Many epithets have been used to describe the regime in place at the centre in India since May 2014 and it is no gratification to hear India, always a proud and growing democracy being increasingly described by international institutes as only “partly free” (Freedom House) and a “partially free electoral autocracy.” (Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute). One of the most fundamental and unique aspects of the Indian freedom movement that included within its scope vastly diverse but committed groups and ideologies who saw the exploitation of colonial rule, was the clear articulation for a “one person one vote” system, universal adult franchise.

Dr BR Ambedkar’s articulations before the Southborough Committee (2019) followed by the Motilal Nehru Report (1928) and the resultant Karachi Resolution of the Indian National Congress (1031) buffeted this clearly by ensuring that this – universal adult franchise with  no ifs and buts – became a non-negotiable part of the citizenship project. Not only did this ensure the inclusion of the most marginalised castes, genders and other sections in the Indian decision making process, it also compelled political forces to formulate policies geared to the largest common good. Ambedkar’s articulations was clear when he was categorical that a democratic government was inseparable from the right to vote, and it was voting that would prove to be (one of) the harbinger(s) of political education. India moved from a restrictive 15 per cent of Indians having (limited) voting rights to universal adult franchise, driven by the transformative impetus of the national movement and the ideals of equality and non-discrimination that it threw up.

The world’s largest democracy, India, therefore beat the oldest, the United States of America (USA) when it came to inclusive enfranchisement beyond qualifications. The USA, reeling under the ignominious Jim Crow laws[1] that indirectly disenfranchised racial minorities only gave all citizens the right to vote in 1964 after a Supreme Court’s ruling in Reynolds v/s Sims. [2]

In what seems like clear regression if not an outright counter-revolution, the party and ideological forces in places since May 2014, have in their manipulation and infiltration of institutions ensured that only a skewed version of democracy exists.[3] Post 2014 India has seen a reign of ‘undeclared emergency’ marked by normalisation of terror: a rule by police (law enforcement) raids or executive fiat; where terror and fear of targeted reprisal by the executive affects normative citizens voices and actions, the concentration of brute political power with the state and economic resources with chosen corporates combined with the steady decline of the federal structure of our Constitution has led to an erasure or erosion of democratic values. Crucial institutions of governance have been seen to crumble under this pressure.

On the last day of 2024 it is time to speak only and specifically of the Election Commission of India (ECI) one such that has clearly abdicated any and every semblance of transparency and accountability. If Articles 324-326 enjoin the ECI, a constitutional body to ensure free and fair elections, these articles of the Constitution as its Preamble underline that the ECI is answerable to the Indian people alone not the government in power.  Yet, election after election, especially those held after 2017 –when for the first time a standalone EVM machine was replaced by a three part system (VVPAT attached to a laptop and Symbol Loading Unit) making the EVS open to manipulation—elections have drawn sharp questions from a scattered but active citizenry. The use of hate speech, slur and vitriol by men and women in constitutional posts –including the prime minister and home minister—have gone unchecked despite election law demanding action from the ECI.[4] [5]

2024 saw these questions at their peak. From the general elections that took place in seven phases from April 19 to June 1 2024, to the Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir elections, and finally to the Maharashtra state assembly polls, the questions and anger towards the ECI has not stemmed nor stopped. Towards all these, the ECI has maintained an autocratic and obdurate silence.

Be it TN Seshan or James Lyndhoh in the past, not to mention, Yakub Qureishi these were all chief election commissioners that held governments to account. Today, the men in that position represent a stultified and manipulated Election Commission of India (ECI) that is both structurally and otherwise holding elections in an un-free and un-fair manner violating not just the Preamble of India but Articles 324-326 of the Indian Constitution. Be it in the manipulation of electoral rolls—bogus injection of voters or mass deletion of sections opposed to the BJP, or in the actual manipulation of the Electronic Voting System (EVS) through the vulnerable Symbol Loading Unit and the Microprocessors in the VVPAts. An external laptop is now connected to the Ballot Unit. Both have labile memories and ever since 2017 when the EVM stopped being a standalone unit the vulnerability of external malware changing/shifting and altering votes cast (from one to another candidate and party) began.  Citizens have asked whether it is this possibility of manipulation that is behind the reluctance of the ECI/system to allow the easy checking of the actual microprocessor through independent experts.

Besides these technicalities that are being raised by concerned and active citizens along with experts every day in the public domain, the manner and absence of any transparency in the ECI’s phasing of elections, its obdurate and blind inaction against hate speech during polls (especially when delivered by the prime minister, home minister and other functionaries), its refusal to make 17 C forms public, its flouting of election law and rules by not collecting Index Cards from Returning officers, its changing of data parameters and figures made public (*from 2019 Lok Sabha, 2024 Lok Sabha, Haryana 2024 Vidhan Sabha and 2024 Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha*) makes the actions even more opaque and open to suspicion. In July 2024 the Vote for Democracy Report compiled data and analysis into a report that raised serious issues and questions that remain, to date, unanswered. [6]

On July 19, Citizens served a notice to the ECI that has, to date received no response.[7] The utter and abject refusal of the ECI to answer key questions on the conduct of free and fair elections requires us as citizens to launch grassroots campaigns for a free and fair election, demanding that “Votes Cast be those Counted”, and the removal of the present Election Commissioner. The data collected by the ECI belongs to the Indian people and ECI must function in the interests of the people and not the regime in power.

Among the key aspects of the defaulting conduct by the ECI is its continuing failure to release all data of votes polled and counted, it’s shifting and changing parameters of data release (releasing percentages of voting that too not constituency but district wise) and its over-centralisation of the process, weakening of the Returning Officers role, powers and accountability. The fact that it is the BJP party that has emerged victorious in many if not all the elections as the process because more obscure has not helped matters.

In the latter part of 2023, in his Paper titled “Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy,” (2023) scholar Sabyasachi Das, formerly of the Ashoka University who studied the 2019 General Election to Parliament, says that electoral manipulation can take place at the stage of voter registration (registration manipulation) or at the time of voting or counting (turnout manipulation).  Both the recently conducted Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections (November 2024) and the upcoming Delhi state elections (2025) have been marked by serious allegations of mass deletions of legitimate voters and significant additions of possibly “bogus voters.” Between April-June 2024 and November 2024, ECI’s own figures show a 41 lakh increase in voters in the states. The opposition Congress has alleged that the seats that benefitted from this unusual and unaccounted increase benefitted the ruling combine. No coherent answer to the detailed representation has come from the ECI.

Das’ 2023 analysis showed how, at the time of voter registration, manipulation is also done in the form of targeted deletion of names of voters who are unlikely to vote for the incumbent party. At the time of voting, polling officers can strategically discriminate against registered voters, who are likely to vote against the ruling dispensation. Manipulation can take place at the time of counting of votes due to confusion created by variations in voter turnout data and percentages as well as weak or prejudiced monitoring by counting observers appointed by the ECI who are from the State Civil Service (SCS), as opposed to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) especially those coming from beneficiary states who are pliable. Both these manipulations allegedly happened in the 2024 election also and ECI neither took preventive steps, nor acted upon the many complaints sent to them.

Other questions that are blowing in the wind, answered and unaddressed are:

• Several candidates who lost by narrow margins have complained of a 99 per cent battery in the EVM machine when counting started in certain booths that is unlikely given the battery usage for polling on polling day
• There have been no answers for mismatch in Form 17C and final results displayed by CU (even if one machine shows this anomaly) –Lok Sabha polls
• The ECI has no answers as to why it did not disclose the ABSOLUTE NUMBERS in the first 2 phases of Lok Sabha 2024
• There was no explanation given for unexplained and sudden power cuts during counting
• There was no explanation given for –in certain cases—EVMs being taken out of strong rooms
• There has been no explanation for ruling party candidates accessing mobile phones used by DEOs feeding the data in the ENCORE APP
• There has been absolutely no explanation or answer given for the high, absurdly illogical and abnormal rise in Voter Turn Out (VTR) percentage over two to more days before counting. (In earlier elections pre-2019 this percentage did not vary beyond 1-2 per cent). With the general elections 2024 and state elections this year variations have been from 6-11 per cent!
• There have been no answers foe the ECI’s inaction for its inaction against prime minister, Narendra Modi’s communal slurs during the Lok Sabha 2024 polls and his open fluting of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) and provisions of the Representation of People’s Act, 1951
• No answers for the sharp increase and addition of voters between GE 2024 and Maharashtra Elections 2024
• No answers for the time allowed to the Shinde-Fadnavis-Pawar Government to pay the instalments of freebies to the voters August to October 2024
• No answers for the valid questions raised by technical experts regarding vulnerability of VVPAT, due to its connection with the internet and its potentially dubious role in transferring spurious or manipulated votes to the Counting Unit (CUY)
• No answers as to whether the ECI is in independent control of the Source code in the EVS Unit and why this cannot be made public
• No answers as to why BJP’s members are on the Board of Directors of Government Companies viz. ECIL and BEL, which manufacture the EVMs

Rules that empower citizens and candidates

• Under Rule 32(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules (RER), 1960, the authenticated printed copy of the electoral roll is available at the District Election Officer, on a permanent basis.
• As per Rule 31(e) of the RER, 1960, all the related papers which led to the revision of the electoral rolls viz. enumeration pads, copies of the roll used for house-to house verification, manuscripts prepared on the basis thereof, claims and objections and applications for correction of entries and transposition of entries (Forms 6, 6A, 7, 8 and 8A), and all papers connected with their disposal, shall be retained for at least three years after next revision of electoral rolls.
• As per the Rule 33, the Electoral Rolls and connected papers, as mentioned above, are open for inspection for any person, on payment of the stipulated fee. These rules are not amended and can be used to verify the issues in question.

For India and Indians to celebrate our democracy, we must insist that these questions are answered, that the Election Commission of India bows to the questions raised by the We the People of India. If a weak and confused Opposition flounders, citizens and independent media need to carry the flag. Of Resistance and Accountability.

Happy New Year. Welcome 2025.

[1] The Jim Crow laws were a body of discriminatory legislation, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries that enforced racial segregation. ‘Jim Crow’ is a perjorative term used for African Americans. The last of the Jim Crow laws were overturned in 1965.

[2] Before this, The Warren Court’s decisions on two previous landmark cases—Baker v/s Carr (1962) and Wesberry v Sanders (1964)—also played a fundamental role in establishing the nationwide “one man, one vote” electoral system

[3] While India experienced a political emergency declared by a previous Congress government between 1975-1977 that also snatched basic human rights, caused disappearances and ran interference with the higher judiciary, the elections declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1977 were free and fair, sweeping her out of power.

[4] In its Report titled “Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System Fit for Democratic Elections?” released in January, 2021 and submitted to ECI, Citizens Commission on Election (CCE) had said that EVM system does not provide provable guarantees against hacking, tampering and spurious vote injections and the VVPAT system as practiced does not allow the voter to verify the slip before the vote is cast and the absence of E2E verification would lead to voting and counting manipulation and had suggested remedial measures. ECI did not bother to respond.[https://constitutionalconduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/citizens-commission-on-elections-vol.-i.pdf].

[5] In August/September 2023, civil society submitted a Memorandum to ECI signed by about 10,000 voters making a specific demand: “The VVPAT system should be re-calibrated to be fully voter-verifiable. A voter should be able to get the VVPAT slip in her hand and cast it in a chip-free ballot box for the vote to be valid. These VVPAT slips should be fully counted first for all constituencies before the results are declared.” [https://www.change.org/p/ecisveep-eci-must-implement-its-constitutional-mandate-to-conduct-free-and-fair-election]. ECI did not even acknowledged this Memorandum leave alone acting upon it.

[6] The report was made public and can be viewed and accessed here:
https://votefordemocracy.org.in/

[7] The Notice served to the ECI may be read here https://votefordemocracy.org.in/

The post Is India’s unique experiment on people’s democracy with the right to universal franchise being lampooned by a compliant Election Commission? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Salutes and Apologies Vasanta ji and Professor GN Saibaba!

The last we met and briefly held hands was outside AKG Bhavan, Delhi where he, with his usual gentle resolve had been wheeled by dear wife, Vasanta to pay tribute to Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the CPI-M. That was September 14, 2024, Sita had left us two days before, exactly a month before Saibaba did, on September 12, 2024. On Saturday, October 12, 2024, the 54 year old professor of English died of “complications following a gall bladder surgery at one of Hyderabad’s known hospitals.”

Immediately, I had to say something publicly, react. “Who answers for this life lost, unaccountability & callousness? #GNSaibaba We owe you….” is what I said on X.

Who answers for this life lost, unaccoutability & callousness? #GNSaibaba We owe you…. pic.twitter.com/6iI7j99yan

— Teesta Setalvad (@TeestaSetalvad) October 12, 2024

Professor GN Saubaba had stubbornly refused to die despite every effort by the brute Nagpur jail authorities, on instructions of the political executive, to ensure every indignity heeped on this physically frail and handicapped man. After being accused and convicted of all kinds of manipulated charges including under the draconian anti-terror law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and convicted to life imprisonment on March 7, 2017 he was first acquitted on October 14, 2022 by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, only for a superior court to ensure further jail term. Saibaba’s poem penned at the time was and is a source of sorrowful inspiration. On August 5, 2023, the Bombay high court judge Justice Rohit B Deo (former Advocate General, Maharashtra from 2016 to 2017) — who had acquitted Professor GN Saibaba—resigned,  a full two years a four months before he was due to retire on December 4, 2025. Though citing personal reasons to be the cause, in his statement before the court while he made farewell remarks in open court, he did say, “I can’t work against my self-respect.” After the Supreme Court’s “interventions” at this stage, the Bombay high court again acquitted Saibaba and others on March 5, 2024, observing that holding a trial under UAPA without adhering to procedural requirements would amount to a “failure to justice”. Professor Saibaba’s wife Vasanta Kumari who valiantly stood by him through all these multiple violations of the Constitution and law had, with him, a beaming smile, when he finally was wheeled out free from the Nagpur Central Jail on March 7, 2024.

Saibaba’s death after a critical surgery at the age of 54 raises questions for which there will be, likely no answers. A former professor of the Department of English, University of Delhi and a prominent figure in the struggle for democratic rights and the defence of the marginalised, Prof. Saibaba, was 90 percent disabled and wheelchair-bound. What had he been accused of, charges that he was, after a bitter ten long years, acquitted? Of being “a member of the banned Maoist party on flimsy grounds of having some Maoist literature in his house.” There was no other evidence and yet, he had been incarcerated eight and a half years ago and had been kept in conditions which utterly disregarded his physical condition and resulted in continuing deterioration of his health. Little regard was paid to his need for proper medical attention. Finally, almost too late, the Maharashtra High Court acquitted him of all charges and he was discharged recently. However, his condition could not take the stress of gall bladder surgery and he passed away due to haemorrhage and cardiac arrest. Saibaba had said on release from Nagpur jail on March 6, “When I went to prison, I had no ailment other than my disability. Now, my heart is 55% functional…live, gallbladder and pancreas have also been affected. My right hand is partially functional. My doctor says I need multiple surgeries.”

Who will pay for this state-driven negligence?

In any civilised society –and electoral democracies mandated by the sovereign will of the people certainly claim that label—there should be an independent inquiry into such a death, at the very least. So that those guilty jailors and Superintendents of Nagpur prison face rebuke, real punishment. And we as citizens with the sovereign authority are informed of who exactly in the executive ordered such treatment. Prof. Saibaba’s death has therefore also been called nothing short of an institutional murder as was Father Stan Swamy’s on July 5, 2021.  On July 5, 2021 Stan Swamy had died of cardiac arrest, complications from COVID-19, Parkinson’s, also a victim of dismal and unaccountable Taloja jail prison conditions.

The Indian state, and judiciary, which failed not only to protect his fundamental right to a dignified life, actually also subjected him to the most cruel and inhuman conditions of incarceration, denying him even the basic medical attention.

His own words best express both his life, treatment in jail and death.

Saibaba’s poem from jail in 2017

When I refused to die
my chains were loosened
I came out
Into the vast meadows
Smiling at the leaves of grass
My smile caused intolerance in them
I was shackled again
Again, when I refused to die
tired of my life
my captors released me
I walked out
into the lush green valleys under the rising sun
smiling at the tossing blades of grass
Infuriated by my undying smile
They captured me again
I still stubbornly refuse to die
The sad thing is that
They don’t know how to make me die
Because I love so much
The sounds of growing grass

November 2017. (Remembering October 1917)

G N Saibaba, life convict, Anda Cell, Nagpur Jail

What does all of this, in any real sense mean? As we pen our thoughts and tributes to this extraordinary man, whom the Delhi University refused to re-instate as professor even after his acquittal, first we must recall that though Professor G N Saibaba died a free man, acquitted of all charges, he could not savour the sounds of freedom for even a year.

Here was a man 90 % physically challenged who survived solitary confinement –three stretches at a time—for a total of eight and a half years. He was deprived of his essential mode of mobility, the wheelchair in the Nagpur’s Central Jail, a wheelchair that he had been dependant on since childhood. Medicines essential to his treatment for 19 ailments were denied him as was a simple bland diet and other medical treatment. This despite the fact that when he was arrested for the second time, in December 2015, on orders of the Gadchiroli sessions court, Professor Saibaba was due for pancreatic surgery and a delay would lead to infection, which his doctors had warned.

Confined to solitary confinement, the Anda Cell (reserved for the most dangerous persons!), itself an acknowledged form of mental torture, he was in jail in Nagpur, a city in Maharashtra with hot summers and cold, cold winters. Even when sharp pains seared his body in winter, jail authorities refused to allow him warm clothes sent by his family. In a letter to his wife, A S Vasanta Kumari, from prison in November 2017, eight months after having been convicted for life under the anti-terrorist act UAPA, he had baldly said, “I am living like an animal.” The callous unaccountability by the jail authorities continued until the very end leading to an open letter, in December 2020 by his lawyer to the jail authorities saying that ‘Saibaba’s future was in his hands.’

Among all the questions that should bother our Courts is this one, “How long is too long a period of incarceration as an under trial for a court to conclude the right of speedy trial is defeated?”  It was the Delhi High Court in Mohamed Hakim v. State (NCT of Delhi) 2021 SCC OnLine Del 4623, who had thus queried,  though that was in the context of grant of bail for an undertrial prisoner. As India today ignominiously boasts of over 4, 00,000 under trials –several thousand of which have served terms way beyond the punitive terms they are charged with, Saibaba’s death reminds us of a state’s complete collapse. Apart from Saibaba, there are other political prisoners, Delhi Riots cases 2020 (Umar Khalid we know and speak of often, Gulfishan Faitima less so), Orissa, Chhattisgarh that point a finger at us and the higher judiciary. Is it not about time that High Court and Supreme Court Judges, step out of their courts and chambers and visit the Jails in their jurisdiction? Meet and speak to under trials and convicted, interrogate and examine why some of their Orders on Bail and Release are simply not implemented on the ground.

More of such ruminations, point by point, later. This one is about Professor GN Saibaba. So I will end this guilt-filled remembrance with the poem tweeted by fellow journalist, Saubaba, today, October 15.

When you remove Saibaba’s eyes,

Please add a touch of gentleness,

For in them lie traces of the world he dreamt of,

That might unfold within someone else.

Please extract his heart with utmost skill,

For in that tenacious heart that denied death

In the fascist Manuvadi regime’s prison,

You may find the roots of tender compassion

For the Adivasis and the oppressed masses.

In constant captivity, grappling with illness,

He stood firm for his beliefs.

Please check, perhaps, those polio-stricken legs

Could leave a mark on the faces

Of the chameleon activists who preach a new ideology every day.

One more, final request…

Please preserve that brain even more carefully for the future generations,

For though ninety percent disabled,

His “thinking mind” made this exploitative system tremble with fear.

Someday, it may help someone identify the system’s weak link.

Janjerla Ramesh Babu

President, Telangana Forum Against Displacement

(With a heart burdened by sorrow for the sudden martyrdom of Comrade G.N. Saibaba…)

Related:

GN Saibaba wheeled out of Nagpur Central Jail on March 7 two days after the Bombay HC resoundingly acquitted him & 5 others in…

Protesting for release of GN Saibaba, Delhi students ‘assaulted’ by ABVP, cops

Prof GN Saibaba Case: Supreme Court to hear Maharashtra Govt’s appeal against HC’s discharge order on Jan 17

Unprecedented, Abnormal, SC order of ‘suspension’ of sentence in GN Saibaba case

SC Staying acquittal of Prof. Saibaba and 5 others sets a dangerous precedent: PUCL

The post When the state turns rogue even protests dry up, Salutes & Apologies Professor Saibaba! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

When, as is our want, as chroniclers of the times, we are pressed to pen our words, our tribute to this special man, leader, father, partner, comrade, thoughts crowd in, yet words refuse to flow in cohesion. Exactly seven days on, after September 12 when we were numbed and chilled to the core as the 3.03 p.m. news crept in, I attempt this piece. Cringing in the knowledge that so much of meaning has already been written.

What more, then, will I have to say?

I will begin this homage, or tribute with this then, sharing (s) from last Friday and Saturday when we collectively bent our heads and grieved first at Seema-Sita’s Vasant Kunj home laced and lined with gracious scented white blooms dotted with the defiant communist red and then, the next day at the Gol Market party office, AKG Bhavan where we had spent so many hours with Sita and other comrades, over the years. I did not just meet Sita there though, over decades. It was most often at the Sahmat daftar, first the one at Vithalbhai Patel house (8 VP house), then at 29 Ferozeshah Road and the last several times at 36, Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla lane, adjoining the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) office. His visits for lunch and pow-wows with close comrades were intimate and friendly and those of us who could get a few minutes –often more—of his time—chatting with him on issues of grave importance, one on one, were lucky. The depth of his understanding of the ever morphing forms of ugly communalism-translated into a bitter abdication by the state and violence and misery for hundreds of thousands of our own, Muslims, made common cause with the work that we– Javed and I –have dedicated large parts of our working lives to robustly counter. His unwavering support of this work, through thick and thin, through better times and bad, was and is special yet part of the support that the party he joined in 1975 (he had joined SFI a year earlier) always offered and has given us. Deep bows and Lal Salaam Comrade!

Sita’s was an unwavering commitment to socialism and communism, his sharp reading of history matched his dedication to the soil of this land, the many layered and many flavoured freedom struggle that ousted the British. More than anything else it was his  nuanced layered and complex understanding of India’s agrarian crisis, the issues of labour organised and unorganised and for me especially, social justice that must come with a critique of communalism and a stand against caste that were fascinating. His admission, somewhat reluctant, of the urgent need of the party and left theorists to really factor in caste and issues of social justice to a class analysis goes back to 2001 or more. I was privileged to be among those who, with support from Sahmat, drew in all parliamentarians to support the cause of Dalits at the Durban UN Conference. That year, on August 31– September 4, when the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Intolerance, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances (WCAR) met in Durban, the first time since the discriminatory and centuries old regime of apartheid was overturned (in South Africa, early 1990s, formation of the first democratic government in 1994) through much sacrifice and struggle in that country, another group of subordinated peoples, discriminated by descent and occupation, forcibly segregated by tradition and religion from access to common resources, Dalits from South Asia, made their voice heard before the international community. The demands, sharply contested by the right and also other “mainstream intellectuals who rebutted claims on the matrix of sociological definitions” was clearly that that caste-based discrimination, which amounts to descent and occupation based oppression, segregation and exclusion be recognised as a distinct form of racism. A distinct form of racism, because it amounts (and has for centuries amounted to) to the denial of basic human rights based on prejudice, discrimination or antagonism and is justified by well–entrenched beliefs about high and low, superior and inferior.

The contrasting stance of India and Nepal are illuminating. As I wrote in Communalism Combat (April 2001, Hidden Apartheid). At the preparatory meeting for the WCAR, on February 19 in Tehran, the Indian government (NDA-I under Atal Bihari Vajpayee) made its stand clear — introducing caste into the ambit of the WCAR at Durban would amount to diluting the concept of racism. The government delegation was represented, among others, by then attorney general, Soli Sorabjee. More significantly perhaps, government spokesmen stressed that the problem of caste was an ‘internal’ one and therefore out of the purview of the UN. In stark and sharp contrast to the Indian government’s position was the Nepal government’s candour on the same issue, confronted as it was, then, with assertions of Nepali Dalits who account for not less than 15 per cent of the total population. The government of the only Hindu kingdom in the world openly admitted that caste is the source of acute discrimination and segregation within Nepal. This, it held, was a serious issue that falls under the theme of the forthcoming conference and should, therefore, form part of the official deliberations at the WCAR at Durban.

The idea of this recollection is not to lay down the rich nuances of that debate, that –given the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh’s (RSS’) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stance on caste even turned nasty for some of us supporting the Dalit demand – but to emphasise the readiness of a man of Sitaram’s intellectual and political acumen to engage with the challenge. A challenge that the demand posed, even to the organised left, the CPI-M, that has been accused of, historically and to date, ignoring the issues of caste oppression and inclusion.

Sita participated in the pre-Durban conference deliberations and lent his voice and support to the Dalit movements’ demand that was essentially attempting to take the issue of caste–based discrimination to a global forum; to solicit international condemnation of caste–based discriminatory practices and support for the struggle against it. Let’s not forget that caste based discrimination, legitimised for centuries through scripture and followed in practice by notions of high and low, superior and inferior, pure an impure. Even 77 years after independence, the problem persists. The Dalit condition, which was the result of such a pernicious theory, is the outcome of a narrow and hierarchically powerful assertion of race by perpetrators of this condition and not the other way around. It is not the metaphor of race that was being invoked but the metaphor of racism, which was the outcome of the misplaced metaphor of race. This Sita understood and as late as five months back, in early 2024, publicly articulated. The need for the organised left to be really seen as a serious political party that regards class as much as caste (and communalism) as the root of Indian oppression. For us at Communalism Combat, too this (journalistic) journey has meant deepening our understanding of how communalism (and majoritarian proto-fascism too) cannot be theoretically understood nor soundly countered or overcome without factoring in, or also battling caste.

The core of our conversations and parleys –Sita and mine–of course always dealt with the work we had undertaken, at great risk and challenge since 1992-93. First in the publishing (in book form) of the Srikrishna Commission Report on the Bombay communal riots of 1992-1993 (copies of which we sold at Rs 60 and 90 to ensure wide readability and availability). This journalist-activist action was born of our realisation that, most judicial commission reports that dissected the causes, build up and fallout of targeted communal violence post-Independence, are documents of legal-political importance that need to influence institutional memory to build in preventive and other measures to ensure that such violence does not periodically – and with more vicious intensity-repeat. For the past 32 years since then, a major personal academic and journalistic endeavour of mine has been to continually engage with these documents, ensure wider reach and availability, a task I am still currently engaged in. As editor of the CPI-M’s People’s Democracy, he was the first one, instrumental in ensuring that independent voices like us contribute to the party organ. Sita needed to fight numerous internal battles to allow me and other contributors the space to write what we wanted in PD in the manner we wanted to. But, in his own inimitable way, persuasive yet dogged, he got his way. This relationship has paved the way for a unique equation between me, a journalist activist academic and the CPI-M that is rare, precious and unique. Sita and Rajen (Rajendra Prasad) first, and then of course comrade Brinda and so many others have ensured that this relationship has been enduring. Communalism Combat (published from August 1993 to November 2012) and most particularly in the work of Citizens for Justice and Peace, post Gujarat 2002 is something that was more than close to Sita’s heart. It was an engagement that he saw as vital for the reassertion of the Constitution, a visionary document that arose out of India’s struggle for freedom. Not a day or month passed in that rich yet fractious battle (that still continues!) with a rogue state and its unaccountable functionaries, that Sita did not have his ear out for us, watchful of our predicament, support unconditional, during vilification and even incarceration. With Rajen and Sahmat in the tiny vibrant office spaces, often, and then at his Gol market office too, long elaborate discussions on the intricacies of our legal battle for accountability and reparation took place. The fact that we at CJP, always centred Survivor Voices in this battle, ensuring that the names of those who had loved, lived and lost their closest ones in the brute perpetrated violence is something that Sita deeply understood and empathised with. He met and interacted with the Survivors who bravely shared their tales and his words, his presence, renewed their faith. In not just their battle for Justice (that has remained only part fulfilled) but in the idea of India itself and the Indian Constitution too. How else can a mother who has lost her only son, another who has seen her sister and daughter raped before her eyes, a wife who lives sleepless with guilt of her dear husband’s death, a former parliamentarian not just hacked to pieces but his reputation smeared too, dare to live on? It was the warm, firm support of a man like Sita – among so many others – who met them, had the patience to listen, who spoke of the issue boldly, even when it became politically non-expedient, that meant we were not completely alone. Post September 3, 2022 when I visited Delhi after my release from jail, one of the most memorable moments of my life – one that I cherish close to me – was the lunch Rajen and colleagues organised at Sahmat – when, within minutes of my reaching, the general secretary of the CPI-M, Sitaram Yechury came by to hug and salute, with partner and fellow journalist, Seema, and soon, another Polit Bureau member, Brinda Karat, followed. Unflinching has been the support and personal respect and affection that I have been fortunate enough to receive. Hundreds of letters that I received from women activists and comrades of the AIUWFP (All India Union of Forest Working Peoples) and AIDWA (All India Democratic Women’s Association) while interned at barrack 6 of the Sabarmati Mahila Jail, Ahmedabad were an immense source of succour and strength.

Yes, it was the minor details and sheer expanse, Sitaram’s grasp on constitutionalism and parliamentary procedure, the irreverence of authority and most of all Sita’s playful charm and chuckle, all of this, that made the time spent with him, something you (silently) tuck away. To savour for another day. For the way Sitaram matched words with ideas, wove in culture and history, shared this with the ease of complete camaraderie made the conversations special.

Words often desert us when a near one passes. There is shock, disillusion, need to collectively grieve and share and then the inevitable clichés. So let me share more of some and all of these with you from September 13-14 in New Delhi.

The elegance and beauty of the flower malas and garlands strewn on the staircase up to the first floor home matched the fragrance of goodwill, care and grief within. They had been handpicked by Kanishka and Vertika (of the Prasad-Chopra-Chaturvedi clan) from the flower market at Seema’s special request. Sita lay before the beautiful, large poster of the original blockbuster, 1949 film, Andaaz with the triangular cast of Dilip Kapoor, Nargis and Raj Kapoor, directed by Mahboob Khan and the songs by Majrooh Sultanpuri. This larger than life poster adorned a bright red wall painted for Sita as a special gift by partner Seema to and for her communist humsafar and love, Sitaram. Kahwa and then tea was served graciously to all (daughter Akhila, son Danish and daughter-in law Swati) as we sat and shared the moments of loss as Pinarayi Vijayan, chief minister of Kerala, much later Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh (remember Sita was the Andhra boy who entered Jawaharlal Nehru University-JNU and became the student union president in 1978) and so many other political figures (even from the ruling dispensation) paid homage. Comrade Brinda Karat was staunchly by the family’s side both last Friday and through the weeks of care at AIMS, Delhi where he had been admitted on August 19 with a pneumonia like infection. There was disbelief and loss and as always a shared camaraderie and many precious conversations.

The next day at the party office was different, yet similar. Here was a different homage, formal, rich with the presence of so many special names from the political and intellectual firmament but it was also one large family. A large, large gathering from the morning till 3 p.m. when the final march began from AKG Bhavan to 14 Ashoka Road, the CPI-M office and finally to AIMS where Sita said goodbye must have touched 25,000. Young people, party affiliated and not, were there in significant numbers. It was not the numbers however but the shared common emotion of loss and belonging that were tangible. District committee members of the party from states across the country recounted how this man, who represented this party and organisation to the world (Sita headed the International Department of the CPI-M) and within India, across regions who spoke Bengali as much as his mother tongue Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi-Urdu apart from fine English was one of them, a comrade who had no airs, who was not just accessible but understood the value of each woman and man in this giant structure. To feel this tangible quality of what Sita was that day in the hot and sweaty mandap outside Gol Market is something I do not think one will see too often, again. His close colleagues Muralidhar, SN, yaar NK Sharma stood some distance away bewildered, unable to face the loss. Danish his second adored son quietly went up and paid homage to his father in the office, the office of the general secretary of the party, where Sita had sat, after some tussle and pulls, since 2015.

Sita’s personal life with Seema in their home and beyond reflected the openness and flexibility of him as a person, the staunch communist ideologue with a generous and practical pragmatic bent that deeply believed that the rich nuances and diversity of India’s coalition politics was not just a pragmatic necessity but possibly, the best way for an inclusive and representative government. His mentor, the wily Sardar of the party, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, groomed Sita well in the dos and don’ts of building consensus. We are too vast, diverse, bonded yet different for any structural rigidity to successfully bind us. The bonds that bind must be – like at the time of India’s struggle for freedom – bows of common cause with arrows that focus on all kinds of oppression, gender, caste and communal driven. These too must evolve with the times and technologies of the day. Language of the young laced with the rich learnings of our positive past is something that Sita respected and we must too.

Not a day has passed since that day, September 12 that I have not thought of Seema, and Sita often. It is a bruising sort of pain. Especially when I think back to that day, April 22, 2021 when the family lost their elder son, Ashish (Bhiku) Yechury to Covid-19. The grace and stoic courage with which he, Swati, Indrani Mazumdar, Seema, Akhila and Danish bore that loss is rare to see. It was the same grace that was evident on September 13-14. Bonded again in quiet and dignified grief, one heart-breaking moment was when Indrani said to me, “how tragically similar the way both Sitaram and Bhiku left us; now they are both gone.”

His dear wife and life partner Seema, a professional colleague and friend will bear the loss with her customary courage and shrugging, biting humour even as she tears up in unbearable grief. The loss will remain a constant void. The dignified threads of love and sharing with all three children will mitigate the difficult passing. Apologies for this additional dose of sobriety and sadness but it is impossible to pen this piece without reflecting and sharing how unfair it has been, for the Chisti-Yechury-Mazumdars to live through this twice. The loss and pain of a loved one’s aching departure.

For Bhiku, at Delhi’s Sunder Nursery, loved ones have dedicated benches to their beloved and lost ones (benches trigger nostalgia, anticipation and also, an inscription becomes an epitaph of belonging). Here we have, this family who has dedicated two benches to “beloved Bhiku” (Ashish Yechury). One of the inscription reads: You left us bereft but with much to discover of the season and the times captured by your camera…And the quirky touch that remains forever you. The second one, also dedicated to Ashish Yechury, ends with a poem by Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo: “So, here you are too foreign for home, too foreign for here. Never enough for both.” Both are, as I said before, in the loving memory of Ashish Yechury.

And then I think, in how many Indian and world cities, Delhi first of course, will benches be dedicated and inscribed to Comrade Sitaram Yechury? His footprints left imprints near and far, and in each of these locales, to that bench that will inscribe, deep affection, loss and love at his too early parting.

Fare thee well comrade Sita, Au Revoir.

Teesta

[1] Sitaram Yechury’s writings and speeches figured regularly and often in both Communalism Combat and Sabrangindia.For example https://sabrangindia.in/ban-private-armies-of-gau-rakshaks-by-govt-order-central-state-sitaram-yechury/; https://sabrangindia.in/a-multi-religious-multi-cultural-nation-state-like-india-must-stay-aloof-from-religion-sitaram-yechury/

Related:

‘You left us a decade too soon, when India needed its body healed and soul rejuvenated’: a farewell to comrade Sitaram Yechury

A life dedicated to idealism of inclusive anti caste India

How Do I Say Goodbye to a Comrade I Have Known For 50 Years?

The post When looks embody the soul: Sitaram Yechury appeared first on SabrangIndia.

This was the last line of his introduction to the third volume, Destruction of the Babri Masjid, A National Dishonour, published by Tulika as a tragic sequel to the two-volume, The Babri Masjid-1528-2004 ‘A question of national honour’.  Failing in health as he was furiously putting together his work on the shocking November 2019 Babri Masjid Supreme Court Judgement, I cannot help but wonder what he felt or was feeling post June 4, 2024 when the 18^th Lok Sabha polls threw up a more empowered opposition.

The decade of the 1990s was decisive in its assault on the Indian republic and democracy. Schisms visible at multiple levels then have widened and deepened to allow for the near complete overturning of the Indian Democratic effort, whose corollary as Ghafoor saheb always said, is Secularism.

It is the decades of the early 1990s that led up to the demolition (on December 6, 1992) and was preceded by the insidious corrosion of democratic institutions and the political class that my association with AG Noorani began and grew. The near regular sight of him dressed in his inimitable coat and tie, sipping a cuppa  in the Bar Council Library on the top floors of the Bombay High Court soon changed into brief, then longer meetings which thereafter took place, sometimes, at his Napean Sea Road residence. For those of us, journalists and students of social sciences and the law, who had lived through the Bhiwandi-Bombay violence of 1984 (and reported on it), witnessed with horror India’s largest political party preside over the massacre of Sikhs in New Delhi and other cities the same year, observed at close quarters the communal conflagrations in neighbouring Gujarat in 1985, then devoured news and analyses on earlier bouts of such violence like Moradabad (1980), later Hashimpura-Meerur (1987), Bhagalpur (1989) there was, increasingly, a pattern to be seen, observed and dissected. The story of “Who cast the first stone?” that needed to be told, and re-told.

Conversations with AG Noorani were a learning in grasping the play of communal politics, seeking answers to questions that many do not ask and few answer. His minute understanding of the communal violence in Bhiwandi that resulted in the epochal Madon Commission report (1970) was eye-opening. It was this decade and his unique exploration of the violent and systemic erosions of India’s secular foundations that have found him a place in India’s gallery of legal scholars.

A lawyer by training and profession, Noorani had that reporter’s uncanny eye for thorough and complete documentation and detail. His home in south Mumbai, crammed with books and carefully filed newspaper clippings. Conversations were never short and he was a stickler for punctuality. Lucky were you if he pointed up to a shelf during such a pow wow pointed to a particular spot, identified the volume he was speaking of and shared it with you, to read!!!

More comfortable with books and newspaper clippings collected over decades, he had a few chose friends, several admiring professional associates and publishers. A lover of choicest dishes and food, he was also a writer who eschewed modernity and gizmos. He wrote every manuscript by hand, sending all he penned to one particular typist near the Bombay High Court who not only deciphered his hand but re-typed any corrections with a second, often final draft.

It is no wonder –given his sharp analyses of the excursions and failings of the Indian state in Jammu and Kashmir (Article 370: A Constitutional History of Jammu and Kashmir-2011) and even Hyderabad (The Destruction of Hyderabad-2014)—that, his fine, regular, writings were only published in the in Frontline and Dawn, both fine publications. Each and all of his columns including those on how a Supreme Court judgement brought sedition through the backdoor (Kedar Nath Singh judgement, 1962) are lessons for the legal writer and journalist. He was also scathing of India’s highest court when he wrote, “CJ Ranjan Gogoi drove a coach and four through the writ of habeas corpus.” For the constitutional courts –given their sensitivity to the all-pervasive (often manipulated) “social media” reading AG on jurisprudence could often be a much needed course correction.

Where and what to recall and remember, what and how to dig and unearth, and finally, how and where to get published! Meticulous detail, integrity of purpose and persistence thy name was Ghaoor saheb. Noorani’s entire body of work, that are a tribute to both a legal and journalistic hawk’s eye shine most of all because of their unalloyed moral core. He spoke not only for what is right, fearlessly but was unafraid of the ostracisms and enemies that came of this task. The story of his publishers –articles and books –is itself a chronicle of the times that remains untold.

• Savarkar and Hindutva (2002)
• The Babri Masjid Question 1528–2003: ‘A Matter of National Honour’, in two volumes (2003)
• Constitutional Questions and Citizens’ Rights (2006)
• The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour (2008)
• Jinnah and Tilak: Comrades in the Freedom Struggle (2010)
• Article 370: A Constitutional History of Jammu and Kashmir(2011)
• Islam, South Asia and the Cold War(2012)
• The Destruction of Hyderabad (2014)

Each and all of these books—and these are only some of them — are meticulous attempts at historicising India’s contemporary reality and exposing the proto-fascist majoritarian forces out to capture and seize democracy. They are a must read for contemporaries, students, lawyers and journalists, all Indians concerned and involved in the present. They are also an invaluable documentation for the future.

Among all, I found myself browsing — yesterday and this morning, as I absorbed the news of his demise – the three tomes on the Babri Masjid demolition. They contain all and everything there is to know of this shameful act from the duplicity of the main players to the fickleness of Indian state functionaries. Two of the three are dedicated to the memory of C Rajagopalachari, “a devout Hindu, a great Indian and a consistent champion of minority rights” but it is this despairing plaint in the final one, quoting Maulana Hazrat Mohani that is the most heart wrenching, They are the murderers too, they are the prosecutors too, Whom then will my kin prosecute for my murder? (Wahin kaatil, wahin mukhbir, wahin munsif therey Aqrba merey Karen khoon ka dawa kis par?)

That Noorani should choose Mohani to quote from, in 2014, is telling. A noted poet of the Urdu language, it was Mohani who coined the slogan that reverberates in every Indian street protest, “Inquilab Zindabad” (Long Live the Revolution). In 1921, Mohani along with Swami Kumaranand are believed to be among the first persons to have demanded complete independence through a motion moved at the Ahmedabad session of the Congress.

This was the legacy that AG Noorani’s writing and vast body of work upheld. Maybe, just maybe, in August of 2024, post-election results, he would have died a more hopeful, less despairing man. Now, both India and its political opposition both need to reaffirm absolutely what AG Noorani lived and died for.

Amen.

Related:

Celebrating AG Noorani at 90!

A History of Article 370

The post Where & what to recall, what & how to dig and unearth, how to get published: The inimitable story of AG Noorani appeared first on SabrangIndia.

For the vibrant Anti-Discrimination Students Movement and Mohammad Yunus who is slated to take over the reigns of power in an unusual move, the challenge is both stark and immediate.

Reports from the Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune and even the Times of India have clearly detailed these attacks, eschewing any attempts at denial, even as they were condemned by rights activists within Bangladesh.

According to the Dhaka Tribune, in Jessore, the warehouse of Babul Saha, chairman of Bhagarpara’s Narikelbaria, was attacked and looted, while 22 shops of the Hindu community there were looted, and several houses were vandalised and plundered. The vandalism and attack took place on Monday night it was reported. At least 200 Hindu families live in the area, locals said. People from every house are now guarding the area at night. The newspaper also reported that during a visit on Wednesday, it was seen that Gobinda Saha, a resident of the area, was cleaning the broken window panes in front of his house, which were vandalized on Monday night. He told the newspaper that around 20-25 miscreants attacked their houses with machetes and sticks around 9:30pm on Monday.

“All of us in the family gathered inside the house and watched everything through the window. Around 10 people tried to break the main gate of my house. Later, they smashed the window glass with a brick,” he narrated. Biplab Kundu, a tenant of Shankar Kumar Mallick’s house, said: “After the attack on houses, we are keeping watch at night. Both men and women are having sleepless nights in fear.”

Govinda Saha said: “On information, three army patrol vehicles visited the spot. Activists of BNP and Jamaat had come to assure us of their support at night. Still, we cannot feel safe.” Additionally, the house of one Lakshmi Rani was also attacked and ornaments were looted on Monday night.

Hindus constitute about 8% of Bangladesh’s 170 million people and have historically largely supported Hasina’s Awami League. Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council leader Kajol Debnath said the attacks that targeted 200 to 300 houses and businesses and 15-20 temples left around 40 Hindus injured. “The situation is grave. We urge the army to ensure security for the minorities and bring the perpetrators of the attacks to book immediately,” Unity Council’s general secretary Rana Dasgupta is reported by The Times of India to have said.

For me, both journalist and rights activist, as heart-breaking as these accounts was the once iconic cultural hub of Rahul Ananda being vandalised and 3,000 rare musical instruments burnt down. The Daily Star reported the incident on August 6:

1 of 3

“Rahul Da and his family are shaken and take shelter to a secret place known to only a few. We could not contact him yet. It was not even his house, it was a rental space he was living in for decades,” said Saiful Islam Jarnal, one of Joler Gaan’s founding members,” reported The Daily Star. As soon as they had broken the gate, they started ravaging the house taking whatever they could find for themselves. They took everything from furniture, mirrors to valuables. After that, they torched the whole house along with Rahul da’s musical instruments,” said another close family source, to The Daily Star. In response, the Joler Gaan posted a song from their official page with a caption, “The house on Dhanmondi 32, once a sanctuary for Rahul Ananda and the Joler Gaan ensemble, was not just a residence but a creative hub where countless songs and instruments were crafted. Known for its open-door policy, the house welcomed all, where Rahul meticulously designed instruments that captured the unique sound of Bangladesh.

“However, this haven was tragically reduced to ashes, taking with it all of the band’s musical instruments, archives, and the family’s belongings. While the residents escaped safely, the loss extends beyond physical possessions, reflecting a deeper lament over the destruction of dreams and creative spirit. Despite the devastation, the message of resilience and the hope for a compassionate future remains, urging people to preserve dreams and not let anger overshadow love and understanding,” the post concluded.

What does this targeted, hopefully limited violence mean for Bangladesh, for the Indian sub-continent and South Asia? For those of us who have battled the corrosive intoxication of hate, from the time when Hindu temples were desecrated in that country –Bangladesh–after the shameful demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, close to 35 years ago, it seems like the beginning of a nightmare that refuses to end. A deadly spiral of tit-for-tat communal targeted violence that has once so bitterly torn us apart between 1946 and 1948. Reverberations and upheavals from that violent past tear us apart still be it in Ranchi, Ahmedabad (1969) Bombay-Bhiwandi in the early 1970s, Nellie (1983), Delhi (1984) Maliana-Hashimpura (1987), Bhagalpur (1989), Bombay 1992-1993 and Gujarat 2002. Not to mention Muzzafarnagar (2013) and the sickening individual lynchings of individual Muslims in India over the past decade.

Already the shrill and sectarian voices from those that rule Delhi and Lucknow have been heard and will no doubt impact the lives of innocent victims from among Muslims in irrational acts of “revenge”. As if the imposed plight of religious minorities under the present Indian self-proclaimed majoritarian dispensation was not bad enough to begin with.

What the young leadership in Bangladesh has brought in response this time, however has been a swift and reassuring response. “A special announcement resonated from a loudspeaker inside a mosque in Bangladesh, issued by the ‘Students Against Discrimination’ group. In a call for peace during the country’s turbulent period, the announcement urged all citizens to maintain communal harmony and protect Hindu minorities. The message emphasised the collective responsibility of safeguarding the lives and property of the minority community from potential threats posed by miscreants or evil forces. The group implored everyone to remain vigilant and uphold the values of unity and protection, highlighting the importance of solidarity in these challenging times.

On Facebook and X photos annotated with English translations in the photo text, so that non-Bengali friends also can understand and acknowledge the efforts show visuals of Muslims protecting Hindu Buddhist and Christians spaces and places of worship. So, while attacks on minorities indeed took place in many areas in the country, that is precisely why the students, the people of Bangladesh spontaneously in Chittagong and elsewhere, came forward for protection, to fight the bigots of their country. India and Indians needs to condemn the violence against Hindus in our neighbouring country but also fight the bigots within ours and their poisonous narratives, using these pictures. Let us all learn how to behave responsibly as majority population in a turbulent time like this.

It has been these abiding acts and images that have offered hope even as the new dispensation yet to be seen in Dacca faces a serious test. For us in India, the challenge is to first unequivocally condemn any signs of targeted violence in Bangladesh while supporting a genuinely democratic upsurge. This is both complicated yet imperative.

Are there enough of us in India and Bangladesh to do both? Both passionately and unequivocally?

Related:

Chaos in Bangladesh provides opportunity to right-wing social media to spread misinformation regarding Hindus, temples being attacked in the country

The post Lessons from a ‘Democratic Revolt’: Prevent the slide into majoritarianism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Teesta Setalvad     Javed Anand

A personal (and professional) tribute

To converse and be with Lolly (Lalita) and Ramu (former Admiral Ramdas) was to  see and behold and admire a couple who have been since we knew them– as Editors, Communalism Combat, as also activists and fellow citizens–always two peas in a pod.

Lalita Ramdas is and was always the light of Ramu’s eye and inspiration

(I still remember how he so candidly write for us in Communalism Combat, (June 1998) about his re-visiting his position as a man of the forces to a determinedly anti-nuke position within days, in June 1998 –shedding years of armed force orientation since age 15.)

Buddha Purnima to Amavasya, we called it and it stands proud in the archives of Communalism Combat. The strapline says it all: Admiral Ramdas, former chief of the Indian Navy, who felt ‘proud’ on May 11, now wants the ‘madness’ to stop

Ramu wrote then about how that re-positioning evolved and came about.

And we also recall and bring to you the piece—ever so honest, jointly written by them that we published as cover story for Communalism Combat (March 1996). They had penned it on Martyr’s Day, January 30, 1996,

“An impassioned piece for communal sanity, respect for the rule of law and social justice,” penned by Admiral Ramdas and Lalita Ramdas, exclusively on Communalism Combat.

The Fire Next Time, we titled it.

There is no better way to pay tribute to Ramu then to speak to Lolly.

And she says today, “We want all our friends to know that we are not mourning Ramu’s demise; we are celebrating his life and spirit. We want all our friends and comrades to celebrate ‘him’ with us; celebrate his indomitable spirit that refused to be cowed down by the mighty and the authoritarians! Ramu will continue to be with us in our peaceful struggles for secularism, peace, rights, justice and human dignity! As passionately as always…”

In losing Ramu we say good bye to the era of civil, rational and fair public servant, who served his people and his country as only he knew how, with head and heart. Even in a less than conscious condition, just a few days back, he turned to Lolly to say, “What is happening with India and Pakistan?”

A question that honestly begs a real answer.

Teesta Setalvad                            Javed Anand

We reproduce the June 1998 piece here for young readers to re-visit and understand our times

Buddha Purnima to Amavasya

Admiral Ramdas, former chief of the Indian Navy, who felt ‘proud’ on May 11, now wants the ‘madness’ to stop

The news of the Indian nuclear blasts came as a total surprise to many on the evening of May 11. It was also the same in the Ramdas household except with a difference. My wife was totally shocked, depressed and angry, whereas I felt good, proud and, secretly, even happy. My own immediate reactions were triggered by the thought that we have at last decided to tell the arrogant ‘Nuclear Haves’ that enough is enough and we also need to be counted in this world.

The Pakistan-India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), India Chapter, was keen to issue a statement condemning these tests, but I found myself unable at that time to go along with the draft that finally ensued and released to the press. This was not a very happy situation considering that I was, and still am, the acting-president of the PIPFPD.

This was further worsened by the wanton jingoism displayed by many important leaders in India who ought to have known better. One thing led to the other and events moved inexorably to the inevitable, when on May 28, Chagai Hills in Baluchistan burst into a whitish glow by the tremendous heat and gamma radiation of the Pakistani tests. The leadership on both sides of the border had outdone each other in the display of their madness and in the rape of Nature!

From the night of May 11 until June 3, I underwent a colossal debate within myself. One part of me was feeling elated, yet there was this other part telling me that there is something very wrong here. Almost 45 years of my life, from the age of 15 to 60, were in naval uniform. I had been brought up in the military environment and belonged to the ‘System’ or the ‘Establishment’. Years of training, brainwashing, discipline, learning the art of naval warfare and technology, being an active member and architect of many projects and schemes, all combined to generate the predictable kind of immediate reactions to our tests. It was almost like reflex action which I am sure readers will understand.

Cooler reflection and a critical analysis of the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan and the security and strategic implications became obvious. The great manthan in my mind had finally churned out the answer. This madness which has landed both India and Pakistan in a total mess must stop before things get out of hand. However, the one thing that this ‘madness’ has done is to initiate a wider public debate on nuclear weapons and their relevance to humanity, with particular reference to the sub- continent and its problems. In the wake of the tests, much has been written and spoken in the press and electronic media about the security and other compulsions that forced India to execute Pokhran II (PokhranI 1 was in 1974). It is obvious today that the timing of the tests was more for meeting domestic political requirements and less for security and strategic reasons.

The traditional arguments put forward by the hawks, namely, deterrence, status, power, and our ability to ‘stand tall’, no longer have any credibility and need to be debunked.

The so called proven effectiveness of the deterrence theory in the Cold War has no relevance in the Indo-Pak scenario. In the Cold War, there was never any dispute between the two great super powers, except for propagating their ideological isms and thereby hoping to influence other nations. In the subcontinent, however, there are many outstanding problems that need to be resolved, including the burning issue of Jammu and Kashmir. Clearly, nothing but a political understanding will really resolve these issues and not nuclear bombs and missiles!

I believe large sections of our peoples have not really understood what a nuclear war implies. Most of them still believe it to be an additional new weapon which will kill the enemy and win the war. But there are no winners in a nuclear war. The horrors of a nuclear holocaust are so different that we need to give this wide publicity. Whilst both countries claim to having set up command and control systems, and fool proof methods for initiating a nuclear attack, I would like to sound a note of caution for the information of our peoples in both our countries. Given the best will in the world there are always many things that can go wrong. Human and material failures are not uncommon.

Even in the area of conventional weapons we have been witness to things going wrong. But the price you pay is miniscule when compared to a similar mistake in this ‘Nuclear weaponised sub-continent’. Any and every approaching missile has to be interpreted as one with a nuclear warhead, which is the first step in the nuclear escalation ladder and mutual destruction. One may argue that this horrendous scenario itself guarantees security as this will deter any such action. This argument is difficult to buy as mutual fears and suspicions continue to exist. No one is likely to believe that the other will honour a non-first- use agreement even if we were to sign it. Where does that then lead us?

Given the kind of emotive leadership in both our countries the risks of accidental or deliberate use to preempt the other, cannot therefore be ruled out. To illustrate the point, India’s minister for parliamentary affairs taunted Pakistan to name the place, date and the venue for the next war. Not to be left behind, the foreign minister of Pakistan boasted the other day that they shall win a war with India in 90 minutes. These are the realities that we are up against.

For all these and many other reasons, today I am committed to the campaign for a ban on all nuclear weapons, right across the world. Perhaps this is also the historic moment for India and Pakistan to understand that both our destinies are intrinsically linked through geography and history. Realpolitik and self-preservation demands that the leadership in both India and Pakistan rise above our previous strongly held positions to defuse this highly dangerous situation.

There is absolutely no justification for any of the ‘Nuclear Haves’ to hold nuclear weapons on national security or any other ground. The need of the hour, though, is for both India and Pakistan to cap their entire nuclear and missile programme and to join hands into pressurise the Pancha Pandavas — the Nuclear Haves — to downsize and subsequently totally eliminate all nuclear weapons in a promulgated time frame.

This may sound too far-fetched to many, but do we really have a choice?

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The post Adieu Ramu, Admiral Ramdas, a public servant of civility, grace and conviction; for you, a personal & professional tribute appeared first on SabrangIndia.

What does the CAA 2019 do?

The CAA amends Section 2 of the Citizenship Act of 1955 which defines “illegal migrants”. Through the amendment, a new proviso to Section 2(1)(b) of the Citizenship Act. As per the same, persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, and who have been exempted by the Central government under the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920, or the Foreigners Act, 1946, shall not be treated as “illegal migrant”. Consequently, such persons shall be eligible to apply for citizenship under the 1955 Act.

However, in what is clearly violative of Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Indian Constitution, the law specifically excludes the Muslim community from the proviso, triggering protests across the country and a slew of petitions before the Supreme Court. The Indian Union Muslim league and at least 149 others have challenged this amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955. The petitioners challenging the law have submitted that the CAA discriminates against Muslims on the basis of religion. Such religious segregation is without any reasonable differentiation and violates right to quality under Article 14, it has been contended. On December 18, 2019, the apex court had issued notice to the Union of India on that challenge. However since the Rules had not then been framed, the union government had argued against any stay on the amended law.

IUML today challenges notification of CAA Rules

Bar & Bench reported that the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) one of the Petitioners that had originally challenged the constitutionality of the Act in 2020 has now moved the Supeme Court (SC) to stay Citizenship (Amendment) Rules 2024. IUM: L, a Kerala-based political party, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), has moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the implementation of Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024.The IUML (petitioner), which was one of the first parties to challenge the CAA before the top court in 2019, has now approached the Court to stay the Rules. In 2019, the IUML had also pressed for a stay on the implementation of the Act. However, the Union government had told the Court then that since the rules had not been framed, the implementation of CAA would not take place.

With the Rules being notified on Monday, March 11, the IUML has now moved the Court seeking a stay on the Rules. IUML has also sought directions to refrain from taking action against persons belonging to Muslim community who have been deprived of the benefit to apply for citizenship under the Rules.

As per the application filed, the rules notified on March 11, create a highly truncated and fast-tracked process for grant of citizenship to persons covered under the exemption created by Section 2(1)(b) of the Act, which defines who will not be treated as an “illegal immigrant”. This, the plea states, is manifestly arbitrary and creates an unfair advantage in favour of a class of persons solely on the ground of their religious identity, which is impermissible under articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution.

States protest

As soon as the much feared news broke, questions were raised over motive, intent. Anxiety prevailed especially for the Indian Muslim community but the Rajbanshis of Bengal and Adivasis and small farmers are no less anxious.

This article in Sabrangindia traces the bigotry behind the enactment.

The chief ministers of the governments of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala released strong statements, not only expressing their condemnation of the CAA, but also asserting that the discriminatory Act would not be implemented in their states and would be contested.

Several commentators have criticised the move as one driven by cynical electoral politics, questioning why the Centre released the Rules at this moment after four years of delays, and condemning the exclusion of Muslims, Sri Lankan Tamils, and many others from the Rules’ criteria. Besides, concerns have been expressed, again, about the over 1,00,000 Afghani refugees whom India has given shelter due to persecution in their home country and similarly close to 40,000 Rohingyas who have fled Myanmaar. Sri Lankan Tamils too reside in many parts of Tamil Nadu and are likely to be (now or in future) be harassed by a vicarious bureaucracy over this amendment.

Since this ignominious amendment was passed, serious questions have been raised on how exactly the government would verify claims of religious persecution, what parameters would be used, and what digital security measures were in place to ensure that the personal data of applicants would remain safe from tampering.

All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) posted at 10:32 pm on Mon, Mar 11, 2024:
“If the CAA cancels anyone’s citizenship, we will not remain silent.” – Smt @MamataOfficial

“If the CAA cancels anyone’s citizenship, we will not remain silent.” – Smt @MamataOfficial

We await clarification on the new rules under CAA. Bengal will not tolerate any disturbance, and we will not allow this contentious law to deprive anyone. pic.twitter.com/7K423IX8pE

— All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) March 11, 2024

Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan released the following statement on twitter

The Central Government's notification of the Rules to the Citizenship Amendment Act in the wake of the elections is aimed at disquieting the nation. The Ministry of Home Affairs has issued the notification regarding the CAA, just ahead of the announcement of the elections to the…

— Pinarayi Vijayan (@pinarayivijayan) March 11, 2024

Chief Minister Tamil Nadu was clear and straightforward

Union BJP Government's divisive agenda has weaponised the Citizenship Act, turning it from a beacon of humanity to a tool of discrimination based on religion and race through the enactment of #CAA. By betraying Muslims and Sri Lankan Tamils, they sowed seeds of division.

Despite… pic.twitter.com/mbraX6SW10

— M.K.Stalin (@mkstalin) March 11, 2024

Other protests

Assam’s chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, has openly threatened that political parties faced the risk of deregistration if they organised anti-CAA protests, citing a ruling of the Gauhati high court in 2023 that declared bandhs as “illegal and unconstitutional”. Meanwhile reports of protests in in Kerala’s Kozhikode, compelled the police to go on a lathi charge. Besides, , late-night vigils were held by student organisations including Fraternity, MSF, and NSU(I) at Jamia Millia Islamia and Hyderabad Central University. The Quint reported protests breaking out against the notification of the Rules on the very same day across multiple districts in Assam. The Indian Express reported student unions burn copies of the CAA, and the opposition declaring a statewide ‘hartal’ on March 13.

A questionable process

A close look at the Rules themselves reveal that applications for the CAA are to be made via an online portal (indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in), on which applicants would be then issued with a digital certificate of registration or a digital certificate of naturalisation.

The Rules further confirm that only persons from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who belong to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christian identities would be considered for citizenship under the Act. A person making an application through the CAA for citizenship would thus need to provide a minimum of five to six documents. These include:

1. 1. i) a filled application form;
   2. ii) one of the documents listed under Schedule IA of the Act, including but not limited to land or tenancy records from the origin country, birth certificates, identity documents, land or tenancy records;

iii) one of the documents from Schedule IB such as ration card, Aadhaar card, license, any letter issued by the Government or Court to the applicant with an official stamp, land or tenancy records, electricity papers, school leaving certificates, and others;

1. 1. iv) an affidavit verifying the correctness of statements made, as attested by a Notary/Oath Commissioner/Magistrate;
   2. v) a document providing evidence that an applicant or either of their parents was a citizen of Independent India (passport or birth certificate); and
   3. vi) if available, the copy of an expired Foreign Passport or Residential Permit

This completed application would then be processed by a District Level Committee, and then if verified, the designated officer would administer an oath of allegiance to the applicant in person, then sent to the Empowered Committee. The final digital certificate would be issued with the signature of the chairman of the Empowered Committee.

The online portal further includes guidelines for the composition of the two committees. The Empowered Committee, headed by the Director of Census Operations, is to be formed by an intelligence bureau officer, a Foreigners Regional Registration Officer, a State Informatics Officer, a Postal Officer or Post Master General, a representative of the Railways and from the office of the Principal or Additional Chief Secretary. The District Level Committee would compromise a District Informatics Officer,  representative not below the rank of Naib Tehsildar, a nominee of the Central Government, and a jurisdictional Station Master of Railways. The required quorum for each of the Committees is only two.

Curiously this aspect of the affidavit to be enclosed with the application for citizenship has raised eyebrows and generated comment:

The entire process leaves room for corruption and mistreatment of applicants both at the District Level Committee and with the Empowered Committee.

Who is the DLC and EC? The composition is questionable , which includes Intelligence Bureau officers and vaguely described nominees of the central government, with their meagre quorum of two individuals, creates an uncertain and unfair system of authentication and evaluation.

There are limited measures to check any oversight by members of the District Level and Empowered Committees and to prevent the abuse of power, leaving scope for harassment and abuse. The requirements for documentation themselves discriminate against Muslim, queer, Dalit, Migrant Workers, Farmers and other marginalised individuals who may no longer have access to documents in Schedule IA and IB.

Other serious questions remain: How far will states resist the Centre’s imposition of the CAA? How much can they resist?

The BJP-RSS led Union Government has repeatedly stated that the CAA is not intended for Indian citizens, differs from the National Register of Indian Citizens, and is solely intended for foreigners, the guidelines for accessing a digital certificate of registration seem relevant in their applicability to any suspected ‘foreigners’ in India, along with their connections to the NPR and NRC. In the midst of such a scenario, will those with relative social, economic, and cultural capital choose not to register themselves under the discriminatory Act as an act of protest?

How far should Indian citizens go and what constitutional measures are tenable in the long-term resistance of an unconstitutional Act?

With the elections near –and only some of the opposition parties vocal on the issue—the questions will re-surface. CJP’s experience, every day in the state of Assam, battling the citizenship crisis reveals, that if NPR-and NRC are also implemented as is threatened by this regime—social turmoil will result.

Background

In 2019, The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from its official twitter handle has deleted a tweet on Amit Shah’s comment on a pan-India NRC (National Register of Citizens). It is not clear when the tweet was deleted, but the move is quite surprising given the fact that Amit Shah has gone on record to say that come what may, there will be no going back on the NRC.

The deleted tweet

(Source – The Week)

Earlier in 2019 during the LokSabha campaign, Amit Shah had promised to remove every single infiltrator from the country by implementing a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC). He had said, “We have promised in our manifesto that once Narendra Modi forms the government again, we will implement the NRC across the country. We will remove every single infiltrator from the country. And all the Hindu and Buddhist refugees…we will find each of them, give them Indian citizenship and make them residents here.”

During his rallies in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee has been one of the most vehement critics of the NRC, he had said that the BJP would ensure that each infiltrator would be thrown into the Bay of Bengal no matter how strongly it was opposed and by whom.

Citizens for Justice and Peace cjp.org.in) has been tracking the government’s moves on the issue consistently

November 2022

Has implementation of CAA 2019 already begun?

The MHA has delegated to 31 districts powers to grant citizenship as per the CAA: The Ministry of Home Affairs in its 2021-22 Annual Report has revealed that it has delegated powers under Citizenship Act to grant citizenship under the controversial 2019 amendment. Delegated powers have been “given” to Collectors of 13 more districts and Home Secretaries of 2 more states. With this, Collectors of 29 districts and Home Secretaries of 9 States have been authorized to grant citizenship in respect of foreigners belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, and Christian or Parsi community from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

March 2024

How the Union of India took a giant step towards both NPR & NRC in 2015 without informed consent

This step was taken when information contained in the Aadhaar database was linked with the NPR database without informed consent, a CJP investigation with collaboration indicates

Related:

How dangerous is the CAA + NRC?

CJP spreads awareness on NPR-NRC in Maharashtra

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQS) ABOUT THE CAB/CAA 2019

WHO IS AN INDIAN? (ENGLISH)

CITIZENSHIP LAWS IN INDIA – FAQS

The “CAA”t is out of the bag

BJP deletes Amit Shah’s comment about NRC from its Twitter handle

The post Selective & discriminatory, CAA notification likely to be followed by NPR-NRC appeared first on SabrangIndia.

While the only legal way of linking the two databases is by acquiring informed consent from every resident through an exercise similar to the Census, which means through a public exercise conducted by the Registrar General of India (RGI), the process appears to have happened without any informed consent.

There is yet another angle or twist. In 2020, at the height of the nationwide agitation against the CAA-NPR-NRC, the union government had announced that the Census (now not conducted since 2011 and which was statutorily due in 2021) will also conduct the NPR simultaneously. There was an outcry of protest against this with several state governments calling for a boycott against answering those questions in the Census form that had to do with the NPR.

Four specific questions included in the NPR-NRC especially the one concerning parents’ places and dates of birth had been added. Pushed into a corner by several unaffiliated state governments, the Home Ministry was compelled to admit, that answering questions in the NPR is purely voluntary while under the Census Ac, 1948, there is a legal obligation to answer all questions put every ten years. The Census process is oral and conducted by designated officers of the RGI without any document that takes or asks for signatures. Census data collection, house-listing and household data collection is crucial for understanding demographics and formulation of policies.

In contrast, the enumeration for the NPR can only be conducted under the provisions of The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 which in fact go beyond the Section amended Section 14A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (amended in 2004) and are therefore arguably ultra vires of the Act itself. Section 14A of the amended Citizenship Act, 1955 (amendment in 2004) states simply that the government “may compulsorily register every citizen as a citizen of India and issue a national identity card to him”. It is the Rules that ascribe the process of NPR enumeration not the Act. Both Section 14A and the Rules are currently under multiple challenges in the Supreme Court.

Given this background to the manner in which the union government has been reluctant to share information publicly, also given its doubtful credentials over data collection and maintenance of data integrity, 2023 brought another surprise.

The Annual Report 2021-22 of MHA declared that crucial personal data –that can only be collected through a rigorous door to door enumeration process by officials under the Registrar General of India (RGI) and which includes Name, Gender, Date and Place of Birth, Place of Residence, Father’s and Mother’s Name was (already) collected, albeit in secretive manner, by seeding Aadhar. Mobile and Ration Card. A series of RTIs has led us to conclude that the exercise was conducted without the informed consent of Indians. A further scrutiny of MHA Reports of 2010, 2015-2016 and 2020 raise more questions.

The scale of NPR-Aadhaar linkage

How many of the NPR updated records contain the details from the Aadhaar card and have the Aadhaar number?

While the 2020 NPR Manual mentions that Aadhaar numbers in the NPR booklet came from the 2015-2016 exercise of “updating the NPR”, the RGI is silent on this and repeated efforts under Right to Information Act (RTI) to the RGI have not helped clarify the exact scale of the linkage. The 2014-15 Annual Report of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) says that the “data digitization process has been completed” and a database of “119.19 crore persons created.” The 2017-18 Annual Report of MHA contradicts this and says that, ” demographic data of 119.95 crore persons was collected in 2010 and has been updated during 2015- 16 in all States / UTs except Assam and Meghalaya”.

While there are several annual reports of MHA that give a count of the NPR records linked with Aadhaar numbers, those reports correspond to the period before the updating exercise of 2015-16. The Annual Report of 2014-15 states that NPR data of more than 23.51 crores persons has been set to UIDAI for duplication and generation of Aadhaar number, of which UIDAI generated 19.67 crores Aadhaar numbers, which is in turn a quarter of the 80.46 crore Aadhaar database generated by UIDAI.=

This number could only have grown after the 2015-16 exercise, which was intended to be a giant leap for the scale of linkage. The official records are clear that the leap did take place, but unclear on the scale or implications.

Is the NPR-Aadhaar linkage illegal?

The NPR database is distinct from the Aadhaar database. While the former draws strength from the amended section 14A of the Citizenship Act, that provides for the possibility of a National Identity Card for Citizens (Rules outline the NPR as the procedure to achieve this). The Aadhar card is simply a proof of residence, with biometric data collection to enable access to government schemes etc. The legal provision for Aadhaar came through the Aadhaar Act of 2016, which made informed consent of the holder of the Aadhaar number mandatory for its use for any specific purpose. After the 2018 judgement in the Aadhaar case limiting its proliferation (that struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act that enabled private entities to use Aadhaar data for services), serious issues of policy incursions into privacy have also been flagged.

The issue is complex. In 2010, an exercise thereafter amended, demographic information for the NPR were collected through a door-to-door enumeration process conducted by RGI, on the basis of a signed form; thereafter this exercise was abandoned. The Aadhaar number was assigned by the UIDAI authorities after the collection of biometric data including photographs, ten fingerprints and IRIS prints. The Aadhaar number is supposed to be the link between the records of one person in the two databases.

However, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 did not provide for linking of two databases controlled by two different agencies. Data for Aadhaar had actually been collected by various private agencies through camps, and not through any door-to-door visit by enumerators engaged by RGI. The wholesale linkage that happened till 2015, without specific consent of any of the Aadhaar number holders, was not backed by that law or any other law. Thus, the legitimacy of NPR – as of 2015 – is highly questionable.

Besides, the very purpose of NPR has been to establish residency (and then citizenship) on the basis of documentation, shifting the burden of proof on an individual that will then expose himself to the tyranny of a local bureaucracy controlled by governments. Absence or anomalies in these documents will lead to arbitrary exclusions from the “ordinary residents” (citizenship list) causing untold hardships and social upheavals. As the lived current experience of the state of Assam reveals. The process if not just fundamentally unfair, the ultra vires process exposes the defenceless individual to the judgment of local authorities.

Come 2019 December and the passage of the religion biased Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) caused outrage. Assertions by senior functionaries of the present union government that the implementation of the CAA-NPR-NRC would “follow a chronology” led to legitimate fears that this was the aggressive first step to use the tyranny of a bureaucratic document test to exclude hundreds of thousands of disempowered and marginalized Indians from their citizenship. Any day now fears of this “chronology” being set in motion may be realized as the CAA Rules (pending since 2019 when the Act was passed) are underway.

Assam has to date spent Rs 1,700 crores on an excruciating exercise that has caused burdens on the not just the state but a third plus of the 3.3 crore population. Arbitrary exclusions have been marked by baseless “notices” being sent by the Assam Border Police and Foreigner Tribunals (adjudicating bodies controlled by the state executive) and while a significant 2, 22, 000 citizens and their families reel under the burden of either being excluded from the NRC or being declared “suspected foreigners” or “D” Voters, our experience on the ground shows that 99 per cent or more are “genuine’ Indians!

The linkage of NPR with the Aadhaar database –without informed consent—and in a hasty and secretive manner– creates further possibility of anomalies and mismatch in documents Added to this, the the proviso, contained in the 2003 Rules that shift the burden of proof on individuals to “prove” citizenship is a recipe made for largescale social disaster and a humanitarian crisis.

It was this belated realization that had most likely led the MHA to abandon the pilot project begun earlier (obliquely referred to MHA Annual Report 2008-09).The complication referred to here is the lack of documentation of genuine citizens in this country, and also the imbalance of the power equation between the common man and the local face of the government. The same complications apply equally to genuine residents.

A union government that is truly representative of all Indians will, from the Assam experience, understanbd this. An unaccountable regime may not.

(The author is a senior journalist and Secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace)

Reference: https://cjp.org.in/cjp-exclusive-how-the-union-of-india-took-a-giant-step-towards-both-npr-nrc-in-2015-without-informed-consent/

(A collective citizens’ investigation by Metiabruz Kolkatta in close collaborators with Citizens for Justice and Peace (cjp.org.in))

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The post Creating an NPR for an all India NRC without informed consent? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In the months prior to the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, a violent mobilisation led by men who were to rise to constitutional posts (Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani), the Indian Parliament passed the Places of Worship Act, 1991. This law was meant to ensure that no place of worship of any religious dispensation was ever made subject to such an ignominious mobilization, again. On the radar of the supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal have been dozens of mosques and shrines the most prominent being the Gyan Vapi Mosque at Kashi (Varanasi) and the Shahi Idgah Mosque at Mathura. “Ayodhya sirf Jhanki hai, Kashi Mathura Baki Hai” (Ayodhya is but a glimse, Kashi, Mathura yet to be done) is the slogan that rang on Indian streets where the mob ruled in the early 1990s.

In November 1993, then again 1994-95 and 1997, petitioner Mohammed Aslam alias Bhure who was an active litigant in the Babri Masjid case petitioned the Supreme Court of India expressing concern and anxiety praying for express ideas to protect the Gyan Vapi Mosque and the Shahi Idgah one too.

Three separate benches of the Supreme Court of India made it explicitly clear that the Places of Worship must be protected and the law (PWA, 1991) strictly implemented.

Sabrangindia has accessed these orders and presents a timeline:

1994 Justices M.N. Venkatachaliah, Chief Justice, S Mohan and Dr AS Anand passed an Order in September of that year. (Mohamed Aslam Bhure had petitioned the Court in November 1993.)

Reiterating seven prayers listed by the petitioner in its Order, the Supreme Court makes specific observations on prayer (v) that asks for cases to be registered as per provisions of Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, against any person who violates the Act by causing damage or converting these places from their existing religion to the religion of other denominations.

The Observations of the Supreme Court are telling:

 “So far as prayer (v) is concerned, it is the statutory obligation of the State to enforce the provisions of the Act. It does not need reiteration that the duty is a fortiori in matters of such serious public concern. In view of the plain obligations of the State to enforce the law, any direction on the hypothetical possibility of violation, amounts to no more than recanting the provisions of the statute itself.” (Para 4)

Ironically, at the time of recording of the 1994 Order as the judgement itself documents, the District Magistrates of both Mathura and Varanasi and the Home Secretary to the State Government of Uttar Pradesh were present in the Supreme Court.

Noting this the Supreme Court observes,

 “Learned Attorney General (then Milon Banerjee) submitted that after the events of December 6, 1992, the Central and State Governments are keenly alive to the need for an appropriately heightened security environment respecting places of worship referred to, and that the Governments are straining every nerve and resource to ensure such safety. Learned Attorney General submitted that adequate security measures for safeguarding these places of worship have been enforced and in operation…..” (Para 6)

The matter does not end there. The judgement goes on to record:

    “Shri AK Ganguly (then Solicitor General), upon instructions from the District Magistrates and the Home Secretary submit that the prayers sought for by the petitioner are, indeed, the subject matter of deep, anxious and committed concern of the Government and all precautions and safety measures have been evolved and are in operation with respect to these places of worship. (Para 7)

Given the fact that, as the three judge bench of the Supreme Court observes, both the State and Central Governments are keenly alive to the problem and have taken adequate steps and these measures are already in operation, no further specific directions are passed by the Court. (Para 8)

The entire SC Order may be read below.

1995 Justices BN Kirpal, Chief Justice, SC Sen and two others passed an Order in August of that year. (Mohamed Aslam alias Bhure had petitioned the Court in 1994.)

Again, it was petitioner Mohammed Aslam alias Bhure who petitioned the court invoking the Places of Worship Act, 1991.

The Order of the Supreme Court observes, that,

“..the Petitioner has filed this petition to ensure protection of the Gyanvapi mosque at Kashi – Banaras and Shahi Idgah Mosque Mosque at Mathura, both in the State of U.P. In this behalf he has also invoked ‘the provisions of the Places of Worship ( Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which, says he, prohibits conversion of any place of worship of any religious denomination into a place of worship of a different section or religious denomination and enjoins maintenance of the status of all religious places as on 15.8.’47. The expression ‘place of worship’ inter alia includes a mosque. Lastly, he contends that Article 49 casts a duty on the state to protect monuments and places or objects of artistic of historical interest.”

“The reliefs claimed the essentially in the nature of directions to be issued to the respondents which include the state of UP, it’s chief Minister as well as the Union of India and their officers and servants to take adequate precautionary measures to protect the two mosques from the threats posed by the office bearers, workers and volunteers of the VHP, Bajrang Dal and the BJP. Directions are also sought to ensure, that people in large numbers do not collect at the two sites. There is also a prayer for the appointment of Union of India as a Receiver of these places.

“While we appreciate the concern and anxiety of the petitioner we see no reason to believe that the Central Government and the State Governments are remiss about performing their statutory and constitutional obligations referred to by the petitioner. It is their duty to take all such measures as are necessary including the restrictions on the number of people visiting the aforesaid place or places of worship to protect the said two places from possible and apprehended assaults. The two Governments, we are sure, are mindful of their obligations and we have no reason to doubt that they will be found wanting in the performance of their constitutional and statutory duties of protecting those places: Good governance demands that of them and it is also essential for the maintenance of law and order, peace and tranquility.”

A copy of this Order of the Supreme Court reiterating its faith in the State and Central government’s commitment to the rule of law was sent to the Chief Secretary of the State of U.P. as well as to the Secretary of U.P. as well as to the secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, by the Registrar General of this Court by FAX message for information and necessary action.

The third significant order of the Supreme Court in the matter, in the immediate wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid was passed in 1997.

1997 Order of the Supreme Court, Justices AM Ahmadi, Chief Justice and Sujata V. Manohar. (Mohamed Aslam Bhure had petitioned the Court in November 1996.)

Again, at the outset, the Court observes that the matter relates to protection of the two places of worship, the Court notes the previous 1994 and 1995 Orders of the Supreme Court where specific directions to both to implement the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 and protect both the shrines (Mosques) were given, the Court proceeds to issue specific and clear directions.

The Supreme Court Order recounts that the Order passed by a Judge (of a Court subordinate to the Supreme Court!) “ensuring status quo” has caused some “difficulty” as by that the police seems to interpret the order to mean that barricades to protect the Mosques cannot be strengthened, enhanced or added to. The Court then, in 1997 proceeds to recount (the abovementioned pararaphs) from the Supreme Court Order of August 17, 1995 (B.N. Kirpal, SC Sen and two others) wherein the SC had made it abundantly clear that all necessary steps must be taken by the authorities “to protect the places of worship.”

Moreover, the Supreme Court specifically observes,

 “We do not think that the Government and police authorities would have any difficulty in understanding our previous order and to understand the same since we had in no uncertain terms permitted them to do everything that is necessary to protect the places of worship. No order of any subordinate court can be construed to run counter to this Court’s Order.” (Para 2)

Clearly with the very nature of the state undergoing a drastic change, some would argue in a worryingly anti-constitutional direction, today in the third decade of the 21^st century, close to 25 years later, the directives in these first orders of the Supreme Court related to the Gyan Vapi Mosque at Varanasi and Shahi Idgah Mosque at Mathura fall on deaf years. The hasty fashion and manner in which “prayers” were allowed inside the Gyan Vapi Mosque on the late evening of February 1, 2024, after an order of a subordinate question, begs these questions.

While these Orders in this sensitive case were not available on the Supreme Court, Sabrangindia has accessed them from law archives

1994 Justices M.N. Venkatachaliah, Chief Justice, S Mohan and Dr AS Anand passed an Order in September of that year may be read here

1995 Justices BN Kirpal, Chief Justice, SC Sen and two others passed an Order in August of that year may be read here

1997 Order of the Supreme Court, Justices AM Ahmadi, Chief Justice and Sujata V. Manohar may be read here

Related:

Puja in Gyanvapi: Mosque Committee announces bandh, Shahr Mufti Batin Nomani appeals for peace

The post When the Supreme Court directed protection for the Gyan Vapi Mosque, upheld the Places of Worship Act, 1991 (1994, 1995, 1997) appeared first on SabrangIndia.

So, when the Congress leadership, on January 10, 2024, in a carefully worded statement politely declined to attend the inauguration of the unfinished Ram Temple on January 22, 2024 at the north Indian town of Ayodhya, stating this was an RSS-BJP event, it drew the predictable Sangh-BJP driven diatribe. Never mind the fact that organised Hinduisms four Shankaracharyas have unequivocally announced their decision to skip Ram Mandir consecration ceremony in Ayodhya, and have, moreover stated that the event is being held ‘against the shastras.”

The Congress’ stand, belated as it may have been, was clear. Representatives would certainly pay respects individually at some later date but not on January 22. If there was a single issue that was left unsaid –the elephant in the room so to speak –is the sheer bloodshed and demonizing that has underlain the RSS-BJP-VHP campaign behind Ram temple and Ayodhya. It has never really been about religion or personal faith but the aggressive and violent methods used to galvanise a section of the population (at last count 37 %) to validate attacks on lives and properties of fellow Indians who belong to another faith, Muslims. 

“Kan kan mein vyape hai Ram, Mat Bhadkaon Danga lekar unka naam” was an evocative poster line in the mid 1980s coined by the Delhi-based Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan in response to the violent “Garv se kaho hum Hindu hai. (Say with pride that we are Hindus)” (some Mumbaikars had come up with “Prem se kaho hum Insaan hai” at the time as well). The poster line says, Ram infuses all aspects of our lives, Do not instigate riots invoking His name. The poster line draws the single most crucial line of difference between say what Congress should be saying in response to the violent aggressive cries of the RSS-BJP: Spirituality and faith are personal, not always rational but true, organised, politicization of this, invoking violence and hate in the name of faith icons, is a recipe for disaster.

Is this language of outreach or inclusion –to an alienated and fractured population –missing from the present Congress response?

The fact that the RSS-BJP’s Narendra Modi-driven orchestrated event is being planned months before a general election (April-May 2024) when the present regime faces a population restless with rising prices, unemployment and sheer despair, has now put a peculiar onus on the Opposition on just how it calibrates its response. Especially so that this (response) does not further contribute to polarisation of voters, the only plank that gives the RSS-BJP unsurpassed success.

2024, New India, the regime’s aggressive posturing’s are also conveniently echoed by electronic media outlets, clearly aligned to government. That the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with its leadership has made no secret of its brazen motives behind the timing of the inauguration of the temple at Ayodhya, a town, always associated with the spiritual tale of Ram and Sita, the Ramayan months before poll dates is no secret. That the same media outlets have been sorely wanting in calling out this brazen misuse and manipulation is also a given. The Opposition therefore faces a particularly unfair and even shrill test, with no level playing field, when media and state agencies, together collaborate on this.

It was the Communist Party of India (Marxist) set the ball rolling on December 26, when in a public communication, the party through its general secretary, Sitaram Yechury, turned down the invitation, stressing that religion is a personal choice. “Our policy is to respect religious beliefs and the right of each individual to pursue their belief. Religion is a personal choice not to be converted into an instrument for political gain. Comrade Sitaram Yechury will not attend the ceremony despite receiving an invitation to do so,” he had said in a post on X. The very next day the Trinamool Congress leadership indicated to the media that chief minister, West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, would not be attending either. Banerjee has, since been vocal in criticizing the trumped up inauguration as a stunt being put on by a “desperate Narendra Modi.”

Will the average Hindu Indian see attendance or non-attendance as a slight of her or his faith? Does the average Indian Hindu endorse this brazen manipulation of the party in power (state) of religion and religious symbols for political gain?

It is well settled political knowledge that the BJP’s sharp rise in the electoral arena from two seats in in Parliament in 1984 to 85 seats in 1989 is largely due to a mobilisation or consolidation of a ‘all Hindu consciousness’ largely –but not only — focused around the campaign to build a Ram Temple at Ayodhya (that was also visceral and clear about its objective of demolishing a 450 year old Mosque, the Babri Masjid). This consolidation of the consciousness was equally pitched on the hysteria around ‘appeasement of the minority’ which is a misnomer when it came to economic, social and citizenship rights for Indian Muslims (the indicators were and are still pathetic) but more to do with symbolisms of religiosity and conservatism (of the minorities) that worked to re-enforce embedded societal prejudices. [1] The infamous Rath Yatra of 1989-1990 was preceded, accompanied and followed by concerted attacks on India’s minorities across the length and breadth of the country; several of these attacks took on the characted of “pogroms” with a heightened communal consciousness manifest in the anti-Muslim bias among India’s police force and law enforcement agencies. The project of Hindutva then, (unlike Hinduism) has always been about the re-fashioning of India into a majoritarian theocratic state and Indian society on hardened racial and ethnic speratives.

Coming back to the present, when the BJP sits with 303 sits in Parliament, and its scion at the top wishes to rake in all credit (including non-invites to Lal Krishna Advani former deputy prime minister and union home minister apart from being the maestro behind the 1980s Rath Yatra) for the grand temple in the name of Ram, is the Congress’ response wanting in depth and nuance?

All organs of the state have been employed, including the questionable move of providing “free” rail travel to “pilgrims” for a month (sic), all of which point to a near desperation in the nine and half year old Modi government to pull out all the stops behind this issue to beat the nagging anti-incumbency that threatens its vote.

While, several Congress leaders have wondered whether passing the “loyalty test” set up by the RSS-BJP had now become an essential qualification for being considered a Hindu. Since its declaration on January 10, the party has been trying to confront the BJP’s “anti-Hindu” slur over its refusal to attend the January 22 Ayodhya ceremony by citing the Shankaracharyas’ decision to skip the event for being held against what they consider scripture-mandated norms.

“The sycophants who are breathlessly screaming since last evening against the Congress should debate why all the four Shankaracharyas are not going,” Congress social media head and spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said. She asked: “Why was the Nirmohi Akhara, which performed the rituals for Ram Lalla for decades, side-lined?”

Significantly, top spiritual leaders of the Sanatan Hindu Dharma, Jagatguru Shankaracharyas, won’t be part of the ceremony to inaugurate the Shri Ram Temple in Ayodhya, The Struggle for Hindu Existence reported on January 7. This is a pro-Hindutva portal dedicated, it says, to protect and struggle for Hindus globally.

Yet, remaining mum on the Shankryacharyas, both spokespersons of the BJP aided by some media outlets have targeted the Congress leadership, accusing it of an “anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim mind-set.” They have displayed photographs of Congress leaders attending iftar events. Predictably, the BJP has also flagged a letter that India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote rejecting an invitation to the inaugural ceremony of the refurbished Somnath temple in Gujarat.

Nehru had adopted a principled stance, underlining the need for the State to keep its distance from religion. However, today’s majoritarian India under the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi is unabashedly (and in a self-glorificatory fashion) projecting him the sole guarantor of “Hindu interests.” Modi and the mammoth party’s PR machine has been behaving as head priest of the State, laying the foundation stone for the Ram temple in Ayodhya and performing the required religious rituals. He is also going to be the main host at the January 22 ceremony, too.

It is, clearly more convenient for the BJP to target the Congress than the Shankaracharyas, who are widely revered in the country. BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi on Thursday claimed that the difference between Mahatma Gandhi’s Congress and Nehru’s Congress was visible now.

He sought to argue that the Congress had abandoned Gandhi and his quest for “Ram Rajya”.The Mahatma’s perception of religion, however, was entirely different from the Sangh Parivar’s. Gandhi believed in the plurality of religions and abhorred any concept of the superiority of some races or religions. Stressing the need for equal respect for all religions, Gandhi had said: “While I believe myself to be a Hindu, I know that I do not worship God in the same manner as any one or all of them.” Gandhi had also insisted that the desecration of any temple, mosque or church amounted to a denial of God’s existence. In his Collected Works, there is a powerful definition of what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi meant by RamRajya.

“By Ram Rajya I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ramarajya Divine Raj, Khuda ki Basti or the Kingdom of God on Earth” M. K Gandhi, Collected Works.

Meanwhile, Sonia Gandhi, the former president of the Indian National Congress and a consistent target of the supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has recently become the focus of the RSS mouthpiece. The Organiser shares Sonia Gandhi’s 2016 letter to the Pope, a day after she declines an invitation to the Ram Mandir event. This letter is published on X, wherein the Congress leader reportedly expressed in the 2016 correspondence to the Pope, ‘if I had not been unwell, I would’ve been there to witness this sacred ceremony,’ referring to the canonisation of Mother Teresa. The Organiser is a weekly magazine affiliated to the RSS.

“If I had not been unwell, I too would have been there to witness this sacred ceremony, and to pay my humble homage to the woman who was the very embodiment of boundless compassion, mercy and grace,” she wrote. Hailing Mother Teressa, Sonia said that every citizen of India, “including our nearly 20 million Catholics takes immense pride and joy on the recognition by Your Holiness and the Catholic Church of Mother Teresa’s profound nobility of soul, purity of purpose, and service to God through service to humanity”.

X user Vinod Sharma, who is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and many other BJP leaders, shared the Congress’s old post with Sonia’s letter to the Pope, saying, “No such letter of joy and devotion, to any Hindu dharmguru about pran pratistha of Ram Temple. Religion becomes a personal matter for Sonia and Rahul, the moment they have to make a ‘Hindu’ choice that runs afoul of their personal Christian religion and Muslim vote bank.”

In a quick and sharp response, Parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor from Kerala at 8.15 a.m, Friday, January 12, was quick to counter this propaganda on ‘X’. Tharoor is also author of the much-acclaimed book, “Why I am a Hindu.”

“25 years ago, then Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, delivered this thoughtful address at the #National Youth Day function at the Ramakrishna Mission on January 12, 2009. It’s hard to imagine a more effective message about Swami Vivekananda’s teachings today. And good to recall that the INC’s identification with Hindu liberalism is not a reaction to events in the last ten years, but a long-held conviction.

[1] The vociferous demand for a special law for Muslim women’s divorce rights while Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister (1986) followed by the opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid for Hindu prayers (Shilanyas) where an inserted Ram idol had been placed in 1949 is seen as one of these acts; other responses to the male clergy from among the minority re-inforcing a religious identity label rather than enforcing social, economic and cultural rights of Indian Muslims are other issued left unresolved by the Congress.

25 years ago today, then Congress President Sonia Gandhiji delivered this thoughtful address at the #NationalYouthDay function at the Ramakrishna Mission, New Delhi on 12th January 1999. It is hard to imagine a more effective message about Swami Vivekananda’s teachings today. And… pic.twitter.com/pGuvmMD69O

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) January 12, 2024

Sonia Gandhi’s 2009 address invokes Vivekananda, “Vivekananda uniquely combined in himself the fiery national spirit of a patriot and the deep spirituality of a saint. He was a thinker and a doer, who endowed within himself the knowledge of the ancient, with the appreciation of the modern, the wisdom of the East and the science of the West, the sacredness of tradition with the necessity for modernity…. It is not just Vivekananda’s understanding and explanation of Hinduism that must be brought home to our youth. His emphasis on literacy and social renaissance is equally relevant… A few thousand graduates, he argued, could not be the basis of a great nation. Educating the masses was his constant refrain. This remains our country’s single greatest challenge as we enter the 21st century.”

Sonia Gandhi’s address may be read here:

[1] The vociferous demand for a special law for Muslim women’s divorce rights while Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister (1986) followed by the opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid for Hindu prayers (Shilanyas) where an inserted Ram idol had been placed in 1949 is seen as one of these acts; other responses to the male clergy from among the minority re-inforcing a religious identity label rather than enforcing social, economic and cultural rights of Indian Muslims are other issued left unresolved by the Congress.

Related:

Breaking: Religion a personal matter, BJP politicising Ram Temple: Congress declines invite to inauguration

The post Is the Congress anti-Hindu or anti Hindutva? appeared first on SabrangIndia.