ZNet, March 31, 2008
The hope for Indian democracy can only arise from the oppressed sections
By Karthik Ramanathan
For those of us who have been watching with disgust the continuing genocide of muslims, the recent reelection as Chief Minister in the Gujarat State Assembly elections of the modern-day nero, Narendra Modi, who presided over the 2002 genocide against Muslims came as a unavoidably rude shock. Nevertheless, the communal mobilisation that floats beneath the surface of the so-called democratic process in the state is very familiar to those who are involved with issues of justice in Gujarat. NYAYAGRAHA (literally meaning an organisation for justice ) formed in Ahmedabad with the primary mandate of securing legal justice and reconciliation for the victims of the violence notes in its publication titled "Campaign For Legal Justice And Reconciliation in Gujarat" that the "predominant situation, especially in villages that were torn apart by the mass violence of 2002, remains one of settled hate, settled fear and settled despair. In that sense, what has elapsed after 2002 is in many ways even more genocidal that the gruesome events of 2002."
One of the slums that NYAYAGRAHA - the organisation of courageous local activists - concentrates its legal efforts on is the 'Ram Lal ka kadda' (RLKK hereon) located not very far from the recently constructed highway that connects Ahmedabad to Vadodara. The highway itself is stunning and surely worshipped by the Gujarati elite as their new road to eternal nirvana. Last summer in 2007, as I drove with Johanna Lokhande from Vadodara through this very capitalist marvel to Ahmedabad, she narrated to me some of the difficult problems that she as an activist with NYAYAGRAHA faced when trying to help the muslim victims. She informed me that some of the muslim women who had to go through the worst under the assault of the Hindu goons and their political masters, were too psychologically affected that it was very difficult to help them be independent. Often, when health related issues were involved, NYAYAGRAHA lacked resources by itself and would try to find other local people to help the woman concerned in such regards. The Vadodara-Ahmedabad corridor was also chilling as much as it was stunning: zipping through it, I could not find one street vendor or rickshaw puller or bullock-driven carts, things which were almost a certain sight in any of India's urban localities. Most of the auto-commuters on this highway are as unaware of the plight of the muslim of Gujarat as the road they ride veil away the rickshaw puller and the bullock carts. Later on, my friend who is a member of PUCL in Vadodara and who has been first-hand witness to some of the terrorism by Hindu goons during 2002, indicates that these issues maybe have an international relevance but they are "not a local issue" - meaning that its taboo to even mention about the crimes of the likes of VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS: the ruling taliban headed by the modern-day nero Modi. Truly, the Ahmedabad-Vadodara corridor I was riding on brought back my earlier memories of similar roads in anglo-american outposts in fundamentalist gulf states, where the drive on the road gives very little feel for the culture of the local population who are outcast in the distance in their own country!
Gujarat's Hindu Democracy rides on the blood of its Muslim Citizens
On reaching Ram Lal ka Kadda, one sees the difficult living conditions as of any slum in India. Makeshift style housing, flies all-around women who are keenly preparing food for their families. But the muslim inhabitants of this slum are also victims of the orchestrated violence in 2002. People here were subjected by Hindu mobs to murder and arson of a kind that official Hindu scriptures reserve for the reign of the asuras (devils). I was late in arriving and Haneef Bhai, an outspoken male member of the community who is working with NYAYAGRAHA to secure justice for the terror carried out on his family was kind enough to welcome me along with the others. Haneef and others explained - pointing their to the area just behind the slum - how mobs of people from the neighboring Hindu slums descended from three different directions on to Ram Lal Ka Kadda. The mobs poured kerosene on a woman and burnt her, and the victim was one of Haneef's six daughters. In RLKK, she was the only person to have been killed. Other muslim communities were not so lucky - all over Gujarat, 2000 muslims lost their lives and many thousands more have been displaced.
Making a trip from the US where as a temporary worker, I have been involved with some of the anti-war actions among other things, it stands in stark contrast the fighting spirit of the people of RLKK. While its a common refrain among activists in the US as to how burnt out they are and they are not sure how to do the right thing to change the world, Haneef defiantly demands that the people who poured fuel on his daughters body be arrested. Even when its clear that the higher level government functionaries are likely to go unpunished, such demands for justice are guaranteed to keep alive the memory of the victims and the brutality of the Hindu terrorists who rule a 'prosperous Gujarat'.
Fighting spirit, trust and generosity
What is remarkable in this process of fighting for justice, is the degree of trust that has developed between the Nyay-pathiks (para-legals) of NYAYAGRAHA and the people of RLKK, one of several other areas where NYAYAGRAHA concentrates its legal efforts. People of RLKK advised me to give any donation for RLKK towards NYAYAGRAHA, spoke of an achievement in basic human trust which is what the goons of the 2002 campaign sought and seek to destroy. But humanity is something that is too much in abundance here in RLKK and that is something the Gujarats communal rulers cannot take away. There surely was little food in the belly in RLKK, but they were willing to feed me to juice and water when I visited. This kind of generosity is something the middle-class in India has lost even before they were born.
As we were speaking and the time was limited as I had already arrived late, many of the women were speaking at the same time and I was not able to make out what they were saying. When I asked them if things are atleast in some ways better since 2002, there was a clear and damning unanimity in their response: "Ji, kuch nahi chal raha hai" (nothing is moving). It was also the case that the compensation that is on the anvil is more of an insult than an injury. When the Hindu goons invaded their space and after they burnt Haneefs daughter, they also destroyed all the homes in RLKK. The people then took shelter in the near by corporation school. For the compensation towards their lost homes, the state machinery offered them 1000 ruppes (or 20 dollars) that too after a long winded legal process. If one learns about the value of human struggle from the Muslim members of RLKK, one cannot fail to note that this is being done in the face of unflinching and continuing arrogance of the Gujarats state machinery. Johanna Lokhande mentioned that Ration cards were to be restored soon, but this was already 2007 - 5 years after the violence - and does any proud citizen care to ask how poor people can get access to food without a ration card, and if one had to be that way for 5 years, its a question that surely skips the mind with convenience.
Terrorism and Genocide
Surely, for all the concern about terrorism that exists in India today, particularly among the urban middle class reactionaries who have no problems in supporting Americas global war on terror with phoney concerns about Islamic Terrorism or Maoism or some other imagined threat to their imagined glory, there is a sudden and deafening silence when the page turns to the question of their own treatment of the nations minorities. This extends to the entire country, as a recent government report (Rajinder Sachar committee) itself admitted with discrepancies in admitting muslims to various government posts, education etc. But in Gujarat the normal state of affairs assumes the case of a silent genocide. An elderly gentleman wearing a religious cap and a loose white dress at RLKK who was also kind enough to join in the discussions explained that after so many years of the organised 2002 terror, they continue to be denied jobs. Pointing at his greying beard, he said, "they see that we have beards, we are muslims and don't offer us jobs", even when the jobs are basic sustenance ones like rickshaw pulling or other labor-type work.
The RLKK members wished me well on my way back and I thanked them for spending their much valued time with me so generously. I joined Johanna and Isakbhai - another member of NYAYAGRAHA who was with us - for a snack at a local restaurant. Johanna and Isakbhai mentioned that even after working with the people of RLKK for so long, they "do not understand how they live" (despite the circumstances). Driving back to Vadodara from Ahmedabad, on one of the roads, we slowed the car briefly. Johanna and Isakbhai pointed to the distance in the middle of a really large waste dump (where the entire city's waste as well as industrial waste is dumped) spanning several kilometers. Lowering the car windows made the stink of industrial wastes of this area known as "Bombay Hotel" even more intense than it already was. In the distance, in the middle of all this waste spanning several kilometers, one could see a dim set of lights. That is the place where one of the relief colonies called "Citizens Nagar" was setup for some of the victims whose original homes were too dangerous to go back to after the violence. Since the state which sponsored the terrorist violence was disinterested in any relief effort, the only land that these survivors could find was this waste dump donated by some local muslim organisation. When the rains come, the only passageway to this colony floods shut and so do the residents livelihoods. Unlike at RLKK, the visitors to the colony are not offered water as the liquid here is coloured with contaminants from the industrial waste dumps. I should mention one thing before I forget. The people at RLKK agreed on one thing: that those who are being arrested in Gujarat today for terrorism today are innocent people while the real terrorists roam scot-free.
Surely, those normal decent people among us who have the luxury to not "understand how they live" and yet do nothing to change the vicious degree of discrimination and genocide clearly have made a choice in support of freedom - for ourselves, for fascism and their continuing crimes.
[Johanna Lokhande, an activist based in Vadodara can be contacted at chicku072001@gmail.com
Ishaakbhai, an activist withNYAYAGRAHA can be reached at ishaaque@gmail.com
Article author can be reached at karthik_ramnatt@yahoo.com ]
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March 31, 2008
March 29, 2008
Six feet of land
Gomantak Times, 29 March 2008
Vidyadhar Gadgil
In one of Leo Tolstoy’s most well-known stories, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” (James Joyce once described it as the finest story ever written), he presents to us a greedy protagonist named Pahom, who is offered as much land as he can walk the perimeter of in a single day. Overcome by his avarice, Pahom tries to cover too much ground, and finding that he is late and the sun is setting, runs frantically to make it back to the starting point in time, only to collapse and die from exhaustion there. He is then buried in an ordinary grave six feet long, thus ironically answering the question in the title. Tolstoy, always inclined towards moral philosophy, uses this as a parable to illustrate the futility of avarice, and how we should learn to live within our needs rather than succumb to our greed.
Of course, Tolstoy never considers that even the six feet -- which he probably considered a basic minimum right -- may be beyond reach, even when it is a pressing need. But that is more or less the situation that Muslims face in Salcete taluka today when it comes to burying their dead.
In Margao, they have been making do with a graveyard at Pajifond Hill which was donated to the community about 125 years ago. This kabrastan is now grossly inadequate for the needs of the community, which has, like other communities, seen a big rise in population. Besides, the cemetery is at the top of a sleep slope, which cannot be reached by vehicular transport―thus, elderly people cannot attend funerals, and even transporting bodies for burial to the kabrastan becomes a problem. The pressures are such that bodies sometimes have to be exhumed within a few months to make space for new burials. The location, being at the top of a hill, is mainly hard rock, and graves have to be dug manually through the rock since it is impossible to take heavy earth-moving machinery up to the kabrastan.
It is not that no efforts have been made to solve this problem. After sustained efforts by the Muslim community, a unanimous resolution was passed in 1999 in the Goa Assembly. Land acquisition proceedings were initiated, only to be subsequently dropped. Luizinho Faleiro, the then CM, wrote to the presidents of masjids in the Margao area in 2004: ‘I was pained at heart to see the pathetic condition of the kabrastan and the hardships suffered by the people attending the funeral...Once a resolution is passed unanimously in the Legislative Assembly, it reflects the will of the state and nobody whosoever has got the right to neglect the same and deny burial facilities...It is shocking that the vested elements in the succeeding Governments chose to cancel the said land acquisition notification thereby adding to the hardships and difficulties of the Muslim brethren….”
Matters have dragged on since then. In 2005, the Congress candidate Digambar Kamat assured in his manifesto for the by-election to the Margao assembly constituency: ‘Pre-acquisition formalities for a large area of land for the purpose of a burial ground for the Muslim population of Salcete have already made good progress. This long standing need of the Muslim community will become a reality within the next six months.’ Land acquisition proceedings to extend the existing graveyard by acquiring land for a kabrastan adjacent to the existing one at Pajifond were to begin in 2007, but there were a number of objections, and groups like the Bajrang Dal actively mobilised opposition to the proposal. The government dragged its feet on the matter. Finally, Margao’s Muslim community asked the government to drop the land acquisition proceedings. The reason given by the Sunni-Jaamat-Ul-Muslameen General Secretary, Noor Mohammed Shah, was that the Muslim community want to live in harmony with other communities, and that ‘the other community has raised objections for the acquisition.’
But there is considerable resentment within the community over the denial of such a basic human right as burial space. While the land acquisition proceedings were hanging fire, Muslim youth conducted a two-day hunger strike in front of the Collectorate. All they got for their pains were more assurances from various politicians. It is now 2008, and Digambar Kamat is currently Chief Minister. The assurances are repeated every once in a while but there is no real progress on the matter to date.
Meanwhile, the Muslim community has been getting increasingly desperate. Deciding not to rely on the government, they have purchased land in a number of places. But just as in the Pajifond kabrastan extension case, there were objections in all cases -- in Macazana, Aquem Alto, and in Sao Jose de Areal. In 1997, in the ODP, the SGPDA had proposed a common burial space for the three major religious communities in Ambajim, Fatorda. To this proposal too there has been opposition from locals on various pretexts. Interestingly, the opposition has come from both the Christian and Hindu communities.
Members of the Muslim community in Margao express disgust and anger over the denial of such a basic right. Social activist Ranjan Solomon quotes a Muslim from Margao: ‘Our dead are being treated as if it were a garbage issue. Just as nobody wants garbage disposed of in their constituencies, so do people reject the idea of having a kabrastan in their vicinity. Our dead are not garbage. They are our fathers, sons and daughters, and sisters and brothers.’
The Muslim community continues to run from pillar to post to get justice. Efforts are also going on to get objections withdrawn through a process of inter-community dialogue to convince people that this is a legitimate need, and that a kabrastan would not create any nuisance or problems. But this alone cannot solve the problem -- essential to the process is political will on the part of the government. Till then, that elusive six feet of land to bury their dead with dignity will remain a distant dream for the Muslims of Margao.
Vidyadhar Gadgil
In one of Leo Tolstoy’s most well-known stories, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” (James Joyce once described it as the finest story ever written), he presents to us a greedy protagonist named Pahom, who is offered as much land as he can walk the perimeter of in a single day. Overcome by his avarice, Pahom tries to cover too much ground, and finding that he is late and the sun is setting, runs frantically to make it back to the starting point in time, only to collapse and die from exhaustion there. He is then buried in an ordinary grave six feet long, thus ironically answering the question in the title. Tolstoy, always inclined towards moral philosophy, uses this as a parable to illustrate the futility of avarice, and how we should learn to live within our needs rather than succumb to our greed.
Of course, Tolstoy never considers that even the six feet -- which he probably considered a basic minimum right -- may be beyond reach, even when it is a pressing need. But that is more or less the situation that Muslims face in Salcete taluka today when it comes to burying their dead.
In Margao, they have been making do with a graveyard at Pajifond Hill which was donated to the community about 125 years ago. This kabrastan is now grossly inadequate for the needs of the community, which has, like other communities, seen a big rise in population. Besides, the cemetery is at the top of a sleep slope, which cannot be reached by vehicular transport―thus, elderly people cannot attend funerals, and even transporting bodies for burial to the kabrastan becomes a problem. The pressures are such that bodies sometimes have to be exhumed within a few months to make space for new burials. The location, being at the top of a hill, is mainly hard rock, and graves have to be dug manually through the rock since it is impossible to take heavy earth-moving machinery up to the kabrastan.
It is not that no efforts have been made to solve this problem. After sustained efforts by the Muslim community, a unanimous resolution was passed in 1999 in the Goa Assembly. Land acquisition proceedings were initiated, only to be subsequently dropped. Luizinho Faleiro, the then CM, wrote to the presidents of masjids in the Margao area in 2004: ‘I was pained at heart to see the pathetic condition of the kabrastan and the hardships suffered by the people attending the funeral...Once a resolution is passed unanimously in the Legislative Assembly, it reflects the will of the state and nobody whosoever has got the right to neglect the same and deny burial facilities...It is shocking that the vested elements in the succeeding Governments chose to cancel the said land acquisition notification thereby adding to the hardships and difficulties of the Muslim brethren….”
Matters have dragged on since then. In 2005, the Congress candidate Digambar Kamat assured in his manifesto for the by-election to the Margao assembly constituency: ‘Pre-acquisition formalities for a large area of land for the purpose of a burial ground for the Muslim population of Salcete have already made good progress. This long standing need of the Muslim community will become a reality within the next six months.’ Land acquisition proceedings to extend the existing graveyard by acquiring land for a kabrastan adjacent to the existing one at Pajifond were to begin in 2007, but there were a number of objections, and groups like the Bajrang Dal actively mobilised opposition to the proposal. The government dragged its feet on the matter. Finally, Margao’s Muslim community asked the government to drop the land acquisition proceedings. The reason given by the Sunni-Jaamat-Ul-Muslameen General Secretary, Noor Mohammed Shah, was that the Muslim community want to live in harmony with other communities, and that ‘the other community has raised objections for the acquisition.’
But there is considerable resentment within the community over the denial of such a basic human right as burial space. While the land acquisition proceedings were hanging fire, Muslim youth conducted a two-day hunger strike in front of the Collectorate. All they got for their pains were more assurances from various politicians. It is now 2008, and Digambar Kamat is currently Chief Minister. The assurances are repeated every once in a while but there is no real progress on the matter to date.
Meanwhile, the Muslim community has been getting increasingly desperate. Deciding not to rely on the government, they have purchased land in a number of places. But just as in the Pajifond kabrastan extension case, there were objections in all cases -- in Macazana, Aquem Alto, and in Sao Jose de Areal. In 1997, in the ODP, the SGPDA had proposed a common burial space for the three major religious communities in Ambajim, Fatorda. To this proposal too there has been opposition from locals on various pretexts. Interestingly, the opposition has come from both the Christian and Hindu communities.
Members of the Muslim community in Margao express disgust and anger over the denial of such a basic right. Social activist Ranjan Solomon quotes a Muslim from Margao: ‘Our dead are being treated as if it were a garbage issue. Just as nobody wants garbage disposed of in their constituencies, so do people reject the idea of having a kabrastan in their vicinity. Our dead are not garbage. They are our fathers, sons and daughters, and sisters and brothers.’
The Muslim community continues to run from pillar to post to get justice. Efforts are also going on to get objections withdrawn through a process of inter-community dialogue to convince people that this is a legitimate need, and that a kabrastan would not create any nuisance or problems. But this alone cannot solve the problem -- essential to the process is political will on the part of the government. Till then, that elusive six feet of land to bury their dead with dignity will remain a distant dream for the Muslims of Margao.
March 28, 2008
Probe afresh 14 Gujarat cases: Supreme Court
Hindu March 26, 2008
J. Venkatesan
Task given to five-member SIT
Cases include Naroda Patiya, Pandarwada killings
Bench did not consider plea for CBI probe
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said a five-member special investigation team (SIT) would conduct a fresh probe or further investigations into 14 post-Godhra communal riots cases to enable a free and fair trial.
It had stayed the trial in these cases on petitions filed by the National Human Rights Commission and the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), which sought a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation and transfer of the cases outside Gujarat.
A Bench consisting of Justices Arijit Pasayat, P. Sathasivam and Aftab Alam said the SIT would comprise three senior IPS officers from Gujarat, Geeta Johri, Shivanand Jha and Ashish Bhatia; the retired CBI Director R.K. Raghavan and a retired police officer of Uttar Pradesh C. B. Satpathy.
The Bench said it would pass a formal order on Wednesday. It did not consider the Centre’s suggestion for entrusting the probe to the CBI and shifting the cases to Maharashtra.
In 2003, the NHRC filed a transfer petition apprehending that the trial if conducted in Gujarat would not be free and fair, as witnesses were being threatened. Subsequently, the CJP filed a similar petition. The cases included the Gulberg, Ode and Sardarpur massacres, and the Naroda Gaon, Naroda Patiya, Baranpura, Machipith, Tarsali, Pandarwada and Raghovpura killings.
Earlier in the day, amicus curiae Harish Salve suggested that the court order a CBI probe or set up a SIT comprising Gujarat police officers of unimpeachable integrity.
The Gujarat government’s senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi opposed the setting up of any outside agency to conduct the investigation.
Justice Pasayat said: “We want at least two officers who are from outside Gujarat.” Mr. Rohatgi suggested the names of Ms. Johri, Mr. Jha and Mr. Bhatia. The judge said the SIT could include Mr. Raghavan and Mr. Satpathy.
Justice Pasayat asked Mr. Salve to suggest a remedy if the investigating officer refused to record the statement of a witness.
Mr. Salve said he would come up with his suggestions on Wednesday, when the court takes up other related petitions .
J. Venkatesan
Task given to five-member SIT
Cases include Naroda Patiya, Pandarwada killings
Bench did not consider plea for CBI probe
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said a five-member special investigation team (SIT) would conduct a fresh probe or further investigations into 14 post-Godhra communal riots cases to enable a free and fair trial.
It had stayed the trial in these cases on petitions filed by the National Human Rights Commission and the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), which sought a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation and transfer of the cases outside Gujarat.
A Bench consisting of Justices Arijit Pasayat, P. Sathasivam and Aftab Alam said the SIT would comprise three senior IPS officers from Gujarat, Geeta Johri, Shivanand Jha and Ashish Bhatia; the retired CBI Director R.K. Raghavan and a retired police officer of Uttar Pradesh C. B. Satpathy.
The Bench said it would pass a formal order on Wednesday. It did not consider the Centre’s suggestion for entrusting the probe to the CBI and shifting the cases to Maharashtra.
In 2003, the NHRC filed a transfer petition apprehending that the trial if conducted in Gujarat would not be free and fair, as witnesses were being threatened. Subsequently, the CJP filed a similar petition. The cases included the Gulberg, Ode and Sardarpur massacres, and the Naroda Gaon, Naroda Patiya, Baranpura, Machipith, Tarsali, Pandarwada and Raghovpura killings.
Earlier in the day, amicus curiae Harish Salve suggested that the court order a CBI probe or set up a SIT comprising Gujarat police officers of unimpeachable integrity.
The Gujarat government’s senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi opposed the setting up of any outside agency to conduct the investigation.
Justice Pasayat said: “We want at least two officers who are from outside Gujarat.” Mr. Rohatgi suggested the names of Ms. Johri, Mr. Jha and Mr. Bhatia. The judge said the SIT could include Mr. Raghavan and Mr. Satpathy.
Justice Pasayat asked Mr. Salve to suggest a remedy if the investigating officer refused to record the statement of a witness.
Mr. Salve said he would come up with his suggestions on Wednesday, when the court takes up other related petitions .
Asma Jehangir: Concern over extended time frame to probe communal riots cases
Hindu March 22, 2008
‘Protraction of the inquiry keeps tensions simmering and devalues justice’.
Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief of the United Nations Human Rights Council, made the following statement on 20 March 2008 in Delhi at the end of her visit to India:
"I wish to thank the Government of India for inviting me here and for giving me this unique opportunity to study the situation with regard to freedom of religion or belief. India is a diverse country, where religions and beliefs are abundant and find respect in a secular framework. My mission started on 3 March 2008 in Amritsar and subsequently I visited Delhi, Jammu, Srinagar, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram, Bhubaneswar and Lucknow. Now I am again in Delhi and with this press conference I am concluding my mission to India.
During my country visit, I had the opportunity to meet with several Government officials, including the Ministers of External Affairs, Minority Affairs and Culture as well as with the Chief Ministers of Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Kerala and Orissa. In addition, I met with the Solicitor General, several Supreme Court Justices and High Court Judges as well as with members of various Human Rights and Minority Commissions. Further meetings with the civil society included leaders and members of the religious communities in India, academics, journalists, human rights activists, lawyers and professionals of the visual arts industry. I would like to acknowledge the high level of cooperation I received both from the Government and from the citizens of India.
Indeed, due to the religious diversity of India, this country visit has been an enriching experience for the mandate I hold since 2004. I will be submitting a detailed report with conclusions and recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council, therefore this press statement will only cover some preliminary impressions that I have formed during the past 2« weeks. In this press statement it would be impossible to make a general assessment of the current state of freedom of religion or belief in the whole of India. In fact, this was not the first visit of the mandate, as my predecessor undertook a mission to India in 1996 (see UN Doc. E/CN.4/1997/91/Add.1). Consequently, my forthcoming report will also be a follow-up on developments during the past twelve years, in order to analyze what has changed and why.
Concerning the legal framework, I am well aware of the fact that the political system of India is of a federal nature and that the States have wide powers, including in the field of law and order. Thus the level of action of the Government to protect its citizens in terms of freedom of religion or belief varies according to the States concerned. I also acknowledge that there are democratic safeguards within the system and that the institutions have accumulated a vast experience in protecting human rights.
Many of my interlocutors have pointed to the positive impact of Indian secularism as embodied in the Constitution. By and large, Indians do value secular principles and I was told time and again that the term "secularism" does not necessarily mean the same as in other countries. Historically, there have been believers of a whole range of religions and beliefs living in India. The central Government has developed a comprehensive policy pertaining to minorities, including religious ones. In this context, I would like to compliment various recent reports on religious minorities, for example drafted by the Committees headed by Justice Rajender Sachar in 2006 and by Justice Renganath Misra in 2007. Such Committees mandated by the Government are a good example of mechanisms put in place to analyse the situation and put forward recommendations for the Government to take action upon.
The National Commission for Minorities, too, has taken up several challenges. Their members took prompt action and issued independent reports on incidents of communal violence with concrete recommendations. However, the performance of various Human Rights Commissions depends very much on the selection of its members and the importance various Governments attach to their mandates. It is vital that members of such commissions have acute sensitivity to human rights issues and must reflect the diversity particularly in terms of gender as women are one of the worst sufferers of religious intolerance. At the same time, I noticed that women's groups across religious lines were the most active and effective human rights advocates in situations of communal tensions.
All individuals I met recognised that a comprehensive legal framework to protect their rights exists, yet many of them especially from religious minorities remained dissatisfied with its implementation. By and large, the Indians respect the diversity of religions and beliefs. At the same time, organised groups based on religious ideologies have unleashed the fear of mob violence in many parts of the country. Law enforcement is often reluctant to take any action against individuals or groups that perpetuate violence in the name of religion or belief. This institutionalised impunity for those who exploit religion and impose their religious intolerance on others has made peaceful citizens, particularly the minorities, vulnerable and fearful.
I have received numerous reports of attacks on religious minorities and their places of worship as well as discrimination of disempowered sections of the Hindu community. The following are only a few examples that are well publicised.
In Uttar Pradesh, I received concrete reports of violence and rapes as a reaction to cases of intermarriage between believers of different religions or castes. Acts of violence continue to occur while perpetrators are dealt with some sympathy by the law enforcement agents. This bias is deep-rooted in society which makes the protection of the victims even more difficult. Some of the cases I was informed about are still under investigation and I hope that justice will prevail.
Less than three months ago, there was widespread violence in the Kandhamal district of Orissa, targeting primarily Christians in Dalit and tribal communities. I received credible reports that members of the Christian community alerted the authorities in advance of the planned attacks of 24-27 December 2007. The police, too, had warned Christian leaders about anticipated violence. The National Commission for Minorities stated in a recent report: "Destruction on such a large scale in places which are difficult to access could not have taken place without advance preparation and planning." Even today, the tensions are prevalent and the anti-conversion legislation is being used to vilify Christians in general.
Concerning the 2002 Gujarat massacre, I have read numerous reports, both of official bodies and civil society organisations and I met a large number of eyewitnesses and people who visited Gujarat during the trouble. The State Government reported that, prior to the Godhra incident, Gujarat had witnessed 443 major communal incidents between 1970 and 2002. As such, the warning was there. However, the massacre that took place after the tragic deaths at Godhra in 2002 is all the more horrifying since by all accounts at least a thousand people were systematically killed. Even worse, there are credible reports that inaction by the authorities was evident and most interlocutors alleged complicity by the State Government. In my discussions with victims I could see their continuing fear which is exacerbated by the distress that justice continues to evade most victims and survivors. Even today there is increasing ghettoization and isolation of Muslims in certain areas. The assertion of the State Government that development by itself will heal the wounds does not seem to be realistic. It is crucial to recognise that development without a policy of inclusiveness of all communities will only add to aggravate resentments.
Furthermore, I am disturbed that at various meetings with members of the civil society during my visit in Gujarat, plain-clothed Government agents took names of all my NGO interlocutors and also made their presence felt afterwards. On several occasions, I had to insist that police officers leave the room during my NGO meetings. The terms of reference of fact-finding missions by Special Rapporteurs (see UN Doc. E/CN.4/1998/45, Appendix V) are very clear in this regard. These terms of reference guarantee confidential and unsupervised contact with witnesses and other private persons as well as assurance by the Government that no persons, official or private individuals who have been in contact with the Special Rapporteur in relation to the mandate will for this reason suffer threats, harassment or punishment or be subjected to judicial proceedings.
I am also concerned at the extended timeframe of investigations in cases involving communal riots, violence and massacres such as those which occurred in 1984, 1992 and 2002. All of these incidents continue to haunt the people affected by them and impunity emboldens forces of intolerance. It is important to draw lessons learnt from these events in order to prevent communal violence in the future. While an inquiry into large-scale communal violence should not be done in indecent haste, it should be accorded the highest priority both by the investigation, the judiciary and any Commission appointed to study the situation. Unreasonable protraction of the inquiry only keeps tensions simmering and devalues justice. I was astonished to learn that just before I arrived in India, the Liberhan Commission probing the circumstances leading to the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya got the 44th extension to conclude its inquiry.
My predecessor, Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, unfortunately was prophetic when he expressed his fears that something in the nature of the 1992 Ayodhya incident will recur in the event of political exploitation of a situation.
In my opinion, there is today a real risk that similar communal violence might happen again unless incitement to religious hatred and political exploitation of communal tensions are effectively prevented.
It is a challenge both for the Government and for non-State actors to defuse tensions and address the root causes ahead of time. The sincerity of the Central Government to implement the Sachar Committee report will be very much seen on the ground because State Governments have been given direction to follow-up on the recommendations of the report. During my visit I have noticed that while the State of Kerala has already undertaken the assignment seriously many States have not even set up the relevant Committees.
I was deeply touched to hear of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits in 1990s following a campaign of threats and violence. They remain dislocated to this day despite the fact the de-escalation of violence in Jammu and Kashmir has had a positive impact on religious tolerance. There have been public statements inviting the Hindu Pandits to return to Kashmir. Places of worship are now more accessible and the tensions are reducing. At the same time, many interlocutors have confirmed a continuing bias amongst security forces against Muslims who also face problems with regard to issuing of passports and security clearances for employment purposes. There are also reports of discrimination against them outside of Jammu and Kashmir, such as the refusal of hotel bookings.
At all places where I met with members of the Muslim community in India, I was informed that a number of them have been arrested on illfounded suspicions of terrorism. They are disturbed that terrorism is associated with their religion despite various public statements from Muslim leadership denouncing terrorism. There was though recognition of the Government's efforts in ensuring that Indian Muslims' rights are protected when arrested abroad.
The visual arts industry in India has played an important role in public education regarding religious tolerance. For this reason it remains a target of mob pressure. Films are effectively banned by non-State actors through intimidation. Regrettably, professionals seem to routinely seek the approval of self-appointed custodians of religious sentiments before going ahead with a film which touches upon communal issues. While any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to violence needs to be prosecuted, this subtle form of self-censorship begs the question how the State could prevent the build-up of an atmosphere of fear of repercussions and mob pressure.
There are other issues of concern with regard to my mandate. These include the legal link between Scheduled Caste status and religious affiliation, the impact of "anti-conversion laws" in several States as well as the concerns voiced by Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and atheists. I intend to discuss these issues in my report to the Human Rights Council.
The vast majority of Indians respects secular traditions and keenly follows the teachings of the nation's founding fathers. I have noticed encouraging signs in the fight against religious intolerance and I am impressed by the outstanding degree of human rights activism in India. There are innumerable examples where individuals have come to each other's rescue, crossing all religious boundaries. Indeed, in Gujarat, a large number of victims recognised the positive role played by some national media and other courageous individuals who effectively saved lives. It is a crucial albeit difficult task for the State and civil society to challenge the forces of intolerance."
‘Protraction of the inquiry keeps tensions simmering and devalues justice’.
Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief of the United Nations Human Rights Council, made the following statement on 20 March 2008 in Delhi at the end of her visit to India:
"I wish to thank the Government of India for inviting me here and for giving me this unique opportunity to study the situation with regard to freedom of religion or belief. India is a diverse country, where religions and beliefs are abundant and find respect in a secular framework. My mission started on 3 March 2008 in Amritsar and subsequently I visited Delhi, Jammu, Srinagar, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram, Bhubaneswar and Lucknow. Now I am again in Delhi and with this press conference I am concluding my mission to India.
During my country visit, I had the opportunity to meet with several Government officials, including the Ministers of External Affairs, Minority Affairs and Culture as well as with the Chief Ministers of Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Kerala and Orissa. In addition, I met with the Solicitor General, several Supreme Court Justices and High Court Judges as well as with members of various Human Rights and Minority Commissions. Further meetings with the civil society included leaders and members of the religious communities in India, academics, journalists, human rights activists, lawyers and professionals of the visual arts industry. I would like to acknowledge the high level of cooperation I received both from the Government and from the citizens of India.
Indeed, due to the religious diversity of India, this country visit has been an enriching experience for the mandate I hold since 2004. I will be submitting a detailed report with conclusions and recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council, therefore this press statement will only cover some preliminary impressions that I have formed during the past 2« weeks. In this press statement it would be impossible to make a general assessment of the current state of freedom of religion or belief in the whole of India. In fact, this was not the first visit of the mandate, as my predecessor undertook a mission to India in 1996 (see UN Doc. E/CN.4/1997/91/Add.1). Consequently, my forthcoming report will also be a follow-up on developments during the past twelve years, in order to analyze what has changed and why.
Concerning the legal framework, I am well aware of the fact that the political system of India is of a federal nature and that the States have wide powers, including in the field of law and order. Thus the level of action of the Government to protect its citizens in terms of freedom of religion or belief varies according to the States concerned. I also acknowledge that there are democratic safeguards within the system and that the institutions have accumulated a vast experience in protecting human rights.
Many of my interlocutors have pointed to the positive impact of Indian secularism as embodied in the Constitution. By and large, Indians do value secular principles and I was told time and again that the term "secularism" does not necessarily mean the same as in other countries. Historically, there have been believers of a whole range of religions and beliefs living in India. The central Government has developed a comprehensive policy pertaining to minorities, including religious ones. In this context, I would like to compliment various recent reports on religious minorities, for example drafted by the Committees headed by Justice Rajender Sachar in 2006 and by Justice Renganath Misra in 2007. Such Committees mandated by the Government are a good example of mechanisms put in place to analyse the situation and put forward recommendations for the Government to take action upon.
The National Commission for Minorities, too, has taken up several challenges. Their members took prompt action and issued independent reports on incidents of communal violence with concrete recommendations. However, the performance of various Human Rights Commissions depends very much on the selection of its members and the importance various Governments attach to their mandates. It is vital that members of such commissions have acute sensitivity to human rights issues and must reflect the diversity particularly in terms of gender as women are one of the worst sufferers of religious intolerance. At the same time, I noticed that women's groups across religious lines were the most active and effective human rights advocates in situations of communal tensions.
All individuals I met recognised that a comprehensive legal framework to protect their rights exists, yet many of them especially from religious minorities remained dissatisfied with its implementation. By and large, the Indians respect the diversity of religions and beliefs. At the same time, organised groups based on religious ideologies have unleashed the fear of mob violence in many parts of the country. Law enforcement is often reluctant to take any action against individuals or groups that perpetuate violence in the name of religion or belief. This institutionalised impunity for those who exploit religion and impose their religious intolerance on others has made peaceful citizens, particularly the minorities, vulnerable and fearful.
I have received numerous reports of attacks on religious minorities and their places of worship as well as discrimination of disempowered sections of the Hindu community. The following are only a few examples that are well publicised.
In Uttar Pradesh, I received concrete reports of violence and rapes as a reaction to cases of intermarriage between believers of different religions or castes. Acts of violence continue to occur while perpetrators are dealt with some sympathy by the law enforcement agents. This bias is deep-rooted in society which makes the protection of the victims even more difficult. Some of the cases I was informed about are still under investigation and I hope that justice will prevail.
Less than three months ago, there was widespread violence in the Kandhamal district of Orissa, targeting primarily Christians in Dalit and tribal communities. I received credible reports that members of the Christian community alerted the authorities in advance of the planned attacks of 24-27 December 2007. The police, too, had warned Christian leaders about anticipated violence. The National Commission for Minorities stated in a recent report: "Destruction on such a large scale in places which are difficult to access could not have taken place without advance preparation and planning." Even today, the tensions are prevalent and the anti-conversion legislation is being used to vilify Christians in general.
Concerning the 2002 Gujarat massacre, I have read numerous reports, both of official bodies and civil society organisations and I met a large number of eyewitnesses and people who visited Gujarat during the trouble. The State Government reported that, prior to the Godhra incident, Gujarat had witnessed 443 major communal incidents between 1970 and 2002. As such, the warning was there. However, the massacre that took place after the tragic deaths at Godhra in 2002 is all the more horrifying since by all accounts at least a thousand people were systematically killed. Even worse, there are credible reports that inaction by the authorities was evident and most interlocutors alleged complicity by the State Government. In my discussions with victims I could see their continuing fear which is exacerbated by the distress that justice continues to evade most victims and survivors. Even today there is increasing ghettoization and isolation of Muslims in certain areas. The assertion of the State Government that development by itself will heal the wounds does not seem to be realistic. It is crucial to recognise that development without a policy of inclusiveness of all communities will only add to aggravate resentments.
Furthermore, I am disturbed that at various meetings with members of the civil society during my visit in Gujarat, plain-clothed Government agents took names of all my NGO interlocutors and also made their presence felt afterwards. On several occasions, I had to insist that police officers leave the room during my NGO meetings. The terms of reference of fact-finding missions by Special Rapporteurs (see UN Doc. E/CN.4/1998/45, Appendix V) are very clear in this regard. These terms of reference guarantee confidential and unsupervised contact with witnesses and other private persons as well as assurance by the Government that no persons, official or private individuals who have been in contact with the Special Rapporteur in relation to the mandate will for this reason suffer threats, harassment or punishment or be subjected to judicial proceedings.
I am also concerned at the extended timeframe of investigations in cases involving communal riots, violence and massacres such as those which occurred in 1984, 1992 and 2002. All of these incidents continue to haunt the people affected by them and impunity emboldens forces of intolerance. It is important to draw lessons learnt from these events in order to prevent communal violence in the future. While an inquiry into large-scale communal violence should not be done in indecent haste, it should be accorded the highest priority both by the investigation, the judiciary and any Commission appointed to study the situation. Unreasonable protraction of the inquiry only keeps tensions simmering and devalues justice. I was astonished to learn that just before I arrived in India, the Liberhan Commission probing the circumstances leading to the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya got the 44th extension to conclude its inquiry.
My predecessor, Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, unfortunately was prophetic when he expressed his fears that something in the nature of the 1992 Ayodhya incident will recur in the event of political exploitation of a situation.
In my opinion, there is today a real risk that similar communal violence might happen again unless incitement to religious hatred and political exploitation of communal tensions are effectively prevented.
It is a challenge both for the Government and for non-State actors to defuse tensions and address the root causes ahead of time. The sincerity of the Central Government to implement the Sachar Committee report will be very much seen on the ground because State Governments have been given direction to follow-up on the recommendations of the report. During my visit I have noticed that while the State of Kerala has already undertaken the assignment seriously many States have not even set up the relevant Committees.
I was deeply touched to hear of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits in 1990s following a campaign of threats and violence. They remain dislocated to this day despite the fact the de-escalation of violence in Jammu and Kashmir has had a positive impact on religious tolerance. There have been public statements inviting the Hindu Pandits to return to Kashmir. Places of worship are now more accessible and the tensions are reducing. At the same time, many interlocutors have confirmed a continuing bias amongst security forces against Muslims who also face problems with regard to issuing of passports and security clearances for employment purposes. There are also reports of discrimination against them outside of Jammu and Kashmir, such as the refusal of hotel bookings.
At all places where I met with members of the Muslim community in India, I was informed that a number of them have been arrested on illfounded suspicions of terrorism. They are disturbed that terrorism is associated with their religion despite various public statements from Muslim leadership denouncing terrorism. There was though recognition of the Government's efforts in ensuring that Indian Muslims' rights are protected when arrested abroad.
The visual arts industry in India has played an important role in public education regarding religious tolerance. For this reason it remains a target of mob pressure. Films are effectively banned by non-State actors through intimidation. Regrettably, professionals seem to routinely seek the approval of self-appointed custodians of religious sentiments before going ahead with a film which touches upon communal issues. While any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to violence needs to be prosecuted, this subtle form of self-censorship begs the question how the State could prevent the build-up of an atmosphere of fear of repercussions and mob pressure.
There are other issues of concern with regard to my mandate. These include the legal link between Scheduled Caste status and religious affiliation, the impact of "anti-conversion laws" in several States as well as the concerns voiced by Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and atheists. I intend to discuss these issues in my report to the Human Rights Council.
The vast majority of Indians respects secular traditions and keenly follows the teachings of the nation's founding fathers. I have noticed encouraging signs in the fight against religious intolerance and I am impressed by the outstanding degree of human rights activism in India. There are innumerable examples where individuals have come to each other's rescue, crossing all religious boundaries. Indeed, in Gujarat, a large number of victims recognised the positive role played by some national media and other courageous individuals who effectively saved lives. It is a crucial albeit difficult task for the State and civil society to challenge the forces of intolerance."
March 26, 2008
Identity and separatism: the politics of ethno-nationalism
The Hindu
March 26, 2008
Identity and separatism: the politics of ethno-nationalism
by M.S. Prabhakara
Barring the Left, political parties including the Congress in most parts of the country have been exploiting identity grievances.
. — Photo: Ranjeet Kumar
Ethno-nationalism is not confined to one State… The picture shows Bihari workers arriving in Patna after being forced out of Assam
A most curious feature of identity movements promoting an exclusivist ideology with language, religion, caste, ‘ethnicity,’ race and any other coordinate one may devise, including, perhaps, at some point gender, as the focal point of such mobilisation is that almost all of them eventually split into mutually hostile factions. Such is the nature of the beast. Perhaps such is also the law of nature for, natural organisms too eventually split and reproduce themse lves in newer forms. However, the dislocations as may be inherent in natural evolution do not as a rule violently and immediately impinge on human societies. This is not so with identity movements, now modishly known as mobilising of ethno-nationalism, and their obverse, separatism, that of their nature are prone to violent atomisation.
Such mobilisations are not unique to Assam and its neighbourhood. For instance, the Dravidian separatist assertion with secessionist undertones that now lie buried deep predates independence. This is now represented by several mutually hostile structures, crypto-secessionist, ultranationalist, some even with rationalist and socialist pretensions. The mobilisation of the ‘hurt Telugu pride’ was a crucial element in the consolidation of Telugu nationalism. Following the inescapable split, this ideology is now appropriated by the Congress leaving the Telugu Desam Party with no agenda. Much the same has been the case with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra where the original and its clone are now engaged in competitive chauvinism. Spending the last seven months of 2007 in Bangalore, I was struck not merely by the similarity of the grievances articulated by organisations claiming to defend the vital interests of the land (Karnataka) and the language (Kannada) to what is now the common currency of identity mobilisation in Assam and its neighbourhood, but also by the fact that the noisiest structure promoting Kannada exclusivism had split, with the other faction no less virulent and exclusivist.
The most successful of such mobilisations based on religion, with an imperilled identity (Islam under threat) as the rallying cry, was the movement for the attainment of a separate nation of Pakistan, the Land of the Pure. That nationalism could not survive its success for even 30 years.
The fact is, barring the Left, political parties including the Congress in most parts of the country have been exploiting identity grievances, adept at playing the ‘regional’ or ‘national’ card depending on whether they are in power or out of power.
A common, indeed necessary, feature of every such mobilisation is the Other, the hated and reviled Enemy seen as the root cause of one’s own perceived diminishment as well as of one’s larger environment. However, the identity of this Other is not always the same, constant. The small restaurateur and pavement trader from the south, mainly Karnataka and Kerala, who was the Enemy for the Shiv Sena over 30 years ago, has now been replaced by that even more generalised ‘north Indian’, the Bhayya, seen as the cause and effect of Mumbai’s urban decay and squalor, and has indeed come to symbolise its quintessence. While for the present the Tamil stands at the apex of the oppressors in the imagination of the Kannadiga, with other neighbours lower down the line, increasingly this spot is being allotted, as in the current demonology of the Shiv Sena and its clone, to the ‘north Indian’, crowding out the Kannadigas from Bangalore and other cities.
Two other features are shared by such movements of aggressive identity assertion. They are all profoundly anti-democratic; and following from this, their methods are necessarily coercive, eschewing reasonable debate of the issues and grievances involved. It would take a courageous person to question the increasingly widespread opinion in Karnataka that the State and its people have been served short by the Union government on issues of their vital concern, like the sharing of the Cauvery waters and the recognition of Kannada as a classical language. The daring dissident is straightway put in the doghouse. It is not accidental that on both these issues the DMK whose support is crucial to the survival of the UPA government, is seen as the villain of the piece, though there is little difference among the various factions of Dravidian nationalist articulation on these issues.
Not all such assertions are inherently anti-democratic, as some Indian ultra-nationalists argue. For instance, by acknowledging the uniqueness of a people’s resonance to their language, the very essence of their being, and by providing such a language identity a political and territorial space, the Union government by its Reorganisation of States in 1956 responded, however belatedly, to what was essentially a democratic demand, something that had been built into the very structure of the freedom movement as part of the anti-colonial struggle.
This did not, however, admit any kind of exclusivism, nor was it counterposed to the broader inclusive Indian nationalism. The anti-colonial struggles had not yet become merely ossified memories. Half a century down the line, this is not the case. Many developments, local, national and international, affecting the economy and society consequent upon the policies of successive governments have contributed to the transformation of what was once a legitimate inclusive democratic aspiration into an exclusivist and coercive ideology, feeding the sense of diminishment and deprivation where narrower and narrower definitions of identity going under the rubric of ‘ethnicity’ now determine the identity discourse.
For instance, the now apparently irreversible transformation of labour, in particular the unorganised labour, into another marketable commodity freely traded cross the state and, increasingly, also across national boundaries poses new challenges to the old concepts of the nation state as well as to the more limited space defined and determined by a people’s inviolable identity – an almost mystic sense of being what they are and articulated in terms mentioned at the beginning of this essay. That those who exploit such anxieties about the increasing threat posed by the rampant outsider in their midst are also among those who exploit the opportunities opened up by this dynamic of forced and closely monitored mobility of unorganised labour does not in the least mitigate the pain and worse of its passive victims. The terrain of struggle is full of pitfalls, holds false promises. Yet, ‘ethnic mobilisation’ is now a flourishing growth industry not merely in Assam and its neighbourhood, but also in most parts of the country.
The difference between the killing, with their hands tied behind their back, bearing the message, ‘Go back to where you came from’, of Hindi-speaking labourers brought by contractors to work on building projects in Manipur, and the chasing away of Hindi-speaking youth seeking to appear in Railway Recruitment Boards tests in Guwahati and Bangalore by competing local youth is only one of degree. Coercive violence takes all kinds of forms.
Those who scoffed at the Indian freedom struggle, not all of them White Colonel Blimps, used to ask the supposed argument stopper question: But is there an India and are there Indians? The question is even now asked by some authentically native intellectuals for whom India is merely a ‘colonial construct’, the dismantling of which is a revolutionary duty. The logical extension of such reasoning, at least in Assam, has been the asking of a similar question: Who is an Assamese? Nothing seemed sillier than this question when it was first raised, even when it was solemnly debated in the state Assembly.
However, given the trend and direction of ethno-nationalistic assertion and mobilisation in virtually every part of the country, it may not be long before similar questions are asked about even the narrowest and most insular definitions of oneself. Put simply, to divide is to multiply.
March 26, 2008
Identity and separatism: the politics of ethno-nationalism
by M.S. Prabhakara
Barring the Left, political parties including the Congress in most parts of the country have been exploiting identity grievances.
. — Photo: Ranjeet Kumar
Ethno-nationalism is not confined to one State… The picture shows Bihari workers arriving in Patna after being forced out of Assam
A most curious feature of identity movements promoting an exclusivist ideology with language, religion, caste, ‘ethnicity,’ race and any other coordinate one may devise, including, perhaps, at some point gender, as the focal point of such mobilisation is that almost all of them eventually split into mutually hostile factions. Such is the nature of the beast. Perhaps such is also the law of nature for, natural organisms too eventually split and reproduce themse lves in newer forms. However, the dislocations as may be inherent in natural evolution do not as a rule violently and immediately impinge on human societies. This is not so with identity movements, now modishly known as mobilising of ethno-nationalism, and their obverse, separatism, that of their nature are prone to violent atomisation.
Such mobilisations are not unique to Assam and its neighbourhood. For instance, the Dravidian separatist assertion with secessionist undertones that now lie buried deep predates independence. This is now represented by several mutually hostile structures, crypto-secessionist, ultranationalist, some even with rationalist and socialist pretensions. The mobilisation of the ‘hurt Telugu pride’ was a crucial element in the consolidation of Telugu nationalism. Following the inescapable split, this ideology is now appropriated by the Congress leaving the Telugu Desam Party with no agenda. Much the same has been the case with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra where the original and its clone are now engaged in competitive chauvinism. Spending the last seven months of 2007 in Bangalore, I was struck not merely by the similarity of the grievances articulated by organisations claiming to defend the vital interests of the land (Karnataka) and the language (Kannada) to what is now the common currency of identity mobilisation in Assam and its neighbourhood, but also by the fact that the noisiest structure promoting Kannada exclusivism had split, with the other faction no less virulent and exclusivist.
The most successful of such mobilisations based on religion, with an imperilled identity (Islam under threat) as the rallying cry, was the movement for the attainment of a separate nation of Pakistan, the Land of the Pure. That nationalism could not survive its success for even 30 years.
The fact is, barring the Left, political parties including the Congress in most parts of the country have been exploiting identity grievances, adept at playing the ‘regional’ or ‘national’ card depending on whether they are in power or out of power.
A common, indeed necessary, feature of every such mobilisation is the Other, the hated and reviled Enemy seen as the root cause of one’s own perceived diminishment as well as of one’s larger environment. However, the identity of this Other is not always the same, constant. The small restaurateur and pavement trader from the south, mainly Karnataka and Kerala, who was the Enemy for the Shiv Sena over 30 years ago, has now been replaced by that even more generalised ‘north Indian’, the Bhayya, seen as the cause and effect of Mumbai’s urban decay and squalor, and has indeed come to symbolise its quintessence. While for the present the Tamil stands at the apex of the oppressors in the imagination of the Kannadiga, with other neighbours lower down the line, increasingly this spot is being allotted, as in the current demonology of the Shiv Sena and its clone, to the ‘north Indian’, crowding out the Kannadigas from Bangalore and other cities.
Two other features are shared by such movements of aggressive identity assertion. They are all profoundly anti-democratic; and following from this, their methods are necessarily coercive, eschewing reasonable debate of the issues and grievances involved. It would take a courageous person to question the increasingly widespread opinion in Karnataka that the State and its people have been served short by the Union government on issues of their vital concern, like the sharing of the Cauvery waters and the recognition of Kannada as a classical language. The daring dissident is straightway put in the doghouse. It is not accidental that on both these issues the DMK whose support is crucial to the survival of the UPA government, is seen as the villain of the piece, though there is little difference among the various factions of Dravidian nationalist articulation on these issues.
Not all such assertions are inherently anti-democratic, as some Indian ultra-nationalists argue. For instance, by acknowledging the uniqueness of a people’s resonance to their language, the very essence of their being, and by providing such a language identity a political and territorial space, the Union government by its Reorganisation of States in 1956 responded, however belatedly, to what was essentially a democratic demand, something that had been built into the very structure of the freedom movement as part of the anti-colonial struggle.
This did not, however, admit any kind of exclusivism, nor was it counterposed to the broader inclusive Indian nationalism. The anti-colonial struggles had not yet become merely ossified memories. Half a century down the line, this is not the case. Many developments, local, national and international, affecting the economy and society consequent upon the policies of successive governments have contributed to the transformation of what was once a legitimate inclusive democratic aspiration into an exclusivist and coercive ideology, feeding the sense of diminishment and deprivation where narrower and narrower definitions of identity going under the rubric of ‘ethnicity’ now determine the identity discourse.
For instance, the now apparently irreversible transformation of labour, in particular the unorganised labour, into another marketable commodity freely traded cross the state and, increasingly, also across national boundaries poses new challenges to the old concepts of the nation state as well as to the more limited space defined and determined by a people’s inviolable identity – an almost mystic sense of being what they are and articulated in terms mentioned at the beginning of this essay. That those who exploit such anxieties about the increasing threat posed by the rampant outsider in their midst are also among those who exploit the opportunities opened up by this dynamic of forced and closely monitored mobility of unorganised labour does not in the least mitigate the pain and worse of its passive victims. The terrain of struggle is full of pitfalls, holds false promises. Yet, ‘ethnic mobilisation’ is now a flourishing growth industry not merely in Assam and its neighbourhood, but also in most parts of the country.
The difference between the killing, with their hands tied behind their back, bearing the message, ‘Go back to where you came from’, of Hindi-speaking labourers brought by contractors to work on building projects in Manipur, and the chasing away of Hindi-speaking youth seeking to appear in Railway Recruitment Boards tests in Guwahati and Bangalore by competing local youth is only one of degree. Coercive violence takes all kinds of forms.
Those who scoffed at the Indian freedom struggle, not all of them White Colonel Blimps, used to ask the supposed argument stopper question: But is there an India and are there Indians? The question is even now asked by some authentically native intellectuals for whom India is merely a ‘colonial construct’, the dismantling of which is a revolutionary duty. The logical extension of such reasoning, at least in Assam, has been the asking of a similar question: Who is an Assamese? Nothing seemed sillier than this question when it was first raised, even when it was solemnly debated in the state Assembly.
However, given the trend and direction of ethno-nationalistic assertion and mobilisation in virtually every part of the country, it may not be long before similar questions are asked about even the narrowest and most insular definitions of oneself. Put simply, to divide is to multiply.
March 25, 2008
Karnataka: Forum stages stir against Parivar
Deccan Herald, 25 March 2008
Condemning the act of the Sangh Pariwar of forcing State Backward Classes Commission Chairman Dr C S Dwarakanath to drink ‘teertha’ in a recent incident, various progressive organisations staged a protest here on Monday.
Activists from across the state belonging to State Backward Castes Union, Kodagu District Progressive Thinkers Forum, Ahinda, KFD, Republican Party of India, Samatha Sainik Dal, Akhila Karnataka Hevala Samaja, Ambedkar Yuva Sene and others took part in the protest dharna.
Addressing the protesters, Basavaraja Devaru of Revana Siddeshwara Mutt in Dharwad said the behaviour of communals in the State had crossed a limit, and unless a lesson was taught to them, harmony would be spoiled in the society.
Mr Basavaraja Devaru expressed his dissatisfaction over the inactivity of the Police department as they did not take any actions against those who forced Dr Dwarakanath to drink ‘sacred water’.
Former Member of Legislative Assembly A K Subbaiah questioned who entitled Hindutvavadis the power of making the chairman of the commission to consume ‘teertha’ forcibly.
‘Teerthodbhava a lie’
Mr A K Subbaiah said the concept of teerthodbhava in Talacauvery is a lie.
“The traditionalists have been propagating lies from long back. In Shabarimala too, people burn camphor and make gullible devotees to believe that it is makara jyothi,” Mr Subbaiah criticised.
Stating that Hindutva is a disease in Hinduism itself, Mr Subbaiah said there is a need for a big movement against communals in Karnataka.
Samatha Sainik Dal State President M Venkataswamy, District Kannada Sahitya Parishat President T P Ramesh, Dalit leader Jayappa Hanagal, litterateur from Mandya H L Keshavamurthy, Karnataka Forum for Development leader Majeed, advocate Vidyadhar, Allaranda Vittal Nanjappa of Progressive Thinkers Forum among others spoke.
The protesters submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner later urging him to take actions against the accused.
Condemning the act of the Sangh Pariwar of forcing State Backward Classes Commission Chairman Dr C S Dwarakanath to drink ‘teertha’ in a recent incident, various progressive organisations staged a protest here on Monday.
Activists from across the state belonging to State Backward Castes Union, Kodagu District Progressive Thinkers Forum, Ahinda, KFD, Republican Party of India, Samatha Sainik Dal, Akhila Karnataka Hevala Samaja, Ambedkar Yuva Sene and others took part in the protest dharna.
Addressing the protesters, Basavaraja Devaru of Revana Siddeshwara Mutt in Dharwad said the behaviour of communals in the State had crossed a limit, and unless a lesson was taught to them, harmony would be spoiled in the society.
Mr Basavaraja Devaru expressed his dissatisfaction over the inactivity of the Police department as they did not take any actions against those who forced Dr Dwarakanath to drink ‘sacred water’.
Former Member of Legislative Assembly A K Subbaiah questioned who entitled Hindutvavadis the power of making the chairman of the commission to consume ‘teertha’ forcibly.
‘Teerthodbhava a lie’
Mr A K Subbaiah said the concept of teerthodbhava in Talacauvery is a lie.
“The traditionalists have been propagating lies from long back. In Shabarimala too, people burn camphor and make gullible devotees to believe that it is makara jyothi,” Mr Subbaiah criticised.
Stating that Hindutva is a disease in Hinduism itself, Mr Subbaiah said there is a need for a big movement against communals in Karnataka.
Samatha Sainik Dal State President M Venkataswamy, District Kannada Sahitya Parishat President T P Ramesh, Dalit leader Jayappa Hanagal, litterateur from Mandya H L Keshavamurthy, Karnataka Forum for Development leader Majeed, advocate Vidyadhar, Allaranda Vittal Nanjappa of Progressive Thinkers Forum among others spoke.
The protesters submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner later urging him to take actions against the accused.
Many Rams: Many Ramayanas
Ram Puniyani
The recent (Feb. 2008) rampage by ABVP activists in Delhi University protesting against the introduction of Ramanujan's essay "Three Hundred Ramayana's", as the reading text, was not the first such act of political vandalism around Ram's story. This essay by the much acclaimed scholar, A.K.Ramanujan is part of his "The Collected Essays of A.K.Ramanujan (Oxford 1999). Earlier, in the aftermath of Babri demolition a Sahmat exhibition on different versions of Ramayana was attacked by RSS combine's goons. This was done on the pretext that one of the panels based on Jataka (Buddhist version) showed Ram and Sita as brother and sister, and it is an insult to their faith. Ramanujan's essay also talks of different versions and presents five of them as an example.
It is known that there are hundreds of versions of Ramayana: Buddhist, Jain, Valmiki etc. Paula Richman in her book 'Many Ramayanas' (Oxford) describes several of these. And again there are different interpretations of the prevalent Valmiki Ramayana, many of which are not to the liking of those who are indulging in this hooliganism in the name of their faith. It is another matter that this intolerant attitude and aggression is done in the name of Hinduism, while asserting that Hinduism is tolerant and other religions are intolerant.
It is a fascinating exercise to go through various tellings and interpretations of the Ramayana. The RSS combine harps on the telling of Ramayana by Valmiki alone and that too its particular interpretation. Even the other renderings acceptable to this intolerant but currently dominant political force are not uniform. Valmiki, Tulsidas and later the one adopted by Ramanand Sagar for his serial Ramayana have their own subtle nuances, which are very different from each other.
Ramayana has been rendered in many languages of Asia in particular. Ramanujan points out that the tellings of Ram story has been part of Balinese, Bengali, Kashmiri, Thai, Sinhala, Santhali Tamil, Tibetan and Pali amongst others. There are innumerable versions in Western languages also. The narrative in these is not matching. RSS combine takes Valmiki as the standard and others as diversions which are not acceptable to it for political reasons. The version of Ramayana it wants to impose has the caste and gender equations of pre-modern times, so it is hung up upon only that version as the only one acceptable to it.
Interestingly one can see the correlation between the class-caste aspirations of the narration-interpretation. In Buddhist Dasharath Jataka, Sita is projected both as sister and wife of Ram. As per this version Dashrath is King not of Ayodhya but of Varanasi. The marriage of sister and brother is part of the tradition of glorious Kshatriya clans who wanted to maintain their caste and clan purity. This Jataka tale shows Ram to be the follower of Buddha. Similarly Jain versions of Ramayana project Ram as the propagator of Jain values, especially as a follower of non-violence. What both Buddhist and Jain versions have in common is that in these Ravan is not shown as a villain but a great spiritual soul dedicated to quest of knowledge, endowed with majestic commands over passions, a sage and a responsible ruler. Popular and prevalent "Women's Ramayana Songs" of Telugu Brahmin Women, put together by Rangnayakamma, keep the women's concern as the central theme. These songs present Sita as finally victorious over Ram and in these, Surpanakha succeeds in taking revenge over Ram.
In Thai Ramkirti, or Ramkin (Ram's story), there is a twist in the tale and Shurpanakh's daughter decides to take revenge attributing her mothers mutilation primarily because of Sita. More interestingly here the focus is on Hanuman, who in this telling is neither devout nor celibate but quite a ladies man, looking into the bedrooms of Lanka. In Valmiki, Kampan and Tamil tellings Hanuman regards seeing another mans sleeping wife as a sin, but not in this Thai version. Incidentally he is a very popular Thai hero even today. Also like Jain Ramayana this Thai telling focuses on genealogy and adventures of Ravana and not of Ram.
In recent times, Jotiba Phule, who stood more with the interests of Dalits and women, was amongst the first to interpret this mythological tale from the perspective of those subjugated by caste-varna-gender hierarchy. Phule points out that upper castes were descendants of conquering Indo-Europeans who overturned the original egalitarian society and forbade the conquered from studying texts. His mythology is woven around King Bali, who could invoke the image of peasant community. Needless to say his murder by Lord Ram from behind is condemned and is seen as an act of subjugation of lower castes by the upper castes. And Ram is seen as an avatar of Vishnu out to conquer India from the Rakshasas (those protecting their crops) for establishing the hegemony of upper caste values of caste and gender hierarchy.
Dr. Ambedkar and Periyar's commentaries are more an alternative reading of the Valmiki's text rather then a separate version. There is a good deal of overlap in the interpretation of both. Dr. Ambedkar focuses his attention on the issues pertaining to Ram's killing of Shambuk for violating the prevalent norm where a low caste has no right to do penance, tapasya. Like Phule he also castigates Lord Ram for murdering the popular folk king Bali. He questions Ram's act of taking Sita's agnipariksha, trial by fire, and his patriarchal attitude towards her. After defeating Ravan he tells Sita that he had done all this battle not to get her released for her own sake but to restore his honor, and his banishing her in response to the rumors about her chastity when she was pregnant comes for severest criticism from Ambedkar.
Periyar is basically taking the same line but in his interpretation the North Indian upper caste onslaught-South Indian resistance becomes the central theme. Periyar, the initiator of Self Respect Movement, was the pioneer of caste and gender equality in Tamilnadu. In one of the movements, which is very less known, on the lines of Dr. Ambedkar burning Manusmriti, he planned to burn the photo of Ram, as for him Ram symbolized the imposition of upper caste norms in South India. This was a part of his campaign against caste Hinduism. Periyar also upheld Tamil identity. According to him the Ramayana story was a thinly disguised historical account of how caste ridden, Sanskritic, Upper caste North Indians led by Ram subjugated South Indians. He identifies Ravana as the monarch of ancient Dravidians, who abducted Sita, primarily to take revenge against the mutilation and insult of his sister Surpanakha. In his interpretation Ravana is practitioner of Bhakti, and is a virtuous man.
The rampage by RSS combines' ABVP can be understood also in the light of current cultural manipulation and cooption of Adivasis by Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, another RSS progeny. This organization is at the core of anti-Christian attacks in the remote areas. In most of these Hanuman, as the loyal devotee of the Lord, is being projected as the idol of Adivaisis. This is done through distribution of Hanuman lockets etc. The symbolism of upper caste with Rama, and Adiviasis with Hanuman gives a political message given by RSS combine of the relationship of upper castes with Adivais. Similarly in these areas Shabri, another destitute woman, is being projected as the role model for Adiviasis. One shold also note that the telling of Ramayana in the Adivasi areas of Dangs, Gujarat, where Shabri Kumbh was held, is very different from the one prevalent in other parts of the country.
The version of Ramayana to be upheld and projected by RSS combine is that of 'Maharshi' Ramanand Sagar's tele-serial Ramayana, which went many steps further than some of the earlier one's in glorifying norms of caste and gender hierarchy. As an example, here Sita herself is keen to be banished to jungle by her 'Lord and master' to ensure that people don't talk ill of Him. And currently this is the bottom line, and any deviation from such blind obeisance comes for severe reprimand from the RSS family. This selection of Ram and this version of Ramayana have more to do with political agenda than faith per se. And so this politics being done in the name of tolerant Hinduism cannot tolerate the Many Rams, Many Ramayanas prevalent the world over!
The recent (Feb. 2008) rampage by ABVP activists in Delhi University protesting against the introduction of Ramanujan's essay "Three Hundred Ramayana's", as the reading text, was not the first such act of political vandalism around Ram's story. This essay by the much acclaimed scholar, A.K.Ramanujan is part of his "The Collected Essays of A.K.Ramanujan (Oxford 1999). Earlier, in the aftermath of Babri demolition a Sahmat exhibition on different versions of Ramayana was attacked by RSS combine's goons. This was done on the pretext that one of the panels based on Jataka (Buddhist version) showed Ram and Sita as brother and sister, and it is an insult to their faith. Ramanujan's essay also talks of different versions and presents five of them as an example.
It is known that there are hundreds of versions of Ramayana: Buddhist, Jain, Valmiki etc. Paula Richman in her book 'Many Ramayanas' (Oxford) describes several of these. And again there are different interpretations of the prevalent Valmiki Ramayana, many of which are not to the liking of those who are indulging in this hooliganism in the name of their faith. It is another matter that this intolerant attitude and aggression is done in the name of Hinduism, while asserting that Hinduism is tolerant and other religions are intolerant.
It is a fascinating exercise to go through various tellings and interpretations of the Ramayana. The RSS combine harps on the telling of Ramayana by Valmiki alone and that too its particular interpretation. Even the other renderings acceptable to this intolerant but currently dominant political force are not uniform. Valmiki, Tulsidas and later the one adopted by Ramanand Sagar for his serial Ramayana have their own subtle nuances, which are very different from each other.
Ramayana has been rendered in many languages of Asia in particular. Ramanujan points out that the tellings of Ram story has been part of Balinese, Bengali, Kashmiri, Thai, Sinhala, Santhali Tamil, Tibetan and Pali amongst others. There are innumerable versions in Western languages also. The narrative in these is not matching. RSS combine takes Valmiki as the standard and others as diversions which are not acceptable to it for political reasons. The version of Ramayana it wants to impose has the caste and gender equations of pre-modern times, so it is hung up upon only that version as the only one acceptable to it.
Interestingly one can see the correlation between the class-caste aspirations of the narration-interpretation. In Buddhist Dasharath Jataka, Sita is projected both as sister and wife of Ram. As per this version Dashrath is King not of Ayodhya but of Varanasi. The marriage of sister and brother is part of the tradition of glorious Kshatriya clans who wanted to maintain their caste and clan purity. This Jataka tale shows Ram to be the follower of Buddha. Similarly Jain versions of Ramayana project Ram as the propagator of Jain values, especially as a follower of non-violence. What both Buddhist and Jain versions have in common is that in these Ravan is not shown as a villain but a great spiritual soul dedicated to quest of knowledge, endowed with majestic commands over passions, a sage and a responsible ruler. Popular and prevalent "Women's Ramayana Songs" of Telugu Brahmin Women, put together by Rangnayakamma, keep the women's concern as the central theme. These songs present Sita as finally victorious over Ram and in these, Surpanakha succeeds in taking revenge over Ram.
In Thai Ramkirti, or Ramkin (Ram's story), there is a twist in the tale and Shurpanakh's daughter decides to take revenge attributing her mothers mutilation primarily because of Sita. More interestingly here the focus is on Hanuman, who in this telling is neither devout nor celibate but quite a ladies man, looking into the bedrooms of Lanka. In Valmiki, Kampan and Tamil tellings Hanuman regards seeing another mans sleeping wife as a sin, but not in this Thai version. Incidentally he is a very popular Thai hero even today. Also like Jain Ramayana this Thai telling focuses on genealogy and adventures of Ravana and not of Ram.
In recent times, Jotiba Phule, who stood more with the interests of Dalits and women, was amongst the first to interpret this mythological tale from the perspective of those subjugated by caste-varna-gender hierarchy. Phule points out that upper castes were descendants of conquering Indo-Europeans who overturned the original egalitarian society and forbade the conquered from studying texts. His mythology is woven around King Bali, who could invoke the image of peasant community. Needless to say his murder by Lord Ram from behind is condemned and is seen as an act of subjugation of lower castes by the upper castes. And Ram is seen as an avatar of Vishnu out to conquer India from the Rakshasas (those protecting their crops) for establishing the hegemony of upper caste values of caste and gender hierarchy.
Dr. Ambedkar and Periyar's commentaries are more an alternative reading of the Valmiki's text rather then a separate version. There is a good deal of overlap in the interpretation of both. Dr. Ambedkar focuses his attention on the issues pertaining to Ram's killing of Shambuk for violating the prevalent norm where a low caste has no right to do penance, tapasya. Like Phule he also castigates Lord Ram for murdering the popular folk king Bali. He questions Ram's act of taking Sita's agnipariksha, trial by fire, and his patriarchal attitude towards her. After defeating Ravan he tells Sita that he had done all this battle not to get her released for her own sake but to restore his honor, and his banishing her in response to the rumors about her chastity when she was pregnant comes for severest criticism from Ambedkar.
Periyar is basically taking the same line but in his interpretation the North Indian upper caste onslaught-South Indian resistance becomes the central theme. Periyar, the initiator of Self Respect Movement, was the pioneer of caste and gender equality in Tamilnadu. In one of the movements, which is very less known, on the lines of Dr. Ambedkar burning Manusmriti, he planned to burn the photo of Ram, as for him Ram symbolized the imposition of upper caste norms in South India. This was a part of his campaign against caste Hinduism. Periyar also upheld Tamil identity. According to him the Ramayana story was a thinly disguised historical account of how caste ridden, Sanskritic, Upper caste North Indians led by Ram subjugated South Indians. He identifies Ravana as the monarch of ancient Dravidians, who abducted Sita, primarily to take revenge against the mutilation and insult of his sister Surpanakha. In his interpretation Ravana is practitioner of Bhakti, and is a virtuous man.
The rampage by RSS combines' ABVP can be understood also in the light of current cultural manipulation and cooption of Adivasis by Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, another RSS progeny. This organization is at the core of anti-Christian attacks in the remote areas. In most of these Hanuman, as the loyal devotee of the Lord, is being projected as the idol of Adivaisis. This is done through distribution of Hanuman lockets etc. The symbolism of upper caste with Rama, and Adiviasis with Hanuman gives a political message given by RSS combine of the relationship of upper castes with Adivais. Similarly in these areas Shabri, another destitute woman, is being projected as the role model for Adiviasis. One shold also note that the telling of Ramayana in the Adivasi areas of Dangs, Gujarat, where Shabri Kumbh was held, is very different from the one prevalent in other parts of the country.
The version of Ramayana to be upheld and projected by RSS combine is that of 'Maharshi' Ramanand Sagar's tele-serial Ramayana, which went many steps further than some of the earlier one's in glorifying norms of caste and gender hierarchy. As an example, here Sita herself is keen to be banished to jungle by her 'Lord and master' to ensure that people don't talk ill of Him. And currently this is the bottom line, and any deviation from such blind obeisance comes for severe reprimand from the RSS family. This selection of Ram and this version of Ramayana have more to do with political agenda than faith per se. And so this politics being done in the name of tolerant Hinduism cannot tolerate the Many Rams, Many Ramayanas prevalent the world over!
March 23, 2008
Crying Wolf: Ramayana, Ramanujan and the ABVP
Frontline, Mar. 15-28, 2008
Crying wolf
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
in New Delhi
In India, controversies around history and literature have a way of surfacing from time to time. This time an essay on the Ramayana by the historian, poet and litterateur A.K. Ramanujan has evoked violent reactions among members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and other Sangh Parivar affiliates. The essay is part of a reading list recommended in a concurrent course (Culture in India: Ancient) for B.A. (Honours) students in the University of Delhi. On February 25, ABVP activists, who have been demanding the withdrawal of the essay on the grounds that it hurt Hindu sentiments by portraying Rama and other characters in the Ramayana disrespectfully, vandalised the Department of History, located in the Faculty of Social Sciences building, and assaulted the head of the department, S.Z.H. Jafri.
It appears that the protest was not as much against the characters in the various Ramayanas by the late Padma Shri recipient than against someone who could be an easy target. The protesters insisted, erroneously, that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughter, Upinder Singh, Professor of History at the university, was the author of a “compilation” that included Ramanujan’s essay.
However, they were wrong on three counts. First, the reading was not part of a compilation as alleged. Second, it had no single author. And third, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre had honoured Ramanujan and, hence, there was little reason for the ABVP, the party’s student wing, to cry foul.
Interestingly, another “nationalist” outfit, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, which spearheaded a campaign against the national Adolescence Education Programme and National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books last year, has lent its support to the ABVP. The campaign had the backing of Murli Manohar Joshi, former Union Minister for Human Resource Development. The Samiti’s website describes itself as a forum of nationalist historians committed to protecting the country against conspiratorial forces represented by the followers of Marx and Wahabism. In 2006, the Samiti demanded that all references to Tipu Sultan be dropped from history textbooks, a demand that was reiterated by the Karnataka Minister for Higher Education D.H. Shankaramurthy.
Ramanujan’s essay titled “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation” illustrates the myriad “tellings” of the story of Rama. The author uses the term “tellings” as opposed to variant or versions, arguing that the latter conveyed the impression that there was an invariant, an original text, usually Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana, which he says is the oldest and the most prestigious of them all. There is no implicit or explicit denigration here of the widely read Valmiki Ramayana.
Interestingly, the concurrent course – for which the reading list has been recommended – was cleared three years ago in 2005 and Ramanujan’s essay became part of classroom teaching in 2006. The concurrent courses were themselves introduced in the university after a felt need that more of inter-disciplinary pedagogy, of a serious nature, was required at the undergraduate level. These courses replaced the earlier light-weight subsidiary subjects that had become more or less meaningless over time with both students and teachers not taking them seriously.
It is not the first time that the history department has been under attack. In 1981, there was a concerted demand by teachers owing allegiance to both the Congress and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) that R.P. Dutt’s India Today and A.R. Desai’s Social Background of Indian Nationalism be dropped from the History syllabus, which was undergoing revision. R.L. Shukla, the then head of the department and who has been following the current controversy, told Frontline that the department had followed the procedure at every level to discuss the matter at the Departmental Council, the Committee of Courses and the Academic Council. Even though the Academic Council could not reach a consensus on the issue, the department was unanimous that the books would be retained. Shukla said the opposition to the inclusion of the two books in the syllabus came from a section of the teaching community feeling that the Department of History was full of “communist” teachers and that it was a “communist syllabus”. The current controversy has its origins with Jafri assuming office in July 2007. A few months after he took over, in December, the department was in the limelight for hosting the prestigious Indian History Congress after an interregnum of 46 years. The furore over the essay gathered momentum soon after.
In mid-January, Jafri received two complaints in the form of memorandums that had been forwarded to him from the Vice-Chancellor’s office. Both letters, one by an organisation called the National Awareness Forum and the other by an outfit called Gyan Parishad, raised objections to the inclusion of the said essay in the course and certain terms used in the essay. A few days later, Jafri called a meeting and, as per convention, discussed threadbare the issues relating to the complaint against the department.
On January 21, the department sent a note to the Dean of College explaining its stand and the rationale behind the course and the essay. It said the course on culture in ancient India was designed to create an awareness and understanding in students of the rich and diverse cultural heritage of ancient India. Apart from Ramanujan’s much celebrated essay, the course included readings on Kalidasa’s poetry, Jataka stories, ancient iconography, ancient Tamil poetry and the modern history of ancient artefacts. The note clarified that the terms that had apparently caused offence to the writers of the letter need not be construed as mischievous or slanderous; that literature and art of all cultures and countries contained material that could offend individual tastes and sensibilities and that there was no question of intending or attempting to denigrate or hurt the sentiments of any religion, tradition or community.
Jafri and his colleague B.P. Sahu said the framing of the concurrent course was put through the same procedure as all the other courses; the readings had not been compiled by any individual academician or scholar as alleged by the protesters. The process itself was transparent, having evolved and been vetted at every stage beginning from the department to statutory bodies such as the Committee of Courses, the Academic Council and the Executive Council. The note said: “In conclusion, this course has gone through all the due administrative procedures and the readings have been all approved by the relevant bodies. We see no reason to drop it from our reading list.”
The university authorities seemed satisfied by this explanation. But on January 29, the ABVP staged a rally and submitted a memorandum to the Vice-Chancellor demanding the withdrawal of the essay. This time, its members alleged that Upinder Singh had compiled the text in which the reading was present. It transpired that a spiral-bound collection of photocopies of individual articles and excerpts relating to the course with a covering page containing Upinder Singh’s name was mysteriously being circulated. Sections of the media also carried erroneous reports regarding the authorship of the said compilation without verifying the facts with the Department of History.
The essay was taken from a volume Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (New Delhi, 1992) edited by Paula Richman. In fact, the syllabus for the course had two other readings by Ramanujan: The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (Bloomington and London, 1975) and the introduction of Folk Tales from India: A Selection of Oral Tales from Twenty-Two Languages (New York, 1991).
Faced with a piquant situation, the department met again on February 4 and prepared a second note, which reiterated its earlier position. This time it clarified that there was no “compiler” of any textbook; in fact, there was no book at all. This note was sent to the Vice-Chancellor. On February 25, accompanied by a host of mediapersons, mainly from the electronic media, a group of ABVP activists descended on the history department. “Initially they were peaceful. They said they wanted to submit a memorandum. And then they insisted that whatever they had to say would be in front of the media,” said Jafri.
Moments after the television cameras started rolling, the activists began throwing furniture around and roughing up Jafri. They asked for Upinder Singh and Sahu, quite oblivious of the fact that both of them were present in the building; Sahu was with Jafri at the time of the assault and Upinder Singh, who was later escorted out by her security, was taking class in one of the adjoining rooms. It was clear that the activists were not students of the history department; they could hardly identify the teachers present in the department, except Jafri, lending credence to the theory that there were outsiders present during the incident.
The police arrested three ABVP activists. Ironically, the footage of the incident helped them identify those who indulged in rioting and assault.
The Students Federation of India, other student fronts and teacher organisations held demonstrations the next day demanding the arrest of those guilty of attacking the teachers in the history department. On February 28, students and teachers cutting across disciplines submitted a memorandum to the University Academic Council, which was in session, demanding that Ramanujan’s essay should not be withdrawn under any circumstance.
The essay has a very interesting beginning: “How many Ramayanas? Three hundred? Three thousand? At the end of some Ramayanas, a question is sometimes asked. How many Ramayanas have been there? And there are stories that answer the question. Here is one.” The first story sets the pace for the rest of the essay, which is about the various versions of the Ramayana in South and South-East Asia. Ramanujan writes that “just the list of languages where the Rama story is found makes one gasp”.
He lists 22 languages from South and South-East Asia itself. Through his essay, Ramanujan strives to sort out, as he says, how the hundreds of tellings of a story found in different cultures, languages and religious traditions related to each other, got translated, transplanted and transposed. So, there are two versions of the Ahalya story, one by Kamban’s Iramavataram (The Incarnation of Rama) and the other by Valmiki.
There is a Santhal version of the Rama story, a Jain version where Rama does not kill Ravana, and a Thai telling, all different from one another. There is also a telling in Kannada, an oral tradition, where the narrator is an untouchable bard. In this version, Ravana is Ravula and Sita is born out of him. Ramanujan says that the motif of Sita as Ravana’s daughter appears elsewhere in one tradition of Jain stories, in the folk traditions in Kannada and Telugu, as well as in several South-East Asian Ramayanas.
Ramanujan’s essay should stay. If anything, it is an example of the cultural diversity and homogeneity of cultural expression that exists today, a phenomenon which is under attack by those who purport to be the custodians of Indian culture and tradition. •
Crying wolf
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
in New Delhi
In India, controversies around history and literature have a way of surfacing from time to time. This time an essay on the Ramayana by the historian, poet and litterateur A.K. Ramanujan has evoked violent reactions among members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and other Sangh Parivar affiliates. The essay is part of a reading list recommended in a concurrent course (Culture in India: Ancient) for B.A. (Honours) students in the University of Delhi. On February 25, ABVP activists, who have been demanding the withdrawal of the essay on the grounds that it hurt Hindu sentiments by portraying Rama and other characters in the Ramayana disrespectfully, vandalised the Department of History, located in the Faculty of Social Sciences building, and assaulted the head of the department, S.Z.H. Jafri.
It appears that the protest was not as much against the characters in the various Ramayanas by the late Padma Shri recipient than against someone who could be an easy target. The protesters insisted, erroneously, that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughter, Upinder Singh, Professor of History at the university, was the author of a “compilation” that included Ramanujan’s essay.
However, they were wrong on three counts. First, the reading was not part of a compilation as alleged. Second, it had no single author. And third, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre had honoured Ramanujan and, hence, there was little reason for the ABVP, the party’s student wing, to cry foul.
Interestingly, another “nationalist” outfit, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, which spearheaded a campaign against the national Adolescence Education Programme and National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books last year, has lent its support to the ABVP. The campaign had the backing of Murli Manohar Joshi, former Union Minister for Human Resource Development. The Samiti’s website describes itself as a forum of nationalist historians committed to protecting the country against conspiratorial forces represented by the followers of Marx and Wahabism. In 2006, the Samiti demanded that all references to Tipu Sultan be dropped from history textbooks, a demand that was reiterated by the Karnataka Minister for Higher Education D.H. Shankaramurthy.
Ramanujan’s essay titled “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation” illustrates the myriad “tellings” of the story of Rama. The author uses the term “tellings” as opposed to variant or versions, arguing that the latter conveyed the impression that there was an invariant, an original text, usually Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana, which he says is the oldest and the most prestigious of them all. There is no implicit or explicit denigration here of the widely read Valmiki Ramayana.
Interestingly, the concurrent course – for which the reading list has been recommended – was cleared three years ago in 2005 and Ramanujan’s essay became part of classroom teaching in 2006. The concurrent courses were themselves introduced in the university after a felt need that more of inter-disciplinary pedagogy, of a serious nature, was required at the undergraduate level. These courses replaced the earlier light-weight subsidiary subjects that had become more or less meaningless over time with both students and teachers not taking them seriously.
It is not the first time that the history department has been under attack. In 1981, there was a concerted demand by teachers owing allegiance to both the Congress and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) that R.P. Dutt’s India Today and A.R. Desai’s Social Background of Indian Nationalism be dropped from the History syllabus, which was undergoing revision. R.L. Shukla, the then head of the department and who has been following the current controversy, told Frontline that the department had followed the procedure at every level to discuss the matter at the Departmental Council, the Committee of Courses and the Academic Council. Even though the Academic Council could not reach a consensus on the issue, the department was unanimous that the books would be retained. Shukla said the opposition to the inclusion of the two books in the syllabus came from a section of the teaching community feeling that the Department of History was full of “communist” teachers and that it was a “communist syllabus”. The current controversy has its origins with Jafri assuming office in July 2007. A few months after he took over, in December, the department was in the limelight for hosting the prestigious Indian History Congress after an interregnum of 46 years. The furore over the essay gathered momentum soon after.
In mid-January, Jafri received two complaints in the form of memorandums that had been forwarded to him from the Vice-Chancellor’s office. Both letters, one by an organisation called the National Awareness Forum and the other by an outfit called Gyan Parishad, raised objections to the inclusion of the said essay in the course and certain terms used in the essay. A few days later, Jafri called a meeting and, as per convention, discussed threadbare the issues relating to the complaint against the department.
On January 21, the department sent a note to the Dean of College explaining its stand and the rationale behind the course and the essay. It said the course on culture in ancient India was designed to create an awareness and understanding in students of the rich and diverse cultural heritage of ancient India. Apart from Ramanujan’s much celebrated essay, the course included readings on Kalidasa’s poetry, Jataka stories, ancient iconography, ancient Tamil poetry and the modern history of ancient artefacts. The note clarified that the terms that had apparently caused offence to the writers of the letter need not be construed as mischievous or slanderous; that literature and art of all cultures and countries contained material that could offend individual tastes and sensibilities and that there was no question of intending or attempting to denigrate or hurt the sentiments of any religion, tradition or community.
Jafri and his colleague B.P. Sahu said the framing of the concurrent course was put through the same procedure as all the other courses; the readings had not been compiled by any individual academician or scholar as alleged by the protesters. The process itself was transparent, having evolved and been vetted at every stage beginning from the department to statutory bodies such as the Committee of Courses, the Academic Council and the Executive Council. The note said: “In conclusion, this course has gone through all the due administrative procedures and the readings have been all approved by the relevant bodies. We see no reason to drop it from our reading list.”
The university authorities seemed satisfied by this explanation. But on January 29, the ABVP staged a rally and submitted a memorandum to the Vice-Chancellor demanding the withdrawal of the essay. This time, its members alleged that Upinder Singh had compiled the text in which the reading was present. It transpired that a spiral-bound collection of photocopies of individual articles and excerpts relating to the course with a covering page containing Upinder Singh’s name was mysteriously being circulated. Sections of the media also carried erroneous reports regarding the authorship of the said compilation without verifying the facts with the Department of History.
The essay was taken from a volume Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (New Delhi, 1992) edited by Paula Richman. In fact, the syllabus for the course had two other readings by Ramanujan: The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (Bloomington and London, 1975) and the introduction of Folk Tales from India: A Selection of Oral Tales from Twenty-Two Languages (New York, 1991).
Faced with a piquant situation, the department met again on February 4 and prepared a second note, which reiterated its earlier position. This time it clarified that there was no “compiler” of any textbook; in fact, there was no book at all. This note was sent to the Vice-Chancellor. On February 25, accompanied by a host of mediapersons, mainly from the electronic media, a group of ABVP activists descended on the history department. “Initially they were peaceful. They said they wanted to submit a memorandum. And then they insisted that whatever they had to say would be in front of the media,” said Jafri.
Moments after the television cameras started rolling, the activists began throwing furniture around and roughing up Jafri. They asked for Upinder Singh and Sahu, quite oblivious of the fact that both of them were present in the building; Sahu was with Jafri at the time of the assault and Upinder Singh, who was later escorted out by her security, was taking class in one of the adjoining rooms. It was clear that the activists were not students of the history department; they could hardly identify the teachers present in the department, except Jafri, lending credence to the theory that there were outsiders present during the incident.
The police arrested three ABVP activists. Ironically, the footage of the incident helped them identify those who indulged in rioting and assault.
The Students Federation of India, other student fronts and teacher organisations held demonstrations the next day demanding the arrest of those guilty of attacking the teachers in the history department. On February 28, students and teachers cutting across disciplines submitted a memorandum to the University Academic Council, which was in session, demanding that Ramanujan’s essay should not be withdrawn under any circumstance.
The essay has a very interesting beginning: “How many Ramayanas? Three hundred? Three thousand? At the end of some Ramayanas, a question is sometimes asked. How many Ramayanas have been there? And there are stories that answer the question. Here is one.” The first story sets the pace for the rest of the essay, which is about the various versions of the Ramayana in South and South-East Asia. Ramanujan writes that “just the list of languages where the Rama story is found makes one gasp”.
He lists 22 languages from South and South-East Asia itself. Through his essay, Ramanujan strives to sort out, as he says, how the hundreds of tellings of a story found in different cultures, languages and religious traditions related to each other, got translated, transplanted and transposed. So, there are two versions of the Ahalya story, one by Kamban’s Iramavataram (The Incarnation of Rama) and the other by Valmiki.
There is a Santhal version of the Rama story, a Jain version where Rama does not kill Ravana, and a Thai telling, all different from one another. There is also a telling in Kannada, an oral tradition, where the narrator is an untouchable bard. In this version, Ravana is Ravula and Sita is born out of him. Ramanujan says that the motif of Sita as Ravana’s daughter appears elsewhere in one tradition of Jain stories, in the folk traditions in Kannada and Telugu, as well as in several South-East Asian Ramayanas.
Ramanujan’s essay should stay. If anything, it is an example of the cultural diversity and homogeneity of cultural expression that exists today, a phenomenon which is under attack by those who purport to be the custodians of Indian culture and tradition. •
March 22, 2008
Concern over extended time frame to probe communal riots cases
The Hindu
22 March 2008
Concern over extended time frame to probe communal riots cases
‘Protraction of the inquiry keeps tensions simmering and devalues justice’.
— Photo: AP
Asma Jahangir… “The vast majority of Indians respects secular traditions.”
Asma Jahangir , the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief of the United Nations Human Rights Council, made a statement on March 20, 2008 in Delhi at the end of her visit to India. Excerpts:
I wish to thank the Government of India for inviting me here and for giving me this unique opportunity to study the situation with regard to freedom of religion or belief. India is a diverse country, where religions and beliefs are abundant and find respect in a secular framework.
Indeed, due to the religious diversity of India, this country visit has been an enriching experience for the mandate I have been holding since 2004. I will be submitting a detailed report with conclusions and recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council, therefore this press statement will only cover some preliminary impressions that I have formed during the past two-and-half weeks.
Many of my interlocutors have pointed to the positive impact of Indian secularism as embodied in the Constitution. By and large, Indians do value secular principles and I was told time and again that the term ‘secularism’ does not necessarily mean the same as in other countries. Historically, there have been believers of a whole range of religions and beliefs living in India. The Central government has developed a comprehensive policy pertaining to minorities, including religious ones. In this context, I would like to compliment various recent reports on religious minorities, for example drafted by the committees headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar in 2006 and by Justice Ranganath Mishra in 2007.
The National Commission for Minorities, too, has taken up several challenges. Their members took prompt action and issued independent reports on incidents of communal violence with concrete recommendations. However, the performance of the various Human Rights Commissions depends very much on the selection of members and the importance governments attach to their mandates. It is vital that members of such commissions have acute sensitivity to human rights issues and must reflect the diversity — particularly in terms of gender — as women are one of the worst sufferers of religious intolerance. At the same time, I noticed that women’s groups across religious lines were the most active and effective human rights advocates in situations of communal tensions.
All individuals I met recognised that a comprehensive legal framework to protect their rights exists, yet many of them — especially from religious minorities — remained dissatisfied with implementation. By and large, Indians respect the diversity of religions and beliefs. At the same time, organised groups based on religious ideologies have unleashed the fear of mob violence in many parts. The law enforcement machinery is often reluctant to take action against individuals or groups that perpetuate violence in the name of religion or belief. This institutionalised impunity for those who exploit religion and impose their religious intolerance on others has made peaceful citizens, particularly the minorities, vulnerable and fearful.
I have received numerous reports of attacks on religious minorities and their places of worship as well as discrimination of disempowered sections of the Hindu community. Concerning the 2002 Gujarat massacre, I have read numerous reports, both of official bodies and civil society organisations, and I met a large number of eyewitnesses and people who visited Gujarat during the trouble. The State government reported that, prior to the Godhra incident, Gujarat had witnessed 443 major communal incidents between 1970 and 2002. As such, the warning was there. However, the massacre that took place after the tragic deaths at Godhra in 2002 is all the more horrifying since by all accounts at least a thousand people were systematically killed. Even worse —there are credible reports — inaction by the authorities was evident and most interlocutors alleged complicity by the State government. In my discussions with victims, I could see their continuing fear which is exacerbated by the distress that justice continues to evade most victims and survivors. Even today there is increasing ghettoisation and isolation of Muslims in certain areas. The assertion of the State government that development by itself will heal the wounds does not seem to be realistic.
I am also concerned at the extended time frame of investigations in cases involving communal riots, violence and massacres such as those which occurred in 1984, 1992 and 2002.
While an inquiry into large-scale communal violence should not be done in indecent haste, it should be accorded the highest priority by the investigation, the judiciary and any commission appointed to study the situation. Unreasonable protraction of the inquiry only keeps tensions simmering and devalues justice. I was astonished to learn that just before I arrived in India, the Liberhan Commission — probing the circumstances that led to the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya — got the 44th extension to conclude its inquiry.
There is today a real risk that similar communal violence might happen again unless incitement to religious hatred and political exploitation of communal tensions are effectively prevented.
It is a challenge for both the government and non-state actors to defuse tensions and address the root causes ahead of time. The sincerity of the Central government in implementing the Sachar Committee report will be seen on the ground because the State governments have been given the direction to follow up on the recommendations of the report. While Kerala has already undertaken the assignment seriously, many States have not even set up the relevant committees.
I was deeply touched to hear of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990s following a campaign of threats and violence. They remain dislocated to this day despite the fact that de-escalation of violence in Jammu and Kashmir has had a positive impact on religious tolerance. There have been public statements inviting the Hindu Pandits to return to Kashmir. Places of worship are now more accessible and tensions are reducing. At the same time, many interlocutors have confirmed a continuing bias amongst the security forces against Muslims who also face problems in securing passports and security clearances for employment purposes. There are also reports of discrimination against them outside of Jammu and Kashmir, such as the refusal of hotel bookings.
At all places where I met with members of the Muslim community in India, I was informed that a number of them have been arrested on ill-founded suspicions of terrorism. They are disturbed that terrorism is associated with their religion despite various public statements from Muslim leadership denouncing terrorism. There was though recognition of the government’s efforts in ensuring that Indian Muslims’ rights are protected when arrested abroad.
The vast majority of Indians respects secular traditions and keenly follows the teachings of the nation’s founding fathers. There are innumerable examples where individuals have come to each other’s rescue, crossing all religious boundaries. Indeed, in Gujarat, a large number of victims recognised the positive role played by some national media and other courageous individuals who effectively saved lives. It is a crucial — albeit difficult — task for the state and civil society to challenge the forces of intolerance.
22 March 2008
Concern over extended time frame to probe communal riots cases
‘Protraction of the inquiry keeps tensions simmering and devalues justice’.
— Photo: AP
Asma Jahangir… “The vast majority of Indians respects secular traditions.”
Asma Jahangir , the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief of the United Nations Human Rights Council, made a statement on March 20, 2008 in Delhi at the end of her visit to India. Excerpts:
I wish to thank the Government of India for inviting me here and for giving me this unique opportunity to study the situation with regard to freedom of religion or belief. India is a diverse country, where religions and beliefs are abundant and find respect in a secular framework.
Indeed, due to the religious diversity of India, this country visit has been an enriching experience for the mandate I have been holding since 2004. I will be submitting a detailed report with conclusions and recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council, therefore this press statement will only cover some preliminary impressions that I have formed during the past two-and-half weeks.
Many of my interlocutors have pointed to the positive impact of Indian secularism as embodied in the Constitution. By and large, Indians do value secular principles and I was told time and again that the term ‘secularism’ does not necessarily mean the same as in other countries. Historically, there have been believers of a whole range of religions and beliefs living in India. The Central government has developed a comprehensive policy pertaining to minorities, including religious ones. In this context, I would like to compliment various recent reports on religious minorities, for example drafted by the committees headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar in 2006 and by Justice Ranganath Mishra in 2007.
The National Commission for Minorities, too, has taken up several challenges. Their members took prompt action and issued independent reports on incidents of communal violence with concrete recommendations. However, the performance of the various Human Rights Commissions depends very much on the selection of members and the importance governments attach to their mandates. It is vital that members of such commissions have acute sensitivity to human rights issues and must reflect the diversity — particularly in terms of gender — as women are one of the worst sufferers of religious intolerance. At the same time, I noticed that women’s groups across religious lines were the most active and effective human rights advocates in situations of communal tensions.
All individuals I met recognised that a comprehensive legal framework to protect their rights exists, yet many of them — especially from religious minorities — remained dissatisfied with implementation. By and large, Indians respect the diversity of religions and beliefs. At the same time, organised groups based on religious ideologies have unleashed the fear of mob violence in many parts. The law enforcement machinery is often reluctant to take action against individuals or groups that perpetuate violence in the name of religion or belief. This institutionalised impunity for those who exploit religion and impose their religious intolerance on others has made peaceful citizens, particularly the minorities, vulnerable and fearful.
I have received numerous reports of attacks on religious minorities and their places of worship as well as discrimination of disempowered sections of the Hindu community. Concerning the 2002 Gujarat massacre, I have read numerous reports, both of official bodies and civil society organisations, and I met a large number of eyewitnesses and people who visited Gujarat during the trouble. The State government reported that, prior to the Godhra incident, Gujarat had witnessed 443 major communal incidents between 1970 and 2002. As such, the warning was there. However, the massacre that took place after the tragic deaths at Godhra in 2002 is all the more horrifying since by all accounts at least a thousand people were systematically killed. Even worse —there are credible reports — inaction by the authorities was evident and most interlocutors alleged complicity by the State government. In my discussions with victims, I could see their continuing fear which is exacerbated by the distress that justice continues to evade most victims and survivors. Even today there is increasing ghettoisation and isolation of Muslims in certain areas. The assertion of the State government that development by itself will heal the wounds does not seem to be realistic.
I am also concerned at the extended time frame of investigations in cases involving communal riots, violence and massacres such as those which occurred in 1984, 1992 and 2002.
While an inquiry into large-scale communal violence should not be done in indecent haste, it should be accorded the highest priority by the investigation, the judiciary and any commission appointed to study the situation. Unreasonable protraction of the inquiry only keeps tensions simmering and devalues justice. I was astonished to learn that just before I arrived in India, the Liberhan Commission — probing the circumstances that led to the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya — got the 44th extension to conclude its inquiry.
There is today a real risk that similar communal violence might happen again unless incitement to religious hatred and political exploitation of communal tensions are effectively prevented.
It is a challenge for both the government and non-state actors to defuse tensions and address the root causes ahead of time. The sincerity of the Central government in implementing the Sachar Committee report will be seen on the ground because the State governments have been given the direction to follow up on the recommendations of the report. While Kerala has already undertaken the assignment seriously, many States have not even set up the relevant committees.
I was deeply touched to hear of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990s following a campaign of threats and violence. They remain dislocated to this day despite the fact that de-escalation of violence in Jammu and Kashmir has had a positive impact on religious tolerance. There have been public statements inviting the Hindu Pandits to return to Kashmir. Places of worship are now more accessible and tensions are reducing. At the same time, many interlocutors have confirmed a continuing bias amongst the security forces against Muslims who also face problems in securing passports and security clearances for employment purposes. There are also reports of discrimination against them outside of Jammu and Kashmir, such as the refusal of hotel bookings.
At all places where I met with members of the Muslim community in India, I was informed that a number of them have been arrested on ill-founded suspicions of terrorism. They are disturbed that terrorism is associated with their religion despite various public statements from Muslim leadership denouncing terrorism. There was though recognition of the government’s efforts in ensuring that Indian Muslims’ rights are protected when arrested abroad.
The vast majority of Indians respects secular traditions and keenly follows the teachings of the nation’s founding fathers. There are innumerable examples where individuals have come to each other’s rescue, crossing all religious boundaries. Indeed, in Gujarat, a large number of victims recognised the positive role played by some national media and other courageous individuals who effectively saved lives. It is a crucial — albeit difficult — task for the state and civil society to challenge the forces of intolerance.
March 21, 2008
Secular Travesty
Times of India, 21 March 2008
Rabindranath Tagore's poem "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high... into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake" is taught to schoolchildren all over the country. It's not a prescription, however, that the government intends to live up to. It kept Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen incommunicado for five months, at an 'undisclosed location' in Delhi, in the hope that she would leave the country even though she had a valid visa to stay. It had its way at last, with Taslima packing her bags for Europe.
The circumstances in which that happened don't do the government much credit. Her harassment didn't stop at cutting her off from those she wanted to see, in the name of security. She may have been denied access to proper medical care, going by complaints coming from her and backed by International PEN, the global writers' body.
Information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi publicly asked her to "bow down" and apologise to those she had offended. He may have forgotten, for the moment, that India is a secular democracy rather than a theocracy. Concern about her treatment came not just from international human rights groups but also from the National Human Rights Commission, which sent a notice to the home ministry and Delhi Police on her "solitary confinement".
The UPA government and its leftist supporters claim to be champions of secularism. Forcing Taslima out of the country, however, was a sad day for Indian secularism. The tactics used replicated those adopted by West Bengal's Left Front government to get her to leave Kolkata, where she had been staying. Her security, apparently, was uppermost in the minds of both central and state governments. What gives the game away, however, is that there is no official condemnation of those who threatened violence against her, or actually carried it out at a Hyderabad book launch in August last year.
Secularism of this variety amounts to a game of competitive fundamentalism. Someone somewhere claims to be offended on behalf of his community and issues threats. The government, in the name of security, bans the book, the film, or the writer. It's the equivalent of handing fundamentalists a megaphone. Someone else, encouraged by the supineness of the government, threatens or undertakes more violence for the sake of his particular peeve. That not only undermines the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression but creates insecurity all round. Not only would Tagore have been horrified at all this, there's serious doubt about whether it works even in terms of such short-term goals as delivering vote banks.
Rabindranath Tagore's poem "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high... into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake" is taught to schoolchildren all over the country. It's not a prescription, however, that the government intends to live up to. It kept Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen incommunicado for five months, at an 'undisclosed location' in Delhi, in the hope that she would leave the country even though she had a valid visa to stay. It had its way at last, with Taslima packing her bags for Europe.
The circumstances in which that happened don't do the government much credit. Her harassment didn't stop at cutting her off from those she wanted to see, in the name of security. She may have been denied access to proper medical care, going by complaints coming from her and backed by International PEN, the global writers' body.
Information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi publicly asked her to "bow down" and apologise to those she had offended. He may have forgotten, for the moment, that India is a secular democracy rather than a theocracy. Concern about her treatment came not just from international human rights groups but also from the National Human Rights Commission, which sent a notice to the home ministry and Delhi Police on her "solitary confinement".
The UPA government and its leftist supporters claim to be champions of secularism. Forcing Taslima out of the country, however, was a sad day for Indian secularism. The tactics used replicated those adopted by West Bengal's Left Front government to get her to leave Kolkata, where she had been staying. Her security, apparently, was uppermost in the minds of both central and state governments. What gives the game away, however, is that there is no official condemnation of those who threatened violence against her, or actually carried it out at a Hyderabad book launch in August last year.
Secularism of this variety amounts to a game of competitive fundamentalism. Someone somewhere claims to be offended on behalf of his community and issues threats. The government, in the name of security, bans the book, the film, or the writer. It's the equivalent of handing fundamentalists a megaphone. Someone else, encouraged by the supineness of the government, threatens or undertakes more violence for the sake of his particular peeve. That not only undermines the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression but creates insecurity all round. Not only would Tagore have been horrified at all this, there's serious doubt about whether it works even in terms of such short-term goals as delivering vote banks.
March 20, 2008
Rush hour of the gods
Meera Nanda
Today's generation of middle class Indians are discarding the secular-humanist version of Hinduism that appealed to an earlier generation of elites and opting for a more overt religiosity. Meera Nanda asks what lies behind the Hinduisation of the Indian public sphere.
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March 18, 2008
How Karnataka is becoming Gujarat of the South
churumuri.wordpress.com
GAURI LANKESH writes from Bangalore: Recently, three young men were arrested in Hubli and Honnali on charges of vehicle theft. Since all of them happened to belong to the Muslim community, within a day of their arrests, police sources leaked to the media that they suspected the trio might be involved in planning terrorist attacks all over the country.
This was enough to trigger a series of speculative stories in the State’s media. Every publication and television channel, without exception, went into a competitive frenzy, all of them clamouring for a first shot at the most ‘horrifying’ story about the ‘terrorist trio’.
Almost every reporter with imaginative talent wrote reams of articles quoting unnamed ‘reliable police sources’ or ‘police sources who did not want to be named’ and narrated how the three young men were planning to blow to smithereens most of Karnataka’s key buildings, such as the Vidhana Soudha, place bombs on (predictably) the premises of IT giants Infosys and IBM, detonate bombs in public places, destroy Hindu places of worship and so on.
What was remarkable about these reports was their contention that the three young men had links right up to Osama bin Laden and down to the local ’sleeper cells’ of various outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The men were also suspected of conducting arms training in nearby forests, of flying the Pakistani flag, of possessing RDX, of having already distributed arms and weapons to various ‘sleeper cells’ across the state, of recruiting hundreds of youth to terrorist organisations, of possessing AK-47s, of having procured Israeli manufactured arms, etc, etc, etc.
But how much of the content of these reports, well laced with the terms ’suspected’ and ‘alleged’, had unsubstantiated and un-sourced ‘facts’ attributed to ‘reliable sources’?
As citizens and discerning readers, can we merely accept in good faith that these reports were genuine?
How much of the information carried (leaked) in these reports was a product of the imaginative powers of local reporters? How much was fed by our increasingly inefficient police force? How much was ’spiced’ up by senior journalists who are forever looking to increase their TRP ratings or circulation figures?
Having already said that all these reports on the ‘terrorist trio’, without exception, were sourced to ‘police officials who did not want to be named’, let us look at one such report to assess how genuine the overall media reports were.
The Mangalore edition of the Kannada daily Udayavani, which adopts a marked pro-Hindutva stance, carried a front-page report that read: “last December Riazuddin Ghouse, Mohammed Asif, Mohammad Abubakkar and Hafeez held a secret meeting where they condemned America’s treatment of people imprisoned at Cuba’s Montessori (!) jail. A copy of the resolutions taken at the meeting has been seized by investigating officers.”
Udayavani is a leading Kannada daily with several senior journalists on its rolls. What is surprising is that not one of them could tell the difference between the word Montessori, used to describe a system of education, and Guantánamo Bay, the name of the prison run by the American government in Cuba. Apparently, in the race for ‘exclusive’ reports, none of them could be bothered with such minor factual details.
Even if one were willing to overlook this rather glaring slip-up by the reporter who filed the story and the senior journalists who okayed it, giving it prime space on the front page, other important questions remain. For example, since when has condemning American atrocities at Guantánamo Bay become a crime? Does this assumption by the police mean that anyone who condemns the unjust imprisonment of people at Guantánamo Bay is a terror suspect?
Are such questions of no importance to the local media?
Apparently not, for instead of raising these valid and significant issues, they carried on blissfully with their ‘exclusive reportage’ based entirely on police sources.
One report, which appeared in The Hindu, can be summed up thus: The fact that one of the arrested youth claimed before the magistrate that his human rights had been violated by the police made the magistrate suspect that he was no ordinary youth. (Does this mean that knowledge of the Constitution, fundamental rights and human rights are not for ordinary Indian men and women?) On the basis of this assumption, the magistrate instructed the police to subject him to a thorough interrogation. And that was when the terrorist links were revealed.
Another report, this one in The Times of India, stated: A warden at the jail became suspicious of Riazuddin Ghouse and Mohammad Abubakkar’s behaviour in the prison where they were jailed on charges of vehicle theft. The duo spoke to each other in low voices, did namaaz five times a day, spoke to one another in English and did not seem to show respect for the national flag when it was hoisted in the morning.
The jail warden conveyed his suspicions to senior police officials and they subjected the duo to interrogation. That was when the youth spilled the beans about their terrorist plans. Had the warden not been such a keen observer of their behaviour the men could well have been let off by the police.
These reports raise a few fundamental questions. Since when has it become a crime to speak of human rights violations? Or speak in a low voice? Or communicate in English? Since when has offering namaaz five times a day become a suspect activity?
As if this were not enough, most or all of the media reported that “religious books and material” were found in the trio’s possession. The media also ‘arrested’ a number of students in its reports even when the police had not in fact done so! Reporters also labelled as “having terrorist links” people who were total strangers to the arrested trio. The list is endless. The end result of all this ‘hyperactivity’ in the media was that the three arrested men were depicted as the most dreaded terrorists this part of the world has seen in recent times.
This reportage took place even as a senior police officer, additional director-general of police Shankar Bidri, told a television channel:
“So far no proof has been unearthed to label these youths as terrorists. The media is indulging in blatant fabrication of news. What if their case too turns out to be another Dr Mohammed Haneef case? (Haneef, who worked in Australia, was mistakenly arrested by the Australian police after being wrongly accused of links to a failed UK terror plot.) Let us not turn into terrorists those who are innocent.”
Sadly, his words of caution fell on deaf ears as the media made merry about Muslim terrorists.
Surely the police need to interrogate the arrested youth and the courts have to pass their judgements before such serious conclusions are drawn? This is why such institutions exist, why the machinery exists in our democracy. It is their job to catch and punish the guilty. But the media seemed to have no time for such ‘niceties’ of democracy or its institutions. It chose to sidestep the process of law altogether and took it upon itself to ‘investigate’ the so-called crime and then pronounced ‘judgement’.
***
With the media in the grip of this ‘terrorist’ mania, can the saffron brigade be far behind? This time their chosen targets were noted litterateur U.R. Anantha Murthy, and the chairman of the State Backward Classes Commission, C.S. Dwarakanath.
When Anantha Murthy wrote his path-breaking novel, Samskara, more than 40 years ago, there were some who considered it ‘anti-Brahmin’ and sought a ban on it. But since most intellectuals dismissed the allegations, no action was taken against it at the time. In the years since, the novel has not only been made into an award winning Kannada film (the first Kannada film, in fact, to win a national award) but has also been translated into several languages across the globe.
Samskara was also listed as a prescribed textbook at many universities in India and abroad. This includes the Mangalore University, which chose the novel’s Hindi version as part of its syllabus for second year degree students and where Samskara is currently being taught in its colleges.
It must be mentioned here that last year the sangh parivar actively promoted a novel called Aavarana, written by Kannada novelist S.L. Bhyrappa. There have been claims that nearly 20,000 copies of the book were sold, a record breaking figure in the history of Kannada publishing for a work of fiction. (The claims, however, have not been verified.)
For long an ardent supporter of the sangh parivar’s Hindutva agenda, in Aavarana, Bhyrappa conveniently interweaves half-truths with blatant falsehoods and presents this as a work of fiction. Given his claims that the book was based on evidence proved by historical researchers (all of whom belong to the sangh parivar caucus), upon reading the book the lay reader could quite easily form a biased opinion of the Muslim community.
The book portrays the Muslim community as bigoted and out to out-populate the Hindus. It appears to hold the Muslim community responsible for all the sins that Muslim rulers may have perpetrated on Hindus in times past and identifies them as the cause of all the problems the country faces today. In the process, the book aims to whip up Hindu sentiments against the Muslim populace in the country.
Apart from the Muslim community in general and Muslim clerics, writers, filmmakers, etc in particular, the book also targets leftists, secularists and historians who do not agree with the saffron brigade’s version of events past; they are dubbed anti-Hindu. When the book was released, supporters of the sangh parivar hailed it as a great work of fiction while progressive forces denounced it as sheer pamphleteering on behalf of Hindutva forces under the guise of literature.
As this debate raged, Anantha Murthy publicly derided Bhyrappa, calling him a “college-level debater” which, in fact, is exactly what he is. This roused the ire of the rightist forces so much that the leading Kannada daily, Vijaya Karnataka, actually launched an SMS campaign against Anantha Murthy. Vijaya Karnataka (now owned by Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd of The Times of India group) is another sangh parivar mouthpiece that calls itself a newspaper. It came as no great surprise therefore when the paper carried two pages filled with anti-Anantha Murthy opinions sent in by its saffron brigade readers.
Protesting this vociferous attack on Anantha Murthy, some of us got together and published a selection of essays critiquing Aavarana, a selection that was fairly well received.
The reason why Aavarana has been dealt with in such detail here is its growing presence on the Hindutva map. So far 15 novels by Bhyrappa have already been translated from the Kannada into other Indian languages and today work is afoot to bring out Aavarana in Hindi and other languages. Considering the amount of unadulterated venom it spews at a segment of our population, it is necessary that intellectuals and progressives in other states counter the half-truths and blatant lies contained in the book to prevent further damage to the fabric of our society.
Since Anantha Murthy is opposed to the Hindutva agenda and has spoken out against it vociferously in the recent past, and since he attacked the sangh parivar’s favourite writer, Bhyrappa, the parivar were looking for a way to get back at him. To do this they chose to falsely claim that some portions of Anantha Murthy’s most famous novel, Samskara, were ‘vulgar‘. Aware that it would be difficult, in the current context, to label the work ‘anti-Brahmin’, they made the specious claim that the ‘vulgar’ portions in the book made it difficult for teachers to teach it to ‘children’!
The sangh parivar even managed to get some lecturers who were sympathetic to its agenda to sign a memorandum claiming as much and submitted this to the University authorities with a plea that the book be withdrawn as a textbook.
The saffron brigade’s attempt to target Anantha Murthy using Samskara as a pretext came under scathing attack from intellectuals and progressives in the State. For the moment, any move to withdraw the novel from University syllabi has been put in abeyance. But in reality the sangh parivar has merely set the wheels in motion. For, in coming years, universities will no doubt be wary of recommending the works of any progressive writer as a prescribed textbook. And from that point onwards a conscious attempt will be made to avoid introducing any writer who is critical of the sangh parivar to the next generation of students.
***
Meanwhile, as one section of the sangh parivar was busy trying to tarnish Anantha Murthy’s image, another found it necessary to attack C.S. Dwarakanath, chairman of the State Backward Classes Commission.
Earlier this month Dwarakanath and other members of the commission visited Coorg in order to inspect existing facilities for the backward classes there. Some commission members visited the ‘religious site’ of Talacauvery—the source of the Cauvery river. According to reports, the priest at Talacauvery asked them to bring Dwarakanath along so he could also receive the ‘holy water’.
In response, one of them told the priest, “He (Dwarakanath) is an atheist who does not believe in such things. He thinks the entire Cauvery river is holy.”
While Dwarakanath himself was blissfully unaware of the incident, word soon spread to local sangh parivar activists. The next morning, when Dwarakanath was alone with just two police constables on guard duty, more than a hundred ’saffronites’, high on local hooch, laid siege to his room. Led by a former BJP MLA from the area, the drunken crowd surrounded Dwarakanath and demanded why he was “insulting the Cauvery river, insulting Hindu sentiments, and being anti-Karnataka”.
Notwithstanding several attempts to reason with them when Dwarakanath tried repeatedly to explain that he considered all of nature holy, the mob remained unconvinced. Apart from pushing and shoving him around, they forced him to drink the ‘Cauvery water’ they had brought with them in an empty Coca-Cola (!) bottle and forcibly applied tilak on his forehead.
Ever conscious of the big picture, the sangh activists took a cameraman and a reporter from a local TV channel along on their drunken crusade.
Having forced a defenceless Dwarakanath to meekly receive the ‘holy water’ and suffer their tilak application, the saffronites made sure that the entire incident was then telecast across the State. As if that were not enough, they also issued a press note to all publications, falsely claiming that “Dwarakanath had apologised to them for having insulted Hindu sentiments and the Cauvery”.
***
These three instances only emphasise the obvious. It is abundantly clear that much of the media in Karnataka today has been saffronised, that Karnataka’s Universities are now being made to bow to the sangh parivar’s unreasonable demands and that the Hindutva brigade, despite its claims that all Hindus are one, will brazenly attack even the head of the Backward Classes Commission in the name of Hindu sentiments.
These developments could perhaps be expected, thought ‘natural’, in a State ruled by the BJP. But as of now Karnataka is under President’s rule. Yet, it is the saffron brigade’s aggressive agenda that dominates the political and public discourse. This pointed shift in Karnataka’s polity is the legacy of a BJP-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition that was in power for all of 20 months.
During this short span of time, a systemic infiltration of the system inflicted grievous damage. Today Hindu progressives are labelled ‘Naxalites’ even as Muslim progressives are targeted as ‘Islamic terrorists’. The same holds true for many pro-people, pro-secularism organisations as well.
It is no wonder then that the police gleefully entertain complaints by saffronites falsely alleging that secularists like Prof Nagari Babaiah of the People’s Democratic Forum ‘insult Hindu gods’ in their public speeches, that Kalkuli Vittal Hegde, leader of the Adivasis living in the Kudremukh forests, has insulted Dalits, that Hegde’s wife is indulging in prostitution, that volunteers working for the rights of the Adivasi people are abetting Naxalites in the area and so on.
Not long ago, the local administration and police rounded up local Muslims, at random, on the basis of specious complaints filed by sangh parivar activists. The same police force turns a blind eye when sangh parivar activists assault Muslims on charges of transporting cattle to slaughterhouses. The same police force coolly releases RSS activists accused of setting a bus on fire and causing the death of two people over the Ram Sethu issue without even a thorough investigation. The list goes on.
Thanks to the police and the administration’s active encouragement of such violent and unlawful behaviour, activists of the sangh parivar enjoy complete immunity and it is they who systematically file innumerable complaints against Muslims and progressive Hindus.
Recently, Pramod Mutalik, leader of the Sri Rama Sena, had the gumption to say, “We have given a list of suspect Muslims to the police at Hubli. It is unfortunate that they have arrested only one person. If the police do not immediately arrest the rest of the people on our list, we will take up widespread protests.”
The sangh parivar has always considered Karnataka its gateway to the south. The last time they were in power, the gates were only partially opened to them but a foothold was all they needed. It was more than enough for them to sow their seeds of hatred. Those seeds have sprouted now and with the elections only a few months away, the BJP will no doubt be reaping a rich harvest.
With the Janata Dal(S) having committed political hara-kiri by supporting the BJP, and the Congress party’s perennial indecision on if and how to counter the sangh parivar, Karnataka, it seems, is unfortunately and irreversibly hurtling towards its new position as the Gujarat of the South.
GAURI LANKESH writes from Bangalore: Recently, three young men were arrested in Hubli and Honnali on charges of vehicle theft. Since all of them happened to belong to the Muslim community, within a day of their arrests, police sources leaked to the media that they suspected the trio might be involved in planning terrorist attacks all over the country.
This was enough to trigger a series of speculative stories in the State’s media. Every publication and television channel, without exception, went into a competitive frenzy, all of them clamouring for a first shot at the most ‘horrifying’ story about the ‘terrorist trio’.
Almost every reporter with imaginative talent wrote reams of articles quoting unnamed ‘reliable police sources’ or ‘police sources who did not want to be named’ and narrated how the three young men were planning to blow to smithereens most of Karnataka’s key buildings, such as the Vidhana Soudha, place bombs on (predictably) the premises of IT giants Infosys and IBM, detonate bombs in public places, destroy Hindu places of worship and so on.
What was remarkable about these reports was their contention that the three young men had links right up to Osama bin Laden and down to the local ’sleeper cells’ of various outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The men were also suspected of conducting arms training in nearby forests, of flying the Pakistani flag, of possessing RDX, of having already distributed arms and weapons to various ‘sleeper cells’ across the state, of recruiting hundreds of youth to terrorist organisations, of possessing AK-47s, of having procured Israeli manufactured arms, etc, etc, etc.
But how much of the content of these reports, well laced with the terms ’suspected’ and ‘alleged’, had unsubstantiated and un-sourced ‘facts’ attributed to ‘reliable sources’?
As citizens and discerning readers, can we merely accept in good faith that these reports were genuine?
How much of the information carried (leaked) in these reports was a product of the imaginative powers of local reporters? How much was fed by our increasingly inefficient police force? How much was ’spiced’ up by senior journalists who are forever looking to increase their TRP ratings or circulation figures?
Having already said that all these reports on the ‘terrorist trio’, without exception, were sourced to ‘police officials who did not want to be named’, let us look at one such report to assess how genuine the overall media reports were.
The Mangalore edition of the Kannada daily Udayavani, which adopts a marked pro-Hindutva stance, carried a front-page report that read: “last December Riazuddin Ghouse, Mohammed Asif, Mohammad Abubakkar and Hafeez held a secret meeting where they condemned America’s treatment of people imprisoned at Cuba’s Montessori (!) jail. A copy of the resolutions taken at the meeting has been seized by investigating officers.”
Udayavani is a leading Kannada daily with several senior journalists on its rolls. What is surprising is that not one of them could tell the difference between the word Montessori, used to describe a system of education, and Guantánamo Bay, the name of the prison run by the American government in Cuba. Apparently, in the race for ‘exclusive’ reports, none of them could be bothered with such minor factual details.
Even if one were willing to overlook this rather glaring slip-up by the reporter who filed the story and the senior journalists who okayed it, giving it prime space on the front page, other important questions remain. For example, since when has condemning American atrocities at Guantánamo Bay become a crime? Does this assumption by the police mean that anyone who condemns the unjust imprisonment of people at Guantánamo Bay is a terror suspect?
Are such questions of no importance to the local media?
Apparently not, for instead of raising these valid and significant issues, they carried on blissfully with their ‘exclusive reportage’ based entirely on police sources.
One report, which appeared in The Hindu, can be summed up thus: The fact that one of the arrested youth claimed before the magistrate that his human rights had been violated by the police made the magistrate suspect that he was no ordinary youth. (Does this mean that knowledge of the Constitution, fundamental rights and human rights are not for ordinary Indian men and women?) On the basis of this assumption, the magistrate instructed the police to subject him to a thorough interrogation. And that was when the terrorist links were revealed.
Another report, this one in The Times of India, stated: A warden at the jail became suspicious of Riazuddin Ghouse and Mohammad Abubakkar’s behaviour in the prison where they were jailed on charges of vehicle theft. The duo spoke to each other in low voices, did namaaz five times a day, spoke to one another in English and did not seem to show respect for the national flag when it was hoisted in the morning.
The jail warden conveyed his suspicions to senior police officials and they subjected the duo to interrogation. That was when the youth spilled the beans about their terrorist plans. Had the warden not been such a keen observer of their behaviour the men could well have been let off by the police.
These reports raise a few fundamental questions. Since when has it become a crime to speak of human rights violations? Or speak in a low voice? Or communicate in English? Since when has offering namaaz five times a day become a suspect activity?
As if this were not enough, most or all of the media reported that “religious books and material” were found in the trio’s possession. The media also ‘arrested’ a number of students in its reports even when the police had not in fact done so! Reporters also labelled as “having terrorist links” people who were total strangers to the arrested trio. The list is endless. The end result of all this ‘hyperactivity’ in the media was that the three arrested men were depicted as the most dreaded terrorists this part of the world has seen in recent times.
This reportage took place even as a senior police officer, additional director-general of police Shankar Bidri, told a television channel:
“So far no proof has been unearthed to label these youths as terrorists. The media is indulging in blatant fabrication of news. What if their case too turns out to be another Dr Mohammed Haneef case? (Haneef, who worked in Australia, was mistakenly arrested by the Australian police after being wrongly accused of links to a failed UK terror plot.) Let us not turn into terrorists those who are innocent.”
Sadly, his words of caution fell on deaf ears as the media made merry about Muslim terrorists.
Surely the police need to interrogate the arrested youth and the courts have to pass their judgements before such serious conclusions are drawn? This is why such institutions exist, why the machinery exists in our democracy. It is their job to catch and punish the guilty. But the media seemed to have no time for such ‘niceties’ of democracy or its institutions. It chose to sidestep the process of law altogether and took it upon itself to ‘investigate’ the so-called crime and then pronounced ‘judgement’.
***
With the media in the grip of this ‘terrorist’ mania, can the saffron brigade be far behind? This time their chosen targets were noted litterateur U.R. Anantha Murthy, and the chairman of the State Backward Classes Commission, C.S. Dwarakanath.
When Anantha Murthy wrote his path-breaking novel, Samskara, more than 40 years ago, there were some who considered it ‘anti-Brahmin’ and sought a ban on it. But since most intellectuals dismissed the allegations, no action was taken against it at the time. In the years since, the novel has not only been made into an award winning Kannada film (the first Kannada film, in fact, to win a national award) but has also been translated into several languages across the globe.
Samskara was also listed as a prescribed textbook at many universities in India and abroad. This includes the Mangalore University, which chose the novel’s Hindi version as part of its syllabus for second year degree students and where Samskara is currently being taught in its colleges.
It must be mentioned here that last year the sangh parivar actively promoted a novel called Aavarana, written by Kannada novelist S.L. Bhyrappa. There have been claims that nearly 20,000 copies of the book were sold, a record breaking figure in the history of Kannada publishing for a work of fiction. (The claims, however, have not been verified.)
For long an ardent supporter of the sangh parivar’s Hindutva agenda, in Aavarana, Bhyrappa conveniently interweaves half-truths with blatant falsehoods and presents this as a work of fiction. Given his claims that the book was based on evidence proved by historical researchers (all of whom belong to the sangh parivar caucus), upon reading the book the lay reader could quite easily form a biased opinion of the Muslim community.
The book portrays the Muslim community as bigoted and out to out-populate the Hindus. It appears to hold the Muslim community responsible for all the sins that Muslim rulers may have perpetrated on Hindus in times past and identifies them as the cause of all the problems the country faces today. In the process, the book aims to whip up Hindu sentiments against the Muslim populace in the country.
Apart from the Muslim community in general and Muslim clerics, writers, filmmakers, etc in particular, the book also targets leftists, secularists and historians who do not agree with the saffron brigade’s version of events past; they are dubbed anti-Hindu. When the book was released, supporters of the sangh parivar hailed it as a great work of fiction while progressive forces denounced it as sheer pamphleteering on behalf of Hindutva forces under the guise of literature.
As this debate raged, Anantha Murthy publicly derided Bhyrappa, calling him a “college-level debater” which, in fact, is exactly what he is. This roused the ire of the rightist forces so much that the leading Kannada daily, Vijaya Karnataka, actually launched an SMS campaign against Anantha Murthy. Vijaya Karnataka (now owned by Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd of The Times of India group) is another sangh parivar mouthpiece that calls itself a newspaper. It came as no great surprise therefore when the paper carried two pages filled with anti-Anantha Murthy opinions sent in by its saffron brigade readers.
Protesting this vociferous attack on Anantha Murthy, some of us got together and published a selection of essays critiquing Aavarana, a selection that was fairly well received.
The reason why Aavarana has been dealt with in such detail here is its growing presence on the Hindutva map. So far 15 novels by Bhyrappa have already been translated from the Kannada into other Indian languages and today work is afoot to bring out Aavarana in Hindi and other languages. Considering the amount of unadulterated venom it spews at a segment of our population, it is necessary that intellectuals and progressives in other states counter the half-truths and blatant lies contained in the book to prevent further damage to the fabric of our society.
Since Anantha Murthy is opposed to the Hindutva agenda and has spoken out against it vociferously in the recent past, and since he attacked the sangh parivar’s favourite writer, Bhyrappa, the parivar were looking for a way to get back at him. To do this they chose to falsely claim that some portions of Anantha Murthy’s most famous novel, Samskara, were ‘vulgar‘. Aware that it would be difficult, in the current context, to label the work ‘anti-Brahmin’, they made the specious claim that the ‘vulgar’ portions in the book made it difficult for teachers to teach it to ‘children’!
The sangh parivar even managed to get some lecturers who were sympathetic to its agenda to sign a memorandum claiming as much and submitted this to the University authorities with a plea that the book be withdrawn as a textbook.
The saffron brigade’s attempt to target Anantha Murthy using Samskara as a pretext came under scathing attack from intellectuals and progressives in the State. For the moment, any move to withdraw the novel from University syllabi has been put in abeyance. But in reality the sangh parivar has merely set the wheels in motion. For, in coming years, universities will no doubt be wary of recommending the works of any progressive writer as a prescribed textbook. And from that point onwards a conscious attempt will be made to avoid introducing any writer who is critical of the sangh parivar to the next generation of students.
***
Meanwhile, as one section of the sangh parivar was busy trying to tarnish Anantha Murthy’s image, another found it necessary to attack C.S. Dwarakanath, chairman of the State Backward Classes Commission.
Earlier this month Dwarakanath and other members of the commission visited Coorg in order to inspect existing facilities for the backward classes there. Some commission members visited the ‘religious site’ of Talacauvery—the source of the Cauvery river. According to reports, the priest at Talacauvery asked them to bring Dwarakanath along so he could also receive the ‘holy water’.
In response, one of them told the priest, “He (Dwarakanath) is an atheist who does not believe in such things. He thinks the entire Cauvery river is holy.”
While Dwarakanath himself was blissfully unaware of the incident, word soon spread to local sangh parivar activists. The next morning, when Dwarakanath was alone with just two police constables on guard duty, more than a hundred ’saffronites’, high on local hooch, laid siege to his room. Led by a former BJP MLA from the area, the drunken crowd surrounded Dwarakanath and demanded why he was “insulting the Cauvery river, insulting Hindu sentiments, and being anti-Karnataka”.
Notwithstanding several attempts to reason with them when Dwarakanath tried repeatedly to explain that he considered all of nature holy, the mob remained unconvinced. Apart from pushing and shoving him around, they forced him to drink the ‘Cauvery water’ they had brought with them in an empty Coca-Cola (!) bottle and forcibly applied tilak on his forehead.
Ever conscious of the big picture, the sangh activists took a cameraman and a reporter from a local TV channel along on their drunken crusade.
Having forced a defenceless Dwarakanath to meekly receive the ‘holy water’ and suffer their tilak application, the saffronites made sure that the entire incident was then telecast across the State. As if that were not enough, they also issued a press note to all publications, falsely claiming that “Dwarakanath had apologised to them for having insulted Hindu sentiments and the Cauvery”.
***
These three instances only emphasise the obvious. It is abundantly clear that much of the media in Karnataka today has been saffronised, that Karnataka’s Universities are now being made to bow to the sangh parivar’s unreasonable demands and that the Hindutva brigade, despite its claims that all Hindus are one, will brazenly attack even the head of the Backward Classes Commission in the name of Hindu sentiments.
These developments could perhaps be expected, thought ‘natural’, in a State ruled by the BJP. But as of now Karnataka is under President’s rule. Yet, it is the saffron brigade’s aggressive agenda that dominates the political and public discourse. This pointed shift in Karnataka’s polity is the legacy of a BJP-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition that was in power for all of 20 months.
During this short span of time, a systemic infiltration of the system inflicted grievous damage. Today Hindu progressives are labelled ‘Naxalites’ even as Muslim progressives are targeted as ‘Islamic terrorists’. The same holds true for many pro-people, pro-secularism organisations as well.
It is no wonder then that the police gleefully entertain complaints by saffronites falsely alleging that secularists like Prof Nagari Babaiah of the People’s Democratic Forum ‘insult Hindu gods’ in their public speeches, that Kalkuli Vittal Hegde, leader of the Adivasis living in the Kudremukh forests, has insulted Dalits, that Hegde’s wife is indulging in prostitution, that volunteers working for the rights of the Adivasi people are abetting Naxalites in the area and so on.
Not long ago, the local administration and police rounded up local Muslims, at random, on the basis of specious complaints filed by sangh parivar activists. The same police force turns a blind eye when sangh parivar activists assault Muslims on charges of transporting cattle to slaughterhouses. The same police force coolly releases RSS activists accused of setting a bus on fire and causing the death of two people over the Ram Sethu issue without even a thorough investigation. The list goes on.
Thanks to the police and the administration’s active encouragement of such violent and unlawful behaviour, activists of the sangh parivar enjoy complete immunity and it is they who systematically file innumerable complaints against Muslims and progressive Hindus.
Recently, Pramod Mutalik, leader of the Sri Rama Sena, had the gumption to say, “We have given a list of suspect Muslims to the police at Hubli. It is unfortunate that they have arrested only one person. If the police do not immediately arrest the rest of the people on our list, we will take up widespread protests.”
The sangh parivar has always considered Karnataka its gateway to the south. The last time they were in power, the gates were only partially opened to them but a foothold was all they needed. It was more than enough for them to sow their seeds of hatred. Those seeds have sprouted now and with the elections only a few months away, the BJP will no doubt be reaping a rich harvest.
With the Janata Dal(S) having committed political hara-kiri by supporting the BJP, and the Congress party’s perennial indecision on if and how to counter the sangh parivar, Karnataka, it seems, is unfortunately and irreversibly hurtling towards its new position as the Gujarat of the South.
March 16, 2008
"Jodha Akbar" and street censorship
[Reproduced from Magazine Section / The Hindu, March 16, 2008]
by RISHI VOHRA
| The recent violence in some States over “Jodhaa Akbar” raises the question: Should public intolerance be allowed to hijack a medium that is exclusively the director’s space? |
No space for a rational, public discourse: Emotional reactions against the film "Jodhaa Akbar".
Even before its release, the film invited the ire of certain groups and was subsequently banned in several States. Noted historians have claimed that the basis of the movie, the relationship between Jodhaa and Akbar, is completely faulty and incorrect. The Rajput groups of India are arguing that the name Jodhaa was the name of Jehangir’s wife.
Considering that Indian films are X-rayed by the stringent Indian Censor Board, is it appropriate for films to be subjected to further censorship demands and bans based on public intolerance? After all, should not the Censors be the ultimate authority in deciding what content is suitable for public viewing?
Against freedom of expressionThis new trend of power in the hands of the people denies the filmmaker his/ her right to freedom of expression. A film is a director’s medium and if the director is not permitted to freely express his/ her interpretation of a certain event through the cinematic medium, what further motivation would highly acclaimed directors have in delivering further quality products to the audience?
Gowarikar, and his team, allegedly spent years preparing for the film, researching the period, and taking pains to ensure that its cultural depictions were correct (in having Jodhaa speak Hindi and Akbar Urdu, for example). In fact, he never claimed the film to be a biopic. In all his interviews, he always maintained that it is a fiction based on historical events. But in spite of this disclaimer, the film has invited the wrath of protestors all over the country and even NRI audiences all over the world. These NRI groups have gone a step further and created a website, www.banjodhaaakbar.com , to garner support for this “noble mission” of theirs.
The ban on “Jodhaa Akbar” in certain States of India could be politically motivated. But the NRI audiences are known to be more evolved due to their years of assimilation into more supposedly broad-minded cultures. A member of an NRI group involved in the protests (on the condition of anonymity) said, “Films such as ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ put our Indian culture in bad light by conveniently depicting inaccurate historical facts. It is detrimental for our younger generations because it gives them a wrong insight into the events that occurred in that historical era.”
Contradictory stancesIf such is the case, then why do these NRI audiences patronise Westernised Indian films that portray meaningless themes through scantily-clad actresses? This member is quick to retort, “Such films are purely for entertainment value. The audiences forget the film as soon as they exit the theatre. Besides, such issues do not offend people as much as the faulty depiction of Indian history.”
Then, besides the basic censorship guidelines, how does any filmmaker determine what would or would not offend the audiences? And if these audiences start holding films to ransom close to its release, how does a filmmaker bulletproof his/her film? The truth of the matter is that even after taking immense precautions, filmmakers never know what to expect when their films near their release date.
In the current scenario, the most that filmmakers can do is exercise their freedom of expression and be true to their craft. No filmmaker ever has had the intention of hurting anyone’s religious or cultural sentiment; after all these filmmakers belong to the same culture. By giving power in the hands of the people, the nation has conveniently passed the censorship responsibility to the public who are not qualified to pass such judgments. Besides, considering that filmmakers like Gowariker are known to do extensive research before making a film, are they not more well-informed of that historical era than the public who largely base their opinions on media reports before the film’s release?
It is interesting to note that there was no uproar when K. Asif’s 1960 classic, “Mughal-E-Azam” featured ‘Jodha Bai’ (Durga Khote) as the Rajput wife of Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor). “Mughal-E-Azam” proved to be one of the most successful of films with the film seeing a recent re-release in 2004. Till date, the audiences continue to lap up the film without raising a question about the historical facts. This goes to prove that public intolerance is a recent trend, as documented by the protests and ban on films (such as “Fanaa”, “Water” and “Fire”) mainly in recent years.
A reason why films based on historical facts, such as “Sikander” and “Mughal-E-Azam”, escaped the critique of the public was that they were viewed solely for their entertainment value. In those days, the media had not completely evolved, leaving cinema as the only visual medium of entertainment. This led to the audiences being starved of entertainment and appreciating every film not only for its visual appeal but also for the efforts of the filmmakers who put their lives on hold to deliver such a masterpiece to them (“Mughal-E-Azam” was in the making for nine years). Says Kamal Shah, 65, (now a resident of San Francisco), “Those days it was just films for visual entertainment. Now you see moving images everywhere. Television, DVDs, even billboards are playing advertisements in the form of videos. Only in films, are we able to sit in a dark hall and concentrate on the subject matter. Maybe that’s why we have become so critical.”
Audience’s lossBy assuming the role of critic and viewer, the audience is not only denying the filmmaker the fundamental right of freedom of expression, but also deducting from their own viewing pleasure. The audience should realise that any true filmmaker’s (which Gowarikar has proven himself to be) intention is to entertain the audiences. Most filmmakers watch their own films in the theatre after its release to gauge audience reaction and hear that sweet sound of praise at the end of the screening to convince them of a job well done. Never has it been a filmmaker’s intention to spend Rs. 50 crores to arouse public sentiment in the controversial issues of religion and culture. If that was the case, they would rather make a documentary at a fraction of the cost.
India should feel fortunate in having a film industry that has continued to churn out steady dollops of entertainment to sustain the ever-increasing appetite of an audience that appreciates the few magical hours away from the harsh realities of everyday life. Intolerance should lead to a personal boycott of the film, and not a full-fledged effort to deprive unconcerned people of a complete cinematic experience. At the end of the day, unlike history text books, Indian films are known to be made solely for entertainment value — by Indians who are as proud of India’s culture and history.
In 2006, under the direction of the BJP’s State Youth Wing, the Gujarat Multiplex Owners’ Association refused to screen the Aamir Khan-starrer “Fanaa” in order to reprimand the star for voicing his support for the people displaced by Gujarat’s Narmada dam project. Aamir Khan loyalists believed that the star’s personal point of view had no connection with the release of the film. Nevertheless, the film suffered financially during its release week due to one person exercising freedom of expression, which was completely unrelated to the film’s content. In certain cases, public intolerance stems from the opinions of certain political parties against people who hold a view different from theirs on any issue. This entails a two-step process. First, the political party blows the issue out of proportion and makes it a controversy. Then, they give the issue a communal hue to inflame passions among certain sections of society.
Easy target: Protestors venting their anger against “Fanaa”.
In 2000, Filmmaker Deepa Mehta faced a rude shock a day before the filming of “Water” was to commence in the holy city of Varanasi. She learned that 2,000 protesters had stormed the ghats, destroying and burning the main film set and throwing the remnants into the Ganga in protest against what was ultimately revealed to be false accusations regarding the subject matter. The resulting tensions and economic setbacks led to several years of struggle as Mehta was eventually forced to film “Water” in Sri Lanka, rather than in India.
Political interferenceMehta’s earlier film, “Fire”, had previously attracted hostility from the conservative Hindu community, which objected to her subject matter and portrayal of conservative households in a negative light. Protests and attacks were let loose on cinemas that screened the film. “Fire” had been passed by the Censor Board. It ran in the theatres for three weeks with neither one incident of violence nor one expression of disapproval. After three weeks, a political party decided that the film denigrated Indian culture and it was temporarily banned in India.
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