‘Where will we go in this bitter cold?’ ask Kashmiris after encounter operation leaves them homeless

December 14, 2018

Mujgund: – Until Saturday afternoon, Ashraf Mir, a resident of Srinagar, had a house where he stayed with his family like all his neighbours. By Sunday afternoon, however, his house had been reduced to a rubble and by the time the security forces had completed their encounter operations killing three militants, he had been rendered homeless. Two of them were under the age of 18, with one as young as 14.

Families whose houses got destroyed during the encounter telling their tales of sufferings to the visitors(Photo: Auqib Javeed/ TwoCircles.net)

It is a similar story for seven families whose homes were left completely destroyed with all the possession between Saturday and Sunday.

The damaged houses where three militants were killed during a gunfight with forces at Mujgund(Photo: Auqib Javeed/ TwoCircles.net)

“They (the security forces) fired around hundreds of rockets, mortar shells; thousands of bullets throughout the night towards our houses and razed them to ground,” said Mir. When he came back to the place his home stood, all he found was a dark reminder of what had happened between Saturday and Sunday. “Everything is gone…clothes, utensils, books of my children, ration stock for winter. They used heavy ammunition to turn our houses into ashes,” he added.

According to Mir, around 4:30 pm on Saturday, the government forces laid a cordon in Ghat Mohalla, Mujgund in Srinagar. After a few hours, he heard gunshots and decided to run to a “safe place” along with his family members.

“We left everything on God’s mercy and took shelter in a nearby village. For the whole night, I could hear the loud bangs and sounds of bullets being fired,” Mir said.

Another resident Ghulam Rasool Kachroo said security forces didn’t allow them to take anything not even the “gold ornaments” and the “money” they have saved for their children.

The damaged houses where three militants were killed during a gunfight with forces at Mujgund (Photo: Auqib Javeed/ TwoCircles.net)

“When we heard gunshots, we were told to leave the houses quickly. I lost everything that I had saved for my children’s and nobody is going to support us. For God’s sake, tell us where we will go in this bone-chilling cold,” said Kachroo whose house was also razed to ground during the encounter.

A joint team comprising the Special Operations Group of Jammu and Kashmir police, Indian Army’s 5 Rashtriya Rifles and Central Reserve Police Force launched a search operation in Ghat Mohalla in Mugjund area of Srinagar City. In the fierce encounter that followed, two ‘minor’ militants Mudasir Parrey, 14, and Saqib Bilal Sheikh, 17, both from Hajin area of North Kashmir’s Bandipora district along with a Pakistani militant identified as Ali Bhai, were killed.

For the residents of the region however, the price paid is extremely high. Seven families have been left homeless after their house was completely destroyed during the encounter. Some residents accuse government forces of using excessive ammunition to kill the trapped militants while others allege there was no militant was present in the Mohalla and accuse government forces of staging a “fake encounter”.

“All the necessary items are completely destroyed, especially the jewellery brought for the marriage of our daughters, nothing had left behind for us were we will go now” said Raja Begum, a 50-year-old who was wailing outside her ruined house. One can see burned utensils, splinters of glass along with bullet cartridges littered near the encounter site.

One of the families sitting outside their destroyed house. (Photo: Auqib Javeed/ TwoCircles.net)

“After zeroing in on a suspected house, forces fired some warning shots after which the militants resorted to indiscriminate firing. The fire was returned, triggering a fierce gun-battle,” according to a police statement. The gunfight also left one army soldier injured while three civilians sustained injuries, the statement added.

The people in the area have started collecting funds for the victims of the encounter with some voluntarily bringing construction material in trucks. Netizens have also started an online campaign to help the victims to rebuild the houses.

“That is why Islam asks us to strengthen the Baitulmal (a store that strives to aid the needy people), so that people don’t have to beg,” said an old man who was collecting the money for the victims on the road.

The victim says nobody from the administration have come forward to help them and that they are spending their days under an open sky. The youth are seething with anger at the attitude of the government. “They will come during the time of elections and will even kiss your feet to get your votes, after that they will show you the middle figure,” said an angry youth while referring to the politicians, none of whom have even bothered to visit the site.

A government official who has served as District Development Commissioner in many districts, while wishing anonymity, said “government doesn’t compensate those destroyed house where militants are being shielded or sheltered. Usually we compensate where the militants haven’t been shielded by the families and where Collateral damage happens.” In the three decades of conflict, thousands of homes have been destroyed during the gunfight between the security forces and militants.

People assemble near the damaged houses where three militants were killed during a gunfight with forces at Mujgund area on the outskirts of Srinagar, on Sunday, December 09 2018(Pic Auqib Javeed/TwoCircles.net)

‘Teenage boys as militants not a good sign’
The two teenage boys had joined militant ranks few in the month of August. Mudasir was a Class 9 student, who went missing from his home, with his school senior, Saqib Bilal Sheikh was a Class 11 student on August 29. The duo had reportedly had gone missing soon after an encounter between militants and armed forces in his neighbourhood in which three Pakistani militants were killed. According to reports, they joined militancy together. The death of two teenagers has send shock waves across the valley, with calls for the all parties to introspect into a situation wherein boys as young as 14 are picking up guns and being shot dead. “This is not a good sign for us and also not good for those people who are accepting them in their organisations,” said Prof. Noor Ahmad Baba, a political scientist at the Central University of Kashmir while raising questions on the militant leadership regarding the recruitments of teenagers.

“I wouldn’t approve this kind of militancy where children would be recruited to fight the battle,” he added. He also slammed the state authorities for their aggressive policies. “The state has become completely aggressive, intolerant and repressive toward its own people. It’s time for them to introspect too,” he said.

Another political analyst Dr Sheikh Showkat Hussain sees young boys joining militancy as a sign of growing alienation and suffocation.

“It is at a stage where every youth irrespective of his age is inclined to join militancy, so it is the reflection of that thing which let these kids to join militancy. The children in Kashmir have grown up in a kind of atmosphere that drives them to pick-up arms” he said while talking to TwoCircles.net.

When asked about the recruitments of teenage boys in the militant ranks he said, “The militant groups are not formal groups where they announce recruitments and people come and they choose the best one. It is an insurgency, where you have a few hundred people fighting and sometimes their leadership also don’t know who is being recruited. It is not an organised and/or a systematic force, it is a form of stray militancy,” he said.

Sheikh also lambasted the state government for using “excessive” forces against the two boys in the encounter.

He said under the International humanitarian law governing the legal use of force in an armed conflict, proportionality and distinction are important factors in assessing military necessity.

Sister of slain militant Mudasir Parray accompanies the body of her brother during a funeral procession on Monday, December 10, 2018. (Pic Faisal Bhat)

“You have to strike the rule of proportionality, if you have a boy who has joined militancy few months ago and doesn’t even know how to use his gun, how can you use missile, mortar shells and drones against him? How can you justify the use of disproportionate forces on these kids?” he questioned

Under Article 85(3)(b) of the International humanitarian law, “launching an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach.”
Meanwhile, the Jammu and Kashmir Police, according to reports, has sought feedback from its district heads about the fresh trend of teenagers joining the militant ranks so that appropriate measures are taken to plug it before “situation goes out of hand.” This is of little solace to the family of Mir, Kachroo and others who lost all their possessions. For the families of Saqib and Mudasir, however, the loss is irrecoverable.

Courtesy: Two Circles

62 Women Among 678 MLAs Elected in 2018, Down To 9% From 11% In 2013-14

December 14, 2018

Mumbai: There are just 62 women among the 678 members of legislative assembly (MLAs) elected in the 2018 state elections, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of data compiled by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms and the Election Commission of India.

Together, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram are home to 93 million women. Among the MLAs these states have voted in, only 9% are women, down from 11% from the previous 2013-14 assembly elections, when female candidates had won 77 of 678 seats.

Only in one state, Chhattisgarh, has there been an increase in the proportion of female MLAs, even though more female candidates contested elections across all five states than the last time.

Mizoram will continue to have zero female representation in its state assembly. Women comprise 49% of the state’s population of 1 million-plus population.

“Women might be coming out in higher numbers to vote but in order for democracy to be truly representative, more women MLAs and MPs need to have a seat at the table,” said Rithika Kumar, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. “We have seen at the panchayat and municipal level that women are not only capable of winning elections but also getting re-elected.”

In fact, female representatives are more likely to provide public goods that take into considerations women’s needs, Kumar said. “It’s simple—women need to have an equal say in matters that affect them, the economy and society at large,” said Kumar. “It’s time for all big parties to step up and walk the talk and give more tickets to women.”

How the states voted
Although more women have been contesting elections across the five states over the last three elections, they have not been winning in greater numbers–women’s representation at the assembly level has failed to match the increment in the number of candidates.

Madhya Pradesh saw the highest number of female candidates this year–235 of the total 2,716 contestants–higher than the 108 in 2013 and 226 in 2008. However, its number of successful women candidates is at its lowest, at just 22–down from 30 in 2013 and 25 in 2008.
In Rajasthan, 182 female candidates contested out of 2,291 (8%) in 2018, up from 152 of 2,030 in 2013 (7%) and 154 out of 2,194 (7%) in 2008. In 2008, 28 women won the elections to become MLAs and in 2013 the number was 25, but this year it has fallen to 23. In 10 years from 2008 to 2018, the proportion of female candidates has fallen from 14% to 11.5%.

Nevertheless, the proportion of female winners was higher than that of female contestants–women comprised 11.5% of the winners in Rajasthan, even though women contestants comprised only 8% of all contestants. Similarly, 9% of contestants in MP were women, and 10% of winners; 10% of contestants in Chhattisgarh were women, and 14% of winners.

Source: Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), State Assembly Reports 2018-2008, MyNeta.info

Note: Figures used for number of contestants refer to the number analysed by ADR and may not reflect the total number of contestants in all cases. *Telangana voted for its first assembly in 2014, ahead of separation.

Chhattisgarh is the only state where more women contested as well as won over previous years–13 (14%) of its 90 available seats were won by women candidates, up from 10 (11%) in 2013 and 11 (12%) in 2008.

At 13, the state’s legislative assembly will have its highest number of women representatives over the past three elections.

Mizoram did not elect a single woman, though its number of female candidates has been rising year-on-year. In 2018, 18 female candidates contested state elections, 200% and 100% higher than in 2013 and 2008, respectively.

Party-wise breakdown
Both the Congress and the BJP fielded no more than 12% women candidates, as per National Election Watch, an umbrella organisation of NGOs working for electoral reforms and improving governance. In absolute numbers, the BJP fielded more, 80, the highest number among all parties, while the Congress fielded 70.

An estimated 79 female candidates contested independently of any party affiliation, 40 under the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and 303 under various regional parties.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the winner in Telangana, gave tickets to the lowest proportion of female candidates, at 3%. The BSP, led nationally by a woman, Mayawati (who goes by one name), had 9% female candidates.

Source: National Election Watch by Association for Democratic Reforms
Note: Figures used for number of contestants refer to the number analysed by ADR and may not reflect the total number of contestants in all cases.

Among the winners, the maximum number of female candidates belong to the Congress, which will have 33 women MLAs across the five states.

It is followed by the BJP with 21 female MLAs. The TRS has elected three women MLAs, the BSP will have two and the Janata Congress Chhattisgarh Jogi and the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party one each.

One female candidate won as an independent.

Source: National Election Watch by Association for Democratic Reforms and Electoral Commission
Note: Figures used for number of contestants refer to the number analysed by ADR and may not reflect the total number of contestants in all cases.

In the last state assembly elections, the BJP had the most female MLAs, and its number of women MLAs has more than halved–from 50 in 2013 to 21 in 2018.

The TRS similarly has half the number of female MLAs–from six in 2014 to three in 2018.

(Sanghera is a writer and researcher with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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Why I am an Indian – Part II

December 14, 2018

My previous essay in this series of Essays for Our Times addressed to India got three hundred shares on fb. This surprising fact has made me keep quiet for a long time, wondering what to write next. It was on “why I am an Indian.” Meanwhile, while I go on reifying the definitions of nation, India and what it means to be an Indian today or who an Indian is or should be, philosophically speaking, now, BJP has lost in five state elections. I started this series, this second book of mine, with a one point agenda, which was to make BJP lose in the 2019 elections. I can say that somehow I have partly succeeded along with all those involved in the same fight. But the fight is not by any means over. We cannot stop fighting unless the fascist forces in India are fully defeated.

At the same time, following on from my first book, I had begun to outline India’s real problems like the Dalit one, which is sociological, of air, and water, and was about to go on to food, but went on instead to understanding that there was a much deeper problem at hand which was the one referring to the thorny issue of national identity, so my last few essays have dealt with that issue.

The comments on my wall to my previous article and reading today’s press as well as being able to read everyone’s opinions on today’s social media networks has made me understand something that is worrisome. People, including Rahul Gandhi, are ready to put up with the BJP and its satellites, and enter into a dialogue with them, showing to me that India is after all not a secular country and there is precious little to choose between it and a Saudi Arabia, a precious little that is being eroded steadily by politics without an eye being kept on what the country really needs. The attitude of both Rahul and his cohort is similar to that of their opponents which is one of giving the people what they want –

Ram Mandir or loans from IMF, both not priorities – and not what is actually essential for the country’s growth. As in the time of the breaking down of the Babri Masjid done during Congress rule what this means is as far as secularism is concerned India remains a country that is sliding towards unashamedly declaring itself ruled by a Hindu upper caste upper class bastion, and the choice offered to people is one of choosing between one such set in INC and another such set in BJP. However I believe that there is a third set consisting of people like me who often do not vote or vote NOTA etc or vote looking at the candidate to at the ideology of the party and so on and so forth.

This set, as I stated earlier, is not Hindu or Muslim and it is not Congress or BJP. I will talk on this now.

Jacques Lacan was the psychologist who spoke of the Other. By the Other Lacan meant initially “other people,” a term he borrowed from Hegel, signified primarily by the Muslims in India to upper caste, upper class north Indian Hindus or Brahmins and Nairs in the South etc.

Muslims are to many Hindus, I have come to increasingly understand, what the Jews were to Nazi Germany, as many people from the North have a version of history, distorted or not, whereby the golden age of what they imagine was a unified Bharath, under empires like that of the Mauryas and Guptas, seemingly, was put on a decline by the Mughal invasion, and Buddhists were failures in being too soft in facing the Islamic sword, and the Hindus lost their power, meaning the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas and the Vaishnavites did, by which power was meant not only their power of/over their kingdoms but also over the shudras and mlecchas and Dalits and tribals. That this version of history is primarily North Indian is something they are not aware of or don’t want to be aware of.

This fear of Muslims as the other is compounded by groups like the RSS, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Vahini and so many more such groups now proliferating after BJP came to power who claim that Muslims increase in number drastically in population and thus will soon become more than twenty five percent of the Indian population and will then demand another country in India, which is the fear that causes them to unleash ‘pogroms’ on Muslims like the one in Gujarat in 20002, the fear of the other.

Thus a group of Hindus in India are driven by three things towards self definition of their identity which is a nostalgia for a golden past for the loss of which they lay the blame on the doorstep of the Muslim invasion by the Mughals, for which they hate them, along with a fear of the presence of an increasing population and migrants, rightly or wrongly, and a desire for a restoration of an imaginary past of glory where the nation-state is purged of the other that Muslims are first. Compounding this is the memory of the Partition of greater Bharath into India and the ever smouldering wound that is Kashmir, that again pits both sides against each other constantly in a never ending, ceaseless, escalating war, made even more complex now with questions like Bangladeshi refugees who are both Hindus and Muslims, but are seen as only Muslims, and Rohingya Muslims.

In other words, Hindu identity has got caught up with the unfortunate strands of hatred, fear and the fascist desire for a purity by cleansing itself of the other which is no longer possible in today’s world even as it never was possible as no such thing called purity ever existed in ideological terms, as Sartre understood, as existence always precedes essence and not vice versa.

However, India has, not only, religiously speaking, as it is religion that Indians understand most, one other in it as understood by these upper caste upper class Hindus who hold to this carefully built construct of what Muslims are, but many “others” like

a. tribals,
b. Dalits,
c. Sikhs,
d. Buddhists,
e. Jains,
f. Christians,
g. Mormons,
h. Church of Scientologists,
i. Seventh Day Adventists,
j. Jehovah’s Witnesses,
k. atheists,
l. antitheists,
m. Satanists,
n. agnostics etc.

This is problematic as as both groups probably view these others as ‘the other of the other,’ the underbelly of the other, that can be dispensed with in the overall picture as democracy or rule or might or power or governance is a matter of numbers. but the recent elections just conculded have shown that they cannot be dispensed with, that minorities and people’s groups matter much more than thought of before, whether in terms of party affiliations or in terms of class or gender or holdings, or occupation etc.

Again, India not only has the above groups in matters of religion and more, as I have wanted to highlight the pattern rather than the whole matter, but also another set of political groups that were already there and are now rising according to today’s needs.
There are the regional parties like:

1. MNF
2. TRS
3. BSP
4. AAP (Delhi)
5. The neo- Marxists (rising up in places like Rajasthan)
6. The Independents (whose support becomes critical in the case of hung assemblies or Parliaments.)
7. Samajwadi Party.
8. DMK
9. JD (S)
10 RJD
11. TDP
12. Anarchists, violent and non violent
Etc. Etc. Etc.
There are also groups of people India does not think matters but do greatly.
Women. (feminists, especially)
Children
The differently abled
Farmers
Nomads or semi-Gypsies (the Kathua case highlights their plight)
Migrant labourers within the nation

Subcultures that are new in origin like the New Age religious groups coming even from places like Japan or even economic grups like Amway etc.

Those whose livelihood and habitats (ecological &environmental) are affected by industrial and technological change like farmers, tribals, reappearing again here in this list too, the people who deal in making and selling handicrafts, our craftsmen etc.

These tortuous lists I am making or drawing up are not aimless. They are meant to show through a new kind of demography delineation and cartography that a nation while a construct and a half real or half imagined community that is both something that extends into the past and across space and place and so not only geographical but in memories and made of people, land, flora and fauna is also sometihng creating itself now, but haphazardly and not in any planned manner, and while this leads me to use Gayathri Chakraborty Spivak’s “strategic essentialism” as a tool to map it, my real aim is to show that its real problems are not being addressed by the BJP or the Congress, whether it be disaster management or food security or ecological and einvironmental security etc. What can we do against or ongioing financial collapse and international debt, for instance? Demonetisation and GST failed in this respect, as it was done by poor planners who do not know the ABCD of economics, The RBI is also under threat now.

To return to the main thread of this essay, Lacan posits an Autre/Other that is the big Other which for the BJP and to the Congress is symbolized by upper class, upper caste Hinduism and not democracy. Democracy is also wrong as it speaks of the rule of the majority when what we need now, as clearly demonstrated by the recent elections, is a rule of minority coalitions working together for the common best interests of the nation. To redress these wrongs we have to see that the big Other is not a religion’s or worldview’s (Hindusim’s/ Islam’s/ Science and Technology’s/ Capitalism’s ) best version as a grand narrative – the one ring to rule all the other rings – as we live in the time of post modernity as pointed out by Lyotard where such grand narratives no longer work even as they never worked, or a political party’s best version, or an idealized view of a nation as the greatest when it is not, but a projection of a vision of the nation as a possible future Utopia and Arcadia, a heaven on earth, accompanied by a withering away of the state as administative and governmental apparatus as the citizens in it are all happy and self governing and peaceful and community conscious , to which one has to strive forwards, which is the only way to create a sustainable growth pattern for the country that will lead to our actual halting of and revamping the present steady decline of its future prospects and those of our people.

Dr A.V. Koshy is an established author and writer who is a poet, critic and artist. He has a doctorate in Samuel Beckett’s Poems in English from the University of Kerala, now published. He has co-authored and published a monograph of essays called Wrighteings: In Media Res and has several, published research papers to his credit. His greatest desire is to build a village for people having autism where all their needs are met. He runs an NGO called “Autism for Help Village Project” with his wife for this dream to come true. He has fourteen other books out now as fiction writer, literary critic, poet, academician, literary theoretician, essayist, editor, anthologist, co -editor, co-author and co-contributor. His latest and perhaps best book is a collection of short stories Scream and Other Urbane Legends.

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/

SPPU “Postpones” 79th Indian History Congress

December 14, 2018

Savitiribai Phule Pune University took this decision unilaterally, citing “financial issues”

The 79^th Indian History Congress (IHC) scheduled from 28-30 December at Savitiribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Maharashtra, has been “postponed” until further notice. The Executive Council members were informed about the postponement through an anonymous email on 11 December 2018. The SPPU authorities have announced the postponement of the upcoming event 15 days prior to the schedule on the university website. In a recent press release, the Indian History Congress stated that the decision to postpone the session was taken unilaterally by university authorities.

Speaking with the Indian Cultural Forum, Dr. Mahalakshmi Ramakrishnan, secretary of the 79^th Indian History Congress said, “Over 1200 delegates were supposed to attend and around 700 papers were to be presented in this year’s Indian History Congress.”

One of the reasons given by the SPPU authorities to the conference authorities was “financial difficulties and lack of accommodation for the delegates.” The EC of IHC has also expressed their anguish in a letter written to the Vice Chancellor.

Commenting on the issue, eminent historian Romila Thapar said, “The last minute postponement sounds rather suspicious because they should have known about the financial situation much earlier. Also, the state of Maharashtra does not agree with the history as taught by the Indian History Congress.”

The annual IHC receives grants from UGC, ICHR, NEUPA and other public institutions. It has also received an amount of Rs. 15 lakhs as delegate and membership fees. According to close sources, one of the reasons given by the SPPU authorities earlier was uncertainty in the “law and order” situation of Maharashtra. Later, however, a letter issued by the university stated that it’s not just the law and order situation, but also financial issues since they are unable to raise funds for the conference.

Responding to the multiple changes in reasons given by the university authorities, Prof. Thapar added, “The reason for not allowing the Congress will keep changing. It all sounds a bit suspicious.”

Indian History Congress is one of the biggest events held in the academic circles. The body constitutes noted academics and historians from across the country. It is recognised by the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) and has a formal representation in the Central Advisory Board of Archeology. IHC, by its constitution, is only committed to the objective of History and not to any particular political ideology or outlook. It has also been defending the academic freedom of speech since 1975, after the arrests of several academics and others during the Emergency. The Indian History Congress decides its upcoming session’s venue a year prior to the event. The current venue, Savitiribai Phule Pune University was chosen by the association of Indian History Congress after the university authorities’ proposal.

Disappointed with the recent changes in the upcoming History Congress, Professor S Irfan Habib, Delhi based historian of science and modern politics said, “The last minute postponement of such a big conference, which the university committed to the IHC more than a year ago, can’t be decided by the university alone. The university must have gotten an idea about the financial situation while preparing for the conference, i.e. 3 to 6 months before. This last minute change can’t just be seen as a “financial” issue, there could be more to it.”

Last year, the Indian History Congress had also critiqued the right-wing government, citing its example on plastic surgery and genetic science relating it to the mythical idols. “The IHC has been facing serious issues over the past few years. The government and especially this right-wing government always have a problem with the IHC. It doesn’t agree with the idea of India that the Indian History Congress proposes or talks about. The whole thing is politically motivated and one can see through it,” added Prof. Habib.

Responding to the postponement, Lakshmi Chandran, a participant and winner of last year’s Dr. Nasreen Ahmed Memorial Prize said, “I was also invited to the IHC for the award. I had already booked tickets. As a participant, I am utterly disappointed with the postponement of the event. For students of history, IHC is one of the most prestigious conferences and it is these students who will be the most affected by the postponement because they can’t afford to lose such a huge sum of money.” Talking to the Indian Cultural Forum, another participant Upasana Hazarika said, “It takes several months of hard work to write a research paper for the conference. Postponing the conference will really demotivate students.”

The IHC has also called for an emergency Executive Council on 14 December 2018 regarding its future course of action. In another Press release issued by the Indian History Congress, Pune, it has called for public support from the citizens and academic community of Pune.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

After 33 Years, Madhya Pradesh Assembly has 2 Muslim MLAs

December 14, 2018

India’s first ‘Happiness Minister’ among 13 BJP Ministers who lost in the state elections.

BHOPAL: After 33 years, the Madhya Pradesh Assembly has two Muslim legislators — Arif Aqueel and Arif Masood. Since 1998, Aqueel was the lone Muslim MLA in the 230-member legislative Assembly, winning from Bhopal North. In the recently held state polls, he has been joined by Masood, who represents Bhopal Madhya. Both are Congress candidates.

In the 2018 Assembly elections, Aqueel defeated BJP’s Fatima Rasool with a margin of 35,000 votes, while Masood won from Bhopal Madhya constituency by defeating BJP’s Surendranath Singh with a margin of 15,000 votes.

There were a total of four Muslim candidates in the fray from the BJP and the Congress. Two women and two men. Congress had given ticket to three Muslim leaders including a women Masarrat Shahid from Sironj seat who failed to win, while BJP only gave a ticket to only one. The Muslim population in the state is estimated at 8-9% of the total population.

Happiness Minister ‘Unhappy’
Tuesday turned out to be unhappy for Madhya Pradesh’s Minister for Happiness, Lal Singh Arya, who was one of the 13 BJP Ministers who lost the Assembly elections.

Arya was the first Minister of Madhya Pradesh’s Happiness Ministry, and also the country’s first, modelled on the national happiness index used by Bhutan.

The Assembly elections result were declared on December 11, and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured 109 seats out of 230 seats, while Congress secured 114, Samajwadi Party 1, Bahujan Samaj Party 2 and four independents.

With the support of other parties and independent MLAs, Congress staked claim to form the government before the Governor Anandiben Patel on Wednesday afternoon.

In a neck-and-neck fight between Congress and BJP, 13 out of 20 sitting ministers of BJP failed to retain their seats. Some top ministers who lost are Minister of Happiness Lal Singh Arya, Higher Education Minister Jaibhan Singh Pawaiya, Revenue Minister Umashankar Gupta, Medical Education Minister Sharad Jain, Finance Minister Jayant Malaiya, Health Minister Rustam Singh, School and Technical Education Minister Deepak Joshi,

In addition, Animal Husbandry Minister Antar Singh Arya, Women and Child Development Minister Archana Chitnis, Backward Class and Minority Welfare Minister Lalita Yadav, New and Renewable Energy Minister Narayan Singh Kushwaha and Food, Civil Supply Minister Om Praksh Dhurwey and state minister Balkrishna Patidar also lost their seats.

Most of these minister lost with a margin of 10,000 votes while New and Renewable Energy Minister Narayan Singh Kushwaha and Finance Minister Jayant Malaiya lost with a margin of only 200 to 300 votes.

After losing the Gohad seat, an unhappy Happiness Minister blamed Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan for his defeat. He said, “I should not have lost from the seat where I had given pace to the development but CM’s ‘koi mai ka lal reservation kahatam nahi kar sakta’ ( no one can ever end reservation) remark had played a key role in losing my seat.”

Besides BJP, Congress stalwart and leader of opposition in the Assembly Ajay Singh also lost th party’s traditional seat Churhat with a margin of 6,000 votes.

CM Chouhan registered a comfortable victory from his traditional seat, Budhni, by defeating Congress’s heavyweight leader Arun Yadav. But the margin of victory was narrower this time by 20,000 votes.

Taking full responsibility for the defeat, Chouhan said, “I’m the one who is fully responsible for the defeat because we failed to reach out to the rural voters.”

He further said, “I’m sure the Congress will fulfill what it has promised in its manifesto. Aaj se ham chowkidar ke bhumika nibhayenge (from today, we will play the role of watchman) and BJP will play a constructive role of opposition.”

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

Global Compact for Migration: what is it and why are countries opposing it?

December 13, 2018

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) sets out a common, comprehensive approach to international migration. It aims at cooperation between states and promotes measures to strengthen regular migration pathways, to tackle irregular migration, and to protect human rights of migrants among other objectives. It is expected to be endorsed by the UN member states in mid-December in an intergovernmental conference in Marrakesh.

Members of the Central American migrant ‘caravan’ at the Mexican border city of Tijuana. Alejandro Zepeda/EPA

But it is also subject to growing controversy – and the number of countries opposing the pact is increasing almost daily. The Dominican Republic is the latest country to join Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in refusing to sign the document that they negotiated for 18 months.

The GCM is creating heated political tension in other countries, too. In Belgium, the government was even in danger of collapse over it. Italy and Estonia will not attend the conference. Switzerland, which led the negotiations as a co-facilitator, won’t back the GCM in Marrakesh either, instead delaying the decision until a vote in parliament. The US quit negotiations early on, in December 2017, and was followed by Hungary seven months later.

So why have so many countries decided not to endorse the pact that they negotiated?

The GCM is a voluntary, non-binding document that introduces no additional obligations to states. It is a global agreement setting out a common framework, shared principles and best practices on international migration.

The GCM emerged, and has been negotiated, in parallel with the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) as a concrete commitment of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2016. In contrast to the GCM, the GCR has been widely supported so far by the international community, with the recent exception of the US.

The final draft of the GCM was approved in July 2018 by all UN member states – except the US and Hungary – with the aim of becoming the first global framework on migration. As one of the interviewees in our ongoing research project on global migration stated, the GCM is “an aspirational document” but “it doesn’t impose and it fully respects the sovereignty of states”.

Many analysts have recognised that the final text is far from perfect. Yet most agree about the significance of the negotiation for multilateralism and global cooperation.

A protest in early December against the UN migration pact by the right-wing Pegida movement in Berlin. Markus Heine/EPA

Several of our interviewees – high-level officials and decision makers in the field of migration – recognised that this was both the best and the worst moment to negotiate the GCM. The attention on migration in the past four years has created the conditions to start an unprecedented global negotiation, but within the most hostile environment possible. The risk of countries leaving the pact overshadowed the process from the beginning.

Not wanting to look welcoming

We can see four interrelated reasons that explain this growing opposition.
First, states with a restrictive migration agenda, such as Hungary, consider the symbolic act of approving the GCM as a sign that they are promoting migration. The regulation of migration is not only seen as a matter of laws, policies, and “border walls”, but also as a matter of communication. Some officials believe that if a country is perceived to be open towards immigration, it is providing incentives for migration, whereas harsh rhetoric is seen as a deterrent.

Such a perspective partly obscures the complexity and multifaceted reasons why people migrate. It is also unrealistic to believe that many would-be migrants closely follow the GCM process. But countries with a restrictive migration agenda don’t want to take any risks. Instead, their aim is to reaffirm their restrictive position by rejecting the GCM.

Second, while state officials are well aware that the GCM is non-binding, those that have rejected it fear it will turn into common practice, or even common law. In turn, advocates of the GCM have underlined that this is an inaccurate view. Its potential, though, lies somewhere in between. Some of our interviewees pointed out that, while not legally binding, it should be a politically guiding framework, which sets out ground rules for the long term.

Rights and the right-wing

Third, some states that have rejected the GCM are especially worried about human rights references within the document. In their view, an emphasis on human rights contradicts what matters for them: securing borders.

The Hungarian government argued that applying a human rights perspective to border control measures is “an extremely dangerous approach”. This position is based on a hyper-securitised view of immigration, in which migrants are seen predominantly as a threat. A framework that includes human rights of migrants, such as the GCM, is seen as incompatible with effective border control.

Fourth, hostility to the GCM mirrors the growing influence of new far-right movements, especially in countries where radical right parties are in power or are prominent. Ideas and myths about the GCM that circulated on extreme right social media sites, are said to have influenced Austria’s decision to withdraw.

In Italy, there was little discussion of the GCM until recently. But the extreme right, most notably the Fratelli d’Italia, ultimately managed to put the issue on the country’s political agenda.

There is a common denominator here: the rise of “sovereignism” as a political ideology. This is defined by anti-migrant nativism, and the rejection of multilateralism and international institutions. The GCM touches upon both of these core issues.

The question is not whether the GCM will be adopted, as a large majority of the 193 UN states still endorse it. Rather it is over the impact it is likely to have, given that its upcoming adoption has already been overshadowed by political statements that contradict the solidarity and multilateral approach to international migration it aims to promote.

Marcia Vera Espinoza, Lecturer in Human Geography, Queen Mary University of London; Leila Hadj-Abdou, Research Fellow Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute, and Leiza Brumat, Research Fellow, Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Eight Muslims MLAs from Rajasthan this time, up from just two in 2013

December 13, 2018

The Rajasthan elections are out and the Congress is all set to form a government in the state along with also doing the same in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The ousting of the BJP from Rajasthan has also resulted in a larger number of Muslim candidates being elected to the Rajasthan assembly, even though interestingly this is the first time that no Muslim won from the BJP since 1998. Compared with 2013 elections when the Rajasthan assembly had only two Muslim MLAs, this election resulted in seven Muslims from Congress and one Muslim from BSP winning. The Congress had given tickets to 15 Muslims in these elections.

Rafeek Khan, Adarshnagar Constituency(Photo: Social Media)

Rafeek Khan of Congress won from Adarsh Nagar seat with a margin of 12,553 over BJP’s Ashok Pamami, who was the current MLA of the region. In Kishan pole, Amin Kagzi won by a narrow margin of a little less than 1,500 votes. The closest fight among the eight Muslim candidates was for Saleh Mohammed from Pokhran, who beat Pratap Pani from the BJP by a margin of just 929 votes. The same could not be said about Zahida Khan, however. The only Muslim female candidate who won, Khan received over 1 lakh votes. She defeated her closest candidate by a margin of over 39,000 votes. Along with Khan, another strong victory for Muslim candidates came from Danish Abrar, who is also the party’s spokesperson for the state. Abrar beat popular BJP leader Ashok Meena by a margin of over 25,000 votes. The other Muslim candidates who won on a Congress seat were Hakam Ali from Fatehpur and Amin Khan from Shau constituency.

Hakim Ali Khan (Photo: Social Media)

Interestingly, the only non-Congress Muslim candidate who won from Rajasthan came not from the BJP but the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Ali won by a margin of over 25,000 against Nempal Singh of the Samajwadi Party with the Congress and the BJP relegated to third and fourth respectively.

WajibAli Naagar constituency ( Photo: Social Media)

The only BJP candidate who won in 2013 elections, Mohammed Younus, was essentially turned into a sacrificial lamb for these elections. Younus, who was the number 2 to Vasundhara Raje, was made to change his constituency on the last day and to make matters worse, he was made to contest against Sachin Pilot in Tonk. No surprises, then, that Younus lost by over 56,000 votes to Pilot who polled over 1 lakh votes.

Amin Khan who won for the 5th time (Photo: Social Media)

These elections across five states have resulted in a total of 19 Muslim candidates winning across Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Chattisgarh. While Rajasthan and Telangana saw eight Muslim candidates each, two Muslim candidates won from Madhya Pradesh while one Muslim candidate also won from Chattisgarh. No Muslim candidate contested from Mizoram.

Sohail Mohammed with his father Ghazi Fakeer from Pohkhran ( Photo: Social Meida)

Courtesy: Two Circles

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