On the day after its Dalit president elect Ram Nath Kovind is predicted to make an easy win to India’s Presidentship, the ruling NDA under Modi refused the courtesy of a parliamentary debate to BSP supremo and Rajya Sabha member Mayawati on Tuesday when she began to speak on atrocities against Dalits under Modi’s NDA II. From Rohith Vemula, to Una to now the attacks on Dalits at Shabbirpur under Adityanath-ruled BJP, Mayawati was furious when she was not allowed to speak by the ruling party benches. While it is deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha of the PJ Kurien who stopped her after three minutes, it was the blustering of ruling party benches that would not allow her to get a word in.
Janata Dal leader and 11 times member of parliament, Sharad Yadav was seen urging the chair to allow her to speak. CPIM’s Sitaram Yechury also said that Dalit atrocities were increasing under NDA II.
Mayawati has been speaking powerfully in Parliament on the attacks on Dalits and minorities. The recent UP state elections saw her party emerging third as a split vote ensured the BJP under Adityanath a sweeping win. Her resignation letter may or may not be accepted (as the format of the resignation is reportedly a one line one) but it is likely to sned a powerful message.
Ironically this comes on a day that the Modi government handed over the powerful portfolio of the I & B Ministry to the prime minister’s favourite Smriti Irani. Irani had been removed after her mis-handling of the Rohith Vemula case when her stand was perceived as singularly anti-Dalit. That and the attack on the universities, especially the Jawaharlal Nehru Universdity (JNU) happened under her watch. Now she’s back and in control of a powerful ministry where the media falls under her. As do the government’s channels like Doordarshan though technically the Prasar Bharati is supposed to be ‘independent.’
Petition Against Maharashtra’s Cow Vigilantes: Bombay High Court
Shadab Patel, a Bandra based businessman has, on Monday filed a PIL before Bombay high court, seeking action by the Court against “self-proclaimed gau rakshaks“ in Maharashtra.
Expressing a grave apprehension that these self-styled cow vigilante groups could stir up trouble during the upcoming Bakri Eid festival, Shadab Patel has urged the court to direct the state to take effective steps to protect citizens, especially those who deal in trade and transport of cattle, from lynch mobs. The anxiety in Maharashtra has grown given the fact just a few days back, a Muslim, and a BJP worker was brutally beaten up in Nagpur after allegations of carrying beef. In a stark example of vigilantes taking law into their own hands and committing the crime of assault, PTI reports that after the assault, the man himself was arrested as ‘it was proven and tested that he was carrying beef,’
“The cow vigilantes groups and sanghatnas are taking law in their own hands and immediate action should be taken against them. They are a threat as they cause disturbance or riot-like situation in the name of beef,“ said Patel in the petition filed through his lawyer, Asif Naqvi.“The citizens have a right to life and right to carry out business and trade, guaranteed by the Constitution of India. It cannot be be violated by such cow vigilantes, whose main aim is to create a sense of fear in the minds of people,“ said the petitioner.
The petition claimed that since 2014, around 24 persons had been killed allegedly by cow vigilantes across India. It listed various incidents from the killing of Mohammed Akhlaq, to Pehlu Khan, Junaid Khan and the most recent attack on a man last month in Nagpur.
“The state and Centre have miserably failed to curb such attacks, hence it is necessary for the court to make guidelines for preventive and safety measures,“ said the petitioner. The PIL has asked the court to direct the state to set up a 24-hour helpline to “keep a check on illegal acts by cow vigilantes moving around freely in the name of cow protection in large groups“. The state should also ask each police station to maintain a list of such vigilante groups in their areas and submit a report to court on action taken against them. The petitioner said the state should provide 24-hour security to traders when transporting livestock. He sought implementation of a Supreme Court order suspending the Union government’s notification banning sale and purchase of cattle at animal markets for slaughter.“If the state cannot provide safety to citizens who deal in cattle trade and transport, they should be provided gun licences to save their lives,“ added the petition. The PIL is likely to be heard later this week.
In the Nagpur incident, newspaper PTI reported that the Nagpur Rural Police have arrested Salim Shaha, a BJP worker who was allegedly beaten up by cow vigilantes earlier this week, under the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act for possession of beef.
Shaha was beaten up by some people on July 12 on the suspicion that he was carrying beef. Police had said on Sunday that as per the forensic laboratory report, the meat which he was carrying that day was beef. Superintendent of police (Nagpur Rural) Shailesh Balkawde told PTI today that Shaha was arrested last night, and produced before Narkhed magistrate’s court in the district today which sent him in police custody for one day.
Police will ask for extension of his custody tomorrow, the SP said, adding that a case has been registered at Jalalkheda Police Station. Shaha (34), a resident of Katol town in Nagpur district, was returning home on his motorcycle when a group of five or six men accosted him at a bus stop in the Bharsingi village on July 12. They allegedly assaulted him on the suspicion that he was carrying beef. Shaha’s family, however, said he may not have known what he was carrying. The family was initially reluctant to talk about the forensic report, stating that it was already “in trouble”.
But “Salim may not have been aware of what he was carrying,” a relative said. The Nagpur (rural) unit president of the BJP, Rajiv Potdar, had said Shaha would be dismissed from the party.After Shaha was beaten up and taken to a hospital, four men–Ashwin Uike (35), Rameshwar Taywade (42), Moreshwar Tandurkar (36) and Jagdish Chaudhari (25)–were arrested and booked under charge of voluntarily causing grievous hurt.
Interview with Vikram Singh Interviewed by P. Ambedkar, Produced by Newsclick Team
There is a clear policy of the ruling establishment to restrict Higher Education to the affluent sections of the society. The 20 million jobs that were promised to the youth have only been an election “Jumla”.
After three years of violence, Islamic State has encountered a major defeat that could mean that its end is near. On July 10 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, after a successful nine-month military offensive to “liberate” the northern city of Mosul, declared “total victory” over IS in Iraq.
He categorically said: “I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood and terrorism which the terrorist Daesh announced from Mosul”, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS or ISIL.
Almost exactly three years ago, on June 29 2014, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the group’s self-styled caliph, proclaimed a cross-border caliphate stretching over vast swathes of northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria.
Today, the Iraqi half of that territory has been almost totally eliminated (the northwestern Iraqi city of Tel Afar, close to the Syrian border, being an exception) while the Syrian half, based in the city of Raqqa, is facing imminent collapse under powerful US-backed Kurdish-led military offensives.
It’s a major turning point.
In the summer of 2014, an ISIL blitzkrieg swiftly defeated Iraqi defence forces across northwestern Iraq, capturing some 40% of Iraqi territories.
Prior to this rapid conquest, ISIL fighters had captured the Syrian province of Raqqa in January 2014, taking advantage of the bloody civil war let loose by pro-democracy movements.
Map of Iraq showing control areas. Includes recent U.S.-led coalition air strikes and recent violence incidents. Reuters
But the territorial conquests could not be sustained for long. After a string of crushing military defeats throughout 2015 and early 2016 at the hands of Iraqi and Syrian armed forces, ISIL lost 65% of its Iraqi territories and 45% of captured ground in Syria.
When Raqqa falls – sooner or later – to Kurdish-led forces, it could mean the complete destruction of the caliphate.
What went wrong with ISIL?
Al-Baghdadi, whose fate is currently unknown, declared his caliphate to realise a series of “impossible” objectives – including restoring Islamic power under a single authority, eliminating US and Western influence on Muslim lands and laying a claim to global leadership – and called upon all Sunni Muslims from Europe to East Asia to unite under his new flag.
These were the same objectives that the now-deceased al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden boastfully proclaimed in the early 1990s.
They were also unrealistic goals given the policy choices and capabilities of ISIL. In his first official speech on June 29 2014, Al-Baghdadi presented a world divided into two mutually opposed camps: Islam, and the camp of disbelief and hypocrisy.
He put pro-caliphate Sunni Muslims in the camp of Islam while the camp of disbelief was the abode of Shia Muslims, Jews, Christians and almost everybody else. This set the new caliphate on a collision course with the rest of the world.
ISIL militants, like their Wahhabi counterparts in the Gulf, also declared Shias to be non-Muslims and viewed the sheikhs, kings and emirs of the Gulf region as American surrogates, ringing alarm bells in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The spectre of the threat they posed soon forced Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US to close ranks to militarily deter and contain ISIL together, despite their differences.
Lack of followers
The spate of atrocities committed by ISIL fighters against the Yazidi community in Syria, who practice a non-Islamic faith, led the United Nations to accuse ISIL of perpetrating genocidal crimes.
This senseless use of violence against non-Muslims alienated most Sunni Muslims, so ISIL was never able to develop much popular support. Less than 8% of Sunni Muslims in the top 20 Muslim-majority countries across the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia supported the ISIL caliphate.
In early December 2015, to ISIL’s despair, thousands of Muslim clerics from across the globe declared the caliphate a terrorist organisation and branded its supporters non-Muslims.
ISIL’s military defeats, loss of territories and control over resources represented further serious blows.
In 2014, the caliphate had eight million Iraqis and Syrians living in its territories, assets worth nearly US$2 billion and annual revenue US$1.9 billion.
Two years later, after territorial losses in Iraq and Syria meant fewer people and businesses to tax, that revenue was more than halved to US$870 million. Its control over oil fields – a lucrative source of money – also shrank from 2014 to 2016.
ISIL’s challenges and legacies
ISIL might be on its way to becoming history, but it will certainly leave its mark.
Just as its emergence posed a twofold challenge (territorial as well as ideological) to the Middle East and the West, ISIL’s demise is also leaving behind the legacies of sectarian violence and killing, inter-ethnic malice and seemingly unmanageable rivalries involving regional and extra-regional powers.
Rightly or wrongly, many commentators saw the declaration of the cross-border ISIL caliphate as a possible death blow to the post-first world war political arrangements in the region.
Present-day national borders in the Middle East are the outcome of a secretly negotiated agreement between Britain and France from May 1916, known as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. It divided the Ottoman Arab territories of the Levant, Jordan, Iraq and Palestine between Britain and France.
Half a dozen Arab states were created: Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Israel, originally created as a “homeland” for the Jewish people in 1917, declared itself a state in 1948.
The caliphate partially challenged British- and French-imposed national boundaries by systematically dismantling the Iraq-Syria border, redrawing the map. It also expressed its resolve to eradicate colonial legacies in the region by extending the boundaries of the caliphate.
This attempt to rewrite the history of the Middle East may keep destabilising the region for years to come.
Ideologically, ISIL has challenged the West’s eurocentric claims to universalism, in which Western values of democracy, human rights and freedom are promoted as universal values that are applicable to all societies, regardless of cultural and racial differences.
Though criticised by many people from within the West, eurocentrism is alive in the hearts and minds of many Western people. The 2003 US invasion to remodel Iraqi society on American lines is just one example.
ISIL rejects Western dominance over the Middle East and has sought to promote the alternative Islamic claim to universalism based on the commandments of the holy Koran.
The Koran instructs all humans to engage in universal morality by creating and upholding a moral order based on the values of justice, equality, truthfulness, fairness and honesty. This applies to all humans, regardless of their ethnic, cultural and racial differences.
Claiming a universal moral order that negates Western values could not but pit ISIL against the West. Future Islamic radical groups, if they emerge, are likely to carry on the ideological battle.
They may well do so in less violent ways. The Koran does not sanction brutal and inhumane methods to fulfil its commandments.
The mess after ISIL
The possible end of ISIL could still mean a more unstable Middle East, at least in the short term.
Currently, most Iraqi factions have morphed into a common front against ISIL, hiding the mistrust and rancor that persists between Shia and Sunni Iraqis, among diverse militia groups, and between Arab and Kurdish Iraqis.
If ISIL disappears, this tentative, temporary alliance may simply fall apart, unleashing more violence on the war-ravaged nation.
Syrian society is likewise polarised; along divisions between the foreign-backed pro and anti-government groups and between the rebel groups themselves. These tensions will outlive ISIS.
Other contradictory interests persist in the region, too: those of Iran, the US and Russia in Syria, and the Iran–Saudi competition for power and influence across the Middle East.
The elimination of ISIL will reaffirm the region’s post-first world war political and territorial status quo but don’t expect it to bring peace to the Middle East.
All India Defence Employees Federation on privatisation of defence production
Interview with S.N. Pathak, C.Srikumar Interviewed by Gautam Navlakha , Produced by Newsclick Team
Newsclick talked to the representatives of All India Defence Employees Federation on privatisation of defense production. The AIDEF is on strike against the same. Ordnance factories making 87 items, including 39 listed under the weapons section, are set to lose the charge, with the ministry of defence (MoD) directing the Army to buy them from the private sector.
Three mosques and two Dargahs were demolished in Delhi on July 10 by Delhi Development Authority (DDA), and the locals are not happy with it. Local businessmen around Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah closed their shops to protest against the action.
Nizamuddin Tikona graveyard is situated near Khusro Park, Delhi. The graveyard is claimed to be more than 500 years old. Even as per Gazette records, the graveyard is shown to be more than 100 years old.
In the same graveyard, three mosques and two dargahs are situated. The whole graveyard is listed under the property of the Delhi Waqf board, over which the mosque and dargah have been built.
Around the graveyard, low-income people built their shelters. To remove these shelters, a PIL in Delhi High Court was filed back in 2015.
Taking action as per the court’s order on the PIL, Delhi Development Authority demolished the temporary shelters on May 16, 2017. But along with demolishing the temporary shelters, DDA’s bulldozers ran over some concrete homes in the vicinity.
The concrete structures which faced DDA’s action were Dargah Hazrat Shaikh and Masjid al Firdaus. To make matters worse, DDA marked other Dargahs and Mosques situated in the Tikona graveyard and told locals that they will be demolished in the coming days.
But this action of DDA backfired when management team of Dargah, some activists and lawyers took the DDA’s action to the court and Court stayed the further action for 15 days.
Moreover, the local shopkeepers and businessmen shut their shops to protest against DDA’s unlawful actions.
Khalid Miyan, Mutwalli of Mosque and Dargah told TwoCircles.net, “The decision to demolish those illegal shelter houses would be right because those were becoming a center of unlawful activities.”
He also said, “But DDA took advantage of his action. They said that the Khusro park belongs to DDA and inbuilt mosques and Dargahs are illegal. But the park is listed in 1972 Gazette as a property of Waqf board.”
Despite several tries at Delhi Development Authority, the officers were not available to comment on the issue. The Court has set the date of July 24 for next hearing on the matter.
Bezwada Wilson: "Nobody takes responsibility for the deaths in sewers," sighed activist Bezwada Wilson on hearing of the deaths of four men while cleaning a tank in Vasant Kunj on Saturday.
These deaths are 'political murder', says Wilson, adding that despite his repeated petitions to the lieutenant governor and chief minister of Delhi and the National Human Rights Commission, even the Prime Minister, on the problem, the reactions were nil or lukewarm.
Wilson, a Magsaysay award winner is one of the founders and national convenor of Safai Karmachari Andolan, provides a startling statistic. He pointed out that in the past 100 days, 39 people had died across India while cleaning sewers. "This is not the first incident of the kind, just a part of regular occurrences," he told TOI. "Now Delhi government won't do anything claiming the matter falls under the LG's office. The PM too speaks on all issues but not on this."
Wilson also alleged that despite providing documents on 56 men who had died in this manner, the authorities had not identified them, so there was no question of their families getting any compensation.
"Who will take action under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, which prohibits anyone from allowing a human to go into a sewer?," the irked Wilson asked. "The administration will simply claim that since 2013, nobody is entering sewers and cleaning has been mechanised. But the truth is not a single sewer in the country is cleared using mechanisation."
Bemoaning the fact that there is much talk about smart cities and bullet trains, Wilson contrasts this with double standards of Indians who never speak of smart sanitation "If 39 deaths in 100 days don't matter to the country, then this is one of the biggest challenges for our democracy," he declared.
Delhi Police have filed an FIR against a student from Sri Ram College of Commerce for physically assaulting his teacher, who gave Pradeep Phogat of ABVP zero marks in the annual assessment.
Image: India Today
The principal of the college, R P Rustagi, said that Phogat got zero marks because he never attended classes. Phogat, for his part, said that he was being singled out for his association with the RSS-linked student organisation, ABVP.
The alleged incident took place on Friday near the parking area of the college. DCP (north district) Jatin Narwal confirmed that an FIR had been lodged under IPC sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 341(wrongful restraint) and 506 (criminal intimidation) against Phogat, reported the Indian Express.
