The Daily Star
July 1, 2011
Front Page
Religion in Politics
Restriction eased
Staff Correspondent
Parliament yesterday eased constitutional restrictions on the use of religion in politics to make way for Islamist parties to continue functioning.
After cancellation of the Fifth Amendment last year, the stringent restrictions on the use of religion in politics, imposed by the 1972 constitution, were restored. But the House did not enforce the ban considering the prevailing political situation.
The proviso of Article-38 of the 1972 constitution was made immediately after the country's independence. It banned the use of religion for political purpose.
"No person shall have the right to form, or be a member or otherwise take part in the activities of any communal or other association or union which in the name or on the basis of any religion has for its object or pursues, a political purpose,” said the proviso.
But the latest amendment eased the limitations, allowing them to form and continue function of a political party in the name or on the basis of any religion.
The changes, however, discourage not to form any party for the purpose of destroying the religious, social and communal harmony among the citizens.
During the passage of the bill yesterday, lawmakers belonging to Workers Party and Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal strongly opposed easing the restrictions. They proposed retaining the restrictions imposed by the 1972 constitution.
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June 30, 2011
June 29, 2011
Thugs play moral police and terrorise young girls in small town Sri Lanka
BBC News 28 June 2011
Sri Lanka police investigate attack on teenage girls
By Swaminathan Natarajan BBC Tamil
Sri Lankan police are investigating an assault on two girls apparently accused of watching pornography in the east of the country last week.
A group of men allegedly beat up the 17-year-olds after they came out of an internet cafe in the mostly Muslim town of Kattankudi, near Batticaloa.
The father of one of the girls says they were accused of watching pornography - a charge the girls deny.
The case has fuelled concern about a rise in radical Islam in that area.
My child has physically recovered from injuries. But she is mentally shattered”
Mohammad Yusuf Abdul Razak Father
An incident of this sort is extremely unusual for Sri Lanka.
'Taken to hospital'
Mohammad Yusuf Abdul Razak told the BBC the men forcefully took his daughter and another girl to a local house and beat them up, before taking them to a local Islamic office.
"After that, an announcement was made from a mosque using loudspeakers that two girls who were caught doing wrongful things are now in the office complex," Mr Razak said.
After hearing this announcement, Mr Razak says, a large crowd gathered there and some started to denounce the girls.
Police finally intervened and the girls were taken to hospital for treatment for their injuries, he said.
Md Ibrahim Md Subir, from the local mosque authorities, denies that any announcement was made, saying the girls were kept in the office and "interrogated", but were treated respectfully.
Sign displaying Tamil, Sinhala, English and Arabic names Arabic has recently been added to some street signs in the area, although most people speak Tamil
But, he said, "a little later some youngsters barged in and a big crowd gathered".
He said the situation got out of control, so they called the police.
Sri Lankan police conducted an identification parade on Tuesday, where one female suspect was identified and later released on bail.
The police have said they are looking for others who are involved in the incident.
Mr Razak said he wants the mosque authorities to make a public announcement stating that the girls did not commit any wrongdoing.
He says that the police investigation of the internet cafe found no evidence to support the claim that the girls watched pornography.
"My child has physically recovered from injuries. But she is mentally shattered," Mr Razak said.
Analysts say that in recent years local women have come under growing pressure from conservatives.
They are now urged, for example, to cover their faces in public, something that had not previously been the cultural practice there.
A few months ago, the local authorities put up street signs in Arabic - even though most local people speak Tamil.
Sri Lanka police investigate attack on teenage girls
By Swaminathan Natarajan BBC Tamil
Sri Lankan police are investigating an assault on two girls apparently accused of watching pornography in the east of the country last week.
A group of men allegedly beat up the 17-year-olds after they came out of an internet cafe in the mostly Muslim town of Kattankudi, near Batticaloa.
The father of one of the girls says they were accused of watching pornography - a charge the girls deny.
The case has fuelled concern about a rise in radical Islam in that area.
My child has physically recovered from injuries. But she is mentally shattered”
Mohammad Yusuf Abdul Razak Father
An incident of this sort is extremely unusual for Sri Lanka.
'Taken to hospital'
Mohammad Yusuf Abdul Razak told the BBC the men forcefully took his daughter and another girl to a local house and beat them up, before taking them to a local Islamic office.
"After that, an announcement was made from a mosque using loudspeakers that two girls who were caught doing wrongful things are now in the office complex," Mr Razak said.
After hearing this announcement, Mr Razak says, a large crowd gathered there and some started to denounce the girls.
Police finally intervened and the girls were taken to hospital for treatment for their injuries, he said.
Md Ibrahim Md Subir, from the local mosque authorities, denies that any announcement was made, saying the girls were kept in the office and "interrogated", but were treated respectfully.
Sign displaying Tamil, Sinhala, English and Arabic names Arabic has recently been added to some street signs in the area, although most people speak Tamil
But, he said, "a little later some youngsters barged in and a big crowd gathered".
He said the situation got out of control, so they called the police.
Sri Lankan police conducted an identification parade on Tuesday, where one female suspect was identified and later released on bail.
The police have said they are looking for others who are involved in the incident.
Mr Razak said he wants the mosque authorities to make a public announcement stating that the girls did not commit any wrongdoing.
He says that the police investigation of the internet cafe found no evidence to support the claim that the girls watched pornography.
"My child has physically recovered from injuries. But she is mentally shattered," Mr Razak said.
Analysts say that in recent years local women have come under growing pressure from conservatives.
They are now urged, for example, to cover their faces in public, something that had not previously been the cultural practice there.
A few months ago, the local authorities put up street signs in Arabic - even though most local people speak Tamil.
RPI's Athawalay Allies with BJP-Shiv Sena
Sleeping with the Enemy
Ramdas Athawalay allies with Shiv Sena
Ram Puniyani
Electoral politics has its own strange logic. While Gopinath Munde, the leader of BJP was hobnobbing with Congress (June 2011), in recent times the leaders from Shiv Sena, Narayan Rane and Sanjay Nirupam have joined Congress in recent years, Ramdas Athawalay, of Republican Party of India, a party claiming to be the party of Dalits based on the ideology of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar has allied with Shiv Sena and are holding joint election rallies. It defies total logic as to how the avowed votaries of Hindu Rashtra (Rane, Nirupam) glibly shift to the Congress, formally a secular party, a party opposed to the goal of Hindu Rashtra. How Gopinath Munde, who has been working for the goal of Hindu Nation, Ram Temple was trying to switch over to Congress. Equally surprising is the fact as to how, Indian National Congress, with the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru can think of taking these politicians, with opposite ideology into its camp?
More surprising than this has been the RPI, Shiv Sena alliance. One recalls that from last few years a slogan was floated in the political circles that Shiv Shakti (Shiv Sena)+Bhim Shakti (Followers of Ambedkar, RPI) is equal to Desh Bhakti (Patriotism). And since then this hobnobbing has been in progress. As such the politics of both these parties is very strange and logically totally opposed to each other’s agenda.
Shiv Sena was propped up by the Mumbai Industrialists, in collusion with the section of Congress leadership to break the hold of Left trade unions in Mumbai in 1970s. From there it went on to launch the tirades against South Indians, (Lungiwallahs), and in a series of ‘hate other’ politics it targeted Gujaratis and later North Indians. During this period it did indulge in street violence and intimidated these regional-linguistic groups. Later it latched on the Rath (Chariot) of Hindu Rashtra and boasted to be a part of Hindutva politics in alliance with BJP. Its leader Bal Thackeray boasted that if his Shiv Sainiks have been in the lead of demolition of Babri Masjid, he will be proud of that fact. Shiv Sena also has been seriously implicated in the post demolition Mumbai violence by Shrikrishna Commission report.
As far as its political agenda is concerned it has been the most vociferous party opposing the issues related to dalits. After the publication of Dr. Ambedkars collected works, the volume on ‘Riddles in Hinduism’, book heavily critical of Lords Ram and Krishna, was opposed by Shiv Sena on the streets, it opposed the move to change the name of Marathwada University to Dr. Ambedkar University and to cap it all; it was the only electoral party which opposed the implementation of Mandal Commission.
On the other are the leaders of dalit movement, the so called inheritors of the legacy of Dr. Ambedkar. Ambedkar all his life talked of annihilation of caste, opposed the notion of Hindu Rashtra and went on to convert to Buddhism on the ground that Hinduism is based on Brahminic theology which upholds caste and gender inequality at deeper level. His core political legacy was to educate, organize and agitate for the democratic rights of dalits. It is in this direction that he formed Independent Labor Party (1936), Scheduled Caste Federation (1942) and laid the outline of the political principles for the Republican Party of India (RPI).
This RPI soon suffered the fate of splits; it was also co-opted by various bigger parties like Congress and BJP. The major agitation launched by Dada Saheb Gaikwad of RPI, did galvanize the dalit movement, but after that the dalit leadership has been groping for the path of its future agitations. The formation of militant Dalit Panthers in the decade of 1960s peaking in 1970 was a brief lasting phenomenon, again leading to splits and weakening of the cause. The equation of politics started changing with Kanshiram who took another path to power. He want on to train the cadres for long time, focused the power in his hands and soon became politically successful, passing the baton on to Mayawati, who through different trajectories succeeded in becoming the Chief Minister of UP. She did ally with SP and BJP on the way, canvassing for Narendra Modi in Gujarat Elections, and justifying the Gujarat carnage as being due to the Godhra incident. Today BSP is the ruling party in UP, it has given a boost to dalit identity but the condition of dalits has far from improved.
Where does the dalit movement go from here? A section of dalits has benefitted form the reservations, education and other accompaniments of affirmative action for dalits. At the same time the reaction to enhancement of dalits position in society has been the rise in the politics of Hindu Rashtra, something which aims at subjugation of dalits and woman. This politics of Hindutva as such resurfaced with the attacks on Dalits and OBCs on the ground of reservation and later on in a clever move has strategized to co-opt Dalits and OBCs and is using them against religious minorities, killing two birds in one stone. Interestingly the political strategies of RSS-BJP-Shiv Sena are too shrewd and ‘clever’. So far their symbolic use of section of leadership of religious minorities and dalits have served the cause of RSS politics very well, barring probably in UP where Mayawati did succeed in coming to power. Still here there is a change in her own language while trying to retain power, from Bahujan (Dalit, OBCs) to Sarvajan (All). This slogan while looking good on surface does hide the changing dynamics of Mayawati in which the old upper caste are trying to regain their upper hand in a hidden way.
The Shiv Sena-RPI alliance is plain opportunism from both the sides. Shiv Sena is totally opposed to the Ambedkars’s values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, while RPI was meant to reflect the aspirations of dalit masses for social equality, political place in the society and a dignified life. At core these have values diametrically opposed to each other. Can they be political allies? For RPI, this path has been chosen on the plea that since Congress has not given adequate political power to the leaders of RPI, and they want a share in the power. They think alliance with Shiv Sena-BJP is the path to dalits political power. Time alone will tell the righteousness of this strategy but one thing is sure, if at all, this alliance will give power to a couple of leaders of RPI but the issues of dalits cannot be addressed by the more dominant political allies, the BJP and Shiv Sena, whose very agenda is against the interests of downtrodden masses.
While Shiv Sena-BJP has shrewdly tried to wean a section of dalits for its electoral advantage, they may also be able to use RPI leadership for their own calculations of electoral power. As far as dalit movement is concerned, the challenges are immense and playing junior partners to the parties totally opposed to the political values of Ambedkar will be counterproductive. The only path for dalits for an empowerment seems to be social agitations and movements around their material issues, issues of security, equality and dignity. This though a painful path is the only option available for the better future of vast sections of those deprived from last many centuries. There can’t be shortcuts for the goal of Equality, in all spheres of social economic and political life of dalits.
Ramdas Athawalay allies with Shiv Sena
Ram Puniyani
Electoral politics has its own strange logic. While Gopinath Munde, the leader of BJP was hobnobbing with Congress (June 2011), in recent times the leaders from Shiv Sena, Narayan Rane and Sanjay Nirupam have joined Congress in recent years, Ramdas Athawalay, of Republican Party of India, a party claiming to be the party of Dalits based on the ideology of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar has allied with Shiv Sena and are holding joint election rallies. It defies total logic as to how the avowed votaries of Hindu Rashtra (Rane, Nirupam) glibly shift to the Congress, formally a secular party, a party opposed to the goal of Hindu Rashtra. How Gopinath Munde, who has been working for the goal of Hindu Nation, Ram Temple was trying to switch over to Congress. Equally surprising is the fact as to how, Indian National Congress, with the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru can think of taking these politicians, with opposite ideology into its camp?
More surprising than this has been the RPI, Shiv Sena alliance. One recalls that from last few years a slogan was floated in the political circles that Shiv Shakti (Shiv Sena)+Bhim Shakti (Followers of Ambedkar, RPI) is equal to Desh Bhakti (Patriotism). And since then this hobnobbing has been in progress. As such the politics of both these parties is very strange and logically totally opposed to each other’s agenda.
Shiv Sena was propped up by the Mumbai Industrialists, in collusion with the section of Congress leadership to break the hold of Left trade unions in Mumbai in 1970s. From there it went on to launch the tirades against South Indians, (Lungiwallahs), and in a series of ‘hate other’ politics it targeted Gujaratis and later North Indians. During this period it did indulge in street violence and intimidated these regional-linguistic groups. Later it latched on the Rath (Chariot) of Hindu Rashtra and boasted to be a part of Hindutva politics in alliance with BJP. Its leader Bal Thackeray boasted that if his Shiv Sainiks have been in the lead of demolition of Babri Masjid, he will be proud of that fact. Shiv Sena also has been seriously implicated in the post demolition Mumbai violence by Shrikrishna Commission report.
As far as its political agenda is concerned it has been the most vociferous party opposing the issues related to dalits. After the publication of Dr. Ambedkars collected works, the volume on ‘Riddles in Hinduism’, book heavily critical of Lords Ram and Krishna, was opposed by Shiv Sena on the streets, it opposed the move to change the name of Marathwada University to Dr. Ambedkar University and to cap it all; it was the only electoral party which opposed the implementation of Mandal Commission.
On the other are the leaders of dalit movement, the so called inheritors of the legacy of Dr. Ambedkar. Ambedkar all his life talked of annihilation of caste, opposed the notion of Hindu Rashtra and went on to convert to Buddhism on the ground that Hinduism is based on Brahminic theology which upholds caste and gender inequality at deeper level. His core political legacy was to educate, organize and agitate for the democratic rights of dalits. It is in this direction that he formed Independent Labor Party (1936), Scheduled Caste Federation (1942) and laid the outline of the political principles for the Republican Party of India (RPI).
This RPI soon suffered the fate of splits; it was also co-opted by various bigger parties like Congress and BJP. The major agitation launched by Dada Saheb Gaikwad of RPI, did galvanize the dalit movement, but after that the dalit leadership has been groping for the path of its future agitations. The formation of militant Dalit Panthers in the decade of 1960s peaking in 1970 was a brief lasting phenomenon, again leading to splits and weakening of the cause. The equation of politics started changing with Kanshiram who took another path to power. He want on to train the cadres for long time, focused the power in his hands and soon became politically successful, passing the baton on to Mayawati, who through different trajectories succeeded in becoming the Chief Minister of UP. She did ally with SP and BJP on the way, canvassing for Narendra Modi in Gujarat Elections, and justifying the Gujarat carnage as being due to the Godhra incident. Today BSP is the ruling party in UP, it has given a boost to dalit identity but the condition of dalits has far from improved.
Where does the dalit movement go from here? A section of dalits has benefitted form the reservations, education and other accompaniments of affirmative action for dalits. At the same time the reaction to enhancement of dalits position in society has been the rise in the politics of Hindu Rashtra, something which aims at subjugation of dalits and woman. This politics of Hindutva as such resurfaced with the attacks on Dalits and OBCs on the ground of reservation and later on in a clever move has strategized to co-opt Dalits and OBCs and is using them against religious minorities, killing two birds in one stone. Interestingly the political strategies of RSS-BJP-Shiv Sena are too shrewd and ‘clever’. So far their symbolic use of section of leadership of religious minorities and dalits have served the cause of RSS politics very well, barring probably in UP where Mayawati did succeed in coming to power. Still here there is a change in her own language while trying to retain power, from Bahujan (Dalit, OBCs) to Sarvajan (All). This slogan while looking good on surface does hide the changing dynamics of Mayawati in which the old upper caste are trying to regain their upper hand in a hidden way.
The Shiv Sena-RPI alliance is plain opportunism from both the sides. Shiv Sena is totally opposed to the Ambedkars’s values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, while RPI was meant to reflect the aspirations of dalit masses for social equality, political place in the society and a dignified life. At core these have values diametrically opposed to each other. Can they be political allies? For RPI, this path has been chosen on the plea that since Congress has not given adequate political power to the leaders of RPI, and they want a share in the power. They think alliance with Shiv Sena-BJP is the path to dalits political power. Time alone will tell the righteousness of this strategy but one thing is sure, if at all, this alliance will give power to a couple of leaders of RPI but the issues of dalits cannot be addressed by the more dominant political allies, the BJP and Shiv Sena, whose very agenda is against the interests of downtrodden masses.
While Shiv Sena-BJP has shrewdly tried to wean a section of dalits for its electoral advantage, they may also be able to use RPI leadership for their own calculations of electoral power. As far as dalit movement is concerned, the challenges are immense and playing junior partners to the parties totally opposed to the political values of Ambedkar will be counterproductive. The only path for dalits for an empowerment seems to be social agitations and movements around their material issues, issues of security, equality and dignity. This though a painful path is the only option available for the better future of vast sections of those deprived from last many centuries. There can’t be shortcuts for the goal of Equality, in all spheres of social economic and political life of dalits.
June 28, 2011
Poliice intimidation of Anhad activists in Gujarat -Anhad press release 28 January 2011
Press Release
28 January 2011
POLICE COMES KNOCKING TO INTIMIDATE ANHAD
Anhad formed in 2003 in response to the Gujarat carnage of 2002 and the blatant killing of over 2000 Muslims, raping of hundreds of women and dislocating over 150,000 families in the wake of the state sponsored carnage has been working in Gujarat for the past eight years.
It has fought for the rights of the internally displaced, for 2002 victims, it was in the forefront of getting POTA repealed and getting the 2002 victims compensation package from the central government.
Anhad has stood up for the human rights violations of every section of the people including women, Dalits, adivasis and Minorities in Gujarat. It has also extensively intervened with the youth and have organised hundreds of programmes covering every single district of Gujarat to spread the message of peace, communal harmony, to safeguard the Indian Constitution which has been under attack in Gujarat, has fought for the freedom of expression in Gujarat.
Anhad has constantly celebrated cultural pluralism and composite culture and have organised huge programmes in Gujarat.
Today two policemen came knocking at Anhad office from Shahpur police station around 2pm.
Our State coordinator Manisha Trivedi was present at the office.
They intimidated her by saying that Anhad is doing anti-state activities here. Does your landlord know that you are running an office here which is anti-state and government, giving a clear indication that they would pressurise the landlord to ask Anhad to vacate the office space.
They took down Manisha's home address, telephone and names of everyone who works in Anhad, their parents name and addresses.
They further said you are supporting Sanjeev Bhatt who is against Modi.
We want to ask several questions from the State Government:
1. Have you declared an independent country where the Indian Constitution doesn't apply?
2. If the Indian Constitution allows freedom of speech, protest , descent then how come it is not allowed in Gujarat.
Gujarat goverment is constatntly tragetting upright officers and any officer who dare to stand against the state is intimiated, anyone, any organisation coming in defence of such officers is intimidated.
We want the amicus curie and the Supreme Court to take note of the fact that any form of descent is crushed in Gujarat.
We strongly condemn this intimidation by the State police and wish to inform the state of Gujarat to lay its hands off from civil society groups who are working for justice and equality of every citizen.
Shabnam Hashmi June 28, 2011
28 January 2011
POLICE COMES KNOCKING TO INTIMIDATE ANHAD
Anhad formed in 2003 in response to the Gujarat carnage of 2002 and the blatant killing of over 2000 Muslims, raping of hundreds of women and dislocating over 150,000 families in the wake of the state sponsored carnage has been working in Gujarat for the past eight years.
It has fought for the rights of the internally displaced, for 2002 victims, it was in the forefront of getting POTA repealed and getting the 2002 victims compensation package from the central government.
Anhad has stood up for the human rights violations of every section of the people including women, Dalits, adivasis and Minorities in Gujarat. It has also extensively intervened with the youth and have organised hundreds of programmes covering every single district of Gujarat to spread the message of peace, communal harmony, to safeguard the Indian Constitution which has been under attack in Gujarat, has fought for the freedom of expression in Gujarat.
Anhad has constantly celebrated cultural pluralism and composite culture and have organised huge programmes in Gujarat.
Today two policemen came knocking at Anhad office from Shahpur police station around 2pm.
Our State coordinator Manisha Trivedi was present at the office.
They intimidated her by saying that Anhad is doing anti-state activities here. Does your landlord know that you are running an office here which is anti-state and government, giving a clear indication that they would pressurise the landlord to ask Anhad to vacate the office space.
They took down Manisha's home address, telephone and names of everyone who works in Anhad, their parents name and addresses.
They further said you are supporting Sanjeev Bhatt who is against Modi.
We want to ask several questions from the State Government:
1. Have you declared an independent country where the Indian Constitution doesn't apply?
2. If the Indian Constitution allows freedom of speech, protest , descent then how come it is not allowed in Gujarat.
Gujarat goverment is constatntly tragetting upright officers and any officer who dare to stand against the state is intimiated, anyone, any organisation coming in defence of such officers is intimidated.
We want the amicus curie and the Supreme Court to take note of the fact that any form of descent is crushed in Gujarat.
We strongly condemn this intimidation by the State police and wish to inform the state of Gujarat to lay its hands off from civil society groups who are working for justice and equality of every citizen.
Shabnam Hashmi June 28, 2011
K N Panikkar on political and cultural constructions of the nation
Frontline, Volume 28 - Issue 14 :: Jul. 02-15, 2011
ESSAY
CULTURE & MAKING OF A NATION
K.N. PANIKKAR
Even when all objective conditions are met, a nation like India can achieve nationhood only when cultural equality is established.
Subramanya Bharati. Nationalist consciousness is well represented in his works.
ISSUES relating to the emergence of nationalism and the formation of the Indian nation have gained prominence in academic and popular debates in the last couple of decades. Almost all aspects of these phenomena have aroused intense scholarly disagreements: from the question of the antiquity of the nation to the struggles for the inclusion of the marginalised. The debate has also generated considerable public passion owing to its political implications. A positive dimension of the debate is that it has enriched the field of inquiry, both empirically and theoretically. Under the influence of internal developments and global pressures, new paradigms and modes of explanation have been sought to conceptualise the formation of the nation in a variety of ways. In the process, much of the past has been discarded, but much more has been retrieved or invented. The rapid rise of Hindu communalism and the increasing influence it commands and the almost unresisted entry of multinational capital have made it necessary to revisit the terms of the existing debate. Neither the anti-colonial character of nationalism nor the Hindu civilisational explanation seems to tell the whole story. Therein lies the importance of invoking the role of culture in the making of the nation.
So far, historians and other social scientists have focussed attention on the anti-colonial movement as the source from which nation and nationalism took shape. In doing so, they took a modernist view of the nation, overlooking to some extent the legacy of pre-modern community life. As a consequence, the complex relationship between nation and nationalism and the process by which primordial identities gave way to national identity were not adequately addressed. Their focus has been on the objective factors that made nation and nationalism possible. As a result, the political and social aspirations of ethnic communities were almost overlooked and subjective factors did not figure in the understanding of the making of the nation. More importantly, culture did not receive adequate attention until cultural nationalism propagated by Hindu communal organisations forced the issue. The pendulum has now swung the other way. Cultural studies have now replaced the study of culture. In the process, it has become such a catch-all concept that it has now become an omnibus in which anything and everything can be incorporated. In this context, the collaboration between social scientists and linguists would be rewarding to develop a theoretically well-anchored conceptualisation of the study of culture.
Footloose capital
The nations and nation states that emerged out of the political settlements after the Second World War and the dissolution of colonial empires are currently being subjected to considerable strain. The interest of footloose capital to hop, step and jump has made national boundaries more porous than before. If capital created nations and nation states, its changing interest is undermining their existence. The history of capital demonstrates its movement in the quest for profit. The interest of commercial capital drew adventurers out of their countries, which led to geographical “discoveries”. Scientific inventions and the interest of commercial capital coalesced to enable the “discovery” of Asia and Africa by Europe. However, neither Asia nor Africa could perform the same feat because such a combination did not fructify in these regions. The progress of capital through different stages of its development – industrial and financial – has now reached the stage where it is knocking on the doors of every nation. Mahatma Gandhi had advised in favour of keeping the doors open so that the wind could freely flow from outside, but in the present conditions in which footloose capital is reaching out to the world, the doors are not likely to last long.
This process, however, is not one in which nations have an opportunity of equal participation. On the contrary, it is based on unequal relations. The global cartels that control the capital are the monopoly of some, and the rest of the world only provides the field for their operations. In other words, the relationship inherent in globalisation is not based on equality, as the term seems to suggest, but on domination and subordination. The processes by which both domination and subordination are brought into being are extremely complex in nature. They involve political influence, economic control and the cultural presence of globalising forces which affects the identity of the nation. As a consequence, the way a nation looks upon itself begins to change. Indian society is a prime example of this change. Colonial rulers following their ideologue James Mill propagated the idea that Indians were an immoral, corrupt and devious people, which eventually Indians themselves started to believe and now they have taken to practising it as well, if the innumerable scams around us are an indication.
In all historical situations of domination, resistance has found articulation in different forms, both violent and non-violent. But resistance in a globalised world has several limitations. First, the beneficiaries of globalisation look upon the operations of global capital as an opportunity for modernisation. At the altar of modernisation, therefore, either consciously or unconsciously, they willingly sacrifice the interest of the people. As a result, resistance in the political and economic fields is not likely to be forthcoming. In these circumstances, the only possible site of resistance is culture, which, however, is being rapidly colonised. Cultural colonisation is so intense and widespread that the living conditions of not only the upper strata of society but even of the lower sections are being affected. Although the discontent arising out of this intrusion has not yet been adequately channellised, opposition to it, particularly in the field of culture, is now being articulated. This is because of the role culture plays in the making of a nation.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.He traced the origin of the nation to the epic times when Ramachandra unfurled the umbrella of sovereignty at Ayodhya.
Nation is a political and not a cultural construct; yet, a nation cannot come into being without its people having a sense of cultural belonging as a shared experience. Culture in itself does not create a nation, but it enables the transformation of different existing identities into a national identity. Antony D. Smith refers to this reality: “The ideologies of nationalism require an immersion in the culture of the nation – rediscovery of its history, revival of its vernacular language through such disciplines as philology and lexicography, cultivation of its literature, especially its drama and poetry, and the restoration of its vernacular arts and crafts, as well as its music, including the native dance and folk song.”
Composite outlook
In India, such a process of immersion in the culture of the nation took place during the period of renaissance although with limitations and weaknesses. The intellectual enquiries of the 19th century were concerned with cultural retrieval and regeneration. The endeavours of the intelligentsia of this period were all centred on cultural or social issues. Attempts were made to revive, enrich and simplify vernaculars. Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, a Sanskrit scholar of great repute, prepared primers in Bengali, and by the end of the century, new vernacular textbooks appeared in almost all languages. At the same time, considerable interest was evinced in ancient Indian theatre, dance forms, and so on. In the process, the cultural and civilisational character of the nation received considerable attention. Much before the emergence of political consciousness, initiatives for the defence of indigenous culture against the intrusion of colonial rulers had found articulation. The search for the cultural resources of the nation resulting from such initiatives was not sectarian but composite in outlook. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy put forward this composite view in unambiguous terms: “It would hardly be possible to think of an India in which no great Mughal had ruled, no Taj been built, or to which Persian art and literature were wholly foreign.” The opinion of Coomaraswamy was echoed in many quarters, the nationalist intelligentsia generally subscribing to such a view of the past, which eventually manifested as the cultural understanding of Indian secularism.
Simultaneously, the exploration of the cultural resources of the nation was increasingly moving towards the religious domain, the intellectual groundwork for which had occurred during the renaissance. This development not only tended to blur the distinction between religion and culture but also to establish an identity between the two. Over a period of time, with the help of “Hindu history”, nation was redefined in religious terms, in the process undermining the territorial and secular nationalism. Such a tendency, both conceptually and organisationally, became quite strong in the 1920s and developed further thereafter.
This indeed was not a sudden development in the 20th century when the anti-colonial movement entered a mass phase and the possibility of sharing power became a reality after the introduction of the diarchy in 1919. In fact, the building blocks of a Hindu nation were already laid in the second half of the 19th century. Even if it did not fructify, Vivekananda had expounded its philosophical rationale in Vedanta, and Dayananda Saraswati had provided the structure of a social organisation for reformed Hinduism. By the end of the 19th century, a Hindu consciousness and indeed a Muslim consciousness as well had developed, through the experience of the Hindi-Urdu controversy, cow protection agitation, the religious militancy of the Arya Samaj, particularly in Punjab, and so on. Therefore, the argument that a “leap forward” in Hindu communalism in the 1920s was in response to a new threatening level of “Muslim organisation, preparedness and militancy” is not historically tenable. This argument overlooks Hindu preparations in the 19th century and the efforts to redefine the nation in religious terms.
Religious identity
Much before the Hindu communal ideology took a leap forward in the 20th century and located a Hindu nation in religious traditions, the imprint of religious identity had already become well marked in the consciousness of the intelligentsia. The debates on public issues in the letters to the editor columns of Bombay Gazette and The Times of India bear ample proof of this widely shared consciousness. The example of Bhaskar Pandurang Tarkhadkar, who described himself as a Hindu while putting forward a secular critique of British rule in 1843 in his letters published in Bombay Gazette, is an index of the nature of self-perception. Similar instances can be cited from among Muslims and Parsees. The melas organised by Nabagopal Mitra, popularly known as National Mitra, with exhibitions of indigenous crafts as one of its principal features, carried the epithet Hindu. The clubs set up in several towns to discuss national and social issues were named after the religion of the participants. Innumerable such instances of public expression of religious identity can be cited which indicate either an open or a subterranean religious consciousness.
LINGARAJ PANDA
Odissi dancers during the Bhubaneswar Mahotsav 2011 in May. While several upper-caste forms were accorded national status, tribal dances and Dalit music did not receive the same consideration.
The relationship between culture, religion and nation was explored by many, both among Hindus and Muslims, during the course of the 20th century. Radha Kumud Mookerji, an erudite scholar of ancient Indian history and the author of the celebrated treatise The Fundamental Unity of India, undertook to demonstrate in a series of lectures that the roots of the Indian nation could be traced to the principles and ideals of Hindu culture. He identified the Indian nation with Bharat Varsha, which he claimed was conceived as a single territorial unit in ancient times. Mookerji's view was not limited to the existence of nation in antiquity but extended to the process by which nationalism became a part of popular consciousness and how religion and culture played a significant role in its realisation. Among Muslims, both Mohammad Iqbal and Mohammad Ali Jinnah based their arguments for a separate Muslim nation on cultural distinctiveness.
Mookerji's argument is important not only for the religious character he attributed to the nation but also for tracing the process by which Hindu identity became a part of popular consciousness. According to him, two factors contributed to this development: religious pilgrimages and Sanskrit. Pilgrimages fulfilled multiple functions: expanded geographical consciousness, strengthened and sustained a person's love of the country, and helped develop the sentiment of patriotism. The expansion of geographical knowledge and the new cultural experience that pilgrimages afforded opened up the universe of the nation. Mookerji, therefore, argued that pilgrimages created awareness about an identity between religion and culture and helped cast the nation in a religious-cultural mould. Language played a very critical role in this process as a means of communication and dissemination of ideas. According to him, Sanskrit literature contained within it “all elements that are needed to develop the different interests of national life, mental or moral, spiritual and practical” for the dissemination of patriotic and nationalist ideas. It was around this nucleus that the idea of a Hindu nation was constructed later by Hindu communal ideologues such as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. His inspiration for doing so most probably came from the theories of ethno nationalism with which he became familiar during his incarceration in the Andamans. Savarkar traced the origin of the nation to the epic times when Ramachandra, the brave and the good, unfurled the umbrella of sovereignty at Ayodhya. According to him, Ramachandra received “national” allegiance not only from the princes of Aryan blood but also from Anaryans such as Hanuman, Sugriva and Bhibhishana. “It was truly our national day, for Aryans and Anaryans knitting themselves into a people was born as a nation.”
A cultural construct
The arguments advanced by Mookerji and Savarkar share some ground with the theoretical formulation that nation is primarily a cultural construct and that it existed much before the emergence of the ideology of modern nationalism. In this context, Partha Chatterjee has suggested that “anti-colonial nationalism creates its own domain of sovereignty within colonial society well before its political battle with the imperial power”. It does so “by dividing the world of social institutions and practices into two domains – the material and the spiritual” – the spiritual is an inner domain bearing the essential mark of cultural identity. Chatterjee goes on to argue that “nationalism declares the domain of the spiritual its sovereign territory and refuses to allow the colonial power to intervene in that domain”.
This formulation raises the question whether culture was a domain in which nationalism could refuse “to allow the colonial power to intervene”. An alternative view recognises culture as a dynamic field in which contestation took place from the very beginning of colonial domination. The contestation took place precisely because colonialism tried to intrude into the cultural domain as a strategy of control of the colonised.
The intrusion was attempted through the cultural infrastructure that the colonial state brought into being and through the active participation of “native” collaborators. The idea of whether nationalism had the power “to refuse to allow” or it could only resist or contest the colonial intervention deserves a much more critical appraisal. Refusing to allow and resisting or contesting are entirely different processes for which different resources and strategies are required. Anti-colonial cultural resistance was, in most cases, not successful because of the cultural and ideological control exercised by the coloniser.
Chatterjee rightly assumes that “nationalism launched a historically significant project of fashioning a modern national culture that is nevertheless not Western”. But it was the result of a dual cultural struggle, simultaneously against traditional and Western culture. Nationalism did not have at its disposal an insular cultural space; such a space had to be created. The colonial attempt at hegemonisation practically touched almost all areas, though in varying degrees. What nationalism, therefore, tried to do was to counter the colonial culture not by resistance alone but by creating an alternative, however feeble the attempt was. Why a possible alternative did not strike root is entwined with the cultural sensitivity and ability of the middle class. It is as much a contemporary issue in the era of globalisation as historical.
Use of cultural forms
Historians have primarily addressed the issue of culture within the parameters of the creative realm in two ways. First, the expression of nationalism in culture, both in form and content, and second, the use of cultural forms and practices for nationalist mobilisation. The former is abundantly manifested in literature, painting and several other realms of creativity. In the works of Premchand in Hindi, Tarashankar Bandhopadhyaya in Bengali, Subramanya Bharati in Tamil, Vallathol Narayana Menon in Malayalam and Raja Rao in English, the nationalist consciousness is well represented. In the realm of painting, Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose express the nationalist ethos.
PTI
DONGRIA KONDH DANCERS performing at the concluding day of the Tribal Dance Festival in Bhubaneswar in December 2010, and (facing page)
The use of cultural forms and practices, particularly theatre and music, performed an instrumentalist role during the anti-colonial movement, but some people fashioned their content and communication to suit contemporary needs. Harikatha and Burra katha in Andhra Pradesh, Ottamthullal in Kerala, Yakshagana in Karnataka and Jatra in Bengal explored nationalist possibilities in different cultural forms.
The attempts to relate culture and nationalism during the colonial period betrayed two general tendencies. The first was homogenisation and the second was exclusion. As a part of the first, a national culture was invented which invariably comprised the practices of the upper castes. The revival of Hindu classical tradition, be it in music or dance, privileged an Indian culture which was earlier the preserve of the upper castes. What is national, therefore, came to be equated with the Brahminical. In the process, the cultural practices of the lower castes were excluded from the national. Nationalism by definition is inclusive, but Indian nationalism did not develop an inclusive character based on equality. Secondly, the cultural perspective was very elitist, as a result of which culture was defined in terms of either mental refinement or the creative. Everyday practices and the creative elements within them were not reckoned as culture. As a result, the symbolic representation of the nation was confined to the achievements of the privileged, and the life of ordinary people did not figure in the nationalist pantheon. While Koodiyattam, Kathakali, Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Carnatic music and several other upper-caste forms were accorded national status, the dances of tribal people and Dalit music did not receive the same consideration.
The anti-colonial movement and the post-Independence state took a “modernist” view of nation and nationalism, which enabled the acceptance of democracy and secularism as the guiding principles of the nation. A consequence of this, perhaps unintended, was the marginalisation of ethno-nationalist aspirations and subjective concerns as expressed in culture. This to a large measure happened in the name of homogenisation and the creation of a national culture. The consequence has been cultural marginalisation and even oppression, which has led to discontent, alienation and revolt. The cultural plurality India is rightly proud of also denotes cultural inequality in practice. The result is that India is not yet a multicultural country that respects the cultural equality of different strata in society. The cultural perspective of Hindu fundamentalism is the best example of this tendency. What the practitioners of this fundamentalism are aiming for is not cultural equality but cultural domination, which in effect deprives the nation of its cultural diversity.
In the making of the nation, culture affords multiple possibilities. A popular and revivalist tendency is to romanticise the past and attribute to it a religious character, which in turn opens the doors to a supremacist ideology. An alternative view would recognise the culturally plural character of society as evolved through complex historical experience. More ideally, it could lead to a multicultural society by accepting the equality of all constituent cultures of the nation. All these possibilities are inherent in the relationship between culture and nation. As Ernest Gellner observed, “Nations as a natural, god-given way of classifying men, as an inherent though long-delayed political destiny, are a myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates pre-existing cultures: that is reality, for better or worse, and in general, an inescapable one.”
India is not yet a nation; it is a nation in the making, as Surendranath Banerjea, an early nationalist leader, observed almost 200 years ago. Even when all objective conditions are met, a nation like India can achieve nationhood, even if inadequately, only when cultural equality is established.
K.N. Panikkar is a former Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. This essay is the text of the inaugural address in a seminar on the “Role of Culture and Language in the Making of a Nation” organised by the Department of Linguistics, University of Mumbai.
ESSAY
CULTURE & MAKING OF A NATION
K.N. PANIKKAR
Even when all objective conditions are met, a nation like India can achieve nationhood only when cultural equality is established.
Subramanya Bharati. Nationalist consciousness is well represented in his works.
ISSUES relating to the emergence of nationalism and the formation of the Indian nation have gained prominence in academic and popular debates in the last couple of decades. Almost all aspects of these phenomena have aroused intense scholarly disagreements: from the question of the antiquity of the nation to the struggles for the inclusion of the marginalised. The debate has also generated considerable public passion owing to its political implications. A positive dimension of the debate is that it has enriched the field of inquiry, both empirically and theoretically. Under the influence of internal developments and global pressures, new paradigms and modes of explanation have been sought to conceptualise the formation of the nation in a variety of ways. In the process, much of the past has been discarded, but much more has been retrieved or invented. The rapid rise of Hindu communalism and the increasing influence it commands and the almost unresisted entry of multinational capital have made it necessary to revisit the terms of the existing debate. Neither the anti-colonial character of nationalism nor the Hindu civilisational explanation seems to tell the whole story. Therein lies the importance of invoking the role of culture in the making of the nation.
So far, historians and other social scientists have focussed attention on the anti-colonial movement as the source from which nation and nationalism took shape. In doing so, they took a modernist view of the nation, overlooking to some extent the legacy of pre-modern community life. As a consequence, the complex relationship between nation and nationalism and the process by which primordial identities gave way to national identity were not adequately addressed. Their focus has been on the objective factors that made nation and nationalism possible. As a result, the political and social aspirations of ethnic communities were almost overlooked and subjective factors did not figure in the understanding of the making of the nation. More importantly, culture did not receive adequate attention until cultural nationalism propagated by Hindu communal organisations forced the issue. The pendulum has now swung the other way. Cultural studies have now replaced the study of culture. In the process, it has become such a catch-all concept that it has now become an omnibus in which anything and everything can be incorporated. In this context, the collaboration between social scientists and linguists would be rewarding to develop a theoretically well-anchored conceptualisation of the study of culture.
Footloose capital
The nations and nation states that emerged out of the political settlements after the Second World War and the dissolution of colonial empires are currently being subjected to considerable strain. The interest of footloose capital to hop, step and jump has made national boundaries more porous than before. If capital created nations and nation states, its changing interest is undermining their existence. The history of capital demonstrates its movement in the quest for profit. The interest of commercial capital drew adventurers out of their countries, which led to geographical “discoveries”. Scientific inventions and the interest of commercial capital coalesced to enable the “discovery” of Asia and Africa by Europe. However, neither Asia nor Africa could perform the same feat because such a combination did not fructify in these regions. The progress of capital through different stages of its development – industrial and financial – has now reached the stage where it is knocking on the doors of every nation. Mahatma Gandhi had advised in favour of keeping the doors open so that the wind could freely flow from outside, but in the present conditions in which footloose capital is reaching out to the world, the doors are not likely to last long.
This process, however, is not one in which nations have an opportunity of equal participation. On the contrary, it is based on unequal relations. The global cartels that control the capital are the monopoly of some, and the rest of the world only provides the field for their operations. In other words, the relationship inherent in globalisation is not based on equality, as the term seems to suggest, but on domination and subordination. The processes by which both domination and subordination are brought into being are extremely complex in nature. They involve political influence, economic control and the cultural presence of globalising forces which affects the identity of the nation. As a consequence, the way a nation looks upon itself begins to change. Indian society is a prime example of this change. Colonial rulers following their ideologue James Mill propagated the idea that Indians were an immoral, corrupt and devious people, which eventually Indians themselves started to believe and now they have taken to practising it as well, if the innumerable scams around us are an indication.
In all historical situations of domination, resistance has found articulation in different forms, both violent and non-violent. But resistance in a globalised world has several limitations. First, the beneficiaries of globalisation look upon the operations of global capital as an opportunity for modernisation. At the altar of modernisation, therefore, either consciously or unconsciously, they willingly sacrifice the interest of the people. As a result, resistance in the political and economic fields is not likely to be forthcoming. In these circumstances, the only possible site of resistance is culture, which, however, is being rapidly colonised. Cultural colonisation is so intense and widespread that the living conditions of not only the upper strata of society but even of the lower sections are being affected. Although the discontent arising out of this intrusion has not yet been adequately channellised, opposition to it, particularly in the field of culture, is now being articulated. This is because of the role culture plays in the making of a nation.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.He traced the origin of the nation to the epic times when Ramachandra unfurled the umbrella of sovereignty at Ayodhya.
Nation is a political and not a cultural construct; yet, a nation cannot come into being without its people having a sense of cultural belonging as a shared experience. Culture in itself does not create a nation, but it enables the transformation of different existing identities into a national identity. Antony D. Smith refers to this reality: “The ideologies of nationalism require an immersion in the culture of the nation – rediscovery of its history, revival of its vernacular language through such disciplines as philology and lexicography, cultivation of its literature, especially its drama and poetry, and the restoration of its vernacular arts and crafts, as well as its music, including the native dance and folk song.”
Composite outlook
In India, such a process of immersion in the culture of the nation took place during the period of renaissance although with limitations and weaknesses. The intellectual enquiries of the 19th century were concerned with cultural retrieval and regeneration. The endeavours of the intelligentsia of this period were all centred on cultural or social issues. Attempts were made to revive, enrich and simplify vernaculars. Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, a Sanskrit scholar of great repute, prepared primers in Bengali, and by the end of the century, new vernacular textbooks appeared in almost all languages. At the same time, considerable interest was evinced in ancient Indian theatre, dance forms, and so on. In the process, the cultural and civilisational character of the nation received considerable attention. Much before the emergence of political consciousness, initiatives for the defence of indigenous culture against the intrusion of colonial rulers had found articulation. The search for the cultural resources of the nation resulting from such initiatives was not sectarian but composite in outlook. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy put forward this composite view in unambiguous terms: “It would hardly be possible to think of an India in which no great Mughal had ruled, no Taj been built, or to which Persian art and literature were wholly foreign.” The opinion of Coomaraswamy was echoed in many quarters, the nationalist intelligentsia generally subscribing to such a view of the past, which eventually manifested as the cultural understanding of Indian secularism.
Simultaneously, the exploration of the cultural resources of the nation was increasingly moving towards the religious domain, the intellectual groundwork for which had occurred during the renaissance. This development not only tended to blur the distinction between religion and culture but also to establish an identity between the two. Over a period of time, with the help of “Hindu history”, nation was redefined in religious terms, in the process undermining the territorial and secular nationalism. Such a tendency, both conceptually and organisationally, became quite strong in the 1920s and developed further thereafter.
This indeed was not a sudden development in the 20th century when the anti-colonial movement entered a mass phase and the possibility of sharing power became a reality after the introduction of the diarchy in 1919. In fact, the building blocks of a Hindu nation were already laid in the second half of the 19th century. Even if it did not fructify, Vivekananda had expounded its philosophical rationale in Vedanta, and Dayananda Saraswati had provided the structure of a social organisation for reformed Hinduism. By the end of the 19th century, a Hindu consciousness and indeed a Muslim consciousness as well had developed, through the experience of the Hindi-Urdu controversy, cow protection agitation, the religious militancy of the Arya Samaj, particularly in Punjab, and so on. Therefore, the argument that a “leap forward” in Hindu communalism in the 1920s was in response to a new threatening level of “Muslim organisation, preparedness and militancy” is not historically tenable. This argument overlooks Hindu preparations in the 19th century and the efforts to redefine the nation in religious terms.
Religious identity
Much before the Hindu communal ideology took a leap forward in the 20th century and located a Hindu nation in religious traditions, the imprint of religious identity had already become well marked in the consciousness of the intelligentsia. The debates on public issues in the letters to the editor columns of Bombay Gazette and The Times of India bear ample proof of this widely shared consciousness. The example of Bhaskar Pandurang Tarkhadkar, who described himself as a Hindu while putting forward a secular critique of British rule in 1843 in his letters published in Bombay Gazette, is an index of the nature of self-perception. Similar instances can be cited from among Muslims and Parsees. The melas organised by Nabagopal Mitra, popularly known as National Mitra, with exhibitions of indigenous crafts as one of its principal features, carried the epithet Hindu. The clubs set up in several towns to discuss national and social issues were named after the religion of the participants. Innumerable such instances of public expression of religious identity can be cited which indicate either an open or a subterranean religious consciousness.
LINGARAJ PANDA
Odissi dancers during the Bhubaneswar Mahotsav 2011 in May. While several upper-caste forms were accorded national status, tribal dances and Dalit music did not receive the same consideration.
The relationship between culture, religion and nation was explored by many, both among Hindus and Muslims, during the course of the 20th century. Radha Kumud Mookerji, an erudite scholar of ancient Indian history and the author of the celebrated treatise The Fundamental Unity of India, undertook to demonstrate in a series of lectures that the roots of the Indian nation could be traced to the principles and ideals of Hindu culture. He identified the Indian nation with Bharat Varsha, which he claimed was conceived as a single territorial unit in ancient times. Mookerji's view was not limited to the existence of nation in antiquity but extended to the process by which nationalism became a part of popular consciousness and how religion and culture played a significant role in its realisation. Among Muslims, both Mohammad Iqbal and Mohammad Ali Jinnah based their arguments for a separate Muslim nation on cultural distinctiveness.
Mookerji's argument is important not only for the religious character he attributed to the nation but also for tracing the process by which Hindu identity became a part of popular consciousness. According to him, two factors contributed to this development: religious pilgrimages and Sanskrit. Pilgrimages fulfilled multiple functions: expanded geographical consciousness, strengthened and sustained a person's love of the country, and helped develop the sentiment of patriotism. The expansion of geographical knowledge and the new cultural experience that pilgrimages afforded opened up the universe of the nation. Mookerji, therefore, argued that pilgrimages created awareness about an identity between religion and culture and helped cast the nation in a religious-cultural mould. Language played a very critical role in this process as a means of communication and dissemination of ideas. According to him, Sanskrit literature contained within it “all elements that are needed to develop the different interests of national life, mental or moral, spiritual and practical” for the dissemination of patriotic and nationalist ideas. It was around this nucleus that the idea of a Hindu nation was constructed later by Hindu communal ideologues such as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. His inspiration for doing so most probably came from the theories of ethno nationalism with which he became familiar during his incarceration in the Andamans. Savarkar traced the origin of the nation to the epic times when Ramachandra, the brave and the good, unfurled the umbrella of sovereignty at Ayodhya. According to him, Ramachandra received “national” allegiance not only from the princes of Aryan blood but also from Anaryans such as Hanuman, Sugriva and Bhibhishana. “It was truly our national day, for Aryans and Anaryans knitting themselves into a people was born as a nation.”
A cultural construct
The arguments advanced by Mookerji and Savarkar share some ground with the theoretical formulation that nation is primarily a cultural construct and that it existed much before the emergence of the ideology of modern nationalism. In this context, Partha Chatterjee has suggested that “anti-colonial nationalism creates its own domain of sovereignty within colonial society well before its political battle with the imperial power”. It does so “by dividing the world of social institutions and practices into two domains – the material and the spiritual” – the spiritual is an inner domain bearing the essential mark of cultural identity. Chatterjee goes on to argue that “nationalism declares the domain of the spiritual its sovereign territory and refuses to allow the colonial power to intervene in that domain”.
This formulation raises the question whether culture was a domain in which nationalism could refuse “to allow the colonial power to intervene”. An alternative view recognises culture as a dynamic field in which contestation took place from the very beginning of colonial domination. The contestation took place precisely because colonialism tried to intrude into the cultural domain as a strategy of control of the colonised.
The intrusion was attempted through the cultural infrastructure that the colonial state brought into being and through the active participation of “native” collaborators. The idea of whether nationalism had the power “to refuse to allow” or it could only resist or contest the colonial intervention deserves a much more critical appraisal. Refusing to allow and resisting or contesting are entirely different processes for which different resources and strategies are required. Anti-colonial cultural resistance was, in most cases, not successful because of the cultural and ideological control exercised by the coloniser.
Chatterjee rightly assumes that “nationalism launched a historically significant project of fashioning a modern national culture that is nevertheless not Western”. But it was the result of a dual cultural struggle, simultaneously against traditional and Western culture. Nationalism did not have at its disposal an insular cultural space; such a space had to be created. The colonial attempt at hegemonisation practically touched almost all areas, though in varying degrees. What nationalism, therefore, tried to do was to counter the colonial culture not by resistance alone but by creating an alternative, however feeble the attempt was. Why a possible alternative did not strike root is entwined with the cultural sensitivity and ability of the middle class. It is as much a contemporary issue in the era of globalisation as historical.
Use of cultural forms
Historians have primarily addressed the issue of culture within the parameters of the creative realm in two ways. First, the expression of nationalism in culture, both in form and content, and second, the use of cultural forms and practices for nationalist mobilisation. The former is abundantly manifested in literature, painting and several other realms of creativity. In the works of Premchand in Hindi, Tarashankar Bandhopadhyaya in Bengali, Subramanya Bharati in Tamil, Vallathol Narayana Menon in Malayalam and Raja Rao in English, the nationalist consciousness is well represented. In the realm of painting, Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose express the nationalist ethos.
PTI
DONGRIA KONDH DANCERS performing at the concluding day of the Tribal Dance Festival in Bhubaneswar in December 2010, and (facing page)
The use of cultural forms and practices, particularly theatre and music, performed an instrumentalist role during the anti-colonial movement, but some people fashioned their content and communication to suit contemporary needs. Harikatha and Burra katha in Andhra Pradesh, Ottamthullal in Kerala, Yakshagana in Karnataka and Jatra in Bengal explored nationalist possibilities in different cultural forms.
The attempts to relate culture and nationalism during the colonial period betrayed two general tendencies. The first was homogenisation and the second was exclusion. As a part of the first, a national culture was invented which invariably comprised the practices of the upper castes. The revival of Hindu classical tradition, be it in music or dance, privileged an Indian culture which was earlier the preserve of the upper castes. What is national, therefore, came to be equated with the Brahminical. In the process, the cultural practices of the lower castes were excluded from the national. Nationalism by definition is inclusive, but Indian nationalism did not develop an inclusive character based on equality. Secondly, the cultural perspective was very elitist, as a result of which culture was defined in terms of either mental refinement or the creative. Everyday practices and the creative elements within them were not reckoned as culture. As a result, the symbolic representation of the nation was confined to the achievements of the privileged, and the life of ordinary people did not figure in the nationalist pantheon. While Koodiyattam, Kathakali, Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Carnatic music and several other upper-caste forms were accorded national status, the dances of tribal people and Dalit music did not receive the same consideration.
The anti-colonial movement and the post-Independence state took a “modernist” view of nation and nationalism, which enabled the acceptance of democracy and secularism as the guiding principles of the nation. A consequence of this, perhaps unintended, was the marginalisation of ethno-nationalist aspirations and subjective concerns as expressed in culture. This to a large measure happened in the name of homogenisation and the creation of a national culture. The consequence has been cultural marginalisation and even oppression, which has led to discontent, alienation and revolt. The cultural plurality India is rightly proud of also denotes cultural inequality in practice. The result is that India is not yet a multicultural country that respects the cultural equality of different strata in society. The cultural perspective of Hindu fundamentalism is the best example of this tendency. What the practitioners of this fundamentalism are aiming for is not cultural equality but cultural domination, which in effect deprives the nation of its cultural diversity.
In the making of the nation, culture affords multiple possibilities. A popular and revivalist tendency is to romanticise the past and attribute to it a religious character, which in turn opens the doors to a supremacist ideology. An alternative view would recognise the culturally plural character of society as evolved through complex historical experience. More ideally, it could lead to a multicultural society by accepting the equality of all constituent cultures of the nation. All these possibilities are inherent in the relationship between culture and nation. As Ernest Gellner observed, “Nations as a natural, god-given way of classifying men, as an inherent though long-delayed political destiny, are a myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates pre-existing cultures: that is reality, for better or worse, and in general, an inescapable one.”
India is not yet a nation; it is a nation in the making, as Surendranath Banerjea, an early nationalist leader, observed almost 200 years ago. Even when all objective conditions are met, a nation like India can achieve nationhood, even if inadequately, only when cultural equality is established.
K.N. Panikkar is a former Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. This essay is the text of the inaugural address in a seminar on the “Role of Culture and Language in the Making of a Nation” organised by the Department of Linguistics, University of Mumbai.
June 27, 2011
The Tyrant who rules over the Dawoodi Bohras
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 26, Dated 02 July 2011
REFORM
DAWOODI BOHRAS
The iron grasp of the high priest
Dawoodi Bohras have always been known for their business gene. But few know they are being choked by a tyrannical and all-powerful religious head. Anumeha Yadav reports how every attempt to rein him in is crushed
THE BOHRA Muslims have always been read through a dominant stereotype: their capacity for business. That’s probably one reason why even chief minister Narendra Modi has found it convenient to reach out to them as part of his PR measures to improve his scoreboard with Muslims in Gujarat. But few Indians would know that the Dawoodi Bohras have been living with — and fighting — deeply suffocating customs under the regime of their spiritual head, the 100-year old Syedna Mohamed Burhanuddin.
This story is not a new one. Three decades ago, the Janata Party-led government in Gujarat allowed the Nathwani Commission, set up by then PM Morarji Desai, to examine complaints of civil rights violations by the Syedna. But even after 1979, when the commission published its findings, the priest and his family have continued to wield overwhelming power over the community through the threats of baraat (community boycott), of denying ruqo chitthi (a letter obtained from the Syedna at a hefty sum so that the dead may enter heaven) and seven kinds of taxes arbitrarily levied on all, including foetuses.
This February, when the Syedna turned 100, one of his seven sons, Huzefa Mohiuddin, walked in for the celebrations in Ahmedabad with Chief Minister Narendra Modi and BJP leaders Vijay Rupani, Asit Vohra and Jayanti Barot. Inside the brightly- lit hall, Mohiuddin praised governance in ‘vibrant Gujarat’. Modi related anecdotes about his closeness with the Syedna over the years. Cell phone cameras clicked. Jointly holding the knife, Modi and Mohiuddin cut a cake to chants of Allaho- Akbar, and congratulated each other.
Modi’s attempts to appear more palatable to minorities by playing footsie with this sect are fairly recent. But those Bohras, who have been trying to resist the Syedna’s chokehold over their civil rights, say they have for decades witnessed their priest grow more powerful with covert support from various state and Central governments and corporate giants. Political expediency takes precedence over reform. (See pictures on next page)
Dawoodi Bohras are predominantly traders concentrated in western India — Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra — and Madhya Pradesh. The men wear distinctive white-and-gold caps while the women wear colourful burqas called rida.
They believe their Imam represents the Prophet on earth and that their 21st Imam had to go into exile in the 12th century. The Syedna, appointed hereditarily since the present Syedna’s grandfather’s time, is supposed to be the spiritual representative in the Imam’s absence.
Blind faith The Syedna, at 100 years, commands a large following that keeps the faith — mostly out of fear
Udaipur has been a centre of reformist struggle since the early 1970s, when a section of Bohras defied the Syedna’s choice of candidates to nominate their own candidates in civic elections. In Bohrwadi, Udaipur, sitting in the reformist Dawoodi Bohra Youth Association office, Zehra Naaz, in her mid-40s, describes how the Syedna’s men attacked a Moharram majlis (assembly) at Moiyyadpura mosque in 1975. “They pushed me from the second floor. I was 14,” she recalls. Her spine was damaged so badly that she could not stand up for two years, having to drop out of school. Now, when the call for the namaz is heard at the mosque at 2 pm, the reformists are confined to a small enclosure.
The Syedna, who claims ownership over the minds and bodies of his followers as well as all communal property, staked claim to the mosque, the largest of eight in the city, in an Udaipur civil court in 1984. When a violent clash broke out during Ramzan in 2004, the administration divided the prayer hall. Reformists got a small portion behind iron bars.
“The Syedna insists that all mosques and communal property be vested in him rather than waqf boards. Last September, through an RTI, we found that he and his coterie submitted a forged certificate in 2000 to the municipal corporation to get permits for new properties,” says Yusuf Ali RG, a reformist whose father defied the Syedna. The family has been socially boycotted on the Syedna’s orders since.
Bohras need the Syedna’s permission to start a school, a charity, marry, even bury their dead
Reformists say the Syedna runs a parallel autocratic government. All Dawoodi Bohras, including those in the US, UK, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Indonesia, Thailand and the Gulf, must pay taxes to the Syedna but cannot ask what is done with the money. They need the Syedna’s permission to establish charities, start a school, marry, even to bury their dead. “The priest charges Rs 2-10 lakh for permission for burial in Bohra cemeteries even when the land is leased from the municipal corporation. The Bohras cannot have what the Constitution allows them because we need the Syedna’s permission for everything,” says Asghar Ali Engineer, a Mumbai-based reformer, who says he accepts the institution of the Syedna, but is fighting for civil rights.
Taxes and control of finances of charities or trusts form the financial basis of the Syedna’s empire. The 1979 commission, led by retired judges NP Nathwani and VM Tarkunde, pointed out, “All trust properties of the community are at the Syedna’s disposal, whether he is legally the sole trustee or not. Thus, he can take decisions as to the application of the income of any trust for such purposes as he considers charitable. Any person challenging his decision has to face the consequences.”
THE COMMISSION’S estimate was that trusts the Syedna controlled in Maharashtra alone were worth Rs 50 crore. It recommended that these trusts be regulated by laws similar to those which govern other Muslim trusts such as the Dargah Khwaja Sahab Act. Norman Contractor, a Dawoodi Bohra businessman and reformist who died in 1983, alleged that the Syedna and his family were embezzling charity funds. Reformists requested the Central government to probe financial details of two trusts headed by the Sydena — Dawat-e-Hadiya and the Syedna Taher Saifuddin Memorial Foundation — in 1977, alleging the priest was investing in industries that followers were then forced to buy shares in.
“In private, income tax authorities told us they cannot investigate this, given the pressure from higher authorities,” says Saifuddin Insaf, general secretary of the Dawoodi Bohras’ Central Board.
The government stayed silent even when the Tanzanian government expelled the Syedna for his alleged complicity in transferring money out of that country in 1967, and nine years later when Sheikh Abdul Qayum Kaderbhoy, the Bohra priest in Sri Lanka, was caught smuggling jewels in his robes by the Sri Lankan government.
Anil Ambani Mukesh Ambani Prithviraj Chavan
top cop LK Advani Narendra Modi
Appeasing the gods (from left) Anil Ambani, Mukesh Ambani, Prithviraj Chavan, top cops, LK Advani and Narendra Modi pay obeisance to the Syedna. This deals a further blow to reformists’ attempts to bring transparency and democracy
Photo: AFP
In fact, 1967 was when the present Syedna imposed a new Constitution on the community. He took over all secular powers vested in local panchayat-like councils, the jamaat. On reaching puberty, a child must take misaaq, an oath of allegiance to the Syedna. With this oath, he signs off all his rights — religious and secular — and agrees that if he disobeys the Syedna, he will have to divorce his spouse, or give up his property, and be cut off from the community as the Syedna wills. This oath was originally a way to assert one’s loyalty for the Ismailis, who were part of an underground movement against the Abbasid Empire. Ironically, a custom that originated during a reform movement has become a tool in the hands of a theocracy.
A glimpse into how the Syedna operates his empire is possible from a UK government inquiry into the Dawat-e-Hadiya trust, of which he is the sole trustee. In July 2001, Charity Commission UK began investigating this public trust with an annual turnover of £2 million (approximately Rs 15 crore). The commission found that of six nominees appointed to administer the trust, four were Syedna’s sons. It ordered them to pay Rs 3 crore back to the trust because the Syedna and the nominees had made payments to themselves, violating their fiduciary responsibilities.
Besides money from taxes and public trusts, the Syedna and his appointees charge money to make appearances. A follower must pay a minimum of Rs 5,000 to apply to see the Syedna at his Mumbairesidence Shaify Mahal in Malabar Hill, where he lives with 300-odd members of his family. A mail circulated prior to Syedna’s visit to California in May asked every household to pay $14,000 ( Rs 5.6 lakh) for the Syedna’s youngest son to inaugurate a mosque in Los Angeles.
The Bohra situation is not a remnant of archaic despotism, it was exacerbated by the greater affluence that came with economic changes post-independence. The threat of social boycott has remained powerful because the community, estimated to be a little over a million, is still fairly insular, often choosing to marry and do business within the community.
“A few years after I returned from the US after completing my PhD, they declared a baraat against me for not wearing the Dawoodi Bohra dress. They asked Muslim civic organisations I was active in to expel me. They tried to target my cousin Ismail Kanga, then India’s ambassador to Yemen, to make an example of what happens if the theocracy is not obeyed,” says professor JS Bandukwala, a prominent social activist and physicist at MS University, Vadodara.
DAWOODI BOHRA l ocalities resound with stories of being threatened, ostracised, beaten and in some instances even being driven to suicide. “My siblings, my relatives, neighbours, everyone stopped talking to me. Some Bohras even tried to burn the house I lived in with my aged mother,” says Zehra Cyclewallah, who lived under police protection in Surat for 14 years after going to court against the Syedna.
Cyclewallah invited the priest’s wrath when she refused to step down as manager of a cooperative bank that the Syedna first inaugurated and then several years later tried to shut down with a fatwa, accusing it of charging interest. The priest and his coterie had similarly tried to shut down Bombay Mercantile Cooperative Bank in Mumbai in 1982. The chairman of the bank, Hoseini Doctor, had then accused the priestly family of trying to gain control of the bank by forcing Bohra employees in the bank to resign or face a social boycott.
Recognising that social boycott is a weapon to deprive Dawoodi Bohras of their constitutional rights, the Bombay State Legislature had passed the Prevention of Excommunication Act in 1948. The Bombay High Court upheld the law but in 1961, a four-member Bench of the Supreme Court accepted the Syedna’s contention that excommunication on religious ground was his prerogative. In a dissenting judgment, then Chief Justice Sinha expressed his discomfort with the judgment. “I am not satisfied that the right to excommunication is a purely religious matter… one is inclined to think that the position of an excommunicated person becomes that of an untouchable,” he remarked. Reformists’ appealed for a review of the verdict but a hearing has been pending for 15 years.
The Syedna, who is the wealthiest of all Muslim clergy, has used his ties with Muslim leaders to serve his own ends, resisting any government scrutiny by raising the bogey of interference in minority culture. In cities with a history of reform within the community such as Udaipur, reformists’ numbers have dwindled. Even former leaders such as Ghulam Hussain, a former president of reformist Bohra Youth Association, have had to apologise and seek refuge with the Syedna.
“If they don’t obey the Syedna, they are not Dawoodi Bohras. Our trusts are run as per India’s laws,” says Quresh Ragib, the Syedna’s public relations officer.
Engineer, who led the movement despite six incidents of physical attacks, including a stabbing attempt in 1976, reels off a list of the high and mighty to whom he appealed to end the Syedna’s chokehold. “Indira Gandhi, Zail Singh, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, VP Singh, Rajiv Gandhi. I stopped trying after Narasimha Rao,” he says. He acknowledges that the underground movement is dead. “Hundreds used to collect in secret meetings in Ahmedabad, Indore, Kolkata. Now 10-15 people turn up. They say they are sympathisers but the fear of punishment is too great,” he says.
If the movement is completely snuffed out, what do the reformists ultimately lose? “The freedom to do what our conscience says, to live with dignity,” he says.
Anumeha Yadav is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.
anumeha@tehelka.com
REFORM
DAWOODI BOHRAS
The iron grasp of the high priest
Dawoodi Bohras have always been known for their business gene. But few know they are being choked by a tyrannical and all-powerful religious head. Anumeha Yadav reports how every attempt to rein him in is crushed
THE BOHRA Muslims have always been read through a dominant stereotype: their capacity for business. That’s probably one reason why even chief minister Narendra Modi has found it convenient to reach out to them as part of his PR measures to improve his scoreboard with Muslims in Gujarat. But few Indians would know that the Dawoodi Bohras have been living with — and fighting — deeply suffocating customs under the regime of their spiritual head, the 100-year old Syedna Mohamed Burhanuddin.
This story is not a new one. Three decades ago, the Janata Party-led government in Gujarat allowed the Nathwani Commission, set up by then PM Morarji Desai, to examine complaints of civil rights violations by the Syedna. But even after 1979, when the commission published its findings, the priest and his family have continued to wield overwhelming power over the community through the threats of baraat (community boycott), of denying ruqo chitthi (a letter obtained from the Syedna at a hefty sum so that the dead may enter heaven) and seven kinds of taxes arbitrarily levied on all, including foetuses.
This February, when the Syedna turned 100, one of his seven sons, Huzefa Mohiuddin, walked in for the celebrations in Ahmedabad with Chief Minister Narendra Modi and BJP leaders Vijay Rupani, Asit Vohra and Jayanti Barot. Inside the brightly- lit hall, Mohiuddin praised governance in ‘vibrant Gujarat’. Modi related anecdotes about his closeness with the Syedna over the years. Cell phone cameras clicked. Jointly holding the knife, Modi and Mohiuddin cut a cake to chants of Allaho- Akbar, and congratulated each other.
Modi’s attempts to appear more palatable to minorities by playing footsie with this sect are fairly recent. But those Bohras, who have been trying to resist the Syedna’s chokehold over their civil rights, say they have for decades witnessed their priest grow more powerful with covert support from various state and Central governments and corporate giants. Political expediency takes precedence over reform. (See pictures on next page)
Dawoodi Bohras are predominantly traders concentrated in western India — Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra — and Madhya Pradesh. The men wear distinctive white-and-gold caps while the women wear colourful burqas called rida.
They believe their Imam represents the Prophet on earth and that their 21st Imam had to go into exile in the 12th century. The Syedna, appointed hereditarily since the present Syedna’s grandfather’s time, is supposed to be the spiritual representative in the Imam’s absence.
Blind faith The Syedna, at 100 years, commands a large following that keeps the faith — mostly out of fear
Udaipur has been a centre of reformist struggle since the early 1970s, when a section of Bohras defied the Syedna’s choice of candidates to nominate their own candidates in civic elections. In Bohrwadi, Udaipur, sitting in the reformist Dawoodi Bohra Youth Association office, Zehra Naaz, in her mid-40s, describes how the Syedna’s men attacked a Moharram majlis (assembly) at Moiyyadpura mosque in 1975. “They pushed me from the second floor. I was 14,” she recalls. Her spine was damaged so badly that she could not stand up for two years, having to drop out of school. Now, when the call for the namaz is heard at the mosque at 2 pm, the reformists are confined to a small enclosure.
The Syedna, who claims ownership over the minds and bodies of his followers as well as all communal property, staked claim to the mosque, the largest of eight in the city, in an Udaipur civil court in 1984. When a violent clash broke out during Ramzan in 2004, the administration divided the prayer hall. Reformists got a small portion behind iron bars.
“The Syedna insists that all mosques and communal property be vested in him rather than waqf boards. Last September, through an RTI, we found that he and his coterie submitted a forged certificate in 2000 to the municipal corporation to get permits for new properties,” says Yusuf Ali RG, a reformist whose father defied the Syedna. The family has been socially boycotted on the Syedna’s orders since.
Bohras need the Syedna’s permission to start a school, a charity, marry, even bury their dead
Reformists say the Syedna runs a parallel autocratic government. All Dawoodi Bohras, including those in the US, UK, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Indonesia, Thailand and the Gulf, must pay taxes to the Syedna but cannot ask what is done with the money. They need the Syedna’s permission to establish charities, start a school, marry, even to bury their dead. “The priest charges Rs 2-10 lakh for permission for burial in Bohra cemeteries even when the land is leased from the municipal corporation. The Bohras cannot have what the Constitution allows them because we need the Syedna’s permission for everything,” says Asghar Ali Engineer, a Mumbai-based reformer, who says he accepts the institution of the Syedna, but is fighting for civil rights.
Taxes and control of finances of charities or trusts form the financial basis of the Syedna’s empire. The 1979 commission, led by retired judges NP Nathwani and VM Tarkunde, pointed out, “All trust properties of the community are at the Syedna’s disposal, whether he is legally the sole trustee or not. Thus, he can take decisions as to the application of the income of any trust for such purposes as he considers charitable. Any person challenging his decision has to face the consequences.”
THE COMMISSION’S estimate was that trusts the Syedna controlled in Maharashtra alone were worth Rs 50 crore. It recommended that these trusts be regulated by laws similar to those which govern other Muslim trusts such as the Dargah Khwaja Sahab Act. Norman Contractor, a Dawoodi Bohra businessman and reformist who died in 1983, alleged that the Syedna and his family were embezzling charity funds. Reformists requested the Central government to probe financial details of two trusts headed by the Sydena — Dawat-e-Hadiya and the Syedna Taher Saifuddin Memorial Foundation — in 1977, alleging the priest was investing in industries that followers were then forced to buy shares in.
“In private, income tax authorities told us they cannot investigate this, given the pressure from higher authorities,” says Saifuddin Insaf, general secretary of the Dawoodi Bohras’ Central Board.
The government stayed silent even when the Tanzanian government expelled the Syedna for his alleged complicity in transferring money out of that country in 1967, and nine years later when Sheikh Abdul Qayum Kaderbhoy, the Bohra priest in Sri Lanka, was caught smuggling jewels in his robes by the Sri Lankan government.
Anil Ambani Mukesh Ambani Prithviraj Chavan
top cop LK Advani Narendra Modi
Appeasing the gods (from left) Anil Ambani, Mukesh Ambani, Prithviraj Chavan, top cops, LK Advani and Narendra Modi pay obeisance to the Syedna. This deals a further blow to reformists’ attempts to bring transparency and democracy
Photo: AFP
In fact, 1967 was when the present Syedna imposed a new Constitution on the community. He took over all secular powers vested in local panchayat-like councils, the jamaat. On reaching puberty, a child must take misaaq, an oath of allegiance to the Syedna. With this oath, he signs off all his rights — religious and secular — and agrees that if he disobeys the Syedna, he will have to divorce his spouse, or give up his property, and be cut off from the community as the Syedna wills. This oath was originally a way to assert one’s loyalty for the Ismailis, who were part of an underground movement against the Abbasid Empire. Ironically, a custom that originated during a reform movement has become a tool in the hands of a theocracy.
A glimpse into how the Syedna operates his empire is possible from a UK government inquiry into the Dawat-e-Hadiya trust, of which he is the sole trustee. In July 2001, Charity Commission UK began investigating this public trust with an annual turnover of £2 million (approximately Rs 15 crore). The commission found that of six nominees appointed to administer the trust, four were Syedna’s sons. It ordered them to pay Rs 3 crore back to the trust because the Syedna and the nominees had made payments to themselves, violating their fiduciary responsibilities.
Besides money from taxes and public trusts, the Syedna and his appointees charge money to make appearances. A follower must pay a minimum of Rs 5,000 to apply to see the Syedna at his Mumbairesidence Shaify Mahal in Malabar Hill, where he lives with 300-odd members of his family. A mail circulated prior to Syedna’s visit to California in May asked every household to pay $14,000 ( Rs 5.6 lakh) for the Syedna’s youngest son to inaugurate a mosque in Los Angeles.
The Bohra situation is not a remnant of archaic despotism, it was exacerbated by the greater affluence that came with economic changes post-independence. The threat of social boycott has remained powerful because the community, estimated to be a little over a million, is still fairly insular, often choosing to marry and do business within the community.
“A few years after I returned from the US after completing my PhD, they declared a baraat against me for not wearing the Dawoodi Bohra dress. They asked Muslim civic organisations I was active in to expel me. They tried to target my cousin Ismail Kanga, then India’s ambassador to Yemen, to make an example of what happens if the theocracy is not obeyed,” says professor JS Bandukwala, a prominent social activist and physicist at MS University, Vadodara.
DAWOODI BOHRA l ocalities resound with stories of being threatened, ostracised, beaten and in some instances even being driven to suicide. “My siblings, my relatives, neighbours, everyone stopped talking to me. Some Bohras even tried to burn the house I lived in with my aged mother,” says Zehra Cyclewallah, who lived under police protection in Surat for 14 years after going to court against the Syedna.
Cyclewallah invited the priest’s wrath when she refused to step down as manager of a cooperative bank that the Syedna first inaugurated and then several years later tried to shut down with a fatwa, accusing it of charging interest. The priest and his coterie had similarly tried to shut down Bombay Mercantile Cooperative Bank in Mumbai in 1982. The chairman of the bank, Hoseini Doctor, had then accused the priestly family of trying to gain control of the bank by forcing Bohra employees in the bank to resign or face a social boycott.
Recognising that social boycott is a weapon to deprive Dawoodi Bohras of their constitutional rights, the Bombay State Legislature had passed the Prevention of Excommunication Act in 1948. The Bombay High Court upheld the law but in 1961, a four-member Bench of the Supreme Court accepted the Syedna’s contention that excommunication on religious ground was his prerogative. In a dissenting judgment, then Chief Justice Sinha expressed his discomfort with the judgment. “I am not satisfied that the right to excommunication is a purely religious matter… one is inclined to think that the position of an excommunicated person becomes that of an untouchable,” he remarked. Reformists’ appealed for a review of the verdict but a hearing has been pending for 15 years.
The Syedna, who is the wealthiest of all Muslim clergy, has used his ties with Muslim leaders to serve his own ends, resisting any government scrutiny by raising the bogey of interference in minority culture. In cities with a history of reform within the community such as Udaipur, reformists’ numbers have dwindled. Even former leaders such as Ghulam Hussain, a former president of reformist Bohra Youth Association, have had to apologise and seek refuge with the Syedna.
“If they don’t obey the Syedna, they are not Dawoodi Bohras. Our trusts are run as per India’s laws,” says Quresh Ragib, the Syedna’s public relations officer.
Engineer, who led the movement despite six incidents of physical attacks, including a stabbing attempt in 1976, reels off a list of the high and mighty to whom he appealed to end the Syedna’s chokehold. “Indira Gandhi, Zail Singh, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, VP Singh, Rajiv Gandhi. I stopped trying after Narasimha Rao,” he says. He acknowledges that the underground movement is dead. “Hundreds used to collect in secret meetings in Ahmedabad, Indore, Kolkata. Now 10-15 people turn up. They say they are sympathisers but the fear of punishment is too great,” he says.
If the movement is completely snuffed out, what do the reformists ultimately lose? “The freedom to do what our conscience says, to live with dignity,” he says.
Anumeha Yadav is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.
anumeha@tehelka.com
Maharashtra's Far right chauvinists in bed with a regional Dalit party
Tehelka, 27 June 2011
The curious choices of Dalit seniors
Ram Puniyani on how the RPI’s alliance with the Shiv Sena could harm the dalit cause
Electoral politics follows a strange logic in India. While Gopinath Munde, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was hobnobbing with the Congress, in recent times the leaders from the Shiv Sena, like Narayan Rane and Sanjay Nirupam, have joined the Congress. On the other hand, Ramdas Athawaley of the Republican Party of India (RPI), a party claiming to be the party of Dalits based on the ideology of Dr BR Ambedkar, has allied with the Shiv Sena. It defies logic how the avowed votaries of the Hindu rashtra – Rane and Nirupam – can glibly shift to the Congress, which is formally a secular party and opposed to the concept of the Hindu rashtra. Equally surprising is the fact that the Congress, with the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru, has even accepted politicians who have had the opposite ideology throughout.
More surprising than this fact is the alliance between the RPI and the Shiv Sena. One can recall that a new term has been floating around for some time now that talks about this alliance. ‘Shiv shakti’ is coined from ‘Shiv’ of the Shiv Sena and ‘Shakti’ of Bhim Shakti, ‘Bhim’ being the mythological hero of Dalits. It has been made popular by the slogan “Shiv shakti is equal to desh bhakti (patriotism). And, since then this hobnobbing has been in progress. As such the politics of both these parties is very strange and logically they are totally opposed to each other’s agenda.
The Shiv Sena was propped up by Mumbai industrialists in collusion with a section of the Congress leadership to break the hold of the Left trade unions in Mumbai. From there, it went on to launch tirades against south Indians – calling them lungiwallahs – and in a series of ‘hate other’ political campaigns, it targeted Gujaratis and later north Indians. During this period, it indulged in street violence and intimidated these linguistic groups. Later it latched on the chariot of the Hindu rashtra and boasted of being part of the Hindutva politics in alliance with the BJP. The Shiv Sena also has been seriously implicated in the post-Babri mosque demolition violence in Mumbai by the Srikrishna Commission report.
As far as its political agenda is concerned it has been the most vociferous party opposing the issues related to Dalits. After the publication of Ambedkar’s collected works, the Shiv Sena protested against the volume Riddles in Hinduism which is heavily critical of gods Ram and Krishna. The party also opposed the move to change the name of Marathwada University to Dr Ambedkar University. It was also the only political party in the country which opposed the implementation of the Mandal Commission. On the other hand, Ambedkar talked of annihilation of caste, opposed the notion of Hindu rashtra and converted to Buddhism opposing Hinduism. He believed in educating, organising and agitating for democratic rights of Dalits. To achieve these goals, he formed the Independent Labor Party in 1936, the Scheduled Caste Federation in 1942 and laid the outline of the political principles for the Republican Party of India.
The RPI soon suffered splits. It was also co-opted by bigger parties, like the Congress and the BJP. The major agitation launched by Dada Saheb Gaikwad of the RPI did galvanise Dalits, but after that the Dalit leadership has been groping in the dark. The formation of militant Dalit Panthers in the 1960s, which peaked in 1970, was a brief phenomenon, which again led to splits and weakening of the cause of Dalits.
The Dalit politics started changing with Kanshi Ram and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), who took different path to power. He trained cadres for a long time, focussed the power in his hands and soon became politically successful. He later passed the baton to Mayawati, who, through different trajectories, succeeded in becoming the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. She did ally with the Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party on the way, campaigned for Narendra Modi in Gujarat and justified the Gujarat carnage partly. Today the BSP is the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh. It has given a boost to the Dalit identity, but the condition of Dalits has not improved.
Where does the Dalit movement go from here? A section of Dalits has benefitted form the reservation policy, education and other accompaniments of affirmative action. At the same time, a reaction to the enhancement of Dalits’ position in society has been the rise in the politics of Hindu rashtra, something which aims at the subjugation of Dalits and women. This is clever politics of Hindutva to attack Dalits and Other Backward Classes on the ground of reservation and later co-opt and use them against religious minorities. The Shiv Sena-RPI alliance is plain opportunism from both sides. The Shiv Sena is totally opposed to the Ambedkar’s values of liberty, equality and fraternity, while the RPI was meant to reflect the aspirations of Dalit masses for social equality, political place in the society and a dignified life. Can they be political allies? For the RPI, this path has been chosen on the plea that the Congress has not given adequate political power to the leaders of the RPI. They now think that alliance with the Shiv Sena and the BJP is the path to political power for Dalits. Time alone will tell the righteousness of this strategy, but one thing is sure that, if at all, this alliance will give power to a couple of leaders of the RPI but the issues of Dalits cannot be addressed by the more dominant political allies, whose very agenda is against the interests of downtrodden masses.
The Shiv Sena-BJP combine has shrewdly tried to wean away a section of Dalits for electoral advantage; they may also be able to use the RPI leadership for electoral gains. But, as far as the Dalit movement is concerned, the challenges are immense and playing junior patterns to the parties totally opposed to the political values of Ambedkar will be counterproductive. The only path for Dalits for an empowerment seems to be social agitations and movements around their material issues, issues of security, equality and dignity. This, though a painful path, is the only option available to Dalits for better future.
Ram Puniyani is a former professor of IIT Mumbai
The curious choices of Dalit seniors
Ram Puniyani on how the RPI’s alliance with the Shiv Sena could harm the dalit cause
Electoral politics follows a strange logic in India. While Gopinath Munde, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was hobnobbing with the Congress, in recent times the leaders from the Shiv Sena, like Narayan Rane and Sanjay Nirupam, have joined the Congress. On the other hand, Ramdas Athawaley of the Republican Party of India (RPI), a party claiming to be the party of Dalits based on the ideology of Dr BR Ambedkar, has allied with the Shiv Sena. It defies logic how the avowed votaries of the Hindu rashtra – Rane and Nirupam – can glibly shift to the Congress, which is formally a secular party and opposed to the concept of the Hindu rashtra. Equally surprising is the fact that the Congress, with the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru, has even accepted politicians who have had the opposite ideology throughout.
More surprising than this fact is the alliance between the RPI and the Shiv Sena. One can recall that a new term has been floating around for some time now that talks about this alliance. ‘Shiv shakti’ is coined from ‘Shiv’ of the Shiv Sena and ‘Shakti’ of Bhim Shakti, ‘Bhim’ being the mythological hero of Dalits. It has been made popular by the slogan “Shiv shakti is equal to desh bhakti (patriotism). And, since then this hobnobbing has been in progress. As such the politics of both these parties is very strange and logically they are totally opposed to each other’s agenda.
The Shiv Sena was propped up by Mumbai industrialists in collusion with a section of the Congress leadership to break the hold of the Left trade unions in Mumbai. From there, it went on to launch tirades against south Indians – calling them lungiwallahs – and in a series of ‘hate other’ political campaigns, it targeted Gujaratis and later north Indians. During this period, it indulged in street violence and intimidated these linguistic groups. Later it latched on the chariot of the Hindu rashtra and boasted of being part of the Hindutva politics in alliance with the BJP. The Shiv Sena also has been seriously implicated in the post-Babri mosque demolition violence in Mumbai by the Srikrishna Commission report.
As far as its political agenda is concerned it has been the most vociferous party opposing the issues related to Dalits. After the publication of Ambedkar’s collected works, the Shiv Sena protested against the volume Riddles in Hinduism which is heavily critical of gods Ram and Krishna. The party also opposed the move to change the name of Marathwada University to Dr Ambedkar University. It was also the only political party in the country which opposed the implementation of the Mandal Commission. On the other hand, Ambedkar talked of annihilation of caste, opposed the notion of Hindu rashtra and converted to Buddhism opposing Hinduism. He believed in educating, organising and agitating for democratic rights of Dalits. To achieve these goals, he formed the Independent Labor Party in 1936, the Scheduled Caste Federation in 1942 and laid the outline of the political principles for the Republican Party of India.
The RPI soon suffered splits. It was also co-opted by bigger parties, like the Congress and the BJP. The major agitation launched by Dada Saheb Gaikwad of the RPI did galvanise Dalits, but after that the Dalit leadership has been groping in the dark. The formation of militant Dalit Panthers in the 1960s, which peaked in 1970, was a brief phenomenon, which again led to splits and weakening of the cause of Dalits.
The Dalit politics started changing with Kanshi Ram and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), who took different path to power. He trained cadres for a long time, focussed the power in his hands and soon became politically successful. He later passed the baton to Mayawati, who, through different trajectories, succeeded in becoming the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. She did ally with the Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party on the way, campaigned for Narendra Modi in Gujarat and justified the Gujarat carnage partly. Today the BSP is the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh. It has given a boost to the Dalit identity, but the condition of Dalits has not improved.
Where does the Dalit movement go from here? A section of Dalits has benefitted form the reservation policy, education and other accompaniments of affirmative action. At the same time, a reaction to the enhancement of Dalits’ position in society has been the rise in the politics of Hindu rashtra, something which aims at the subjugation of Dalits and women. This is clever politics of Hindutva to attack Dalits and Other Backward Classes on the ground of reservation and later co-opt and use them against religious minorities. The Shiv Sena-RPI alliance is plain opportunism from both sides. The Shiv Sena is totally opposed to the Ambedkar’s values of liberty, equality and fraternity, while the RPI was meant to reflect the aspirations of Dalit masses for social equality, political place in the society and a dignified life. Can they be political allies? For the RPI, this path has been chosen on the plea that the Congress has not given adequate political power to the leaders of the RPI. They now think that alliance with the Shiv Sena and the BJP is the path to political power for Dalits. Time alone will tell the righteousness of this strategy, but one thing is sure that, if at all, this alliance will give power to a couple of leaders of the RPI but the issues of Dalits cannot be addressed by the more dominant political allies, whose very agenda is against the interests of downtrodden masses.
The Shiv Sena-BJP combine has shrewdly tried to wean away a section of Dalits for electoral advantage; they may also be able to use the RPI leadership for electoral gains. But, as far as the Dalit movement is concerned, the challenges are immense and playing junior patterns to the parties totally opposed to the political values of Ambedkar will be counterproductive. The only path for Dalits for an empowerment seems to be social agitations and movements around their material issues, issues of security, equality and dignity. This, though a painful path, is the only option available to Dalits for better future.
Ram Puniyani is a former professor of IIT Mumbai
Advani's convoluted logic on Kashmir
Kashmir Times, Editorial, 27 June 2011
Advani's convoluted logic
If anything, Nehru-Sheikh 'colluded' to secure Kashmir for India, against 1947 run of events
LK Advani's (mis)interpretation of history in relation to Kashmir conforms to the convoluted logic of the political clan to which he belongs. The 'could-be' prime minister of India wants the world at large to believe that the 'problem' of Kashmir is the Nehru family's 'gift' to the Indian nation and that Sheikh Abdullah's aggrandisement had contributed to creating such a situation in 1940s. Advani's line of thinking conveniently ignores the undeniable fact of history that but for Jawahar Lal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah's personal relationship the political map of not only Jammu and Kashmir but the entire subcontinent would have been different. In the first place, this part of J&K would not have been where it is today if Nehru and Sheikh had not interfered with the run of events in 1947. Two key determining factors in the partition plan were the demographic composition and geographical contiguity of princely states to determine their accession to one of the two newly independent dominions. Where J&K should have normally gone, on that basis, is too obvious to reiterate. However, Nehru-Sheikh pre-independence political line up against Maharaja Hari Singh created an ambiguous situation. It was compounded by Pakistan when it committed the blunder of mounting a tribal invasion in 1947 to forcibly annex J&K. Chain of following events culminated in accession with India in October, 1947, two months after India and Pakistan became independent countries.
Advani conveniently ignores these and other recorded facts of history to boost BJP's sagging image. The party and its clueless leadership have been in desperate search for 'issues' for the next round against the UPA, in 2014. Its internal weaknesses compounded by recent electoral setbacks have precluded it from exploiting grave weaknesses exposed in the performance of the UPA regime. Controversy over Gopi Nath Munde showed the depth of internal divisions. Ayodhya issue that catapulted the BJP to power in 1990 has run its course. Narendra Modi's magic has worn out and remains confined to his own Gujarat state. Advani's old dream of making it to the 7, Race Course Road is all but gone. New pretenders to the throne have been trying to outdo one another.
It is in this difficult situation that Advani has sought to revive his worn out theme. It is clear that immediate idea is to pollute the atmosphere with twisted facts and prejudiced ideas so that the fragile steps being taken towards reviving India-Pakistan dialogue on Kashmir are derailed. At a time when the need of the hour is to facilitate revival of amicable atmosphere in the interest of India, Pakistan as well as the people of J&K, BJP's mascot has chosen to play spoil sport. Their failure to arouse communal passion over 'Lal Chowk chalo' adventure and recent exposure of rottenness of the party's state unit must be quite frustrating for the leadership. For all practical purposes, the state BJP unit is in disarray. What happens here in J&K is bound to have implications for the party's future and prospects far beyond the state. In any case, 'Kashmir' has always been a tempting proposition for the BJP and its sectarian ideology. Therefore, it would be useless to look for historical accuracy or intellectual honesty behind what Advani has said in his blog. His forgettable brush with 'secularism' against the backdrop of his Pakistan visit resulted in his exile until he made amends. It is now a chastised Advani vexing eloquent on his distorted historical lessons to whosoever might still be listening.
Advani's convoluted logic
If anything, Nehru-Sheikh 'colluded' to secure Kashmir for India, against 1947 run of events
LK Advani's (mis)interpretation of history in relation to Kashmir conforms to the convoluted logic of the political clan to which he belongs. The 'could-be' prime minister of India wants the world at large to believe that the 'problem' of Kashmir is the Nehru family's 'gift' to the Indian nation and that Sheikh Abdullah's aggrandisement had contributed to creating such a situation in 1940s. Advani's line of thinking conveniently ignores the undeniable fact of history that but for Jawahar Lal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah's personal relationship the political map of not only Jammu and Kashmir but the entire subcontinent would have been different. In the first place, this part of J&K would not have been where it is today if Nehru and Sheikh had not interfered with the run of events in 1947. Two key determining factors in the partition plan were the demographic composition and geographical contiguity of princely states to determine their accession to one of the two newly independent dominions. Where J&K should have normally gone, on that basis, is too obvious to reiterate. However, Nehru-Sheikh pre-independence political line up against Maharaja Hari Singh created an ambiguous situation. It was compounded by Pakistan when it committed the blunder of mounting a tribal invasion in 1947 to forcibly annex J&K. Chain of following events culminated in accession with India in October, 1947, two months after India and Pakistan became independent countries.
Advani conveniently ignores these and other recorded facts of history to boost BJP's sagging image. The party and its clueless leadership have been in desperate search for 'issues' for the next round against the UPA, in 2014. Its internal weaknesses compounded by recent electoral setbacks have precluded it from exploiting grave weaknesses exposed in the performance of the UPA regime. Controversy over Gopi Nath Munde showed the depth of internal divisions. Ayodhya issue that catapulted the BJP to power in 1990 has run its course. Narendra Modi's magic has worn out and remains confined to his own Gujarat state. Advani's old dream of making it to the 7, Race Course Road is all but gone. New pretenders to the throne have been trying to outdo one another.
It is in this difficult situation that Advani has sought to revive his worn out theme. It is clear that immediate idea is to pollute the atmosphere with twisted facts and prejudiced ideas so that the fragile steps being taken towards reviving India-Pakistan dialogue on Kashmir are derailed. At a time when the need of the hour is to facilitate revival of amicable atmosphere in the interest of India, Pakistan as well as the people of J&K, BJP's mascot has chosen to play spoil sport. Their failure to arouse communal passion over 'Lal Chowk chalo' adventure and recent exposure of rottenness of the party's state unit must be quite frustrating for the leadership. For all practical purposes, the state BJP unit is in disarray. What happens here in J&K is bound to have implications for the party's future and prospects far beyond the state. In any case, 'Kashmir' has always been a tempting proposition for the BJP and its sectarian ideology. Therefore, it would be useless to look for historical accuracy or intellectual honesty behind what Advani has said in his blog. His forgettable brush with 'secularism' against the backdrop of his Pakistan visit resulted in his exile until he made amends. It is now a chastised Advani vexing eloquent on his distorted historical lessons to whosoever might still be listening.
Silly academic theorising to debunk secularism
[Obfuscation is the name of the game, to debunk do-able secularism. Ok, fine we've never had secularism in India, but to suggest its a bad idea is nonsense. These guys get paid to sit in their ivory towers, i wish they would sit in the middle of a communal riot and decide which side they are on. See below report in The Guardian]
The Guardian, 27 June 2011
Secularism is not the same as modernity
Has secularism masked empirical complexities that would help us understand the relationship between religion and modernity?
by Lois Lee
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jun/27/secularism-different-modernity
The Guardian, 27 June 2011
Secularism is not the same as modernity
Has secularism masked empirical complexities that would help us understand the relationship between religion and modernity?
by Lois Lee
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jun/27/secularism-different-modernity
June 26, 2011
Is this criticism of NAC draft anti-communal violence Bill reasonable ?
Indian Express
Justices Verma and Srikrishna red-flag NAC draft anti-communal violence Bill
Seema Chishti
Jun 26 2011, 01:27 hrs New Delhi:
The Congress may dismiss the BJP’s attack on the National Advisory Council’s draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill as “communal propaganda”. But there’s mounting criticism from quarters it may find hard to shrug off — independent jurists with an impeccable record of having intervened in cases of communal discord or violence.
Their argument: existing laws need to be better implemented, access to justice needs to be expanded — another law isn’t the answer. Especially one which, just like the one for a Lokpal, sets up panels of eminent people of “good moral character” and expects to equip them with a magic wand.
Commenting on the Bill — its amended draft was released this week — former Chief Justice of India Justice J S Verma says: “No law can eradicate communalism in the country...We need to identify lacunae in present laws, if any, and make amendments. We have enough laws, in fact the maximum in the world. The problem is in faithful implementation. It is not the Constitution that has failed us but we who have failed the Constitution.”
Gujarat 2002 is the refrain of many in the NAC to justify this Bill. Verma, who as chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, took a proactive role in cases related to the Gujarat massacres, says: “From the unfortunate history of Gujarat in 2002, we must learn how we can help prevent such incidents and help with reparations and with access to justice.”
Instead, this Bill, critics say, sets up a whole new bureaucracy at the Centre, a seven-member National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation, parallel state authorities and — in a remarkable parallel with the Lokpal proposal — expects it to “prevent” any communal violence, control an outbreak of violence, monitor the probe, the prosecution and the trial and distribution of relief and reparations. (Chapter IV, Clause 30).
The proposed law also defines the victim as member of a religious or linguistic minority or SC/STs — opening the door to a bewildering interpretation of who all are eligible.
Four of the seven members have to be from either a linguistic or religious minority or an SC/ST community. The qualifications include “high moral character and impartiality,” and, in the flavour of the season, it bans membership of any political party for at least a year before the appointment.
No wonder Justice B N Srikrishna, a former Supreme Court judge and author of the report on the communal riots in Mumbai of 1992-3, finds the principle behind the Bill flawed.
“The investigative and prosecuting machinery under the CrPC could itself be used by suitable amendments,” he says. “There’s no need for an elaborate separate Act for that. Large-scale communal riots like in Mumbai or Gujarat do not happen on the spur of the moment. These are the result of elaborate preparations. There should be an effective method of tagging known communal elements and for swooping down on them with preventive arrests in case of intelligence inputs so as to nip the riots in the bud. What is needed is lightning action and not meandering gait. What is needed is pre facto and not post facto activism. The Bill suggests no such quick reactive machinery. Communal riots spread like wildfire and must be treated like fire emergencies. The Bill shows no such thinking. It seems to be long on cure and short on prevention.”
On the National Authority, he says: “It’s a toothless tiger. Its role seems more to collect information and advise the government at the Centre and state levels. This is an example of mindless proliferation of laws. That is the rampant disease in our country. We have and make many laws but hardly implement them seriously.”
Echoing this is chairman of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) Wajahat Habibullah. He says the creation of such an Authority would mean a “vast centralized machinery, which is also a criticism of the Jan Lokpal Bill”.
He adds: “Instead of empowering the community to safeguard minority interests, the Bill would instead strengthen the government machinery which, in the past, has shown itself to have been the principal offender in failing to so safeguard.”
Welcoming a law to control “collective violence,” the NCM has cautioned on safeguarding the rights of states vis-a-vis the Centre and on varying interpretations of how the term “group” is to be defined.
Endorsing the Bill is Justice M S Liberhan, who headed the Ayodhya Commission after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He said there’s a need to be less cynical about new laws and accept that there is a lacuna when it comes to communal or group violence. On the BJP’s criticism there is an anti-majority bias in the draft, Liberhan said: “Only those who are weak and numerically weaker need protection. In case, there are gaps like attacks by a Muslim group on Hindus where they are in a majority, the law can be amended later to accommodate them.”
Sources in the NAC rebut the criticism saying the Bill protects all those who are in a “non-dominant” position — not just religious minorities. And that the it does not envisage the National Authority as one “taking away” the functions of the state but merely to “ensure that justice is done.”
They also underline the “progressive reparations” suggested in the Bill — Rs 15 lakh for death to victims of group violence.
Clearly, this Bill, too, is headed for a fractious political — and legal — debate.
Justices Verma and Srikrishna red-flag NAC draft anti-communal violence Bill
Seema Chishti
Jun 26 2011, 01:27 hrs New Delhi:
The Congress may dismiss the BJP’s attack on the National Advisory Council’s draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill as “communal propaganda”. But there’s mounting criticism from quarters it may find hard to shrug off — independent jurists with an impeccable record of having intervened in cases of communal discord or violence.
Their argument: existing laws need to be better implemented, access to justice needs to be expanded — another law isn’t the answer. Especially one which, just like the one for a Lokpal, sets up panels of eminent people of “good moral character” and expects to equip them with a magic wand.
Commenting on the Bill — its amended draft was released this week — former Chief Justice of India Justice J S Verma says: “No law can eradicate communalism in the country...We need to identify lacunae in present laws, if any, and make amendments. We have enough laws, in fact the maximum in the world. The problem is in faithful implementation. It is not the Constitution that has failed us but we who have failed the Constitution.”
Gujarat 2002 is the refrain of many in the NAC to justify this Bill. Verma, who as chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, took a proactive role in cases related to the Gujarat massacres, says: “From the unfortunate history of Gujarat in 2002, we must learn how we can help prevent such incidents and help with reparations and with access to justice.”
Instead, this Bill, critics say, sets up a whole new bureaucracy at the Centre, a seven-member National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation, parallel state authorities and — in a remarkable parallel with the Lokpal proposal — expects it to “prevent” any communal violence, control an outbreak of violence, monitor the probe, the prosecution and the trial and distribution of relief and reparations. (Chapter IV, Clause 30).
The proposed law also defines the victim as member of a religious or linguistic minority or SC/STs — opening the door to a bewildering interpretation of who all are eligible.
Four of the seven members have to be from either a linguistic or religious minority or an SC/ST community. The qualifications include “high moral character and impartiality,” and, in the flavour of the season, it bans membership of any political party for at least a year before the appointment.
No wonder Justice B N Srikrishna, a former Supreme Court judge and author of the report on the communal riots in Mumbai of 1992-3, finds the principle behind the Bill flawed.
“The investigative and prosecuting machinery under the CrPC could itself be used by suitable amendments,” he says. “There’s no need for an elaborate separate Act for that. Large-scale communal riots like in Mumbai or Gujarat do not happen on the spur of the moment. These are the result of elaborate preparations. There should be an effective method of tagging known communal elements and for swooping down on them with preventive arrests in case of intelligence inputs so as to nip the riots in the bud. What is needed is lightning action and not meandering gait. What is needed is pre facto and not post facto activism. The Bill suggests no such quick reactive machinery. Communal riots spread like wildfire and must be treated like fire emergencies. The Bill shows no such thinking. It seems to be long on cure and short on prevention.”
On the National Authority, he says: “It’s a toothless tiger. Its role seems more to collect information and advise the government at the Centre and state levels. This is an example of mindless proliferation of laws. That is the rampant disease in our country. We have and make many laws but hardly implement them seriously.”
Echoing this is chairman of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) Wajahat Habibullah. He says the creation of such an Authority would mean a “vast centralized machinery, which is also a criticism of the Jan Lokpal Bill”.
He adds: “Instead of empowering the community to safeguard minority interests, the Bill would instead strengthen the government machinery which, in the past, has shown itself to have been the principal offender in failing to so safeguard.”
Welcoming a law to control “collective violence,” the NCM has cautioned on safeguarding the rights of states vis-a-vis the Centre and on varying interpretations of how the term “group” is to be defined.
Endorsing the Bill is Justice M S Liberhan, who headed the Ayodhya Commission after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He said there’s a need to be less cynical about new laws and accept that there is a lacuna when it comes to communal or group violence. On the BJP’s criticism there is an anti-majority bias in the draft, Liberhan said: “Only those who are weak and numerically weaker need protection. In case, there are gaps like attacks by a Muslim group on Hindus where they are in a majority, the law can be amended later to accommodate them.”
Sources in the NAC rebut the criticism saying the Bill protects all those who are in a “non-dominant” position — not just religious minorities. And that the it does not envisage the National Authority as one “taking away” the functions of the state but merely to “ensure that justice is done.”
They also underline the “progressive reparations” suggested in the Bill — Rs 15 lakh for death to victims of group violence.
Clearly, this Bill, too, is headed for a fractious political — and legal — debate.
June 23, 2011
Ramdev’s vigilantism has echoes from Latin America ?
Tehelka, 21 June 2011
OPINION
Angry young men can get it wrong too
KS Dakshina Murthy on how Ramdev’s vigilantism has echoes of Latin American anarchy
Illustration: Tim Tim Rose
Baba Ramdev recently announced he would impart arms training to 11,000 citizens drawn from different regions of the country. If he does carry out these plans, the next time the police attempt to storm a similar gathering at the Ramlila Maidan, it will face citizens armed and trained. What could follow if the two sides clash is too disturbing to contemplate here. But, in effect, this will signal the arrival of organised vigilantism in the mainstream India.
Already, in Chhatisgarh, the havoc caused by the armed vigilante group Salwa Judum has been extensively documented by human rights groups. Backed by landlords, supported by security forces and the government ostensibly to fight Naxalism, the Salwa Judum was accused of being used to settle personal scores, target innocent people and assert the authority of vested interests until the Supreme Court intervened to check it.
Ramdev’s threat may have been an angry reaction to the midnight police action against him and his followers, but that it should have been aired at all is a serious blow to the tradition of peaceful democratic protests that have survived so far, despite the state’s heavy-handedness, the worst of which one witnessed during the Emergency.
The text book definition of vigilantism is an attractive proposition, especially in a dysfunctional democracy. It fills up an administrative vacuum left by the state. Groups of people trained in weaponry or otherwise band together and hunt out officials or anyone else perceived to be corrupt and unjust. While the popular middle class perception tends to romanticise these groups, in reality there is no way of saying which way they can head and who the target can be.
Worse, there have been several instances in Latin America and Africa where vigilante groups have been co-opted by the state to stifle genuine dissident movements. Even the Salwa Judum eventually ended up as an unofficial arm of the state. Since vigilante groups do not have a firm ideological basis for their formation, they tend to be loose and open to subversive influence that can re-route them far from their original intent.
In the specific instance of Ramdev’s stated intentions, considering his leanings, his armed group will be broadly right wing, conservative and tied to the Hindutva sentiment. The implications of this are obvious. In a country where there are already deep fissures and hidden fault lines, a mainstream entry by vigilante groups can only mean social turmoil and big trouble for the state.
Moreover, formally training ordinary people in using weapons and giving access to arms can encroach on India’s democratic space and irrevocably alter the largely peaceful dispute-resolution mechanisms that have evolved over the years.
Since Independence, despite the various pulls and pressures applied socially and politically, the Indian democracy has managed to survive much to the surprise of many outside the country. One reason for this is the largely non-militarised character of the society. Other than the fringe Naxal groups and separatists in Kashmir and the Northeast, recourse to arms is rare. Disputes have been resolved without the use of organised weaponry, even if violence has been resorted to.
The point is not that vigilantism is unknown in the Indian lexicon. It has always been the staple of mainstream cinema, celebrated by filmmakers and devoured by audiences. Naseeruddin Shah’s A Wednesday, Rajinikanth’s Sivaji or Kamal Hassan’s Indian were almost inspirational in their depiction of vigilante justice. In the past, there have been countless others, like the all-time favourite Sholay. An actor like MG Ramachandran acquired legendary status almost always playing the part of a vigilante. The sheer power of his roles later won him the popular vote, jockeying him into the position of the chief minister of Tamil Nadu.
Vigilantism on celluloid is vastly different than it is in reality. From a sociological perspective, watching vigilantism in action within the confines of the cinema hall appears to be a safe outlet to ease the pressure, anger and frustration of people who constantly have to deal with the perceived injustice and unfairness of the “system”, particularly that exuded by an apathetic bureaucracy, the police and the judiciary. But, replicating that in real life can have disastrous consequences. Training citizens, who otherwise would have had no access to weaponry, is a logical precursor to vigilantism, which has had a controversial and bloody history around the world. Several nations in Latin America – Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico to name a few – with an entrenched practice of vigilantism are even today struggling to end this dubious practice. Among many others, one that shocked the world a few years ago was the burning alive of two federal police officials in a suburb of Mexico city by vigilante groups which, mistook them for kidnappers.
Reacting to that incident, an expert on the subject Mark Ungar was quoted by Newsweek as saying that in Latin America "it's spreading in the sense that vigilantes are going after criminals, officials, even governments – and once it starts it's hard to stop".
Once citizens are grouped and trained in weaponry, it is next to impossible to control what they do with that skill. Vigilante groups by definition bypass the established institutions of the state, mainly the police and judiciary, and start meting out instance justice. Many a time a vigilante action can end up in a situation where targets are lynched. During 1996 to 2002, some 482 people were reportedly lynched in Guatemala by vigilante groups.
In western Sudan, the Janjaweed (Arabic for riders on horseback), a vigilante group backed by the Sudanese government, has terrorised people in the Darfur region as reprisal against a rebel movement there for a separate state. In the last eight years, the Janjaweed has indiscriminately laid bare entire villages, driving out an estimated one million people out of their homes. Thousands have been attacked, raped and looted across the region.
Somalia is another extreme example of what happens when vigilantism becomes the mainstream mode of settling disputes and asserting control. The central government there has lost authority, legitimacy and ability to govern. The vigilante groups owing allegiance to feudal lords have a free run of the country. Somalia’s government and parliament operate from the neighbouring Kenya. In Afghanistan, where the power of regional commanders undermines that of the central authority of President Hamid Karzai, there are fears that the country may be heading the Somalian way. A similar, though not as serious, situation prevails in Iraq.
Typically, vigilante groups operate in democratic countries. In the case of Libya or Yemen, where large sections of people are combating the state, they cannot be termed vigilante. Rather, they are perceived to be resisting authoritarian governments.
In the Indian context, other than parts of the rural hinterland, where vigilante-type violence is already prevalent, the mainstream discourse still favours a democratic process with all its attendant pitfalls, delays and frustrations. The practice of non-violent protest, a Gandhian legacy, continues to command a large following. The movement against large dams, exemplified by the Narmada Bachao Andolan, is an example of a protest within democratic parameters. So also is the fight headed by the National Alliance of People’s Movements to retain the rights of tribals living in forests, among others.
The Anna Hazare-led resistance against corruption has used the democratic space successfully to spark a debate in the country on the issue and focus on ways to strengthen the accountability of the legislature, judiciary and the executive. After pushing hard democratically to attract the attention of the people and grow the anti-corruption mood into a popular movement, to allow someone like Ramdev to veer it into vigilantism would be tragic.
KS Dakshina Murthy is an editorial consultant with The Hindu, Bengaluru
daxshin@gmail.com
OPINION
Angry young men can get it wrong too
KS Dakshina Murthy on how Ramdev’s vigilantism has echoes of Latin American anarchy
Illustration: Tim Tim Rose
Baba Ramdev recently announced he would impart arms training to 11,000 citizens drawn from different regions of the country. If he does carry out these plans, the next time the police attempt to storm a similar gathering at the Ramlila Maidan, it will face citizens armed and trained. What could follow if the two sides clash is too disturbing to contemplate here. But, in effect, this will signal the arrival of organised vigilantism in the mainstream India.
Already, in Chhatisgarh, the havoc caused by the armed vigilante group Salwa Judum has been extensively documented by human rights groups. Backed by landlords, supported by security forces and the government ostensibly to fight Naxalism, the Salwa Judum was accused of being used to settle personal scores, target innocent people and assert the authority of vested interests until the Supreme Court intervened to check it.
Ramdev’s threat may have been an angry reaction to the midnight police action against him and his followers, but that it should have been aired at all is a serious blow to the tradition of peaceful democratic protests that have survived so far, despite the state’s heavy-handedness, the worst of which one witnessed during the Emergency.
The text book definition of vigilantism is an attractive proposition, especially in a dysfunctional democracy. It fills up an administrative vacuum left by the state. Groups of people trained in weaponry or otherwise band together and hunt out officials or anyone else perceived to be corrupt and unjust. While the popular middle class perception tends to romanticise these groups, in reality there is no way of saying which way they can head and who the target can be.
Worse, there have been several instances in Latin America and Africa where vigilante groups have been co-opted by the state to stifle genuine dissident movements. Even the Salwa Judum eventually ended up as an unofficial arm of the state. Since vigilante groups do not have a firm ideological basis for their formation, they tend to be loose and open to subversive influence that can re-route them far from their original intent.
In the specific instance of Ramdev’s stated intentions, considering his leanings, his armed group will be broadly right wing, conservative and tied to the Hindutva sentiment. The implications of this are obvious. In a country where there are already deep fissures and hidden fault lines, a mainstream entry by vigilante groups can only mean social turmoil and big trouble for the state.
Moreover, formally training ordinary people in using weapons and giving access to arms can encroach on India’s democratic space and irrevocably alter the largely peaceful dispute-resolution mechanisms that have evolved over the years.
Since Independence, despite the various pulls and pressures applied socially and politically, the Indian democracy has managed to survive much to the surprise of many outside the country. One reason for this is the largely non-militarised character of the society. Other than the fringe Naxal groups and separatists in Kashmir and the Northeast, recourse to arms is rare. Disputes have been resolved without the use of organised weaponry, even if violence has been resorted to.
The point is not that vigilantism is unknown in the Indian lexicon. It has always been the staple of mainstream cinema, celebrated by filmmakers and devoured by audiences. Naseeruddin Shah’s A Wednesday, Rajinikanth’s Sivaji or Kamal Hassan’s Indian were almost inspirational in their depiction of vigilante justice. In the past, there have been countless others, like the all-time favourite Sholay. An actor like MG Ramachandran acquired legendary status almost always playing the part of a vigilante. The sheer power of his roles later won him the popular vote, jockeying him into the position of the chief minister of Tamil Nadu.
Vigilantism on celluloid is vastly different than it is in reality. From a sociological perspective, watching vigilantism in action within the confines of the cinema hall appears to be a safe outlet to ease the pressure, anger and frustration of people who constantly have to deal with the perceived injustice and unfairness of the “system”, particularly that exuded by an apathetic bureaucracy, the police and the judiciary. But, replicating that in real life can have disastrous consequences. Training citizens, who otherwise would have had no access to weaponry, is a logical precursor to vigilantism, which has had a controversial and bloody history around the world. Several nations in Latin America – Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico to name a few – with an entrenched practice of vigilantism are even today struggling to end this dubious practice. Among many others, one that shocked the world a few years ago was the burning alive of two federal police officials in a suburb of Mexico city by vigilante groups which, mistook them for kidnappers.
Reacting to that incident, an expert on the subject Mark Ungar was quoted by Newsweek as saying that in Latin America "it's spreading in the sense that vigilantes are going after criminals, officials, even governments – and once it starts it's hard to stop".
Once citizens are grouped and trained in weaponry, it is next to impossible to control what they do with that skill. Vigilante groups by definition bypass the established institutions of the state, mainly the police and judiciary, and start meting out instance justice. Many a time a vigilante action can end up in a situation where targets are lynched. During 1996 to 2002, some 482 people were reportedly lynched in Guatemala by vigilante groups.
In western Sudan, the Janjaweed (Arabic for riders on horseback), a vigilante group backed by the Sudanese government, has terrorised people in the Darfur region as reprisal against a rebel movement there for a separate state. In the last eight years, the Janjaweed has indiscriminately laid bare entire villages, driving out an estimated one million people out of their homes. Thousands have been attacked, raped and looted across the region.
Somalia is another extreme example of what happens when vigilantism becomes the mainstream mode of settling disputes and asserting control. The central government there has lost authority, legitimacy and ability to govern. The vigilante groups owing allegiance to feudal lords have a free run of the country. Somalia’s government and parliament operate from the neighbouring Kenya. In Afghanistan, where the power of regional commanders undermines that of the central authority of President Hamid Karzai, there are fears that the country may be heading the Somalian way. A similar, though not as serious, situation prevails in Iraq.
Typically, vigilante groups operate in democratic countries. In the case of Libya or Yemen, where large sections of people are combating the state, they cannot be termed vigilante. Rather, they are perceived to be resisting authoritarian governments.
In the Indian context, other than parts of the rural hinterland, where vigilante-type violence is already prevalent, the mainstream discourse still favours a democratic process with all its attendant pitfalls, delays and frustrations. The practice of non-violent protest, a Gandhian legacy, continues to command a large following. The movement against large dams, exemplified by the Narmada Bachao Andolan, is an example of a protest within democratic parameters. So also is the fight headed by the National Alliance of People’s Movements to retain the rights of tribals living in forests, among others.
The Anna Hazare-led resistance against corruption has used the democratic space successfully to spark a debate in the country on the issue and focus on ways to strengthen the accountability of the legislature, judiciary and the executive. After pushing hard democratically to attract the attention of the people and grow the anti-corruption mood into a popular movement, to allow someone like Ramdev to veer it into vigilantism would be tragic.
KS Dakshina Murthy is an editorial consultant with The Hindu, Bengaluru
daxshin@gmail.com
Excerpts from the 25-page chargesheet - the Samjhauta plot
Indian Express
Tracking the Samjhauta plot
June 22 2011
The NIA chargesheet on the Samjhauta Express blasts traces the events from the plotting to the actual attack. Excerpts from the 25-page chargesheet, transcribed by Bhartesh Singh Thakur
Vengeance
Aseemanand was upset about Islamic jihadi/terrorist attacks on Hindu temples like Akshardham (Gujarat), Raghunath Mandir (Jammu) and Sankat Mochan Mandir (Varanasi). He expressed his anger during discussions with Sunil Joshi, Pragya Singh and Bharat Bhai. All of them discussed the attacks and over time, they developed (a desire for) vengeance not only against the misguided jihadi terrorists but against the whole Muslim community. Aseemanand put forward a “bomb ka badla bomb” theory.
Bharat Bhai had met Aseemanand in 1999 and become a close disciple of his. It was during 2003 that Aseemanand met Pragya and Joshi and they became very close.
Early meetings
In October 2005, Indresh Kumar (RSS leader) and others visited Shabri Dham, Gujarat. Joshi arranged a meeting between Aseemanand and Indresh. They discussed jihadi attacks on Hindu places of worships and the need to give a befitting reply.
In March 2006, after the blast at Sankat Mochan, Joshi and Aseemanand held a meeting at Shabri Dham. Aseemanand said they should no longer tolerate such attacks and exhorted them to retaliate with attacks on Islamic religious sites. Joshi informed him that he had some boys capable of such actions, but he added that undertaking any such mission would incur heavy expenses, logistic arrangements. He said that for procuring raw materials for explosives, arms and ammunition and other items, he required not only money but also Aseemanand’s connections. Aseemanand readily agreed.
Funds
Aseemanand gave Rs 25,000 in cash to Joshi and directed him to visit, along with Bharat Bhai, several places in UP and Jharkhand to meet some resourceful Hinduvadi leaders. Joshi teased Aseemanand, “What will this Rs 25,000 do; it will only meet travel Bharat Bhai's and my travel expenses.” When Aseemanand expressed an inability to give more, Joshi said, “Just give us your blessings, there are others who will provide the money for the job.”
In May 2006, Joshi went to Shabri Dham on return from Jharkhand and UP. Joshi and Bharat Bhai briefed Assemananad about their visit. Joshi told Aseemanand they had gone first to Jharkhand, where Devender Gupta had provided SIM cards, pistols and explosives. After that, they had gone to Agra and further to Gorakhpur but could not get help. He informed Aseemanand that he and Bharat Bhai went to Nagpur and met Indresh, who gave Rs 50,000 for explosives and other items.
Main meeting
Joshi requested Aseemanand to call a coordination meeting at the residence of Bharat Bhai at Valsad, Gujarat, for chalking out the strategy. In June 2006, the main conspiracy meeting took place, attended by Aseemanand, Sadhvi Pragya, Joshi, Sandeep Dange, Ramchander Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma, Amit Chauhan and Bharat Bhai. Aseemanand was introduced to Kalsangra, Dange, Sharma and Amit Chauhan by Joshi.
'Kaam ke ladke'
Aseemanand, who presided over the meeting, reiterated his theory of “Bomb ka jawab bomb se dena chahiye”. All agreed.
Joshi said, “Yeh sabhi kaam ke ladke hain.”
Dange suddenly got agitated and said, “Mandirs are being attacked everywhere and Hindus are silent.” Joshi said, “Hindus are being killed and the government is running a Samjhauta train.” To this Dange replied, “We will blow up the Samjhauta train”... Joshi intervened and brought some order to the agitated discussion. Aseemanand suggested blasts in Malegaon, Ajmer, Hyderabad and also on the Samjhauta train. Joshi took on the responsibility for all the blasts.
Target Samjhauta
Joshi talked about targeting the Samjhauta Express, which he and Sandeep Dange had already discussed. Joshi said they should, anyhow, stop the train, because most of the travellers in this train were Pakistani Muslims. He had already done some groundwork.
Joshi said, “For this we need a different kind of bombs, assemble a variety of chemicals. For a number of simultaneous blasts on a running train, SIM card bombs won’t do”. He added that Dange was an expert in making bombs and would undertake this project.
Aseemanand told Joshi he would try to contribute as much funds as possible. Joshi, however, asked him not to worry. “There are others who will give the money.” He told Aseemanand the Rs 25,000 he had given in March 2006 was spent on train tickets for Bharat Bhai and himself, and on some SIM cards, arms and explosives.
Groundwork
(Joshi told them that) there would be three groups, the first of white-collared people who would help motivate youths for the missions and provide shelter, the second of members who would procure raw materials for fabricating bombs, and the third to fabricate bombs and plant them. Aseemanand and Bharat Bhai were in the first group and Joshi said he would be in touch with all these groups but people in any group should not try to make contact with those in another.
The suitcase cover, with APOLO 600 handwritten on it, was purchased from Abhinandan Bag Centre, Kothari Market, Indore. Puran Singh, a worker, was at the sales counter. Iqbal Hussain, a tailor at M K Bag Centre, Kothari Market, had stitched the cover and put his mark on the cover by writing APOLO 600. Call details show that Joshi was at Kothari Market on February 14, 2007.
The explosives
Four Improvised Explosive Devices were planted in unreserved compartments, of which the IEDs in the 12th and 13th compartments exploded. The explosion was followed by fire in the compartments. One unexploded IED in a suitcase was recovered from the 15th compartment, which exploded in the process of being defused. However, one unexploded IED in a suitcase was recovered from the spot down the railway line (near the 15th compartment).
On analysis of the debris and unexploded devices, it emerged that both IEDs had explosive material like pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), radicals of nitrite trinitrotoluene (TNT), cyclonite (RDX), sulphur, potassium chlorate, petrol, diesel, and mixture of petrol, diesel and kerosene. No commonly used explosive material or their decomposition products could be detected in the post-explosive debris. It came out that the exhibits could be assembled to form a suitcase improvised explosive, an incendiary-type device. The Orpat clock (alarm circuit) along with an electronic circuit and a battery could be used to trigger the device at a preset time. Cast iron metallic pieces could be part of an exploded pipe bomb.
Ice-cream for celebration
On February 19, 2007, at around 12 pm, when Neera and Lovely (Pragya's sister) were at Pragya’s Surat residence, Pragya talked to someone on the phone and asked if “the boys are OK”. After that, she sought to watch the news. They went to a flat in a building in a nearby housing society and asked the woman there to switch on the TV. The news about the Samjhauta blast was being flashed on all channels. On seeing the visuals of the bodies, Neera got disturbed and started crying. Pragya asked her, “Why are you crying?” Neera replied, “Look, how many people have died.”
Pragya was very jubilant and gleefully said, “Don’t cry, all these are Muslims who have died.” When Neera saw Hindu names in the list of deceased, she said, “Didi, look, there are Hindus too.” Sadhvi replied, “Chana ke sath ghun bhi pista hai.”
After watching the news, Pragya expressed a desire to eat ice cream to celebrate.
‘Teacher's job’
On February 19, 2007, Bharat Bhai and Sunil Joshi were watching TV at Bharat Bhai’s home in Valsad. When news of the blast came, Joshi said, “Good, this job was done by our Teacher (Dange) and his boys. Finally he has done it.”
On February 20, 2007, Pragya, Neera and one Ritesh Sharma again arrived at Shabri Dham from Surat by bus. Joshi arrived the same day and after that he, Pragya and Aseemanand had a secret meeting. Aseemanand told Joshi privately, to prick his ego, “You claim responsibility for Samjhauta; the incident has happened and you are sitting right here.” Joshi replied, “Swamiji, this is indeed the work of our people.” Aseemanand asked him when he was in Gujarat, how could he carry this out at such a faroff place. Joshi replied, “It was Teacher’s (Dange’s) job.”
More cash, more blasts
In 2007, Joshi asked Aseemanand for more money for the next blast, which he intended at Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad. Aseemanand was prepared and gave him Rs 40,000.
In May 2007, Bharat Bhai called Aseemanand and told him Joshi would be coming to meet him in Shabri Dham with “some news”. After about a week, Joshi arrived. He was carrying a Telugu newspaper that had news of the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad. He told Aseemanand it had been done by his boys.
Some days before the Ajmer blast (October 11, 2007), Joshi called Aseemanand and said, “Swamiji, keep listening to the news, there will be good news soon.” After a few days, Joshi went to Shabri Dham along with one Raj and one Mehul and told him “his boys had carried out this blast too”.
After the blast, Joshi had called Bharat Bhai and told him to switch on the TV and said, “We have exploded the Diwali bomb.” Bharat Bhai saw the news of the Ajmer blast.
Arrest
Aseemanand fled Shabri Dham when he learnt about the arrest of Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma in connection with the Ajmer blast. He reached village Atmalpur, Hardwar, in Uttaranchal, stayed with Swami Brahamanand by impersonating as Swami Omakarnand, and obtained a ration card and a voter’s card by submitting forged documents. During his stay he developed close relations with Shakti Singh and Ajay Chauhan and one day, he told Chauhan in presence of Singh that he was involved in the Samjhauta blast. Chauhan advised him to surrender in the court at Hardwar, which he did not do.
Aseemanand was finally arrested on November 18, 2010, from Atmalpur by CBI.
Investigations
Sunil Joshi kept a personal phone diary till the time of his murder in December 2007. The phone diary disclosed some important contact details. Under the head emergency number, Aseemanand’s number was included, indicating their closeness. Joshi kept arms, explosives and IEDs in his house which were apparently used by Kalsangra after being removed from the house of Joshi after his murder. The call details of telephones used by Pragya, Sunil Joshi, Sandeep Dange and Aseemanand show the connections between the suspects/co-accused during February-March 2007.
The involvement of Amit alias Sunny, Pragya, Indresh, Devender Gupta and some other individuals in the conspiracy is highly suspected. Further investigation will be continued under Section 173(8), CrPC.
Tracking the Samjhauta plot
June 22 2011
The NIA chargesheet on the Samjhauta Express blasts traces the events from the plotting to the actual attack. Excerpts from the 25-page chargesheet, transcribed by Bhartesh Singh Thakur
Vengeance
Aseemanand was upset about Islamic jihadi/terrorist attacks on Hindu temples like Akshardham (Gujarat), Raghunath Mandir (Jammu) and Sankat Mochan Mandir (Varanasi). He expressed his anger during discussions with Sunil Joshi, Pragya Singh and Bharat Bhai. All of them discussed the attacks and over time, they developed (a desire for) vengeance not only against the misguided jihadi terrorists but against the whole Muslim community. Aseemanand put forward a “bomb ka badla bomb” theory.
Bharat Bhai had met Aseemanand in 1999 and become a close disciple of his. It was during 2003 that Aseemanand met Pragya and Joshi and they became very close.
Early meetings
In October 2005, Indresh Kumar (RSS leader) and others visited Shabri Dham, Gujarat. Joshi arranged a meeting between Aseemanand and Indresh. They discussed jihadi attacks on Hindu places of worships and the need to give a befitting reply.
In March 2006, after the blast at Sankat Mochan, Joshi and Aseemanand held a meeting at Shabri Dham. Aseemanand said they should no longer tolerate such attacks and exhorted them to retaliate with attacks on Islamic religious sites. Joshi informed him that he had some boys capable of such actions, but he added that undertaking any such mission would incur heavy expenses, logistic arrangements. He said that for procuring raw materials for explosives, arms and ammunition and other items, he required not only money but also Aseemanand’s connections. Aseemanand readily agreed.
Funds
Aseemanand gave Rs 25,000 in cash to Joshi and directed him to visit, along with Bharat Bhai, several places in UP and Jharkhand to meet some resourceful Hinduvadi leaders. Joshi teased Aseemanand, “What will this Rs 25,000 do; it will only meet travel Bharat Bhai's and my travel expenses.” When Aseemanand expressed an inability to give more, Joshi said, “Just give us your blessings, there are others who will provide the money for the job.”
In May 2006, Joshi went to Shabri Dham on return from Jharkhand and UP. Joshi and Bharat Bhai briefed Assemananad about their visit. Joshi told Aseemanand they had gone first to Jharkhand, where Devender Gupta had provided SIM cards, pistols and explosives. After that, they had gone to Agra and further to Gorakhpur but could not get help. He informed Aseemanand that he and Bharat Bhai went to Nagpur and met Indresh, who gave Rs 50,000 for explosives and other items.
Main meeting
Joshi requested Aseemanand to call a coordination meeting at the residence of Bharat Bhai at Valsad, Gujarat, for chalking out the strategy. In June 2006, the main conspiracy meeting took place, attended by Aseemanand, Sadhvi Pragya, Joshi, Sandeep Dange, Ramchander Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma, Amit Chauhan and Bharat Bhai. Aseemanand was introduced to Kalsangra, Dange, Sharma and Amit Chauhan by Joshi.
'Kaam ke ladke'
Aseemanand, who presided over the meeting, reiterated his theory of “Bomb ka jawab bomb se dena chahiye”. All agreed.
Joshi said, “Yeh sabhi kaam ke ladke hain.”
Dange suddenly got agitated and said, “Mandirs are being attacked everywhere and Hindus are silent.” Joshi said, “Hindus are being killed and the government is running a Samjhauta train.” To this Dange replied, “We will blow up the Samjhauta train”... Joshi intervened and brought some order to the agitated discussion. Aseemanand suggested blasts in Malegaon, Ajmer, Hyderabad and also on the Samjhauta train. Joshi took on the responsibility for all the blasts.
Target Samjhauta
Joshi talked about targeting the Samjhauta Express, which he and Sandeep Dange had already discussed. Joshi said they should, anyhow, stop the train, because most of the travellers in this train were Pakistani Muslims. He had already done some groundwork.
Joshi said, “For this we need a different kind of bombs, assemble a variety of chemicals. For a number of simultaneous blasts on a running train, SIM card bombs won’t do”. He added that Dange was an expert in making bombs and would undertake this project.
Aseemanand told Joshi he would try to contribute as much funds as possible. Joshi, however, asked him not to worry. “There are others who will give the money.” He told Aseemanand the Rs 25,000 he had given in March 2006 was spent on train tickets for Bharat Bhai and himself, and on some SIM cards, arms and explosives.
Groundwork
(Joshi told them that) there would be three groups, the first of white-collared people who would help motivate youths for the missions and provide shelter, the second of members who would procure raw materials for fabricating bombs, and the third to fabricate bombs and plant them. Aseemanand and Bharat Bhai were in the first group and Joshi said he would be in touch with all these groups but people in any group should not try to make contact with those in another.
The suitcase cover, with APOLO 600 handwritten on it, was purchased from Abhinandan Bag Centre, Kothari Market, Indore. Puran Singh, a worker, was at the sales counter. Iqbal Hussain, a tailor at M K Bag Centre, Kothari Market, had stitched the cover and put his mark on the cover by writing APOLO 600. Call details show that Joshi was at Kothari Market on February 14, 2007.
The explosives
Four Improvised Explosive Devices were planted in unreserved compartments, of which the IEDs in the 12th and 13th compartments exploded. The explosion was followed by fire in the compartments. One unexploded IED in a suitcase was recovered from the 15th compartment, which exploded in the process of being defused. However, one unexploded IED in a suitcase was recovered from the spot down the railway line (near the 15th compartment).
On analysis of the debris and unexploded devices, it emerged that both IEDs had explosive material like pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), radicals of nitrite trinitrotoluene (TNT), cyclonite (RDX), sulphur, potassium chlorate, petrol, diesel, and mixture of petrol, diesel and kerosene. No commonly used explosive material or their decomposition products could be detected in the post-explosive debris. It came out that the exhibits could be assembled to form a suitcase improvised explosive, an incendiary-type device. The Orpat clock (alarm circuit) along with an electronic circuit and a battery could be used to trigger the device at a preset time. Cast iron metallic pieces could be part of an exploded pipe bomb.
Ice-cream for celebration
On February 19, 2007, at around 12 pm, when Neera and Lovely (Pragya's sister) were at Pragya’s Surat residence, Pragya talked to someone on the phone and asked if “the boys are OK”. After that, she sought to watch the news. They went to a flat in a building in a nearby housing society and asked the woman there to switch on the TV. The news about the Samjhauta blast was being flashed on all channels. On seeing the visuals of the bodies, Neera got disturbed and started crying. Pragya asked her, “Why are you crying?” Neera replied, “Look, how many people have died.”
Pragya was very jubilant and gleefully said, “Don’t cry, all these are Muslims who have died.” When Neera saw Hindu names in the list of deceased, she said, “Didi, look, there are Hindus too.” Sadhvi replied, “Chana ke sath ghun bhi pista hai.”
After watching the news, Pragya expressed a desire to eat ice cream to celebrate.
‘Teacher's job’
On February 19, 2007, Bharat Bhai and Sunil Joshi were watching TV at Bharat Bhai’s home in Valsad. When news of the blast came, Joshi said, “Good, this job was done by our Teacher (Dange) and his boys. Finally he has done it.”
On February 20, 2007, Pragya, Neera and one Ritesh Sharma again arrived at Shabri Dham from Surat by bus. Joshi arrived the same day and after that he, Pragya and Aseemanand had a secret meeting. Aseemanand told Joshi privately, to prick his ego, “You claim responsibility for Samjhauta; the incident has happened and you are sitting right here.” Joshi replied, “Swamiji, this is indeed the work of our people.” Aseemanand asked him when he was in Gujarat, how could he carry this out at such a faroff place. Joshi replied, “It was Teacher’s (Dange’s) job.”
More cash, more blasts
In 2007, Joshi asked Aseemanand for more money for the next blast, which he intended at Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad. Aseemanand was prepared and gave him Rs 40,000.
In May 2007, Bharat Bhai called Aseemanand and told him Joshi would be coming to meet him in Shabri Dham with “some news”. After about a week, Joshi arrived. He was carrying a Telugu newspaper that had news of the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad. He told Aseemanand it had been done by his boys.
Some days before the Ajmer blast (October 11, 2007), Joshi called Aseemanand and said, “Swamiji, keep listening to the news, there will be good news soon.” After a few days, Joshi went to Shabri Dham along with one Raj and one Mehul and told him “his boys had carried out this blast too”.
After the blast, Joshi had called Bharat Bhai and told him to switch on the TV and said, “We have exploded the Diwali bomb.” Bharat Bhai saw the news of the Ajmer blast.
Arrest
Aseemanand fled Shabri Dham when he learnt about the arrest of Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma in connection with the Ajmer blast. He reached village Atmalpur, Hardwar, in Uttaranchal, stayed with Swami Brahamanand by impersonating as Swami Omakarnand, and obtained a ration card and a voter’s card by submitting forged documents. During his stay he developed close relations with Shakti Singh and Ajay Chauhan and one day, he told Chauhan in presence of Singh that he was involved in the Samjhauta blast. Chauhan advised him to surrender in the court at Hardwar, which he did not do.
Aseemanand was finally arrested on November 18, 2010, from Atmalpur by CBI.
Investigations
Sunil Joshi kept a personal phone diary till the time of his murder in December 2007. The phone diary disclosed some important contact details. Under the head emergency number, Aseemanand’s number was included, indicating their closeness. Joshi kept arms, explosives and IEDs in his house which were apparently used by Kalsangra after being removed from the house of Joshi after his murder. The call details of telephones used by Pragya, Sunil Joshi, Sandeep Dange and Aseemanand show the connections between the suspects/co-accused during February-March 2007.
The involvement of Amit alias Sunny, Pragya, Indresh, Devender Gupta and some other individuals in the conspiracy is highly suspected. Further investigation will be continued under Section 173(8), CrPC.
June 22, 2011
Don’t underplay top RSS leader's role in Samjhauta blast
Mail Today, 22 June 2011
Don’t underplay Indresh’s role in Samjhauta blast
IT would appear that the National Investigation Agency ( NIA), which on Monday filed a chargesheet against Asimanand and four other Hindutva terrorists in the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast case, has developed cold feet in charging senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Indresh Kumar.
It is possible that the NIA will include Mr Kumar’s name later, yet there is something strange about the agency’s approach.
According to the NIA’s own chargesheet, one of the accused, Sunil Joshi — who has since been murdered — had fixed a meeting between Asimanand and Mr Kumar in Surat in October 2005 and Joshi along with Bharat Bhai — an accused in the 2007 Ajmer blast case — met Mr Kumar in Nagpur where the RSS leader gave them Rs 50,000 in cash for the procurement of explosives and other materials.
Moreover, four of those chargesheeted — Sandeep Dange, Ramji Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma and the slain Sunil Joshi — are all RSS activists, so it would not be wrong to infer that in a regimented and hierarchal organisation like the RSS, they would have had the support of a senior functionary like Mr Kumar.
Even though Mr Kumar was not part of what the NIA calls the ‘ main conspiracy meeting’ that is said to have been held in June 2006, the fact that he provided financial support for the attack and was in close contact with some of the accused — Sunil Joshi in particular — is more than sufficient basis for his name to be included in the Samjhauta blast chargesheet.
It would appear that the agency is balking at the prospect of charging an RSS leader as senior as Mr Kumar and invoke the ire of the entire Sangh Parivar.
Don’t underplay Indresh’s role in Samjhauta blast
IT would appear that the National Investigation Agency ( NIA), which on Monday filed a chargesheet against Asimanand and four other Hindutva terrorists in the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast case, has developed cold feet in charging senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Indresh Kumar.
It is possible that the NIA will include Mr Kumar’s name later, yet there is something strange about the agency’s approach.
According to the NIA’s own chargesheet, one of the accused, Sunil Joshi — who has since been murdered — had fixed a meeting between Asimanand and Mr Kumar in Surat in October 2005 and Joshi along with Bharat Bhai — an accused in the 2007 Ajmer blast case — met Mr Kumar in Nagpur where the RSS leader gave them Rs 50,000 in cash for the procurement of explosives and other materials.
Moreover, four of those chargesheeted — Sandeep Dange, Ramji Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma and the slain Sunil Joshi — are all RSS activists, so it would not be wrong to infer that in a regimented and hierarchal organisation like the RSS, they would have had the support of a senior functionary like Mr Kumar.
Even though Mr Kumar was not part of what the NIA calls the ‘ main conspiracy meeting’ that is said to have been held in June 2006, the fact that he provided financial support for the attack and was in close contact with some of the accused — Sunil Joshi in particular — is more than sufficient basis for his name to be included in the Samjhauta blast chargesheet.
It would appear that the agency is balking at the prospect of charging an RSS leader as senior as Mr Kumar and invoke the ire of the entire Sangh Parivar.
June 21, 2011
Holy Shit - obscurantist politicians in Karnataka turn to god of land and property disputes
BBC News
20 June 2011
Indian politicians place disagreements 'before god'
Temple dedicated to the Hindu god Manjunatha in Karnataka Both parties are due to appear at a temple later this month
Two arch political rivals in the Indian state of Karnataka have decided to resolve their political differences before a Hindu god.
The state chief minister and his opposition rival - a former chief minister - agree that a divine showdown will resolve their dispute.
On 27 June they are due to present their arguments in a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Manjunatha.
He is the deity who arbitrates on land and property disputes.
The BBC's Habib Beary in the state capital Bangalore says that Manjunatha will seldom have been called on to adjudicate between two such high-profile litigants.
Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa has been accused by opposition leader HD Kumaraswamy of corruption.
Mr Kumaraswamy has threatened to expose land scams allegedly committed by Mr Yeddyurappa, in addition to accusing the chief minister of trying to "buy" his silence on the matter through intermediaries.
In reply, Mr Yeddyurappa has rubbished the allegations as "humbug", and has challenged his rival to stand before Lord Manjunatha and repeat his charge. Mr Kumaraswamy has accepted the challenge.
The former chief minister is so convinced as to the strength of his case that he has declared his willingness not only to testify before God but also before an inquiry.
Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa Mr Yeddyurappa says that he is convinced God is on his side
"I am even prepared to undergo the truth serum test," Mr Kumaraswamy said.
Childish
In an open letter to his opposition rival, the chief minister said: "I believe in God. I hope you are also a believer in God. Therefore I am throwing you a challenge... If you have the courage to stick to your allegations in front of the Almighty, I will appreciate your courage."
However the chief minister's party colleagues are unhappy over the oath challenge.
Karnataka Health Minister Sreeramalu said that God should not have to arbitrate in the state's political disputes.
"Such actions would only affect the religious sentiments of people," he said.
A senior Congress leader, Motamma has also described the oath challenge as childish.
"The chief minister has lowered the image of the high office he holds," she said.
20 June 2011
Indian politicians place disagreements 'before god'
Temple dedicated to the Hindu god Manjunatha in Karnataka Both parties are due to appear at a temple later this month
Two arch political rivals in the Indian state of Karnataka have decided to resolve their political differences before a Hindu god.
The state chief minister and his opposition rival - a former chief minister - agree that a divine showdown will resolve their dispute.
On 27 June they are due to present their arguments in a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Manjunatha.
He is the deity who arbitrates on land and property disputes.
The BBC's Habib Beary in the state capital Bangalore says that Manjunatha will seldom have been called on to adjudicate between two such high-profile litigants.
Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa has been accused by opposition leader HD Kumaraswamy of corruption.
Mr Kumaraswamy has threatened to expose land scams allegedly committed by Mr Yeddyurappa, in addition to accusing the chief minister of trying to "buy" his silence on the matter through intermediaries.
In reply, Mr Yeddyurappa has rubbished the allegations as "humbug", and has challenged his rival to stand before Lord Manjunatha and repeat his charge. Mr Kumaraswamy has accepted the challenge.
The former chief minister is so convinced as to the strength of his case that he has declared his willingness not only to testify before God but also before an inquiry.
Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa Mr Yeddyurappa says that he is convinced God is on his side
"I am even prepared to undergo the truth serum test," Mr Kumaraswamy said.
Childish
In an open letter to his opposition rival, the chief minister said: "I believe in God. I hope you are also a believer in God. Therefore I am throwing you a challenge... If you have the courage to stick to your allegations in front of the Almighty, I will appreciate your courage."
However the chief minister's party colleagues are unhappy over the oath challenge.
Karnataka Health Minister Sreeramalu said that God should not have to arbitrate in the state's political disputes.
"Such actions would only affect the religious sentiments of people," he said.
A senior Congress leader, Motamma has also described the oath challenge as childish.
"The chief minister has lowered the image of the high office he holds," she said.
June 20, 2011
It pays to be a peddler of faith in India
Mail Today, 19 June 2011
Editorial
Rich in body and spirit
THE revelation that the late Sathya Sai Baba’s personal chamber stocked nearly 100 kg of gold, 307 kg of silver and ` 11.56 crore in cash raises a couple of pertinent questions.
While it is laudable that the Central Sathya Sai Trust has been transparent about the recovery it must be asked what such assets were doing in the Baba’s personal chamber in the first place.
Given that it is donations which greatly help godmen build their empires, surely there must be a proper mechanism to streamline and store collections, especially since they, being the property of a charitable trust, enjoy tax exemptions? Are we to infer from this that the Sathya Sai Baba enjoyed the autonomy to divert such money as and how he wished? The other important issue is of the contradiction between what our godmen seek to convey with their saffron robes and otherworldly paraphernalia and what they seem to follow in their personal lives.
We thought spiritual people inhabited an exalted realm, being free of the allurement of material possessions. But the wealth that has been unearthed from the Baba’s chamber — incidentally called a ‘ mandir’— reminds us of the ill- gotten stuff that is recovered from the homes of tax evaders and corrupt babus.
The irony here should not be lost on those who repose deep faith in godmen, which in the case of Sathya Sai Baba includes luminaries from different walks of life.
The other day, Baba Ramdev, who had launched a campaign against black money, gave details about the trusts he runs, making no mention of the many companies that are a part of his business empire.
There is no getting away from the conclusion that most of this country’s godmen take their trusting followers for a royal ride which, even the devil would acknowledge, is the most heinous of crimes.
o o o
It pays to be a peddler of faith in India
12 crore in cash
22 crore worth of gold
1.64 crore in silver faith in India
This is what was found after Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s personal chamber was opened. He is not the only spiritual guru to have owned millions in cash & kind. A look at India’s other godmen who walked on the path of spirituality & became rich enough to rival a king
BABA RAMDEV
BORN: RAM KRISHNA YADAV
ASSETS: Patanjali Yogpeeth & Divya Yogi Mandir trusts, which run, among other things, Patanjali Ayurved College, Patanjali Chikitsalaya, Yog Gram, Goshala, Patanjali Food And Herbal Park, etc.
THE RISE and rise of Baba Ramdev makes the perfect plot for any Bollywood flick.
Born in a poor farmer’s family in Haryana, he used his knowledge of yoga asanas to build an enviable ` 1,100 crore empire.
Until 15 years ago, a struggling Ramdev was often seen on the streets of Haridwar, peddling his bicycle as he went to temples and people’s homes to teach them yajnas to make ends meet.
He was born to Gulabo Devi and Ram Nivas Yadav at village Ali Saiyad Pur in Mahendragarh district. He attended the local school in Shahjadpur till Class VII. Thereafter, he joined a gurukul in Khanpur village, where he studied Sanskrit and yoga. Eventually, he renounced worldly life, entered sanyas and assumed the name Baba Ramdev. Later, he moved to Haridwar and spent years studying ancient Indian scriptures at Kangari gurukul . In the mid 90s, Ramdev, along with Acharya Karamveer, established the Divya Yog Mandir Trust in Haridwar and gained worldwide acclaim through his morning yoga classes on a TV channel.
His empire today consists of over three dozen companies.
Raju Gusain in Dehradun
--
MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI
KERALA’S ‘ hugging Amma’, Mata Amritanandamayi, may the richest godwoman in country.
Even by modest estimates, the Amritanandamayi Trust, which presides over, is said to have assets worth over ` 1,000 crore.
Amritanandamayi, who belonged to a backward Hindu community, embraced spirituality in her teens. Today, her ashram at her native Vallikavu, a small island off Kollam, is a posh five- storey building.
devotees.
across charged topnotch Under Amrita trust colleges, institutions courses communications.
are located Coimbatore, Prakash This Sai opened.
guru & who & Her trust’s fortunes come mostly from its numerous educational institutions — students are charged fees at market rates — besides a hospital, a TV channel and contributions from her millions of Indian and foreign devotees.
Amrita Schools are located across Kerala; students are charged the same fee as topnotch private schools.
Under the brand name of Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetham, the trust also runs engineering colleges, business schools, and institutions offering post graduate courses in biotechnology and communications. These colleges are spread over five campuses located in Kollam, Kochi, Coimbatore, Mysore and Bangalore.
Prakash in Thiruvananthapuram
BORN: SUDHAMANI IDAMANNEL
ASSETS: Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetham colleges, Amrita Institute of Medical Science ( Kochi), Amrita Schools, a TV channel
---
SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR
SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR SRI SRI Ravi Shankar loves projecting himself as a messiah peace.
With an estimated 300 million followers in 151 countries, the Art of Living founder — who prefers to don white robes instead of saffron — indeed has qualms boasting that he has touched more lives that any other godman worth his salt.
Ravi Shankar was unheard of the early 1980s. Within three decades, however, he built an empire that is said to be worth several thousand crores today.
Born in Papanasam, Tamil Nadu, in 1956, to Vishalakshi and R. S. Venkat Ratnam, Ravi Shankar started studying the Vedas when he was just six years old, his aides say. By the time he reached 17, he had completed studies in Vedic literature and science. Subsequently, he undertook a tour, meeting other spiritual leaders and in 1982, he established the Art of Living Foundation in Bangalore.
Soon, his ashram became a tourist centre, attracting millions of followers from across the globe.
But his ashram, on the Bangalore- Dindigul national highway, has come under its fair share of controversies.
Last July, NRI Paul P. accused Ravi Shankar’s trust of grabbing his land. Paul P. alleged that the trust had grabbed 15 acres of land for which he held the General Power of Attorney ( GPA).
But Ravi Shankar’s trust contended that it had purchased the land directly from the farmer and it was not aware of the GPA. That, however, has done little to dent Ravi Shankar’s following.
Aravind Gowda in Bangalore
BORN: RAVI SHANKAR RATNAM
ASSETS: Art of Living Centre ( Bangalore), Sri Sri Shankar Vidya Mandir Trust, PU College ( Bangalore), Sri Sri Centre for Media Studies ( Bangalore), Sri Sri University, Art of Living Health & Educational Trust ( US), etc.
--
RAM RAHIM
THE Sirsa- based Dera Sacha Sauda was established by Shah Mastana Ji from Baluchistan in 1948, as a centre for spiritual learning. Today, the sect — which is headed by the controversial godman Ram Rahim Singh — owns large tracts of agriculture land, market complexes, swanky cars and boasts of several ashrams across India.
According to the Dera website, it has got more than 250 branches worldwide with its headquarters based near Sirsa, Haryana.
The sect claims to be a non- profit, charitable society, independent of any political or commercial affiliations.
The Dera also runs three specialty hospitals and an international eye bank.
However, it has received maximum publicity — or notoriety — through Ram Rahim.
The Dera chief is accused of murder, rape and sexual harassment and is currently out on bail. He is being investigated by the CBI and trial is on before a special CBI court at Ambala.
Mail Today Bureau in New Delhi
BORN: GURMEET RAM RAHIM SINGH INSAAN
ASSETS: Over 700 acres of agriculture land in Sirsa, a 175- bed hospital in Ganganagar, Rajasthan, gas stations, market complexes and over 250 ashrams across the globe
--
SANT SRI ASARAM BAPU
AMONG all the living godmen in India, Asaram Bapu is one of the most controversial.
Besides several allegations of land- grabbing, there have also been whispers of “ sinister activities” at his ashrams, following the mysterious deaths of a few of his followers on the premises.
Asaram and his ashrams have been served several notices by the state governments, including that of Gujarat, for alleged land- grabbing. Even his main ashram at Motera, Ahmedabad, is said to be built on land acquired illegally.
In 2009, the Narendra Modi government admitted in the assembly that Asaram had encroached upon 67,000 square metres of land near Motera.
But most allegations have never been proved.
The trust headed by the controversial godman owns more than 350 ashrams in the country and abroad, besides 17,000 Bal Sanskar Kendras.
The first — and largest — ashram was set up in Motera along the banks of River Sabarmati in 1971.
Besides, the trust also has ashrams in New Jersey and other parts of the US, former media in charge of Asaram Ashram Uday Sanghani says.
The trust also generates its income through the production of puja materials, incense sticks, CDs, etc.
D. P. Bhattacharya in Ahmedabad
BORN: ASUMAL SIRUMALANI
ASSETS: Over 350 ashrams, with its headquarters in Ahmedabad; over 17,000 Bal Sanskar Kendras
--
LONG GONE BUT LEGACY LIVES ON
OSHO
BORN Chandra Mohan Jain on December 11, 1931, in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, he spanned a multi- million empire and gathered followers from all corners of the world.
His outspoken criticism of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, institutionalised religion, as well as his open attitude towards sexuality made Osho aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh one of the most controversial gurus in the country, until his death in 1990.
In 1981, he relocated to the US, where he established Rajneeshpuram in Oregon. Four years later, he was deported back to India. His Pune ashram, the Osho International Meditation Resort, today attracts over two lakh people from all over the world each year.
MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
THE GURU, who was born in Jabalpur as Mahesh Prasad Varma, achieved fame in the 1970s and became famous as the spiritual adviser to The Beatles and other celebrities.
He founded the Transcendental Meditation- Sidhi programme, which claimed to offer practitioners the ability to levitate and to “ create” world peace. When he died on February 5, 2008, his businesses were estimated to be valued at $ 2 billion to $ 5 billion. The real estate was valued at another $ 5 billion.
Editorial
Rich in body and spirit
THE revelation that the late Sathya Sai Baba’s personal chamber stocked nearly 100 kg of gold, 307 kg of silver and ` 11.56 crore in cash raises a couple of pertinent questions.
While it is laudable that the Central Sathya Sai Trust has been transparent about the recovery it must be asked what such assets were doing in the Baba’s personal chamber in the first place.
Given that it is donations which greatly help godmen build their empires, surely there must be a proper mechanism to streamline and store collections, especially since they, being the property of a charitable trust, enjoy tax exemptions? Are we to infer from this that the Sathya Sai Baba enjoyed the autonomy to divert such money as and how he wished? The other important issue is of the contradiction between what our godmen seek to convey with their saffron robes and otherworldly paraphernalia and what they seem to follow in their personal lives.
We thought spiritual people inhabited an exalted realm, being free of the allurement of material possessions. But the wealth that has been unearthed from the Baba’s chamber — incidentally called a ‘ mandir’— reminds us of the ill- gotten stuff that is recovered from the homes of tax evaders and corrupt babus.
The irony here should not be lost on those who repose deep faith in godmen, which in the case of Sathya Sai Baba includes luminaries from different walks of life.
The other day, Baba Ramdev, who had launched a campaign against black money, gave details about the trusts he runs, making no mention of the many companies that are a part of his business empire.
There is no getting away from the conclusion that most of this country’s godmen take their trusting followers for a royal ride which, even the devil would acknowledge, is the most heinous of crimes.
o o o
It pays to be a peddler of faith in India
12 crore in cash
22 crore worth of gold
1.64 crore in silver faith in India
This is what was found after Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s personal chamber was opened. He is not the only spiritual guru to have owned millions in cash & kind. A look at India’s other godmen who walked on the path of spirituality & became rich enough to rival a king
BABA RAMDEV
BORN: RAM KRISHNA YADAV
ASSETS: Patanjali Yogpeeth & Divya Yogi Mandir trusts, which run, among other things, Patanjali Ayurved College, Patanjali Chikitsalaya, Yog Gram, Goshala, Patanjali Food And Herbal Park, etc.
THE RISE and rise of Baba Ramdev makes the perfect plot for any Bollywood flick.
Born in a poor farmer’s family in Haryana, he used his knowledge of yoga asanas to build an enviable ` 1,100 crore empire.
Until 15 years ago, a struggling Ramdev was often seen on the streets of Haridwar, peddling his bicycle as he went to temples and people’s homes to teach them yajnas to make ends meet.
He was born to Gulabo Devi and Ram Nivas Yadav at village Ali Saiyad Pur in Mahendragarh district. He attended the local school in Shahjadpur till Class VII. Thereafter, he joined a gurukul in Khanpur village, where he studied Sanskrit and yoga. Eventually, he renounced worldly life, entered sanyas and assumed the name Baba Ramdev. Later, he moved to Haridwar and spent years studying ancient Indian scriptures at Kangari gurukul . In the mid 90s, Ramdev, along with Acharya Karamveer, established the Divya Yog Mandir Trust in Haridwar and gained worldwide acclaim through his morning yoga classes on a TV channel.
His empire today consists of over three dozen companies.
Raju Gusain in Dehradun
--
MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI
KERALA’S ‘ hugging Amma’, Mata Amritanandamayi, may the richest godwoman in country.
Even by modest estimates, the Amritanandamayi Trust, which presides over, is said to have assets worth over ` 1,000 crore.
Amritanandamayi, who belonged to a backward Hindu community, embraced spirituality in her teens. Today, her ashram at her native Vallikavu, a small island off Kollam, is a posh five- storey building.
devotees.
across charged topnotch Under Amrita trust colleges, institutions courses communications.
are located Coimbatore, Prakash This Sai opened.
guru & who & Her trust’s fortunes come mostly from its numerous educational institutions — students are charged fees at market rates — besides a hospital, a TV channel and contributions from her millions of Indian and foreign devotees.
Amrita Schools are located across Kerala; students are charged the same fee as topnotch private schools.
Under the brand name of Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetham, the trust also runs engineering colleges, business schools, and institutions offering post graduate courses in biotechnology and communications. These colleges are spread over five campuses located in Kollam, Kochi, Coimbatore, Mysore and Bangalore.
Prakash in Thiruvananthapuram
BORN: SUDHAMANI IDAMANNEL
ASSETS: Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetham colleges, Amrita Institute of Medical Science ( Kochi), Amrita Schools, a TV channel
---
SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR
SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR SRI SRI Ravi Shankar loves projecting himself as a messiah peace.
With an estimated 300 million followers in 151 countries, the Art of Living founder — who prefers to don white robes instead of saffron — indeed has qualms boasting that he has touched more lives that any other godman worth his salt.
Ravi Shankar was unheard of the early 1980s. Within three decades, however, he built an empire that is said to be worth several thousand crores today.
Born in Papanasam, Tamil Nadu, in 1956, to Vishalakshi and R. S. Venkat Ratnam, Ravi Shankar started studying the Vedas when he was just six years old, his aides say. By the time he reached 17, he had completed studies in Vedic literature and science. Subsequently, he undertook a tour, meeting other spiritual leaders and in 1982, he established the Art of Living Foundation in Bangalore.
Soon, his ashram became a tourist centre, attracting millions of followers from across the globe.
But his ashram, on the Bangalore- Dindigul national highway, has come under its fair share of controversies.
Last July, NRI Paul P. accused Ravi Shankar’s trust of grabbing his land. Paul P. alleged that the trust had grabbed 15 acres of land for which he held the General Power of Attorney ( GPA).
But Ravi Shankar’s trust contended that it had purchased the land directly from the farmer and it was not aware of the GPA. That, however, has done little to dent Ravi Shankar’s following.
Aravind Gowda in Bangalore
BORN: RAVI SHANKAR RATNAM
ASSETS: Art of Living Centre ( Bangalore), Sri Sri Shankar Vidya Mandir Trust, PU College ( Bangalore), Sri Sri Centre for Media Studies ( Bangalore), Sri Sri University, Art of Living Health & Educational Trust ( US), etc.
--
RAM RAHIM
THE Sirsa- based Dera Sacha Sauda was established by Shah Mastana Ji from Baluchistan in 1948, as a centre for spiritual learning. Today, the sect — which is headed by the controversial godman Ram Rahim Singh — owns large tracts of agriculture land, market complexes, swanky cars and boasts of several ashrams across India.
According to the Dera website, it has got more than 250 branches worldwide with its headquarters based near Sirsa, Haryana.
The sect claims to be a non- profit, charitable society, independent of any political or commercial affiliations.
The Dera also runs three specialty hospitals and an international eye bank.
However, it has received maximum publicity — or notoriety — through Ram Rahim.
The Dera chief is accused of murder, rape and sexual harassment and is currently out on bail. He is being investigated by the CBI and trial is on before a special CBI court at Ambala.
Mail Today Bureau in New Delhi
BORN: GURMEET RAM RAHIM SINGH INSAAN
ASSETS: Over 700 acres of agriculture land in Sirsa, a 175- bed hospital in Ganganagar, Rajasthan, gas stations, market complexes and over 250 ashrams across the globe
--
SANT SRI ASARAM BAPU
AMONG all the living godmen in India, Asaram Bapu is one of the most controversial.
Besides several allegations of land- grabbing, there have also been whispers of “ sinister activities” at his ashrams, following the mysterious deaths of a few of his followers on the premises.
Asaram and his ashrams have been served several notices by the state governments, including that of Gujarat, for alleged land- grabbing. Even his main ashram at Motera, Ahmedabad, is said to be built on land acquired illegally.
In 2009, the Narendra Modi government admitted in the assembly that Asaram had encroached upon 67,000 square metres of land near Motera.
But most allegations have never been proved.
The trust headed by the controversial godman owns more than 350 ashrams in the country and abroad, besides 17,000 Bal Sanskar Kendras.
The first — and largest — ashram was set up in Motera along the banks of River Sabarmati in 1971.
Besides, the trust also has ashrams in New Jersey and other parts of the US, former media in charge of Asaram Ashram Uday Sanghani says.
The trust also generates its income through the production of puja materials, incense sticks, CDs, etc.
D. P. Bhattacharya in Ahmedabad
BORN: ASUMAL SIRUMALANI
ASSETS: Over 350 ashrams, with its headquarters in Ahmedabad; over 17,000 Bal Sanskar Kendras
--
LONG GONE BUT LEGACY LIVES ON
OSHO
BORN Chandra Mohan Jain on December 11, 1931, in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, he spanned a multi- million empire and gathered followers from all corners of the world.
His outspoken criticism of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, institutionalised religion, as well as his open attitude towards sexuality made Osho aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh one of the most controversial gurus in the country, until his death in 1990.
In 1981, he relocated to the US, where he established Rajneeshpuram in Oregon. Four years later, he was deported back to India. His Pune ashram, the Osho International Meditation Resort, today attracts over two lakh people from all over the world each year.
MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
THE GURU, who was born in Jabalpur as Mahesh Prasad Varma, achieved fame in the 1970s and became famous as the spiritual adviser to The Beatles and other celebrities.
He founded the Transcendental Meditation- Sidhi programme, which claimed to offer practitioners the ability to levitate and to “ create” world peace. When he died on February 5, 2008, his businesses were estimated to be valued at $ 2 billion to $ 5 billion. The real estate was valued at another $ 5 billion.
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