that it deserves. Four key innovations under Article 15 in this judgment have given it a new lease of life. If confirmed by the Supreme Court, these innovations will provide unprecedented constitutional protection from discrimination to all vulnerable minorities — including Muslims, Christians, women, tribals, Dalits, gays and disabled persons. It is odd, then, that some of those who are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this interpretation are also the ones who most vociferously want to see it overturned.
The high court has held that “personal autonomy is inherent in the grounds mentioned in Article 15”. It is autonomy that allows us to form relationships and pursue the projects that give our lives meaning. Systematic discrimination diminishes the quality of all our lives by denying us access to an adequate range of valuable options, in all the things that matter most in our lives: housing, jobs and partners. Thus, the first important innovation in the case was to include those grounds “that are not specified in Article 15 but are analogous to those specified therein ... those which have the potential to impair the personal autonomy of an individual”. Therefore, even though grounds such as disability and pregnancy are not specified in Article 15, they now have its protection. Notice that the high court had already held that “sex”, a specified ground, includes “sexual orientation”. Therefore, opening up the scope of Article 15 to other analogous grounds like disability was not crucial for the result of the case. Yet, given this ruling, all autonomy-related grounds can now claim the special protection of Article 15.
The second innovation under Article 15 is the incorporation of “strict scrutiny” as the appropriate standard of review. Until recently, all that the State needed to prove is that the challenged measure is “reasonable”. This is a deferential, rather than a strict, standard of review. But the high court has now read seemingly conflicting Supreme Court precedents harmoniously to clarify that although “the principle of strict scrutiny would not apply to affirmative action under Article 15(5) ... a measure that disadvantages a vulnerable group defined on the basis of a characteristic that relates to personal autonomy must be subject to strict scrutiny”. In simpler terms, it will be much harder to justify discrimination against a vulnerable minority (Dalits, Muslims, women, and so on) protected by Article 15 than used to be the case. Again, the discussion on strict scrutiny was not important for the result in this case. The high court was clear that “a provision of law branding one section of people as criminal based wholly on the State’s moral disapproval of that class goes counter to the equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 15 under any standard of review.” The main benefit of this higher standard of review will be reaped in future cases by all vulnerable minorities.
The third important constitutional innovation under Article 15 is the pronouncement by the high court that it provides protection from discrimination perpetuated not only by the State (‘vertical’ protection) but also by a private individual (‘horizontal’ protection): “In other words, it even prohibits discrimination of one citizen by another in matters of access to public spaces.” Again, given that a central law was in question, this case was concerned only with vertical discrimination. But by stating that the protection of Article 15 is horizontally applicable as well, the high court has widened the scope of an earlier Supreme Court judgment, which granted horizontal protection only to women (Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan, 1997). Now, every Muslim or Dalit citizen who is denied housing by a landlord on the ground of his or her religion has a constitutionally enforceable claim against the landlord. Recently, the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion, Bangalore, in an open letter to the minister of minority affairs, demanded an effective equal opportunities commission to combat discrimination in the private sector. The Naz Foundation judgment makes that demand a constitutional imperative.
Finally, the judgment recognizes that discrimination includes not just direct discrimination, but also indirect discrimination and harassment. This is another key demand in the CSSE open letter. Indirect discrimination occurs when a superficially non-discriminatory measure has a disproportionate impact on a vulnerable group. A housing society that only lets to vegetarians has a disproportionate impact on certain religious and caste groups. Under this interpretation, such indirect discrimination is prohibited by Article 15.
These constitutional innovations make no difference to the actual result in the Naz case. The judges could have reached the same result by a sterile ruling that relied solely on the words of the Constitution. However, they chose to invoke its spirit and have crafted a remarkably progressive jurisprudence on anti-discrimination law. If these interpretations are accepted by the Supreme Court, Article 15 is set to become one of the key constitutional guarantors of personal autonomy for vulnerable minorities.
It may seem that this judgment does not obviously benefit Hemanshu, who is Hindu, English-educated, male, able-bodied, north Indian, straight, Hindi-speaking and upper-caste. But should Hemanshu lose his legs in an accident, or get posted in a non-Hindi speaking or non-Hindu-majority area, he too will be protected. The court has recognized that pluralist societies rarely have permanent majorities or minorities. The Constitution stands for the principle of minority protection, whoever they might happen to be. This should be noted by the ulema and the archbishops who seem to have failed to envision a fellowship of the disenfranchized in their response to the court’s judgment.
The author is a lecturer in constitutional law at St Hilda’s College, Oxford
Book Extract: 'Offence - the Hindu Case' by Salil Tripathi
http://interjunction.org/article/fighting-for-the-soul-of-rama/
FIGHTING FOR THE SOUL OF RAMA
By Editor on July 20, 2009 4:41 pm
The Hindu nationalist insistence on a single, authoritative version of the Ramayana contravenes the central tenet of Hinduism. In this edited extract from his new book, Offence: the Hindu Case (Seagull Press: Calcutta/London/New York, 2009), Salil Tripathi argues the historical and political case for defending the plurality of Hinduism.
”THE CURIOUS FACT is that as we move into the 21st century, historians have become central to politics. We historians are the monopoly suppliers of the past. The only way to modify the past that does not sooner or later go through historians is by destroying the past. Mythology is taking over from knowledge.”
—Eric Hobsbawm in “Politics, Memory and the Revisions of History in the Twenty-first Century,” lecture delivered at Columbia University, 2003.
If history represents collective memory, and if it is to be objective and not written by victors, it becomes important to guard its sanctity. After artists like Maqbul Fida Husain, the Hindu nationalists’ prime target is Indian history. In late February 2008, a group of Hindus stormed into the history department of the University of Delhi, breaking windows and causing general mayhem. They belonged to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (All India Students’ Council), the student wing of the BJP. They were angry because the professors had directed students to read an essay on the Ramayana that they considered ‘blasphemous.’
The essay, “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,” by the distinguished poet A. K. Ramanujan, a Macarthur Genius Fellow who died in 1993 in the US where he taught at the University of Chicago, marvels at the sheer diversity and range of the epic Ramayana, and recounts many of the unusual and alternate renderings of the myth, pointing out the vibrant plurality in religion and literature. The head of the history department, a quiet academic called Saiyid Zaheer Hussain Jafri, is, as his name suggests, a Muslim. The professor who reportedly assigned the essay is Upinder Singh, who happens to be Sikh and the daughter of India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This particular combination gave the nationalists further ammunition.
The conventional Ramayana narrative is complicated enough. Most interpretations tell a story with which many Indians, Hindu or not, are familiar. But as you travel through the length and breadth of the vast Indian nation, the stories change, sometimes subtly, sometimes quite drastically, and no one singular view prevails. Ramanujan’s essay irritated Hindu activists precisely because it showed that there is no one, unique rendering or interpretation of the Ramayana. Not surprisingly, the student activists called it “malicious, capricious, fallacious, and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.”
But to silence a voice that says that there are many versions of Ramayana is not only an act of crude censorship and an attack on Hindu intellect, it also goes against the central tenet of Hinduism. The doyen of Indian history, Romila Thapar, herself a target of vicious attacks by Hindu nationalists, has shown how the Ramayana’s many versions embed stories reflecting social aspirations and ideological concerns of each group that propounded a different version. The Hindu nationalists’ challenge to the diversity of voices is more a political proposition than a religious assertion.
And how diverse those narratives are—not only across India, but as far away as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos where they vary even more widely than in India. These multiple narratives interfere with the master version of a strong, virile, masculine and martial lord/warrior-king—like the image now reinforced by Virgin Comics in India which casts him as a muscular, Superman-like hero in Ramayana 3392 AD—that the BJP wants to project in India.
There is political purpose behind depicting Rama as a soldier, and not as maryada purushottam (the ideal man who knows his own and society’s limits, and who will sacrifice his interests for others). And that is to inject militancy into the Hindus, who, the BJP believes, have been made to feel like second-class citizens in their own country.
Feminist scholars are indeed appalled by the Ramayana’s overt masculinity. But they have also found in Sita a cliché-ridden representation of femininity, a docile woman willing to be led wherever her husband takes her and unquestioningly accepting her fate, including cruel punishments and chastity tests. Gauri Parimoo Krishnan notes: “Valmiki’s Ramayana has been wrongly ascribed canonical status, giving rise to a sort of patriarchal, literate, pan-Indian elitism which in recent times has been scorned.” In the Indian feminist magazine, Manushi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen and Madhu Kishwar have written powerful critiques of the masculine interpretation of the Ramayana.
A survey of Hindu epics may suggest that Hindu gods don’t claim to be morally perfect; they do practise subterfuge and trickery. In an uncertain universe, we often have to act in ways that seem morally impure in order to achieve a higher end. That, indeed, is the message of the Mahabharata. On the other hand, the Ramayana aims to show how it is possible to lead a morally pure life. Rama’s heroism is not simply based on his battlefield skills but also on his ability to place the interests of others—and his own sense of obligation—above his own.
Such sacrificial acts are passé; the BJP wants to project Rama as a superman. However, elevating him over other gods makes Hinduism seem monotheistic, a bit less like itself and a bit more like Islam or Christianity. The late Morarji Desai, a former prime minister, astutely noted this point in a conversation with me in the late-1980s, when the BJP was still only beginning to embark on what then seemed like a quixotic campaign—to reclaim the site of the Babri Masjid. “They are playing a dangerous game,” he told me. “They want to create a cult of Rama. They are converting Hinduism into Islam—they are making Hinduism a religion with one book (Ramayana), one place of worship (Ayodhya) and one God (Rama). That is not Hinduism. Hinduism is about plurality.”
Edited extract reproduced with permission from Seagull Books. Offence: The Hindu Case will be available in bookstores from August, 2009. It is published by Seagull Books (Calcutta/London/New York) and distributed worldwide by the University of Chicago Press. The book is available for pre-order from Amazon in the UK and US.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. He has written frequently for a range of publications, including Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Guardian, Index on Censorship, Washington Post and Salon. He is also a columnist for Mint and a writer-at-large for Tehelka. Salil serves on the board of English PEN, and has been a senior visiting fellow at the Kennedy School, Harvard University.
FIGHTING FOR THE SOUL OF RAMA
By Editor on July 20, 2009 4:41 pm
The Hindu nationalist insistence on a single, authoritative version of the Ramayana contravenes the central tenet of Hinduism. In this edited extract from his new book, Offence: the Hindu Case (Seagull Press: Calcutta/London/New York, 2009), Salil Tripathi argues the historical and political case for defending the plurality of Hinduism.
”THE CURIOUS FACT is that as we move into the 21st century, historians have become central to politics. We historians are the monopoly suppliers of the past. The only way to modify the past that does not sooner or later go through historians is by destroying the past. Mythology is taking over from knowledge.”
—Eric Hobsbawm in “Politics, Memory and the Revisions of History in the Twenty-first Century,” lecture delivered at Columbia University, 2003.
If history represents collective memory, and if it is to be objective and not written by victors, it becomes important to guard its sanctity. After artists like Maqbul Fida Husain, the Hindu nationalists’ prime target is Indian history. In late February 2008, a group of Hindus stormed into the history department of the University of Delhi, breaking windows and causing general mayhem. They belonged to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (All India Students’ Council), the student wing of the BJP. They were angry because the professors had directed students to read an essay on the Ramayana that they considered ‘blasphemous.’
The essay, “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,” by the distinguished poet A. K. Ramanujan, a Macarthur Genius Fellow who died in 1993 in the US where he taught at the University of Chicago, marvels at the sheer diversity and range of the epic Ramayana, and recounts many of the unusual and alternate renderings of the myth, pointing out the vibrant plurality in religion and literature. The head of the history department, a quiet academic called Saiyid Zaheer Hussain Jafri, is, as his name suggests, a Muslim. The professor who reportedly assigned the essay is Upinder Singh, who happens to be Sikh and the daughter of India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This particular combination gave the nationalists further ammunition.
The conventional Ramayana narrative is complicated enough. Most interpretations tell a story with which many Indians, Hindu or not, are familiar. But as you travel through the length and breadth of the vast Indian nation, the stories change, sometimes subtly, sometimes quite drastically, and no one singular view prevails. Ramanujan’s essay irritated Hindu activists precisely because it showed that there is no one, unique rendering or interpretation of the Ramayana. Not surprisingly, the student activists called it “malicious, capricious, fallacious, and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.”
But to silence a voice that says that there are many versions of Ramayana is not only an act of crude censorship and an attack on Hindu intellect, it also goes against the central tenet of Hinduism. The doyen of Indian history, Romila Thapar, herself a target of vicious attacks by Hindu nationalists, has shown how the Ramayana’s many versions embed stories reflecting social aspirations and ideological concerns of each group that propounded a different version. The Hindu nationalists’ challenge to the diversity of voices is more a political proposition than a religious assertion.
And how diverse those narratives are—not only across India, but as far away as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos where they vary even more widely than in India. These multiple narratives interfere with the master version of a strong, virile, masculine and martial lord/warrior-king—like the image now reinforced by Virgin Comics in India which casts him as a muscular, Superman-like hero in Ramayana 3392 AD—that the BJP wants to project in India.
There is political purpose behind depicting Rama as a soldier, and not as maryada purushottam (the ideal man who knows his own and society’s limits, and who will sacrifice his interests for others). And that is to inject militancy into the Hindus, who, the BJP believes, have been made to feel like second-class citizens in their own country.
Feminist scholars are indeed appalled by the Ramayana’s overt masculinity. But they have also found in Sita a cliché-ridden representation of femininity, a docile woman willing to be led wherever her husband takes her and unquestioningly accepting her fate, including cruel punishments and chastity tests. Gauri Parimoo Krishnan notes: “Valmiki’s Ramayana has been wrongly ascribed canonical status, giving rise to a sort of patriarchal, literate, pan-Indian elitism which in recent times has been scorned.” In the Indian feminist magazine, Manushi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen and Madhu Kishwar have written powerful critiques of the masculine interpretation of the Ramayana.
A survey of Hindu epics may suggest that Hindu gods don’t claim to be morally perfect; they do practise subterfuge and trickery. In an uncertain universe, we often have to act in ways that seem morally impure in order to achieve a higher end. That, indeed, is the message of the Mahabharata. On the other hand, the Ramayana aims to show how it is possible to lead a morally pure life. Rama’s heroism is not simply based on his battlefield skills but also on his ability to place the interests of others—and his own sense of obligation—above his own.
Such sacrificial acts are passé; the BJP wants to project Rama as a superman. However, elevating him over other gods makes Hinduism seem monotheistic, a bit less like itself and a bit more like Islam or Christianity. The late Morarji Desai, a former prime minister, astutely noted this point in a conversation with me in the late-1980s, when the BJP was still only beginning to embark on what then seemed like a quixotic campaign—to reclaim the site of the Babri Masjid. “They are playing a dangerous game,” he told me. “They want to create a cult of Rama. They are converting Hinduism into Islam—they are making Hinduism a religion with one book (Ramayana), one place of worship (Ayodhya) and one God (Rama). That is not Hinduism. Hinduism is about plurality.”
Edited extract reproduced with permission from Seagull Books. Offence: The Hindu Case will be available in bookstores from August, 2009. It is published by Seagull Books (Calcutta/London/New York) and distributed worldwide by the University of Chicago Press. The book is available for pre-order from Amazon in the UK and US.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. He has written frequently for a range of publications, including Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Guardian, Index on Censorship, Washington Post and Salon. He is also a columnist for Mint and a writer-at-large for Tehelka. Salil serves on the board of English PEN, and has been a senior visiting fellow at the Kennedy School, Harvard University.
India: How Government Funded Educational Institutions Are Promoting Religion
Frontline, July 04-17, 2009
PRODUCING PRIESTS
by Meera Nanda
Several deemed universities serve as crucial links in the supply of retailers of Hindu rituals, feeding a demand fuelled by material prosperity.
[Photo: http://www.flonnet.com/fl2614/images/20090717261403101.jpg] Shanker Chakravarty
[Caption] Students who secured the Degree of Vidyavaridhi (PhD) at the first convocation of the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan in New Delhi, deemed to be a university in May 2002, on June 29, 2005.
WHAT is good for the market is proving to be good for the gods in India. The more material acquisitions the middle classes make, the more pujas and homas they feel compelled to perform. Every vahan (vehicle) must have its puja, as must every tiny plot of bhoomi (land) before anything can be built upon it. Every puja, in turn, must have an astrologer or two and a vastu shastri, too. And then, every astrologer and vastu shastri worth his/her name must know how to work a computer, speak in English, and be “scientific” about it all.
Watching India’s thriving god market, one cannot help asking a simple question: where are all these seemingly modern pujaris, astrologers, vastu shastris and other retailers of rituals coming from? How does the supply of ritualists keep pace with the bottomless demand 21st century-Hindus have for religious rituals of all kinds?
Deemed universities have always served as crucial links in the supply chain that runs from traditional gurukuls and Vedic pathshalas to the homes, temples, offices, shops and even corporate boardrooms of the middle classes in India, going all the way to NRIs. The diplomas and degrees conferred by these universities, the majority of which are funded by taxpayers’ money, are actively “modernising” Hindu priestcraft and turning it into an economically comfortable middle-class occupation.
The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) infamous decision in 2001 to introduce jyotir vigyan and karma kanda into post-secondary education breathed a new life into the already existing Sanskrit institutions which had been deemed to be universities. In addition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government created a new network of deemed universities which continue to provide direct and indirect support for training Hindu ritualists. Even if the BJP were to stay in political wilderness for years to come, its objective of promoting traditional Hindu sciences will be well taken care of by the institutional infrastructure it put in place when it was in power.
When the UGC in 2001 decided to introduce astrology courses in higher education, three national-level institutions well known for their jyotish and karma-kanda courses had already been deemed as universities. They are: Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth in New Delhi, Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth at Tirupati, and Gurukul Kangri Vishwavidyalaya in Haridwar.
These institutions specialise in shastric learning, which includes advanced courses in jyotish, purohitya and yoga, both as a part of the regular course of study in Ved-Vedang and for special diplomas and certificates. They saw considerable expansion after the UGC (and later the Supreme Court) gave the green light to astrology. Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, for example, bought new equipment for its Department of Jyotish and set up a horoscope bank during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2002-07). It also expanded its reach by starting part-time diploma and certificate courses for astrology and purohitya. But this was only the tip of the iceberg.
In May 2002, the New Delhi-based Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan (RSS) was deemed to be a university. This old and venerable institution (founded 1970), which for so long had taken care of old Sanskrit manuscripts and Sanskrit scholars, was given the authority to create new syllabi, offer new courses and confer degrees.
All 10 of its campuses (in Allahabad, Puri, Jammu, Trichur, Jaipur, Lucknow, Sringeri, Garli, Bhopal, Mumbai) are deemed as universities, meaning that each one of them is authorised to design new courses (within the already permissive UGC guidelines) and hand out degrees and diplomas. The Sansthan serves as the nodal body that coordinates all the various campuses, along with the activities of the two vidyapeeths in New Delhi and Tirupati mentioned above. It is a part of its mandate to give out grants and financial aid to non-governmental gurukuls and Vedic pathshalas. It also grants stipends and scholarships for vocational courses in jyotish and karma kanda meant to improve the employability of those with Sanskrit degrees.
To round up the story so far, mention must also be made of two institutions recently deemed to be “yoga universities” that are not directly involved in jyotish and karma kanda but are still relevant to maintaining an adequate supply of priests.
They are Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (SVYAS) in Bangalore, which was recognised by the UGC in 2001, and Bihar Yoga Bharati in Fort Munger, Bihar, which became a deemed university in 2000.
There are two more strands in this tangled web of priest-training institutions:
The Central government funds the Ujjain-based Maharishi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratisthan, which acts as an accrediting and funding agency for non-governmental Vedic pathshalas and gurukuls that are cropping up all over the country. This agency is supposed to set the standards for gurukuls and conduct examinations for budding pujaris. Recognition from this agency has become a selling point for gurukuls.
The State-level UGC-approved universities, over and above the deemed universities mentioned earlier, form a category that includes well-known universities such as Mahesh Yogi’s university in Madhya Pradesh or the Kavi Kulguru Kalidas Sanskrit University in Ramtek, Maharashtra. These institutions do not have the status of university conferred upon them later by the UGC, but were established as full-fledged universities by their respective State legislatures and later granted recognition by the UGC.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vedic Vishwavidyalaya was established by a unanimous vote of the Madhya Pradesh State Legislature under Congress Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in 1995. This was done to honour Mahesh Yogi as a native son of Madhya Pradesh. This institution has become one of the best-known sources of advanced degrees (including PhDs) in all kinds of Vedic sciences. Many of its graduates have gone on to establish profitable businesses and/or academies as vastu shastris, astrologers, gemmologists, and so on.
These State-level, UGC-recognised universities and yoga universities serve as finishing schools for smaller, less well-endowed gurukuls and Vedic pathshalas that are cropping up all over the country. Many of these priest-schools take in young indigent boys (girls are not allowed) and train them in traditional karma kanda. But since they do not have the authority to confer academic degrees, they channel their students into any of the deemed or accredited State universities that specialise in yogic or Vedic sciences – loosely defined to include everything from astrology to yoga. This improves the marketability of their students as pujaris and other ritualists in India or abroad.
It is true that Sanskrit education is deeply intertwined with the ritualistic aspects of Hinduism and the two are often hard to tease apart: learning to perform a yagna or a puja is only the practical, hands-on aspect of mastering Yajurveda for a degree in Sanskrit. But rather than try to draw lines between teaching the religious literature written in Sanskrit and teaching rituals, the Indian educational establishment has gone the other way: it is using the cover of teaching Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy to use public money and resources to promote Hindu rituals.
Can India really call itself a secular republic when it pours public resources into promoting the majority religion through deemed universities?
Meera Nanda’s new book, The God Market: How Globalization is Making India More Hindu, will be published in August by Random House.
PRODUCING PRIESTS
by Meera Nanda
Several deemed universities serve as crucial links in the supply of retailers of Hindu rituals, feeding a demand fuelled by material prosperity.
[Photo: http://www.flonnet.com/fl2614/images/20090717261403101.jpg] Shanker Chakravarty
[Caption] Students who secured the Degree of Vidyavaridhi (PhD) at the first convocation of the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan in New Delhi, deemed to be a university in May 2002, on June 29, 2005.
WHAT is good for the market is proving to be good for the gods in India. The more material acquisitions the middle classes make, the more pujas and homas they feel compelled to perform. Every vahan (vehicle) must have its puja, as must every tiny plot of bhoomi (land) before anything can be built upon it. Every puja, in turn, must have an astrologer or two and a vastu shastri, too. And then, every astrologer and vastu shastri worth his/her name must know how to work a computer, speak in English, and be “scientific” about it all.
Watching India’s thriving god market, one cannot help asking a simple question: where are all these seemingly modern pujaris, astrologers, vastu shastris and other retailers of rituals coming from? How does the supply of ritualists keep pace with the bottomless demand 21st century-Hindus have for religious rituals of all kinds?
Deemed universities have always served as crucial links in the supply chain that runs from traditional gurukuls and Vedic pathshalas to the homes, temples, offices, shops and even corporate boardrooms of the middle classes in India, going all the way to NRIs. The diplomas and degrees conferred by these universities, the majority of which are funded by taxpayers’ money, are actively “modernising” Hindu priestcraft and turning it into an economically comfortable middle-class occupation.
The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) infamous decision in 2001 to introduce jyotir vigyan and karma kanda into post-secondary education breathed a new life into the already existing Sanskrit institutions which had been deemed to be universities. In addition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government created a new network of deemed universities which continue to provide direct and indirect support for training Hindu ritualists. Even if the BJP were to stay in political wilderness for years to come, its objective of promoting traditional Hindu sciences will be well taken care of by the institutional infrastructure it put in place when it was in power.
When the UGC in 2001 decided to introduce astrology courses in higher education, three national-level institutions well known for their jyotish and karma-kanda courses had already been deemed as universities. They are: Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth in New Delhi, Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth at Tirupati, and Gurukul Kangri Vishwavidyalaya in Haridwar.
These institutions specialise in shastric learning, which includes advanced courses in jyotish, purohitya and yoga, both as a part of the regular course of study in Ved-Vedang and for special diplomas and certificates. They saw considerable expansion after the UGC (and later the Supreme Court) gave the green light to astrology. Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, for example, bought new equipment for its Department of Jyotish and set up a horoscope bank during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2002-07). It also expanded its reach by starting part-time diploma and certificate courses for astrology and purohitya. But this was only the tip of the iceberg.
In May 2002, the New Delhi-based Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan (RSS) was deemed to be a university. This old and venerable institution (founded 1970), which for so long had taken care of old Sanskrit manuscripts and Sanskrit scholars, was given the authority to create new syllabi, offer new courses and confer degrees.
All 10 of its campuses (in Allahabad, Puri, Jammu, Trichur, Jaipur, Lucknow, Sringeri, Garli, Bhopal, Mumbai) are deemed as universities, meaning that each one of them is authorised to design new courses (within the already permissive UGC guidelines) and hand out degrees and diplomas. The Sansthan serves as the nodal body that coordinates all the various campuses, along with the activities of the two vidyapeeths in New Delhi and Tirupati mentioned above. It is a part of its mandate to give out grants and financial aid to non-governmental gurukuls and Vedic pathshalas. It also grants stipends and scholarships for vocational courses in jyotish and karma kanda meant to improve the employability of those with Sanskrit degrees.
To round up the story so far, mention must also be made of two institutions recently deemed to be “yoga universities” that are not directly involved in jyotish and karma kanda but are still relevant to maintaining an adequate supply of priests.
They are Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (SVYAS) in Bangalore, which was recognised by the UGC in 2001, and Bihar Yoga Bharati in Fort Munger, Bihar, which became a deemed university in 2000.
There are two more strands in this tangled web of priest-training institutions:
The Central government funds the Ujjain-based Maharishi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratisthan, which acts as an accrediting and funding agency for non-governmental Vedic pathshalas and gurukuls that are cropping up all over the country. This agency is supposed to set the standards for gurukuls and conduct examinations for budding pujaris. Recognition from this agency has become a selling point for gurukuls.
The State-level UGC-approved universities, over and above the deemed universities mentioned earlier, form a category that includes well-known universities such as Mahesh Yogi’s university in Madhya Pradesh or the Kavi Kulguru Kalidas Sanskrit University in Ramtek, Maharashtra. These institutions do not have the status of university conferred upon them later by the UGC, but were established as full-fledged universities by their respective State legislatures and later granted recognition by the UGC.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vedic Vishwavidyalaya was established by a unanimous vote of the Madhya Pradesh State Legislature under Congress Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in 1995. This was done to honour Mahesh Yogi as a native son of Madhya Pradesh. This institution has become one of the best-known sources of advanced degrees (including PhDs) in all kinds of Vedic sciences. Many of its graduates have gone on to establish profitable businesses and/or academies as vastu shastris, astrologers, gemmologists, and so on.
These State-level, UGC-recognised universities and yoga universities serve as finishing schools for smaller, less well-endowed gurukuls and Vedic pathshalas that are cropping up all over the country. Many of these priest-schools take in young indigent boys (girls are not allowed) and train them in traditional karma kanda. But since they do not have the authority to confer academic degrees, they channel their students into any of the deemed or accredited State universities that specialise in yogic or Vedic sciences – loosely defined to include everything from astrology to yoga. This improves the marketability of their students as pujaris and other ritualists in India or abroad.
It is true that Sanskrit education is deeply intertwined with the ritualistic aspects of Hinduism and the two are often hard to tease apart: learning to perform a yagna or a puja is only the practical, hands-on aspect of mastering Yajurveda for a degree in Sanskrit. But rather than try to draw lines between teaching the religious literature written in Sanskrit and teaching rituals, the Indian educational establishment has gone the other way: it is using the cover of teaching Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy to use public money and resources to promote Hindu rituals.
Can India really call itself a secular republic when it pours public resources into promoting the majority religion through deemed universities?
Meera Nanda’s new book, The God Market: How Globalization is Making India More Hindu, will be published in August by Random House.
The Hindutva View of History: Rewriting Textbooks in India and the United States
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Issue 10.1 Winter/Spring 2009
The Hindutva View of History: Rewriting Textbooks in India and the United States
by Kamala Visweswaran, Michael Witzel, Nandini Manjrekar,
Dipta Bhog, Uma Chakravarti
Organizations associated with India's BJP political party and the Sangh Parivar have attempted to fundamentally and inaccurately revise textbooks to propagate a Hindu nationalist view in Californian and Indian schoolbooks.
The Hindutva View of History: Rewriting Textbooks in India and the United States
by Kamala Visweswaran, Michael Witzel, Nandini Manjrekar,
Dipta Bhog, Uma Chakravarti
Organizations associated with India's BJP political party and the Sangh Parivar have attempted to fundamentally and inaccurately revise textbooks to propagate a Hindu nationalist view in Californian and Indian schoolbooks.
July 19, 2009
Secular academics stand up for the Delhi Court ruling against section 377
sacw.net, 19 July 2009
http://www.sacw.net/article1026.html
INDIA: STATEMENT BY TEACHERS, RESEARCHERS AND ACADEMICS WELCOMES THE DELHI HIGH COURT JUDGEMENT READING DOWN SECTION 377
We, teachers, researchers and academics from all over India, welcome the Delhi High Court judgement reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to decriminalize consensual sex among adults in private. The judgement held that “Section 377 IPC, insofar as it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution.” In other words, the court believes that continuing to criminalize citizens on the grounds of their sexual preference violates the Fundamental Rights to life and personal liberty, to equality, and the right not to be discriminated against on non-relevant grounds.
We in the academic community have had a hitherto silent engagement with the pain, harassment, fear and discrimination that comes with being non-heterosexual/queer. We know students, colleagues, friends and family members who are queer, or may be queer ourselves.
But sexual preference and identification is only one part of people’s identities. We believe that a modern democracy must respect diversity regardless of whether consensus exists in society on the desirability of each such practice, provided such practices respect the personhood of others. There need not be consensus in society, for instance, on either meat-eating or vegetarianism as desirable, provided both groups are free to follow their dietary preference. Similarly if “religious leaders” believe that homosexuality is not sanctioned by the scriptures, they have the right to propagate their views, provided that these views are not taken as having the final sanction on the issue for society as a whole.
At the same time, religious identity is as important for many homosexuals as for heterosexuals. Homosexual people who are practicing Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians have fully participated in this challenge and supported the decision.
We state emphatically that Section 377 as it exists is anti-democratic, and reiterate our support for the Delhi High Court judgement.
180 Signatories:
Apurba K Baruah, Manorama Sharma (NEHU, Shillong);
Tilottama Sharma Misra, Udayon Misra (Guwahati);
Shaila Desouza, (Goa University and Member, Goa State Commission for Women);
Alito Siqueira, (Goa University);
Prabhakar Bhimalapuram, K Madhava Krishna, Harjinder Singh ‘Laltu’, (IIIT, Hyderabad);
Sowmya Dechamma, G Haragopal, Jenson Joseph, R.V.Ramana Murthy, Yasser Arafath P.K, Sanjay Palshikar, Sujata Patel, Arun Kumar Patnaik, Aparna Rayaprol, (University of Hyderabad);
A.Suneetha, (Anveshi, Hyderabad);
Satish Poduval, M. Madhava Prasad, N. Manohar Reddy, Susie Tharu (EFLU Hyderabad)
Anup Dhar, Rakhi Ghoshal, Tejaswini Niranjana, Rochelle Pinto, (CSCS Bangalore)
Annapurna Garimella, Lata Mani, Kavery Nambisan, Vijay Nambisan, Rekha Pappu, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, (Bangalore)
Janaki Abraham, Sadhna Arya, Naman P. Ahuja, Pratiksha Baxi, Maitrayee Chaudhuri, Anuradha Chenoy, Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Rohan D’Souza, Ajay Gudavarthi, Siddharth Mallavarapu, Ranjani Mazumdar, Nivedita Menon, Padmini Mongia, A.K.Ramakrishnan, Mohan Rao, Anupama Roy, Tanika Sarkar, Urmimala Sarkar, Kavita Singh, (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi);
Amrapali Basumatary, Amita Baviskar, Shahana Bhattacharya, Brinda Bose, Gautam Chakrabarti, Uma Chakravarty, Anita Cherian, Radhika Chopra, Prem Chowdhry, Nonica Datta, P. K. Datta, Satish Deshpande, Anita Ghai, Saroj Giri, Charu Gupta, NA Jacob, Rachana Johri, Chitra Joshi, Sunalini Kumar, Mukul Manglik, Dilip Menon, Krishna Menon, Rajni Palriwala, Sumit Sarkar, Parth Shil, Mohinder Singh, Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Sanjay Srivastava, Nandini Sundar, Achin Vanaik, Madhvi Zutshi, (Delhi University);
Sabeena Gadihoke, Shohini Ghosh, K.S.Kusuma, Sanghamitra Misra, Ambarien Al Qadar, Sreerekha, Shamuel Tharu, (Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi);
Ratna Kapur, (CFLR, Delhi);
Anu Aneja (IGNOU, Delhi)
Sarada Balagopalan, Aditya Nigam, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan, (CSDS Delhi);
Renu Addlakha, Mary E. John, Sreelekha Nair, N Neetha, (CWDS, Delhi);
Malavika Karlekar, Editor, Indian Journal of Gender Studies
Shah Alam Khan (AIIMS, Delhi);
Vineeta Bal, (National Institute of Immunology,Delhi)
Pulapre Balakrishnan, (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi)
Kailash K.K., Deepak K. Singh, Janaki Srinivasan, (Panjab University, Chandigarh)
Mangesh Kulkarni, Sharmila Rege, Anagha Tambe, (University of Pune)
Ajit Menon, Anandhi.S, Padmini Swaminathan, (MIDS, Chennai);
MSS Pandian (Chennai); Meena Kandasamy (Anna University, Chennai)
Nasreen Fazalbhoy, Kamala Ganesh, Shoba Venkatesh Ghosh, Kanchana Mahadevan, Leena Rao, Sam Taraporevala, Vrijendra (University of Mumbai)
K. Sridhar (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai)
Vineeta Bhatia, Amita Bhide, K.P. Jayasankar, Nandini Manjrekar, Anjali Monteiro, Bindhulakshmi P, Lakshmi Lingam, B. Manjula, Shilpa Phadke, Monica Sakhrani, (TISS, Mumbai)
Supratik Chakraborty, Om Damani, Anindya Datta, Siby K. George, Siddhartha Ghosh, Farhana Ibrahim, Shishir K. Jha, K. D. Joshi, Piyul Mukherjee, Ratheesh Radhakrishnan, Bhaskaran Raman, Sharmila, (IIT Bombay)
Kaiwan Mehta, (K Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture, Mumbai)
Chhaya Datar, Rohini Hensman, Rohan Shivkumar, Rajinder Singh (Mumbai)
Gita Chadha (University of London External Programme, Mumbai)
Johannes Manjrekar, Shivaji K Panikkar, Indrapramit Roy, Santhosh.S (M S University of Baroda);
Meera Velayudhan (Ahmedabad);
J Devika, Praveena Kodoth, V.J.Varghese, (CDS Thiruvananthapuram)
Jiju Varghese Jacob (Govt. Polytechnic College Punalur)
T.V.Sajeev (Kerala Forest Research Institute, Peechi)
Janaky Sreedharan, Mini Sukumar, K.Gopinathan, (University of Calicut)
V C Harris (Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam)
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Anjan Ghosh, Epsita Halder, Janaki Nair, (CSSS Kolkata);
Abhijit Gupta, Kavita Panjabi, (Jadavpur University)
Nikhila H., (Pondicherry University)
Pushpesh Kumar, (SRTM University, Nanded)
Rekha Chowdhary, Ellora Puri, (University of Jammu)
Oishik Sircar (Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat)
K.Srilata (IIT Madras)
Sukla Sen, Life Fellow, Indian Academy of Social Sciences, Allahabad
http://www.sacw.net/article1026.html
INDIA: STATEMENT BY TEACHERS, RESEARCHERS AND ACADEMICS WELCOMES THE DELHI HIGH COURT JUDGEMENT READING DOWN SECTION 377
We, teachers, researchers and academics from all over India, welcome the Delhi High Court judgement reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to decriminalize consensual sex among adults in private. The judgement held that “Section 377 IPC, insofar as it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution.” In other words, the court believes that continuing to criminalize citizens on the grounds of their sexual preference violates the Fundamental Rights to life and personal liberty, to equality, and the right not to be discriminated against on non-relevant grounds.
We in the academic community have had a hitherto silent engagement with the pain, harassment, fear and discrimination that comes with being non-heterosexual/queer. We know students, colleagues, friends and family members who are queer, or may be queer ourselves.
But sexual preference and identification is only one part of people’s identities. We believe that a modern democracy must respect diversity regardless of whether consensus exists in society on the desirability of each such practice, provided such practices respect the personhood of others. There need not be consensus in society, for instance, on either meat-eating or vegetarianism as desirable, provided both groups are free to follow their dietary preference. Similarly if “religious leaders” believe that homosexuality is not sanctioned by the scriptures, they have the right to propagate their views, provided that these views are not taken as having the final sanction on the issue for society as a whole.
At the same time, religious identity is as important for many homosexuals as for heterosexuals. Homosexual people who are practicing Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians have fully participated in this challenge and supported the decision.
We state emphatically that Section 377 as it exists is anti-democratic, and reiterate our support for the Delhi High Court judgement.
180 Signatories:
Apurba K Baruah, Manorama Sharma (NEHU, Shillong);
Tilottama Sharma Misra, Udayon Misra (Guwahati);
Shaila Desouza, (Goa University and Member, Goa State Commission for Women);
Alito Siqueira, (Goa University);
Prabhakar Bhimalapuram, K Madhava Krishna, Harjinder Singh ‘Laltu’, (IIIT, Hyderabad);
Sowmya Dechamma, G Haragopal, Jenson Joseph, R.V.Ramana Murthy, Yasser Arafath P.K, Sanjay Palshikar, Sujata Patel, Arun Kumar Patnaik, Aparna Rayaprol, (University of Hyderabad);
A.Suneetha, (Anveshi, Hyderabad);
Satish Poduval, M. Madhava Prasad, N. Manohar Reddy, Susie Tharu (EFLU Hyderabad)
Anup Dhar, Rakhi Ghoshal, Tejaswini Niranjana, Rochelle Pinto, (CSCS Bangalore)
Annapurna Garimella, Lata Mani, Kavery Nambisan, Vijay Nambisan, Rekha Pappu, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, (Bangalore)
Janaki Abraham, Sadhna Arya, Naman P. Ahuja, Pratiksha Baxi, Maitrayee Chaudhuri, Anuradha Chenoy, Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Rohan D’Souza, Ajay Gudavarthi, Siddharth Mallavarapu, Ranjani Mazumdar, Nivedita Menon, Padmini Mongia, A.K.Ramakrishnan, Mohan Rao, Anupama Roy, Tanika Sarkar, Urmimala Sarkar, Kavita Singh, (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi);
Amrapali Basumatary, Amita Baviskar, Shahana Bhattacharya, Brinda Bose, Gautam Chakrabarti, Uma Chakravarty, Anita Cherian, Radhika Chopra, Prem Chowdhry, Nonica Datta, P. K. Datta, Satish Deshpande, Anita Ghai, Saroj Giri, Charu Gupta, NA Jacob, Rachana Johri, Chitra Joshi, Sunalini Kumar, Mukul Manglik, Dilip Menon, Krishna Menon, Rajni Palriwala, Sumit Sarkar, Parth Shil, Mohinder Singh, Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Sanjay Srivastava, Nandini Sundar, Achin Vanaik, Madhvi Zutshi, (Delhi University);
Sabeena Gadihoke, Shohini Ghosh, K.S.Kusuma, Sanghamitra Misra, Ambarien Al Qadar, Sreerekha, Shamuel Tharu, (Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi);
Ratna Kapur, (CFLR, Delhi);
Anu Aneja (IGNOU, Delhi)
Sarada Balagopalan, Aditya Nigam, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan, (CSDS Delhi);
Renu Addlakha, Mary E. John, Sreelekha Nair, N Neetha, (CWDS, Delhi);
Malavika Karlekar, Editor, Indian Journal of Gender Studies
Shah Alam Khan (AIIMS, Delhi);
Vineeta Bal, (National Institute of Immunology,Delhi)
Pulapre Balakrishnan, (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi)
Kailash K.K., Deepak K. Singh, Janaki Srinivasan, (Panjab University, Chandigarh)
Mangesh Kulkarni, Sharmila Rege, Anagha Tambe, (University of Pune)
Ajit Menon, Anandhi.S, Padmini Swaminathan, (MIDS, Chennai);
MSS Pandian (Chennai); Meena Kandasamy (Anna University, Chennai)
Nasreen Fazalbhoy, Kamala Ganesh, Shoba Venkatesh Ghosh, Kanchana Mahadevan, Leena Rao, Sam Taraporevala, Vrijendra (University of Mumbai)
K. Sridhar (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai)
Vineeta Bhatia, Amita Bhide, K.P. Jayasankar, Nandini Manjrekar, Anjali Monteiro, Bindhulakshmi P, Lakshmi Lingam, B. Manjula, Shilpa Phadke, Monica Sakhrani, (TISS, Mumbai)
Supratik Chakraborty, Om Damani, Anindya Datta, Siby K. George, Siddhartha Ghosh, Farhana Ibrahim, Shishir K. Jha, K. D. Joshi, Piyul Mukherjee, Ratheesh Radhakrishnan, Bhaskaran Raman, Sharmila, (IIT Bombay)
Kaiwan Mehta, (K Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture, Mumbai)
Chhaya Datar, Rohini Hensman, Rohan Shivkumar, Rajinder Singh (Mumbai)
Gita Chadha (University of London External Programme, Mumbai)
Johannes Manjrekar, Shivaji K Panikkar, Indrapramit Roy, Santhosh.S (M S University of Baroda);
Meera Velayudhan (Ahmedabad);
J Devika, Praveena Kodoth, V.J.Varghese, (CDS Thiruvananthapuram)
Jiju Varghese Jacob (Govt. Polytechnic College Punalur)
T.V.Sajeev (Kerala Forest Research Institute, Peechi)
Janaky Sreedharan, Mini Sukumar, K.Gopinathan, (University of Calicut)
V C Harris (Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam)
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Anjan Ghosh, Epsita Halder, Janaki Nair, (CSSS Kolkata);
Abhijit Gupta, Kavita Panjabi, (Jadavpur University)
Nikhila H., (Pondicherry University)
Pushpesh Kumar, (SRTM University, Nanded)
Rekha Chowdhary, Ellora Puri, (University of Jammu)
Oishik Sircar (Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat)
K.Srilata (IIT Madras)
Sukla Sen, Life Fellow, Indian Academy of Social Sciences, Allahabad
Reserved Past: De-reserving Future
by Ram Puniyani
Reservation has been a big bone of contention in our society. Since last two decades the issue has been expressed in subtle, direct and indirect, forms. In popular psyche while some reservations are desirable and good others are the one which are regarded as an obstacle to social progress and some others are regarded as an obstacle to national integration. Currently the one’s related to Women’s reservation is regarded as being highly desirable, the one relating to Dalit-OBC is thought of as cause of stagnation, obstacle to progress and depriving the more meritorious upper castes from the portals of opportunity, while the mere talk of reservation for minorities is presented as dividing the nation.
Despite India coming out of colonial yoke, despite the democracy and modern constitution being in place, the process of transformation of caste and gender has remained half way through. The foundations of these twin transformations were laid during the freedom movement, but since forms of landlordism and hold of clergy continued in society, the caste-gender transformation has not been completed. Nehru expressed this to a French journalist, Andre Marloux, that a secular constitution is there but country is gripped by deep religiosity. Our Constitution makers took up the step of affirmative action for dalits-adivasis, reserving seats for a stipulated period of time. Since the implementation of these policies was in the hands of upper caste, the proper implementation could not take place and the problem lingered on, resulting in every succeeding government extending the period of reservations, part of it was also motivated by electoral compulsions. To add to this came the issue that reservations for these groups were used by a few in the community, leading to creamy sections fattening themselves and a larger sections remaining deprived of the basic amenities and consequent dignity.
The process of urbanization resulted in the affluent middle classes coming up and by 1980 they became assertive, and dead against the reservations for dalit-OBC. They crystallized around RSS affiliates and the result was the first major anti dalit violence in Ahmedabad in 1981, this was backed up by the one in 1986 against OBCs in Gujarat. By this time women’s movement was picking up. From last more than a decade women have been demanding their due in the social and political sphere. The RSS support base saw the Mandal, reservation for OBCs, as a big threat to their social status and rallied around Advani’s Rath yatra. Mandal was to be countered by Kamamdal (politics in the name of religion) as Atal Bihari Vajpayee put it. Kamandal spilled the blood on the streets and the issue of reservation went to the back drop and major assault now was directed against, minorities, First the Muslims and the Christians, Pehle Kasai-Phir Isai, as their popular battle cry put it.
With the severe security problems of minorities, the question of equity remained in the background. The Muslim community as a matter of fact went down on the social indices as pointed out by the Sachar Committee. With declining economic indices the talk of reservation for Muslims in education and jobs started coming up. But RSS affiliates, working for a Hindu nation, essentially the one with hegemony of upper caste males, struck hard by saying that any reservation for Muslims will mean formation of another Pakistan. One can’t understand the logic of the same, but one can surely understand the threat concealed in this formulation. So now the compromised talk of Equal Opportunity Commission, affirmative action for minorities and the formulation that all steps short of reservation are to be thought-of, is going on. How far Equal Opportunity Commission will achieve the purpose, if the societal thinking is so hostile to the minority welfare, remains to be seen?
During this time the Women, another major and deprived section, were given reservation in Panchayats. This effort had all the merits but some deeper flaws prevailed. One was that in most or many Panchayats, where women were Sarpanchs (chief), their Husband or other male relative practically controlled the scene. Despite this, women did make some headway in the direction of empowerment. With this came the demand of reservation for women in Parliament, the highest law making body. Most of the political parties, including BJP, the one controlled by RSS, so inherently believing in the birth based hierarchy of caste and gender, supported it. The only opposition came from the OBC dominated parties, for whom the caste inequality has been the central concern of their politics.
Their argument is that at present mainly upper caste and affluent women are in the social space so this move will tilt the caste balance in favor of upper castes. So they say that there should be inbuilt sub quota based on the basis of caste and minority. To say that women are women, no inner differences are to close the eyes to reality. The poor dalit, adivasi, Muslim women have little in common with the affluent elite women. The Bill for women’s reservation has been struggling to be passed since 1996. So far as there was no clear majority of any party in Lok Sabha, the bill kept hanging fire. Now with UPA, in comfortable position the expectation is that the bill should be passed.
Is there any merit in what Sharad Yadavs, Mulayams and Lalus have been saying? It has been presented in the media that they are against the reservation for women as such. Their demand that the bill be presented after modification has been underplayed and rejected out of hand. One whole-heartedly supports the reservations when necessary, to bring in gender and social justice. At the same time there has to be a safety clause that the reservation should be suitably implemented to avoid the adverse effects. While some political voices that are very vociferous for ‘merit’, are against the concept of reservation more so for SC-ST-OBC-minority reservation, are also strong proponents of reservation for women! Why these double standards? Why the bill has not been amended to include the sub quota for caste and minorities not added is a mystery, or is it that, it shows the real agenda of those who are for the bill in present form?
Reservation has been a big bone of contention in our society. Since last two decades the issue has been expressed in subtle, direct and indirect, forms. In popular psyche while some reservations are desirable and good others are the one which are regarded as an obstacle to social progress and some others are regarded as an obstacle to national integration. Currently the one’s related to Women’s reservation is regarded as being highly desirable, the one relating to Dalit-OBC is thought of as cause of stagnation, obstacle to progress and depriving the more meritorious upper castes from the portals of opportunity, while the mere talk of reservation for minorities is presented as dividing the nation.
Despite India coming out of colonial yoke, despite the democracy and modern constitution being in place, the process of transformation of caste and gender has remained half way through. The foundations of these twin transformations were laid during the freedom movement, but since forms of landlordism and hold of clergy continued in society, the caste-gender transformation has not been completed. Nehru expressed this to a French journalist, Andre Marloux, that a secular constitution is there but country is gripped by deep religiosity. Our Constitution makers took up the step of affirmative action for dalits-adivasis, reserving seats for a stipulated period of time. Since the implementation of these policies was in the hands of upper caste, the proper implementation could not take place and the problem lingered on, resulting in every succeeding government extending the period of reservations, part of it was also motivated by electoral compulsions. To add to this came the issue that reservations for these groups were used by a few in the community, leading to creamy sections fattening themselves and a larger sections remaining deprived of the basic amenities and consequent dignity.
The process of urbanization resulted in the affluent middle classes coming up and by 1980 they became assertive, and dead against the reservations for dalit-OBC. They crystallized around RSS affiliates and the result was the first major anti dalit violence in Ahmedabad in 1981, this was backed up by the one in 1986 against OBCs in Gujarat. By this time women’s movement was picking up. From last more than a decade women have been demanding their due in the social and political sphere. The RSS support base saw the Mandal, reservation for OBCs, as a big threat to their social status and rallied around Advani’s Rath yatra. Mandal was to be countered by Kamamdal (politics in the name of religion) as Atal Bihari Vajpayee put it. Kamandal spilled the blood on the streets and the issue of reservation went to the back drop and major assault now was directed against, minorities, First the Muslims and the Christians, Pehle Kasai-Phir Isai, as their popular battle cry put it.
With the severe security problems of minorities, the question of equity remained in the background. The Muslim community as a matter of fact went down on the social indices as pointed out by the Sachar Committee. With declining economic indices the talk of reservation for Muslims in education and jobs started coming up. But RSS affiliates, working for a Hindu nation, essentially the one with hegemony of upper caste males, struck hard by saying that any reservation for Muslims will mean formation of another Pakistan. One can’t understand the logic of the same, but one can surely understand the threat concealed in this formulation. So now the compromised talk of Equal Opportunity Commission, affirmative action for minorities and the formulation that all steps short of reservation are to be thought-of, is going on. How far Equal Opportunity Commission will achieve the purpose, if the societal thinking is so hostile to the minority welfare, remains to be seen?
During this time the Women, another major and deprived section, were given reservation in Panchayats. This effort had all the merits but some deeper flaws prevailed. One was that in most or many Panchayats, where women were Sarpanchs (chief), their Husband or other male relative practically controlled the scene. Despite this, women did make some headway in the direction of empowerment. With this came the demand of reservation for women in Parliament, the highest law making body. Most of the political parties, including BJP, the one controlled by RSS, so inherently believing in the birth based hierarchy of caste and gender, supported it. The only opposition came from the OBC dominated parties, for whom the caste inequality has been the central concern of their politics.
Their argument is that at present mainly upper caste and affluent women are in the social space so this move will tilt the caste balance in favor of upper castes. So they say that there should be inbuilt sub quota based on the basis of caste and minority. To say that women are women, no inner differences are to close the eyes to reality. The poor dalit, adivasi, Muslim women have little in common with the affluent elite women. The Bill for women’s reservation has been struggling to be passed since 1996. So far as there was no clear majority of any party in Lok Sabha, the bill kept hanging fire. Now with UPA, in comfortable position the expectation is that the bill should be passed.
Is there any merit in what Sharad Yadavs, Mulayams and Lalus have been saying? It has been presented in the media that they are against the reservation for women as such. Their demand that the bill be presented after modification has been underplayed and rejected out of hand. One whole-heartedly supports the reservations when necessary, to bring in gender and social justice. At the same time there has to be a safety clause that the reservation should be suitably implemented to avoid the adverse effects. While some political voices that are very vociferous for ‘merit’, are against the concept of reservation more so for SC-ST-OBC-minority reservation, are also strong proponents of reservation for women! Why these double standards? Why the bill has not been amended to include the sub quota for caste and minorities not added is a mystery, or is it that, it shows the real agenda of those who are for the bill in present form?
July 18, 2009
Kerala: Latent Communalism and the Police Narrative - Reflections on Beemapalli
Sitting Ducks - A Beemapalli reflection
by Bobby Kunhu (http://community.eldis.org/myshkin/Blog/)
It is with the utmost hesitation that I write this. Hesitation because I think I have not understood, nor have many others who have written about the May police firing in Beemapalli. Not that there is any ambiguity in anybody’s (who has visited the place) mind about the specific incidents that took place on 17th of May this year. As a part of a small fact finding team trying to tie up its report, I’d rather use this space to raise contextual questions about the police firing that have been haunting me since I heard the first reports of the firing.
At the outset, I need to assert as a human rights lawyer (and independent of the socio-economic realities of Beemapalli) that what happened on May 17th in Beemapalli is one of the worst possible crimes - where lives of 6 people were taken by forces of the state, without following the procedure established by law - in other words extra-judicial murders - and calling it by any other name is as offensive as the incident itself. In my mind, the incident involves the police allegedly firing 50 rounds of bullets at a gathering in a coastal village. The facts are that 43 people were injured and 6 died in the police firing. The fact is that all the people who died and were injured were Muslims. The fact is that there is no credible evidence shown that the crowd fired at was violent or provocative. The fact is that there is no damage reported from the police side. The fact is that the police bypassed the usual procedures that need to be adopted before a firing. Having made that assertion, let me move on to the first set of concerns that have been haunting me.
Silent Media, Silent Opposition
The first of these is the general social and political reactions to Beemapalli firing. In fact one of the factors that led me to take the initiative in organising a fact-finding was the deafening silence that followed the violence in Beemapalli. It looked like that only "Muslim" organisations were interested in taking up the issue. Even the political opposition did not seem like wanting to capitalise this serious lapse in governance. When I tried prying into the possible reason, a newspaper report lauding the media for acting sensibly by maintaining silence and thereby averting a communal issue was literally thrown at my face. (The report was titled, Signs of a Mature Media, Opposition).
But was this violence communal to start with? The victims of the violence did not seem to think so - despite all of them belonging to one single community!!
Interestingly apart from the high profile Lavalin case, the national and Kerala media was filled with stories of racist violence in Australia around this time. Then how did such gruesome violence fail to capture collective social imaginations? The only plausible answer that comes to my mind is the identity of those killed and injured in Beemapally - they were all from fish worker Muslim community - and do not have messiahs touting their cause.
There are other reasons as well for my arrival at this hypothesis. The first being that in the past couple of decades state violence in all its manifestations is being directed against traditionally and structurally marginalised groups. Formal expressions were demonstrated in Muthanga, Chengara and now Beemapalli. Insidious and subtle expressions through changes in reservation structure, discourse on terror used to de-legitimise communitarian political expressions and so on.
Dangerous Activities
Interestingly Beemapalli, being a Muslim ghetto has figured many a time in police narratives on terror. It would take another full essay to analyse this. It is in this context that couple of weeks after the firing, an intelligence report dated before the firing was leaked to the press. This report warns the state police of dangerous and illegal activity in Beemapalli and Malappuram. Much to my amusement, what the newspapers omitted was that this "dangerous" activity is the trade in pirated CD/DVDs that Bheemapally is notorious for. Interestingly, this has been subsequently used to close down this trade and increase police presence in Beemapalli. One of the speculations that was aired as a reason for the extreme violence from the police firing was to gain a foothold into this lucrative terrain.
Claims on Coastal Resources
The next reason is rooted in the socio-economic conditions prevailing in coastal areas generally and Beemapally specifically. The Indian coast has been a simmering pot of discontent for sometime now - aggravated especially after the tsunami. This discontent is rooted in multiple contestations for coastal resources and fish-worker resistance articulated through their right to the coast as a common property resource. I have been witness to a number of concerted efforts to divide the coastal community during the tsunami rehabilitation process. Some of these experiences have been documented as well. These contestations are grounded in the fact of the vulnerability of the coastal communities and Dalit and Muslim communities amongst these are even more vulnerable. Beemapally violence needs to be seen in this context as well. Portrayal of the police violence in Beemapally as communal riots instigated by a Beemapally mob by the police and a section of society including segments of the Catholic church subtly fails to acknowledge that the neighbouring hamlet Cheriyathura is inhabited by Latin Catholics. This reading is inherently dangerous as it pits two similarly placed vulnerable communities against each other.
Two Beemapallis and a Free Run
Further, Magalene, a fish worker leader confirms my suspicion that social indicators in Beemapalli are much worse compared to neighbouring fishing hamlets. She points to the fact that there are two Beemapallys in existence - one glossy Beemapally made of the DVD/CD trade and the other fish-worker hamlet which lacks even basic hygiene and sanitary requirements. She also points to the abysmal female literacy and empowerment in this hamlet in support of her claim. This also perhaps points to a hegemonic social apathy towards people that are forced to live on the fringes - a certain lack of value for their lives. This also could have contributed to the unchallenged free run that the Police is having with their version of the violence and attempts to portray their violence as a communal clash.
My next set of concerns is regarding the impunity with which the Police framed a community as communally volatile and in all probabilities is getting away with it. In his report to the government, DGP Jacob Punnose claims that the police fired 50 rounds and there are 43 injured and 6 dead - indicating that police fired to hit. This also dispels claims that several rounds were fired in the air. Of course there are other unsubstantiated claims in DGP Punnose’s report. But what gets my nerve is the shoddy framing that the police has indulged in, without having done any homework whatsoever - is this born out of a confidence that the Police force would get away with murder since the people killed are fishing Muslims? The confidence of the police seems to be bolstered by the collective silences and framing of Bheemapalli as a dangerous area mentioned above. It needs to be remembered that DGP Punnose is spearheading the demand for Police reforms and reducing political control over the police. In the process many vital questions remain unanswered, including questions that would legally place the violence as cold-blooded murder within criminal jurisprudence.
The silence on Beemapalli violence opens many cans of worms - including the deeply hegemonic nature of Kerala’s responses to its marginalised, latent communalism within the administration and media and so on and so forth. The responses to Beemapalli has left me perplexed, especially after having visited the place. But, having spend considerable time and energy on conflict situations, my sense is that Kerala might be sitting on a social time bomb, if it continues this lackadaisical attitude towards its marginalised population.
I believe Beemapalli calls for a classical "secular" response and honest peace building exercises that would instill a sense of confidence in Beemapally residents that they are not being persecuted - but that might be a difficult job and would call for extreme commitment.
(Published originally in the op-ed page of the Malayalam newspaper Thejas on the 15th July, 2009. Also to be found at http://sudeepsdiary.blogspot.com/2009/07/sitting-ducks-beemapalli-reflection.html
by Bobby Kunhu (http://community.eldis.org/myshkin/Blog/)
It is with the utmost hesitation that I write this. Hesitation because I think I have not understood, nor have many others who have written about the May police firing in Beemapalli. Not that there is any ambiguity in anybody’s (who has visited the place) mind about the specific incidents that took place on 17th of May this year. As a part of a small fact finding team trying to tie up its report, I’d rather use this space to raise contextual questions about the police firing that have been haunting me since I heard the first reports of the firing.
At the outset, I need to assert as a human rights lawyer (and independent of the socio-economic realities of Beemapalli) that what happened on May 17th in Beemapalli is one of the worst possible crimes - where lives of 6 people were taken by forces of the state, without following the procedure established by law - in other words extra-judicial murders - and calling it by any other name is as offensive as the incident itself. In my mind, the incident involves the police allegedly firing 50 rounds of bullets at a gathering in a coastal village. The facts are that 43 people were injured and 6 died in the police firing. The fact is that all the people who died and were injured were Muslims. The fact is that there is no credible evidence shown that the crowd fired at was violent or provocative. The fact is that there is no damage reported from the police side. The fact is that the police bypassed the usual procedures that need to be adopted before a firing. Having made that assertion, let me move on to the first set of concerns that have been haunting me.
Silent Media, Silent Opposition
The first of these is the general social and political reactions to Beemapalli firing. In fact one of the factors that led me to take the initiative in organising a fact-finding was the deafening silence that followed the violence in Beemapalli. It looked like that only "Muslim" organisations were interested in taking up the issue. Even the political opposition did not seem like wanting to capitalise this serious lapse in governance. When I tried prying into the possible reason, a newspaper report lauding the media for acting sensibly by maintaining silence and thereby averting a communal issue was literally thrown at my face. (The report was titled, Signs of a Mature Media, Opposition).
But was this violence communal to start with? The victims of the violence did not seem to think so - despite all of them belonging to one single community!!
Interestingly apart from the high profile Lavalin case, the national and Kerala media was filled with stories of racist violence in Australia around this time. Then how did such gruesome violence fail to capture collective social imaginations? The only plausible answer that comes to my mind is the identity of those killed and injured in Beemapally - they were all from fish worker Muslim community - and do not have messiahs touting their cause.
There are other reasons as well for my arrival at this hypothesis. The first being that in the past couple of decades state violence in all its manifestations is being directed against traditionally and structurally marginalised groups. Formal expressions were demonstrated in Muthanga, Chengara and now Beemapalli. Insidious and subtle expressions through changes in reservation structure, discourse on terror used to de-legitimise communitarian political expressions and so on.
Dangerous Activities
Interestingly Beemapalli, being a Muslim ghetto has figured many a time in police narratives on terror. It would take another full essay to analyse this. It is in this context that couple of weeks after the firing, an intelligence report dated before the firing was leaked to the press. This report warns the state police of dangerous and illegal activity in Beemapalli and Malappuram. Much to my amusement, what the newspapers omitted was that this "dangerous" activity is the trade in pirated CD/DVDs that Bheemapally is notorious for. Interestingly, this has been subsequently used to close down this trade and increase police presence in Beemapalli. One of the speculations that was aired as a reason for the extreme violence from the police firing was to gain a foothold into this lucrative terrain.
Claims on Coastal Resources
The next reason is rooted in the socio-economic conditions prevailing in coastal areas generally and Beemapally specifically. The Indian coast has been a simmering pot of discontent for sometime now - aggravated especially after the tsunami. This discontent is rooted in multiple contestations for coastal resources and fish-worker resistance articulated through their right to the coast as a common property resource. I have been witness to a number of concerted efforts to divide the coastal community during the tsunami rehabilitation process. Some of these experiences have been documented as well. These contestations are grounded in the fact of the vulnerability of the coastal communities and Dalit and Muslim communities amongst these are even more vulnerable. Beemapally violence needs to be seen in this context as well. Portrayal of the police violence in Beemapally as communal riots instigated by a Beemapally mob by the police and a section of society including segments of the Catholic church subtly fails to acknowledge that the neighbouring hamlet Cheriyathura is inhabited by Latin Catholics. This reading is inherently dangerous as it pits two similarly placed vulnerable communities against each other.
Two Beemapallis and a Free Run
Further, Magalene, a fish worker leader confirms my suspicion that social indicators in Beemapalli are much worse compared to neighbouring fishing hamlets. She points to the fact that there are two Beemapallys in existence - one glossy Beemapally made of the DVD/CD trade and the other fish-worker hamlet which lacks even basic hygiene and sanitary requirements. She also points to the abysmal female literacy and empowerment in this hamlet in support of her claim. This also perhaps points to a hegemonic social apathy towards people that are forced to live on the fringes - a certain lack of value for their lives. This also could have contributed to the unchallenged free run that the Police is having with their version of the violence and attempts to portray their violence as a communal clash.
My next set of concerns is regarding the impunity with which the Police framed a community as communally volatile and in all probabilities is getting away with it. In his report to the government, DGP Jacob Punnose claims that the police fired 50 rounds and there are 43 injured and 6 dead - indicating that police fired to hit. This also dispels claims that several rounds were fired in the air. Of course there are other unsubstantiated claims in DGP Punnose’s report. But what gets my nerve is the shoddy framing that the police has indulged in, without having done any homework whatsoever - is this born out of a confidence that the Police force would get away with murder since the people killed are fishing Muslims? The confidence of the police seems to be bolstered by the collective silences and framing of Bheemapalli as a dangerous area mentioned above. It needs to be remembered that DGP Punnose is spearheading the demand for Police reforms and reducing political control over the police. In the process many vital questions remain unanswered, including questions that would legally place the violence as cold-blooded murder within criminal jurisprudence.
The silence on Beemapalli violence opens many cans of worms - including the deeply hegemonic nature of Kerala’s responses to its marginalised, latent communalism within the administration and media and so on and so forth. The responses to Beemapalli has left me perplexed, especially after having visited the place. But, having spend considerable time and energy on conflict situations, my sense is that Kerala might be sitting on a social time bomb, if it continues this lackadaisical attitude towards its marginalised population.
I believe Beemapalli calls for a classical "secular" response and honest peace building exercises that would instill a sense of confidence in Beemapally residents that they are not being persecuted - but that might be a difficult job and would call for extreme commitment.
(Published originally in the op-ed page of the Malayalam newspaper Thejas on the 15th July, 2009. Also to be found at http://sudeepsdiary.blogspot.com/2009/07/sitting-ducks-beemapalli-reflection.html
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