Wada Comes to Standstill as Adivasis Demand Work and Wage

October 5, 2016

Demand for War on Poverty and Hunger Echoes in the Air

Around a Lakh people had sat on protest at the house of Maharashtra Tribal Development Minister Vishnu Savara at Wada on Monday. The key demands raised by protesters were implementation of Forest Rights Act, work under EGS, timely salaries for Anganwadi workers, etc. People had gathered on the call of AIKS, DYFI, SFI and other Left Organisations, ended the demonstration after assurance on Tuesday morning. It is to be noted that thousands of Adivasi children have died due to malnutrition in Maharashtra over period of 1 year.

In times when slogans like ‘Mera Desh Badal Raha Hai’ are echoing on television channels, news of several Adivasi children in Maharashtra dying due to malnutrition, comes to burst the bubble of ‘digital India’. Malnutrition is not a recent occurrence in the country; we have been trying to deal with the problem for decades now. The recent data from Maharashtra, specifically from the tribal communities, is enough to shock any government out of their aloof attitude towards the everyday troubles of the common people. In September during a hearing of the PIL regarding deaths of 17,000 people in the last year in tribal areas of Maharashtra, the Bombay High Court asked the state government to take immediate action.

Around 10,000 Adivasi children under the age of five have died in the last 5 months in the state. However, governments, both at the center and state, have completely ignored the issue and like many predecessor governments they too have let the problem escalate to this devastating stage. Malnutrition is the Gordian knot which requires a multi-pronged strategy to be untied. The present center and state governments are not only turning a blind eye to the deaths of the Adivasis but have also weakened the schemes which could have provided some relief to the poor and starving people. Ever since, the Modi government came to power in 2014 there has been a significant decline in the budgetary allocations for the social welfare schemes. PM Modi has been very outspoken about his abhorrence towards the MGNREGA scheme which was introduced to ensure work for the rural people. This scheme, if implemented in its spirit, has the ability to become an important tool to fight poverty and hunger. But the BJP government is dead set to weaken it. In Maharashtra, government is not providing work under this scheme. ICDS is another hot target of the BJP government’s budget cuts. A scheme which provides basic nutrition for children of the 0-6 age group should be encouraged in a country which struggling to feed its children. On the contrary, BJP ruled Maharashtra has not paid the Anganwadi workers in 4 months. Reportedly, money meant for the SC/ST Sub-plan has been diverted to other activities. 1 lakh crores had been allegedly diverted for other activities since the formation of Modi government.

After experiencing the absolute disregard of Maharashtra government on the issue, on 3rd October people took to the streets in Wada. Around one lakh Adivasi farmers, women, youth, and students organized a massive protest. They marched for 4 kilometers. The administration which has been ignoring the cries of its starving people was efficient enough to deploy police and Rapid Action Force in massive numbers. The Tribal Affairs Minister was supposed to meet with a delegation; he fled Wada.

Prime Minister Modi on many occasions has called the 21st century: the century of Asia and by extension India. Is he and his party planning to take on the world with a large number of hungry and dying children?

* With Inputs from Vijoo Krishnan

Courtesy: Newsclick

The Mewat Biryani raids have permanently damaged livelihoods of poor Muslims

October 5, 2016

In Mewat, Haryana, the traditional cheer of Eid ul Zuha was muted this year, overcast by clouds of fear. Four out of five residents of the district are Muslims. Outside Jammu and Kashmir, Mewat has the highest ratio of Muslim residents except Dhubri in Assam. The Meo Muslims practise Islam but also retain many Hindu names and practices. Mewat, recently renamed Nuh, is one of the poorest districts of Haryana. In earlier years, impoverished Meos would sometimes come together for the annual Eid sacrifice, seven households joining to sacrifice one animal. But this year, for the first time, most Muslim households did not sacrifice any animal.

Image: News18

The dread of Muslim residents mounted after raiding teams of the state police, supported by non-State cow vigilantes, collected samples of biryani sold by locals on the highways to Alwar and Gurgaon to test whether these contained cow meat. This was about a week before the Eid. No official reports were made public about the findings of the tests, but cow vigilante leaders claimed that five of the seven samples tested ‘positive’ for cow meat.

Memories are also fresh among Muslims of the lynching of Mohammed Ikhlaq in Dadri less than a year ago, based on the rumour that he had killed a cow and eaten its meat during Eid. People in Mewat feared that mobs could attack any of them, claiming that the meat that they were eating and distributing was cow meat, and they could be killed in the way Ikhlaq was. In fact, ‘Ikhlaq’ had become a verb in people’s conversations: ‘people may Ikhlaq us’, they said, meaning that they could be lynched.

It has become risky to transport cows. If a truck is found to carry cows, then gau rakshaks stop the truck, thrash the driver, often vandalise or burn the vehicle, and then drag the driver, if still alive, to the police.

These rakshaks derive a great sense of social power from this role. But even if the transported animals are not cows — buffaloes, or even camels — the transporters remain equally vulnerable to attack. Instead of gau rakshaks, they pose to be animal rights activists, often claiming allegiance to Union minister and leading animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi. And they are still attacked even though they are not transporting cows.

Apart from the long shadows that the Haryana police biryani raids cast on Eid festivities, the even more permanent damage they inflicted was on the livelihoods of thousands of poor Muslims. Along highways, young men would sell on portable wooden carts steaming biryani to truck-drivers and workers. They would mainly use buffalo meat, which was economical and conformed to local tastes. A plate would sell for Rs 15 to 20. It offered a source of inexpensive and sanitary nutrition, and had become a major part of the contemporary culture of the region.

But even more than this, the biryani stalls were a source of decent livelihood to approximately 15,000 people. It is estimated that around 3,000 such stalls operated across the district. Each offered employment to at least five people, for a range of tasks from the rearing and sale of the meat and rice, collecting firewood, cooking that began typically before dawn inside thousands of Mewat homes, transportation and sale.

However, after the raids by the police, almost all of these have shut down. In an impoverished district with low literacy, there were few jobs for residents who owned little land. Many worked in stone quarries but these were recently shut down. Tens of thousands drove trucks, but more than 50,000 of their driving licences were recently cancelled when they submitted these for renewal. On the back of so much livelihood distress, the abrupt closure of the biryani trade in terror of official action has resulted in suffering and anger.

Cow slaughter is prohibited in Haryana since the mid-1950s under the Punjab Prohibition of Cow Slaughter Act (1955), but lawyer Ramzan Chaudhary tells me that this statute was lightly enforced. This changed with the election of a BJP government in Haryana in 2014. The socially conservative chief minister led the passage of a far more stringent Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gau Samvardhan Act, 2015. This first expanded the prohibition to include slaughter of any ‘gau vanshaj’ — including bulls, oxen, heifers and calves, even when these animals are disabled, diseased or barren. It made possession even of tinned and imported beef a crime. It prescribed high penalties including rigorous imprisonment of three to 10 years. The earlier law made no provision for testing or sampling meat samples, but this statute provided for establishing laboratories for such testing. The Haryana government constituted a police — Cow Protection Task Force — led by a DIG Bharti Arora, who went on record about her missionary zeal to protect cows.

It was policepersons of this task force who conducted the Mewat biryani raids, sending samples to the Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Hisar. The Tribune reports that all that the forensic investigation could conclude was that the meat was ‘cattle meat’, not whether or not it was cow meat. It stated that the laboratories are not equipped to conduct any such tests that would stand legal scrutiny in a court of law.

All of this makes the official motive for the police raids on the biryani stalls even more troubling. Lacking the expertise and equipment to actually test whether the meat samples were of cows or buffaloes, what the raids timed a week before the Eid festival accomplished was only to create a climate of dread that crushed both the festival and one major livelihood source of thousands of poor persons. The greater tragedy is that this seems to have been precisely what the government, openly hostile to a segment of its citizens based on their religious identity, actually wanted to accomplish.

Harsh Mander is the author of Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India.

(This article was first published on Hindustan Times. It has been republished with the permission of the author.)

India Highest Importer of Arms in the World and No 6 in Defence Spending

October 5, 2016

At 13.4 per cent of our total budget, we spend much more on buying arms from abroad rather than on education and health.

India is and has been, since 2011, the single largest importer of arms in the world, accounting for 14 per cent of total arms imports of the world and the sixth largest spender on arms in the world, the second largest from Asia, second only to China.

Pakistan our bête noir is much lower down in the arms import scale, making up only 3.3 per cent of the world imports. China, which has the largest number of military expenditure in Asia, however, accounts for only 4.7 per cent of the total world imports, when it comes to arms.

So not only are we spending more on arms but our dependency on foreign powers for defense equipment (not indigenous manufacture) adds another factor to the relationship. India’s imports are twice the second largest importer country Saudi Arabia’s imports, which makes up for 7 per cent of the total world imports.

These figures are irrefutable, coming as they do from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

SIPRI graphic arms import
Images: SIPRI

India is the sixth largest spender in the world, when it comes to military expenditure and is second largest from Asia, following China, also according to SIPRI. In 2015, India’s expenditure on military was $ 51,257 million as against Pakistan’s $ 9,510 million. However, South Asian countries are far behind the expenditure of the United States, which is whooping $ 596,024 million and quite behind China’s $ 214,787 million as well, according to SIPRI. (The extensive map by SIPRI showing military expenditure by different countries in an interactive graphic format can be found here.)

And this is while, even according to conservative estimates put out by the World Bank, India accounted for the largest number of people living below international poverty line in 2013, with 30 per cent of its population under the $1.90-a- day poverty measure. Placing the figure of the total of India’s ‘poor’ at a staggering 224 million, the recently released report 'Poverty and Shared Prosperity', also indicated that ‘extreme poverty worldwide continued to fall despite the global economy's "under-performance".

So while we puff up our chests on the surgical strokes against our neighbour and turn a blind eye to the pitfalls of sabka saath sabka vikas paradigm within, maybe its worth taking a deep breath and looking at this, the other side.

In the last two months, Maharashtra capital, Mumbai–a state regarded as being high on both the ‘financial capital’, business, and ‘progressive social values’ index’ has seen at least 12 deaths of infants as a result of malnutrition. Palghar district, situated at a distance of a hundred kilometer from the state capital, has recorded 600 deaths of children due to malnutrition within a four-month-period (April – August 2016), and as per some of the news reports, close to 4,000 children in the district are suffering from either severe or moderate form of malnutrition.

The United Nations (UN) says that in India, 2.1 million children die before reaching the age of five, every year. And, malnutrition is only one of the issues in the country, where 21.9 percent of the population is below poverty line, 68 million people still live in slums and suffer because of the unsanitary and uninhabitable living spaces.

On the other hand, India’s relation with the neighbouring country Pakistan is at its worst after Uri attack, skirmishes that have been taking place since and an anticipated war scenario. Some have been stressing on the need to modernise the Indian military and want the government to spend more in order to strengthen its defence. Many more deals to purchase modern aircraft and equipment for Indian Army are in the pipeline. Beneficiaries as we have seen with the recent Rafael deal are none less than India’s favoured few, the crony capitalists.

India is the largest client for Russia and the second largest for UK and Italy. Several deals to purchase Rafael fighter jets, Apache and Chinook aircrafts, Kamov helicopters and M777 lightweight Howitzer guns have either been signed or are going to be signed in near future, at a cost of approximately 1.5 lakh crore (SIPRI).

These figures pose a serious dilemma in front of a developing country like India, which is the second most populous country in the world, and ranks low on the list of countries with high human development index.

In India’s annual budget this year, however, the government allocated a budget of 2.58 lakh crore to defence, 38,892 crore for health and of 72,394 crore to education. A massive 13.04 per cent of the country’s annual budget, therefore, goes to defence as against the 1.96 per cent to health and 3.96 per cent to education. India’s defence spending spending went up by ten per cent (9.76 per cent) of the budgetary allocations (2.58 crores) as compared to the revised estimates of 2.33 lakh crores for 2015-2016. The finance minister Arun Jaitley had, conspicuously, made no mention of the defence allocation for 2016-17 in his Budget speech, however.

For a developing country like India, which is the second most populous country in the world, and ranks low on the list of countries with a high human development index (HDI), these priorities in focus pose a serious dilemma. As India settles for rank 130 in the list of 188 countries, its neighbours like Pakistan and Bangladesh have settled for ranks 147 and 142 respectively.

Though the budget allocated to the health sector, showed a hike of 15 per cent as compared to the last year’s allocation which had been slashed by five per cent from the previous year, the allocation is not close to what attention and funding that this sector actually deserves. The question one needs to ask here then, is: is the Indian taxpayer’s money going where it’s really required?

As the issue like poverty, malnutrition, unemployment and dearth of infrastructure continue to plague the country, where do our priorities lie? Is the modernisation of the military the only absolute priority?

Will these questions receive any answers?

जवानों के नाम पर राजनीती बंद करो

October 5, 2016

Social Media is abuzz with criticism of the ruling regime’s blatant misuse of the Indian Army: in its posters in western Uttar Pradesh, a state going for the polls in March 2017. This is not the first time the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been desperate to appropriate for itself the image and gains of the Indian army.

Senior journalist Om Thanvi says,

"यह मूर्खतापूर्ण हरकत है, सर्जिकल स्ट्राइक पर राजनीति करना और सेना को भी उसमें घसीट लेना। भाजपा को यह काम राष्ट्रहित में बंद कर देना चाहिए।"

On social media here are some comments:

पहले श्री राम के नाम पे वोट
फिर हिंदुत्व के नाम पे वोट
कुछ काम नहीं आ रहा तो जवान के नाम पे ?
अरे एक बीजेपी का नेता या उसका बेटा पाकिस्तान के साथ में लड़ाई किया हो नाम बतावो …
जवानों के नाम पे राजनीती बंध करो
शर्म करो शर्म

AAP: Release video evidence of surgical strikes now.

BJP: No, we will release it only before elections, we have nothing else to show. For now be happy with posters praising BJP govt instead of Army for Surgical Strike.
Pic from (Muzaffarnagar) U.P

जवानों के नाम पे राजनीती बंध करो
शर्म करो शर्म
अरे सरकार वीज़ा क्यों देता है

यह शहीदों का अपमान नहीं है ?

This is not the first time that the BJP is misusing and maligning the name of the Indian Army by politicizing its use. It did so earlier too in 2012.

This report says:

New Delhi: On the request of the Army, the Defence Ministry, on Wednesday, is expected to take up with the Election Commission the issue of a photograph of Army Chief Gen Bikram Singh used on a BJP poll poster in Madhya Pradesh.The photograph showed Gen Bikram Singh saluting martyrs in Jammu along with two other senior officers.

The Army request has been received and the issue is expected to be taken up with the Election Commission on Wednesday, Defence Ministry sources said.

The Army wants its sentiments to be conveyed to political parties, they said.

Congress has already sought derecognition of BJP in the wake of the advertisement issued by it in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, saying the national flag and the photo of the Army Chief have been "misused".

Party spokesman Meem Afzal had said the AICC has approached the Election Commission over the advertisement which gives a "negative" image of Congress.

The complaint was against Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and state BJP chief Narendra Singh Tomar.

Afzal alleged that BJP was seeking to drag the Army chief in politics by using his photo.

50% Of UP Anti-Foeticide Funds Unspent, India Global Ranking Hit

October 5, 2016

The Uttar Pradesh government has left unspent about half the funds it was allocated to curb female foeticide, according to a recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. This, in turn, has impacted India’s position in global gender indices.

An expectant mother having an ultrasound examination in Anand, Gujarat. The Uttar Pradesh government has left unspent about half the funds it was allocated to curb female foeticide, according to a recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. The audit found that none of the diagnostic centres followed mandatory rules of preserving image records or backups taken during the ultrasonography of pregnant women. In 68% of cases, women did not even hold the necessary referral slips from their doctors.

UP, India’s most populous state, also records the second highest fertility rate in the country after Bihar. An average woman here bears at least three children in rural areas, according to the 2013 Health and Family Welfare Statistics report. However, the state is also witnessing a rapid decline in its child sex ratio. For every 1,000 boys aged between 0 and 6 years, the state has 902 girls (Census 2011), down from 916 in 2001 and 927 in 1991. Three decades ago, in 1981, UP recorded a ratio of 935.

Over the same period, the country’s child sex ratio has fallen from 962 girls per 1,000 boys aged 0 to 6 years, to 914 girls per 1,000 boys in 2011.

Source: Ministry of Health & Family Welfare

Latest figures for UP from 2015 indicate that the child sex ratio has further fallen to 883, observed the CAG report based on data from the Health Management Information System.

Nature produces more males than females, as boys are more vulnerable to infant diseases than girls. The child sex ratio, therefore, tends to mirror the sex ratio at birth–ideally, between 943 and 954 females for every 1,000 males.

Since 2001, the child sex ratio in India, in general, and UP, in particular, has plunged below this, suggesting that female foeticide continues unabated.

This is despite the fact that UP, which elects 73 of 543 members of parliament in Lok Sabha, has considerable political clout. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, won his parliament seat from Varanasi in 2014, while Congress president Sonia Gandhi bagged Rae Bareilly.

UP seeks funds, leaves much untouched

The CAG report rapped the state government for its “lackadaisical attitude” towards implementing the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 (PC-PNDT Act). The law aims to prevent sex-selective abortions through regulation and monitoring of clinics using ultrasound equipment. Earlier this year, state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had sworn to protect the girl child through strict implementation of the Act across UP.

With state elections due in five months, activists are hoping the CAG comments will be raised in political campaigns. “It’s time for politicians to rally and push for more action on crimes against unborn girls. In past UP elections, caste and communalism took precedence over basic human development issues,” said Sabu George, a veteran advocate against female foeticide and member of the National Inspection & Monitoring Committee set up under the PC-PNDT Act.

Between 2010 and 2015, UP–among the 10 Indian states with the lowest child sex ratios–claimed it would need Rs 20.26 crore to prevent sex-selective abortions through implementation of the Act. Of this, the state received 35% (Rs 7.09 crore) from the Centre through the National Health Mission.

Source: Comptroller & Auditor General

‘Missing daughters’, the CAG critique

From the funds received, the state spent 54% (Rs 3.86 crore) over five years–barely 20% of the state’s original estimate, the CAG report noted. The state also raised an additional Rs 1.9 crore through registration or renewal fees and penalties charged from diagnostic centres. This is kept in a savings bank account and remains unused.

“In most women empowerment schemes, UP showed significant savings ranging from 46 to 100 per cent — mainly due to poor implementation,” the CAG audit observed in a chapter entitled ‘Missing Daughters’. “Despite allocation of funds, majority of the schemes… could not achieve their goal of reducing gender disparity due to lack of planning and inefficient execution by implementing agencies and ineffective monitoring by the governance structure.”

“Missing Daughters” is a comprehensive audit of the implementation of the PC-PNDT Act at the state-level (carried out in 20 of 71 districts) to ascertain whether available diagnostic technologies are properly regulated and monitored.

13 of 20 audited districts maintain poor records

The audit found that none of the diagnostic centres followed mandatory rules of preserving image records or backups taken during the ultrasonography of pregnant women. In 68% of cases, women did not even hold the necessary referral slips from their doctors.

Further, as per the PC-PNDT Act requires, a district appellate authority (DAA) must maintain permanent records of all diagnostic centres including details of the ultrasound machines possessed. However, in 13 of 20 audited districts, no such records were available.

Despite this negligence, the audit found that “neither any action was taken nor any penalty imposed on the defaulting USG centres by District Magistrates” in 936 (58%) of 1,652 registered diagnostic centres in the surveyed districts. Only show-cause notices were issued to 221 centres in five years without follow-ups.

State and district advisory committees did not meet regularly, nor did they ensure proper follow up action on their directions. “This rendered the entire system of monitoring, created under the provisions of the PC-PNDT Act, ineffective and largely dysfunctional,” the CAG observed.

Owing to its size and population, UP’s ineptitude in dealing with gender disparities has considerable impact on India’s ability to improve its performance in the global human development index. Recently, the country was ranked 108th of 145 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, much below neighbours such as Sri Lanka (84) and China (91). Along with Bihar and Rajasthan, UP is among the worst Indian states for women to live in, IndiaSpend reported in July 2016.

UP and gender ranking of rest of India

“One in every four Indian girls is born in UP. Thus, the state’s declining sex ratio seriously impacts India’s overall child sex ratio, and we are not likely to see much improvement in rankings in 2021 unless the issue is taken up seriously in the largest state,” said George.

The report on UP is also symptomatic of a larger trend of states’ poor implementation of the Act across India, as IndiaSpend has previously reported in June 2015. Since the law came into effect in 1996, only 350 people have been convicted under the Act, suggesting vast underreporting of the crime, IndiaSpend reported in August 2016.

Some key findings from the CAG audit

68% ultrasonography cases did not hold the necessary referral slips from doctors who recommended such tests
57% did not mention the purpose of carrying out USG/diagnostic procedures.
“It was difficult for the inspecting authorities to establish the purpose of carrying out diagnostic procedures and large scale misuse of technology for illegal sex determination could not be ruled out,” the audit noted.
0 test-checked centres followed mandatory rules of preserving sonographic image records or backups taken during ultrasonography of pregnant women.
In 13 of 20 CAG-audited states, no records were maintained of all diagnostic centres including details of all ultrasound machines. As per the PC-PNDT rules, a district appellate authority (DAA) must maintain permanent records of all diagnostic centres to curb unauthorised practices.
In the audit 120 ultrasound machines were found missing. The state had sealed these for breaching the provisions of PC-PNDT Act, 1994 between 2010-2015 but their whereabouts were unknown leaving them vulnerable to misuse.
“One sealed machine was found to have been sold in Bulandshahr district and in two other machines at Agra were found to have been removed from the centres, without any intimation to the department,” the audit said.
CAG inspections found sonography equipment did not did not have memory to save data for more than 24 hours making it difficult to verify their actual usage history.
GoUP had not yet introduced a centralised online-tracking system for monitoring all scanning carried out on USG machines to control misuse of these machines for illegal purposes
Only five meetings (33 per cent) of the State Supervisory Board had been held against the required 15 meetings during 2010-15. CAG also noticed that most of the recommendations made by SSB were not implemented.
The State Advisory Committee (SAC) met 5 times against the required 30 meetings during 2010-15.
943 District Advisory Committee-level meetings (42%) were conducted during 2010-15, against the required 2250 meetings.
Scrutiny revealed that GoUP neither notified any institute as accredited to impart training, nor conducted any examination of medical practitioners conducting ultrasonography.
GoUP had not established a dedicated toll-free phone line as of October 2015 for registration of complaints nor department had any database of complaints received for their proper disposal. On this being pointed out in audit, the department stated (June 2015) that no phone line was established for complaint registration but complaints can be registered through their website which was established in November, 2014

(Saldanha is an assistant editor with IndiaSpend.)

This article was first published on India Spend

110th birth anniversary of Freedom Fighter Niamatullah Ansari

October 5, 2016

There are many people who fought for India’s freedom and sacrificed their life and comfort so that we can live in a free country, but it is tragic that they could not find their rightful place in the history. Mr. Niamatullah Ansari of Gorakhpur is one amongst them. Apart from a freedom fighter, he was a crusader for social justice, and also left an impact as a person of letters, for his contribution to the Urdu literature.

Image: Two Circles

Mr. Niamatullah Ansari was born in a well to do family of Gorakhpur on September 28th, 1903. In 1920, when Mahatma Gandhi launched the non-co-operation movement, he denounced his education in Calcutta (now Kolkata) at an early age of 18 years, and returned back to Gorakhpur to participate in the movement. He got so involved in the freedom struggle that he could not complete his higher education.

Niamatullah Ansari

He was instrumental in establishing the local unit of the Congress Party in Gorakhpur, and in 1925 he participated as a representative at the All India Congress Committee session, which was held at Kanpur. In 1936, he was elected President of the City Congress Committee of Gorakhpur and further held other offices of responsibility in the party.
He was given the charge of the Namak Satyagrah Andolan movement in 1930 under the command of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1940, an extraordinary meeting of the Provincial Congress Committee was held in Gorakhpur, and on his instance Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the President of the Provincial Congress Committee, accepted the invitation and delivered a hard blowing speech where he called the people to rebel against the British Raj. This was the turning point in the struggle for freedom. Consequently Nehru was arrested in Gorakhpur and after the historic trial was sentenced to four years of rigorous imprisonment.

Late when the Satyagrah Aandolan caught the imagination of the Indian masses, Mahatma Gandhi nominated him as the first Satyagrahi from the Gorakhpur region, which was a great honor in itself. He was arrested and sentenced to one and half years of rigorous imprisonment and a hefty fine of four hundred rupees were imposed on him. He was taken to Ghazipur and kept in jail there along with other freedom fighters. In 1942, during the “Quit India Movement”, he was arrested under the infamous DIR and was imprisoned for two and half years in the Naini jail of Allahabad along with the senior leaders of the country.

He was strictly against the Muslim League’s ideology of Two Nation Theory, and the partition of India was totally unacceptable to him. He along with others opposed the Muslim League by aligning with the Momin Conference and played a pivotal role in organizing the Momin Conference session in Gorakhpur in 1939 under the tutelage of his father-in-law Janab Murtaza Husain. It may be recalled that the Momin Conference later joined hands with the Indian National Congress and took active and assertive part in the freedom struggle.

Later he was elected to the State Assembly from Gorakhpur in 1962 with a huge margin. It may not be out of place to mention that the Gorakhpur assembly seat was previously held by his brother-in-law Janab Istafa Husain in the previous two elections. Unfortunately, he could not complete his term and became bed ridden due to an attack of paralysis and after a prolonged illness died in 1970.

Mr. Niamatullah Ansari will be remembered as Mohsin-e-Qaum for upholding the honor of oppressed and marginalized sections of the Muslims, who were discriminated, insulted, and ridiculed by the so called Ashraf of the society. He stood firm against the Zamindarana Nizam, under which the low caste Muslims were declared Razeel or inferior, and were compelled to pay Razalat Tax. He did not only refuse to pay this discriminatory tax which was like peanuts to him, but he convinced others also not to pay. The infuriated Zamindar filed case in the lower court of Gorakhpur against him, and prayed that he being a Razeel he be directed to pay the tax. Some 75 years ago, the legal battle of Ashraf vs. Arzal based on the premise whether Julahas (Weavers) are Razeel or not, was fought in the Gorakhpur Court and thereafter in the Allahabad High Court, is of historical significance. He won the legal battle and the courts gave its verdict that Julahas are not Razeel, and the Zamindar of the time has no right to levy the Razalat Tax from them and other deprived sections of the society. The Razalat Tax having set aside, the down trodden could live with honor was mainly due to his brave efforts. Today when everybody is taking the cause of social justice and equality, we fail to mention the contribution of Mr. Niyamatullah Ansari who was the first crusader who took this cause. Later his legacy was passed to his favorite nephew, and my father late Ashfaq Husain Ansari, who continued the battle which his Mamoon championed.

He had special attachment with Urdu. He began writing at an early age and his articles were regularly published in leading Urdu journals of those times. One of his noble literary companions was famous Majnu Gorakhpuri, who later moved to Pakistan. Since his literally contributions are beyond the scope of this article, they will be discussed some other time.

(Courtesy: Twocircles.net)

Not NHRC’s finest hour

October 5, 2016

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is India’s highest statutory body constituted for the defence of the human rights of vulnerable people. Since it was created by a statute of Parliament in 1993, it has had a mixed and chequered record in the performance of duties that are critical in a country of such vast historical inequalities and embedded systems of oppression.

Image: The Indian Express

Its finest hour was in the aftermath of the Gujarat communal riots in 2002, when it actively held the state government to account for relief, reparations and justice for the survivors. But for much of its tenure, the NHRC has often been criticised for inaction during human rights violations in contexts of communal, caste and gender violence and discrimination, extra-judicial killings, torture and forced disappearances.

However, a recent report by the NHRC, for the first time, opens it up to grave criticism not just of inaction, but of actively contributing to a majoritarian, communally-charged discourse. Its team visited the Muslim-majority township of Kairana in western Uttar Pradesh in which some Muslim survivors of the communal violence in 2013 had migrated after being uprooted because their homes and families had been attacked and they felt it was unsafe to return. The report, in effect, regards these Muslim migrants not as victims deserving the defence of the NHRC but as people responsible for contributing to raised levels of crime and the harassment of women which resulted in the “exodus” of law-abiding Hindu residents from Kairana.

The NHRC states that it acted on the basis of a complaint by Supreme Court advocate Monika Arora, but the charge of a Hindu “exodus” from Kairana because of the alleged criminal activities of riot-affected migrants was first raised by BJP MP Hukam Singh. His complaint was part of an old strategy of majoritarian communalists to paint the Hindu community as victims even when Hindu communalists perpetrate communal attacks. His communally explosive charges were disproved by investigations by The Indian Express, The Hindu and NDTV, which demonstrated that most of the 346 Hindus alleged to have left Kairana did so much earlier in search of better opportunities, or were dead or still living in the town.

The NHRC still felt it fit to reinvestigate the same communally motivated charges that had been publicly disproved. It concurs in its report that because of “the post-rehabilitation scenario resulting in resettlement of about 25-30,000 members of Muslim community in Kairana town from district Muzaffarnagar, UP, the demography of Kairana town has changed in favour of the Muslim community becoming the more dominating and majority community”. The report agrees with “witnesses” and “victims” that “the rehabilitation in 2013 has permanently changed the social situation in Kairana town and has led to further deterioration of law and order situation.”

There is much that is extraordinary about these NHRC findings. In a recent report Living Apart: Communal Violence and Forced Displacement in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, Akram Chaudhary, Zafar Eqbal, Rajanya Bose and I documented the exodus forced by communal attacks of around 50,000 Muslims, of whom around 30,000 were living in poorly resourced and self-settled refugee colonies. We described the enormous suffering of these displaced persons, forced forever to leave the villages of their birth in a continuing climate of hate and fear, moving from camps to tiny tenements, with education, livelihoods and social relationships destroyed. This exodus, caused by communal violence, spurred no action in support of the displaced persons by the NHRC. The thousands of Muslims forced to leave their villages because of targeted communal attacks are not “victims” or “witnesses” for the NHRC. They are, instead, the problem. The “victims” are the Hindu residents of Kairana town where the riot-displaced persons took refuge. It is also noteworthy that since 2013, the NHRC has taken no significant initiatives to assist riot victims.

Further, the figure of 25-30,000 persons having come into Kairana town after 2013 is a gross exaggeration. Our survey, reported in Living Apart, had found around 200 riot-affected families in Kairana. After the NHRC report, Akram Akhtar and his colleagues undertook a fresh survey in case they had missed any resettled families and found another 70 stray Muslim families in the outskirts of the town. Even if we assume an average family size of seven, this would still amount to around 2,000 persons, a far distance from the irresponsible figure quoted by the NHRC.

The 2011 census showed that Kairana had a population of 89,000 persons, of who more than 80 per cent were Muslim. It is difficult to see then how an addition of 2,000 persons had so drastically altered the demography of Kairana “in favour of the Muslim community becoming the more dominating and majority community”, as stated by the NHRC, when it was already an overwhelmingly Muslim majority town. What is even more regrettable is that this small increase of Muslim people internally displaced by hate-violence is stated by the NHRC to have resulted in a deterioration of the law and order situation in Kairana town. Once again, this conclusion is not based on any crime figures or other data presented by the NHRC; instead, this is based on the statements of the Hindu “victims” that its team chose to speak with. The NHRC report states: “At least 24 witnesses stated that the youths of the specific majority community (Muslims) in Kairana town pass lewd/taunting remarks against the females of the specific minority community in Kairana town. Due to this, females of the specific minority community (Hindus) in Kairana town avoid going outside frequently. However, they could not gather courage to report the matter to the police for the legal action.”

Our enquiries with the local police revealed that there were no complaints of so-called “eve-teasing” or lewd remarks by Muslim youth made to them over the last year. It is highly unfortunate that the NHRC report plays into the communal stereotype that dates back to Partition — of Muslim young men sexually harassing Hindu girls. This is even more irresponsible because it was precisely this charge against Muslim youths that sparked off the 2013 communal massacre that led to the killings, arson and forced exodus of Muslims from mixed villages in the region. For the NHRC to accept these conclusions, without any credible independent evidence, reflects its unacceptable complicity in communal rumour-mongering and stereotyping.

This is a precipitous fall for the NHRC, from the heights it attained under the leadership of Justice J.S. Verma — after the Gujarat 2002 communal riots, it chose the mantle of the principal defender of the rights of a survivors of the gruesome attacks. The NHRC was unflinching and uncompromising as it documented the many failings of the state and central government in ensuring the protection, relief, compensation, rehabilitation and access to legal justice for the survivors. It was the NHRC which itself moved the Supreme Court to oversee the investigation and trial of the major massacres. From these heights, the NHRC slipped later to a record largely of wilful passivity during subsequent communal and caste massacres. But it has today allowed itself to echo communal majoritarian labelling of the victims. We have seen many public institutions enfeebled and compromised in recent years. The NHRC is too important a public institution, created as it was for the defence of the rights of the weak and oppressed, to be destroyed in this way.

(This article was first published on Indianexpress.com. It has been republished with the permission of the author.)

What Sunkanna’s Resistance Means: Dalit Scholar Refuses to Accept His PhD From Appa Rao

October 4, 2016

This Dalit scholar’s act is more than symbolic. It signifies not just the resistance, made iconic by Rohith Vemula’s image with the velivadas, but the resistance of India’s institutions to take corrective steps and improve

Photo Courtesy: University of Hyderabad/Facebook

Facebook Video of the Epic Event:

Velupla Sunkanna refused to accept his PhD degree from suspended Vice Chancellor(VC) Podile Appa Rao.
The refusal of Velpula Sunkanna, a student of the University of Hyderabad (UoH), to accept his PhD degree from the Vice Chancellor Podile Appa Rao is an unprecedented act of resistance that has shaken the institution. Sunkanna was one of the five students expelled from the hostel and public places in the university along with Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide in January this year.

Rohith Vemula's death on January 17, 2016 had shaken the conscience of the country. Not because the media covered it, but because it was forced to. His letter of December 18, 2015 to Podile Appa Rao was simply not responded to by the university authorities.

[Rohith allegedly sarcastically said in the letter that every VC of HCU should “10 mg of sodium azide to all the Dalit students at the time of admission… [and] a nice rope to the rooms of all Dalit students.” This handwritten letter should have been read as a precursor to what was coming. In the letter, Rohith allegedly goes on to say, “I request your highness to make preparations for the facility [of] ‘euthanasia’ for students like me. And I wish you and the campus rest in peace forever.” ]

The Ambedkar Students Association was vilified, and dubbed 'anti-national' by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The party in power used its clout from Hyderabad to New Delhi– and this crass interference and the chain of command interference by the ruling regime has been documented.

A central minister of the BJP, Bandaru Dattatreya wrote to then minister for human resources development (MHRD) Smruti Irani on August 17, 2015, a letter in which he clearly calls the activities and vision of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) as casteist and anti-national? Letter can be seen here. This was after the state vice president of the party nudged those in Delhi.

Rohith Vemula’s Research Fellowship and that of four other Dalit research scholars was stopped (illegally) for seven months severely constraining and humiliating him.On five occasions, bureaucrats of the MHRD under Smruti Irani write directly to the Vice Chancellor (VC) Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on the matter showing an unseemly interest in the case.

(The letters are dated September 3, 2015 from the Under Secretary referring to comments by Bandaru Dattatreya, MOS, for Labour and Employment; another dated September 24, 2015, sent as reminder, signed by Deputy Secretary to the GOI; letter dated October 20, 2015, signed by Joint Secretary, MHRD; letter dated November 19, 2015, signed by Under Secretary to the GOI). Letters can be seen here.

These letters show an obsessive interest by the Minister, MHRD that was, in effect, putting extraordinary pressure on the university authorities, the VC.

Though a fellow student at HCU called the Health Centre immediately after learning of Rohith being hanged and within five minutes the CMO Health Centre, Dr P Rajashree reached the spot, felt his pulse and declared him dead, the Modi regime through Irani(in Parliament) was busy nullifying this and perpetuating a Goebellsian lie to the nation in Parliament that no doctor or police were allowed to see Rohith till the next day. [The doctor certified Rohith's death at 7.30 pm: UoH medical officer counters Smriti Irani's statement – http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/doctor-certified-rohiths-death-730-…

On February 25, 2016, the minister, Smruti Irani demeaned her post by uttering a series of falsehoods on the floor of the Indian Parliament.

It did not stop here. Insult upon insult has been heaped by the Modi regime on the Rohith Vemula family and wider family, that of the protesting students. In a shameful act, the top echelons of the government spent time and energy in trying to prove that Radhika Vemula, Rohith Vemula's mother was not Dalit.

The iconic scene and site of the nine month long protest has been the veliwada, the spot within the university campus where the humiliated scholars were forced to sleep, out in the open. It became the spot where the protests were mounted, songs were song, paintings created. In memory of Rohith and to strengthen the resistance. Caste exclusionary practices on the campus are shameful to document; they have not yet been repulsed by mainstream India. Rohith Vemula, Dontha Prashanth, Sunkanna and their compatriots have through dogged resistance made a lasting impression on the reality that is the university campus of today. A battleground of ideas and dissent.

But the ultimate resistance came last week when the student election results were announced. And the rowdy and criminalised Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) did not win a single seat.

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What Sunkanna’s Resistance Means: Dalit Scholar Refuses to Accept His PhD From Appa Rao

This Dalit scholar’s act is more than symbolic. It signifies not just the resistance, made iconic by Rohith Vemula’s image with the velivadas, but the resistance of India’s institutions to take corrective steps and improve

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