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By comparing Akbar to Hitler, BJP shows there’s no place for even a ‘good’ Muslim in India’s history

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It's not about being the 'good' Akbar or the 'bad' Aurangzeb – like Pakistan, India can't accept a minority historical icon anymore.

Akbar
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In August 2015, New Delhi’s Aurangzeb Road was renamed APJ Abdul Kalam Road by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. On the surface, this was done because Aurangzeb wasn’t a very nice man – or so goes most of popular Indian history. Of special note are his policies that supposedly discriminated against non-Muslims and his support for puritanical religion: a special tax on non-Muslims, temple destruction banning music and so on. So terrible is Aurangzeb’s image in modern India that not only Hindutva ideologues but even liberals and some left-wingers came out in support of the renaming.

Now, after Aurangzeb, the BJP has set its sights on Akbar Road, another street in Lutyens’ Delhi. On Tuesday, VK Singh, minister of state for external affairs, publicly demanded it be renamed Maharana Pratap Singh Road, after the Sisodia ruler of Mewar who was defeated by Akbar’s forces in 1576 at the Battle of Haldighati. Singh isn’t alone. The BJP chief minister of Haryana ML Khattar and Member of Parliament Subramanian Swamy have backed him, as has the party's national spokesperson, Shaina Chudasama – who, in a rush of enthusiasm, declared that Akbar was like Hitler.

Aurangzeb and his great-grandfather Jalaluddin Akbar are the Cain and Abel of popular Mughal history. Even while Aurangzeb is reviled, his great-grand father Akbar shines through as an embodiment of the Idea of India: a broad-minded, catholic ruler who united the large parts of the subcontinent under one flag and also happened to be Muslim. It was a Nehruvian jackpot. That even Akbar is now being targeted shows just how far to the Right India has moved. From now, practically no Muslim can stake a firm claim to be a part of the country’s historical pantheon – not even if you were one of the country's most powerful emperors in all of its history.

Secular pin-up boy
Akbar made alliances with Hindu Rajputs, who were the backbone of his army – even at Haldighati, Akbar entrusted his forces to a Rajput, Man Singh (who has his own Delhi road). He had a Khatri, Todar Mal, for his finance minister, whose revenue system more than anything, ensured that the Mughals ruled for three centuries. Theological debates were organised by the emperor at a time when religious-driven prejudice was so strong that most Indians wouldn’t even so much as touch each other for fear of losing their jati and "upper" castes thought most of their countrymen subhuman. Jalaluddin, it seems, even left formal Islam, founding a religion called the Deen-e-Ilahi, angering the Muslim clergy – a grudge held till today by conservative Muslims.

The clamour to rename Aurangzeb Road was pinned on the man being a tyrant. However, in spite of these spades of liberalness, why is Akbar in the cross-hairs today?

The answer is simple: the powerful demand to strike out Akbar Road shows rather clearly that the move to rename Aurangzeb Road had very little to do with the character of Aurangzeb itself. While modern scholarship has shown that the colonial binary between Akbar and Aurangzeb was a false one, making cardboard cut-outs of complex historical figures and administrative systems, at the end of the day, in the public sphere, Akbar or Aurangzeb really doesn’t matter: any Muslim ruler simply has no place in the popular historical imagination as an Indian anymore.

Othering Akbar
It is important to note that revulsion for Akbar isn’t a one-off thing popping up now with a few leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is actually rather widespread and in keeping up with the overall rise of Savarkarite Hindutva nationalism, which treats Muslims as permanent outsiders to the Indian nation. The internet abounds with narratives of Akbar which, contrary to all historical evidence, treats him as a religious tyrant. Even worse, Ekta Kapoor, the storyteller laureate of Hindi-speaking India, has produced a television show which has an out-and-out negative portrayal of Jalaluddin.

Most worryingly, Akbar has been a political untouchable since 1947. For a person of his stature and power, surprisingly little of Akbar is seen on the street. India loves to name public works after Hindu rulers such as Shivaji and, of course, Pratap but Akbar, a man many times more powerful than both of them combined, is conspicuous by his absence. India has no roads, roundabouts, airports or museums named after Akbar; no equestrian statues of a man who was the most powerful sovereign in the world during his time. (The Akbar Road at the centre of this debate is a name bestowed by the British, who made sure that their new capital city embedded the historical memory of the seven cities of Delhi.)

Maharana Pratap, on the other hand, is well remembered. Kolkata has a park named after him, Mumbai a chowk and Lucknow a road. Udaipur has its Maharana Pratap Airport and Delhi’s interstate bus terminal is named after the Rana. Equestrian statues of Pratap abound across India, with one even making it to Parliament – one of only three medieval rulers to be so feted (the other two being Ranjit Singh and Shivaji). This when Pratap was the ruler of a tiny principality and was rather easily defeated by Akbar – a man whose empire had a massive impact on not only the rest of the Mughals and the British Raj but even the modern Indian state.

Towards a Hindu Pakistan
While Akbar and Aurangzeb are attacked for their faults – an easy enough thing to do given how different modern values are from medieval times – Pratap is let off. Temple destruction is a hot topic of debate but untouchability and caste is silently forgotten. Tsunamis of uninformed outrage crash onto the internet over the Mughal treatment of Hindus but there is pin-drop silence on the Rajput treatment of Dalits. If one is objective about using 21st century values to judge 16th century potentates, no one will come out smelling of roses.

In the end, the personal qualities of the icons India choses is hardly the matter here – it is their religious community. India is simply hurtling towards becoming a mirror image of Pakistan. Pakistan’s Muslim nationalism disallows it from accepting non-Muslims into its popular historical pantheon. The country literary begins its history from the time Islam enters Sindh and excises great rulers such as Ranjit Singh of Lahore as well as its rich Buddhist pre-Islamic past. Bhagat Singh, a man claimed by almost the entire political spectrum in India, struggles to get even a square named after himself in the very Pakistani city where he gave up his life struggling against colonialism.

Increasingly, Akbar is now to India what Bhagat Singh is to Pakistan – a remarkably admirable historical figure struggling to be remembered simply because he happens to have been born into the wrong religious community.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

Why Ragpickers, Unrecognised And Unpaid, Are Critical For Waste Management In India

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The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station every night at around 11 pm. During the six-hour journey from Ajmer, the train serves tea, snacks, soup, dinner and dessert–more food than an average person can eat in that time.

ragpickers_620
Ragpickers collect recyclables from a dump yard in New Delhi. By 2050, India will be generating 450 million tonnes of garbage annually and ragpickers–who work without any job security, dignity or safety gear, exposed to health hazards, harassment and abuse on the streets–will have to be an important part of its waste management plans.

 
As soon as passengers start getting off the train, ragpickers jump in and start scrounging for waste material and leftovers–samosas, biscuits, plastic bottle, wraps and so on. They are a part of India’s massive reserve of ragpickers–their numbers are estimated between 1.5 million and 4 million; Delhi itself has over 500,000.
 
Ragpickers sustain themselves by collecting, sorting and segregating waste and then trading it. In doing so, they help clean up a significant proportion of the 62 million tonnes of waste generated annually in India.
 
Given that rag-picking is a totally informal sector it is hard to quantify how much waste is collected in this manner, but there are rough indicators: Only 75-80% of the waste generated in India is collected by municipal bodies. And more than 90% of India does not have a proper waste disposal system.
 
A lot of garbage clearing thus is the done informally, by ragpickers who work without any job security, salary or dignity. Not just that, they are regularly exposed to cuts, infection, respiratory diseases and tuberculosis apart from poverty, humiliation, harassment, and sexual abuse on the streets, as IndiaSpend investigations found.
 
“This informal sector has saved the country. They are doing a good job and I have decided to recognise their efforts. We will grant (a) national award,” former environment minister Prakash Javadekar had declared in 2015 at an event on waste management in New Delhi.
 
It was declared that a cash prize of Rs 150,000 ($2,330) would be given to three ragpickers and three associations involved in innovative waste management. More than a year later there is no information available about the scheme.
 
India’s waste crisis is set to spiral–450 million tonnes by 2050
 
The environment minister has stated that India will, in another couple of decades, generate nearly thrice the waste it currently does–“165 million tonnes by 2030 and 450 million tonnes by 2050”. Only 22-28% of the waste now collected is processed or treated.
 
The problem is particularly acute in cities. Per capita waste generation rate in Indian cities ranges between 200 and 870 grams a day and is rising. Between 2001 and 2011, growing urban population and increase in per capita waste generation has resulted in a 50% increase in the rubbish in Indian cities. The government traced this to changing consumption patterns and consumer behaviour.
 
Why rag-picking is a free but critical civic service
 
Ragpickers actually complement the work of civic bodies, Shashi Bhushan Pandit, who runs the All India Kabadi Mazdoor Mahasangh, pointed out in this March 2016 interview.
 
“According to the law under which a municipality is set up, it places dustbins according to the size of the population. It is assumed that the generator of the waste will drop it in the bin. After that, it is the responsibility of the municipality to collect it from there (the transfer station) and treat it at the landfill,” Pandit said. “However, it is not the responsibility of the municipality to pick up the garbage from the source. That’s why the informal sector has filled this gap.”
 
Papiya Sarkar, senior programme officer (chemicals and health), Toxics Link, a New-Delhi based environmental NGO, classifies waste pickers into four categories: Those who carry sacks and collect anything of resale value from open drains and bins; the kabadi or bhangar men on bicycles who collect from households and then segregate glass, paper, and bottles from plastics; those who ride tricycles and collect almost 50 kg of waste each day and travel long distances to sell them, and finally, those who work for scrap dealers.
 
The occupation exposes these workers to toxins, the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health shows. They have little or no access to protective gear.
 
Treated with contempt, suspicion on the streets
 
Darkness Under the Lamps was a study undertaken by Harsh Mander and V Manikandan in 2011 at the Centre for Equity Studies in Madanpur Khadar, an urban village in south Delhi where many ragpickers live. They complained that they were treated “with suspicion and derision, because of their extreme poverty, vocation of rag-picking, minority faith and suspicions that they are from Bangladesh by the middle-class community living around (sic)”. The children of ragpickers often carry on with the same occupation and are rarely educated.
 
The government treats them no differently. Pandit has demanded inclusive rights, health benefits, safety gear and social security for ragpickers because they provide services that benefit the environment. “In Bogota, Columbia, every ragpicker is paid $2 per day by the municipality. In Brazil, they have made sure that only the ragpicker can pick the waste (from the source). Why can’t India do it?” he asked.
 
Ragpickers are destitute migrants, mostly from poor states
 
In September 2016, with the support of the Kachra Kamgar Union, we visited a ragpickers’ colony near Vasant Kunj, close to the Delhi airport. More than 250 families here depend on rag-picking to earn a living.
 
The men leave their homes early morning with their waste carts. A few of them work where the municipal corporation deposits waste, some scour the roads and others go to specific neighbourhoods looking for kabadi from homes.
 
Each ragpicker has a different story to tell, but they all suffered acute destitution once. Ranjit is a landless labourer from Bihar who came to Delhi seeking employment. Kundan once grazed cattle for a Chhatarpur farm in south Delhi. Another man washed toilets at the Delhi airport before settling down at the ragpickers’ colony.
 
Chandrika, who was a bonded labourer in Bihar and earned 1.5 kg of vegetables for a month’s work, came to Delhi in 1985 when she was very young. “Only the destitute get into this work. Some of us are contracted into it by moneylenders who dump several people in a single room and pay them a pittance for their work. Then there are traders who employ ragpickers,” she said.
 
Most ragpickers in this colony, however, work independently. Several men we spoke to agreed that they had tried their hand at other things but came back to rag-picking because it paid better. Migrants here also help their kin to move to Delhi and join the trade. This meant that most people in the basti (neighbourhood) came from two states: Bihar and West Bengal.
 
The women we met do not go out for picking, but are expected to sort waste at home. Even eight- or 10-year-old children join their parents in sorting waste.
 
“If you work 12-14 hours a day, you can make a living. But rates have gone down significantly. A sack of rag that fetched us Rs 300 five years ago now gets us no more than Rs 175-200. See how much rice and vegetables cost now–it is impossible to survive,” complained Kundan.
 
Police harassment is a common complaint. Young boys are picked up on false allegations and beaten up in police stations, said the residents. Sometimes they pick up mobile phones or other lost or stolen goods and then get arrested for committing a crime. However, in this colony, residents said the union ensures that they are not harassed much.
 
“Yes, we deal with garbage, but we want to live in a clean space”
 
Hair and plastic fetch the best rates but sorting waste is a difficult and hazardous job. “We open sacks and there are soiled sanitary napkins in newspapers, human excreta in polythene, shards of glass, syringes or nails. We cut ourselves, develop rashes and infection. Rotten food makes us sick. But we have no pension, no recognition, no medical facilities,” said a ragpicker.
 
When the main earner in a family falls very sick, he or she is packed off to the village to recover. The government hospitals, they alleged, do not want to treat them and they have to opt for expensive private dispensaries.
 
When waste is disposed in India, it is done with little concern for those who will be handling it later. For example, both soiled diapers and sanitary napkins need to be treated as medical waste: According to the Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 1998 any waste with faecal, blood, body fluid must be treated separately. But usually these are thrown into a common dust bin.
 
The colony, built on forest land, has no concrete houses–landowners will not allow any permanent construction. Only a third of the households had a ration card. There is no personal or public toilet in the colony, and no electric metres have been installed.
 
We asked a few women hailing from Uttar Pradesh for the one thing they would ask from the government. Disposal bins for the waste leftover from sorting, they said. Without bins, this waste simply piles up in their homes and lanes.
 
“Give us that and access to water. We buy two buckets of water every other day and pay Rs 1,000-2,000 a month to the one person who has a hand pump. If we can get a tanker, we could bathe properly. Yes we deal with garbage, but we want to be able to live in a space that is clean,” the women said.
 
A more detailed discussion and case study of urban poverty in Delhi can be found in the “India Exclusion Report 2016” due to be released on May 12, 2017, by Centre for Equity Studies and Yoda Press.
 
(Bose and Bhattacharya are senior researchers with Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

G.N. Saibaba – The Teacher I Could Not Have

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The critique of the judgement brought out by the Defence Committee — When the Prosecution’s Case Becomes the Judge’s Onus — has cited loopholes in the evidence that links Saibaba to the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF)

I saw Professor G.N. Saibaba for the first time at the Delhi University South Campus Cafeteria. I was told that he taught one of our optional papers on Indian Literature, then offered in the third Semester for postgraduate students of the English Department. Although he taught at Ram Lal Anand College, he took classes for postgraduate students as a ‘cooperative’ faculty member. Cooperative faculty members are not paid for their lectures; they are only paid travel allowance. He was teaching us for free, voluntarily taking on more than his load of teaching undergraduate students. I mention these details for a reason. When the word “Maoist” or “Naxalite” gets attached to an individual, our perception of that person undergoes a subtle shift. (Think of the den of anti-national intellectuals housed in Jawaharlal Nehru University.) That Professor Saibaba, in spite of being differently-abled, chose to take more classes without pay, should tell us something about this ‘dangerous’ man, supposedly ready to spew his venom on the nation. 

The police, of course, did its best to keep classrooms sanitised. Shortly after the commencement of my third semester, G.N. Saibaba’s house was illegally raided 1 on 12 September, 2013. The police took away his hard disks, pen drives, and personal laptop – electronic devices he had bought and ‘stolen’ at the same time. (The search warrant was for stolen property.) Why did the Maharashtra police stage such a dramatic arrest in Delhi? A report of the arrest, published in the national daily, The Times of India, can provide a clue. It concluded with the claim made by the police that has, so far, not been proved: “Police claimed that besides (Hem) Mishra, three other arrested Maoist leaders, including Kobad Gandhy, Bacha Prasad Singh and Prashant Rahi have also named Saibaba as their contact in the national capital.” While the prosecution referred to Hem Mishra, who is a student, there were no references to the others. Naming more prominent leaders like Ghandy made the public image of Saibaba more sinister. The police wore plain clothes for the same purpose: to give the impression that this was a sensational arrest of an absconding mastermind based in Delhi. The truth is that Saibaba had been cooperating with the police and was regularly in touch with them. 2 

Let’s leave the rigmarole of the case behind and go back to the classroom. Why is it important to have teachers like Saibaba? One of his students, Martand Kaushik, writes, “Saibaba viewed literature through a highly political lens. He had completed his PhD thesis on Indian writing in English. The thesis was picked up by a major publisher at the time. Still unpublished, his paper is a damning indictment of most Indian English writers. Highlighting the elite social background of the authors, Saibaba scrutinises the bias in their writings from the perspective of the Indian poor, especially adivasis and lower castes.” I may not agree with Saibaba’s conclusions, but preventing him from teaching in the classroom denies the possibility of these discussions and debate. What is important is that he brought a perspective inside the classroom that challenged what English departments had held dear for many years. In an interview with Hindustan Times, Saibaba compared his situation to the fictional world of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Many others have called it Kafkaesque. The similarities are not too hard to find. Joseph K., in Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, discovered that he is arrested for a crime that was never revealed to him. Even though he was under arrest, he was not kept in confinement. As a result, he found himself jailed psychologically even as he moved around freely. In Saibaba’s situation too, the trail was as much a test on his psychological health, as it was a test of his physical endurance.

Saibaba’s failing health condition had been a concern already as the trial went underway. The concern was shared not just by the Defence Committee or his family members and well-wishers, but also by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which sent notices to the Secretary of the Prison Administration of the Government of Maharashtra, and to the Superintendent of the Central Jail in Nagpur. The judgement, however, does not share the concerns of the NHRC:

Hence, merely because the accused no.6 Saibaba is 90% disabled is no ground to show him leniency and though he is physically handicapped but he is mentally fit and he is a think tank and high profile leader of banned organization CPI (Maoist) and its frontal organization RDF and by the violent activities of accused nos.1 to 6 and members of banned organization CPI (Maoist) and its frontal organization RDF, the situation of Gadchiroli district from 1982 till today is in paralyzed condition and no industrial and other developments are taking place because of fear of naxal and their violent activities. Hence, in my opinion, the imprisonment for life is also not a sufficient punishment to the accused but the hands of the Court are closed with the mandate of Section 18 and 20 of UAPA and in my opinion it is a fit case to award sentence of imprisonment of life to accused no.1 Mahesh Tirki, no.2 Pandu Narote, no.3 Hem Mishra, no.4 Prashant Rahi and no.6 Saibaba for offence… (emphasis mine)
The judgement came as a huge blow, and the distress was evident in the faces of those who came for the Press Conference organised by the Defence Committee on 20 April, 2017. The critique of the judgement brought out by the Defence Committee — When the Prosecution’s Case Becomes the Judge’s Onus — has cited loopholes in the evidence that links Saibaba to the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), and the organisation’s link with the Communist Party of India (Maoist), but even if we accept the association, he is still charged for vague, and not specific, crimes committed by “naxals”. Markanday Katju, former judge of the Supreme Court, has said: “The case against Saibaba is that he had links with Maoist extremists. However, in Sri Indra Das vs. State of Assam, 2011. the Supreme Court observed that mere membership of a banned organisation (i.e. banned under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act or TADA or any other statute) will not incriminate a person.” If we keep this in mind, the biases operating in the judgement are clear. 

Saibaba and the others are held guilty for preventing the industrial development of Gadchiroli district from 1982. In the press conference held by the Defence Committee, Vasantha Kumari, Saibaba’s wife, had said, “This is a democratic, secular country. We will have different opinions on different matters. If you impose one idea over other ideas, we will not accept it… This jal, jangal, jameen is ours. It is our right.” According to the judgement, Saibaba is held guilty for holding opinions on development that the state of Maharashtra does not agree with. He is, to quote the more management term of the judgement, a “think tank”. These tanks are full, and there are too many of them, sprouting out of dense jangals, preventing the spread of the industrialised, developmental tanks of the state. The resoluteness of every person present in the press conference is proof that these tanks will brim with taste of jal, the canopy of the jangal, and smell of jameen.

Souradeep Roy is part of the editorial collective of the Indian Writers' Forum.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 


1. According to a press report released by the People’s Committee of Civil Liberties (PUCL), none of the mandatory regulations for the arrest of G.N. Saibaba was followed. Read the press release here.  
2. Following the raid on his house 12 September, 2013, Saibaba was asked for the passwords to his hard disks by Subhash Bawache, the Investigating Officer. Saibaba was taking a class when the call was made and sent an email to the IO with the passwords when he returned home. This happens on 1 October 2013, five months prior to his arrest on 9 May 2014.  
 

Manto Lives

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To the Dead. Who must wake up; So they may teach the living how not to die. Life is fragile.


 

In today’s world of uncertainty, violence, and fear where political correctness has made us spineless – story of India and Pakistan keeps us engaged. They are like old lovers – quarrelling and loving. Whatever the level of hatred, in moments of peace India-Pakistan have shared a many things; memories, music, dramas, and culture. We have fought wars and then also talked about unifying our cricket teams. This ceaseless love-hate relationship gathers a many thoughts. At the present moment in history it then becomes important for us to see our story tellers as social theorists. Saadat Hasan Manto was one such writer.

Manto, the widely read and most controversial Urdu writer was born in the year 1912 on 11th May at Samrala, Punjab’s Ludhiana district. He gave the world a collection of enthralling body of literature. In a career spread over two decades of literary, journalistic, radio-scripting, film-writing, he produced twenty-two collection of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches and many scripts for films. He was tried for obscenity several times, thrice before and thrice after partition/independence. It is said Manto’s greatest works were produced in last seven years of his life, which was the time of great financial and emotional hardship for him. He died a few months short of his forty third birthday in January 1955, in Lahore.  His works have been deeply studied and interpreted across the world.

Manto appeals to us all because his stories (especially on Partition of 1947) disenchant us with the apparent truths of our own times. Manto, to assert again, is especially relevant at the present moment in history because our society is plunged into sectarian and communal killings, against which Manto wrote vehemently. One idea that Manto tried to rescue and which we must rescue today was the idea of secularism. He saw secular not as the patent of the state but as work of a culture. The power of religion to pervade all categories was the reason that it was supposed to be kept away from politics. For India-Pakistan this notion of secularism could never work. The need to go beyond secularism as a form of political correctness has to be explored. One begins to question, does being religious prevents one from being secular? Bismillah Khan, a great musician once said that he wanted his Shehnai to smell of Banaras. Why can’t then we have our secularism to touch upon our memories, our stories, our myths? Manto was writing these stories, trying to find the secular in the work of a culture. He goes beyond Gandhi’s ethics, beyond Nehru’s science and rationality, and beyond the mannerisms of Jinnah. Manto wrote history of the everyday in the extraordinary.

His partition stories treat partition as a human event, a psychological event and a continuous process rather than an event in history or a political occurrence unified over and above personal experiences. Fischer had once said that in a decaying society, art, which is truthful, will also reflect decay. Manto’s stories did the same. At one level these stories make one paralysed. For example how is one to make sense of these lines from a story titled Riyayat, “don’t kill my daughter in front of my eyes.’ Alright, alright, peel off her clothes and shoo her aside.”

Manto first expressed his shock to the violence of partition in ironic and brutal short stories in Siyah Hashiye or Black Margins. There are thirty two stories in it. As an introduction to this collection Manto wrote:

“For a long time I refused to accept the consequences of the revolution, which was set off by the partition of the country. I still feel the same way; but I suppose, in the end, I came to accept the nightmarish reality without self-pity or despair. In the process I tried to retrieve from this man-made sea of blood, pearls of rare hue, by writing about the single-minded dedication with which men had killed men, about the remorse felt by some of them, about the tears shed by murderers who could not understand why they still had some human feelings left. All this and more, I put in my book, Siyah Hashiye.”

Partition lives on in the consciousness of people, across borders, in its ‘division and contradiction.’ Manto’s stories remind us that the very humanity has been assaulted and violated; there are only victims whose trauma go beyond the physical pain and loss of life but remain scarred both in mind and soul. Manto’s stories have offered a different kind of language which goes beyond fixed categories of good and evil, victims and perpetrators, and a narrow minded focus on the insanity and barbarity of partition. The human dimension of partition which was lost in only capturing the political developments that led to partition is noted by Manto in his stories – the human aspect dealing with loss and sharing, grief and joy, friendship and enmity. These stories provide insights into relationship between two communities, a struggle, a resistance coloured with trauma, violence, pain, and suffering. Two line vignettes in Manto’s Siyah Hashiye speak of the kind of weariness that filled the air because of religious differences, where killings took place and people forcibly converted to other religions. A story called Determination reads, “Under no circumstances am I prepared to be converted to a Sikh. I want my razor back,” or another powerful story, which also reminds one of Gujarat riots and callousness (or helplessness) of police, is Prior Arrangement, it reads:

“The first incident took place near the barricade. A constable was immediately posted there.

The very next day, another incident took place in front of the store. The constable was shifted to where the second incident had taken place.

The third incident happened near the laundry at midnight. When the inspector ordered the constable to move to the new place, he took a few minutes before making the request: “please depute me to that spot where the next incident is going to take place.”
Sometimes in Manto’s stories when the characters confront the ruthless violence and inhumanity it seems their only conceivable response is madness. His stories like Khuda ki Qasam depict that.  Physically partition may have divided but psychologically India-Pakistan remained connected intimately. Manto’s greatest story, as considered by many, Toba Tek Singh, uses madness in the story as a metaphor for sanity. Like other stories, this too renders pain and trauma of the experiences of the partition with great sensitivity, it questions the wisdom of partition and the madness it unleashed. Another story, Khol Do, records the cries of pain, vile sexuality, violation and pleas of mercy and also hope. Stories like Thanda Gosht and Mozelle address issues of rapes, mutilations and violations of body, they ridicule religion, and also discuss how even after disappearing in the depths of depravity some human aspect remains.

Manto has been considered a humanist and rightly so. Many of his stories find the concern for humanity at the centre and themes of friendship, hope and love emerge too. Manto’s Ek Akhri Salute is about two friends Ram Singh and Rab Nawaz on the opposite sides of the border who suddenly meet in the middle of the battle. They are delighted to listen to each other’s voices. They had grown up together, their fathers were childhood friends too, and they went to school together. Ram Singh gets up to show himself to Rab Nawaz from the across the border, Rab Nawaz shoots in that direction for fun and realises that he actually has shot Ram Singh. Upon seeing the blood of his friend he felt as if he had been shot. He calls for a doctor and puts temporary bandage on him. In their conversations, Ram Singh asks, “do you really need Kashmir?” to which Rab Nawaz replies, “Yes.” “I don’t believe that, you have been misled” says Ram Singh. Rab Nawaz sits next to him till his last breath. Throughout the story these two friends are calling out to each other by shouting across the dividing line, recalling old times, cracking jokes, but their reunion ends in tragedy. It shows the dilemmas of pre-partition friends having become enemies port-partition because of a line drawn creating borders. It also shows how people remained friends no matter if the animosity between their countries grew. Manto recognises the Kashmir conflict and with the growing worsening situation of Kashmir one only sees blood and tears in the valley no humanity; and hence the need for us to reflect.

Swaraj Ke Liye is another story where the scene is set in post Jalianwala Bagh Amritsar which is highly charged with political activity. When Ghulam Ali becomes the leader of the local branch of the Congress party, he gets drunk on patriotism and becomes a sort of dictator (does that remind us of groups high on nationalism today?). When he gets married, he is asked not to have sex until India gains independence. After eight months of repressing his sexual urges he returns to normal married life and has children. Manto blends politics and sex, questioning the validity of two institutions – marriage and nationalism or patriotism, which becomes useless when they curb people’s natural impulses.

Manto’s stories relate not just loss of moral senses, of life, of home, of tradition, of integrated community but place us in the midst of a depraved, absurd universe. One cannot help but ask, will I be courageous enough to be essentially human to bring down the senselessness and brutality of violence? The full value of Manto’s humanism and secularism would only be realized when the white chalk with which he wrote on the blackboard to enhance its blackness becomes a catalyst for reassessing our selves across borders, in different territories and write a new narrative of shared history, culture, pain, fear, love and hope in our various spaces – hope that will avenge itself on history.

Courtesy: Newsclick

UP Govt Protects Its Own: Adityanath can’t be tried in 2007 Gorakhpur riots case, Allahabad HC told

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Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath cannot be tried for a case of inciteful hate speech that led to the death of two and destruction of properties of hundreds more, the government now run by the accused politician himself, has told the High Court.  The Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Bhatnagar, through an Order of May 3 denied permission to prosecute the chief minister, his political boss. Advocate for the petitioner, Farman Naqvi took strong exception to this order passed by the senior-most bureaucrat in the state, especially since it involved a subordinate passing an order in a substative sisue against a person who commanded power over him. Naqvi has now been given permission to amend the original petition (that dates back to 2008) so that it can challenge this order of the chief secretary as ultra vires and bad in law. The matter will now be heard on July 5 after the summer vacation.

The court was faced with a sticklish question, can a man be judge of his own cause? Yes, obviously has ruled the Uttar Pradesh government.


 
On May 4, just seven days ago, the HC had summoned the UP Chief Secretary with records of Gorakhpur riots in which CM Adityanath is named accused: The petition by social worker Pervez Parvaaz on which the order was passed on May 4 stated that the CB-CID, which is an arm of the UP police and is currently probing the riots, may not conduct an impartial inquiry.
 
The Allahabad High Court had summoned the chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh to appear in person in court on May 11, also directing him to bring along all documents relating to the 2007 Gorakhpur riots in which the then local MP and current chief minister Yogi Adityanath was named as an accused. A division bench of justices Ramesh Sinha and Umesh Chandra Srivastava directed the chief secretary to appear in person on May 11 and file a personal affidavit besides producing all documents relating to the 2007 riots, including the sanction given by the state government to prosecute the accused. The Order of May 4 may be read here.

Sabrangindia had first reported on May 2, 2017 how the court was faced with a piquant situation when the chief minister was now required to decide whether to grant prosecution against himself. “Can a man be judge of his own cause?” was the stiklish question.

The order was passed on a petition filed by Parvez Parwaz, the complainant in the FIR that was lodged at Cantt police station of Gorakhpur in connection with the riots, and Asad Hayat, a witness in the case. In the petition, apprehensions were raised that the CB-CID, which is an arm of the state police and at present probing the riots, may not conduct an impartial inquiry and a prayer was made that directions be issued for handing over the investigation to an independent agency.

Under Section 196 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CRPC), sanction to prosecute for offences of incendiary and inciteful speech (sections 153a and 295 of the Indian Penal Code is required from the government before criminal prosecution can begin. Even the First Information Report (FIR) for hate speech in this case was lodged only after the High Court passed an Order to the effect on September 26, 2008. Even this was challenged by co-processionist and fellow offender, Anju Chowdhury in the Supreme Court(SC) that finally on December — 2012 affirmed the High Court order and passed significant observations on how a second FIR can be registered when aspects of the offence have not been captured in the original FIR registered by the police on the incident. Initially the Chief Judicial Magistrate(CJP) had rejected the application of Parvez Parvaaz on ground that the police had already registered on FIR invoking section 302 on six unknown persons. Both the High Court Order and Supreme Court order (that may be read here) are significant in terms of establishing legal precedents
 
In the present case, pending in the High Court since 2008, where the social activist petitioner had also prayed for transfer of investigation to an independent agency, the state government under Samajwadi Party scion, Akhilesh Yadav had, typically dragged its feet. The government came to power in April 2012 but it was only in 2015 that the state government finally gave a compliance report stating that investigations by CBCID had been completed but approval of higher authorities for further action had not yet been granted! In January 2017, months before the state went to the polls, the CBCID finally told the High Court that offences had been made out and the matter had been referred for sanction under section 196 to prosecute the accused persons under sections 153a and 295 of the CRPC.
 
Thereafter the matter came up on March 10 (just a day before the Holi break) and then on April 24 when again the state government advocate told the court sanction was awaited and that the Court was about to give directions to the state government to take a decision on whether it was according sanction or not under section 196. On the next date of hearing, April 28, 2017, advocate for the petitioner, Farman Naqvi strongly argued that no person, however highly placed can be judge of his own cause and hence urged the Court to assume the power of sanctioning authority under Article 226 of the Indian Constitution and adjudicate whether or not this is a fit case to prosecute the accused or not.

Significantly, on a previous date of hearing in the matter, the petitioners’ counsel S F A Naqvi had raised doubts over the CB-CID’s ability to conduct a proper inquiry as “the person against whom sanction for prosecution has been granted by the state government has himself become the head of the state”. Naqvi had made the submission in response to an affidavit filed by the CB-CID wherein it had been stated that the state government had granted sanction, under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (inciting communal violence), to prosecute all those who have been named in the FIR including Yogi, the then Gorakhpur Mayor Anju Chaudhary and local BJP MLA Radha Mohan Das Agarwal.

The story begins in 2007, 27 January when prior to a Muharram procession, at a "Warning Meeting", Adityananth and other members of the Hindu Vahini and the elected officials of the Bharatiya  Janata Party (BJP) were creating an intra-community polarisation through their speeches. A local citizen and social activist, Parvez Parvaaz passing by heard the speech of Adityanath when he said,

“if the blood of one Hindu be shed then they will not register any FIR with the administration against the bloodshed of one Hindu in the times to come, instead they will get ten persons (Muslims) killed. If damage is done to the shops and properties of Hindus, they would indulge in similar activities towards the Muslims. Anything can be done to save the glory of indus and all should prepare for a fight. Amongst others, it was also stated in the complaint as under: 'we will not allow lifting of Tazia anywhere in the Gorakhpur City and the Gorakhpur District and we will also celebrate our Holi with these Tazias. He stated that we will have to take harsh steps for the welfare of Hindus and we do not want that the generations to come remember us with bad names. He stated  that I do not understand that we will be ready to take up those names, therefore, be ready to fight your final battle.
 
Adityanath was, shamefully a Member of Parliament when he uttered these words. He further said that
'once you stand up then you see that Gorakhpur will remain peaceful for many years. If the administration does not take revenge of the murder of the Trader’s son, then we will take ourselves, we will ourselves take revenge of that murder. Member of Parliament Yogi Aditya Nath, in his speech, termed the administration as worthless and eunuch and the incidents as Government sponsored terrorism and challenging the democratic Government he stated that they will destroy the law and order and will take law in their own hands."
 

Why we need an international freedom movement

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France’s election of a centrist pro-Europe president has offered us all some respite, but, in many respects, the world still seems headed for dark times.


Venezuela is among the countries in which popular resistance to repressive politics is on the rise. Marco Bello/Reuters

There’s bloodshed in Syria with no end in sight, massacres in Yemen, South Sudan and Myanmar and a recent resumption of intense fighting in Ukraine.

It also hints at a deeper decline, a sign that freedom itself is being eroded. From the first months of the Trump presidency and the hatred exposed by the Brexit campaign to the rise of the extreme right in Europe – including in France where, after all, 11 million people did vote for Marine Le Pen – reason seems to be receding in the West.

It has been replaced by alternative facts and apocalyptic rhetoric.

Even so many people still cling to the belief that the world’s troubles are distant and largely unthreatening. Protest, in this mindset, is either an activist’s sport or an endeavour led by groups whose freedom is directly threatened.

Such thinking is dangerous. In truth, the attack on freedom is coming from within, and stemming the tide of anti-liberalism will require that everyone join the fight.
 

A demonstration in London promoting European unity. Gulah Ahmed/Flickr, CC BY-ND
 

Freedom, authority and inequality

One challenge, perhaps, is that freedom is not necessarily an essential value shared by a large part of the population of democratic countries, nor does it mean the same thing to all people.

For some, “freedom” means human rights, free and rational search for truth and emancipation; for others, it means domination, the freedom to scorn, humiliate and sometimes kill. Syria, the greatest atrocity yet seen in the 21st century, is an example of the freedom to massacre. The West has been grotesquely silent on Russia’s participation in this war.

Then there’s the issue of fake news. In some ways, the most worrying risk is not the spread of fabricated reporting but, as columnist Nick Cohen has written in The Guardian, that people are inclined to demand and believe fake news. The result is that we increasingly live in two different worlds, unknown to the other.

Philosophy offers us useful frames of reference for the current crisis of freedom.

As Hannah Arendt and Alexis de Tocqueville before her have noted, when freedom is ineffective it’s usually because authority has disappeared. Here Arendt does not refer to authority as in authoritarian force but to the authority of knowledge – that is, the ability to differentiate between fact and fiction and to recognise truth.

Unrestricted freedom of opinion, one of the characteristics of real democracy according to Arendt, does not mean taking liberties with the truth.

A secondary cause of today’s eroding liberal order lies in inequality. A growing wealth gap has given rise to an understandable suspicion of liberal elites, leading to a (perhaps less understandable) rejection of everything they stand for.

Finally, there’s the decoupling of globalisation from common, shared public norms. In theory, globalisation was supposed to go hand-in-hand not only with the unprecedented movement of capital, goods and persons but also with a set of shared political standards: the UN Charter, international conventions on war and refugees and the like.

Officially, this world system also comes replete with common commercial, social and environmental practices. We have major aid programs for poor countries, UN conventions on corruption and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which helps nations fight against animal trafficking and poaching.

But, as has been well documented over the past year of angry-voter uprisings, many people and nations never benefited from these systems, while others got very rich and powerful thanks to them.

Globalisation is now fracturing under pressure from groups who, rightly or wrongly, hold it responsible for their suffering, and it is a popular target for political attack (Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen are only the latest to leverage its failures to gain votes).
As a result, the essential international rights and freedoms that were once championed by true believers in the democratising power of globalisation are more easily ignored.
 

Thousands of Hungarians protest against their right-wing government. Bernadett Szabo/Reuters
 

From a polarised world to a three-sided fight

Being insufficiently jealous of freedom is a fairly new problem. After the fall of communism and a relative reduction of authoritarian states in the late 20th century, many in the West have developed a false sense of security.

This has hindered our ability to comprehend the new global status quo. Some thinkers, such as Francis Fukuyama, have now conducted an honest revision of their previous theories on the end of history, acknowledging that the threat to a liberal world view has not dissipated.

There are numerous ideologies that are no less dangerous today than communism was 75 years ago, and they demand a more detailed analysis.

Putinism, whose chief ideologue is philosopher Alexandre Douguine, is a prime example of just such an anti-freedom world view. Seeing Vladimir Putin’s reign in Russia as simply the dominance of a strong state over the individual is simplistic, as is suggesting that he merely seeks a return to conservatism and traditional values of religion, family and nationalism.
 

Yes, Vladimir Putin is watching. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
 

In truth, Putin’s regime hides a broader desire to negate the inheritance of the Enlightenment, both nationally and internationally. Dissidents are oppressed and assassinated by groups under the orders of shadowy figures; Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, exerts near total control over society.
 

La résistance

There are signs of an emerging resistance. The United States, Poland and Hungary, especially (and to a lesser extent the UK, with its Remain movement) have seen mass protests and spontaneous acts of resistance that reach far beyond intellectual and political circles. It is an impressive civic groundswell.

The Pulse of Europe movement has also had impressive success on the continent, and many people took to the street to protest Trump’s visit to Europe’s side of the Atlantic.

In both Canada and Germany, welcoming refugees is an abiding principle of both the government and the majority of citizens – an expression of liberal values to counter the xenophobia of the world’s burgeoning extreme right-ring parties.
 

Refugees in the country are learning what being Canadian is all about. Mark Blinch/Reuters
 

But to succeed in today’s trying times, any liberation movement must necessarily be international. The threat against freedom is now everywhere – not just in authoritarian states such as North Korea but also in Western democracies (the United States), the developing world (Venezuela) and Islamic countries (Syria, Egypt).

And, dangerously, our collapsing faith in globalisation and its trappings has given authoritarian countries a more credible voice in setting the world agenda.

Defending freedom should be seen as a primary geopolitical challenge – our security depends on it. That means looking beyond borders and standing together in resistance as a global community.

It also means accepting compromise, seeing the virtues of moderation and knowing the difference between defending civilisation and making an expedient political choice. To push back against anti-freedom forces, right must talk to left, elites to non-elites and activists to the politically unengaged.

Many conservative politicians already understand that letting slide certain essential rules of solidarity will push vulnerable people into the embrace of extremes. That is a good sign, but it is only the beginning.

All liberal world citizens – liberal understood in the broadest sense of the word – have an obligation today to put ourselves at the service of freedom in order to ensure the future of history.

Translated by Alice Heathwood pour Fast Forword

Nicolas Tenzer, Chargé d'enseignement International Public Affairs, Sciences Po – USPC

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

‘We oppose triple talaq but don’t dare call us BJP’s handmaidens’: Petitioner Hasina Khan

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Asking us to lie low lest we are seen as rallying with the ruling party trivialises our decades-long struggle for justice.

tRIPLE tALAQ
Image: Reuters
 

In 1985, when the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Shah Bano case granted divorced Muslim women the right to alimony, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, a non-governmental organisation that professes to represent Indian Muslims in all matters of their faith, shouted “Islam is under threat”.

In response, Muslim women rallied to fight for their rights, especially in matters of marriage and divorce, and several women’s groups emerged from the community over the next three decades. Bebaak Collective, Awaz-e-Niswaan, Sahiyar, Muslim Mahila Manch, Pehchan, Muhim, Parvaaz Sangathan, and, more recently, Bebaak Collective Sahiyar articulated a radical politics, at one with secular and feminist causes.

So, when, in 2016, Shayara Bano petitioned the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of the practices of triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy, these groups joined in the cause. It was a demonstration of the support system created by the women’s movement over the past three decades, something that was not available to Shah Bano.

A reminder that our struggle was far from over came when the Muslim Personal Law Board challenged Shayara Bano’s petition. They have also launched a signature campaign to canvass support. They contend that the rights of Muslim women must be claimed “within the community” and accuse women’s groups of being handmaidens of majoritarian politics.

The argument is disingenuous. While the threat of majoritarian politics is indeed real – witness the ruling establishment’s incessant rhetoric on triple talaq at the exclusion of all other issues facing women in this country – the relationship between gender justice and minority rights is too complex to be reduced to “for or against the community” dichotomy.
 

BJP leaders Roopa Ganguly and Locket Chatterjee at a demonstration against triple talaq in Kolkata. Image credit: IANS
BJP leaders Roopa Ganguly and Locket Chatterjee at a demonstration against triple talaq in Kolkata. Image credit:IANS
 

Bebaak Collective, Aawaz-e-Niswaan, Muhim, Pehchan and other such groups working with the community across states raise women’s issues without regard to their religious affiliation, whether it is violence inflicted on them during communal riots or discrimination in everyday life while accessing their basic rights to education, livelihood, shelter and healthcare.

Today, however, even progressive forces want us to lie low lest our cause, especially the abolition of triple talaq, halala and polygamy, is appropriated by the Hindutva forces in power. “Ab yeh mahol nahin hai, jab right-wing sarkar satta mein hai,” we are advised. We are seen as rallying with the BJP government to secure the rights of Muslim women.

This trivialises our three-decade-long struggle for equality and justice and generates fierce opposition to even rudimentary reforms. It also provides an excuse for the ruling dispensation to beat the women’s movement with the old whip of the Uniform Civil Code.
The code is unjustly presented as a response to Muslim women’s demand for gender equality although for this government it is just a dog whistle for communal polarisation. We not only oppose appropriation of the cause of Muslim women but also seek the accountability of the state.

Let me state our position in no uncertain terms: when we demand that triple talaq be declared unconstitutional, we do not seek criminalisation of individual Muslim men who exercise the prerogative of unilateral decision-making in the process of ending a matrimonial relationship, or delegitimisation of any marriage. As petitioners supporting Shayara Bano’s appeal, we propose that the apex court frame guidelines (as was done with Vishaka Guidelines to prevent sexual harassment) to ensure, essentially, that a divorce is not unilaterally decided by the man. Also, mechanisms must be developed to enforce such guidelines so that every affected woman does not have to run to the higher judiciary in every case. A support system for such women is also called for.

Systems of injustice

A community’s relationship with the state poses several challenges for the assertion of gender justice. For example, Khap Panchayat and Sharia Court are community institutions that are strengthened by state patronage. They establish systems of oppression – ban on inter-caste, inter-faith marriages; atrocities against Dalits, including sexual violence against Dalit women; fatwas to control women’s mobility and sexuality – yet they routinely enjoy state impunity.

The Muslim women’s movement has challenged both the oppression of the Indian state and the conservative forces within the community. Often, the state has refused to engage with them on the pretext that their matters are “internal to the community”, thereby strengthening the very forces in the community that are responsible for their situation.

To these people, the self-styled arbiters of the community’s interests, the issue of women’s rights is always marginal, as we have found from years of interacting with them. They are concerned more about controlling what we wear, what we read and who we live with. Indeed, even some Muslim women’s rights activists have told us that livelihood concerns – roti, kapda, makan – should take precedence over all others. In effect, they invisiblise concerns of mobility, sexuality rights, multiple family visions and diverse living practices of Muslim women.

The women’s movement is one of solidarity, and, indeed, various women’s groups are working together on many causes. Sadly, though, there is a division on the question of religion, which has come to be the definitive marker of the Muslim community.

Can we not accommodate multiple identities within the community, even those that do not practise religion in normative ways? Can the question of women’s rights not be imagined outside religion?

As petitioners supporting Shayara Bano’s appeal, we do not believe that abolishing triple talaq will resolve all issues faced by Muslim women. But we must claim this opportunity to raise the concerns of matrimonial and inheritance rights, as well as the right to property. If the court does declare triple talaq unconstitutional, then it falls to the state to ensure equal citizenship of Muslim women beyond the realm of Personal Law. It is self-evident that in a country as vast and diverse as India, neither Muslim women’s identity nor their living reality is homogenous. It will, thus, be futile to rest all hopes of their emancipation on a legal remedy.

Hasina Khan is a feminist activist based in Mumbai. Her women’s rights organisation Bebaak Collective is one of the petitioners in Shayara Bano’s triple talaq case. Geeta Thatra and Roshni Rina helped write this article.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

The Prisoners’ Revolt: The Real Reasons Behind the Palestinian Hunger Strike

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More than 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned under military rule since Israel began its occupation of Palestinian territories in June 1967.

Palestine

More than 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned under military rule since Israel began its occupation of Palestinian territories in June 1967.

Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison . The West Bank is a prison, too, segmented  into various wards, known as areas A, B and C. In fact, all Palestinians are subjected to varied degrees of military restrictions. At some level, they are all prisoners.
East Jerusalem is cut off from the West Bank , and those in the West Bank are separated from one another.

Palestinians in Israel are treated slightly better than their brethren in the Occupied Territories, but subsist in degrading conditions compared to the first-class status given to Israeli Jews, as per the virtue of their ethnicity alone.

Palestinians “lucky” enough to escape the handcuffs and shackles are still trapped in different ways.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon's Ein el-Hilweh , like millions of Palestinian refugees in “shattat” (Diaspora), are prisoners in refugee camps, carrying precarious, meaningless identification, cannot travel and are denied access to work. They languish in refugee camps, waiting for life to move forward, however slightly, as their fathers and grandfathers have done before them for nearly 70 years.

This is why the issue of prisoners is a very sensitive one for Palestinians. It is a real and metaphorical representation of all that Palestinians have in common.

The protests igniting  across the Occupied Territories to support 1,500 hunger strikers are not merely an act of 'solidarity' with the incarcerated and abused men and women who are demanding improvements to their conditions.

Sadly, prison is the most obvious fact of Palestinian life; it is the status quo; the everyday reality.

The prisoners held captive in Israeli jails are a depiction of the life of every Palestinian, trapped behind walls, checkpoints, in refugee camps, in Gaza, in cantons in the West Bank, segregated Jerusalem, waiting to be let in, waiting to be let out. Simply waiting.

 

There are 6,500 prisoners in Israeli jails. This number includes hundreds of children, women, elected officials, journalists and administrative detainees, who are held with no charges, no due process. But these numbers hardly convey the reality that has transpired under Israeli occupation since 1967.

According to prisoners' rights group, Addameer, more than 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned under military rule since Israel commenced its occupation of Palestinian territories in June 1967.
That is 40 percent of the entire male population of the Occupied Territories.

Israeli jails are prisons within larger prisons. In times of protests and upheaval, especially during the uprisings of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were subjected to prolonged military curfews, sometimes lasting weeks, even months.

Under military curfews, people are not allowed to leave their homes, with little or no breaks to even purchase food.

Not a single Palestinian who has lived (or is still living) through such conditions is alien to the experience of imprisonment.

But some Palestinians in that large prison have been granted VIP cards. They are deemed the “moderate Palestinians,” thus granted special permits from the Israeli military to leave the Palestinian prison and return as they please.

While former Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat was holed up  in his office in Ramallah for years, until his death in November 2004, current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is free to travel.

While Israel can, at times, be critical of Abbas, he rarely deviates far from the acceptable limits set by the Israeli government.

This is why Abbas is free and Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, (along with thousands of others) is jailed.

The current prisoners’ hunger strike began on April 17, in commemoration of “Prisoner Day” in Palestine.

On the eighth day of the strike, as the health of Marwan Barghouti deteriorated , Abbas was in Kuwait meeting a group of lavishly dressed Arab singers .

The reports, published in “Safa News Agency” and elsewhere, generated much attention on social media. The tragedy of the dual Palestinian reality is an inescapable fact.

Barghouti is far more popular among supporters of Fatah, one of the two largest Palestinian political movements. In fact, he is the most popular  leader among Palestinians, regardless of their ideological or political stances.

 
If the PA truly cared about prisoners and the well-being of Fatah’s most popular leader, Abbas would have busied himself forging a strategy to galvanize the energy of the hungry prisoners, and millions of his people who rallied in their support.

But mass mobilization has always scared Abbas and his Authority. It is too dangerous for him, because popular action often challenges the established status quo, and could hinder his Israeli-sanctioned rule over occupied Palestinians.

While Palestinian media is ignoring the rift within Fatah, Israeli media is exploiting it, placing it within the larger political context.

Abbas is scheduled to meet U.S. President Donald Trump on May 3.

He wants to leave a good impression on the impulsive president, especially as Trump is decreasing foreign aid worldwide, but increasing U.S. assistance to the PA . That alone should be enough to understand the US administration’s view of Abbas and its appreciation of the role of his Authority in ensuring Israel's security and in preserving the status quo.

But not all Fatah supporters are happy with Abbas’ subservience. The youth of the Movement want to reassert a strong Palestinian position through mobilizing the people; Abbas wants to keep things quiet.

Amos Harel argued in ‘Haaretz ’ that the hunger strike, called for by Barghouti himself, was the latter's attempt at challenging Abbas and “rain(ing) on Trump's peace plan.”

However, Trump has no plan. He is giving Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, carte blanche to do as he pleases. His solution is: one state, two states, whichever ‘both parties like.’  But both sides are far from being equal powers. Israel has nuclear capabilities and a massive army, while Abbas needs permission to leave the Occupied West Bank.

In this unequal reality, only Israel decides the fate of Palestinians.

On his recent visit to the U.S., Netanyahu articulated his future vision.

"Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River," he said.

Writing in The Nation, Professor Rashid Khalidi  expounded the true meaning of Netanyahu's statement.

By uttering these words, "Netanyahu proclaimed a permanent regime of occupation and colonization, ruling out a sovereign independent Palestinian state, whatever fiction of 'statehood' or 'autonomy' are dreamed up to conceal this brutal reality," he wrote.
"Trump’s subsequent silence amounts to the blessing of the US government for this grotesque vision of enduring subjugation and dispossession for the Palestinians."

Why then, should Palestinians be quiet?

Their silence can only contribute to this gross reality, the painful present circumstances, where Palestinians are perpetually imprisoned under an enduring Occupation, while their 'leadership' receives both a nod of approval from Israel and accolades and more funds from Washington.

It is under this backdrop that the hunger strike becomes far more urgent than the need to improve the conditions of incarcerated Palestinians.

It is a revolt within Fatah against their disengaged leadership, and a frantic attempt by all Palestinians to demonstrate their ability to destabilize the Israeli-American-PA matrix of control that has extended for many years.

"Rights are not bestowed by an oppressor," wrote Marwan Barghouti  from his jail on the first day of the hunger strike.

In truth, his message was directed at Abbas and his cronies, as much as it was directed at Israel.

– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.” His website is www.ramzybaroud.net .
 

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