India: CM of Karnataka, act now against communalisation of the Covid crisis | Report of Press Conference in Bangalore, May 6, 2021

[Great to see environmentalists and well known activists stand up but why they chose to include a communal organisation the 'Communal SIO' in their press conference beats imagination. It does well to damage their reputation]

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CM of Karnataka, act now against communalisation of the Covid crisis

Report of Press Conference held via Zoom on 6th May 2021, 3 pm

Opening the press conference, Ms. Bhargavi Rao, Trustee of Environment Support Group noted “We have lost so many of our loved ones, not so much because of the virus as because of malgovernance.” She drew particular attention to the unnecessary deaths that happened in Gulbarga and Chamrajnagar due to appalling lack of oxygen in hospitals. She pointed out that at a time like this when people are going through such a grave crisis, it is expected that our elected representatives must support us. But shockingly it has emerged that three MLA’s (viz. Mr Uday Garudachar, Mr. Satish Reddy and Mr. Ravi Subramanya) and an MP (Mr. Tejasvi Surya) all representing Bangalore are trying to communalise the situation. “At this juncture we demand that the CM steps in and takes charge. It is in this context that we’ve called for this Press Conference. We have a group of people from across civil society organisations, individuals, researchers and people from the public health organisations represented to address this press conference”, she explained.

Advocate Maitreyi Krishnan, representative of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) began her intervention by saluting all the frontline workers: the nurses, the doctors, the sanitation workers, the journalists and the pourakarmikas across the state. She highlighted that this is the time where effort must be to mobilise resources to protect the lives of people. However, a deeply distressing incident of communalisation has occurred as is evident from the video that is circulated of the four elected representatives accosting senior BBMP officials with allegations of corruption in bed allotment, but only targeting Muslims and a Christian. Maitreyi agreed that questions of bed allotments, scams and corruption are certainly things which must be looked into. But at the same time she pointed out that what has been done by Mr. Tejasvi Survya  is a clear attempt to provide a communal twist to the situation. She noted that out of a total list of 205 workers only the names of 17 Muslims were read out (almost all the Muslims working there). Mr.  Ravi Subramanya, she pointed, even proceeded to threateningly question if BBMP is running a madrasa or a corporation. While Mr. Satish Reddy asked if  BBMP is a Haj committee. Nothing all these are blatant attempts to promote hatred among communities. “This is an instance where people were persecuted solely on the basis of religion. Such an attempt to promote enmity is highly condemnable”, Maitreyi asserted.

Maitreyi further spoke of Whatsapp messages being circulated calling these 17 people terrorists, as well as blaming a senior officer of the BBMP - as clear attempts to create disharmony in these very difficult times. She observed that this is a time when the majority of people of the state, especially people belonging to deprived sections of society, are undergoing extreme hardship, not not only because of the virus, but also because of the lockdown. Despite this, she highlighted how people  are standing up for each other and going out of their way to selflessly help people in distress. Communalisation, she asserted, is simply unacceptable and said a complaint has been registered in Sidappura police station against the four elected representatives. “We demand that an FIR be registered for this incitement of hatred against Tejasvi Surya, Ravi Subramaniam, Satish Reddy and Uday Garudachar. We demand their arrest. We also demand that strict action be taken against any person who attempts to spread communal hatred in these times'', she concluded

Mr. Ramchandra Guha, historian, renowned writer and columnist, remarked that a year back he had written a column which mentioned that the COVID pandemic MAY be the greatest crisis since partition. A year later he said he is convinced that the qualifier “may” has to be emphatically removed and called the pandemic as THE greatest crisis since partition. “At this time, it's also important to remember the lessons of how to overcome  the trauma and tragedy of partition. Nehru and Patel, were heading the Congress government setting aside their differences and got Baba Sabib Ambedkar and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who were political rivals for over 20 years to work with each other in a national cabinet to heal the wounds of partition, unite the nation and to promote a prudent constitution”, Guha stated.

He noted that the Chief Minister of Karnataka, Mr. B S Yeiyurappa is a wise statesman, experienced and knows the state very well. “That's also true of the other senior leaders in our state - people like Mr Siddharamaih of the Congress or Mr Deve Gowda, our former prime minister - they know the gravity of the situation which these four gentlemen who are stoking trouble may not know.  So maybe all three of them could get together, and take things in hand”, he suggested. He highlighted that the major focus should be on saving lives, and inciting communal hatred at a time like this is a vicious distraction. “Our state cannot afford violence and division at a time like this, where all our attention should be on containing the crisis, alleviating the suffering, making hospital beds available, ensuring there's adequate supply of oxygen and other resources, of showing proper concern and compassion for all, not just doctors, but nurses, sanitation workers, supervisory staff and everyone else” he asserted. Mr. Guha concluded by making an appeal for unity in these difficult times: “This is a major crisis in the time in the life of our sickly, in our state and in our country. It's up to the Chief Minister, as well as the senior opposition leaders, to stand up and stop this poison of communalisation immediately”.

Mr. Leo Saldanha, Coordinator, Environment Support Group addressed the press conference by drawing attention to the representation that is being made to the Chief Minister to act against the communalization of the alleged BBMP Covid Bed allotment scam. He pointed out that the need of the hour, to tackle the health crisis in the city, is to decentralize the public health system. “You don't have to call a central number to get oxygen in your local ward or your local panchayat”, said Mr. Saldanha. He pointed out that every ward and panchayat is elected under the provisions laid out in the Constitution and as constitutional authorities they must deliver secure the right to life to people locally. “Right to life has to be delivered through the Panchayat system, through the Nagarpalika system” is what he noted and went on to highlight that centralized systems are neither ‘understandable’ nor ‘accessible’ to the local public. These are times of disaster and there is a Disaster Management Authority constituted under the Disaster management Act. Although the Act is draconian in nature, the State Government must set aside the oppressing powers and make use of the ‘humanistic powers’ from the law to ‘humanise the entire endeavour’ he argued. He requested everyone to collectively push the government to respond to the sick, to the ones who have lost their close ones and the larger public in general. He further requested the Chief Minister to come forward and stop the communalization that is gaining ground and stop efforts to establish a parallel health system by Mr. Tejasvi Surya. “The only health system that should work is the public health system, everyone should be drafted-private sector, public sector; no MP or MLA should have his own parallel system. It is not a time for politics. The Chief Minister must take strident steps”, asserted Mr. Saldanha.

Mr. Abdul Suhaib, of Students Islamic Organisation commenced by congratulating the civil society fraternity for coming forward to counter the vicious intent of four public representatives in maligning one particular community for the alleged BBMP Covid Bed allotment scam. He stated that the situation in our country is very grim, with the health infrastructure stretched beyond capacity. “The health workers are physically and mentally exhausted, to a level that counselling support has to be extended to them”, pointed out Mr. Suhaib. He expressed grave concern over the fact that  in times such as these, communal comments and statements are only leading to more chaos and pain. He stated that in this current crisis, all communities are trying their best to provide humanitarian relief. He said that statements which incite communal hatred are not worthy of attention and urged everyone to lend conscious attention towards arrangements of most life saving requirements which are not available. He said that irrespective of religion, caste, class, there is a need to pay attention to all in addressing this humanitarian crisis.  He also expressed his worries that the blatant attempt to communalise has put so many young people who are tirelessly working to save lives, especially from Muslim community, at grave risk.

Dr. Sylvia Karpagam, representing Campaign Against Hate Speech, highlighted the lack of preparedness across the public health system, across the board. “From when this pandemic had started, from the perspective of public health, it is obvious that the health care system is not ready. We had a lot of time to set up multiple forms of local infrastructure to combat this situation. As none of this was done, currently we are seeing more critical cases needing immense care and facilities”, she asserted. She also noted that most of those seriously affected are of the poorer sections of the society and since there isn't much knowledge of the current situation, people are overwhelmed by fear and not even taking necessary basic care required.

She also noted the highly stressful conditions being faced by Covid volunteers currently, saying that both their mental and physical health is taking a toll as they try to source oxygen cylinders, medicines and hospitals for Covid patients. “A lot of the Covid volunteers are from the Muslim community. They are working day and night to help people. I think it is very shameful that this situation is being communalised”, she concluded.

Mr Mani P R S, began by saying that we are facing the brunt of two viruses, one is covid-19 and the other is communalism. At normal times, governmental parties tend to focus on religion to gain a following. But efforts to communalise in an emergency is totally unacceptable. He then calls out Mr. Tejasvi Surya questioning if he has any empathy or feelings towards people. Further he adds that India's history is full of rich diversity, secularism and has formed a strong bond of love and compassion amongst the diverse peoples. ”Tejasvi Surya's efforts are futile and will not be allowed to damage this bond”, he asserted. He concluded his comment by saying everyone from every religion, economic section and caste must come together and fight as one against both Covid-19 and communalism.

Ms. Madhu Bhushan of CIEDS echoed Mr. Mani’s thoughts on the two viruses. She expressed concern that there is weak attention to the fact that  coronavirus has really hit the poor and marginalised communities hard, both in the rural and urban areas, and they lack access to health services. She insisted decentralization of health care is critical to extend access to poor communities and to strengthen the public health systems. She stated that even though the health system is overburdened, it is still functioning and providing the much needed care. The health care workers, ASHA workers, etc., are working round the clock and giving the best they can to save lives,  Ms. Madhu said. In such times as these, communal statements by Mr. Tejasvi Surya to derail the process has to be condemned. She also expressed that a lot of things have to be put in place such as covid care centres, upgrading the local PHCs, ensuring there are life saving medicines and medical equipment. She pointed out such matters deserve priority and that all efforts must be directed to get the attention of them. She urged that  Mr. Tejasvi Surya must be held accountable for trying to detract from what is the priority right now. She concluded that in times such as these, there is no place for hateful divisiveness and should be countered.

Concluding the Press Conference, Ms. Bhargavi Rao shared the urgent steps being suggested to  put forth to address the grave Covid crisis across the state:

1. The deaths of COVID patients due to lack of oxygen in Chamrajnagar, in Kalburgi, Belagavi and Yelahanka, is unpardonable.  The enquiries ordered must be completed with urgency, and made public. Action must be initiated against negligence, and corruption if any. 

2. The COVID response strategy must be decentralized so that people are able to access oxygen, physicians, medical care, vaccination, etc. within the ward or panchayat. The entire mechanism should be governed transparently and with accountability.  

3. Ward Committees in urban areas and Panchayats Facilitation Committees must be immediately revived with involvement of those who know the local population well and will address them with a culture of care (and without any political considerations), such as local physicians, principals of schools and colleges, leading lawyers and journalists, NGOs (unaffiliated to any political party), etc.

4. People must be able to access help from their homes, be they rich, poor or middle class, and by calling a number that is responsive at the ward/panchayat levels.  The current system of calling one number in a district, or in the state, is simply not working and is resulting in avoidable agony and deaths.

5. It should be the duty of the municipal, zilla panchayat and district administration to ensure that all supplies are diligently reached to local government levels, and logistical support extended to ensure all gaps are closed.

6. The Disaster Management Cells at the Ward/Panchayat levels must be immediately activated, as directed by the Hon’ble High Court of Karnataka, with participation of community volunteer groups and citizen volunteers and they must be well coordinated with the District Disaster Management Cells. The State Disaster Management Authority, of which you are the Chairperson, must ensure that preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation are performed as part of a continuous process that will cover COVID and future emergencies.  Succour to the affected through household visits to monitor their well-being and help for maintaining physical and mental health should be enabled.

7. Karnataka must take a decision, regardless of any financial considerations, to demand Central support to ensure everyone is vaccinated against COVID for free. The fact that the US Government has now decided to participate actively in WTO negotiations to waive IPR over COVID vaccinations must be seen as an opportunity to demand Indian manufacturers supply vaccines at cost (with marginal profit perhaps), and that public sector vaccination plants are revived post haste. Karnataka must take steps to build its own public sector vaccine production capacities in this regard. 

8. The entire machinery of the local governments and the state must be so coordinated and conducted that there should be no room for pilferage, misallocation of beds and medical facilities. Simply stated, there must not be any room for inefficiency and corruption. Information regarding availability of vaccines, beds, medicines should be displayed publicly at ward/GP levels and on ward-level websites.

9. The Prime Minister’s initiative to make available all medicos (including those in final year MBBS and equivalent medical training levels) to address the pandemic must be taken a step further in Karnataka by ensuring they are facilitated to work at Public Health Centres and Anganwadi levels, and also in every public hospital where there is shortage of medical staff.  Adequate budgetary allocations must be made to ensure the entire public health system works to maximal capacity in the shortest period of time.

10. There is an acute need for outreach at the ward and panchayat levels to maintain covid regulations, encourage testing at the first presentation of any symptom and follow immediately next steps in tackling COVID. A public address system can be an effective way of communicating important instructions for a Covid appropriate behaviour, and also leafleting and poster campaigns to reach every household.

11. Public hospitals at the panchayat and ward levels should be equipped with basic equipment like X-ray and scanning machines to ensure the poor are not pushed to take scans in private scanning centres at unaffordable costs, which puts them in irretrievable debts.  Covid Care Centres should be set up urgently using public infrastructure like government schools, etc at the ward/panchayat level to provide immediate care and attention to those who have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic and for those who cannot isolate themselves at home.

12. The public health machinery and medical professionals drafted from the private medical sector should reach out to all neighbourhoods and houses. This effort will help both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, to take all precautions at home and in Covid Care Centres  and drastically reduce the need for hospitalisation. This step alone will save hundreds of lives and thousands of families needless distress.

13. Ward and panchayat level fever clinics must be completely revived, increased in numbers strictly adhering to covid safety precautions.

14. The state should also ensure availability of fresh masks and hand sanitizers at all public health facilities, not just for staff but also for those visiting the centres for testing, vaccination and general health care. This itself will help reduce infection rates.

15. All hospitals must be inspected by the health department to take stock of the ICU situation, particularly with respect to fire hazard and ensure emergency safety measures are in place. The inspection should also take stock of water and sanitation facilities at all these hospitals. All those functioning under poor conditions must be warned and immediate action must be taken up to fix the problems. With increase in beds at all hospitals infrastructure are being stretched and this will have serious risks.

14. The state must ensure all human resources working in the frontline in treating Covid patients including those living and working in crematoria and graveyards  are adequately compensated for their overtime, with benefits and provisions for leave and recuperation.

17. The state must ensure all women frontline workers are provided with enough PPE and sanitary napkins. Managing a period when in a PPE during the peak summer can be extremely difficult, causing discomfort. The least that can be done is to ensure the women frontline workers have at least enough PPE and sanitary napkins to change during the course of their long working hours.

18. The state must appoint mental health counsellors for all front line workers in every ward and provide tele counselling facilities as the frontline workers traumatised by the number of deaths they are witnessing day after day. This is particularly important in addressing the mental health of doctors, paramedics and nurses who are breaking news of demise of  loved ones, and  will not be able to deal with this  stress and trauma any further.

19. The state must ensure all frontline workers are well hydrated and taking good nutrition. All covid hospitals must be supplied with fruits and beverages for all the frontline staff.

20. We will be happy to work with the governments at all levels in ensuring our public health systems are brought to their feet and made to work to save lives now.  At the same time, we urge you to intervene and stop a parallel system of COVID referrals that is being developed by Shri Tejasvi Surya through BJP Yuva Morcha,  leaching out much needed medical personnel who are in fact required to help revive public health systems.  At this time, no MP and MLA must be allowed to develop such parallel systems which will result in avoidable chaos, and possibly add to the death toll and misery of lakhs who are already suffering.

21. The state must make a statement that there will be zero tolerance towards anyone spreading hate and causing communalism.

22. The state must work with NGOs working in diverse sectors such as women, children, senior citizens, sexual minorities, sex workers, disabled, orphans and others to ensure testing, care and vaccination reaches everyone and ensure no one is left behind.

23. Philanthropies, foundations and CSR support must be welcomed, channeled and focussed on the above in collaboration with the local governments and NGOs.

Note: The full Representation to the  Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka may be accessed at: https://bit.ly/2SwoR3v

The Kannada version of this representation is accessible at: https://bit.ly/2R30cmy

For more details please call: 9880595032 / 9243190014

[This report has been prepared by Sana Huque, Senior Research Associate and Ashwin Lobo, Karthik Anjanappa, Shrestha Chowdhury, Research Associates, ESG]

‘Can you identify Bangladeshi by looking at face’: Karnataka HC slams state

The News Minute

‘Can you identify Bangladeshi by looking at face’: Karnataka HC slams state

The BBMP demolished many huts in a settlement in Bengaluru over suspicions that illegal Bangladeshi immigrants stayed there.

news Court Monday, February 03, 2020 - 19:47

Haripriya Suresh Follow @haripriyas_

"By looking at the face of a person, can one be identified as being a Bangladeshi national?” questioned Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka, slamming the state over the demolition of settlements in Bengaluru over suspicions that illegal Bangladeshi immigrants stayed there. 

The High Court bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Hemant Chandangoudar told that state that it will have to rehabilitate those affected by the demolitions.
The court was hearing the plea filed by the People's Union for Civil Liberties which challenged the demolition of migrant settlements in Bellandur and Whitefield in the city on January 18 and 19.
In a previous hearing, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) distanced itself from the demolitions. On Monday, the state, which was represented by Advocate-General Prabhuling K Navadgi also maintained that it did not have anything to do with the demolition.
Further, he questioned the misuse of power at multiple levels during the process through which the demolition was carried out — the police officer who wrote to the landowners, as well as the BBMP carrying out the demolition. “On the suspicion that they are Bangladeshi, will the police take law into its own hands and write to the owner, and the BBMP act?” he asked.It had turned out that many residents in the migrant settlement were from states like Assam, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and even Karnataka.
CJ Oka also questioned why the police officer is still in service. “The fact that the state has protected the officer shows that all is not well,” he quipped.
He stated that since the problem began with the state, it must take measures to rehabilitate them — either monetarily or otherwise.
He also tore into the authorities, questioning them as to on what basis the people were declared to be Bangladeshi. He stated that nothing seemed to indicate that the police officer visited the site to identify Bangladeshi immigrants.
“Door-to-door survey by a competent authority must be done. Proper verification needs to be carried out,” he said.
“No date was set by the BBMP for demolition. The stand of the state government is that they have not done it. Prima facie, it is impossible to accept that the occupants vacated on their own,” the CJ said.
Lawyers representing the owners of the land where the shanties were razed maintained that those who were squatting on the property left after they “politely requested” them. “Who will believe that people left because they were politely requested to?” the CJ quipped.
The court will pass its final order in the case on February 7.
Read: Who demolished migrant huts claiming Bangladeshi infiltration? BBMP says it didn't
After video claims 'Bangladeshi immigrant' settlement in Bengaluru, BBMP razes 100 huts

NRC: Fear and dismay at ‘India-Bangladesh border’ in Bengaluru | Sudipto Mondal

The Federal

NRC: Fear and dismay at ‘India-Bangladesh border’ in Bengaluru

Sudipto Mondal

6:59 AM, 26 September, 2019

[Photo] Mahima Begum and Mohammed Kabir Khan hailing from Khulna district of Bangladesh live in the Kaali Khaata area of Thubarahalli where they segregate garbage for a living. Civic conditions are far worse in Kaali Khaata than in the areas inhabited by Indian Bengali Muslims. All photos by Sudipto Mondal

“That side of the road is Bangladesh, this side is India. We don’t go there and they don’t come here,” says Jamaal Hassan (43), sounding panicky. “The police should go after them, not us. We are Indians, it’s our birthright to live and work here.”

Hassan is one of the 5,000 Bengali-speaking Muslim labourers who live in a confusing maze of tarpaulin and tin shanties in Thubarahalli village located along the tech corridor of East Bengaluru.

The Bengalis have their own names for the clusters in Thubarahalli. The ‘Bangladeshi side’ is called ‘Kaali Khaata’ (Bengali slang for the waste recycling) because garbage segregation is their main occupation. The ‘Indian side’ is called Laal Maati (red earth) where most are employed in the construction sector.

The actual Indo-Bangladesh border is at least 2,000 kilometers away. But the situation in Thubarahalli is as grim as in India’s border states, particularly Assam, where the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was recently updated to identify illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

The reason for Jamaal’s anxiety in faraway Thubarahalli’s ‘mini-Bengal’ is that a similar scenario is set to unfold in Karnataka where tens of thousands of Bengali Muslims are employed across the informal sectors of construction, waste recycling and agriculture.

The state government, following orders of the central home ministry, is weeks away from opening a detention centre for illegal foreigners in the city with a special focus on nabbing illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

The detention centre for illegal foreigners in Bengaluru is weeks away from opening and will focus on illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
It will make Karnataka the the second Indian state, after Assam, to have such an exclusive facility to hold people declared as illegal foreigners by the courts.

The BJP’s national vision

The Bengaluru detention centre is apparently just the first step towards the larger vision of the BJP, which said in its 2019 election manifesto that it would compile NRCs across the country and deport undocumented immigrants, particularly those from Bangladesh.

Addressing Parliament in July, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said, “We want to stop infiltration and also push every single infiltrator out of the country. As far as Hindu refugees are concerned, we are bringing the Citizenship Amendment Bill to give them Indian citizenship.”

Assam was plunged into chaos in July 2018 when four million people, mostly Bengali-speaking Muslims ostensibly, were left out of the first draft of the citizens register. The large-scale exclusions led rights groups to accuse the Hindu nationalist BJP state and central governments of carrying out an anti-Muslim purge.

The state, with a 35 per cent Muslim population, has been on the edge after 1.9 million names were left out of the final NRC list published on August 31.

As in Assam, so also in Thubarahalli, it is difficult to tell which Bengali Muslim is from Bangladesh. Only the residents know the difference between Kaali Khaata and Laal Maati.

They speak the same Urdu and Sylheti-infused dialect of Bengali that is spoken in districts on both sides of the 4,156-km international border. The minor variations are hard to tell apart even for a native Bengali speaker like this reporter.

Women’s ornaments and fabrics, men’s sarongs and hairdos, children’s games, the cuisine, the music blasting in the carrom clubs where the men unwind in the evening — all reflective of a common culture that is influenced as much by Islam as by an amorphous pan-Bengali consciousness.

Bengali Muslim workers hailing from West Bengal’s border districts such as Malda, Murshidabad and Dinajpur unwind after a hard day’s work in carrom clubs like this which are spread across Laal Maati.
Why Thubarahalli, why Karnataka?

Senior Kannada language journalist and political commentator, Irshad Uppinangady says that trouble has been brewing for Bengali Muslim labourers in Karnataka ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power in the country in 2014 on the back of a right-wing surge.

“Like for Donald Trump and hardline Republicans in the US, who want to build a wall on the Mexican border, anti-Bangladeshi xenophobia and Islamophobia are central themes in the Hindutva narrative of Modi and BJP,” Irshad tells The Federal.

Even as the humanitarian crisis triggered by the NRC in Assam was making international headlines, Irshad says BJP leaders in Karnataka and regional big media outlets sympathetic to the party started raising the pitch against Bengali Muslims in the state.

“There were centre-spread features and prime time debates in right-wing news outlets. Bengali Muslims were openly described as a terrorist threat in the media by senior journalists and BJP leaders,” he says.

BJP MP from Bengaluru, PC Mohan is one of the party’s flag-bearers on the issue and described by many as the man behind the idea of the Bengaluru detention centre.

Speaking to The Federal, he describes himself as a “humble servant” of the party and says, “I am only implementing the vision of our leaders Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.” He warns that the detention centre in Bengaluru is only the beginning.

“We will work towards building such facilities in other districts too. There are thousands of illegal Bangladeshis in the coffee plantations of Kodagu and Chikmangalur districts, many more in the farms of north Karnataka,” he says.

Irshad, however, argues out that the Bengaluru detention centre would not have been possible without the support of leaders from the so-called secular Congress party, which was in power in the state until recently.

“It has been a feature of the Congress to be on the back foot and tread a soft-Hindutva line every time the BJP intensifies a campaign based on religious polarisation.”

Senior state Congress leaders Ramalinga Reddy and G Parameshwara, Irshad adds, matched the BJP’s anti-Bangladeshi and anti-Muslim rhetoric step for step. “They both held the post of home minister (in-charge of law and order) and played a key role in encouraging the police against Bengali Muslims by making public statements against the community,” he says.

Reddy and Parameshwara, however, refused to speak to The Federal on the issue.

Harassed and discriminated

R Kaleemullah, from the city-based NGO Movement for Justice, says that in the past five years, Bengali Muslim labourers in Bengaluru have been harassed endlessly by the city’s civic officials and the police.

“For the BJP and the police, using the Bangladeshi tag is just an excuse to target Muslims. There have been dozens of cases in the last five years where people with authentic Indian IDs have been falsely implicated as illegal foreigners,” he says.

Many of these cases fell flat in the courts, Kaleemullah says, thanks to the efforts of the city’s human rights lawyers. “When they realised it wasn’t going to be easy to fix people in such cases, the police, at the instance of BJP leaders, started filling false cases of theft, prostitution and drug trafficking against them.”

Kaleemullah says most of the energy of human rights activists and lawyers is concentrated in Thubarahalli. “There are much larger Bengali Muslim settlements in Sarjapur, Bellandur, Hosur and other parts of the city’s outskirts where we have not been able to do much work. The situation there and in other parts of the state is much worse,” he says.

Kaleemullah is careful to point out that he and the other activists are only working to rescue genuine Indian citizens. “In Modi’s India, as a Muslim, I can very easily be bracketed as a Bangladeshi supporter or even a terrorist sympathiser. Our struggle is only to ensure that no Indian suffers. The Bangladeshis are extremely poor people but we can’t save them,” he says.

Areas like Kaali Khaata are where the city’s garbage gets segregated. The unsanitary conditions and the heaps of garbage make for a post apocalyptic picture.

Bangladeshis: The backbone of Bengaluru’s garbage management

In Thubarahalli’s Kaali Khaata, the residents are surprisingly candid about being from Bangladesh.

“I am from Khulna district of Bangladesh. I have been living here for 12 years and before that I was in Delhi for 20 years. What is there to hide? I’m here because there’s work. I’m not stealing or murdering people for money,” says Mahima Begum (40).

She is also open about the fact that she and her family got voter IDs made through a broker for a bribe of ₹2,000 a piece and Aadhaar cards for ₹1,000 each.

Mahima and her husband Mohammad Kabir Khan (48) say that there are at least 2,000 Bangladeshis among the 5,000 Bengali Muslims in Thubarahalli. “This is still a small settlement, the ones in Sarjapur and Hosur are double this size. Everybody is in the Kaali Khaata business,” Kabir says.

Confirming this, former Bengaluru city council member M Paari says, “Bangladeshis are the backbone of the garbage recycling industry in the city. Earlier it would be Telugu-speaking Dalits, but they slowly moved away into construction where wages are better and more likely to be paid.”

According to Paari, contractors hired by the city corporation to transport garage to the recycling centres are notorious for underpaying, delaying and defaulting on payments to workers. “Bangladeshis are the only ones who are desperate enough to do this inhuman work. They depend on money from selling scrap not on the wages from contractors,” he says.

Kabir confirms this and says that he is supposed to be paid ₹10,000 per month to transport dry waste to the outskirts of the city but has been paid only ₹3,000 for the last one year.

Mahima insists that things are still not as bad as back home in Bangladesh where, according to her, essentials are more expensive and wages lower. “We make around ₹12,000 from selling the garbage that he collects,” she says and trails off, “copper, aluminum, iron, paper, plastic, bottles, human hair, mattresses, shoes and jackets.”

About the drive to oust Bangladeshis from Bengaluru, she says, “We have all the Indian ID cards.” Asked what she plans to do if the police discover that her ID is fake, she says, “There’s nobody here to speak for us. If they don’t want us here, we will go back. They can’t shoot us, can they? But if we go, who will do this work?”

What would they do in Bangladesh if things are as bad as they say? “Same work, maybe work in the ship-breaking yards in Chittagong. We don’t know any other work, this is our skill. That’s why contractors all the way from Bengaluru come to hire us,” Kabir says.

The couple, whose hut is overrun by heaps of dry garbage, thinks that life is better on the other side of the road in Laal Maati. “They have proper IDs; that’s why they can fight the police. They can work in any field but we cannot because we are always afraid of being caught.”

As things go, those in Laal Maati think that the people of Kaali Khaata have it better.

“There’s a lot of money in garbage. A kilo of human hair sells for ₹3,000,” says Jamal dismissively when asked about the terrible living conditions in Kaali Khaata. “Can people like you and me sit for days and pluck hair out of heaps of garbage? No, but the Bangladeshis can,” he says condescendingly.

He resents their presence in the area and blames them for Laal Maati’s troubles with the police. “We will be more than willing to show the police who the Bangladeshis are but they are only after us just because we are Muslim,” he says.

The residents of Laal Maati went the extra mile to prove their love for India. They celebrated the country’s Independence Day by hoisting the Indian flag in Laal Maati. “We invited the police also for the flag hoisting,” Jamal says, “But they did not come.”

[Photo] Bengali Muslim residents of Lala Maati celebrating india’s independence to prove their patriotism.
Responding to fears that innocents might suffer as a result of the drive against undocumented Bangladeshis in Karnataka, the state’s additional director general of police for law and order (ADGP-L&O), Kamal Pant says that the police will do its job professionally.

“They are being hired because Bangladeshi labour is cheaper. The department will make contractors aware of the security and legal implications of hiring illegal foreigners,” he says.

India: Surprise surprise, there is now a Francois Gautier (Consul General of France in Bangalore) is he the same person as the famous hindutva driven Francois Gautier ? The French authorties in Delhi would do well to clarify

Courtesy call on by  Mr. Alexandre Ziegler, Ambassador of France to India and Mr. François Gautier, Consul General of France today.  @FranceinIndia @fgautier26 pic.twitter.com/KsTikWP99Y

— CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) June 7, 2018

[Has the Karnataka CM made an error is using the twitter handle of the Hindutva laden Francois Gautier @fgautier26 ]

India: Bangalore Woman Faces Police Case For Facebook Posts On Yogi Adityanath following complaint by BJP Yuva Morchas

ndtv.com

Bengaluru Woman Faces Police Case For Facebook Posts On Yogi Adityanath

Bengaluru | Press Trust of India | Updated: March 22, 2017 08:54 IST

BJP Yuva Morchas accused a woman of posting "obscene, morphed and tampered" images. (File)

Bengaluru:  Bengaluru Police lodged a criminal case against a woman for making "objectionable posts"on her Facebook page which allegedly depicted Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in "poor light."

A First Information Report or FIR was filed against the woman on complaint of BJP Yuva Morcha members, said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) S Ravi.

"The BJP Yuva Morcha members filed a complaint against Prabha N Belavangala for uploading objectionable posts on her Facebook page, depicting Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister in a poor light," Ravi told PTI.

In its complaint, the BJP Yuva Morcha accused the woman of posting "obscene, morphed and tampered" images, purported to be of UP Chief Minister Adityanath, on the social media site, he said.

He said the FIR has been filed under Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to defamation, promoting enmity on grounds of religion, conducing mischief besides offences under the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Bengaluru city BJP Yuva Morcha president Sapthagiri Gowda claimed the images prima facie appear to be morphed and digitally tampered, and also "depicted Adityanath in a very poor light and is highly defamatory in nature."

He also alleged that Prabha has acted knowing fully well that it would cause the breach of public peace and also argued that the Facebook posts violate several penal provisions.

Section 153A relates to promoting enmity between two groups on grounds of religion, race, place or birth, residence or language and 292A to printing of grossly indecent or scurrilous matter.

IPC Section 499 pertains to defamation and 500 to punishment for defamation, while 505 is about "statement conducing to public mischief."

Mr Gowda alleged that Prabha is a "habitual mischief and rumour monger" and had even earlier tried to create disharmony in society by publishing inflammatory content on Facebook.

"FIRs had also been lodged against her earlier as well, for similar offences," Mr Gowda claimed.

India: Meet The People Who Turned Bengaluru Into A City Of Fear And Despair (T.S. Sudhir)

Huffington Post India

Meet The People Who Turned Bengaluru Into A City Of Fear And Despair

he faultlines can no longer be ignored.

14/09/2016

TS Sudhir
Contributing Editor, HuffPost India

Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images
Vehicles are burnt by protesters at a bus depot in Bengaluru, September 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Stringer via Getty Images)

On Monday, Bengaluru saw for itself how Kannada activism has been hijacked. The preserve of intellectuals till the 1980s, it has progressively been lumpenised. Drawing on the Shiv Sena model of sub-nationalism and extortion to fuel itself, it culminated in manic Monday when competing groups out to control Bengaluru decided to log it out of its global image as India's Silicon Valley.

In a matter of a few hours, Bengaluru crashed into a deep gorge, a valley of fear and despair.

Over 500 people have been detained by the Bengaluru police in the last 24 hours. A majority of them rowdy sheeters in the city, mainly operating out of the northern and eastern parts of Bengaluru. On Monday, they had worked in tandem, converting areas in north and south-west Bengaluru into a theatre of arson, loot and destruction.

Over the past few years, several fringe groups have spread their tentacles in Bengaluru, in the garb of protecting Kannadiga pride. Carrying the red and yellow Kannada flag, the bigger groups are Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, Jaya Karnataka, Kannada Okkoota and Kannada Sena. But as the workload to carry out assignments grew, they have also grown amoeba-like into several smaller branches, available for a hit on speed dial.


It is only ironic that in outsourcing city Bengaluru, the task to derail Bengaluru is outsourced by shady political operators to these roll-call outfits. Bengaluru today is run by these people, whose groups have a track record of fomenting trouble at the drop of a coin.

Vatal Nagaraj is the most visible of these fringe group leaders, a rent-a-cause activist with the dubious claim of having organised over 10,000 protests in the last four decades. This maverick was the most visible face during the Karnataka bandh last week, his protest gulping the tonic of linguistic chauvinism to indulge in rabble-rousing. He took on Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw for her sarcastic tweet that Bengaluru should be renamed "Bandh-luru" and warned that anyone living in Karnataka will have to toe its line.

AFP/Getty Images
Bangalore, September 12, 2016. MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/Getty Images.

Narayana Gowda heads Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, which agitates on issues as diverse as jobs for Kannadigas, imposition of English over Kannada, Cauvery dispute or Karnataka's border disputes. His Vokkaliga credentials helps him bond with politicians of the same caste, who have turned a blind eye to the Vedike's over-the-top activities.

There are others, with more shades of grey. Muthappa Rai, who heads Jaya Karnataka, was allegedly once a Dawood Ibrahim aide and reportedly involved in several murders. He was arrested in 2002 and extradited from Dubai and was described by filmmaker Ramgopal Varma as the "Bahubali of the underworld". His outfit's website claims a membership of over 7 lakh.

Sridhar, popularly referred to as "Agni" Sridhar, is a former rowdy, who now claims to be an intellectual. He even wrote a script based on the Bengaluru crime scene and directed a Kannada film Thamassu in 2010. His Kannada Sene, established six years ago, has taken on Shiv Sena in the Karnataka-Maharashtra border districts to assert Kannada supremacy.

Most of the youth are aged between 25 and 30 and are either daily wage labourers, construction workers or small-time property dealers. The red and yellow scarf around their neck turns them into a warrior on the street.

It now transpires that the Karnataka bandh on Friday was largely a Nagaraj and Karnataka Rakshana Vedike show, both scoring high on TRPs of a different kind — Turmoil Rating Points. With the Vedike and Jaya Karnataka in direct competition to control Bengaluru, Monday's violence was the result of competition between these fringe groups taking its toll on the city.

Senior police officers confirm that a majority of those picked up owe allegiance to these three outfits, even though all these fringe groups deny any hand in the violence. Most of the youth are aged between 25 and 30 and are either daily wage labourers, construction workers or small-time property dealers. The red and yellow scarf around their neck turns them into a warrior on the street.

Over the years, these fringe groups, emboldened by political protection, freelance for anyone who wants to use their services for a cause or against a rival. Many of them are known to run protection services, like mafia gangs, dividing Bengaluru into zones and areas. They also make their money on big-ticket land deals. Which is why the red and yellow flag today is used by shopkeepers not as a symbol of pride in being a Kannadiga but more to ward off troublemakers.

Senior police officers say this "parallel policing ends up enhancing the brand equity of these hoodlum gangs". Contrast it with how Bengaluru's brand equity has taken a hit with images of arson going viral. The fear factor that Monday has created, most feel, will come in handy when the groups go to collect funds from commercial establishments in the run-up to Karnataka Rajyotsav (Karnataka Formation Day) on 1 November.

The present situation gives Karnataka police an excellent opportunity to purge Bengaluru of these elements. All it needs to do is to seize the cellphones of those detained, peruse their call records, find out who called who in the 72 hours between Friday and Monday and connect the dots. The question is whether the black sheep in the political establishment will greenlight the action plan.

In 2009, when Shankar Bidari was Bengaluru's top cop, the police decided to call the Kannada outfits' bluff and cracked down on them. But in the last two years, they have gained strength again. "The party in power in Karnataka — irrespective of who it is — is apprehensive about taking them on because they fear it will be perceived as anti-Kannada. So, no clear cut orders are given and the police keep waiting," says a senior officer.

The fear factor that Monday has created, most feel, will come in handy when the groups go to collect funds from commercial establishments in the run-up to Karnataka Rajyotsav (Karnataka Formation Day) on 1 November.

The fact is not one but two Bengalurus exist. It suits everyone to showcase only the magnificent Vidhana Soudha, MG Road, Commercial Street and Electronic City as the real Bengaluru. Unfortunately, it also survives cheek-by-jowl with its seedy Siamese twin, which thrives on divisiveness and rancour.

So the "this is not the Bengaluru I know" line is only for those who ignored these faultlines that exist in Karnataka's capital, like in any other developing city. Time for the political and police leadership to draw the Laxman rekha and tell these troublemakers of Bengaluru — This far and no further.

India: Why did Bengaluru burn?

livemint.com - Sep 19 2016

by R. Sukumar
Tamil Nadu-bound buses in flames after they were torched by pro-Karnataka activists during a protest over the raging Cauvery water row in Bengaluru last Monday. Photo: PTI

In the early 2000s, soon after Infosys Ltd had built an impressive, and expansive, new wing of its campus in Bengaluru’s Electronics City, I met the company’s then chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy.

As we walked around the campus, talking of business and people, and the brightly coloured umbrellas stacked in the reception of almost every building, he pointed to a couple of the company’s housekeeping staff in their brown uniforms. They were from nearby slums and low-income neighbourhoods, Murthy said, and it was important that they believed they were sharing in Infosys’s growth. I worry about what would happen if they didn’t, he added.

He and I knew the answer even then, and India and the world, last Monday, when the city burnt for a few hours. By numbers alone (one dead, around 100 buses burnt, Rs.20,000 crore of productivity and business losses to companies), the violence the city saw wasn’t significant—a sign of the troubled times in which we live—but it was almost as if, for a few hours, someone had peeled back the motherboard of India’s own Silicon Valley, and shown us the ugliness beneath. [. . .]

FULL TEXT: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/crNfAzYcEHdtLQovz24tTP/Why-did-Bengaluru-burn.html

India - Cauvery row: Fear and panic spread across Bengaluru

The Times of India

Cauvery row: Fear and panic spread across Bengaluru
Arun Dev | TNN | Sep 13, 2016, 07.02 AM IST
SUDDEN SHUTDOWN: Within a few hours, there was utter chaos on the streets of Bengaluru as people rushed to the safety of their homes. Cops had a tough time controlling the protesters and ensuring there was no widespread damage to life and property.SUDDEN SHUTDOWN: Within a few hours, there was utter chaos on the streets of Bengaluru as people rushed to the... Read More
BENGALURU: By Monday afternoon, a thick cloud of smoke could be seen on Mysuru Road from Vidhana Soudha. As one approached the City Market, the plumes could be seen at several locations. With all bus services towards Mysuru Road stopped, hundreds were seen walking on Mysuru flyover to get home.

Spreading urban unrest - with arson attacks on Tamil Nadu registered vehicles - engulfed Bengaluru-Mysuru road, where more than 60 vehicles, mostly trucks and buses, were set on fire. One of the worst-affected areas on Mysuru Road was Timber Yard Layout, where on a stretch a little over 1km long, at least eight trucks went up in flames. The trucks belonged to a transport company, whose owner requested his name be withheld.

Over 20 trucks had been parked inside the godown on Monday morning. A group of men barged into the compound. "They went around looking at registration numbers and asked us for the keys of Tamil Nadu registered vehicles. When we resisted, they said they would set the godown on fire. After we backed out and gave them the keys, they drove some trucks and pushed some out, and set them on fire," said the manager.

Many Tamil drivers, unaware of the violence, were trapped in the city, once the violence began. Without a place to hide their large vehicles, they were sitting ducks for the mobs.

In a desperate attempt to escape, a truck driver scratched the TN registration from his truck and wrote 'KA' with black paint. But his luck ran out when the mob stopped and asked him to speak near the Satellite Bus Stand. He was made to drive and park across Mysuru Road and pulled out of the vehicle.Protesters rammed a wooden log into the driver's compartment and set the truck's cargo on fire.

At one place on Mysuru Road, police intervention averted a possible clash between two groups after some miscreants pelted stones in an area which has many Tamil-speaking people. In the clash, one person suffered minor injuries, which resulted in both sides pelting stones. However, a police personnel arrived quickly and dispersed the crowd.

Over 100 phone calls were received by the fire control room. Alerted by public of a plastic godwon on fire near Hegganahalli main road, North Bengaluru, one fire tender was pressed into service around 7.30pm . Miscreants set the fire tender vehicle on fire after chasing away police. Miscreants damaged an empty BMTC bus near Goraguntepalya.

source URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Cauvery-row-Fear-and-panic-spread-across-Bengaluru/articleshow/54302612.cms

Talk of cosmopolitan of Bangalore is no more than a mythicised past (Janaki Nair)

The Hindu, February 9, 2016

Being cosmopolitan in India
by Janaki Nair


Bengaluru’s much-touted cosmopolitanism is no more than a mythicised past. We must urgently and consciously develop a new ethics that respects, and responds humanely to, the strangers in our cities

Once more, following the recent attack on the Tanzanian woman in Bengaluru, as has happened in each instance when order breaks down, the city’s alleged “cosmopolitanism” has been called to account. In August 2012, when thousands of people from the North-eastern States responded in panic to threats on social media and fled the city, a similar anxiety about disappearing “cosmopolitanism” was raised. There is something vaguely reassuring in the collective clicking of tongues and wringing of hands over a remembered, indeed mythicised past.

To begin with, let us ask whether such an appellation, assuming it has only positive connotations, was ever deserved in a city like Bengaluru. At the risk of earning the well-shaped wrath of fellow Bengalureans, let me explain that nostalgia for a “peaceful” past apart, it would be difficult to assert that “Asia’s Silicon Valley” had even a history of toleration of difference. If it was, to be fair, a town that showed high levels of social peace in the early post-Independence decades, it was less because its citizens were “cosmopolitan” and more because the stresses and strains of becoming a metropolis, a democracy, and of being claimed as a regional capital had barely begun. In other words, while Bengaluru may not have seen the same organised and institutionalised xenophobic violence against a wide range of migrants and “outsiders” as Mumbai did since the 1960s, it has not been immune to explosions against different social groups.

A divided city

Bengaluru’s status as a “divided city” — a British-ruled civil and military station and an old city which came under the Mysore state — came to an end only in 1949 when the two sides were conjoined in one municipality. By the 1950s, as more intra-State migration into the city began, a gradual demand began to be made for privileging those of the linguistic region of Karnataka over outsiders, notably Tamils. If most of the city was not riven by the divides that were nurtured, sometimes by managements themselves, in Bengaluru’s prestigious public sector units, it was because they were somewhat segregated from the rest of the city. But soon, battles over language, but also land and water, began to be staged in the State capital, culminating in the exodus of Tamils in 1991, and not much later, virulent attacks on Muslims in 1994. These tears in the urban fabric have not been easy to repair.

Bengaluru remained a divided city despite the spatial and municipal integration: as U.R. Ananthamurthy’s anguished essay in 2006, following the resistance to renaming the city, had it, the gulf between the English- and Kannada-speaking cities of Bengaluru had reached planetary proportions! He hoped that the name change would become a step towards Kannadisation, which he defined as the “ability to belong to the world at large even as one is rooted in one’s Kannadaness”. No one can deny that Ananthamurthy belonged to the world at large, as much as the world was made his own. Yet his was a lonely voice among those who did not want to see the Sensex fall, or call centres shut shop and leave the city which had opened its arms to information-rich technologies and the employability it brought in its wake.

Language and exclusion

This brings me to the second point: why then has there been a persistent yoking of the term cosmopolitan with the city of Bengaluru? No marks here for realising that it has only meant that migrants and even long-time residents, especially of the former Cantonment, are not obliged to speak the local language! For some time, it was, for historical reasons, the space which was uniquely self-sufficient in English. Unlike many other parts of India, as erstwhile residents of the Cantonment knew only too well, even dhobis and autorickshaw drivers were conversant in English, making the new entrant comfortable in the extreme. Provided that the new entrant also spoke English. With the hordes of Hindi-speaking techies and workers who flooded the city, a new lingua franca was coursing the streets of Bengaluru, but it was still not Kannada. Kannada’s dominated status has continued, despite its many foot soldiers and the name change.

Still, there were hordes of foreign students in the 1970s and early 1980s: Bengaluru was the favoured destination of Malaysians, Ethiopians, Nigerians and Kenyans, and most of all Iranians, who trained in engineering, dentistry or agricultural sciences, and were tolerated, if only for the money they pumped into the local economy. The foreign student profile has changed a good deal now, and this may have to do with the political fortunes and new institutional structures of their own countries.

Apart from these peculiarities, there are changes that are sweeping over urban life in India to which Bengaluru is not immune. Those of us who are leading increasingly securitised lives know that we are being seen, documented and possibly controlled by technologies and powers over which we have little control. The ecology of fear has been enhanced by the multiplication of unnamed terrors. If we earlier feared the occasional pickpocket and harasser of women, we are now enjoined, by disembodied and jarring interruptions to our shopping pleasures, fond farewells at railway stations, and in public places, to be wary of strangers, unidentified objects and suspicious movements. It is patriotic now to be vigilantly suspicious and even more so to report suspicious activity, not just of strangers but of neighbours and tenants alike.

All this does not bode well for even the loosest definitions of cosmopolitanism. A city by definition is a space, as innumerable historians and sociologists have already told us, which ideally privileges and nurtures the unexpected encounter, and calls on its citizens to be able to respond humanely even to those who are not linked to us in familial, ethnic, nationalist or caste affiliations. But the preferred mode of governance in Indian cities, especially but not only in the colonial period, was via community heads, local dadas, caste groupings and so on which even the most robust resident welfare associational practices have found difficult to dislodge or replace. If even Bengaluru does not conform to any definition of cosmopolitanism, can any city qualify?

The Kochi example

In an investigation that he undertook some years ago, Ashis Nandy explores an aspect of city life that thrives in a place like Kochi/Cochin, and is seriously threatened in most other regions of India. It is a place that nurtures, though perhaps quite unself-consciously, “precolonial traditions of cultural pluralism”. It has a long history of accommodating peoples of different regions both from the hinterland and across the seas. There is a commingling of several religions, including, unusually, Judaism. Its capacity to absorb “the outsiders”, all of whom learn to speak the language (Malayalam) and join its plural alimentary pursuits (including, as his example shows, the Bharatiya Janata Party functionaries who tuck into a beef-and-rum lunch) set it apart from other equally large cities. As the lively and well-attended Kochi Biennale, which has been running since 2012, also shows, it is possible for such spaces to nurture not just creativity on a spectacular scale but a more unified public presence than at many comparable citywide festivals.

These are qualities to be prized since the majority of Indian cities are disfigured by combats over indigeneity, language nationalism, communal antagonism and fierce battles over who may be defined as “sons of the soil”. And of course tensions about race and gender. They make the “alternative cosmopolitanism” of Cochin an impossibility. For how long will such exceptionalism continue? One wonders whether the ineffable essence, or as Mr. Nandy puts it, “a culturally embedded entity”, will succumb to the pressures that find easy targets elsewhere. Despite the fact that workers from the Hindi heartland arriving in the near past have shown no obligation to learn the language, Kochi’s ability to assimilate immigrants into its linguistic cosmos is in sharp contrast to that other city of the south that is undeservedly called “cosmopolitan”.

We need not place on ourselves the unbearable burden of loving each other in order to nurture true cosmopolitanism. But neither can we rely on the ineffable essence that Mr. Nandy identifies for Kochi. Instead, as the attacks on the Tanzanian woman and others in Bengaluru reveal to us, we must urgently and consciously develop a new ethics that respects, and responds humanely to, the strangers in our cities. But for now, suspicion, fear and envy are our principal public feelings, even in Bengaluru.

(Janaki Nair is Professor of History at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.)

Colour of hate: Attack on Tanzanian girl shows racism is alive and well in India (Shuma Raha)

The Times of India

Colour of hate: Attack on Tanzanian girl shows racism is alive and well in India
February 4, 2016, 9:00 pm IST Shuma Raha in Random Harvest | India | TOI

How do you tackle racism in a country where few admit that it exists? How do you solve a problem that the state insists is simply not there?

We act racist in so many obvious ways, but will hotly deny any such slur on our national character. We are fifty shades of brown, but the lighter we are on that colour scale, the better we like ourselves — and others. Whether it is the humongous popularity of fairness creams or the fair factor in matrimonial ads for brides, they all point to our inherent loathing for the dark-skinned. Yet ask us if we are racist, and we are instantly amazed by the very idea.

The shocking incident in Bengaluru last Sunday in which an angry mob thrashed a 21-year-old Tanzanian girl once again spotlights the curious relationship we Indians have with racism.

Consider the circumstances of the incident. On the night of January 31, a Sudanese man runs over and kills a 35-year-old woman on the outskirts of the city. He is attacked by a mob (violent vigilantism is now the inevitable endgame of almost any fatal road accident) until he is rescued by the police and taken into custody. Thirty minutes later a Tanzanian female student with four friends happen to drive through the same spot. The mob, its bloodlust clearly unsated, pounce upon them and beat them up too. In the ensuing melee, the girl’s top allegedly gets torn.

Terrified, her clothes in shreds, she tries to escape the rampaging mob by getting into a bus. But the passengers push her right back into the midst of her tormentors. And when she finally goes to the police, the law keepers turn her away and do not immediately take down her complaint.

There has been considerable outcry over the incident since it came to light on Wednesday. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has voiced her shock and dismay; The Tanzanian high commissioner has sent a ‘note verbale’ to the Indian government protesting the incident; and the Bangalore police, galvanised into action by the outrage, has now arrested five men.

But no one has uttered the “R” word. Karnataka home minister G Parameshwara said, “The attack on the Tanzanian student was a not a racial attack. It was in response to an earlier incident.” Police commissioner NS Megharikh chimed in, also insisting that it was not a race-related hate crime.

Okay, so why was the Tanzanian girl attacked at all?

It has been argued that it was a case of “mistaken identity”, that the mob mistook the girl and her friends for those who had caused the accident (as if to say that had there been no “mistake”, the thrashing and alleged stripping of the girl would be perfectly justified). However, since the mob had already been venting its ire on the Sudanese man who was responsible for the accident, the “mistaken identity” theory falls flat on its face.

The ugly truth is that the Tanzanian girl and her friends were attacked precisely because they bore the same racial features as the Sudanese man. Because one African national had committed a crime, the good people of Hesaraghatta Road in Bengaluru decided to teach a lesson to any African they could lay their hands on.

You wouldn’t do that if you didn’t nurture a glowering hatred for that community of “others” — those who are different in features, skin tone, language and culture. So one incident is seized upon with righteous viciousness and at once turned into a licence to go after that entire community, that entire race, with sticks and stones.

It’s a fantastic excuse to rain abuse on those “different” folks and tell them to get out and stay out. It’s exactly the same as attacks on Muslims in the West whenever there is an Islamist terrorist strike on their soil.

Only, here, the retaliation is sharpened by a racism that rides on colour — our collective hatred for the dark-skinned.

Attacks on blacks in our country have been on the rise in recent years. As more and more students from the African continent come here to study and work, hoping to profit from India’s quality institutions, they often have to contend with frightening racial prejudice. In January 2014, Somnath Bharati, then law minister in Arvind Kejriwal’s first AAP government in Delhi, famously led a vigilante group into the house of some African women, and in utter violation of the rule of law, humiliated them and accused them of prostitution and drug peddling.

In September that same year, three African students were beaten up at the busy Rajiv Chowk Metro station in the heart of Delhi after an altercation with other passengers. In March 2015, a group of Ivory Coast nationals were attacked in northeast Bengaluru allegedly because they were making a “nuisance” in the area.

Like every racist society, much of India stereotypes blacks as being prone to crime, violence and sleaze — the men, dealers in narcotics, the women, peddlers of prostitution. They are stared at, whistled at, called names, their “otherness” a perennial source of fear and loathing and intermittent bursts of violent hostility.

Of course, our racism is not directed at blacks alone. Men and women from the Northeast face the same animus, quite obviously because they belong to a different racial type. In 2014, Nido Tania, a 19-year-old student from Arunachal Pradesh, was beaten to death in south Delhi. That, and the sickening regularity with which people from the Northeast are attacked in the rest of India, have led to the demand for an anti-racism law.

However, bringing in a new law will be an exercise in futility unless we acknowledge our racism, and admit to the fact that we singularly racist in our thought and action. We are not just colour conscious, but we ascribe qualities and stereotypes to the “dark” and the “fair”. And that shapes our response to people, often in dangerous and destructive ways.

We need to face up to this elephant in the room. Only then can we hope to begin the conversation about ending racism in our society.
The state can make a beginning by calling a spade a spade — by calling a deplorable racist attack just that.

India: Shame Bengaluru, shun racism (Editorial, Deccan Herald, 5 Feb 2016)

Deccan Herald

Editorial:

Shame Bengaluru, shun racism

February 5, 2016, Bengaluru, DHNS

It was shameful that a young Tanzanian girl student was assaulted, stripped and made to run around on the streets of Bengaluru by a mob of people on Sunday. It is difficult to imagine that the propensity for such unruly and uncivilised conduct lurks just below the skin of people and under the surface of a city which claims to be modern, cosmopolitan and tolerant. There cannot be any reason or provocation that can justify such heinous conduct. It has again tainted Bengaluru’s name and image, as some similar incidents have done in the past. The girl and her friends were passing the spot where an accident involving a car driven by a Sudanese student had taken place. One person had been killed in the accident. The Tanzanian student and her friends were caught by a mob on the scene, assaulted and their car set on fire. A person who offered the girl a shirt was also attacked.

The crime and shame were compounded by the response of the police who refused to file an FIR when the students reported the matter. They were also pushed out of a bus when they tried to flee the scene. The police claim that it was only a case of road rage cannot be accepted. It cannot be denied that there was a racial element in the conduct of the mob. Foreign students in Bengaluru are frequently victims of prejudice, discrimination, improper behaviour and insults. Even students and people from the North-East are subjected to ill treatment and discrimination. It is not long ago that people from the North-East made an exodus from the city for fear that they would be attacked. The fear was unfounded, but the psychology was real, based on their experience in the city. Foreign students also have to live with such fear, and many of them have expressed it.The people who attacked the girl and outraged her modesty should be punished under the law.

Action should be taken against the policemen who refused to register her complaint. Those who should have protected her actually sided with the people who attacked and insulted her. The matter has also become a diplomatic issue with the Tanzanian embassy taking it up and India expressing regret over the matter to that country. But beyond law and diplomacy, it is a human issue. It is disgraceful that such an incident happened in the city. Bengaluru owes an apology to the girl. It should also assure itself and the world that no one would be discriminated against on the basis of race, colour or appearance.

India: A racist turn in Bengaluru [Bangalore] (Editorial, The Hindu, 5 Feb 2016)

The Hindu, February 5, 2016

A racist turn in Bengaluru

Less than four months after an Australian man was violently harassed for sporting a tattoo of an Indian goddess, Bengaluru is in the news again, for sinking to new lows of bigotry and vigilantism. This time it was a Tanzanian woman at the receiving end of mob fury. It all reportedly began with an accident in which a Sudanese national drove his car over a 35-year-old woman, killing her. A mob quickly gathered, determined to mete out instant justice. When he managed to flee, his car was burnt down. Half an hour later, a Tanzanian student who happened to be passing by with her friends stopped by to inquire what was going on. The mob turned its ire on her and her three friends even though they were in no way connected to the Sudanese man involved in the accident — other than being, in the eyes of the mob, of the same race as the Sudanese, African. She was chased, assaulted, and had her clothes torn by the mob before being rescued. Her car, too, was torched. The incident occurred on Sunday, but the police did not register a complaint until Tuesday. The lackadaisical response of the law and order machinery prompted the Tanzanian High Commission to register a protest with the Indian government. This, in turn, prompted External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to write to Karnataka Chief Minister K. Siddaramaiah. By Thursday, four suspects had been arrested and investigations are currently on.

The entire episode raises a disturbing question: is it any longer possible, or even plausible, to express shock at what has happened? Such acts of violence are not peculiar to Bengaluru alone. Indeed, something like this did happen, not too long ago, in Delhi. Under the controversial guidance of a Law Minister of the State, African women were branded as ‘prostitutes’ and molested in a ‘midnight raid’. The Bengaluru mob, too, seems to have given free rein to racism. The repeated targeting of Africans suggests a case of pathological colourism — discrimination and hostility directed against dark-skinned people. Indians’ cultural preference for fair skin is well known, and amply attested by the vast market for fairness creams. It is quite common to find people remark admiringly on how ‘fair’ a newborn baby is. And matrimonial advertisements are notorious for seeking ‘fair’ brides. However, to reduce the depressing message from this episide to skin colour alone would be to underestimate the discrimination and violence in India against those who are visibly ‘different’. Some years ago, Bengaluru saw an exodus of young people from northeastern India residing in the city after rumours spread of violence targeting them. In the national capital, even as the megalopolis becomes more cosmopolitan, the periodicity of assaults on residents from the northeast is such that there appears to be a pattern. Certainly, both the citizenry and the law and order machinery need to be sensitised to the prejudices. But the task can only be achieved if strong political expression is given to the essential value of diversity and tolerance.

As Bengaluru mob strips Tanzanian woman, it's time to ask why bigotry is so ingrained in India (Shoaib Daniyal)

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Racism in India

As Bengaluru mob strips Tanzanian woman, it's time to ask why bigotry is so ingrained in India

The mob's action was solely driven by the woman's race. What does this say about India?

Shoaib Daniyal  · 3 Feb 2016

Bengaluru is India’s city of the twenty-first century. India’s Silicon Valley, it’s often called, drawing upon our penchant for American parallels. Well, here’s another American parallel: racism. On Sunday, a mob assaulted, stripped and paraded a 21-year-old Tanzanian student, later on setting fire to her car as well. Her only fault was that she was passing through the same neighbourhood where, an hour before, a Sudanese student had run over and killed a resident. The enraged mob simply picked on the Tanzanian woman because she was of the same race as the Sudanese driver.
How did the police react? The Deccan Chronicle reported that when the woman approached the police station to register a complaint, she was turned away. Come back when you have the name of the driver, she was told. Later on, a local politician, BS Shankar, even went so far as to justify the violence.
Bosco Kaweesi, Legal Adviser to the All African Students Union in Bengaluru said, in exasperation, “She’s Tanzanian, the man who caused the accident comes from Sudan, they didn’t even know each other."

Pervasive feature
Collective mob justice is a pervasive feature of Indian society. Usually it’s based on religion or caste but, in this case, the identity picked up was race, a feature getting increasingly common as significant numbers of Africans move to India for work or education.
In 2013, Nigerians suffered racist attacks across Goa, even as state Minister Dayanand Mandrekar called them a cancer. So severe was that episode that Nigerian diplomats warned of a backlash back in Nigeria against Indians working there. In 2014, a mob assaulted two Africans at a Metro station in Delhi. The incident, captured on camera, depicted a frightening picture of racism, as the mob tried to get at the two men cowering, ironically, inside a police booth. Earlier in Delhi, a state minister himself led vigilante justice against the city’s African residents.
Bigotry based on skin colour has a chequered past in India. At one level, Indians are obviously racist given how much value we attach to light skin, even propping up a huge cosmetics industry to make Indians fairer – an entire nation of Micheal Jacksons. Language and pop culture reflect that as well. One of Bollywood’s evergreen songs tells of how even a “dark-skinned man” can be a good person. Languages like Hindi and Punjabi have their own N-word: habshi.
India’s African elite
Of course, India also does not have the debilitating legacy of western slavery based on race (it was based on caste instead). Black Africans have been a part of India’s elite in centuries past. In the medieval Deccan, for example, people of African-origin were highly-prized as ace sailors and mounted warriors. In the 17th century, the Abyssinian Malik Ambar rose to become the regent of the Ahmadnagar Sulatanate. His army consisted of Marathas, including Maloji, grandfather of Shivaji, and Ambar’s methods of guerrilla warfare came to dominate the Deccan. In 1672, as the Aurangzeb ordered a naval siege on British Bombay, the Mughal fleet was commandeered by a man of African-origin.
Descendants of those Africans who came to India, now make up the Siddi community, also derogatorily called Habshis. After their heyday in medieval India, they now face discrimination for being dark-skinned.
People who have tried to bring attention to India’s frightening culture of majoritarian intolerance over the past year have been shouted down, vilified and mocked. But pushing problems under the carpet usually makes things worse. India has multiple faultlines of bigotry already. To add race to that is an alarming prospect.