The Madras High Court on Tuesday ruled in favour of Perumal Murugan, author of the novel 'Madhorubhagan', granting him relief from all the controversies that shrouded the work of fiction that compelled him to announce that he would withdraw his entire body of work from publication and never write again.
At the end of a year-long legal battle, First Bench of Chief Justice S. K. Kaul and Justice Puspha Sathyanarayana held that the settlement arrived in the peace-keeping meet held by the district administration would not be binding on the author. The bench also dismissed the plea moved by the residents to initiate criminal proceedings against him and consequently quashed an FIR filed against Mr. Murugan. The settlement arrived in the peace-keeping meet held by the Namakkal district administration would not be binding on the author, rules court.
The court further directed the State government to circulate a series of guidelines framed by the court to handle such situations among the State police and to form an expert committee to handle such issues.
The Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers and Artists Association president, S.Tamilselvan, had challenged the decision of a peace committee meeting held at Namakkal on January 12 organised by the district administration and expressed solidarity with the writer. The decision was that Mr. Murugan had agreed to issue an unconditional apology, delete the controversial portions from his book, and withdraw unsold copies from the market. Meanwhile, a group of people claiming to be residents of Tiruchengode approached the High Court to initiate criminal charges against the author.
On February 13, 2016, Sabrangindia had featured this video interview with Peerumal Murugan’s publisher completely standing by him and his work
“I have always stood with all my writers”, says Kannan Sundaram, publisher, Kalachuvadu. Kalachuvadu was first begun as a magazine by his father, the Tamil writer, Sundara Ramaswamy. Kannan Sundaram wasthen in Delhi to receive the Samanvay Bhasha Samman 2015 on behalf of Perumal Murugan when he spoke to Souradeep Roy.
The controversy over Madhurobhagan (One Part Woman), Murugan's book, is not the first Kalachuvadu has faced. There was significant opposition to Kalachuvadu’s publishing Tamil feminist literature in the 1990s.
At a time when publishers are increasingly reluctant to stand by their own writers, Sundaram maintains that he supports complete freedom of expression for all his writers.
Forests officials in India's hinterlands are a law unto themselves. Hand in glove with poachers and timber mafia, they are accused of implicating forest dwellers in fake cases, barbarically torturing villagers in secret chambers, which some times result in custodial deaths. There are allegations of fake encounters too. In the first of an investigative series, Nidheesh J Villatt takes a close look at the alleged criminal activities of forest officials in UP's Dudhwa National Park
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, commonly known as Forest Rights Act (FRA) passed in 2006 sought to “correct historical injustice” meted out to the most marginalised sections. The law, captured the imagination of social activists world over as it intended to give land rights and other resources to traditional forest dwellers.
Coming as it did at a time when almost the entire policies of the government was focused to facilitate the smooth movement of capital, this legislation along with some others like Right to Information(RTI), was welcomed with great enthusiasm by those committed to social justice.
The law was intended to make the conservation of forest more transparent without impinging on the rights of the traditional forest dwellers.
Despite its progressive and democracy deepening clauses the FRA was criticised on two fronts.
First by the ‘developmentalists’ who view forest as an area which must be exploited to enhance the GDP. The other, the more sophisticated ones argued that giving rights to traditional forest dwellers would mean felling of trees!
Ten years down, is the FRA working? What are the changes it has brought on the ground?
Our special correspondent Nidheesh J Villat wanted to begin his piece with Dudhwa National Park in Uttar Pradesh.
What started off as a routine story threw up startling facts. The forest officials are a law unto themselves. They hold sway over the 490 square kms park on the Indo-Nepal border.
Forest officials find the FRA as an affront to their supremacy. They seem to have a finger in every pie. They are accused of conniving with lumber jacks and poachers in plundering the natural resources. The slightest act of assertion by forest dwellers are dealt with intimidation and torture.
All vested interests are aligned against the Scheduled Tribes, Dalits and lower caste Muslims who constitute a majority of traditional dwellers. Those who try to question are often illegally taken into custody, and in some cases subjected to extreme forms of torture.
To divide those fighting for their rights, forest officials have even formed vigilante groups under the garb of protecting forests.
During his investigations, Nidheesh was told that fake encounters were staged to snuff out resistance from locals. No inquiries are done. The deaths of the poorest of poor are said to be passed off as ‘unnatural’ deaths.
NaradaNews exposes the macabre activities of forest officials in the badlands of Lakhimpur Keri that skirt the country’s border with Nepal.
We hope this report, being published in four parts, will put a spotlight on the barbaric acts in Dudhwa National Park. We believe this would be the first step in ending such savagery.
Editor
“After removing our pyjamas they cut the elastic of the underwear with a country knife and threw it away. We were forced to lie down. They filled a veterinary syringe with petrol from the forest department bike. After this they forcefully parted our legs and injected petrol into our anus. Some had cotton soaked in petrol pushed it into their anus, ” Tulsi Ram, a frail young man told me.
Sounds barbaric?
“All of us started crying in deep pain. Petrol had started working. Because of pain I thought my stomach would burst. I pleaded for some water. Instead of giving water, they started beating us with a big wooden pole till it broke. We fell unconscious. After some time, some of us regained consciousness. Then officers came and poked us with big laathi and asked us…’you Chamar (a Dalit subcaste) bastards came here to sleep? After Chamar Mayawati came to power you guys are arrogant,” Tulsi recalled.
I was speaking to a group of Dalits and other lower caste traditional forest dwellers in Rampur Bandhiya village in Dudhwa National Park.
I went thereafter hearing about the unconstitutional methods used by the forest department to evict the traditional forest dwellers — Adivasis (predominantly Tharus), Dalits and lower caste Muslims — from the villages situated inside and in the buffer zone of the National Park. (See Video)
Jungle Raj | Photo: Vijay Pandey
Braving the morning chill, Tulsi and his friends recalled with horror the day (22 September 2011), they were picked by a team of forest officers, while they were grazing cattle.
Their crime? They refused to pay the parallel tax–locally known as galla orhafta collected illegally by the forest officers to permit grazing of cattle.
The monthly hafta is Rs 500 here. In some other villages, a family have to pay an yearlygalla consisting of one quintal of rice, 20 kgs of wheat, 25 kgs of mustard and several litres of honey.
“None of us were having money that day. So we couldn’t pay. We were picked and were beaten throughout the journey from village to Belarayan Forest Range Office. This continued in the ‘torture room’ of the Range Office,” Dorei, an elderly man recalled.
I spoke to Steven Miles, professor of medicine and Bioethics at Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesotta, US, about the torture methods of the forest officers in Dudhwa. Miles is an expert on internal medicine and specialises in medical consequences of the torture. His book, Oath Betrayed:America’s Torture Doctors, “examines military medicine in the War on Terror prisons”.
He says that injecting petrol into the anus or rectum will have serious medical consequences.
“Torture is an impulsive and largely improvised practice. The painful introduction of material or air into the rectum dates at least back to the middle ages. It was used in the ‘War on Terror’ by the US as rectal feeding. Pepper being put in the rectum has been sporadically practiced around the world and the use of other caustic substances including gasoline (petrol) is not surprising,” Miles pointed out.
“Torture techniques are a craft. Rectal and sexual traumas are very common in the torture of men. It would be unusual if rectal gasoline was the only method used. I would not be surprised if brutal and painful rectal rape with a stick or baton or even fluorescent light bulb was done first to open the rectal sphincter. At that point, gasoline (petrol) could be instilled. Gasoline is enormously and instantly painful on rectal tissue and the inflammation alone could cause rectal fissures and fistula connecting the rectal cavity to the bladder, intestines or freely into the abdomen allowing stool to pass into the abdomen and causing septicemias. The risk of perforations and fistulae would be greatly increased by preceding trauma and rectal tears caused by a baton or from the trauma of a tube inserted into the rectum to administer the gas.
Gasoline is toxic when it gets in the blood, usually by inhaling and occasionally by oral ingestion. That toxicity includes convulsions, kidney failure, heart failure and shock. I think it is unlikely that significant gas would be absorbed through the rectal wall,” says Miles.
Suhaeli river is used to torture forest dwellers by ‘ducking’. | Photo: Vijay Pandey
When I told him about ‘ducking’ (forcibly immersing the head in the river) of Dudhwa victims, before they were subjected to anal torture, he commented that “all torture are multi-modal”. Threatening, beating and denial of drinking water would be common in almost all cases of torture, he says. “15% of the torture victims are subjected to asphyxia” (a condition which is the resultant of the denial of oxygen to the body).
“It is highly probable that victims were tightly bound in a way to stretch or compress ligaments. It may be that when the petrol was inserted, that they were threatened with ignition”, he adds.
Arun Ferreira, noted human rights activist, who was arrested by the Maharashtra police (after branding him as Maoist) details about petrol torture in his prison memoir Colours of the Cage. He says that there was a police officer whose “expertise” was injecting petrol in anus/rectum. Ghulam Hassan Lone, a Kashmiri Muslim youth was allegedly subjected to similar torture in mid 1990s. He was accused of being a militant who was waging war against India.
“Begar (unpaid forced labour) is common here. After monsoon, forest officers force villagers to clean roads and do other related work. Funds earmarked for such work would be siphoned off by them. The reluctance of some villagers to do begar has made forest officers furious”, village head Yashpal Singh alleged.
Victims of fake cases | Photo: Vijay Pandey
“This is early 2016. Why is this kind of a brutal torture not yet news?” I asked Singh.
“Journalists from Delhi and Lucknow need wildlife safaris. Local journalists are completely dependent on the economy controlled by forest department,” a rights lawyer who accompanied me pointed out.
Interestingly in another village, a Tharu Adivasi elder gave a vivid picture of journalism in India’s hinterlands where class and caste inequalities unfold crudely.
“If we go and collect firewood, which is a constitutional right under FRA, journalists report this as massive wood theft. On a few occasions villagers have blocked vehicles smuggling huge quantity of timber to Nepal which occur with the connivance of forest officers. But next day’s newspapers would report that the huge logs smuggled as mere waste wood.”
Key Facts of Forest Rights Act (FRA) Act: Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, popularly known as FRA Parliament Nod: 2006 Replaced: Indian Forests Act Important Features 1. Land Rights The Act grants people title deeds to forest land that they have been cultivating prior to December 13, 2005. Those cultivating land but don’t have documentary proof can claim upto 4 hectares, as long as they are cultivating the land themselves for a livelihood. Those who have a prior title or a government lease, but whose land has been illegally taken by the forest department, or whose land is the subject of a dispute between forest and revenue departments, can claim title to those lands. The land cannot be sold or transferred to anyone except by inheritance. 2. Use Rights The law provides for rights to use and/or collect the following minor forest produce such as tendu leaves, herbs, medicinal plants etc. 3. Grazing areas and water bodies 4. Right to Protect and Conserve forests 5. Right against Arbitrary Relocation
Source : Shankar Gopalakrishnan’s chapter in the upcoming book ” Elgar Handbook on Environmental Law”
Delving into the tale of Dalits who were brutally tortured by injecting petrol into the anus (peeche lagana in local parlance) and accompanying caste abuse hints that forest bureaucracy in the hinterlands are steadfastly following the colonial era of forest governance.
FRA was a direct threat to the clout of the department, veteran trade unionist Ashok Choudhary points out.
“During the last Mayawati government, there were some serious efforts to democratise forest governance by implementing FRA. Forest bureaucracy, eco-tourism mafia and local elites opposed it violently. State violence against Adivasis and Dalits should be seen in this larger context.”
My travel to the interiors of Lakhmipur Kheri gave me an idea about the atrocities of forest department.
“They run a parallel government. They indulge in fake encounters and custodial rape. They also loot natural resources by collaborating with the mafia. They also develop indigenous methods of torture,” a senior IAS officer with several year administrative experience in the district told me.
Kinjal Singh IAS, the former collector of Lakhimpur Kheri was transferred to Faizabad district for challenging the powerful forest bureaucracy.
Kinjal Singh, the collector of the district till recently, had incurred the wrath of the powerful forest mafia for questioning this parallel system of governance.
Acting on several complaints received from Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers about the alleged criminal activities happening inside the Dudhwa park as well as in the buffer zone, the young officer ordered surprise checks by police and revenue department.
During some surprise checks she conducted, Kinjal had found massive uprooting of rare species of trees (which fetches huge money in the market) in villages like Pachpeda Richhaya, Kundanpur, Khairigargh (all falling in core area of Dudhwa) as well as in several villages situated in the buffer zone.
During these visits, she also stumbled upon several spots inside the park which were notorious for brewing illicit liquor. All these illegal activities were done in active collaboration of forest officers. Kinjal also started inquiring about several cases of encounter killings, custodial deaths and sexual assaults allegedly carried out by the forest bureaucracy.
This made the bureaucracy vindictive and they started a hate campaign against the collector with the active help of local media persons who were allegedly receiving a share of the spoils.
In an unusual development, forest employees in the Dudhwa Tiger reserve had even boycotted work for several days demanding transfer of Kinjal. The UP government transferred the collector to Faizabad, another district citing huge revenue loss caused by the strike of the forest staff.
“The move by Kinjal to implement FRA made the department furious. Forest officers are a part of mafia associated with timber smuggling and wildlife poaching. Once Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers enter forest, mafia operations would be affected. So they wanted to ensure that FRA is not implemented,” Rajnish, a trade unionist active in this area, pointed out.
The Daily Star, Bangladesh reported late last evening, July 4, that two of the five Bangladeshi militants who hacked to death 20 people at a restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone used to follow three controversial Islamists, including Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik. Militant Rohan Imtiaz, son of an Awami League leader, propagated on Facebook last year quoting Peace TV’s controversial preacher Naik “urging all Muslims to be terrorists”, SabrangIndia brings to its readers a piece on the controversial preacher, banned for hate speech by both UK and Canada
Let’s grant even the venom-spewing their freedoms. Agreed, freedom of speech is meaningless if there is no space for the offending word. No democracy can survive in the absence of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,agreed. But should there be no Laxman Rekha that even in a democracy none must cross? If not instigation to hatred, could incitement to violence perhaps mark the boundaries of individual freedom?
So, let’s grant our home-grown televangelist, Dr Zakir Naik his freedoms. His freedom to hurt national sentiments: “If you (Americans) eat pigs you behave (wife-swap) like pigs”. His freedom to hurt religious sentiments: “Jews and pagans are the worst eternal enemies of Islam”. His freedom to outrage those who care about gender justice: “women who get raped are asking for it” (dumb woman,didn’t Islam tell you to expose nothing more than your face and wrists?). His freedom to condemn sexual minorities: “death for homosexuals”. His freedom to send fellow Muslims to the gallows: “apostasy is a one-way street”. His freedom to grant special privilege to the male gender: “Man is more polygamous by nature as compared to a woman “.
What about his statements on terrorism? “Every Muslim should be a terrorist… to selective people, i.e., anti-social elements;” “If he (Osama bin Laden) is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him… If he is terrorising America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, he’s following Islam.”
How does one “read” such statements? It all depends on who is reading them. In his self-defence after the [UK] visa ban, Dr Naik offers two clarifications: one,“Due to the fact that he (Osama Bin Laden) has not been convicted in respect of 9/11 and as Dr Zakir Naik cannot verify the claims against him, he "neither considers him a saint nor a terrorist”; two,“the quote is from a lecture he delivered in 1996, almost five years before 9/11”.
But the clarifications only raise further questions:
Dr Naik cannot decide about Osama because the latter has not been convicted for 9/11 and because he (Naik) cannot independently verify the claims against Osama since,“I’m not in touch with him. I don’t know him personally. I (only) read the newspaper.” Interesting. On what basis then did he arrive at his “America-the-greatest-terrorist” conclusion: newspaper reports, personal acquaintance with ex-President Bush,or a non-existent verdict of the International Criminal Court?
If the relevant quote is from a 1996 lecture, what stopped Dr Naik from coming clean a few months ago when in an NDTV programme,anchor Barkha Dutt threw that very statement at him? Why did his response so agitate Maulana Mehmood Madni of the Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Hind?
Is lip service enough to condemn terrorism in the name of Islam? In these terror-torn times,would Dr Naik care to inform us how much time and attention was paid to this malady of current-day Islam during his 10-day long “Islam Peace Conference-2009” in Mumbai? How frequently does the terror scourge figure in discussions or debates on his Peace TV channel?
What about his statements on terrorism? “Every Muslim should be a terrorist… to selective people, i.e., anti-social elements;” “If he (Osama bin Laden) is fighting the enemies of Islam,I am for him… If he is terrorising America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, he’s following Islam.”
Above all,as a devout Wahhabi, Dr Naik insists on a literal reading of the Quranic verses torn out of the socio-cultural realities of a primitive Arab society over 1,400 years ago. Which is why, like all literalist readers of Holy Scriptures, he is incapable of extracting the normative, universal ethico-moral principles embedded in the context-specific passages of the text. Which is why what he peddles as Islam is nothing but out-of-date, petro-dollar sponsored Wahhabism that is repugnant to modern sensibilities. The digression apart, where is the guarantee that some Muslims with fevered imaginations would not “read” Dr Naik’s utterances selectively and literally just as he himself reads the Quran and the Hadith?
Consider this: Dr Naik is reportedly a big hero for Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan-American arrested last year for plotting to bomb the New York subway, Dr Kafeel Ahmed of Bangalore origin who tried to storm Glasgow airport in an explosives-packed car and Mumbai’s Rahil Sheikh accused in the 7/11 train blasts.
No one accuses Dr Naik of being part of any terror network. But should a self-proclaimed champion of peace be so reckless in his use/misuse of inflammable words? Or are we dealing here with calculated ambiguity, a deliberate playing with fire? Until the televangelist learns to mind his language, I go with the British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) and the British Muslims Forum (BMF) in supporting the visa ban.
P.S.: On second thoughts,the ban should perhaps be revoked on condition that while in the UK, Dr Naik agrees to a discussion with Dr Taj Hargey on ‘The Status of Women in Islam’ and with Inayat Banglawala on ‘Rights of Gay Muslims’. A trustee of BMSD, Dr Hargey is also chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and an imam at its mosque. Dr Hargey has an open invitation to women scholars to his mosque to lead mixed-gender Friday congregational prayers. But he might not shock our own doctor so much as Banglawala, media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB),a large nationwide,mainstream Muslim organisation that even today is considered by many to be a hybrid of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood. Horror of horrors, through a recent article in the Guardian, UK,Banglawala has appealed to MCB to include a gay Muslim support group as an affiliate!
No one accuses Dr Naik of being part of any terror network. But should a self-proclaimed champion of peace be so reckless in his use/misuse of inflammable words? Or are we dealing here with calculated ambiguity, a deliberate playing with fire?
Imagine the 150 million viewers of Peace TV being treated to such a rich discourse on diversity in Islam.
Veteran communist leader and former World Peace Council president Romesh Chandra passed away today in Mumbai, the CPI said in a statement. Ex-member of national executive of the CPI, Chandra died at around 3 PM in the Maharashtra capital due to old age, party leaders said. He was 97.
"Chandra's was witness to the historic peace movement. He made hefty contributions towards the movement. His demise is a big loss," CPI Maharashtra secretary Bhalchandra Kango said. According to the Left party's statement, Chandra had taken part in freedom struggle as a student leader and later joined CPI and went on to become its national executive. Chandra, who joined the Council headquarters in Helsinki as its president and played a role during cold war era, had addressed United Nations' General Assembly as peace body's leader many a times, the highest number of times as an Indian, the party said.
A recipient of Lenin Peace Award, Chandra had also worked as the editor of CPI's central organ New Age. "The Central Secretariat of the CPI pays its respectful homage to one of its prominent leaders and sends party's condolences to the bereaved family," the CPI said in a statement. Chandra is survived by his son Firoze. His wife, had passed away last year, Kango said. They had been separated.
The World Peace Council (WPC) expressed grief and loss at the passing away of our veteran leader and President of Honor Romesh Chandra today in Mumbai. He has been recognised to have served decades long the peace movement in India and the world. Romesh Chandra was born on March 30, 1919, in Lyallpur, India. He received degrees from a university in Lahore and from Cambridge University. From 1934 to 1941 he was chairman of the Students’ Union in Lahore. He became a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1939, of the Central Committee of the CPI in 1952, of the National Council of the CPI in 1958, and of the Central Executive Committee in 1958; from 1963 to 1967 he was a member of the Central Secretariat of the National Council of the CPI. From 1963 to 1966, Chandra was editor of the central organ of the CPI, New Age. He served as General Secretary of the All-India Peace Council from 1952 to 1963. In 1953 he joined the World Peace Council, and in 1966 he became the WPC’s General Secretary and a member of its presidium while in 1977 he was elected President of the WPC. During the Assembly of WPC in Athens in 2000 Romesh Chandra contributed decisively to the preservation of the anti-imperialist character of the WPC and got elected President of Honour.
He served and contributed to the struggle of the peoples and their just causes and championed in the solidarity movement with the peoples under dictatorial regimes, for the liberation and self-determination of the peoples in dozens of cases all over the world. Romesh Chandra was awarded the F. Joliot-Curie Gold Peace Medal in 1964. He received the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace among Nations in 1968, and he was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples in 1975 by the USSR.
Romesh Chandra was a genuine son and figure of the Indian working-class movement and one of the leaders of the world peace movement.
In the prosperous district of Kannur in one of India’s most prosperous states, Kerala, Eramangalathu Chitralekha, 39, was the first Dalit woman to drive an autorickshaw in 2005. Her new profession immediately angered the upper castes, who taunted her and threatened violence. One day, that year, her autorickshaw was set ablaze. In 2013, it was damaged beyond repair. The district collector gifted her a new autorickshaw in June 2014, but on March 4, 2016, it was destroyed again.
Chitralekha is unclear about her future, but she is clear that she is a victim of Hinduism’s deep-rooted caste discrimination. “My house was ransacked by Nair (upper caste) men. My son was humiliated and forced to drop out of school after eighth grade when stories started doing the rounds that I was a woman of loose morals,” she said. “He’s 22 now and still to find a job.”
Chitralekha is a Pulaya, a people termed adiyar, or slaves, in her village of Edatt. “We are low born,” she explained. “We are not permitted to draw water from the same well or eat from the same plates or drink from the same glasses used by the upper castes.”
The destruction of Chitralekha’s autorickshaw was one of numerous crimes reported in 2016 against Dalits, lowest of Hindu castes: From stopping the entry of Dalits into temples–in Uttarakhand, a bridegroom in Haryana, a community in Karnataka–to burning homes and beating women, the murder of a Dalit who married an upper-caste woman in Tamil Nadu and the rape and murder of a law student in Kerala.
These incidents are random snapshots of violence against scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) nationwide in 2016, for which data have not yet been compiled. It is unlikely that crimes against SCs and STs—up 40% and 118% over five years to 2014—will buck the trend visible in National Crime Records Bureau data.
Not only do SCs and STs—who comprise 25%, or 305 million, of India’s 1.2 billion people—endure historic and systemic discrimination, as the first part of this series showed, they are targets of growing violence, as they attempt to improve their lives in the world’s fastest-growing economy.
No shortage of laws, but discrimination is endemic
As the relentless attacks on Chitralekha show, education and prosperity are no guarantee that attitudes will change. With India’s highest literacy rate and seventh-highest per capita income, Kerala also has among the highest crime rates against SCs and STs relative to its population.
In absolute terms, in 2014, most crimes against SCs were registered in Uttar Pradesh (8,075) followed by Rajasthan (8,028) and Bihar (7,893), and most crimes against STs were registered in Rajasthan (3,952), Madhya Pradesh (2,279) and Odisha (1,259).
There is no shortage of laws to address the violence against India’s disadvantaged castes and tribes.
Specific laws include the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Specific laws include the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Besides, the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which governs most crime in India, has adequate legal provisions–if implemented.
“Whenever I filed a complaint against the goons, the police would let them go scot-free,” said Chitralekha. “The second time I went to lodge a complaint, the sub-inspector threatened to arrest me, instead!”
However, better reporting and registering appears to be a reason for the rising numbers of crimes against SCs and STs, from 33,412 (SCs) and 5,250 (STs) in 2009 to 47,064 (SCs) and 11,451 (STs) in 2014.
But the reluctance to register cases continues, as our conversations with Dalit survivors of violence indicated.
Manjeet’s murder, the burning of Jitendra’s children and the search for motives
Jai Bhagwan does not know why his son was killed on February 16, 2016.
In the village of Kartarpura in Rohtak, Haryana, Dalits routinely endured abuse, as Bhagwan’s son, Manjeet—who used only one name—did.
“He was returning home from work when they killed him,” said Bhagwan. “Getting harassed was a daily thing, but this time we don’t even know what happened.” The police registered a case against “unidentified persons”, and Bhagwan had heard nothing since then.
Manjeet is survived by his wife, Suman, son Prince (5) and daughter Kajal (7).
Sometimes, some attacks are so brutal that they—momentarily—make it to national headlines, as did the murders of Jitendra Kumar’s children in Faridabad, about 100 km south of Bhagwan’s home. Kumar, his wife, two-year-old Vaibhav and nine-month old Divya, were asleep when upper-caste attackers poured fuel and set the house alight.
Both children died, the cause of the attack ascribed to a feud.
Kancha Ilaiah, director of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, said rising violence against SCs and STs was a backlash to growing assertiveness.
As Dalits grow assertive, and jobs scarce, an upper-caste backlash
According to NCRB data, 704 murders and 2,233 rapes against SCs and 157 murder cases and 925 rapes against STs were reported in 2014.
“They (upper castes) are feeling insecure because of the progress of the SCs and STs,” said Ilaiah. “It is the natural course of history. The upper castes are still stuck in a world where the Dalit and the tribal are untouchables, to be treated as slaves.”
In February 2016, when the national capital region of Delhi was rocked by violent agitators demanding reservations for upper-class Jats, Dalits were attacked indiscriminately, and somereported killed.
Those riots were a manifestation of India’s inability to create enough employment for the million young people who join the job market every month. Organised industry added no more than 500,000 jobs in all of 2014, as IndiaSpend reported in February 2016. Upper castes, said experts, battle amongst themselves but join to keep Dalits out of the race.
“We all say we’ve a society moored in equality, but actually we are not,” said Dalia Chakrabarti, an associate professor of sociology at West Bengal’s Jadavpur University. “Caste hierarchy and jaatiwad (casteism) are deeply rooted in our society. I see this as a battle for power, where the strong always want to oppress the marginalised.”
Rameshwar Oraon, chairperson of the National Commission of Scheduled Tribes, said the rise in crimes against SCs and STs reflects better case reporting and registration. “That said, the commission is still worried and has expressed its concern to the Union government,” Oraon told IndiaSpend. The data back his concern.
Low convictions in crimes against SCs/STs
Compared to a 45% conviction rate for all IPC cases, no more than 28% of crimes against SCs and STs end in conviction, according to NCRB data.
Oraon said the Prevention of Atrocities Act (POA), 1955, and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 have not been implemented properly. “The state has failed to compensate and rehabilitate victims,” he said.
“Our police carry their caste with them; even when they are on duty, they practice discrimination,” said Ilaiah.
Former Maharashtra Director General of Police Rahul Gopal confirmed official discrimination. “There were instances where the police discriminated against people from the lower castes,” he said.”The POA Act is of little help.”
In December 2015, the POA was amended to establish special courts to try crimes against SCs and STs and rehabilitate victims.
(Ghosh is a Bangalore-based independent reporter and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.)
Series concluded. You can read the first part here.
UN SR warned of dangerous levels of continuing instigated violence against religious minorities in Myanmar
Anti-Muslim violence spiraled across Myanmar across the past week, even as the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee has warned of "tensions along religious lines remain pervasive across Myanmar society" "This is precisely the wrong signal to send. The government must demonstrate that instigating and committing violence against ethnic or religious minorities has no place in Myanmar," he said at the end of a 12-day visit to the country.
Nearly 100 police guarded a northern Myanmar village on Saturday, July 2 after a Buddhist mob burned down a mosque, a police officer said, in the second attack of its kind in just over a week as anti-Muslim sentiment swells in the Southeast Asian nation.The state-owned Global New Light of Myanmar said security forces in Hpakant in Kachin state were unable to control Friday’s attackers, who were armed with sticks, knives and other weapons.
It said the mosque’s leaders had failed to meet a June 30 deadline set by local authorities to tear down the structure to make way for construction of a bridge. Earlier, on June 23, a mob demolished a mosque and a Muslim cemetery in a village in Bago Region, about 60 kilometers northeast of Yangon, reportedly as a consequence of a personal dispute.
Tensions are also simmering in western Rakhine, a state scarred by deadly riots in 2012 that left communities almost completely divided along religious lines. The region is home to the stateless Rohingya, a Muslim minority largely relegated to destitute displacement camps and subject to host of restrictions on their movements and access to basic services, AFP reports.
Suu Kyi, a veteran democracy activist who championed her country’s struggle against repressive military rulers, has drawn criticism from rights groups for not taking swifter moves to carve out a solution for the ethnic minority. Her government recently ordered officials to refer to the group as “people who believe in Islam in Rakhine State” instead of Rohingya — a term whose use has set off protests by hardline Buddhists who insist the group are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Yet even the government’s broad phrase has failed to placate local Rakhine Buddhists, who demand the group be referred to only as “Bengalis” and say they are preparing to rally in protest at the order on Sunday. The UN Special Rapporteur (SR) Yanghee Lee urged the country’s new civilian government to make “ending institutionalised discrimination against the Muslim communities in Rakhine State… an urgent priority”. A mob has burned down a mosque in northern Myanmar in the second attack of its kind in just over a week.
Police are reported to be guarding the village of Hpakant in Kachin state, after failing to stop Buddhist villagers setting the mosque ablaze. Last week, a group of men destroyed a mosque in central Myanmar in a dispute over its construction. The UN has earlier, too, warned the government led by Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi to crack down on religious violence. The latest attack took place on Friday, when a group of villagers stormed the mosque and set it on fire. Reports said they attacked police officers guarding it, and stopped the fire brigade from reaching the site.
"The problem started because the mosque was built near a (Buddhist) pagoda. The Muslim people refused to destroy the building when the Buddhists discovered it," Moe Lwin, a local police officer, told AFP. He said around 90 police officers are now stationed in the village, where the situation has calmed. In a similar incident in central Bago state last week, the Muslim community was forced to seek refuge in a neighbouring town, after their mosque was burnt down and a Muslim man was beaten up. It happened in a village called Thayel Tha Mein.
We deserve the truth, not more political blame games
We need to address the real problem before more shots are fired
After months — probably years — of denial and self-deception about the existence of militant radicals tied to foreign groups, our government woke up to the reality that everybody had been warning us about all along.
This raid and hostage situation in the Gulshan cafe may be unprecedented in Bangladesh’s history, but in the annals of recent terror history, this is just one more incident.
Could this horror have been avoided? Perhaps yes, perhaps not. What is undeniable, however, is that this is a terror act that was waiting in the wings for a long time, and it finally happened. Sad that it took two young police officers’ lives and made victims of innocent national and foreign citizens, many of whom were working in Dhaka for a living.
More than two dozen lives were in great danger. We hoped that somehow a total blowout would be averted, but knowing that the militants who were occupying the cafe had yet to make any statement regarding their objectives, there were only speculations about the outcome, none of which was pretty.
Various claims have been made regarding the affiliation or sponsorship of these terrorists, ranging from the Islamic State to al-Qaeda to local home-grown groups — the usual suspects. Foreign media has, in the meanwhile, made Dhaka a centrepiece of the latest terror attacks, and are attributing the attack to either of the two infamous international militant groups.
Additionally, the foreign media is also pointing out our government’s failure to listen to the signals that the country has been receiving from the wave of individuals, foreigners, bloggers, and religious minorities being killed. In fact, this incident has stirred up critics to come out full force to blame the government for the failure to reign in budding militants in the country.
Coming in the wake of Istanbul attack, we could not fully rule out the presence of foreign elements among these attackers.
But what is certain to happen is that this will bring, in its wake, more deaths, and it has turned the city into a gloomy and melancholy place at a time when everyone is about to celebrate the end of a holy month with festivity. The blood that has already been shed has cast a pall of gloom. This was only darkened further with the ensuing losses.
We will probably be splitting hairs for days to come trying to figure out how it happened, and there will be more blame games going around. But if there is one lesson to be learned from this tragedy, it is that surveillance alone cannot stop such acts of terror. We may have hundreds of guards and policemen keeping eyes on the people trying to prevent the rogues from attacking.
But it takes only one determined group of people to outwit and outsmart these guards through their ability to network and amass enough firepower to launch such a blitz.
Terror acts of the kind that just happened do not happen all of a sudden. These take days and months of planning, preparation, and assembly. I have written before, and I reiterate it now, that radical extremism of the kind that is now on display globally does not crop up suddenly in a country without a nexus of ideas that run across.
The terrorists who took over the Gulshan cafe, and carried out their nefarious acts, were all our own citizens, but they drew their inspiration from a bigger cadre of militants with a mission that threatens all countries of the world, irrespective of cast, creed, or religious belief.
It is sad that our government, despite its commitment to fight and contain global terrorism, has failed to recognise the enemy within.
By putting blame on the opposition parties and their putative agenda to embarrass the government in the past, we have allowed our law enforcement agencies to lose focus on the real danger lurking in the country and getting bolder by day.
There has been much evidence of the growth and strength of these elements in the past, but for strange reasons, our authorities continue to ignore them.
The cost of political blame gaming is heavy as we can see from this incident. Neither rhetoric nor political blame game can replace real action to contain the cancer of radical militancy.
I am not suggesting that terrorism of the kind that is threatening the world today can be prevented easily, but at least our energy can be better spent and resources better used to fight the cancer of militancy, if our politicians agree to put aside their differences and fight together.
I am praying and hoping that there is no more bloodshed. But what I am hoping most is that there will be transparency in police action, and we will get to know who the perpetrators were. Let there be no murkiness to explain this to the nation. We deserve the truth.
In order to find a truth behind the claim by BJP MP Hukum Singh that many Hindu families have been forced to flee Kairana town in Uttar Pradesh due to threats from the Muslim community, The Milli Gazette, a fortnightly English language newspaper, sent a team there comprised of Ovais Sultan Khan, a social activist, Pushp Sharma, a journalist, Mazin Khan a journalist, Kauser Usman, a journalist and Mohammad Anwar, a social activist.
Following is the fact-finding report of the team: A team of journalists and activists, deputed by The Milli Gazette, on June 14, 2016 visited the town of Kairana in Western Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district which is in the national news due to the claim by the local BJP member of Parliament Hukum Singh that 346 Hindu families have been forced to flee Kairana town due to threats from the Muslim community. This claim aroused much media and political interest and focused lights on the law-and-order situation in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
After Hukum Singh's allegations, National Human Rights Commission(NHRC) issued a notice to the UP government for its report on the alleged exodus, while the UP government itself ordered a probe into the issue. When our team reached Kairana, we got the news from the nearby Kandhla town that a similar list of 163 Hindu families has been released by BJP and its allied right-wing groups spelling out similar allegations.
The Kairana list had the names of four dead persons and 68 who left Kairana long ago. It also includes name of 20 families which are still living in Kairana. This indicates that these allegations are part of a well-designed plan to polarise the society ahead of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections next year.
The mouthpieces of Rahshtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and different sympathisers of the RSS-BJP contributed heavily in rumour-mongering to create a communal divide on the ground in order to to strengthen the BJP. RSS mouthpieces Organiser and Panchjanya made Kairana their cover page issue and compared it with the displacement of Pandits from the Kashmir valley.
The role of some journalists and media agencies has been highly objectionable in propagating these allegations. We found that the Kairana issue was the focus of a week-long propaganda by the Hindi daily Dainik Jagaran, which was later picked-up by Zee News and others. They kept publishing stories without any verification on the ground.
On the day of our visit, Hukum Singh, an accused in the Muzaffarnagar anti-Muslim riots of September 2013, took a U-turn. Now he claimed that the alleged “exodus” of Hindus from Kairana was "not communal" but was rather connected with the poor law and order situation in the region. This again was a lie since the deteriorating law-and-order situation should cause similar exodus from many towns in the region.
The Saharanpur Range DIG Police, A.K. Raghav, sent a report to the state government on June 11, 2016 regarding this issue. He revealed that the whole effort of the local MP to polarise the situation in the town and neighbourhood is devoted to the intention for his daughter to contest the upcoming assembly elections. DIG Raghav indicated the possibility of some big communal incident in the near future. In his report, the DIG said that these groups are giving the communal angle to a every small incident. In one particular case, where a woman was raped and murdered, two Hindu names cropped up as the accused but there was political pressure to drop their names and arrest Muslims instead for the crime.
On the other hand, Shamli District Magistrate asked the SDM and Circle Officer of Kairana to probe the allegations that "jihadi elements" had forced the migration of Hindus from the town. This action came after the VHP joint general secretary Surendra Jain said on 13 June that “Jihadis are being encouraged to carry out their activities”.
Famous for its role during the 1857 revolt and the 19th century Indian classical music ‘Kirana Gharana’, this town has 80.74% Muslims, 18.34% Hindus and the rest belong to other faiths according to the 2011 Census. This is the area which had given temporary refuge to the large number of Muslims displaced during the anti-Muslim Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013.
Our team found that there are many untold stories which are not coming out, and that behind this whole communal game there is a plan to win the 2017 UP assembly elections.
The day of our visit was the eighth day of fasting in the month of Ramadan. We noted that eateries were open and people were eating on the roads in this Muslim-dominated town. There was no sense of any tension on the roads, markets and mohallas contrary to what was being shown in some news channels. We also failed to see any “For Sale” signboard or writing on the walls of any house.
Kairana Station House Officer (SHO), M.S. Gill, told us “It’s not true to call it ‘Hindu migration’. It’s usual these days. Everywhere people are moving from one place to another to explore better prospects. Interested parties are raising such issues keeping 2017 elections in mind.” Kairana police station’s sub-inspector Tanwar said that “Media has hyped the issue unnecessarily. Community leaders from both sides assembled nearby and appealed for harmony.”
Famous for its role during the 1857 revolt and the 19th century Indian classical music ‘Kirana Gharana’, this town has 80.74% Muslims, 18.34% Hindus and the rest belong to other faiths according to the 2011 Census. This is the area which had given temporary refuge to the large number of Muslims displaced during the anti-Muslim Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013.
A Hindu sweet shop owner, 56, who preferred anonymity, told us: “Yes Mukim Kala gang demands ‘protection money’ and my elder brother shifted from Kairana because he had received extortion threat. But criminals target rich people irrespective of their caste or religion.” Wasim, 42, a local resident, said, “Hukum Singh has been trying to create communal violence here since 2013. But let him do whatever he can, both communities share a bond and no one can disturb this.”
One important finding was that there are political rivalries within BJP and RSS leaders in this region. For claiming more power and space within different structures, they launch different hate-mongering drives against Muslims to stay in the limelight and outdo each other. Locals said that ever since Prime Minister Modi's rally at Saharanpur on 26 May, Hukum Singh is trying hard to be in the news. The reason being that the BJP Union Minister of State Sanjeev Balyan and Meerut area MLA Sangeet Som did not allow Hukum Singh to share the stage with PM Modi on that occasion.
Our team visited markets and narrow streets in Kairana’s mohallas and also met top Police officials of the town. We came to know that 21 Hindu marriages were cancelled in Kairana thanks to the BJP rumour-mongering.
Kairana SHO, M.S. Gill told us: “who will send his daughter to Kairana if such rumours are spread?” He also observed that in his four-month duty in this area, no singal communal incident occurred and that no complaint related with communal hate or crime was made. He said that there was no exodus of Hindus in this Muslim-majority area even when the 2013 riots took place. There was also no such activity even after the murder of businessmen for extortion of money. He said, I am hearing the word “palayan” (Hindi for exodus) for the first time in my life. He further said, we found more Muslims than Hindus participating harmoniously in Ramnavami and Balaji Shobha Yatra processions in the town but no one talks about it in media. He added, there are extortion cases by local goons, particularly the Muqeem Kala gang, but his major targets are Muslims, not Hindus. He runs an extortion racket in the name of protection money. He continues to do this from inside jail where he is lodged since October 2015 along with his sharp shooter Sabir.
Our team was told by local people that the exodus cannot be blamed completely on crime. As the name of Muqeem Kala gang arises in discussion, it is clear that such gangsters only touch the super-rich irrespective of community. We were told that once Muqeem got only 40-50 thousand rupees during a heist. He preferred to throw the money back on the victim.
Local traders told us that due to limited options available, families from both communities are shifting to other cities, mainly to metros, in search of better prospects. The team was told by local people that many of the families mentioned in the list migrated primarily due to economic reasons which is a global phenomenon now. Delhi is situated at the distance of just 98 kms, which prompted many families to shift to the fast running metro which provides better prospects.
In 2014, there were a total of 22 murders in Kairana. But there were only seven Hindus on this list while the rest (14) were Muslims and one was unknown. When three Hindu businessmen were killed in 2014, there was a 7-day-strike by the market association which has a large representation of Muslim traders.
The day of our visit was the eighth day of fasting in the month of Ramadan. We noted that eateries were open and people were eating on the roads in this Muslim-dominated town. There was no sense of any tension on the roads, markets and mohallas contrary to what was being shown in some news channels. We also failed to see any “For Sale” signboard or writing on the walls of any house.
In this whole episode, an interesting perspective noted by our team is that the locals seem to enjoy the attention they are getting from media amid hope that the poor condition of the town will get highlighted and something will be done about it.
We were told again and again that the reason of the migration, not “exodus”, is the economic factor and changing aspirations of the new generation in this age of globalisation. Civic facilities are non-existent in Kairana; people have to go to Panipat or Meerut for healthcare as well as shopping. There is no scope of work here, therefore around 5-7 thousand locals travel daily to the nearby town of Panipat to earn their daily wages.
Traditionally, this was an area of Jain and Hindu money-lenders but people these days don’t go to them and prefer to borrow from easily-accessable banks with a less percentage of interest.
A traditional sweet-maker (halwai) in Gumbad mohalla, a BJP supporter, told us that there is no business in the town. Earlier, people used to come here for shopping from Haryana areas but they stopped after the 2013 riots. When we asked about his family, he said that his elder son is a bank manager in Ahmedabad, the younger one is studying for CA and his only daughter is married. He lives here with his wife and waiting to sell his property for the right price, and will settle down with his sons. What he didn’t tell us also important. His sons are not inheriting the profession of their father as there are new avenues and prospects for a much better life. Like him, many are willing to leave the place. It is not the case of Hindus alone, 150 Muslim families, according to local police sources, too have migrated to other places in the hope of a better life for them and their children.
After this “Hindu list of exodus”, local Muslims too have issued a list of Muslims who left the town showing that the migration was mainly for earning a better livelihood outside.
The ruling classes in Delhi and Lucknow are not listening to such voices. They didn’t pay attention for the uplift of the town and now they are playing the polarisation game. They promise development but deliver hate and fear instead trying to divide society which easily gets influenced due to illiteracy and lack of trust manfucatured by the right-wing extremist groups which spread rumours to garner votes and grasp power.
Uttar Pradesh Police is yet to file even an FIR against the BJP MP who made such ruckus without any logic and proof.
Our recommendations: 1. U.P. Police should without delay file a case against Hukam Singh on the charges of fabricating a false list and disrupting communal harmony. 2. In the run-up to the assembly elections next year, Police and administration in the whole of Uttar Pradesh, especially in eastern UP, should be alert as the BJP and its allied outfits will spread rumours, polarise society and cause riots. 3. Media, especially Hindi press and news channels, should exhibit more responsibility and check the facts on the ground before rushing to publish baseless rumours as facts.
