Canada’s troubling indifference to the Air India bombing

By

-

February 23, 2018

In this 2005 photo, Rattan Singh Kalsi shows a photograph of his daughter, Indira, at a meeting with families of the victims of the 1985 Air India bombing.

Rattan Singh Kalsi kept photos of all his grown children in his room at the seniors’ home, but one of them towered over the rest.

The photo anchored a kind of shrine to his daughter, Indira, who had died more than 30 years earlier, just as she was entering adulthood.

Indira had grown up in Canada and Rattan had bought her a plane ticket so she could see India, the country their family had come from, and spend time with the relatives she might not get to see once the responsibilities of work and adult life set in.

Naturally, Rattan, who had been middle-aged at the time of Indira’s death, was heartbroken when she was killed in the bombing of the plane. He never recovered. He was not responsible for what had happened, but he blamed himself and lived in quiet anguish for the rest of his life.

Not long before he died, he shared his story. I was there to record it, and it was unbearably sad for both of us.

Rattan had left behind a request to scatter his and his wife’s ashes (she had died some years earlier) over the same patch of ocean where the remains of the plane carrying their daughter had splashed down.

Bomb planted in Canada

All 329 people on board Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985, were killed, including 280 citizens or permanent residents of Canada.
They were lost to a bomb that exploded while their plane was in Irish airspace, en route from Canada to India. The bomb had been planted in Canada in an act of terror planned by extremists allegedly advocating for a separate Sikh state in the Punjab.

It was Canada’s worst mass murder, yet it is barely remembered in this country.

Today, Canadians commonly regard the bombing as an Indian tragedy, or at most an Indo-Canadian tragedy. They typically dwell on the terrorism, but rarely on the grief and hardship of fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, children, friends and neighbours left behind.

Why hasn’t this tragedy claimed a prominent place in Canadian history and public memory? Some now call it Canada’s 9/11, but until the attack in New York City some 16 years later, they didn’t call it much at all.

The Canadian families of the dead wonder year after year why no one but them seems to care, or why their grief is seen as less worthy than that of others who are more openly taken into the nation’s heart.

Yes, there was a long criminal trial, a public inquiry and an apology from the federal government for failing to prevent the bombing and for the mistreatment of the families thereafter.
The bombing was belatedly declared “a Canadian tragedy,” so Air India is part of the official record, but it does not appear to be part of the Canadian family album.

‘Broad indifference’

I have no personal connection to the tragedy, but our country’s broad indifference to it came to me as a surprise. A course I was teaching at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., 25 years or more after the bombing, called for a section on Air India Flight 182, but when I went to look up the scholarly research, I was astonished by how little there was.

The absence of research was consistent with the broader and more troubling fact that the bombing has never resonated as deeply with Canadians as the scale of the tragedy would suggest.

An Indo-Canadian woman shows her two-year-old grandson where the name of her husband and his grandfather, Daljit Singh Grewal, is located on a monument during a memorial marking the 25th anniversary of the Air India bombing in Vancouver, B.C., in June 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

The mismatch between the tragedy itself and its significance in the public memory may have many explanations, including racism.

It could be that the bombing is regarded as an Indian issue, since it was apparently motivated by political conflicts rooted there, or as an Irish event, since the plane that had taken off in Canada exploded in Irish airspace. It may be that since most of the Canadian victims were of Indian ancestry, that their fellow Canadians discounted them as outsiders or minorities.

Whatever the reason, a great wound had been left to the families to tend to on their own, and history had closed it over, leaving barely a scar for the public to see. The wound represented not only the grief of losing one’s loved one, but the heartache of not being recognized as Canadians, and the loss not being viewed by the Canadian government and fellow citizens as a loss worthy of public mourning.

Since then, I have made it a personal and academic mission to haul this tragic event into the Canadian living room for a broader discussion, partly for the sake of the memory of those who died, and partly for the sake of those who have had to carry on without them.

Memorializing Air India

In 2016, toward the end of the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, my colleagues and I organized a two-day conference at McMaster featuring family members, scholars and artists in the hope of bringing the bombing closer to its rightful place in the Canadian consciousness.

(Khursheed Ahmed)

Last year, we published an anthology, Remembering Air India: The Art of Public Mourning that creates a different sort of public record of the bombing than official responses.

In the course of my research, I have had the difficult honour of interviewing dozens of relatives of those who perished on Air India Flight 182. They have taken me inside their pain, and I find their grief substantial, complex and palpable even after three decades.

My work has led me to understand what our country lost in the bombing, and also what we have lost by failing to include the tragedy and its living victims in our collective memory.

At the annual commemoration of the bombing in Toronto every year, Air India families come up to me and ask who I lost. To me, it’s distressing that they have come to expect that only other family members would care enough to come to a memorial service.

Slowly, I am assembling an Air India Flight 182 archive, the first of its kind, featuring families’ scrapbooks, poems, dance, kids’ paintings and recordings and transcripts of interviews with family members, to be housed at the McMaster University library and made available online for users around the world.

My hope is that it will preserve the memory of those who passed away, document the pain of their families and create resources for research that may finally connect this “Canadian tragedy” to Canada itself.

It’s high time.

This article was first published on THECONVERSATION.

How Jind in Haryana has become a nightmare for Dalits

By

-

February 23, 2018

0

Gangrapes, murders and broken busts of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar

Several stories are coming out Jind related to how the state has been failing Dalits in the region. On Jan 18, 2017, Ishwar Singh, an employee with Haryana Confed (Haryana State Federation of Consumers’ Cooperative Wholesale Stores Ltd) committed suicide after months of harassment at the hands of corrupt officials and state administration.

Singh, a Dalit from Jind, Haryana, took the extreme step after he spent three months in jail when charges of corruption were filed on him. Singh had alleged that it was higher authorities who had been involved in corruption, but to acquit them, he, a lower level worker,was picked as a target.

The protests in Jind have been going on for over 10 days now but the government is yet to act on the issue.

Although he came out of jail, he could never recover from the humiliation he faced. Having stopped talking to his family and even eating, he finally committed suicide on the night of January 17. After his death, the usual government promises followed, but not before the family had protested for five days outside the Jind Civil Hospital. The family was promised a thorough CBI inquiry into the corruption scandal, a compensation of Rs 10 lakh, and a job for one of the family members by state minister, Krishna Pawar. However, a year later, none of these promises have been fulfilled.

Another family, that of one Satish Kumar feels similarly cheated. Satish was a soldier in the Indian Army who died fighting Kashmiri insurgents. In a number of villages across the nation, martyred soldiers have a bust of theirs installed in their villages but since Satish was a Dalit, his bust was never installed in his village. Not only this, his family received neither compensation nor a government job as is the norm. Despite a number of pleas and visits to the Ministry of Defence and state government, there has been no response.

On January 9, 2018, a Dalit girl left her home in Jhansa village of Kurukshetra district for tuitions, but never returned. On January 12, her body was found about 2 km from her residence in the village of Rajvaha in Jind district. Post-mortem reports revealed that the girl had been gangaped and suffered vicious assaults. Her private parts had been penetrated with sharp tools which caused excessive bleeding leading to her death. Her body had bruise marks all over. A week later, one of the guys who was said to be a friend of the girl was also found dead. The family of the girl along with local Dalit activists sat on a dharna (protest) outside Jind civil hospital for over a week following which they were assured that the CBI would inquire into the matter. Again, the promises were never honoured.

Protesters waving black flags in Jind, Haryana during the arrival of Amit Shah

This is not the first such incident in the region. Last year, a girl from Aasan village of Jind district was raped, following which she had to suffer humiliation at the hands of the public. In an extreme step, the girl committed suicide after consuming poison. Here too, the family was promised swift inquiry and punishment for the accused that was never delivered.

In many ways, these stories coming out from Jind are only a reflection of the deeply casteist nature of the society, says Rajat Kalsan, a Dalit activist and a lawyer from Jind. He points out, “In the past few years, there have been many reports emerging from Karnal, Kurukshetra, Jind, Panipat and Hisar about busts of Dr. Bhimrao Babasaheb Ambedkar being desecrated. However, not one person has ever been arrested in these cases. This shows how seriously the district administration takes cases where Dalit icons are humiliated.”

Kalsan, who has been protesting along with the families outside the small secretariat in Jind for over 10 days, says, “Despite a series of attacks on Dalits, it seems the Haryana government is not at all interested. There are no constitutional bodies in the state to address Dalit issues despite the Constitution mandating it to have a National Scheduled Caste Commission.”

Kalsan however, adds that he and the other protesters have been left equally disappointed with the support of people from all walks of life. “People who have benefited from the vision of Babasaheb Ambedkar are also silent on these atrocities…people and NGOs who claim a lot and talk ‘big’ are missing from these protests…one of the protesters Dinesh Khapad nearly died from the fast unto death yet not one person from the administration has blinked,” he adds.

The protesters were detained for three hours on February 15

On February 15, six days after the protests started outside the secretariat in Jind, BJP National President Amit Shah was scheduled to visit the region. Rajat Kalsan, Dinesh Khapad and other protesters decided to waive black flags at Shah, hoping that the same would at least get the government to acknowledge their grievances. However, on the contrary, the police acted against the protesters and detained and were released only after three hours.

A detailed look into these cases, and a closer inspection of the caste realities of Haryana shows that despite strong laws such as Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (PoA), there is a serious lack of will on the part of administration to implement the same. In most of these cases, the police do not even register FIRs until the community protests. Then, there is the inclusion of the PoA Act. “I will give you an example of how even this law is used to target us. Last year in Hisar, there was a row between Brahmin and the Dalit community over a public handpump, following which Dalits were beaten up. When we forced the police to include the SC/ST PoA Act, the Khap Panchayat called for social boycott of the Dalits who had filed the complaint. So, we filed a complaint against the people who had called for the boycott and made sure that these people are also booked under the Act as well. However, despite the Act being clear that offences under the Act are non-bailable, the sessions court freely released the accused on bail. When even courts do not want to help us, what options do we have?”

Kalsan knows a thing or two about how the police and the state machinery are complicit in these cases. “The attacks on Dalits are a systematic way to turn Haryana into a fight between Jats and other dominant communities versus non-Jats. The BJP government had no issue when Jats went on a rampage during their fight for reservations but refuses to even pay compensation when Dalits are raped and murdered,” he says. Kalsan adds that time and again, he is accused by people of dividing people on the basis of caste. “I am a counsel for Dalit families of Mirchpur atrocity cases and for seven years, because of the nature of the case, I was given police protection. However, protection was then suddenly withdrawn. No reason was given on my asking why. .” He adds that for his efforts, there are more than 12 cases registered against him. “The law is strong, the people are not. And here lies the issue. We cannot achieve much unless the government wants things to change. And it seems this government is satisfied with Dalits being attacked and murdered,” he says.

This article was first publishe on TwoCircles.

The Nirav Modi Scandal

By

-

February 23, 2018

0

Nirav Modi, and his uncle Mehul Choksi, are the latest additions to the list of the so-called “entrepreneurs of new India” who have looted public money and decamped with the loot.

Image Courtesy: The Indian Express

Nirav Modi, and his uncle Mehul Choksi, are the latest additions to the list of the so-called “entrepreneurs of new India” who have looted public money and decamped with the loot. The Punjab National Bank, the second largest bank in the country, kept giving them loans without any collateral (which is basically what happened through the complicated procedure of the so-called “Letters of Undertaking”); and one fine day Nirav Modi simply left the country with his immediate family, to be followed by his uncle a few days later.

Several characteristics are shared by all these decamping “entrepreneurs” whose list includes Lalit Modi and Vijay Mallya. First, all of them are high-profile “celebrities”. Lalit Modi for years appeared everyday on television screens in lakhs of homes across the country during IPL matches, alongside political and Bollywood heavyweights, and was hailed as the “brain” behind this event. Vijay Mallya was a member of parliament elected with much fanfare, and also a regular TV presence during IPL matches involving the team that he owned, the Royal Challengers Bangalore,. And Nirav Modi, whose diamonds adorned Hollywood and Bollywood stars, was in addition related through marriage to the country’s top “entrepreneur” family, the Ambanis.
Secondly, all of them were close to the ruling party. Lalit Modi’s proximity to Sushma Swaraj and to Vasundhara Raje continued openly even after he had fled the country. Vijay Mallya had been elected to the Rajya Sabha with the surplus votes of the BJP. And not only was Mehul Choksi “Mehulbhai” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but Nirav Modi actually appeared in a photograph , after having fled the country, as part of Modi’s team of Indian “entrepreneurs” at the Davos summit. The government’s subsequent claims that he merely slunk into the photograph are absurd: nobody can just slink into a Prime Minister’s photograph.

Indeed the closeness of all these persons to the ruling Party is evident from the fact that their escapes can be shown to have been “assisted escapes” by the government (as a report in The Wire establishes). In the case of Vijay Mallya, who misappropriated Rs.9000 crores, a “lookout” notice issued on October 16, 2015, was conveniently and unaccountably “downgraded” on November 25, allowing him to escape from the country on March 1, 2016. And in the case of Nirav Modi, who defrauded PNB of Rs.11400 crores, the government took no action whatsoever despite being informed about his misdemeanour in July 2016.

Thirdly, each one of them continues to be absolutely brazen about his criminal deed without an iota of remorse. Lalit Modi struts around the world pretending that he is the victim. Vijay Mallya has the temerity to march into a function at the Indian High Commission in London. And Nirav Modi has even written a letter suggesting that it is PNB’s impetuousness, leading to a media blitz on his borrowing, that is responsible for his default, ignoring conveniently that he fled the country on January 1, long before any news of his default had reached the media.

It is ironic that a government which screams its opposition to economic malfeasance, which put millions to acute hardship through an act of demonetization supposedly for fighting black money, and whose insistence on Aadhar for plugging “loopholes” in public distribution has already starved several destitute persons to death, has presided over a plunder of banks by some of the country’s richest people, and even “assisted” their escape! And there is a deafening silence till now from both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister on this latest case of plunder by Nirav Modi.

It is also ironic that Assocham should use the instance of this plunder to demand that public sector banks should be privatized! This is tantamount to a demand for handing over the banks to the very same tribe whose members are responsible for looting them: a Nirav Modi loots the PNB and sits cozily in New York, while this very loot then becomes the reason for the PNB to be handed over, say, to his relatives, the Ambanis! Or, even more ironically, the same Nirav Modi can use a front to buy the same PNB with the same money that he has looted from it!

But while Assocham can always be expected to make such outlandish demands, even the Chief Economic Advisor to the government, Arvind Subramaniam, has asked for an increase in private equity in public sector banks on the grounds that this would bring greater share-holder vigilance to check such malpractices. One wonders if his views are those of the government; and if not, then one wonders how he can freely air them while holding a responsible official post. But there are two obvious flaws in his position.

First, vigilance alone by those holding an interest in the bank cannot stop such malpractices, as the Barings Bank case shows, where the funds of Britain’s oldest merchant bank were used for rampant speculation by one of its employees, Nick Leeson, which brought down the bank. In the PNB case where LOUs anyway have a very short life-span, either there was a bunching of LOUs just before the scam burst, or fresh LOUs were issued to cover expiring LOUs, so that audit could not catch the misdemeanor. The share-holders therefore could scarcely have been able to prevent it.

The more important issue here relates to the fact that lending practices were bent with impunity by a bunch of employees to favour Nirav Modi; and preventing this requires a change in practices rather than greater share-holders’ vigilance. The Modi government’s culpability in this case lies in not taking action despite being warned, which again calls for a change in practices. Such a change for instance, should involve greater parliamentary vigilance over PSB affairs rather than greater share-holder vigilance through privatization.

Secondly, suppose for a moment that PNB was a private bank. Then with a scam of this order, there would have been a run on the bank from depositors, leading either to its collapse with disastrous consequences, or to a government bail-out at heavy cost. But because PNB happens to be a government-owned bank, there is still enough confidence among depositors, despite Jaitley’s and Modi’s deafening silences, not to panic into withdrawing their deposits.

Privatization, whether involving private control or only greater private equity, will not per se prevent such occurrences, but banks will still require government funds to keep afloat in the event of such occurrences. And if government funds are to be used in such eventualities, then there is no reason why the government should not own the banks or should dilute its equity. For preventing such occurrences what is required therefore is the devising of appropriate institutional mechanisms of supervision even while retaining government ownership.

There is however a deeper problem here. Capitalism exhorts private economic agents, such as businesses, corporations and banks to pursue economic gain, indeed that is supposed to be its modus operandi; yet it wants employees of these agents to obey command and not to pursue their own private gain even clandestinely. It promotes hedonistic behavior, of maximizing gain, in the realm of the economy; but it wants the State, and its employees, not to be contaminated by such individual hedonism. It wants profit maximization by private agents, but it can work only if they do so within legal bounds; yet there is nothing to prevent them from pursuing profit-maximizing behavior at the expense of the law (through offering bribes to law-enforcers for instance).
There is in other words a basic contradiction at the heart of capitalism, namely that it is tenable only if the behaviour it exhorts is kept bounded within limits; but there is nothing in the system to keep it so bounded.

This problem has not in the past assumed the seriousness that it potentially can, because for a long time, the personnel in institutions outside of the economy, such as the State, had ideas of what is “done” and what is “not done” that were either derived from an earlier mode of production (e.g. “a sense of honour”, “the badge of a public school” etc.), or, under Social Democracy, based on a certain commitment to the community-values of workers (“can’t let my folks down”). In countries like ours, the legacy of the freedom struggle had introduced ethical considerations to the personnel of the State and the public sector that shunned the private aggrandizement associated with capitalism. The contradiction at the heart of capitalism in short had not assumed the intensity that would have made the system dysfunctional.

With neo-liberalism however this restraint goes. The quest for private gain gets generalized, which manifests itself in the kind of institutional break-down that we find of late. Nirav Modi’s therefore is not a case of “crony capitalism” supplanting “genuine capitalism”; it is rather a case of “genuine capitalism” coming into its own and displaying its fundamental unworkability.
To be sure, having institutional restraints, as suggested above, can stem the rot for a while; but soon even these restraints themselves will get subverted, and the fundamental unworkability of a system based on the pursuit of private gain will again manifest itself.

This article was first publish on NEWSclick.

The Withering Away of the University

By

-

February 23, 2018

0

“Currently, at Jawaharlal Nehru University currently, the flag of RSS happily flies with the flag of neo-liberal world-politics.”

The series of events that has unfolded, and is still unfolding, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of the premier institutions of higher education and research of this country, is symptomatic of a deep-seated, mostly unconscious, malaise. From a distance, it appears that it is the internal conflict between two opposing political ideologies – “left” and “right” – truing to seek domination. In fact, this is precisely the appearance that a certain group is invested to proclaim. This is not without reason.
A closer look should reveal the real truth: that this “appearance” is a fiction which is invested with the value of “truth”, and that it is propagated by those who are apologetic of the current administrative apparatus. And it is not difficult to see why.

The question is not really the internal battle between “left and “right”.

It is true that those few faculty members who support “the regime” at place can be said to be more or less of the conservative disposition. But the immense number of students and teachers on the other side (the overwhelming number is demonstrated each time in all those massive events of protests that have occurred in the last two years) are not necessarily the supporter of any “left” political ideology, or of any party for that matter.

The real question, which is obscured in all those heated debates that have taken place in last two years, is rather this: an immense number of students and teachers of this University is attempting to preserve the very ethos of, not only of this University, but of what University as such by definition is, and ought to be: a place of intellectual and spiritual freedom.

This includes freedom from the hegemonic regime at place (whatever that regime may be at any instance of time, left or right); freedom from all external coercion to pursue, fearlessly, what is beneficial to the interests of the Universe as such (that is why it is called “University”); and of humanity at large, beyond all closures of the nation, race, community, religion or sexuality.

The state and the administration should be facilitating agents to foster knowledge and wisdom of the highest order that flourish in this spiritual site. They are responsible for this nourishment of critical thinking and intellectual freedom: in this sense, the state and the administration are obliged – if not by the force of the law, but at least ethically (therefore, this obligation is even higher than any legal obligation) – to protect and nourish the University as such.
What we see in the last few decades is the transformation of the role of the state in relation to the country at large. The state, now, no longer wants to see itself as a “social welfare” state, but as one multinational company among others, albeit bigger one than most of the other companies.
With this transformation, the responsibility of the state to the social welfare is also fast disappearing. The state now wants to enter into the vast, global market of profit-making business partnership with other countries through facilitating of free market and privatisation of almost every mode of our existence (including health care and transport) using the tax payer’s money.

In this process, not only is the question of “social justice” (to the deprived sections, to the Dalits and minorities) considered redundant, the very space of University, too, is becoming a useless institution for the profit-making state, unless the University itself somehow becomes another profit-making institution, a factory or industry among others.

When the University is reduced to a profit-making institution, the question of intellectual freedom and critical-creative transformation of humanity does not occur. Instead, the real stake is how much profit the University is making. The decisive 55% budget cut to University Grants Commission is only one symptom among others: there are massive seat cuts in almost all government funded central universities of the country; a huge number of faculty is working on Ad-hoc basis without any hope of recruitment in any near future; fellowships to research scholars in humanities and social sciences are more or less either reduced or stopped altogether; even in a University like Jawaharlal Nehru University, reservation policies in students’ intake are not followed in last two years. This puts the constitutional norms and rules that seek to establish social justice and equality to shame.

Very soon, this process of privatisation of education will reach such magnitude that most of the young people of the coming generation of this country will be deprived of higher education and research altogether, not to speak of the alarming phenomenon of unemployment that has already made itself felt.

What is happening here? What is happening at JNU is only symptomatic of what is happening in all institutions of higher education and research of this country. Like the state — which has forgotten its role as a “social welfare” state, and instead has become a player in the market place of the capital accumulation (which destroys the very idea of social justice, social equality, and upliftment of the well-being of the citizens) — the administrations of the universities (JNU is the prime example here) too have become players in the free market where knowledge is a commodity, students and teachers are mindless cogs in the immense apparatus of knowledge production. Students, by definition, must be deprived of any intellectual freedom to debate, to think, to examine matters of prime concern, not only of the nation but of the entire humanity.

It is not for nothing that current Vice-Chancellor of JNU speaks not only of battle tanks but also of “industry”. The latter idea is far more sinister than the former. For him, this University is a laboratory and a factory which will produce commodities in the market place of the world; the University, for him, is a multinational company within the big multinational company of the nation. The administrator now no longer thinks himself as the facilitator of intellectual freedom and social justice, but as the engineer of profit in the market place of the world.

The paradoxical fact is that – in fact it is not at all a paradox – this very “neo-liberal” economic theology is now combined with the most obscurantist and the most regressive, which is at once most dangerous and terrifying, political view to the society at large. The current administration happily combines the “neo-liberal” economic theology (supported by the most sophisticated and advanced technological apparatus) with the most regressive and socially unjust cultural standpoint of extreme conservatism.

Currently, at JNU, the flag of RSS happily flies with the flag of neo-liberal world-politics.

What, then, is destroyed is the very place of an excellent University that for decades have contributed to the intellectual life, not only of the nation but to the world of learning as such. What, then, is destroyed is the very ethos of democracy and intellectual freedom, the very passion of critical thinking and creativity which flourished at this University for last so many decades.

One is tempted to say that what could not happen, to such an extent, at the level of national politics, has now happened in JNU.

This includes the rise of the absolute state; the merciless dictatorship of the VC at JNU which is supported by few other profiteers; the taking place of the regime of terror where dissenting students and teachers are daily harassed and punished and humiliated; the establishment of a machinery of surveillance, of discipline and punish.

The question of attendance, which has recently raised such a huge uproar among students and teachers alike, is not one question among others: it is precisely the protest against the regime of terror at place today at JNU where everyone is terrorised. It is one desperate attempt, on part of the students and teachers, to salvage the University from its headlong rush into the abyss of annihilation.

Not to speak of corruption: all possible norms, rules, laws – of the University and the law of the land – are thrown to the dustbins! What once resonated: “Hail, intellectual freedom!”, now appears: “Hail, our leader VC!”
It is the responsibility of the nation to protect and nourish its intellectual and spiritual institutions. What is going on at the University currently is neither a sectarian fight of a sect for some tangible privileges and benefits, nor even political domination for a “ left” ideology, but a painful, bitter, difficult struggle to preserve a precious institution of an entire nation from forces of destruction.

This article was first published in the Indian Cultural Forum.

The Strike is on at TISS!

By

-

February 22, 2018

0

TISS students continued to be on strike on Thursday, protesting the fee hike as well as the withdrawl of aid to students from marginalised communities and backgrounds. The strike originally began on Wednesday, February 21 when in a historic show of resistance and solidarity, the students boycotted all classes, field work and got exams cancelled.

Responding to a call given by its students’ union, over 500 students blocked the main gate protesting the rollback of financial aid to SC, ST and OBC students (including religious and other minorities). The blockade at the main gate continued on Thursday, as the administration had on Wednesday asked for a 24-hour time period in order to respond to students’ demands. The students feel that this could be the tactic of the administration to delay any commitments on their part and take the steam off the struggle which is currently seething with the outrage of the students on an extremely anti-students move.

Archana Soreng, TISS students’ union president elaborated on the need for the protest saying, “The first method we adopted was that of negotiations with the administration and we have been in a constant state of dialogue for past one month. But now we are at the end of the semester and suddenly we are intimated that the financial aid will be stopped for the students. We are left with no option but to protest this move.” As per a press release issued by the Union, students from across Hyderabad, Guwahati and Tuljapur campuses have also joined the protests.

The students who were earlier eligible for the Government of India Post-Matric Scholarship (GoI-PMS) will be most impacted by the decision of the institute to rollback financial aid for students. This exemption was in line with the institute’s policy to facilitate the entry and sustenance of students from marginalized background into spaces of higher education, since it boasts of values of social justice and its expertise in training students for social work and empowerment.

“I took admission in the 2016-2018 batch and before that there was no such notification about a hike. Even the UGC guidelines say that the entire fees structure has to be explained in the prospectus of the institute so that students can apply with the knowledge of the fees structure. Here we are witnessing a situation in which the students came to know only at the final stage of admission process that they will not be able to get the financial aid or otherwise, in the middle of their courses. How is that fair,” questioned Archana who has been at the forefront of the protests since yesterday.

Oddly enough, a statement issued by TISS registrar, callously shrugs off all responsibility on TISS’s part as a University, and appears to transfer the blame to the Government of India. It reads:
“The Government of India Post Matric Scholarship is paid by the Social Welfare Department/Tribal Welfare Department of the respective state government on receipt of an application submitted by the student. The institute plays no role in the scholarship disbursement process, except certifying it. These scholarships are transferred directly to the bank accounts of students. The institute has not stopped the facility. TISS is following all the guidelines of the Government of India.”

Over the past many years, there has been a slow rollback of all forms of financial aid to students, accompanied by drastic measures such as exponential increase in fees, introduction of surveillance, biometric data collection for attendance and other administrative purposes as well as a host of other unpopular moves.

Highlighting the contradictions in the values and actions of the premier institute, Archana said, “The institute’s moves go against the ethos of social justice. Why can’t the institute come up with a proposal for students from marginalized backgrounds and update it on their website? Currently nothing is mentioned about the institute’s erratic moves on fee structure and hikes as well as rollback of aid.”

Currently, the average fees of TISS amounts to an exorbitant sum of Rs. 70,000-80,000 per semester. While on the one hand the institute cites curtailing in fund allocation a reason for rollback of such aid, it is not hard to notice the expansion it is making in its logistics, wherein several new centers have been opened up recently. An estimated number of more than 500 students will be impacted by this specific move. The enrolment of students from OBC category already saw a drop of 9%, as per the claims of students’ union.

The atrocious fees amounts charged by TISS are not at par with any of the other Central university fees such as JNU, EFLU, HCU etc. The institute has tried to defend the high fees that it charges by calling itself a Premier Institute. It also compares itself with other elite institutions such as IITs and IIMs, though their exclusivity is well known.

“Though the immediate issue for us is fighting the fee rise, this is definitely part of a larger policy measure in which institutions of higher education are rapidly being privatised. If an institute becomes an A grade institute, and has a fees structure of Rs. 9 lakh how can one imagine that students will be able to afford this. Even the faculties are bound to be impacted by this kind of privatisation,” asks Soreng.

In a statement released on February 21, the concerned alumni of TISS alleged, “These actions will result in complete absence of students from oppressed communities to participate in higher education in TISS, as the financial aid and GoI-PMS cannot match the fees. Also, with the introduction of Direct Bank Transfer of scholarship, the institute has washed its hands off any responsibility of providing fee exemption arguing that the scholarship is an individual transaction between the student and the government.”

Drawing attention to the anti-students’ nature of the current dispensation, Shefali Saini, a student of MPhil at TISS said, “The government is completely against the students from marginalized sections. It has been anti-students from the time it came into power. The current regime wants the hegemonization of knowledge in only a few hands, namely those from the upper caste, class privileged people and they want to completely disregard the historic struggles of disenfranchised communities to enter the spaces of higher education. In last few years the specific targeting of Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and others has been evident. Hence I feel that such moves of the government should be resisted across campuses.”

Apart from demanding a retract of the notification for present GOI-PMS students to pay for fees (tuition, DH and Hostel), the charter of demands also includes demands for exemptions from DH and Hostel Fees for the students of BA MA integrated programme and a symbolic representation of the Office of Dean SPO from SC ST OBC category. Students have also sought disclosure of quantum of losses by TISS due to payment of scholarships, year-wise details of funding from UGC and other relevant expenditures such as on dining and hostel facilities.

Ahmedabad emerges as Gujarat’s crime capital

By

-

February 22, 2018

0

Often touted as the crown jewel of the state, and a symbol of the so-called ‘Gujarat model’, Ahmedabad seems to be emerging as the state’s crime capital. A report containing crime-related data was recently tabled in the Gujarat Assembly. It showed that the incidence of cases of robbery/looting, home break-ins, theft, rape, and kidnapping in Ahmedabad spiked significantly in 2017, compared to 2016. 2017 saw 253 cases of robbery, 699 cases of home break-ins, 3,246 cases of theft, 159 cases of rape, and 405 cases of kidnapping being registered. In comparison, in 2016, 125 cases of robbery/lotting, 466 cases of house break-ins, 2,623 cases of theft, 112 cases of rape, and 376 cases of kidnapping were registered. Only the number of murder cases declined slightly.

In contrast to Ahmedabad, the crime data for other cities–Rajkot, Surat, and Vadodara–showed significantly fewer crimes compared to Ahmedabad. MM Mehta, ex-police commissioner, said that Ahmeda

bad is emerging as a metro, “resulting in population rise and in that context, the crimes are also rising.” A police official who did not wish to be named noted the necessity of rethinking the police’s “strategy toward safety of common people,” adding that the police also need to “deal with the notorious criminals strictly or else the situation may deteriorate further from here.”

Ahmedabad was, at one time, one of the safest places in Gujarat, and is considered the epicentre of former Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Gujarat model’ for development. However, this recent crime data indicates that development in the state is irregular, at best. Modi, now the country’s Prime Minister, is at his seat in Delhi, far from his home state, and questions are being raised about the efficacy of the ‘Gujarat model’, with this newly released crime data being the latest instalment.

Abbas warns Security Council, Palestinians could become ‘refugees or terrorists in Europe’

By

-

February 22, 2018

0

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday at the United Nations Security Council that President Donald Trump had harmed prospects for peacemaking when he made the “dangerous” and “unlawful” decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last December. It was Abbas’ first speech with senior White House officials in attendance since communication with U.S. negotiators abruptly ended nearly three months ago, although both sides have disparaged the other in that period.

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Observer State of Palestine, addresses the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian situation, February 20, 2018. (Photo: UN Photo/Manuel Elias)

Abbas told the UN ambassadors he met with the Trump “four times in 2017” and “repeatedly reaffirmed” his commitment to a two-state solution. “Yet this administration has not clarified its position. Is it for the two-State solution, or for one-State?” Abbas questioned.

Yet Abbas, however frustrated with the U.S., told the Security Council he is not ready to part ways.

The Palestinian leadership has sought in recent years an international team of negotiators in which the U.S. is but one of many foreign government brokering a deal with Israel. Palestinians hope international involvement will give them a better agreement than working with the U.S. alone.

Abbas then called for an international conference taking place “mid-2018” in Moscow. He outlined principles tied to previous UN resolutions and commitments signed by both Israel and the Palestinians: mutual recognition between Israel and a state of Palestine based on 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, a halt to settlement growth, “minimal land swaps, in equal value and ratio,” a “just and agreed solution for the Palestine refugees,” and “halting transfer of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.”

Abbas included an off-the-cuff warning for Europe on the issue of honoring international law, guaranteeing Palestinian refugees the right to return. Abbas said, “It’s either that or they will become refugees and terrorists in Europe.”

The conference will be a second of its kind. A similar summit was held in France in January 2017. The U.S. and Israel boycotted the meeting.

While speeches were still on-going in New York, Palestinian commentators in Ramallah began criticizing Abbas for re-playing his strategy. Abbas’ former advisor Diana Buttu said his “address was yet another iteration of speeches long ago, in which he once again implored the world to convene an international conference to address Palestinian rights.”

In Washington, Zaha Hassan, an attorney and fellow at New America who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team from 2010 to 2012 said, “The best Abbas can hope for is that the world will not break ranks and join the U.S. in twisting international law and principles to Israel’s will.”

“The help Abbas seeks will have to be led from Palestinians themselves, not from outside,” she added.

After Abbas spoke, UN ambassador Nikki Haley addressed the Security Council, saying: “The Palestinian leadership has a choice to make between two different paths.” Abbas can resume pre-talks with the Trump administration, or choose a “path of absolutist demands, hateful rhetoric, and incitement to violence.”
She went on: “Our negotiators are sitting right behind me, ready to talk. But we will not chase after you. The choice, Mr. President, is yours.”

The White House envoys Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, who is Donald Trump’s son-in-law, do not usually attend this forum, but they were seated nearby.

Haley also took a moment to address Palestinian official Saeb Erekat, who a month earlier told her to “shut up” in an interview.

“I will not shut up,” she emphatically stated, “Rather, I will respectfully speak some hard truths.”

When Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon took the microphone to speak, Abbas got up and walked out the exit. “I expected Mr. Abbas to stay with us and have a dialogue unfortunately he is once again running away,” Danon said, later affirming, “The only way to move forward is with direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Later in the day White House spokesperson Josh Raffel who deals with the Middle East portfolio issued a statement that the Trump administration “will continue working on our plan which is designed to benefit both the Israeli and Palestinian people. We will present it when it is done and the time is right.”
Raffel noticeably had a few positive words on Abbas. “[H]is recognition that Jerusalem is holy to Jews in addition to Muslims and Christians is a step in the right direction.”

A veteran peace processor also praised the speech.

Courtesy: http://mondoweiss.net

Wives of ‘muhajirin’: who’s your husband?

By

-

February 22, 2018

0

Upon arriving in Syria, the first step a foreign fighter takes is to find a woman to marry. Why do Syrian women accept such marriages?

Meen Zawjk. Public Domain.

At the beginning of 2013, the term ‘muhajir’, or migrants, became widely used in Syria in reference to foreign fighters who had entered the country to join armed Islamist groups.

Studies indicate that their numbers exceed 80,000 immigrants of different nationalities, mostly from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Turkistan, Germany, Britain and France.

Most of the men joined Daesh after its founding in April 2013, while others joined the ranks of rival militant groups such as Al Nusra Front, currently known as Tahrir Al Sham [Liberation of the Levant], and the Islamic Turkistan Party.

After arriving in Syria, the first step a muhajir usually takes is to find a woman to marry before heading to the frontlines; and for several reasons that will be explained in this investigation, Syrian women agree to such marriages.

The local reality

Shagan
Shagan, who preferred to use a pseudonym for this story, is a university graduate who, unmarried at the age of 28, had suffered many sleepless nights hearing her family complain that she was past the age of marriage and would become an old spinster. Then an Egyptian muhajir from Al Nusra Front proposed to her.

Shagan accepted his offer of marriage for many reasons: her family’s deteriorating finances due to the ongoing war in Syria, the loss of her job – her only source of income – as well as her belief that this was her one chance to prove to her family that she was no longer a spinster.

One week later, in 2016, she found herself married and sharing a bed with a complete stranger that she knew nothing about; not even his real name. He gave himself a Jihadist name: Abi […] the Egyptian – Shagan has preferred to omit this title.

“Being married to a jihadist was extremely difficult as it was, and even more so as he was a muhajir!” she said.

When asked about her husband’s characteristics, she said: “He was a mean man, a fanatic and stubbornly opinionated, with no capacity for debate or conversation. Also, he forced me to wear the niqab and abaya, which I had never worn before marriage.”

Shagan wasn’t raised in a religiously conservative family to adapt easily to such extremisms, but she fell victim to the customs and traditions of the society that she lives in, as well as to her ignorance of the true nature of such foreign fighters and their political beliefs.

One of the reasons why she agreed to marry him, she said, was that she hoped for a comfortable life outside of Syria if he ever decided to return to his native Egypt.

By the second week of their marriage, their problems had become clearer, and Shagan found her new life bereft of any conversation or understanding. She told her family that she wanted a divorce, but before she could tell her husband, he was killed in a battle against the Syrian regime.

“My marriage to a foreign fighter was the biggest mistake of my life, and his death was my greatest mercy,” she said.

Umm Walid
It was strange to hear Umm Walid [Walid’s mother], from the southern countryside of Aleppo, speak to her three-year-old son in classical Arabic when we met in Idlib, mid-2017. When we asked her why, she explained that his father had instructed her to do so before he’d returned to his home country.

Her husband is of British origin but also holds a Turkish passport. He fought among Tahrir Al Sham’s ranks in Idlib, northern Syria. A few months after marrying Umm Walid, he returned to the UK, leaving her alone and heavily pregnant with a child that would one day struggle to find his father.

Nonetheless, she feels confident that her husband will return to Syria one day or send for her to join him in Britain. However, a few months after our meeting, we were told by close relations that she had left for Raqaa on her husband’s orders.

Meen Zawjk. Public Domain.

Umm Saleh
In contrast to Umm Walid, Umm Saleh [Saleh’s mother] from rural Idlib, worries about the great risk of her son having no identity and not being listed at the civil register. She recognises that a child’s life in a society such as Syria is dependent on his origin and parentage.

In late 2016, her dire finances and her father’s chronic illness forced her to marry Abi Abdel Aziz, a muhajir from Turkistan fighting with the Turkistan Islamic Party. He was thirty five, while she was barely eighteen.

Using similar terms to Shagan’s, she described as her husband as “miserly, he beat me a lot and he was always suspicious.”

She claims that he harassed her when she refused to take abortion bills as he didn’t want to have children in Syria. She wouldn’t take the pills as she wanted to comply with Islamic sharia law, so he left her and divorced her.

Umm Saleh considers herself to blame for the marriage, and told us that marriage to a foreigner is not favoured in Syrian society, and that she initially wasn’t happy with him before she became persuaded by his “strong faith and closeness to God”, a common factor cited by all the aforementioned women.

Finding wives for muhajirin

According to an exclusive interview with the Syrian Network for Human Rights, foreign jihadists ‘muhajirin’ find their wives via two methods: the first is the traditional approach, whereby the jihadist asks the woman’s family for her hand in marriage. The women are found through different ways, such as, for example, a fighting comrade telling him about a female relative suitable for marriage, or through local people connected to the jihadist.

The second method is to find a wife through the Sharia institutes of the Islamist organisations to which the fighter belongs, where the jihadist announces his intention to marry, and then interested women propose to him, and he selects his pick from the lot; after which he proposes to her family.

As for their motives, the Syrian Network states: “In Idlib we noticed that there are generally no forced marriages, but what usually happens is the migrant fighter takes advantage of the woman’s conditions, such as her being from a poor family; so he pays her dowry to the family to help improve their lives.

If the woman is divorced or widowed, she’s normally considered a financial and social burden on her family, so she is married off. We have also noticed marriages motivated by religious reasons, where the family marries their daughter off to a foreign muhajir in the belief that they will be rewarded by God for such an act.

Some marriages are also arranged for protection: the family is forced to accept the muhajir’s proposal as he has the power and authority to protect the wife and her family, and to give them some power in their community. As for the woman, she accepts such an offer so as not to clash with her family, and so as to have a better financial and social status through her marriage.”

Statistics and civil reactions

Due to the sensitivity of the issue, there are no accurate statistics on the number of marriages between Syrian women and foreign fighters, but research by the Syrian Human Rights Network in Idlib shows that over 836 women were married to jihadist migrants, bearing 93 children.

Meanwhile, figures from the ‘Who is Your Husband’ campaign show over 1,750 marriages in Idlib, of which over 1,100 bore children. There are more than 1,800 children born of these marriages in Idlib alone.

This campaign was launched in Idlib and its surrounding areas in mid-January 2018 to raise awareness among women, parents, local decision-makers, religious clerks and men of the law on how such marriages are organised.

According to Assem Zidan, the campaign’s main coordinator, such marriages have the worst impact on the children in terms of their identities and futures.

“Legally, these children are denied their basic civil Syrian rights, the most important of which are their identity and access to education, in addition to their being connected to their fathers” unsound legacies.

Zidan also spoke about the wives’ mental, health and family status; especially since a large number of foreign fighters had left their wives either to return to their home countries, to fight elsewhere in their Islamist groups or to be killed in battle. As a result, the wives are usually left without a breadwinner and alone to face several psychological, social and familial challenges.

The Syrian network believes that 52 percent of these marriages ended in different ways; and the figures cited are only for Idlib. However, any attempt to investigate the same matter in Deir Ezzour or Raqaa would be futile as discussing the topic of marriage would be considered crossing the line given tribal notions of honour that prevent such conversations.

Courtesy: Open Democracy

Canada’s troubling indifference to the Air India bombing

Bomb planted in Canada

‘Broad indifference’

Memorializing Air India

How Jind in Haryana has become a nightmare for Dalits

Gangrapes, murders and broken busts of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar

The Nirav Modi Scandal

Nirav Modi, and his uncle Mehul Choksi, are the latest additions to the list of the so-called “entrepreneurs of new India” who have looted public money and decamped with the loot.

The Withering Away of the University

“Currently, at Jawaharlal Nehru University currently, the flag of RSS happily flies with the flag of neo-liberal world-politics.”

The Strike is on at TISS!

Ahmedabad emerges as Gujarat’s crime capital

Abbas warns Security Council, Palestinians could become ‘refugees or terrorists in Europe’

Wives of ‘muhajirin’: who’s your husband?

Upon arriving in Syria, the first step a foreign fighter takes is to find a woman to marry. Why do Syrian women accept such marriages?

The local reality

Finding wives for muhajirin

Statistics and civil reactions

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

Important Links

Other Links

CONNECT