Glimpses from the Safdar Memorial on 1st January 2016 in New Delhi

some photos by Harsh Kapoor from 1st Jan 2016 Safdar Memorial events with an artwork exhibit called Avaaz Do by artists from Delhi and Bombay, a poster exhibit by Sahmat, music, dance, poetry, a book counter and a food court at constitution Club annexe on Rafi Marg, in Delhi

Art Exhibit, Avaaz Do ! on Jan 1st, 2016 at Safdar Memorial (New Delhi)

This january 1st is the 27th memorial to Safdar Hashmi at the Constitution Club annexe on Rafi Marg. Starting at 1 pm, it will feature street theatre, music, dance, poetry and a special exhibition of works made by artists in Bombay and Delhi - Avaaz Do! These works have been specially made by artists in response to the climate of fear and threats to our freedom of expression and lifestyle choices which have become endemic in the recent past. The murders of writers and rationalists, the murders of members of the minority community and dalits have shocked the nation. Many writers have returned their state awards in protests and a huge number of scientists, artists and prominent citizens have raised their voice against the divisive politics we are witnessing.

Avaaz Do! is a platform for artists to express their feelings through their creative work in the form of banners. Amongst the many artists who have contributed are: Atul and Anju Dodiya, Meera Devidayal, Lalitha Lajmi, the late Hema Upadhyay, Jitish Kallat and Reena Saini Kallat, Nalini Malani, Shakuntala Kulkarni, Veer Munshi, Arpana Caur, Ketaki Sheth, Justin Ponmany, Vivan Sundaram, Inder Salim, Tushar Joag, Sharmila Samanth, Mahula Ghosh, Saba Hasan, Pushpamala N.

Announcement: In solidarity with Perumal Murugan - against cultural vigilantism and censorship (17 Feb 2015 @ Sahmat, New Delhi)

67th anniversary of Gandhi's assassination 30th Jan. 2015, 2 pm on, Audi 1, Convention Centre, JNU (SAHMAT and others)

Sahmat's Press Statement on Attack on Shabnam Hashmi

SAHMAT
Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
29, Ferozshah Road, New Delhi-1
Tel: 011-23381276, 23070787
Email. sahmat8@yahoo.com

28.4.2014

Press Statement on Attack on Shabnam Hashmi

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the attack on Shabnam Hashmi in Rai Barley. She was attacked at about 12.30 on April 28 while she with her associates was distributing leaflets brought out by JAVAB- Janvadi Vichar Andolan Bharat barely 100 metres from the Gadaganj Police Station in side the Rai-Barely constituency.

Shabnam Hashmi and her associate were attacked by a gang of about 20 hoodlums who snatched all the Javab Leaflets while pushing and abusing Shabnam Hashmi in the most foul and sexist terms.

At the police station Shabnam had to argue with the SHO, telling him that no one can be stopped from exercising their right to free expression and that he had to file an FIR against the attack on her and the threats of rape and sexist abuses. The SHO did not register an FIR and did not give her a copy of her complaint.

We demand that the hoodlums are immediately apprehended and coercive tactics of the BJP not be allowed by the local administration.
Ashok
SAHMAT

http://www.sacw.net/article8514.html

Secularism in Arts Comes out in Full Glare: Report in People's Democracy on the seminar marking 25th anniversary of Sahmat

People's Democracy, October 13, 2013

SEMINAR ON 25TH SAHMAT ANNIVERSARY

Secularism in Arts Comes out in Full Glare

Amol Saghar

ON the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) organised a three day seminar on ‘Secularism and the Arts’ from September 26 to 28, 2013. This seminar, held in the Sahitya Akademi auditorium, took place at a time when communal forces are going an extra mile to polarise the Indian masses on the basis of religion and vitiate the communal harmony of the country. This explained the relevance of the seminar. The seminar saw a plethora of insightful and interesting papers being presented, throwing light on different strands of the theme. The speakers tried to analyse the close interrelationship of arts and secularism, and its relevance in today’s context.

In his short welcome address, Sohail Hashmi presented an outline of SAHMAT’s history and threw light on its work since it came into existence. In the light of the communal disturbances the country has witnessed in recent times, the most recent being the Muzzafar Nagar riots, he explained the relevance of organisations like SAHMAT in maintaining harmony in the present times.

WHAT SECULARISM REALLY MEANS

After the welcome address, the first session of the day saw two doyens of history, viz Irfan Habib and Romila Thapar, discussing the concept of secularism from two different perspectives. In his insightful and thought provoking presentation, Professor Irfan Habib tried to analyse the various meanings that are associated with the word secularism. He brilliantly brought forth the fact that religion and secularism have nothing to do with each other and that what secularism really meant was outright rejection of intervention of religion into the sphere of morality. He also said a state is secular as far as it is not guided by any religion. To him the French revolutionary state was a secular state in true sense of the word.

He further argued that even though the word secularism was added in Indian constitution in 1976, it is sad to see that in today’s scenario this word has got corrupted in the everyday parlance. Today it means respect for and tolerance towards all religions. But yet there is no legal foundation for the view that a secular republic must respect the religions. He argued that even a non-tolerant state can be secular. The Supreme Court too, it was argued, played a role in corrupting the concept of secularism. Going back in history we see that religious tolerance has always been an important part of Indian history— be it the reign of the Ashoka, where perhaps for the first time the concept of religious tolerance was mentioned explicitly in Rock Edict 12; or the national movement where this idea was invoked repeatedly. For Habib, ‘neutrality towards religions’ should better be used instead of the phrase ‘respect for religions.’

Habib also underlined that in India we see religious influences in certain spheres of everyday life. For instance, there is detailed mention of hostility towards cow slaughter in article 12 of our constitution. Similarly, there is a mention of the uniform civil code in article 44. Habib spent a good amount of time in discussing this issue and, expressing surprise at this notion, he asked how one could speak of uniform civil code when the same laws do not say anywhere that both men and women are equal partners as far as inheritance laws are concerned. We cannot talk about the former without the latter.

In this context he spoke about the Hindu code bill which, according to him, was a landmark development as it showed that in two years period the ages old dharmasastras were overthrown by the parliament, which marked a complete transformation of the civil code. However, he expressed displeasure that such landmark changes were not seen in other religions. He further argued that India may be secular in other respects but Indian state is certainly not secular as far as personal laws are concerned. What we see is that idea of religious tolerance is often in clash with the notion of secularism. With regard to personal laws, he forcefully stressed that these are not sacrosanct and their negative aspects must be opposed.

PROVISIONS OF SECULARISM WEAKENED

As for secularism in the realm of education, it is sad that the concerned provisions have got weakened. Our constitution clearly says no religious education would be imparted in any educational institution, but in reality we see this notion repeatedly violated. An example is of the NCERT school textbooks controversy under the tenure of the BJP led government. Surprisingly, even though newspaper reports of the day rubbished the BJP move, the apex court did not oppose it; instead, it supported by citing the saints who, according to the court, were the source of all religious and morality based education.

As for madrasa education, we see state subsidies directed towards several madrasas operating through the length and breadth of the country. This, it was argued, is a clear violation of article 28 of our constitution. Habib expressed surprise that the Sachar committee recommended this move, instead of opposing it; nor did any political party oppose it. Explaining the politics behind madrasa education, he argued that there are hardly any girl students in madrasas. Further, it is wrong to believe that Muslim children do not want to go to public (government) schools; it is just that there are no public schools in most of the “Muslim areas,” and thus a majority of these children do not have easy access to public school education. Also, as Hindu children do not go to these madrasas, there is hardly any interaction between Muslim and Hindu boys, which is disastrous.

The speaker also put forward some ideas that could help to change this situation. One solution is that public schools should be set up in Muslim areas. The movements promoting legislation favouring secularism, such as the one associated with giving leverage to the secular content in school textbooks, must be encouraged by all means. Wherever the Left is dominant, it should oppose attempts made by divisive forces to construe the meaning of secularism in a wrong way. The notion of secularism must apply to all institutions and groups irrespective of their being majority or minority ones.

ON RIGHT WING MOBILISATION

After Professor Irfan Habib’s presentation, that of Teesta Setalvad was equally enriching, and in many ways an eye-opener. Discussing the issue of secularism from a legal perspective, she went back a little bit into history and argued that there was a compromise insofar as abolition of the caste system was concerned. Instead of completely eradicating the system for once and all, the custodians of the country at that time preferred to chicken out of the issue and were instead satisfied only with the abolition of untouchability.

Setalvad further argued that a close relationship exists between communalism and the growth of right wing groups. As far back as 1951, we see B R Ambedkar resigning from the first ministry of independent India on the issue of Hindu code bill. On the eve of the succeeding election, Ambedkar formulated a manifesto titled ‘Charter of Dalits’ in which he criticised the right wing politics and argued that if there was anything untouchable, it was this sort of politics. Today the irony is that dalits are being used for the right wing politics. The success of Bajrang Dal is contrary to what Ambedkar stood for in 1951. One can also cite the example of Babu Jagjivan Ram who did not become the prime minister precisely because he was a dalit. The fact is that dalits are still a marginalised section.

Setalvad’s paper also delved into the issue of hate speech that has always played a vital role in vitiating the environment and promoting communal hatred. Every communal disturbance is invariably preceded by a string of hate speeches and rumours before it reaches the stage of actual violence. In this regard one can recall the distribution of trishuls during the NDA government in 1999. Lately, a similar phenomenon was seen in Muzzafar Nagar; here mahapanchayats were allowed to be organised where hate speeches against a particular community were openly delivered and where people gathered with illegal weapons.

Before concluding, she drew attention to two important issues. First, it would be disastrous if we are selective in our narratives of the national movement. We must refrain from the practice of including certain aspects and completely ignoring other, equally important aspects of the national movement. Secondly, there is a tendency among many of us to loosely use terms such as pseudo-secularism (a term which BJP has been using); we have to refrain from it.

Nor should we compartmentalise the idea of secularism and democracy, or emphasise only one --- electoral --- aspect of it. Secularism, equality and non-discrimination are three concepts which need to be looked together. The speaker also pointed out that the Sachar committee, which was formed in 2005, completely ignored the issue of security of the Muslims. It is noteworthy that the term minority was completely removed from article 16 of the constitution, which again was a compromise.

RELIGION CAN’T HAVE PRIMACY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

The last paper of the morning session was that of Professor Romila Thapar who delved into the issue of secularisation of Indian society. Secularism has got restricted, unfortunately, to a mere slogan. She also said our concept of secularism has been derived from Europe. Co-existence of all religions is a noble idea but it certainly does not denote the real meaning of secularism. This concept came about with the rise of communalism in India in the 1920s. Thus the ideology of secularism has a historical context, and there is a link between secularism and nationalism, which has not been investigated.

Professor Thapar argued that secular does not deny religion, but at the same time it does not give it any sort of primacy in everyday life. She stressed that state should stop patronising the institutions which have religious affiliations. To her, religion promotes the idea of dominant and subordinate people or groups. One may also note that it is the caste distinctions that have almost always decided the functioning of religious groups and there are also instances when people have formed their own religion, as in the example of Lingayats.

Before concluding, Professor Thapar argued that today, whether we like it or not, social networking sites like Facebook have come to occupy an important position in society. Divisive forces are making use of these sites to promote their agenda and we also have to use the same media to fight them effectively. The Muzzafar Nagar riots have shown the dangerous role played by such sites. Presenting a somewhat frightening picture, she also argued that we should be prepared for more communal disturbances in near future, especially in Muslim majority areas.

The session concluded with some useful and insightful remarks made by Professor Prabhat Patnaik who chaired the first session. He emphasised that secular must also be seen as the reducing role of religion even in the personal sphere.

BHAKTI TRADITION AND SECULARISM

The evening session saw four more, equally rejuvenating papers being presented. In this session chaired by M K Raina, Malini Bhattacharya, Madhu Trivedi, Vidya Shah and Madan Gopal Singh shared their ideas of the close association of secularism with arts. Bhattacharya in her presentation discussed the notion of secularism from the perspective of literature and folklore. She referred to Rabindranth Tagore’s Gora and tried to analyse the way the issue of secularism was dealt with in this work.

She further talked about the emergence of various sects in Bengal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and also the important role women played in promoting the folk traditions in this period. The baol tradition of Bengal was a rare tradition that was able to break all sorts of societal barriers. But these sects got narrowed down due to what she called cultural inbreeding. In the end, she observed that while religious tolerance and intolerance exist side by side, it is the duty of the state to protect the secular space. She ended with the plea that struggle to protect the secular space is no less important than the struggle to protect land.

While Madhu Trivedi’s paper discussed the concept of secularism purely from a historical point of view, Vidya Shah in her presentation began by recalling her childhood years and how she was not allowed to participate in the recitation of ritualistic chants like those from Yajurveda only because she was a girl; she naturally felt marginalised. However, the presence of feminist in several of these recitations is very important.

Shah’s presentation was accompanied by recitation of various sorts including those from Bulle Shah, Andal and Kabir. In conclusion she raised a pertinent point by asking as to what happened to a woman bhakta in the bhakti movement. For her feminism is in fact deeply rooted in the concept of secularism.

Madan Gopal Singh recited several verses which were written as far back as the 16th century and through these recitations he explained how a close relationship always existed between secularism and arts. He argued that the aspect of secularism has always been present throughout history, though it has been visualised differently at different points of time. The accompanying recitations by Shah and Singh were like an icing on the cake and made the session a memorable experience.

SECULARISM IN VISUAL ARTS

The morning session on the second day saw well known painter Gulammohammed Sheikh, Pushpmala N and Ram Rahman making power-point presentations to discuss the intricate association of arts and secularism. In his presentation Sheikh explained how secularism got reflected in literary traditions throughout the course of Indian history. With the help of various slides and pictures, he drove home the point that secularism has always been an integral part in the making as well as visual execution of literary traditions.

Various arts including sculpture have played a pivotal role in assimilating the lower caste groups into the cultural belief systems of upper caste groups. Arts thus allowed a broadening of the belief system and at the same time also allowed upward mobility in our society.

Pushpamala N, in her interesting presentation, tried to analyse the theme of secularism from the perspective of artistic representation. She tries to see how secularism is played about in the popular artistic representations such as those of Raja Ravi Verma and others.

Ram Rahman’s paper was a lesson in the history of SAHMAT. With the help of several visuals he tried to make everyone present aware of the work done by the organisation since the time of its inception. He threw light on the positive role played by SAHMAT in bringing about people from different walks of life in an attempt to raise voice against the divisive politics carried out by certain vested interests. In the years prior to and immediately after the Babri Masjid demolition, the SAHMAT ran important campaigns to keep communal hatred at bay and bring back the confidence of the minorities, which was severely affected by the demolition of the mosque. The speaker also visually highlighted how, while running its campaigns, SAHMAT itself came under attack more than once.

The session chaired by S Kalidas witnessed some highly emotional and at the same time interesting interventions by some of those present.

In the evening session, Subhash Kapoor, director of two critically acclaimed movies, viz Phas Gaye Re Obama and Jolly LLB, and renowned art critic Sadanand Menon were the speakers. The session was moderated by Sashi Kumar. The two speakers discussed the manner in which secularism has been dealt with in Indian cinema. While Kapoor chose to discuss it mainly from the perspective of the mainstream Bollywood cinema, Menon tried to trace the trajectory of secularism in Indian cinema from a general perspective and also the way it was reflected in the cinema of the south.

Kapoor argued that a sort of irony exists as far as secularism and its depiction in most of the movies is concerned. He raised several points such as the manner in which certain sections of society, e.g. Muslims, are depicted in the movies. Today the title of the movies is shown only in Hindi and English and not in Urdu. Also, producers hesitate to invest in movies which try to take the issue of communalism head on. He provided several interesting examples to highlight these issues which worried him.

Menon traced the growth of communalism from the time it emerged in the post-1857 period up to the present time. He also discussed at length some movies like Roja and Bombay, which tried to deal with the issue of religious differences and secularism.

DEVELOPMENTS IN HINDI & URDU

The concluding day was devoted to the issues of language and literature, and their close proximity with the theme of secularism. While the morning session was dedicated to the Urdu literary traditions and how one can see secularism embedded in a majority of the works written in this language, the evening session analysed this concept in the context of Hindi literary tradition. Ramesh Dixit, Naresh Nadeem, Khurshid Akram and Salil Misra carried out the morning proceedings, with Ali Javed in chair. The session saw the participants reciting poetries and couplets from Meer, Sauda, Ghalib, Nazeer Akbarabadi, Akbar Allahabadi and Faiz, among others, from time to time to enrich their respective presentations.

In his passionate talk, Ramesh Dixit made it clear that, as compared to Hindi poetry, compositions in Urdu were more strongly opposed to imperialism, colonialism, communalism and feudalism. Urdu poetry is poetry of resistance by its very nature.

Naresh Nadeem underlined the relationship of Urdu poetry with the Sufi tradition and insisted that secularism of the Urdu literary creations must be seen in the context of its source in tasawwuf (Sufism). He made a poignant point when he said that there was a clear-cut difference between the ways Hindi and Urdu poets took note of the country’s independence. While the former were celebrating the independence in various forms, the latter was weeping due to the fact that the country had been partitioned. Not just communist but also non-communist writers and poets felt a deep sense of sadness. Nadeem also attempted to trace how the Hindi literary tradition got a tinge of communalism as an enmity against Urdu developed here.

Khurshid Akram tried to show how secularism was reflected in the short stories written in Urdu language throughout the period.

Salil Misra’s tried to locate the aspect of secularism in the works of Nazeer Akbarabadi and Akbar Allahabadi.

In the second session chaired by Chanchal Chauhan, Manmohan and Jawarimal Parekh tried to study how secularism got reflected in various works written in the long history of Hindi literary tradition. It was argued in this session that, instead of making it an issue of one-upmanship, we should rather realise that secular elements are present in both the literary traditions but that we fail to see this point since there is little interaction between the two traditions as a result of a division made by the British way back in the 19th century.

It is unfortunate that the development of Hindi in the modern period bypassed the secular route and went through the path of communalism. There is, however, an element of secularism in a number of Hindi works and it is for us to take note of it and promote this aspect of our literary tradition.

The extremely enriching and memorable three-day seminar came to a conclusion with Sohail Hashmi delivering the vote of thanks. He also informed those present about the coming programmes of SAHMAT to celebrate its twenty five years in existence.

Secularism and the Arts - Sahmant seminar in Delhi 26, 27, 28 September 2013 - programme

SECULARISM and the ARTS

on 26, 27, 28 September 2013

at Sahitya Akademi Conference Hall
Third Floor, Rabindra Bhavan
35 Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi

THURSDAY • 26 SEPTEMBER 2013 • 9.30 am – 6 pm

9.30 am Sohail Hashmi: Welcome address

10 am – 1.30 pm SESSION ONE The Secular: A Historical Perspective
Speakers Irfan Habib: ‘Secularism: In Theory and Practice
Mihir Bhattacharya: ‘The Historical Practice of Irreligion’
Romila Thapar: ‘Redefining the Secular Mode for India’
Chair Prabhat Patnaik

1.30 – 2.30 pm Lunch

2.30 – 6 pm SESSION TWO Evolution of a Secular Worldview: As Reflected in Music and the Performing Arts

Speakers Malini Bhattacharya: ‘Secularism in the Folk Tradition of Bengal’
Madhu Trivedi: ‘The Secular Element in North Indian Performing Arts’
Vidya Shah: ‘Spoken Like Women: Feminine Iterations in Mystic Poetry’
Jitendra Raghuvanshi: ‘Awami Rangmanch: Rang-e-Noor ka Karwan’
Madan Gopal Singh: ‘Tying the Secular Knot’
Chair: M.K. Raina

6.30 pm Poetry readings, at The Attic, Regal Building

FRIDAY • 27 SEPTEMBER 2013 • 10 am – 6 pm

10 am – 12 pm SESSION THREE Tracing the Contours of the Secular in the Visual Arts – 1

Speaker Gulammohammed Sheikh: ‘Art, Artists and Belief Systems’
Chair Kavita Singh

12 – 1.30 pm SESSION THREE Tracing the Contours of the Secular in the
Visual Arts – 2

Speakers Pushpamala N.
Ram Rahman
Chair S. Kalidas

1.30 – 2.30 pm Lunch

2.30 – 6 pm SESSION FOUR
Tracking the Trajectory of the Secular/Communal Impulse in Indian Cinema (Panel Discussion)
Panelists Sadanand Menon
Dibakar Banerjee
Subhash Kapoor
Zia-us- Salam
Moderator Sashi Kumar

6.30 pm Poetry readings, at the seminar venue

SATURDAY • 28 SEPTEMBER 2013 • 10 am – 6 pm

10 am – 12 pm SESSION FIVE Reflections in Urdu Literature

Speakers Shireen Moosvi: ‘Secularism in Urdu Poetry: From Mir to Faiz’
Ramesh Dixit: ‘Urdu Poetry and Composite Culture’
Khurshid Akram: ‘Secularism, Aqliyat aur Urdu Kahani Aaj’
Salil Misra: ‘Alternative Perspectives on Religion in Urdu Poetry: Nazir and Akbar’
Naresh Nadeem: ‘Sufism, Independence, the Secular in Urdu Poetry’

Chair Ali Javed

1.30 – 2.30 pm Lunch

2.30 – 5.30 pm SESSION SIX

Speakers Manmohan: ‘Hindi ke Jatiya Gathan ki
Reflections in Hindi Literature
Vidambana aur Secular Virasat’
Jawarimal Parakh: ‘Hindi Sahitya ki Laukik
Parampara: Pahchaan ke Bindu’
Asad Zaidi: ‘On the so-called Hindi Public Sphere’

5.30 PM Concluding Remarks

SAFDAR HASHMI MEMORIAL TRUST
29 Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi 110 001
Phone: (+91-11) 23381276 / 23070787
Email: sahmat8@yahoo.com

Sahmat Press Statement on Supreme Court clean chit to Narendra Modi

SAHMAT
Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
29, Feroze Shah Road,New Delhi-110001
Telephone- 23381276/ 23070787
e-mail-sahmat8@yahoo.com

Date 15.7.2013

Press Statement on Supreme Court clean chit to Narendra Modi

In an interview to the foreign news agency Reuters that was published on July 12 2013, Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief minister has made a desperate attempt to creat an impression that Supreme Court has given him a clean chit through the SIT which was appointed by it to investigate the criminal complaint of Zakia Jafri and Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP) on 27.4.2009. A section of the media, without verifying the facts has allowed this impression to gain credibility. The facts in relation to Supreme Court and SIT are as follows:
The SIT was appointed by the Supreme Court on 26.3.2008 on a petition by Teesta Setalvad, D.N.Pathak, Cedric Prakash and Others, first to look into the nine cases recommended by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to be investigated by the CBI. The same SIT was a year later also asked to look into the criminal complaint against Narendra Modi and 61 others filed first before the Gujarat Police on 8.6.2006.

The SIT submitted its report on the Zakia Jafri and CJP Complaint to the Supreme Court on 12.5.2010 itself recommending that Further Investigation was required.
In the interim, the SC had also to drop two officers from the SIT, Shivandand Jha (because he was an accused in the Zakia Jafri complaint) and Geeta Johri who had been found, in the Sohrabuddin case to have serious strictures passed against her by the Supreme Court itself. (April 6 2010)

The following features of the SIT report need special mention:
(a) It found the speeches of N Modi objectionable and that Modi had a communal mindset, travelling 300 kilometres to Godhra but not visiting any relief camps that housed the internally displaced Muslims, victims of reprisal killings post Godhra until 6.3.2002.
(b) It found it questionable that bodies of the unfortunate Godhra victims were handed over to a non-government person, Jiadeep Patel of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) who is currently facing trial in the Naroda Gaam massacre case;
(c) It found that Saneev Bhatt an officer of the State Intelligence, Gujarat had opined that he attended the controversial meeting at the chief minister's residence indicating that illegal and objectionable instructions were given.
(d) It accepted that Police Officers like RB Sreekumar, Rahul Sharma, Himanshu Bhatt and Samiullah Ansari who had performed their tasks legally had been penalised and persecuted by the Modi regime and those who had buckled under the illegal and unconstitutional instructions had been favoured consistently;
(e) It however still concluded that there is no prosecutable evidence against the chief minister
The SC was not satisfied with this conclusion and direcetd that the Amicus Curaie Mr. Raju Ramachandran, who had already been appointed to assist the Supreme Court in this critical case, visit Gujarat, independently assess the evidence garnered and meet with witnesses directly, bypassing SIT.
Amicus Curaie Raju Ramachandran submitted and Interim report (January 2011) and Final report (July 2011).
The Supreme Court gave the SIT an opportunity to further investigate in light of the Amicus Curaie's contrary findings and thereafter file a Final Report before a Magistrate on 12.9.2011. In the same order the SC gave the petitioners the inalienable right to file a Protest petition and access all documents related to the SIT
After its further investigation the SIT, ignoring the contents of the Amicus Curaie report, filed a final closure report on 8.2.2012 without issuing any notice to the complainant Zakia Jafri and CJP as is required under Section 173(2)(ii) of the CRPC. Worse, it fought a hard as nails battle to deny access to any of the documents related to the investigation to the petitioners.
It took a whole year, from 8.2.2012 to 7.2.2013 for the complainant to access all the documents related to the Investigation including the SIT Reports filed before the Supreme Court. The complainant Zakia Jafri assisted by the CJP filed the Protest Petition on 15.4.2013.

The petitioners Mrs. Zakia Jaffri and CJP are now arguing in support of the Protest Petition being allowed, showing through an arduous and rigorous process, how the SIT ignored its own evidence. Arguments that began on June 25 are still going on.

It is clear from the above that the SC has never given Mr. Modi a clean chit on the issue of 2002 pogrom. These facts could have been earlier verified by Reuters as well as the collusive media. We hope that the media will present the facts truthfully in relation to the ‘so-called’ clear chit to Mr. Modi

SAHMAT
CITIZENS FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE

SAHMAT
29 Ferozshah Road, New Delhi-110001
Tel:011-23381276/011-23070787
email:sahmat8@yahoo.com
Website: www.sahmat.org

The Sahmat Collective, an Indian art exhibition touring the U.S. - A report by Lise McKean

The Hindu, June 29, 2013
A secular collage
by Lise McKean

The Sahmat Collective, an Indian art exhibition touring the U.S., is a striking representation of communal dynamics.

“That’s an auto-rickshaw,” a local woman said matter-of-factly to her companions pointing to the three-wheeler parked inside the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. Shiny red rather than dusty black and yellow, the authentic Bajaj auto-rickshaw came from nearby Wisconsin to help tell Sahmat’s story. The exhibition — The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India Since 1989 — was in Chicago from February until early June and travels to museums at the University of North Carolina and then the University of California at Los Angeles.

The first image in the exhibition is ‘Safdar Hashmi’s Funeral Procession (1989)’, a large black and white print of a photograph taken by Ram Rahman. The photo shows Hashmi’s corpse covered with a hammer-and-sickle flag and surrounded by a packed procession of mourners. Thirty-four-year-old Hashmi was assassinated while leading a pro-labour street theatre performance in an industrial area outside Delhi. His family, friends, and fellow travellers formed Sahmat (Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust) in the aftermath of this unprecedented onslaught on artist-activists.

The flag signals Hashmi’s party affiliation and Sahmat’s leftist politics. A Bangladeshi man viewing the exhibition told me that Sahmat is a front organisation for the CPI (M). However, Prabhat Patnaik’s essay in the impressive exhibition catalogue describes a more complex and nuanced relationship. The rapidity of Sahmat’s responses to the 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid and the 2002 attacks on Muslims in Gujarat suggest that it is neither stymied nor stalled by party politics and bureaucracy.

Smart Museum curator Jessica Moss organised the exhibition with Delhi-based co-curator and Sahmat founding member Ram Rahman. Moss first heard about Sahmat several years ago when visiting Delhi with her husband Kavi Gupta, owner of contemporary art galleries in Chicago and Berlin. She was “struck by how the group could galvanise around issues and how little Sahmat was known outside of India.” And thus began her quest to bring Sahmat to the U.S.

Anthony Hirschel, the Smart Museum director, describes the museum’s impetus for organising the exhibit: “India now occupies such a large place in our understanding of the world, it seemed entirely the right time for the Smart Museum to devote a major exhibition to the work of some of its leading artists.” Both Hirschel and Moss also spoke about how Sahmat meshes with two key Smart interests — contemporary art from Asia and ways that artists engage with current social and political issues through their work. Moss added that the exhibition provides a context for more deeply understanding and appreciating works made by India’s “global art stars.”

Sahmat has a rich archive of diverse projects spanning over two decades of activism. Abundance and historical-cultural specificity pose challenges for creating an exhibition accessible to non-Indian audiences. But Moss and Rahman deftly responded by organising the exhibition into case studies. This approach highlights the innovative ways that the trust involves artists and designers to join forces with musicians, poets, dancers, and scholars. It also shows how Sahmat mobilises its resources to reach out to multiple publics and promote secular Indian nationalism and freedom of expression.

The case studies are grouped by theme in Smart’s galleries: Sahmat’s Beginnings; Janotsav (People’s Festival); Children’s Books; Artists Against Communalism; Ayodhya: Demolition of the Babri Masjid and After; Tributes to Gandhi; Gift for India; Art on the Move; Ways of Resisting; Reasserting Secularism; and Free Speech and Defending Husain. The final gallery billows with colourful Sahmat signs and screens a video compilation of excerpts from performances at the annual Safdar Hashmi Memorial and other Sahmat events.

Through the loosely chronological presentation, the artwork, artefacts, and accompanying text offer excellent primary sources on recent Indian history. Unfortunately, most audiences in art museums do not take the time to digest wall-text and captions. The difficulty of engaging with politically imbued art in the museum setting is multiplied when the work is displayed so far from its “native” context.

So despite several carefully worded definitions, the exhibition’s heavy use of the commonplace Indian term “communalism” confounded many non-Indian viewers. Communalism is not used in American political discourse. It doesn’t connote violence or struggle; much less inter-religious strife or religious nationalism. Fortunately, many pieces in the Sahmat show do not require background knowledge or expertise. Instead they rely on art’s power to convey ideas and evoke emotion and experience even when meaning isn’t readily discernible.

The exhibition offers no shortage of works that prompt return for repeated savouring. Gargi Raina and Gigi Scaria contributed two of the many striking works in the 2007 exhibition — Making History Our Own — which marked the 60th anniversary of India’s independence and the 150th anniversary of the 1857 Uprising. Raina’s austere yet visceral ‘The Scattering (Zafran)’ is a set of six prints on paper each arrayed with varying densities of delicate wisps of blood. Scaria’s ‘Details of a Personal History’, digital print of a black and white photograph, evokes the formal calm of a still life. It invites the viewer to visually ponder this workers’ way station — a store showroom under construction with clothes hanging on nails, a bamboo ladder diagonally bisecting half the room, and a patch of marble floor in the foreground gleaming through dust and debris.

M.F. Husain is revered by Sahmat and art lovers across the world as a giant of modern art. Sahmat has organised symposia, publications, and exhibitions to honour him and protest his persecution by Hindutva forces. Like other Sahmat projects with a shared theme, works in its 2009 exhibition celebrating Husain on his 94th birthday display a lively diversity. Pushpamala N. conveys incisive self-assertion in her tableau-like ‘Motherland with Om Flag and Trishul’ while Sudhir Patwardhan combines tenderness and wit in his drawing that gives Husain an extra pair of arms.

In addition to its filial devotion to M.F. Husain, Sahmat organised projects to revive the memory of Mahatma Gandhi.

This reminder of Hindutva’s viciousness is grimly echoed in Vivan Sundaram’s ‘Memorial: Burial 1, 2, and 6’ and ‘Memorial: Iron Pyre (1993)’. These post-Ayodhya works stopped Chicago-based photographer and geography professor David Solzman and me in our tracks. Dr. Solzman gravely pronounced, “This guy doesn’t take any prisoners. His work deals with savagery and god-awful waste.”

Keywords: Sahmat Collective, University of Chicago, Indian art exhibition, M.F. Husain, modern art

Discussion on Zakia Jafri's protest Petition,2 pm to 5 pm on Tuesday, May 7, 2013, Literature Hall. IIC Annexe, India International Centre

Communalism Combat
and
SAHMAT
Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
29, Feroze Shah Road,New Delhi-110001
Telephone- 23381276/ 23070787
e-mail-sahmat8@yahoo.com

29.4.2013

Dear [. . .]
For over two decades now, we at SAHMAT and Communalism Combat have stood for the strengthening of India’s secular, democratic values by taking on frontally the divisive forces of communalism and fundamentalism.
As part of this ongoing battle, we believe it is imperative to host a detailed discussion/interaction between senior representatives of the political class, mass organisations and editors and journalists over the Issues Arising out of the Zakia Protest Petition, a landmark effort in the battle against impunity and for pinning responsibility for communal misgovernance.
We therefore invite you to join us at the Literature Hall. IIC Annexe, India International Centre between 2 pm to 5 pm on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 to participate in such a discussion.
The filing of the Zakia Jafri Protest Petition before the Magistrate on 15 April 2013 is a significant landmark in the sustained battle for the Rule of Law, Constitutional Governance and against communal forces and their vicious mobilisation within organs of the state and through unholy alliances with non-state actors. The petition, filed after a sustained battle to get a fair and transparent investigation against a chief minister, cabinet colleagues, senior administrators, policemen and front men and women of the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal will now make a strong case for charge sheeting of 59 accused.
Apart from the individual accused involved in this case, against whom a strong case for criminal culpability and administrative connivance and failure has been made out, the wider issues raised are critical to understand. Communal mobilisation precedes violence. It’s transformation into brute attacks against targeted sections of the population remain fundamental threats to the lasting security of all Indians, communal harmony and the secularisation of the Indian polity.
We believe therefore the wider issues raised through the Zakia Jafri Protest Petition are debated widely to ensure a greater understanding of such mobilisation and to build a resistance to the same in future. Only then can we collectively demand a transparent and accountable system of governance from our representatives and the parties that they represent.
We look forward to such a sustained discussion and your participation.

" In all probability Mrs Zakia Jafri and son Tanvir Jafri will also be present for the discussions. "

Yours Sincerely

Ram Rahman, Teesta Setalvad
For Communalism Combat & SAHMAT

Issues Raised
· Aggressive Mobilisation of Communal Forces and Response of State Agencies & Government
· Monitoring and Check on Hate Speech, Hate Writing, Pamphleteering
· State and Government Response to a Tragedy like Godhra on 27 February 2002
· Contemporaneous Records that Reveal Government Callousness or Indifference
· Transparency in Summoning assistance from the Military /Paramilitary forces
· Comparative Analysis of Districts & Commission records worst affected (15) and those that held their own (SPs/DMs refused to bow down to political masters)
· Role of Whistleblowers in Pinning down Accountability
· Role of Survivors/Activists/ Legal and Civil Rights Groups
· Role of the Political Class
· Role of Media


SAHMAT
29 Ferozshah Road, New Delhi-110001
Tel:011-23381276/011-23070787
email:sahmat8@yahoo.com
Website: www.sahmat.org

Sahmat Collective: Slogans for Communal Harmony (Video)

Photos from Sahmat evening for remembering Gujarat 2002

The above pictures were taken by Harsh Kapoor / sacw.net

Gujarat 10 YEear Memorial , FEB 27, 2012

On the 10th anniversary of the Gujarat Carnage

In Support to the victims of communal riots

In Solidarity with all those who are struggling for justice

On Monday, 27th February from 5 pm. To 8 pm.

AT SAHMAT, 29 Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi-110001

Programme includes singing by Madangopal Singh and
live telecast of Shubha Mudgal at Gulberg Society
at Ahmedabad organised by Communalism Combat
and Citizen for Justice and Peace. Also Tribute
Exhibitions.


SAHMAT
29 Ferozshah Road, New Delhi-110001
Tel:011-23381276/011-23070787
email:sahmat8@yahoo.com
Website: www.sahmat.org

Redefining the Secular in Indian Society - A report on 7 December 2011 event by Sahmat

From: Sukumar Muralidharan's Blog

Redefining the Secular in Indian Society

It is a word that has been tossed around in political contests and minutely dissected in scholarly circles. But “secularism” still remains an elusive concept. And in practice, “secular” politics is besieged at a number of levels, unable at any time to rise above particular, sectional interests.

An event on December 7 organised by Sahmat was the occasion for a scholarly inquiry into the deeper meanings and definitions of the “secular” in Indian society. There are numerous -- and mostly irreconcilable -- definitions already in circulation. December 7 became for this reason, an exercise in redefinition and rediscovery, in retrieving a principle from depths of conceptual confusion.

The event was organised a few days after the eightieth birthday of Romila Thapar, one of India’s greatest historians. Though this aspect was downplayed in deference to the individual’s unease with the public observance of a personal milestone, all speakers opened their remarks with eloquent tributes to an institution builder, teacher and mentor for generations of scholars. Beyond the world of academia, Romila Thapar has illumined trails of history that have long remained obscure for the wider public, considerably enhancing the quality of public discourse.

The historian K.N. Panikkar recounted some part of the public debt owed this remarkable career as an academic and public intellectual. Romila Thapar combined “scholarly pursuit with social commitment” in a manner that lent “direction to many a public issue”. While exploring new frontiers in historical scholarship, she also had time to frontally combat the “political abuse of history” – which indeed was a term of her coinage from the dark days of the Ayodhya movement, when the forces of Hindutva had managed to recruit large numbers to the cause of effacing a medieval mosque. Aside from giving a rigorous scholarly orientation to the effort of defeating the spurious historiography of Hindutva, Panikkar remarked, Romila Thapar was at the forefront of the campaign for sanity and tolerance in public life.

In remarks that opened the evening’s discussions, Romila Thapar spoke about the shifty and elusive character of “secularism” as a political principle. It is not difficult to identify events and actions that are antithetical to secularism. But as an affirmative principle, “secularism” is very difficult to pin down.

In this conceptual vacuum, parties of an overtly communal stripe have portrayed secularism as a denial of religion and the primordial identities that make the Indian nation what it is. Others have turned its supposed principle of religious tolerance into the sanction for the perpetuation of a clerical hegemony. Still others have recoiled from the futility of the entire project of building a secular order in a society of intense religiosity, ascribing the pathologies of modern sectarian politics entirely to the denial of identities held basic to social existence.

Romila Thapar warned against all these possible outcomes of a muddled thinking. The definition popular in India, she said, “either equates secularism with atheism .. or else more commonly, (refers) to the co-existence of all religions”. Neither has great validity, since “personal belief is not central to the secular” so much as the “control of society by religious institutions”. And religious coexistence or tolerance is a meaning that has evolved specifically in the Indian historical context, as an antidote to the communal politics of both the Hindu and Muslim stripe. Yet it is a definition that has not accounted for either the “fact of religions being of unequal status”, or for the “underlying hierarchy in concepts such as the majority and the minority communities”.

Coexistence or religious tolerance cannot in this sense, be a primary criterion. The secular ideal originates in the western milieu where the issue of coexistence was of relatively little consequence, since subjects of the Sovereign were normally enjoined to follow the faith he patronised. What was germane rather, was the subordination of the religious authority to the worldly power. In the Romila Thapar’s words: “The secular implies the primacy of civil laws. .. Identities of religion, race, caste, language and so on would be subordinated to the identity of citizenship, based on equal rights, duties and obligations of all citizens on the state”.

The focus then shifts from secularism as a principle supposedly embedded in the institutions of governance, towards secularisation as a process accompanying the consolidation of the nation-state. Religion loses its primary claim to citizen allegiance and is confined to a private sphere, while the civic compact takes over the public domain. People live together in “civil society” not because they resemble each other in terms of religion or any other marker of identity, but because they share a common set of values, embodied in a system of civil law.

But is this separation of the private and public spheres always feasible? And can religion be all that easily confined to the private sphere or demoted as a primary criterion of identity fixation? Religion is of course a medium for the socialisation of the individual and a private religion would be in some senses, a contradiction in terms. A more credible approach would be to view secularisation in terms of the balance of power between social institutions, as a process by which the civic compact as embodied in a secular constitution supersedes the decrees of religious authority.

Historically, secularisation has also corresponded to the diminution of the political power of the ecclesiastical orders, typified for instance, by the loss of their tithes and titles to land. That understanding though, is of limited relevance in India, where an ecclesiastical order on the lines of the Catholic Church never really existed.

Instances when sovereigns have specifically enjoined tolerance for various faiths as a political commitment are not lacking from Indian history. So too are there numerous instances of the sovereign power patronising a variety of religious institutions and orders. But these cannot be used to buttress the argument for secularism, since their focus was “the furtherance of religion as a social force”.

A more credible source for secular doctrines in Romila Thapar’s assessment, could be found in the various nastika sects which existed from the earliest times in India and despite all their internal disagreements, were almost all “opposed to divine sanction as necessary for civil laws”.

The nastika view was that “the universe is self-created” and life itself constituted by a combination of elements. Human consciousness and knowledge are finite and derived from perception, rather than revelation. In Romila Thapar’s words again, the nastika sects held that “laws being man-made, can be changed”. These were arguments that the Buddhists and Jainas found extremely congenial to their mission of propagating “social ethics as the mainspring of human behaviour, where the laws and values of society should ensure the equality and dignity of its members”.

Moving rapidly forward to contemporary times, these aspects of Indian tradition are of obvious relevance to the modern debate on secularism. From being a rather pale assurance of religious tolerance, secularism becomes a more robust principle of ensuring that constitutional guarantees of liberty and equality are fulfilled. Key assurances of the Indian constitution, such as equality before the law and fair opportunity, have obviously been breached repeatedly and without any gesture of redress from the State. Words and deeds are being increasingly subject to control and manipulation in accordance with “invented laws of what are described as religious and cultural tradition”. The rich multiplicities of history are being effaced in “monolithic structures” that answer the seeming need for a nation-state to define itself by primordial identities rather than the civic compact.

For Romila Thapar, these circumstances made the task of “redefining the secular in Indian society” an absolute imperative. Opportunities were available, since as a nation, India still has “the freedom to choose the values that should govern our society”. The retrieval of the secular could begin by shifting the focus “from a passive co-existence of religions, to the more dynamic co-existence of citizens with .. equal rights and obligations, guarded by the vigilance of a free and just society”.

Picking up on some of these themes, K.N. Panikkar drew attention to the need for understanding secularism in the context of “community formation” in modern times and the newly minted forms of religious identity that emerged within the colonial milieu. Small and diverse communities that existed on the basis of their economic and social functions, were under the influence of colonial modernity, incorporated into one or the other religious group. Religion had been a “perceived and experienced reality” in pre-colonial times, without generating a consciousness that transcended the local milieu. These identities became entrenched as civil society was incorporated into the colonial system. Moreover, in early early nationalist propaganda, these newly minted identities were seen as congruent with “national” identities.

To view secularism as an outcome of religious harmony is to invert the perspective, since tolerance only emerges when secularism is in place. Secularism as a principle however, began its journey in India burdened with the deadweight of religion, which in turn was perceived as a monolithic doctrine in which the multiple cultural diversities of the real world were effaced. Religious harmony fails to achieve the secular ideal because every religion has within it, various kinds of cultural and social hierarchies. Coexistence thus becomes a formula for the sustenance of difference and for the perpetuation of these inequalities within each religious order.

It was “logical” to have accorded a degree of priority to religious harmony, given the reality of Indian society, where multiple religious traditions had at various times sprouted and flourished. But the notion was not sufficient to achieve a truly inclusive social order. “For realizing inclusiveness, cultural plurality is not sufficient”, said Panikkar: “what is essential
is cultural equality”.

In its practice in India, secularism in both its state and society centred versions, was enclosed within the discourse of “religious consciousness”. It failed to reconcile between the “religious and material conditions of existence”. Redefining the secular requires that areas of human existence other than the religious, such as culture and economy, be incorporated into its praxis. It requires that “the values of democracy and social justice and cultural equality” be introduced as integral elements of the secular compact.

Secularism accorded priority to the political values of liberty and equality, over the codes of duty and obedience ordained by religion. Concluding the discussion, Prabhat Patnaik argued that what is often taken to be the purely ethical impulse towards freedom has a basis in reason. Every individual has a rational cause to struggle for freedom as part of a human collective, since nobody can call himself free while there are many who are unfree.

This collective endeavour for freedom fosters the domain of the “secular”. It creates the community that strives for a transcendence of narrower values imposed by religion. But it is threatened by the forces of reaction which seek to impose an order based on religious values. More subtly, the bourgeois order which retains a formal commitment to secularism, may seek to engineer schisms in the collective struggle for freedom, reducing each individual to an atomised existence, impelling him in turn to seek an anchorage in an older, familiar network of religious community.

The denial of human freedom then is the logical course of a bourgeois political order which exalts an individual’s seeming gain at the expense of society, as the ultimate benchmark of achievement. With the untold riches foretold on that pathway now proving illusory and the world order built on the unfettered and unaccountable rampage of finance capital in palpable crisis, the forces of reaction seem poised to resume their push towards absolute political power. A redefinition of the secular in Indian society is clearly a political programme of surpassing urgency.

December 28 2011

Prosecute of Narendra Modi Now SAHMAT Statement on Bhatt’s affidavit

SAHMAT

Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust

29, Feroze Shah Road, New Delhi -110001

Telephone 23381276/ 23070787

e-mail-sahmat@ vsnl.com

23.4.2011

SAHMAT Statement on Bhatt’s affidavit

Prosecution of Narendra Modi must begin without further delay

We call on the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigating Team (SIT) to take immediate note of the consequences arising from the affidavit filed by the senior Gujarat cadre police officer, Sanjeev Bhatt, pointing directly towards the culpability of chief minister Narendra Modi in the state-wide pogrom against Muslims in 2002.

Several of the revelations made by Bhatt suggest that the SIT has not been true to its mandate to investigate the riots impartially and effectively. We are disturbed by the allegation that the SIT tried to tutor Bhatt prior to his formal deposition and that it has tried to suppress his damaging revelations about Modi’s explicit instructions that the police should allow the free expression of “anger” by rioting mobs.

We have always been aware of Modi’s criminal culpability in the riots that swept through Gujarat for over a month after the Godhra train arson of February 2002. Bhatt’s affidavit provides a sound legal foundation to the case against the chief minister and establishes a sound basis to begin the process of prosecution against him.

We call on the SIT to show the necessary sensitivity and commitment to the urgency of justice for the victims of the murderous Gujarat riots, engineered by those who were entrusted with the job of governing the state.

From

SAHMAT

Invitation: Post Carnage Gujarat & its Socio Political Reality - Talk by Teesta Setalvad (26 April 2011)

SAHMAT

Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust

29, Feroze Shah Road , New Delhi -110001

Telephone- 23381276/ 23070787

e-mail-sahmat@ vsnl.com

18.4.2011



You are invited to a talk

by Teesta Setalvad on

Post Carnage Gujarat & its Socio Political Reality



On Tuesday, 26th April, 2011 at ICSSR Conference Room,

35 Ferozshah Road, New Delhi at 4.30 p.m. (Behind Rabindra Bhavan.)


Prof. C.P.Chandrasekhar will chair

SAHMAT

Report in Frontline on the symposium Faith and Fact: Democracy after Ayodhya Verdict”

Frontline, Volume 28 - Issue 01 :: Jan. 01-14, 2011


Bones of contention

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI

Experts say that not all the facts that emerged during excavations at Ayodhya were taken into account in the verdict given by the High Court.


THE verdict delivered by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court on September 30 on the Ayodhya title suit has been a subject of debate and discussion among social scientists, activists and legal experts. “Faith and Fact: Democracy after Ayodhya Verdict”, a symposium held in New Delhi from December 6 to 8 and organised by Social Scientist, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) and Communalism Combat, dealt with the verdict's ramifications, including its consequences for the country's plurality and secularism, one of the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution that is unalterable even by the legislature.

Historians such as Irfan Habib, Shireen Moosvi and Syed Ali Rezavi drew on historical and archaeological evidence to show that many facts were not taken into account in giving the judgment, while the flawed report of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was. Legal experts lamented the deep-rooted social and religious biases among members of the higher judiciary and the implications that this had for democracy in India. The occasion was marked by the release of a significant publication by the Aligarh Historians Society, titled “History and the Judgement of the Allahabad High Court (Lucknow Bench) in the Ramjanambhumi-Babri Masjid case”. In its preface, Irfan Habib wrote: “The operational part of the majority judgment derived not from Justice S.U. Khan's, but from Justice Sudhir Agarwal's reading of the historical background.”

The ASI's excavation report of 2002 formed the crux of the judgment. Rezavi explained, with the help of slides, how the Babri Masjid could not have been made at a time later than the 15th century and that it was not constructed by the later Mughals as alleged. Irfan Habib, who is also the president of the Aligarh Historians Society, spoke of the ASI's conduct and said that it was surprising that while the idols were assumed to be those of Ram Lalla, the Babri Masjid was referred to as an “alleged” mosque.

The ASI's report talked of finding “pillar bases” in its excavations. Rezavi, who was one of the three archaeologists appointed by the court as observers during the excavations, said that many of the ASI's actions were disturbing. He said that “minaras”, or minarets, came much after Babar's time and that the argument that all mosques had minaras and the Babri Masjid was not a mosque as it did not have one was flawed. These structures appeared from Shah Jahan's time. Even the defined arch, he explained, emerged only during Aurangazeb's and Akbar's regimes. “In Babar's period, they were still trying to perfect the arch,” he said. The main archway of the Babri Masjid and the heaviness of the structure were ideas borrowed from the Iranian tradition, he said. The material used in the Babri Masjid, surkhi (according to an established glossary this means pounded brick mixed with lime to form a hydraulic mortar) and lime alternating with rubble and calcrete was used in many structures in Ayodhya such as makbaras and mausoleums.

Rezavi, who calls himself a historian rather than an archaeologist, said that the pillars found at the site were decorative ones inserted in the archway and could not support any structure. “None of the pillars, including the free-standing ones, resembles each other. They could have been got from anywhere else and used as decorative pieces. The existence of pillars does not mean that there was no mosque,” he said, citing examples of existing mosques and Mughal structures that have pillars that are not used for decorative purposes but for supporting the roof. Fatehpur Sikri in Agra, Jama Masjid in Delhi and structures in Jaunpur, which typified Mughal mosques, used pillars, he pointed out.

Irfan Habib said that the Babri Masjid was supposed to be a protected monument. On the orders of the Bench that the ASI seek expert opinion, the ASI deployed the services of a company called Tojo-Vikas International Limited to undertake geological surveys. He quipped: “Ignorant as the ASI was of history, it got in touch with a company with the name of Tojo.” Hideki Tojo was Japan's political and military leader who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.

The Indian History Congress had protested when the Bench ordered the excavation to see if there was any structure below the mosque. The High Court had ruled that the exercise would be undertaken by five eminent archaeologists, including two Muslims. “The first thing the Government of India did when the ASI was assigned the task was to change the Director-General of ASI. The then Bharatiya Janata Party government got a pliant DG,” Habib said. The nomenclature of the Bench as referred to in the ASI itself changed; from being referred to as the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi Bench, it became the Ram Janmabhoomi Bench. A team leader was selected, and of the 20 experts, only one was a Muslim.

“Even before the excavation, the religious colour of the excavation was established. The Bench took notice of this and asked the ASI to remedy it. Religion was not as important as public confidence was. In fact, more non-Muslim archaeologists and historians were representing the Sunni Waqf Board,” he said.

Of a total of 89 labourers, only nine were Muslims, and the ASI continued to defy the orders, said Habib. “It was obvious that their conduct was not above board,” he said. The matter took a serious turn when the ASI did not record the glazed ware, bones and fragments that appeared while digging the trenches. The Bench ordered that the matter should be sealed. “All this reflects in Justice Sudhir Agarwal's judgment, but he does not mention it,” he said. The Bench then passed an extraordinary order that called for the appointment of a new team leader. The existing leader, B.R. Mani, was made Director, Excavations. While Justice Sudhir Agarwal's judgment makes no note of the observations by the Bench, it took a serious view of the violations by the ASI. “It was only because of the monitors appointed by the Bench that the truth came out,” said Habib, adding that Justice Agarwal was irritated by complaints by the monitors regarding the ASI's behaviour. “It does not irritate him that the ASI was committing violations,” he said.

Judicial censures, especially motivated ones, he said, should not matter to historical experts. The monitoring did not go in vain; the ASI was forced to record the glazed ware and other findings. “The ASI report is motivated; it has concealments and defiance. It provides no concordance with layers and trenches; one just has to take their word for it,” he said. On the ASI's finding of pillar bases, he said that the ASI claimed to have found pillar bases with brickbats.

“It is interesting that B.R. Mani's own report on Lalkot where stone bases were found and were said to be weak enough to hold a canopy, in Ayodhya, brickbats can hold pillars,” said Habib. The assertion that the remains of 50 pillars were found was also specious because it was not supported by the finding of an equivalent number of slabs. “Where did they all go? Pillars are supposed to be there and cannot be found. The question is why should pillar bases be associated with Hindus and not Muslims. All this was submitted as evidence by R.C. Thakran, but it was ignored. Not only pillars are Hindu, even circles are. The area denoted as a circular shrine despite its Lilliputian size was given gigantic importance in the judgment, ” he added.

The presence of bones could have been an indication of human habitation, especially by the poor; it could not have been a temple, let alone the Ram Janmabhoomi temple, he said. There was no proof of animal sacrifice; without citing any authority on the subject, Justice Agarwal in his order emphatically stated that “it was a well-known fact that in certain Hindu temples, animal sacrifices are made and flesh is eaten as prasad while bones are deposited below the floor at the site”. No evidence has been found of the Kali cult in the Upper Gangetic Basin where Ayodhya is situated, said Habib. On the contrary, the presence of glazed ware and bones showed that the land adjacent to the walls and the main structure remained open, as would be the case with an Eidgah or Qanati (with much open land) mosque, so that the waste matter could be thrown there. The presence of glazed ware itself was a clincher of Islamic presence.

In the three centuries preceding 1528, argue the Historians' Forum, Ayodhya, or Awadh, was a city with a large Muslim population along with Hindu inhabitants, and given the dietary customs of the two communities, an “abundance of animal bones” would weigh heavily in favour of a Muslim presence in the immediate vicinity of the disputed site. The historians felt that the court should have asked the concerned plaintiffs what proof there was that a temple existed. To have merely asserted that the remains beneath the Babri Masjid were “religious” was not sufficient in itself as such a structure could be theoretically Islamic, Jain, Buddhist or even Saivite, given the presence of animal bones. Neither were any significant remains of a “massive Hindu or Vaishnavite temple”, images or stones with sculptured divinities, vandalised or otherwise, found in the excavations. On the basis of very limited “evidence”, stones and bricks, the idea of an entire temple was constructed. The detailed notes were deleted from the computer, as reported to the Bench by the ASI.

Historians baffled

The historians were baffled by the opinion of Justice Agarwal with respect to Islam where he is supposed to have said: “Whatever we had to suffice it to conclude that the incidence of temple demolition are [ sic] not only confined to past but is going in [ sic] continuously. The religion which is supposed to connect all individuals with brotherly feeling has become a tool of hearted [ sic] and enmity.” How can a historian answer in either “yes” or “no”, asked Shireen Moosvi, one of the authors of the document. Moosvi was cross-examined by the Bench.

Legal experts like B.A. Desai, Mihir Desai and Anupam Gupta and retired judges like P.B. Sawant and Hosbet Suresh felt that the act of demolition was a clear contempt of court and those responsible for that should have been put behind bars. They expressed concern as to how certain judgments had interpreted Hindutva and given legitimacy to acts perpetrated under its name. B.A. Desai, who was also the former Additional Solicitor General of India, wrote in his paper that Hindu communal forces had looked upon Justice Verma's judgment ( Manohar Joshi vs N.B. Patil) as the “judicial imprimatur of its divisive ideology”, where the judge found that the statement of Manohar Joshi that the “first Hindu state will be established in Maharashtra” did not amount to appeal on the grounds of religion. Desai said that the judge did not find anything wrong in the election speech of Manohar Joshi, a Shiv Sena leader, and held that “in our opinion, the mere statement that a Hindu state will be established in Maharashtra is by itself not an appeal on the ground of his religion but the expression at the best of such hope”.

Mihir Desai pointed out how derogatory statements of another senior Shiv Sena leader about Muslims were interpreted by the High Court as having referred to only “anti-national” Muslims. “The High Court held a view that even the Shiv Sena leader did not harbour,” said Desai. The order was challenged in the apex court, which turned down the appeal. Justice Hosbet Suresh lamented that the courts often favoured the majority community. “I could never imagine that this kind of a judgment could be delivered. If faith is to be the rule of law, it would affect democracy ultimately,” he said.

Justice P.B. Sawant felt that all the key institutions in the country were being run by the ruling classes. “As a citizen, lawyer and judge, I have yet to come across a case where a person belonging to the ruling class or supporting a ruling class has been convicted and a victim has got justice. The Lucknow Bench has committed three grave injustices. One, it converted a title suit to a partition suit; two, instead of giving a judgment, it gave a compromise that was not sought by anybody; and three, it made its basis faith and not law,” he said.

The basis of democracy was the rule of law and if that got substituted by faith, then the outcome would be disastrous, he said. All the legal experts were unanimous that in the interests of democracy and secularism, the judgment needed to be reversed. “Let us hope the Supreme Court sets things right. Had the apex court given this kind of a judgement, where would we have gone? It is now the Constitution which is at stake,” he said.

Report of the symposium on ’Faith & Fact: Democracy After the Ayodhya Verdict’

by Teesta Setalvad

On December 6/7/8, 2010, Communalism Combat, Sahmat and Social Scientist organised a three day symposium in Delhi on ’Faith & Fact: Democracy After the Ayodhya Verdict’. The deliberations, over 3 days, between academics (historians and archaeologists), jurists and lawyers, activists and journalists were invigorating and challenging.

Full Text at: http://www.sacw.net/article1761.html

‘History and the Judgement of the Allahabad High Court (Lucknow Bench) in the Ramjanmabhumi - Babri Masjid Case’ - Booklet by Sahmat

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5.12.2010

PRESS RELEASE

During the three day symposium Fact and Faith: Democracy After Ayodhya Verdict, commencing on the 6th of December 2010, a booklet containing four artciles titled ‘History and the Judgement of the Allahabad High Court (Lucknow Bench) in the Ramjanmabhumi - Babri Masjid Case’ is being released. The booklet authored by the Aligarh Historians Society deals with all the major points at issue relating to history and archaeology that have been raised in the judgemnet of Justice Sudhir Agarwal. The papers deal with the date of construction of the Babri Masjid and the historicity of its inscriptions. They also assert that the belief in the site of the Ramjanmabhumi is a recent one. The historians including Prof. Irfan Habib will be addressing the symposium on 6th December at Muktdhara, Bhai Veer Singh Marg, Gole Market, New Delhi.

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SAHMAT

Democracy After The Ayodhya Verdict: A symposium (New Delhi, 6-8 December 2010)