In a major setback to its summary and unilateral decision to terminate the services of renowned Gandhian, professor and Magsaysay award winner, Dr Sandeep Pandey on January 6, 2016, the Allahabad High Court has ordered the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) to explain the Board of Governor (BOG) decision that led to the termination.
It was in pursuance of Resolution No 3.59 passed at the meeting of the Board of Governors held on December 21, 2015 that the decision to terminate the services was taken. The BOG, of the IIT BHU will now have to defend its resolution, which has been passed, casting stigma and making serious allegations against Dr Pandey. Dr Sandeep Pandey was called 'anti-national', without providing any opportunity for him to be heard, or giving him a chance to respond or explain. The BOG simply took cognisance of a letter from a student of M.A. IInd year Political Science (who never attended the IIT classes), even without taking any pains to verify the correctness of the allegations leveled. Dr Pandey was Visiting faculty at the IIT, BHU.
This action had drawn widespread condemnation across the country and was seen to be not just arbitrary but a manifestation of the machinations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sway on the everyday functionings of the Ministry for Human Resources Development (MHRD).(See story below). The termination of the services of Dr. Sandeep Pandey as visiting faculty in the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT BHU was challenged by him in Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 5323 of 2016, Sandeep Pandey Vs. Union of India and others.
The matter was taken up before the High Court at Allahabad on Friday, February 5, 2016 before the bench consisting of Justices V.K. Shukla and M.C. Tripathi. The High Court under its order has asked the counsel appearing for IIT BHU to seek instructions in the matter as to how he defends the termination order and has posted the matter for hearing on February 11, 2016. Advocate Rahul Mishra, appeared for Dr Pandey and Ajeet Kumar Singh for IIT BHU.
Dr Pandey in his petition has argued that his removal is an open abuse of power on ideological and non-academic grounds and it has its roots somewhere else. Besides he has argued that the Vice Chancellor-Professor G.C. Tripathi was appointed as the Chairman of IIT Board of Governors by the Ministry of HRD, Government of India, bypassing the panel of five names recommended by the resolution of the Board. Professor G.C. Tripathi and Dean of Faculty Affairs, IIT (BHU), Professor Dhananjay Pandey, both gentlemen are associated with RSS, who has primarily forced the decision.
-The decision taken by the Board for terminating the services of Dr Pandey sans any academic considerations and it is merely on account of conflict of ideologies and therefore if such a decision stands vindicated, it will surely pose a threat to the basic fundamental freedoms granted in the Indian Constitution.
-The decision of the Board at the instance of the Chairman is in fact a step further to saffronisation of the IIT (BHU) and the University and in our democratic state such an attempt which is aimed at suppressing the ideologies is required to be nipped in bud as otherwise it will have serious effects.
-The framers of our Constitution have given to us the fundamental right in the shape of freedoms as detailed in Article 19 of the Constitution of India, particularly freedom to speak under Article 19 (1) (a), which includes professing even different ideologies and State is prohibited from curbing such freedoms which are subject only to some reasonable restrictions (in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence) and the IIT (BHU) by means of the resolution and the consequent termination order has made a dent upon the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of India.
-The BOG resolution and order under challenge in the petition, has nothing to do with the academic performance of Dr Sandeep Pandey and he has been simply punished by the dictates of the Chairman of the Board. The Board was guided in its decision with the complaint of Avinash Pandey which appears to have been procured, without any verification. The truthfulness of the contents of the complaint were not verified through any preliminary fact finding enquiry. It was a rushed and un-thought through decision. .
-The branding of Dr Pandey as anti-national under the opinion formed by the Board has very serious effects as he is being sought to be permanently non-suited for any appointment/ engagement by any academic institute and that too without any enquiry or opportunity for him to be heard.
-The resolution and termination order under challenge in the High Court, which is stigmatic and passed without affording opportunity to the petitioner, Dr Pandey, and without even any fact finding enquiry-(i) goes to infringe fundamental rights of the petitioner under Article 14, 16, 19 (1) (a) & 21 of the Constitution of India; (ii) is in complete violation of principles of natural justice & (iii) is wholly without jurisdiction because it was passed in the absence of any agenda on the board.
See also Intolerance Strikes, Sandeep Pandey is out of BHU
RSS hardliners ensured the premature termination, says Pandey
My contract at the IIT, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) Varanasi as a visiting faculty has prematurely ended after teaching there for two-and-a-half years. This decision was prematurely taken by the Board of Governors (BOG). In a recent Board meeting the Vice Chancellor of BHU, who was made the Chairman of the IIT Board of Governors by the Minister of HRD, government of India, Smriti Irani, after by-passing the panel of five names recommended by a resolution of the Board of Governors. Thereafter, professor G.C. Tripathi, and Dean of Faculty Affairs, IIT, BHU and professor Dhananjay Pandey, both gentlemen associated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), primarily forced the decision.
The charges levelled against me are that I am a Naxalite, showed a banned documentary on Nirbhaya case and am also involved in anti-national activities.
I wish to clarify that I'm not a Naxalite. The ideology that I would consider myself closest to is Gandhian.
But I do identify with the causes taken up by Naxalites even though I may not agree with their methods.
The banned documentary on Nirbhaya made by BBC was to be screened in my Development Studies class during the even semester of academic year 2014-15 but the decision was withdrawn after intervention of Chief Proctor of the BHU and officer of the Lanka Police Station just before the class. However, a discussion on the issue of violence against women in our society was conducted after screening a different documentary.
I do not believe in the idea of a nation or national boundaries, which I think are responsible for artificial divisions among human beings similar to the ones on the basis of caste or religion. Hence I cannot be anti or pro-nation. I am pro-people. I'm not a nationalist but am a universalist. I have no regrets as the decision to terminate my contract has not been taken based on my academic performance but it is because of my political views and activities. I've enjoyed my stay at IIT, BHU and wish the Institute and the University the best.
(Sandeep Pandey, a Magsaysay awardee for emergent leadership has trained in Mechanical Engineering but has been working on social justice issues; he is co-founder of Aasha)
That is the moment she fell in the street on January 26, 1997, an instant after a member of the Armed Islamic Group cut her throat on the outskirts of Sidi Moussa.
In November 2012, when I am finally able to locate them in a quartier populaire east of Algiers, I spend several hours talking with Amel’s mother, Houria, and her surviving daughters. Sitting on the couch in front of her TV, Khalti Houria (Auntie Houria) as everyone calls her, wears a long blue dress and glasses that hang around her neck. Both stalwart and shattered, she shows me Amel’s watch, which was returned by the gendarmes. Its white face features small green flower buds just under the spot where the glass is broken. The second hand still aims optimistically upward, frozen fifty-seven seconds after 5:17, approaching a 5:18 that will not come.
Twenty-two years old and a third-year law student at the University of Algiers, Amel lived in the dorm. She wanted to visit her family on that seventeenth day of Ramadan, a day known as Ghazwat Badr in commemoration of a historic Muslim victory. So she boarded the bus for Sidi Moussa, and would never finish law school.
Amel’s mother tells me everything she had heard about what happened on the bus. Just outside the town, the vehicle was stopped at a faux barrage. Amel occupied a seat behind the driver, who was a neighbor, and held her schoolbag. Though she did not cover her head in Algiers, and wore makeup, she had a friend’s shawl wrapped around her hair when the men from the Armed Islamic Group climbed aboard. One came to Amel, hit her on the shoulder, and said, “Ahl al houkouma” (partisans of the government). “Get up. Kill her.” They grabbed the law student by the arm. Still, she dared to say, “Don’t touch me.” According to Khalti Houria, Amel then “turned and looked at everyone.” Even now the mother appeals to her daughter’s fellow passengers as she weeps: “Amel did not speak but begged you with her eyes and asked you to save her.” No one could. “When they got out of the bus, one armed man had a knife and was rubbing it on the pavement, preparing to kill her.”
There are two versions of what happened next. Some said Amel was kicked as she was getting out of the bus and fell to the ground; others remembered that she had her throat cut while still standing. Her death was an atrocity. It was also meant as a warning. In the moment after Amel’s watch stopped, the GIA men told all the other passengers: “If you go to school, if you go to the university, the day will come when we will kill all of you like this.”
The terrorists had posted placards all over Sidi Moussa saying that young people must stop studying and stay home. As a law professor, I want to understand why a young woman with her whole life ahead of her would continue her legal education when she could be murdered as a result. Apparently, Amel had said to her father, “I will study law and you will always have your head high. I am a girl, and you will always be proud of me. I will do the work of a man.” Mrs. Zenoune, herself a housewife, had long dreamed of her children studying. All six did.
Amel’s sister Amena explains: “Our mother inculcated in us the idea that studying means you are a free woman. Mom said, ‘I am ready to lose all four of them. I will sacrifice them for knowledge.’ When people remember ‘Amel Zenoune who was assassinated by the terrorists,’ they say, ‘The girl who was killed for studying law.’ People say, ‘She was the example for us.’ ”
While still cherishing the values Amel died for, her death was an agony for her family. And so was the way they found out about it. Sidi Moussa, as the sewing teachers had recalled, was then a wasteland of terror. Its people had no running water, no electricity after the terrorists attacked the power station, and no telephone service. So the family was never sure when to expect Amel or their other daughters home.
Finally, twenty policemen showed up at the door, but, faced with the mother and her younger children, the policemen found themselves unable to deliver the news they had come to give. One asked Houria how many of her daughters studied in Algiers, then told her enigmatically that she and her husband had been ordered to meet the prosecutor in Blida the next day. Their work undone, the cops drove off and left the family wondering in the dark. Khalti Houria had a bad feeling. Any of her college-student daughters, or all three, could have been headed home that night.
When the police left, a group of neighbors came to the apartment, including the bus driver’s wife. Everyone assumed that the family now knew the news. Khalti Houria begged the driver’s wife, “Fatiha, tell me.” So the driver’s wife shared as much as she could: “They cut your daughter’s throat.” This answer only left terrible questions for Khalti Houria. “I said, ‘Which one?’ One neighbor said, ‘The one who wore glasses.’ ” No one seemed to know the precise facts.
With no one able to give her a definite answer, and no working phone, Khalti Houria ignored the evening curfew and took off with her young son, running through the perilous streets of Sidi Moussa until she got to the gendarmerie. When she finally found herself face-to-face with a gendarme, Khalti Houria remembers saying, “ ‘My son, tell me how many of my daughters.’ He said, ‘Madame, one only. The one who was at the law school. She was wearing jeans and a coat.’” The bereaved mother insisted: “Swear to me.” He swore. So, in the most awful moment of her life, she actually felt gratitude. “I prayed and I sat and kissed the earth and I said, ‘God give me strength.’ They were all three at the university. It was a little less painful that it was one rather than two, or three.” Even as she found out she had not lost three daughters, the reality that one was gone, and how, sank in.
But Khalti Houria’s agony gave way to rage. “I sat on the ground and said everything that came into my mind. That hour my struggle began.” Her daughter Amena describes the mother’s long walk home through the desolation of Sidi Moussa. “The commissariat was far from where we lived. All along the road, Mama insulted the terrorists. She didn’t stop. The police said, ‘If we had ten mothers who had lost their child who did what Mme. Zenoune did, the terrorists would never have won in Sidi Moussa. Never.’ There are many who died before Amel, God have mercy on her soul. No one had done what Mom did. It was enormous to make that journey. Not to have fear. For her, it might have been in her head, ‘Who cares anymore?’ ” In the dark streets of the martyred town, Mrs. Zenoune taunted those who had taken her child. “You killed Amel. Come and kill me.”
Eye-to-eye with the terror she had felt over the previous terrible years, that night she defied it. When she got home, she threw open her door that was always bolted shut. “Let them enter.” Khalti Houria continued denouncing the murderers on the balcony of the family home well into the early morning hours when the neighbors got up for Zuhour, or Ramadan breakfast. “Ya haggar.” (You who are unjust.)
“You killed her because she was studying. She was beautiful. She was better than you. Amel, Amel, Amel.” After her jeremiad, the gendarmes came and told her husband that the rest of the family should leave Sidi Moussa immediately. They buried Amel and left their lives behind them.
One of Amel’s younger sisters, Lamia, later overcame her own despair and went to law school in Amel’s memory, practicing today in Algiers, as her older sister hoped to. “Fundamentalism will not win, even if they say, ‘Allahu Akbar’ all day long,” Khalti Houria swears.
Lamia the lawyer takes me into the small, neat living room to see Amel’s framed portrait, which hangs on the wall. The law student had pitch-black hair that fell just below her shoulders, and luminous dark eyes that are now the centerpiece of this room. She was not smiling when the picture was taken, but her determined expression displays what her classmate Adnane Bouchaïb had told me about her: that she had both the eloquence and the lively personality needed to be a successful lawyer. “She had a big future in front of her,” Adnane recollected.
Somehow, in the portrait on the living-room wall, Amel looks both serene and entirely aware of what her future might actually hold. Her face captures perfectly something she said to her mother not long before her murder. “Mom, please put this in your head. Nothing will happen to us, Inshallah. But if something happens to us, you and Dad, you must know that we are dead for knowledge. You and Father must keep your heads high.”
Amel’s watch stopped at 5:17, but she lives on in Algeria and everywhere else women and men continue to fight fundamentalism, by striving for knowledge, and by keeping their heads held high.
(This book excerpt is from Karima Bennoune, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism (www.karimabennoune.com) and that is was published by W.W. Norton and Company.)
Gandhi’s refusal to accept that caste was at the core of both inequality and untouchability within Hinduism lay at the heart of their difference
At a historic meeting that marked 83 years ago yesterday, February 4, Ambedkar and Gandhi met at the Yeravada prison in 1933.
Gandhi requested Dr. Ambedkar to lend his support to Dr. Subbarayan’s Temple entry Bill and that of Ranga Iyer. Dr. Ambedkar declined in person. Ten days later, he issued a statement on February 14, 1933. He outlined the impracticability of the bill, crticised it for not making Untouchability illegal and outlined why he would not prefer just temple entry.
Ambedkar in his own detailed arguments, on why he did not support Gandhi on Temple Entry
The main question is: Do the Depressed Classes desire Temple Entry or do they not? This main question is viewed by the Depressed Classes by two points of view. One is the materialistic point of view. Starting from it, the Depressed Classes think that the surest way of elevation lies in education, higher employment and better ways of earning a living. Once they become well placed in the scale of social life, they would become respectable the religious outlook of the orthodox towards them is sure to undergo change, and even if it didn’t happen, it can do no injury to their material interest. Proceeding on these lines the Depressed Classes say that they will not spend their resources on such an empty things as Temple Entry. There is another reason why they do not care to fight for it. Their argument is the argument of self-respect.
Not very long ago there used to be boards on club doors and other social resorts maintained by Europeans in India, which said “Dogs and Indians” are not allowed. The temples of Hindus carry similar boards today; the only difference is that the boards on the Hindu temples practically say: “All Hindus and all animals including gods are admitted; only Untouchables are not admitted”. The situation in both cases is of parity. But Hindus never begged for admission in those places form which the Europeans in their arrogance had excluded them.
Why should an Untouchable beg for admission in a place from which he has been excluded by the the arrogance of the Hindus? This is the reason of the Depressed Class man who is interested in material welfare. He is prepared to say the Hindus, “to open or not to open your temples is a question for you to consider and not for me to agitate. If you think, it is bad manners not to respect the sacredness of human personality, open your temple and be a gentleman. If you rather be a Hindu than a gentleman, then shut the doors and damn yourself for I don’t care to come.”
What is the drive behind this offer of temple entry ? Is temple entry to be the final goal of the advancement in the social status of the Depressed Classes in the Hindu fold? Or is it only the first step and if it is the first step, what is the ultimate goal? Temple entry as a final goal, the Depressed Classes can never support.
I found it necessary to put the argument in this form, because I want to disabuse the minds of men like Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya of their belief that the Depressed Classes are looking forward for their patronage.
The second point of view is the spiritual one. As religiously minded people, do the Depressed Classes desire temple entry or do they not? That is the question. From the spiritual point of view, they are not indifferent to temple entry as they would be, if the material point of view alone were to prevail. But their final answer must depend upon the reply which Mahatma Gandhi and the Hindus give to the questions namely: What is the drive behind this offer of temple entry? Is temple entry to be the final goal of the advancement in the social status of the Depressed Classes in the Hindu fold? Or is it only the first step and if it is the first step, what is the ultimate goal? Temple entry as a final goal, the Depressed Classes can never support.
Indeed they will not only reject it, but they would then regard themselves rejected by Hindu Society and free to find their own destiny elsewhere. On the other hand, if is only to be a first step they may be inclined to support it. The position would then be analogous to what is happening in India today. All Indians have claimed dominion status for India. The actual constitution will fall short of Dominion status and many Indians will accept it. Why? The answer is that as the goal is defined, it does not matter much if it is to be reached by steps and not in one jump. But if the British had not accepted the goal of Dominion status, no one would have accepted the partial reforms which many are now willing to accept.
In the same way, if Mahatma Gandhi and the reformers were to proclaim what the goal which they have set before themselves is for the advancement of the social status of the Depressed Classes in the Hindu fold, it would be easier for the Depressed Classes to define their attitude towards Temple entry.
The goal of the Depressed Classes might as well be stated here for the information and consideration of all concerned. What the Depressed Classes want is a religion, which will give them equality of social status. To prevent any misunderstanding, I would like to elaborate the point by drawing a distinction between social evils are which are the result of secular causes and social evils which are founded upon doctrine of religion. Social evils can have no justification whatsoever in a civilised society. But nothing can be more odious and vile than that admitted social evils should be sought to be justified on the ground of religion. The Depressed Classes may not be able to overthrow inequalities to which they are being subjected. But they have made up their mind not to tolerate a religion that will lend its support to the continuance of these inequalities.
The Depressed Classes can say that they are Hindus only if the theory of Chaturvarna and Caste system is abandoned and expunged from the Hindu shastras. Do the Mahatma and the Hindu reformers accept this as their goal and will they show the courage to work for it?
If the Hindu religion is to be their religion, then it must become a religion of Social Equality. The mere amendment of Hindu religious code by the mere inclusion in it of a provision to permit temple entry for all, cannot make it a religion of equality of social status. All that it can do is to recognize as nationals not aliens, if I may use the common terms which have become so familiar in politics. But that cannot mean that they would thereby reach a position where they would be free and equal. , without being above and below anyone else, for the simple reason that the Hindu religion does not recognise the principle of equality of social status : on the other hand it fosters inequality by insisting upon grading people as Brahmins, Kshatrias, Vaishyas and Shudras, which now stand toward one another in an ascending scale of hatred and descending scale of contempt.
If the Hindu Religion is to be a religion of social equality then an amendment of its code to provide temple entry is not enough. What is required is to purge it of the doctrine of chaturvarna. That is the root cause of all inequality and also the parent of the Caste system and Untouchability, which are merely forms of inequality. Unless it is done not only will the Depressed Classes reject the temple entry, they will also reject the Hindu faith. Chaturvarna and the Caste system are incompatible with the self-respect of the Depressed Classes. So long as they stand to be its cardinal doctrine, the depressed classes must continue to be looked upon as low.
The Depressed Classes can say that they are Hindus only if the theory of Chaturvarna and Caste system is abandoned and expunged from the Hindu shastras. Do the Mahatma and the Hindu reformers accept this as their goal and will they show the courage to work for it? I shall look forward to their pronouncements on this issue, before I decide upon my final attitude. But whether Mahatma Gandhi and the Hindus are prepared for this or not, let it be known once and for all that nothing short of this will satisfy the Depressed Classes and make them accept temple entry. To accept temple entry and be content with it, is to temporise with evil and barter away the sacredness of human personality that dwells in them.
There is, however, one more argument which Mahatma Gandhi and the reforming Hindu may advance against the position I have taken. They may say: “acceptance by the Depressed Classes of Temple entry now, will not prevent them from agitating hereafter for the abolition of Chaturvarna and Caste. If that is the view, I like to meet the argument right at this stage so as to clinch the issue and clear the road for future developments. My reply is that it is true that my right to agitate for the abolition of Chaturvarna and Caste system will not be lost, if I accept Temple entry now. But the question is on what side will Mahatma Gandhi be when the question is put. If he will be in the camp of my opponents, I must tell him I can’t be in his camp now. If he will be in my camp he ought to be in it now.
(Almost all the Depressed Classes leaders of Dr. Ambedkar’s persuasions, endorsed the view of their leader. Srinivasan, Permtai and Malik upheld views of their leader.
Gandhi issued a statement in reply in which he stated : “I am a Hindu, not merely because I am born in the Hindu fold, but I am one by conviction and choice. There is no superiority or inferiority in Hinduism of my conception. But when Dr. Ambedkar wants to fight Varnashram itself, I cannot be in his camp, because I believe Varnashram to be an integral part of Hinduism. )
(Source: SECTION- IV Kalaram Temple entry Satryagraha, Nasik and Temple entry movement, Volume-XVII. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speeches)
Dalit and Adivasi write to the Liason officer, Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi urging action
Dalit Students of the Indian Instiute of Mass Communication, New Delhi have registered strong outrage and protest against fellow students who have allegedly launched an especially vicious hate and abusive campaign against them on social media. In a written communication dated February 1, 2016 they have requested sensitisation classes to avoid spreading “ill will” against students belonging to Scheduled caste and Scheduled Tribe community on the Campus failing which they would be compelled to take legal action.
It is shocking that this sort of abuse has been resorted to by an Institute that will produce tomorrow’s journalists, television honchos, advertisement and public relations personnel apart from film makers!
The communication has been addressed to the Liason Officer, SC/ST Cell of the Institute.
The post on social media platform – Facebook on the January 18, 2016, “is derogatory and demeaning to the SC and ST students studying in IIMC. It clearly promotes ill will and hurts sentiments of the undersigned students.” There are, on paper, statutory safeguards under the Prevention of Atrocities Act.
Students have attached screen shots of their comments on the post which are reproduced below. The usage of Hindi words such as “Randi Rona” by the alleged offenders, shows contempt for the solidarity shown to a brother Dalit student, Malai Khana” on the matter of affirmative action towards social justice and the promotion of equity etc. And these are only some examples of the kind of statements which make the students feel that they are being look down upon.
Sabrangindia is in possession of a copy of the complaint. Dalit and Adivasi students have said that they do not want any punitive action “except a public apology and undertaking against the person writing or spreading such messages.” The follow up letter urges that,” we would beg to request a slot in the academic timetable to be allocated for sensitizing of all the students by experts in the field of Caste/Tribe reality and affirmative action, to promote amicability and inclusivity on campus. This initiative would make us feel human and dignified.”
Copies of the complaint have been also been addressed to Sunil Arora, IAS, Chairman, IIMC, Anurag Mishra, IIS, OSD, IIMC, All Dept. Heads and Course Coordinators , Ministry of Social Justice, Govt of India and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Govt of India.
In a follow-up communication the students have also appreciated the positive response from the authorities. Students have further drawn attention to certain incidents that have occurred on campus aggravating discontent amidst the Dalit and Adivasi student post the petition filing. These are:
Case 1: Social media are now flooded with hashtags (#) of supporting the perpetrator and they say abusing and derogatory remarks made are freedom of speech and expression. (Annexure 1)
Case 2: In the campus there is an air of worry that one course is instrumental in trying to raise voice against the issue and it is juvenile on the part of that specific course. (Annexure 2)
Case 3: Comments are being passed and remarks made loud when the students pass through the corridors in the college and hostels.
Students have urged proactive action by the faculty to ensure harmony and amicability on campus failing which they would be forced to take legal recourse against their will. Dalit and Adivasi students are simply not able to focus on their studies.
The return of Pandits to the Valley has been a sordid saga of ill-conceived plans and mischief informed by a trust deficit
Last week, January 25, when the announcement of the Padma Bhushan award to the former Jammu and Kashmir governor Jagmohan was made, there were notes of both jubilation and criticism from the two major communities of Kashmir. Both these communities view his role in the flight of the Kashmiri Pandits(KPs) after militancy erupted in the Valley and the massacres of Kashmiri Muslims, in striking contrast.
The narratives are so far apart that, to date even the figures of the Pandits killed in Valley during the years of militancy and those who were displaced remain strongly contested. Official figures suggest 219 Pandits were killed and about 50,000 Kashmiris are registered as displaced families.[1] These also include some Kashmiri Muslims and non-Kashmiri speaking Hindus. However, Hindutva-driven right wing groups among the Kashmiri Pandits talk about thousands being killed and put the size of the displaced community to anything between 5 to 7,00,000. Incidentally, this number is far higher than the total population of Pandits, according to the 1981 census. [2]
A more realistic figure of the number of slain Pandits is offered by the Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti (KPSS)—a non-migrant KP organization. The KPSS president Sanjay Tickoo, who claims to have documented all cases of Kashmiri Pandit killings since 1989 maintains that 670 Pandits have been killed in Kashmir in militancy related violence. Tickoo also deflates the theory of “holocaust day” observed by some right wing Pandit groups on January 19 when their flight from the Valley began, maintaining that only 6 Pandits were killed in 1989. “We oppose observing January 19 as ‘Holocaust/ Exodus Day’ as we stayed put in Kashmir and faced tough times along with our Muslim brethren and the day has no meaning for us,” he said in a recent interview to a newspaper. [3]
Two and a half decades after militancy began and Kashmiri Pandits fled en masse due to fear from the Valley, the events viewed from these exclusivist and coloured prisms have failed to reconcile the narratives of Kashmiri Muslims and Hindus. The greater tragedy is that it is the bitter narratives, though by no means in a majority, that have been louder and dominating. This manufactured and dominant minority voice creates barriers and totally fails in any attempt to build bridges between the two communities. Neither does it facilitate any enabling plan for the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits who have been displaced. Many of those displaced live a sorry life in camps getting a meagre cash relief of Rs 2500 per head per month.
The return of those displaced Kashmiris, suffering for over two decades in camps or even those living in plush houses cut off from their roots, has been jinxed by many factors – the serious trust deficit between the two communities, the lack of political will and ill-conceived and poorly implemented packages. Added to this, is the vulnerability of the Kashmiris to right wing politics and petty politicking of political forces out to exploit their plight which has further closed the doors on their return.
The displacement of this minuscule population from the Kashmir Valley has hugely impacted on the social and economic fabric of the entire state. The importance of bringing back Pandits to their homes minus the ugly demand of a separate homeland or the impractical option of fully secluded safe zones cannot be underscored. The Pandits have suffered from both an identity crisis and also other factors caused by displacement –and this includes socio-economic exclusion — and thus need to return to their roots. This homecoming is as important for Kashmiri Muslims, who too have suffered a great deal with the total erosion of the Kashmiri plural culture, added to their lived trauma of experiencing an everyday gun culture and a huge rise in the graph of human rights violations.
A small and negligible population of Pandits do continue, even today, to live in the Valley but a majority of Kashmiri Muslims do not even get to interact with them. A new generation of Kashmiris in and outside the Valley, born in the last two decades, is therefore totally oblivious of their existence and in absolute ignorance of a plural culture as a way of life. Such a plurality is vital for any civilization to escape the web of stagnation.
To date, there has been no real political will to bring back displaced Pandits to the Valley, either from the governments at the State or Centre. The last decade or so has seen introduction of a slew of hurriedly thrashed out rehabilitation and return plans, none of which have been effectively implemented on ground.
One reasonable exercise was started by the UPA-II government at the Centre with the creation of Committee for Action Plan for Return and Rehabilitation of Kashmiri Migrants, in which several members from both communities were involved in a consultation process with the government. However, the Committee became the victim of usual official boredom and procrastination among policy makers. No serious effort was put in after the first few rounds of meetings. Corresponding to this move, the government announced 3000 jobs for displaced Kashmiris willing to return as part of the Prime Minister’s package in 2011. The scheme has not been effective because of the poor and shabby arrangements in flats reserved for the beneficiaries of the scheme. The flats are inadequate, in terms of quality and quantity. 723 flats for transit accommodation had been constructed at various locations in the Kashmir valley which were then being utilised for accommodating migrant employees.
The1981 census put the population of Pandits to less than 1.25 lakh (1,23, 828). According to 1941 census, the Kashmiri Pandit population was 76,868 as against the Muslim population of over 17 lakh. (quoted by Kulbhushan Warikhoo in his book Cultural Heritage of Kashmiri Pandits, page 339)
Under the recent plan for Kashmiri migrants, and as part of the Prime Minister’s Rs 80,000 crore package for Jammu and Kashmir, the construction of 6000 additional units for transit accommodation in the Kashmir valley for migrants to whom state government jobs had been provided was also approved. The accommodation for these employees is scattered across the Valley – Vessu Qazigund, Sheikhpora (Budgam), Hawal (Pulwama), Khanpora (Baramulla), Nutnussa (Kupwara) and Mattan, (Anantnag).
As part of this fresh package, 3000 additional jobs have also been approved. However, what is not much talked about is the fact that the 3000 posts created through the earlier package, have yet to be filled in.
These 3000 posts had been created within various government departments in 2011 for providing employment to Kashmiri migrant youth, who were interested in serving in the valley. Out of 2184 selections made by the recruiting agencies, 1446 candidates have so far already joined various departments. Of the remaining 1554 vacancies, 1443 posts had been referred to the Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board (JKSSB) and 111 Class-IV posts to the Relief Organization (M) in 2012. JKSSB had since issued a select list of 430 candidates while the Relief Organization issued a select list of 87 candidates against the 111 Class-IV posts referred to them.
The return policy is ineffective due to several reasons. The main one being that there are few takers for the job opportunities being created. The package has come too late in the day. Many youth among displaced Kashmiri Pandits families, including some still living in camps in Jammu, Udhampur and Delhi, have already dispersed to other parts of the country and joined a world outside of Kashmir –be it in education or employment — many of them are well settled and not keen to return. Secondly, the reports of beneficiaries of the employment package reeling under neglect and poor living conditions has further discouraged others to embark on this adventure. Thirdly, a feeling of insecurity exacerbated by suspicions of Muslims continues to exist.
This trust deficit, instead of being bridged, has widened ever since the BJP took over the reins of power in New Delhi and later also entered into an alliance with PDP to rule in Jammu and Kashmir. Last year, the present government under prime minister Narendra Modi, announced cluster colonies and separate safe townships for Kashmiri Pandits. The announcement was met with stiff resistance in the Valley because it invoked fears among the Muslims of the BJP pursuing a saffron agenda.
The fears were enhanced as the announcement came in the backdrop of similar reports in the media, quoting union home ministry sources. No official then made any clarification about such reports that played a huge role in arousing misgiving and suspicions and created perceptions among moderates in both communities that such policy further damages the sanctity of secular and plural traditions of Jammu and Kashmir, the Kashmir Valley in particular. The media reports defined the broad elements of the policy as creating three separate cities within the Valley for Kashmiri Pandits and of further extending its benefits to all refugees by obliterating the difference between the refugees from Pakistan Administered Kashmir, who are state subjects of Jammu and Kashmir, and the West Pakistan refugees, who are historically not residents of the state. If this proposal was ever conceived or existed in the minds of Delhi’s policy makers, it is one laced with not just ambiguity but by blatant mischief.
This brand of mischief finds continuity within the overall narrative within which the official word is missing or wanting. In more recent times, Kashmiri Pandit leaders with right wing leanings (the latest to join the bandwagon is Bollywood actor Anupam Kher)[4] have begun to link the revocation of Article 370 with the return of Kashmiri Pandits. Such voices inspire fears of the BJP trying to fulfill its Hindutva agenda of artificially changing the demography of the only Muslim majority state in the country.
The return of the Pandits is an essential, though not the only component, to conflict resolution in Kashmir. Official plans and packages will always have their limitations. The exodus of the Pandits from the Valley happened within the general feeling of mistrust between communities and ultimately created even more mistrust, fuelled by right wing elements on both sides, including hawks within the government. Therefore, any policy for return and rehabilitation requires a more comprehensive policy of facilitating and laying the ground work for building bridges for which communities need to be involved, not turned antagonistic to each other through confusions, whisper campaigns and unverified media reports.
It would be important to revive the UPA government’s half-hearted attempt to involve communities and all stake holders through the creation of a Committee for Action Plan for Return and Rehabilitation of Kashmiri Migrants. The present union government, if it is sincere about the return of the Pandits to the Valley, could do well to pick up the threads from where this last official attempt was left off, because any plan of return and rehabilitation rooted in a policy of segregation would ultimately breed more malice, animosity, mistrust and othering, especially if it was imposed from above without the involvement of all communities.
It is also important to make a real beginning by preserving the vital link between the two communities who remain in Kashmir — the Pandits who refused to flee in the face of all odds and Kashmiri Muslims. Protecting them and their interests can effectively aid the process of building bridges. Sight cannot be lost of the fact that the valley Pandits are reeling under a deep fear psychosis, far greater than the Muslims of the Valley by virtue of there being a minute, negligible minority. They are also suffering due to acute economic distress stemming from years of neglect. This is where the government needs to step in.
While, the lure of jobs and building flats can be good inducements to bring back the Pandits, their stay can sustain only with a re-doubled, genuine community level effort, for which the government ought to play the role of facilitator, not aggravtor. The active involvement of the communities in any return plan will ensure the necessary opinion building which will in turn create a more conducive, amicable and welcoming atmosphere for not just the Pandits but all other minorities.
In any normal situation, where the trust deficit between communities has been seriously damaged, the onus of restoring confidence apart from the government lies with the majority community. However, the majority community of the Valley battered and shattered by the conflict, is today extremely powerless. The Kashmiri Muslims themselves live amid a stifling atmosphere of excessive militarization and it would not be easy for the Muslims to play the normal role of pro-active engagement, without genuine efforts made by officialdom. Despite and inspite of their plight, however, Kashmiri Muslims ought to rise to the occasion and show the magnanimity of accepting Pandits warmly, irrespective of what their ideologies are. Pandits have been and continue to be a part and parcel of Kashmiri society.
The Pandits willing to return would also need to keep these limitations of local Muslims in mind, rather than being hamstrung with their own victimhood. They have suffered immensely but they are not the only sufferers. The two communities need to come together on an equal footing, start at the minimal level of trust and build on from there, not view each other within the equation of perpetrator and victim, as some hardliner right wing KPs are trying to do. Such ‘othering’ and demonising of an entire community is a dangerous position to begin from. Breaking out of the miasma requires both commitment and vision.
A community level participation is the most vital component of any return plan. Such genuine participation should highlight the need for continuing dialogue(s) at the community level, would require initiatives to move out of conference halls into the homes of people. The good thing is that many people at an individual level have maintained that contact. Besides, many Kashmiri Pandits, Sikhs and non-Kashmiri speaking Hindus have continued to live in Kashmir through the years of conflict. So, all that is required is the significant move of building further, multiplying in a sense the contact between the two major communities. This will then ensure that this dialogue percolates down from one generation to another – with greater focus on the generation that has grown up oblivious to each other’s existence. That is where the key to any return of the Kashmiri Pandit lies.
[1] 60,452 Kashmiri migrant families are officially registered in different parts of the country, of which about 38,119 registered Kashmiri migrant families are residing in Jammu
[2] The1981 census put the population of Pandits to less than 1.25 lakh (1,23, 828). According to 1941 census, the Kashmiri Pandit population was 76,868 as against the Muslim population of over 17 lakh. (quoted by Kulbhushan Warikhoo in his book Cultural Heritage of Kashmiri Pandits, page 339)
[4] This year, January 19, 2016, Kher was on sections of national television in a ‘documentary’ that showed the plight of Pandits, albeit exaggeratedly; days later he was recipient of the Padma Bhushan award along with Jagmohan
The Russian scientists wanted to determine the state of mind of the Chinese leader by looking for chemicals in the excrement they believed were linked to certain behaviour and traits
“I am here to do more than eat and shit,” an irate Mao ZeDong shouted during his only meeting with Josef Stalin in Moscow, having been kept waiting for days. This was Stalin’s attempt to show him who was the real boss. Yet it transpires that he was far more interested in Mao’s inner workings than he let on.
According to recent reports, former Soviet agent Ivor Atamanenko claims Stalin had ordered Mao to be fed well during his ten days of closely supervised “hospitality”. Mao was also asked to use a special toilet, where his excrement was collected daily and sent to a secret lab for analysis. The Russian scientists wanted to determine the state of mind of the Chinese leader by looking for chemicals in the excrement they believed were linked to certain behaviour and traits. It may sound completely crazy but the anecdote does raise a valid question. How much can you tell about someone’s mental state from the chemicals in their poo? Let’s take a look at the science.
Dubious research The researchers, tasked with analysing stool samples from a number of foreign leaders, believed that high levels of brain chemicals such as the amino acid tryptophan were a sign of someone likely to be calm and easy to deal with. If levels were low, however, it would mean the opposite. The also believe a lack of potassium in poo was a sign that somebody was nervous and suffering from insomnia.
We don’t know Mao’s actual results or even how accurately they could measure the chemicals. Many fields of science in Russia during Stalin’s time were in many fields caught up in the dogmatic political struggles of the era.
Stalin had, for ideological reasons, banned classical genetics as it was based on what he regarded as tainted Western Darwinian views. Instead, he encouraged alternative theories – for example, his favourite scientist Trofim Lysenko used Lamarckism to argue that grain yields could be trebled simply by burying seeds in cold ground. He faked huge experiments for years until the truth became too embarrassing to tell. Millions starved and the Soviet union grain supply suffered terribly.
For that reason, it was quite unlikely that tryptophan could be measured accurately enough in 1949 to detect subtle changes. The trusted secret police fixer Lavrentiy Beria, who was in charge of the project, would probably have given Stalin the results he wanted to hear. Failure was not a good career move.
Gut microbes versus DNA So was it all just pseudoscience? Actually, while potassium is unlikely to say much about our personalities, tryptophan is more useful. It comes from the proteins in our diet and is the source of key brain chemicals produced in our intestines. These include melatonin (responsible for regulating sleep and abnormal in many anxiety states) and serotonin (associated with a variety of mental conditions such as depression but also appetite). Having good levels of tryptophan in our stool samples is probably a sign of good health and ironically gives our waste product its nasty smell. However the interplay of these gut chemicals with the brain (our gut-brain axis) is much more complex than we imagined.
Serotonin has recently been linked to our gut contents in mysterious ways. The 100 trillion microbes in our colon produce at least a third of all our bodies’ chemicals and many vitamins. The gut microbes in our large intestine are responsible for maintaining most of our serotonin supplies, which influence our mood. Anxiety and stress in lab animals lead to changes in the numbers and types of gut microbes and alter the chemicals they produce. When pellets of poo are taken from these animals and transferred to the sterile guts of normal mice they become anxious and stressed. This means that anxiety can truly be infectious.
In humans, thousands of different microbe species can be now rapidly identified by DNA techniques just by swabbing a bit of toilet paper. Tests are showing that we all have a unique microbial fingerprint that consistently identifies us throughout life. On average we share less than 20% of our common microbes with other people compared to sharing 99.9% of our DNA.
Small human studies have shown major abnormalities in microbe populations with people with chronic pain, depression and autism compared to normal controls. While disruption to our microbes could be partly due to the stress of the disease it suggests they could also be contributing. Studies using probiotics to change microbes and the chemicals they produce to improve mental symptoms have been very successful in lab animals, and in a few human studies, like a recent pilot improving exam stress in Japanese medical students.
It may seem unlikely, but current analyses of thousands of poo samples from different populations are showing that even with our crude understanding, the ability to predict a common disease like obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disease or accelerated ageing from a stool examination is orders of magnitude better than with DNA testing.
Maybe Stalin’s experiment wasn’t so crazy after all – and if we had Mao’s poo sample today we could learn a lot more about him. World leaders should take greater care of their excrement – it could fall into the wrong hands.
Two kilograms of daal per household per month must be provided to every household for the drought-affected period by the Central/State governments as daal is a principle source of high and yet daal consumption has been reducing and is worse in this drought affected year that has severely impacted on hunger. The Tamil Nadu pattern of distributing daal at Rs 30 per kilogram is a feasible one.
Besides, eggs (or milk) need to be urgently provided within the Mid-Day Meal Schemes to school going children especially in drought-affected areas. Where milk is in short supply one egg per child is mandatory. These are some among a list of critical suggestions made by the Swaraj Abhiyan in its Written Arguments filed before the Supreme Cort today, January 29. The Abhiyan had filed a detailed petition before the supreme court praying for an enforcement of the National Food security Act, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) especially in drought affected areas of the country. The petition and the written arguments can be read here. Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan and academic-activist Yogendra Yadav have formed and led the Swaraj Abhiyan.
Twelve states in the country including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Odisha are drought affected; however while all these declared their states as drought-affected between September and October 2015, the notable exceptions were Gujarat, Bihar and Haryana.
The Swaraj Abhiyan conducted an intense survey of Bundelkhand district in October 2015 and thereafter filed a petition asking for judicial directives for government schemes to be implemented forthwith to stem the acute distress prevalent in rural India. The petition was heard on January 4 and 22, 2016. The nest hearing of the petition is on February 1, 2016.
The petition and the written notes both make a strong plea for the Manual for Drought Management to be followed by the Government for managing water resources in the drought-affected areas including policy for use of reservoir storage, repair and augmentation of all existing water supply schemes and other emergency measures for supply of drinking water
In its petition, the Swaraj Abhiyan has relied on data collected by the Samvedana Yatra across nine states between October 2 to 15, 2016 to assess the ground situation resulting from the drought and also conducted an independent survey in 108 representative villages in the severely affected Budelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh which shows alarming figures: 39% families had not consumed dal even once in the last 30 days, 60% had not consumed any milk and 14% admitted going to bed hungry at least once during this period; 40% families had to resort to distress sale of their cattle, 24% had to mortgage or sell their land and 79% had to eat roti or rice with just salt of chutney at some point since the crop failure around Holi this year.
The Swaraj Abhiyan, in its petition, claims that this has been confirmed subsequently by various media reports, and that though it had addressed letters to Chief Ministers of various states to request urgent action on drought relief, they have failed to redress the misery of this vast population, they have even failed to properly implement the existing schemes that could have provided support during this period of distress. Swaraj Abhiyan has also stated in its writ petition that except for 2 states no other states have implemented the National Food Security Act, resulting in the failure to provide adequate food grains through the Public Distribution System at this hour of crisis.
In its petition, the response of the Centre and states have been described as ineffective and sluggish: “The total number of person days employment generated under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme has actually gone down during this drought period, when it was needed most. States have not followed the relief work required under their own drought manual. Not a single state has as yet paid any relief or compensation for Kharif crop loss; most of the respective governments have failed to fully pay for the crop losses during previous Rabi crops; insurance schemes have benefitted only a tiny fraction. State governments do not have adequate funds to handle this disaster and the Government of India does not follow any transparent method to provide funds for this purpose.”
While the fact of drought is admitted by the Union of India and various states and that eight states have already officially declared a state of drought, the states of Bihar, Gujarat and Haryana have not yet declared a drought despite recording rainfall deficit of 28%, 14% and 38% respectively, states the petition. Slamming the states for their weak, ineffective and tardy response towards alleviating the conditions of drought affected citizens, the petitioner has made the startling claim that no government has provided any compensation or relief to the farmers for crop loss during this drought. The Swaraj Abhiyan has charged the states of being highly negligent in performing their obligations and accused them of causing enormous damage to the lives of the people due to their inaction.
The petitioner has claimed that though the states are bound to give open handed employment of 150 days at the legal minimum wage for all willing to avail in the drought affected areas in accordance with the standard laid down by the respondents themselves under the MGNREG Act, 2005, they have failed to provide the same. Further, Swaraj Abhiyan, in its PIL has stated that the States have failed to implement the National Food Security Act, 2013 whose very purpose is to provide food security means and make available sufficient food-grains to meet the domestic at affordable prices.
The Abhiyan has asserted that the negligence on the part of the Central Government and the State governments amounts to a contravention of the rights of citizens guaranteed under Articles 21 and 14 of the Constitution of India, and it has also charged the states with having abdicated their constitutional obligation under Article 21 of the Constitution of India which makes it mandatory for the Respondents to ensure the right to life of the citizens which includes the right to live with dignity with at least two square meals a day.
The petition seeks the intervention of the Supreme Court in such dire circumstances to alleviate the conditions of the drought affected people, the Swaraj Abhiyan has inter alia, sought for directions to the Centre and the 11 states arrayed as the respondents in the writ petition to : (i) declare a drought in their respective states and provide immediate essential relief and compensation to their people to tackle the present natural calamity; (ii) provide adequate and timely compensation for crop loss and input subsidy for the next crop to the farmers affected by drought; (iii) immediately make available and make timely payment for employment of 150 days under the MGNREG Act to the drought affected people, and (iv) immediately make available food-grains as specified under National Food Security Act, 2013 to all the rural people in drought affected areas irrespective of any classification such as APL/BPL; (v) restructure crop loans for damaged crops and other debts of farmers in the drought affected areas; (vi) to formulate uniform standard rules for the purpose of declaration of drought; and (vii) fix fair, objective and transparent package for crop loss compensation.
On the first date of hearing of the matter on January 4, 2016, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to collate data on the various social security schemes being implemented in the 12 drought-affected states. The court asked states to assist the Centre in doing so. The court asked the Centre to collate data on deficit rainfall, implementation of National Food Security Act, midday meal scheme and the Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The petition has sought timely disbursement of crop loans, drought compensation, help in procurement of subsidized cattle fodder and formulating an integrated water policy.
Meanwhile, the ongoing Right to Food Campaign has collated its findings on the efficacy of the National Food Security Act (NFSA).
Critical data mapping by the Right to Food Campaign (this updated map and this detailed table which depicts the inclusion and exclusion criterion, eligibility lists of beneficiaries and toll free helplines) reflects the rollout of the National Food Security Act (NFSA)NFSA across India based on statements by the central and state governments. This is a crucial mapping in a year when almost half of the country’s districts reel under severe drought conditions. The situation on the fround however tells a different tale. Especially in states that have only recently enacted and launched the Act, the situation on the ground is far different.
Starvation Deaths: There has been a spate of starvation deaths in the news over past months, especially with the 65 deaths in the tea gardens of West Bengal in the last six months of 2015, in the drought-affected districts of Odisha and even Chhattisgarh. In Uttar Pradesh the drought has been described as a situation of man-made starvation (Hindi). In West Bengal, the Duncan group has agreed to open langars in their gardens but the situation remains grim in other estates. The findings from the ground on the implementation of the NFSA by the Right to Food Campaign reveal the following:
Uttar Pradesh: Uttar Pradesh, where 50 of the 75 districts have been affected by deficit rainfall, was committed to launching the NFSA on December 1, 2015 in three phases till April 2016. But in Bundelkhand the situation is dire. Families are forced to eat rotis made of grass, farmers are mired in debt and out-migration rampant in a situation of official denial of hunger and man-made starvation [Hindi]. A survey conducted by Swaraj Abhiyan in October also found that in 30 days, 39% families had not consumed dal even once, 60% had not consumed any milk and 14% admitted going to bed hungry at least once.
Odisha:The NFSA was officially rolled-out on October 2, 2015 and subsidised grain was distributed from early November in 14 districts. But there has been some confusion on the ground at a time when 26 of 30 districts have been affected by drought. The Dongria Kondhs have been denied Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) cards, that they are automatically eligible for as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). In November=December 2015, the Odisha Khadya Adhikar Abhiyan also organised a Lok Adhikar Yatra which converged in Sambalpur.
Jharkhand: The NFSA was formally launched on September 25, 2015, but the distribution of new ration cards has been fraught. The state campaign organised a two-day training program to monitor the implementation of the Act. A one-page survey proforma, guidelines and a software program have also been designed to match the list of eligible beneficiaries from the state government website with the Census 2011 Primary Census Abstract population database, which can be adopted by other state campaigns too.
Jammu and Kashmir: There has been sustained opposition to the NFSA by some opposition parties and citizens who have taken to the streets to demand that their original guarantee of 35 kilos per person be retained instead of 5 kilos per person.
But on the positive front, there have been a few important developments:
West Bengal: In a welcome development the state government has announced that with an additional expenditure from its own coffers, it will expand the coverage to 80-85% of the population eligible for foodgrains under the Act. This will expand coverage from the current 3.33 crore people in the state to almost 9 crore. In September-October 2015, the state campaign had organised an NFSA awareness campaign with motorbike rallies on 5 routes.
Antyodaya Anna Yojana Restored: Some months ago, the Food Ministry had proposed the winding-up the AAY category to provide 35 kilograms of subsidised foodgrain to ‘poorest of the poor’ families over time. But after much opposition by the campaign, citizens and people’s organisations, that provision has been dropped. The original and modified orders are here.
ICDS: After substantial across-the-board budget cuts for social sector programs and sustained protests by civil society, allocations for the current year for the ICDS has been marginally increased to Rs.15,485.77 crores. But in the midst of drought, there are reports from Uttar Pradesh that 1.5 lakh children have been denied cooked meals at anganwadis for three months due to delays from the centre.
Dear young friends who went to Jhandewala on Rohith Vemula’s birthday,
And all those who were there in spirit, in Delhi, Hyderabad and elsewhere. I am writing to you because I think you might have all taken things much further than anyone can quite imagine or understand at present.
I am writing to you, for today and for tomorrow, so that every time in the future that young people gather to celebrate their friend Rohith’s birthday, we might all begin to have a different kind of conversation. So that the boundaries between mourning and celebration, between anger and joy may always remain blurred enough for us to know what to do next, each time.
Since you had a close encounter with the police and their colleagues in the RSS on Rohith’s birthday, I want to spend a little time thinking about them with you. Bear with me. I sincerely hope we will not have to bear with them for much longer.
It is an undisputed fact that the ungainly khaki shorts of the far-right RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh / National Volunteer Force) militia’s uniform were inspired by the working attire of rank and file policemen in British India. Once upon a time it was the RSS which looked up to the police, playing out its fantasies about street-power in cop-drag. Nowadays, it is policemen, especially, but not only, those working here in our city with the Delhi Police (with us, for us, always) who seem to be guided by the RSS. Men with small minds and big sticks have always had a tendency to worship and obey men with smaller minds and bigger sticks.
Mark them well, dear students, dear young friends and comrades of Rohith, whosoever you may be, as you study, as you protest, as you agitate, educate and organize, as you walk the streets of our cities and take out marches in campuses, as you laugh and sing and grieve and fall in love with each other, discovering with your solidarities what it means to desire and demand a better life, for your bodies and for your minds, and, (as Rohith did) for your mothers too, and for all their sewing machines. For each and every body that labours and gives life to the world.
They, the men in Khaki, (shorts or trousers) are here to pull the shutters down on your world. They are the adversaries of all your desires. It is they, not you, who want to drag us all down from our destinations in the imagined world of stars, who want to close down universities, cut fellowships and pulp books and burn libraries. It is they, not you, who want to maintain the practices and protocols of exclusion and humiliation, to enforce the casual caste apartheid of canteens, common rooms and hostels. It is they, not you, who stop screenings, disrupt meetings and violate the daily intercourse and play of conversations. It is they, not you, who can’t deal with the fact that students do what students must – read, think, argue, learn, push their desires and curiosities. Never forget them, never forgive them. Look them calmly in the eye and do not yield an inch. They are terrified of your gaze, of the beauty of all your gatherings and assemblies.
The events unfolding before all our eyes, including the pathologically bellicose responses to all dissent (and even the mere suspicion of dissent) in and around university campuses in India makes it clear that in this regime led by Narendra Modi and administered by (Manu)Smriti Irani, in this winter of our discontent, the RSS and all that it represents and presides over, with its meagre moral compass and its frugal, miserable imagination, carries the biggest stick of all, especially when it comes to anything to do with education, culture and civic life. You are beginning to understand this more, aren’t you, with each semester that passes, with each passing day.
Rohith Vemula, a student of Hyderabad Central University (HCU) paid with his life for the clarity with which he came to this understanding. You, his young comrades, in their thousands, are now paying, all over the country with your peace of mind, with bruises, broken bones and lots of shattered dreams. We should treat this as an emergency that is already in operation in campuses across India, and wherever you, the young, gather.
The Delhi Police shakha (branch) of the RSS protected its masters in Jhandewalan on the afternoon of Saturday, the 30th of January by mercilessly thrashing several of you – unarmed, peaceful students demonstrating against the complicity of the far right, especially the ABVP, (the RSS aligned student organization) and ministers of the BJP government at the Centre (who obey every ‘cultural and educational’ diktat of the RSS hydra) in the circumstances that drove the Dalit student-activist Rohith Vemula to suicide in Hyderabad Central University (HCU)
It is an undisputed fact that the ungainly khaki shorts of the far-right RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh / National Volunteer Force) militia’s uniform were inspired by the working attire of rank and file policemen in British India.
But for those of us who are new to this conversation, (because the whole world is listening), a brief recap, as they say on TV.
You, students (aligned to different organizations, as well as individuals) from all the major universities in Delhi (JNU, DU and JMI) had gathered at Ambedkar Bhavan in Central Delhi intending to march peacefully to the RSS headquarters at Jhandewalan on Saturday This was planned as an intrinsic part of an All-India programme of peaceful protests called by a ‘joint action committee of students for social justice’ demanding justice for Rohith Vermula on 30th January, which also happened to be Rohith’s birthday. The protest of the 30th of January was a logical continuation of what had started at the HCU campus, and that had spread, campus by campus, throughout the country, through day protests and night vigils, through speech, song and silence, in a splendor of dignified, angry, calm, considered actions and gatherings.
But not only were the students in Delhi not allowed to march to exercise constitutionally guaranteed rights to assembly and peaceful protest, rather, more disturbingly, a clearly disproportionate level of violence was unleashed to prevent them from doing so. What should have been a normal, routine, protest meeting turned into vortex of unprovoked violence unleashed by ‘the forces of law and order’. Women students were manhandled and abused by male police personnel. Journalists were assaulted. Cameras were broken. Men in plain clothes, clearly visible in a video that has gone viral on social networks, who the protesting students allege are RSS goons, joined the policemen in attacking the students. The police did nothing to stop, or restrain them. It allowed some men to take the law into their own hands in order to stop a peaceful protest. In doing so, the Delhi Police stands accused of violating the very structure of ’law and order’ that it is supposed to uphold. They have proved themselves to be nothing others than goons in uniform, acting in concert with goons in mufti.
The RSS has issued a customary and shameless denial that its members had any hand in thrashing the unarmed students. Since the RSS maintains no record of ‘members’, any RSS activist can do anything in any riot or situation of violence and then have higher office bearers resort to denials. This modus operandi of ‘plausible deniability’ is nothing but standard operating procedure as far as the sangh is concerned. Meanwhile, RSS-ABVP-BJP spokesmen, and key ministers of the Modi government (Smriti Irani and Sushma Swaraj) have continued to slander the spontaneous students movement that has emerged in rage from the grief over Rohith Vermula. They have continued their barrage of innuendo against Rohith and his grieving mother especially in connection with Rohith’s Dalit identity.
The Delhi Police (DP), on its part, initially suggested that the conflict near Jhandewalan occurred because of ‘tensions’ between two factions within the protesting students, one keen to contain the demonstration, and another eager to take it forward. This was exposed to be a lie when all the different student organizations present at the protest clearly stated that there were no ‘differences’ between them with regard to the conduct of the protest. It is well known that the Delhi Police apparatus has greater competence when it comes to wielding lathis in comparison to when it comes to bare faced lying. Someone should teach at least a few DP officers to occasionally aspire to a slightly higher standard of untruth on camera than they are accustomed to deploying on a routine basis in the lower courts of the capital. As of now, the police commissioner, who said he was unaware of what had been going on, has suggested that an internal enquiry will be conducted. The report of that enquiry can be predicted in advance – “anti-social and anti-national elements within the protesting students created a provocative situation…some students attacked some other students…the police personnel acted (with utmost restraint) to uphold law and order…”. A case of rioting, obstructing police personnel on duty and violating section 144 (prohibiting assembly of more than a certain specified number of persons) will in all probability be filed against a group of unknown persons. And so on.
While this recent incident of police-sangh brutality seems to have caught the attention of the mainstream media at last, it needs to be understood that this is only the latest instance of a long chain of events which we can begin to more accurately describe as a war being conducted by the Modi regime against the young. Perhaps in consonance with the great traditions that they lay exclusive claim to, they should call it ‘Operation Ekalavya’.
In recent months, Operation Ekalavya has meant that universities have suspended students, thrown them out of hostels and withdrawn fellowships as punitive measures (as happened in HCU with Rohith and his comrades). It has meant that administrators and student politicians affiliated to the ABVP have humiliated and attacked students on casteist, sexist and communal lines. That police have repeatedly entered university campuses, drenched students with water cannons on the streets of cities, conducted severe lathi-charges, undertaken pre-dawn swoops and detentions, taken students into custody and attacked peaceful gatherings with tear gas shells.
This has happened for any number of reasons – to protect politically connected administrators complicit in protecting those accused of sexual harassment (for instance in Jadavpur University, where the Trinamool Congress has mimicked the BJP in the way it handled dissent) – to break the spine of the ‘Occupy UGC Movement’ that refuses to lie low in campuses all over India – to measures undertaken to bolster the presence of incompetent favorites of the regime in power at the centre – as in the official responses to the protests at FTII.
In fact the momentum of attacks on students and young people has shown no sign of slowing down in recent days. One would have thought that given the rage that broke out in response to HCU’s shameless conduct with Rohith Vemula, university administrators and others with influence and power on campuses might have acted (in their own self interest, for the sake of maintaining a semblance of order) with a degree of restraint. That has not been the case. In fact, authorities have acted provocatively, and with a deliberate intent to scare students. For instance, students in Haryana Central University, (at the Mahendragarh Campus) were not only not allowed to take out a silent candle lit march to express their grief for Rohith Vemula, the organizers of the march were threatened by ABVP members who filed police complaints against them, university authorities also threatened them with suspensions and other punitive measures. A few students were even made to sign undertakings, under duress, to the effect that they would neither participate in nor organize such events while in the university. Similar threats were also made to students and faculty trying to organize a peaceful meeting in Udaipur. Police and RSS members assaulted students taking out a protest march in Kolkata, exactly as they did in Delhi on the 30th of January.
What the events of the last few days reveal is a pattern that has been visible for a while now to anyone following what is going on in academic life in India. Across India, in university and college campuses, on streets and in public spaces, the current regime has unleashed a systematic assault on the young, and this includes both young students as well as young workers. It has made attempts to deprive researchers of fellowships (which has led to the ‘Occupy UGC movement’ , it has placed tight controls on freedom of expression in university campuses and workplaces, it has tried to police every aspect of the social, personal and political lives of students and young working people. It has assaulted people gathered to celebrate love, freedom, equity and dignity on campuses. It has arrested young workers who have tried to protest against inhuman working conditions. It has heaped casteist abuse and humiliation on dalit students and and sought to drive terror into the hearts and minds of students and young people from ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. It has especially sought to curtail the mobility and personal autonomy of young women.
What should have been a normal, routine, protest meeting turned into vortex of unprovoked violence unleashed by ‘the forces of law and order’. Women students were manhandled and abused by male police personnel. Journalists were assaulted. Cameras were broken. Men in plain clothes, clearly visible in a video that has gone viral on social networks, who the protesting students allege are RSS goons, joined the policemen in attacking the students.
Contrary to what many of the idiots who appear as talking heads on television screens believe, I suspect that the Modi regime has come to recognize that it actually does not enjoy the support of a substantial section of the young. No amount of spin doctoring, ad copy and PR can actually alter that fact. The regime’s intense and pathological hatred of the normal life of young people in campuses all over India is indicative of the depth of its paranoia. And its stupid, clumsy responses to the life of the young, are its desperate attempts to dominate the one sphere of social life (in universities and higher education) where it feels it does not yet have total control.
Modi and his cronies are confident about the fact that their nonsense gets taken seriously in board-rooms, editorial offices, barracks, prisons, court-rooms and in the labyrinth of the bureaucracy, but they know that the places that they get laughed at routinely, on a daily basis is on campuses, workplaces and factory shop-floors – which is where the young gather. Unlike factories (where trade unions, who are unable to adjust to the realities of contractualization and in formalization, and are consequently no longer necessarily key loci of dissent, which has moved to other informal organizational forms) university campuses are still venues of a kind of formal political life around student organizations. The regime has understood that its promise of ‘better days’ has been seen through for the sham that it is, especially by the young, who actually have a real stake in the future. Coupled with this, as the sociologist Sanjay Srivastava has recently said, there is now, finally, thanks to reservation, a real presence of students from economically and socially deprived sections of society in higher education and research. These students, many of them from dalit backgrounds, know better than anyone else that the talk of ‘good days’ is only fakery. The radicalization of students like Rohith Vemula is a living example of this process at work.
Of late, the role played by Dalit and Ambedkarite student groups, increasingly in dialogue with a new kind of culture of independent left mobilization on campuses, has been the biggest thorn in the side of the effort to enforce what we might call the Modirani (Narendra Modi + Smriti Irani) consensus about the contours of higher education. This is important for the Modi regime for two reasons – firstly, if successfully implemented, it enables the regime to have a greater control over culture and the symbolic and intellectual engines of social life, and secondly, it also enables it to dominate the very spaces where the articulate elites (administrators, journalists, judges, civil society activists) of the near future will emerge from. The favorites of the regime know well that they have a real problem as far as the ‘quality’ of people who come up the standard ‘sangh’ structure. Most of them are inarticulate, ill-informed morons, and few have a pulse on life outside shakhas. They are not the best material to run a power structure with. Hence the desperate measures, implemented primarily through the ABVP, to get control, over the material, political and imagined life of university spaces.
It is not that ABVP activists are not young people, but that by aligning themselves with the active machinery of repression in universities, they are given an opportunity to quickly come into the political notice of BJP apparatchiki. This temptation to take a ‘short cut’ to a possible political career with the BJP acts as an incentive even insofar as the violent implementation of measures that are actually counter to the interests of all students qua students is concerned. The ABVP activist who willingly goes along with measures to destroy the functioning of universities, supports cuts, repressive administrative measures and constraints on student life is doing so only because he (and it is usually he) is promised a leg up in what is promised as a lucrative political career in the BJP, despite the fact that these measures actually hurt his interests as a student. (This is by no means particular to the ABVP and the BJP alone, the career of many SFI activists during the time that the CPI-M destroyed universities and academic life in West Bengal, or the career profile of a successful NSUI activist under a Congress dispensation would reveal features identical to this general pattern). At present, this leads to a kind of competitive thuggery, and a constancy of internal one-upmanship within the ABVP on campuses. With rival factions and leaders within the ABVP competing with each other to show who can be most disruptive, and consequently, who can obtain the greatest fraction of political patronage from a senior BJP politician. The chain of events that led to Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide, with ABVP leaders ratcheting up the levels of obstruction to normal student political activity, including involving Bangaru Dattatreya, a union minister and a senior BJP leader, essentially to settle a petty campus score is clearly indicative of the consequences of this mode of operation.
There is now a chain of command that originates from the highest level of governance (cabinet ministers like Smriti Irani and Bangaru Dattatreya) and filters down to classrooms and canteens, mediated through the local ABVP ‘adda’ on a campus. It is this chain of command that disrupts and tries to dominate universities and colleges. This is the front-line of the war on the young, where some of the young also get used, as quislings and cannon fodder.
This war has only started, and its only going to get more ugly. Contrary to what a list of forty busy body courtiers suggest, the provocations in university campuses across India are not actually coming from the student opposition, it is coming from those close to power. The student groups who find themselves in opposition are doing all the little things that student groups always do – making posters, organizing events, inviting speakers, holding screenings, doing campaigns in classrooms and hostels, along with studying, going to the library, hanging out in canteens and undergoing all the personal and social ups and downs that striate the lives of young people all over the world. It is the student activists close to the ruling dispensation that act as obstructive forces, disrupting the normal rhythm of life in campuses.
What this means is that had the ABVP activists in Hyderabad Central University simply held a screening in opposition to Rohith Vemula and his friends’ attempt to screen a film on campus on the Muzaffarnagar Riots, or had they held a counter-meeting to a discussion that engaged with Yakub Memon’s hanging, we would not have had to come to this pass in Hyderabad. Instead of acting in a spirt of convivial but intense agonism, as normal student groups do – which is to say – to put up a poster in opposition to a poster, or to organize a meeting or screening to oppose a meeting or a screening, to share in the normal polemical life of a campus, they violently opposed the normal processes of student activism. They used their proximity to power, both administrative and political, to repress the intellectual and moral lives of their fellow students. It is this that led to the drama of suspension, expulsion from hostels, curtailment of dues and the administratively enforced, politically motivated social boycott that resulted in Rohith’s death. This is the kind of collateral damage that the war on the young is extracting routinely from our university spaces.
The Modi regime, as of now shows no sign of moderation or intelligence, and seems hell-bent, on provoking even more confrontations. The student opposition cannot afford to let its guard down. If it does, the universities will turn into mediocre teaching shops with shakhas attached to them.
This may require an escalating program of teach-ins, discussions and co-ordination between students, faculty and staff in universities to defend academic life from the corrosive influence of the Sangh Parivar and the Modi Regime. It will certainly require an insistence that there can be dialogue with the authorities only subsequent to the resignations of Smriti Irani and Bangaru Dattatreya – the two union ministers directly culpable for the situation that led to Rohith Vermula’s death. It can only express itself through an attitude of zero tolerance towards police-sangh violence against peaceful student protestors. This requires the immediate suspension of the police officers and authorities who commanded the ‘I-2-3 – Charge’ on unarmed students. It requires a serious investigation of the collusion between the police and the RSS.
This morning, at eleven, there is a call for students to assemble in protest at the Delhi Police Headquarters. Gather there, dear students, peacefully, but in rage, to register your disgust with the war the regime has declared on you. If you are listened to in the coming days, then you have the option to recognize the restoration of a certain kind of normalcy in the universities. If you are not listened to, you have the option to recognize that it is this regime that is transforming the spaces of higher education into zones of abnormal confrontation. If, in order to then defend the space of the university from further attacks you find yourself needing to transform the terms of engagement by taking your dissent outside the walls of the university and into every pore of society then only this regime, not you, will be called upon to answer for the situations that come to pass. What is at stake is all our futures, because you, more than anyone else can stake your claim to the republic of the future.
A few years ago, in the winter of 2012-2013 you, the young people of Delhi had gathered, many times, and in the face of gross violence, to express your solidarity with a young, then unnamed woman who had come to represent through her injured self the agonies that patriarchy unleashes on to the world. At that time, it was said, by some, that your assemblies were gatherings of the elite, that they did not represent wider solidarities. You proved those cynics wrong then, you are proving them wrong again. By making the substance of the assertion of a Dalit life the criterion for judging the way that the regime treats the young, the future, you have given everyone a chance to re-write the language of solidarity in this land.
Three years ago, you had lain siege to Raisina Hill, the very epicenter of power in this vast land, and had shaken that power to its foundations, for a few days. Is it time now for you to gather again, in even larger numbers, to insist that you will not let the evil of caste and its brokers, prejudice and the obscene fantasies of a fascist makeover of our social universe ever take root? Is it time once again for you to show us that the world, and the stars that Rohith Vermula was so drawn to can be re-imagined on the streets of Delhi, on the gradient of Raisina Hill?
The Modi regime may have started this war, Smriti Irani may have conducted a few maneuvers, but you – young people of oppressed castes and classes from Delhi, Hyderabad and everywhere – you who are students, workers, women, queer, friends and comrades, rivals even – all you lives that can share what it means to know yourself and others as dalit, without state or estate – who gather as beautifully as a rain-storm on the horizon of a parched land, to annihilate caste and the castes of mind that perpetuate violence and indignity of all kinds, you may yet be the ones who will bring it to an end,
Hyderabad, Jhandewala, Raisina Hil Everywhere that you appear, you shall prevail, you shall win.
.jpg)
