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So the Sanghis (persons affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-RSS) are asking, if the curfew is so bad how could Jean Drèze, Kavita Krishnan, Maimoona Abbas Mollah and Vimal Bhai move around. Here is a short answer:
We moved about on foot in Srinagar, or by auto part of the way. Skirting wire, and fibbing to police/CRPF as needed. We walked till my collapsed arches burned with pain – walked, walked, walked more.

Outside Srinagar was another story. Many cab drivers refused to take us outside Srinagar, out of sheer fear, or ditched us after saying yes. But then we persevered and found one who took us via highways to the towns of Sopore and Bandipora one day, and South Kashmir the next, avoiding what he knew to be the Army camps and checkpoints. At some unavoidable checkpoints we fibbed a bit. We went to villages, where again we walked about a lot on foot.

As mainland Indians, we face less harassment than ordinary Kashmiris. We have far less to lose – no one can keep us under control by kidnapping our kids. So yes, it’s possible to move about and speak to people. Some journalists have done this also. More need to.

From Kavita Krishnan’s FB wall

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Deserting one’s wife without a valid divorce is now a criminal offence for Muslim men but a civil offence for men of other communities. The ordinance must go.

 
Image Courtesy: PTI

First Published on Scroll.in

Unilateral divorce, or the desertion of a wife by her husband without a valid divorce, is a serious offence that does immense harm to women. Its victims in India include women of all communities.

The Muslim Personal Law in India treats marriage as a contract and outlines several valid divorce procedures. But it also allowed oral, unilateral divorce in the form of instant triple talaq until the Supreme Court last year held it to be unconstitutional and void, that is, not divorce at all. To enforce the Supreme Court’s judgement, the Narendra Modi government brought a bill, but it was not passed by the Rajya Sabha. So, this month, the government promulgated an ordinance criminalising instant triple talaq.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is now denouncing anyone who questions the ordinance as a “supporter of instant triple talaq”. There is, of course, no question of defending instant triple talaq. It must be held invalid. But should it be criminalised? Moreover, can unilateral divorce or desertion be a criminal offence for men of one community but only a civil offence for those of other communities?

Clearly, these are questions for serious debate. But the Modi government has chosen to bypass Parliament and introduce an ordinance. The media, instead of asking these questions and creating a space for informed debate, is mostly helping the ruling party drown out valid concerns about the ordinance. Most news channels have not even bothered to educate themselves, let alone their audiences, about the distinction between civil and criminal offences, or why instant triple should be treated differently from desertion.

Because of this misinformation campaign, it is widely believed that the ordinance is a step towards framing a Uniform Civil Code – to replace separate personal laws for different religious communities – and ending an injustice Muslim women alone face. The reality is that unilateral divorce is faced by women of all communities. Census data shows there are nearly 20 lakh Hindu women who have been abandoned without valid divorces. The figure is 2.8 lakh for Muslims, 90,000 for Christians, and 80,000 for women of other communities.
In case of Muslim women, what made the problem worse was that unilateral divorce was allowed and legalised by the Muslim Personal Law. But after the apex court’s verdict, this is no longer the case. Now, to deter religious bodies and leaders from continuing to recognise instant talaq, we need a legal provision to penalise them if they do.
 

Selective criminalisation

The ordinance makes instant triple talaq by Muslim men a cognizable and non-bailable criminal offence punishable with up to three years in prison. The question is: how can the desertion of his wife without a legally valid divorce be a criminal offence for a Muslim man but just a civil, matrimonial offence for a Hindu man?

This is not a step towards a Uniform Civil Code; the ordinance violates the country’s existing uniform criminal code by creating a specific criminal law solely for Muslim men.

Unlike the Muslim law, the Hindu Personal Law sees marriage as a sacrament rather than a contract, so it does not prescribe a procedure for divorce. As such, Hindu men can unilaterally desert their wives without even having to say “I divorce you”, words that a Muslim man must utter to validate instant talaq. Such desertion has no legal or social sanction, yet is widely prevalent.

Perhaps most prominently, Jashodaben continues in vain to seek recognition from her husband, Prime Minister Narenda Modi, who deserted her 45 years ago. That Modi separated unilaterally from his wife is borne out by the fact that Jashodaben has repeatedly, and publicly, expressed her wish to live with him – a wish the prime minister has ignored. For millions of Hindu women like Jashodaben, it is especially tough because their husbands can leave them without even bothering to obtain a divorce, valid or otherwise.

Is this any less arbitrary than a Muslim man abandoning his wife after uttering “talaq, talaq, talaq”?
 

A civil offence

The All India Progressive Women’s Association, which I serve as secretary, holds that all forms of unilateral divorce, including instant talaq, must be invalidated, and treated as civil matrimonial offences. None should be criminalised, though.

Since the Supreme Court’s judgement, instant talaq has lost force as divorce. Saying the word “talaq” thrice amounts to an expression of intent by a Muslim husband to divorce his wife. If he follows up on this intent and deserts his wife, it should be treated as a civil, matrimonial offence. If, say, a qazi recognises it as divorce, they should be penalised with the cancellation of their registration.

If a man from any religious community threatens to divorce or desert his wife, she should be able to treat it as “marital cruelty”, and file a criminal complaint under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code. In contrast, the practice of nikah halala, which requires a woman to marry and sleep with another man in order to return to her first husband, should be criminalised because it imposes sexual indignity and violence on Muslim women in the name of tradition. Any religious body sanctioning or ordering nikah halala should face criminal prosecution as well.
 

Curtailing rights

The BJP claims the ordinance is meant to safeguard the rights of Muslim women. Is that really the case?

A woman facing instant talaq would want her husband to be held accountable to their marriage and to continue to support her. How can a husband provide maintenance to his wife if he is in jail and unable to earn?

The ordinance allows a Muslim woman to approach a magistrate and seek “subsistence allowance” from her husband even though maintenance laws stipulate that a separated woman and her children must receive enough support to continue enjoying the lifestyle they had in the marital home. So, rather than expand Muslim women’s rights, the ordinance, with respect to maintenance, discriminates against them.

What would really help Muslim women is legal and socioeconomic aid that enables them to pursue justice when they are unilaterally divorced. Such aid should, in fact, be provided to women of all communities.
 

Dangerous discourse

The media-orchestrated discourse around the triple talaq ordinance has echoes of 2013, when they helped spread the bogey that an amendment proposed to India’s rape law in the wake of the Delhi gangrape would lower the age of consent from 18 to 16, when in reality it was the other way round. By thus whipping up a frenzy, the media drowned out the valid concerns of women’s groups that increasing the consent age would serve to criminalise consensual sexual relations among teenagers and even encourage “honour” crimes. In this context, it is disturbing and dangerous that the ordinance is being promulgated without informed debate and critical scrutiny, either in Parliament or in the media.

It is imperative that responsible sections of the media urgently create space for concerns about this move to be discussed and, relatedly, about the report of the Centre’s High Level Committee on the Status of Women in India, released in 2015. It recommends reforming personal laws of all communities – and not just of Muslims – to make them gender-just.
 

Gender-just laws

The Modi government has ignored the report. Is it because it is seeking to propagate the idea that Muslim men are uniquely cruel to women and deserving of exceptional criminal prosecution?

The truth is the Modi government is least bothered about women’s rights, or even Muslim women’s rights. It is using valid concerns about the practice of instant talaq to target the community. I fear the instant talaq ordinance – and law, whenever it comes – may well be the new cow protection law, primarily a pretext to harass and criminalise Muslim men. We must insist Parliament debate the legislation thoroughly and consult all stakeholders before passing it. The ordinance must be withdrawn.

Kavita Krishnan is secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association.

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Dismissed Without Reading?
The UN report is, however, a historic opportunity for India’s people to reorient and reassess the conversation around Kashmir. India’s media and columnists could have played an important role in creating a hospitable and educative space for this conversation. Instead, what we have seen is the almost panicky attempt, on part of prominent opinion-makers, to shut down the conversation and dismiss the report as too silly even to merit close scrutiny and debate.     

For instance, Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of The Print (also President of the Editors’ Guild of India) wrote an opinion piece in The Print on 16 June, which began by declaring
 

The United Nations Human Rights Council’s report on Kashmir is so fatally flawed it was dead on arrival. Debating its accuracy, fairness, methodology or motives is a waste of time.

The opening words themselves betray that Gupta, in his haste to junk the report, has not even bothered to read the title page of the report. The report is not authored by the United Nations Human Rights Council (a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly comprising member states, that holds periodic sessions). It is authored by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (a permanent body that is part of the UN Secretariat structure and answers directly to the UN Secretary General). The OHCHR report has in fact appealed to the UNHRC to establish an independent investigation into Kashmir.

Barkha Dutt, in her column in the Hindustan Times  dismissed the report is a couple of throwaway sentences:
 

India is absolutely right in rejecting the airy-fairy United Nations Human Rights Council report on violations in Kashmir. The report pretends terrorism does not exist.

Like Gupta, Dutt too failed to correctly cite the UN body that authored the report. What accounts for this glaring lapse in basic journalistic rigour on the part of two leading columnists, and the publications that carried their articles? It seems they were in too much of a hurry to mire the report in a fog of jeering ridicule to bother with accuracy. The political agenda took precedence over journalistic objectivity.

India’s liberal journalists have claimed the slain Kashmiri editor Shujaat Bukhari as one of their own – someone who occupied “middle ground” and was reviled by “extremists on both sides.” Bukhari was killed hours after the UN report was released; he was described by Dutt as “a rare voice of moderation and reason in a public discourse bulldozed by ideological extremes” (Washington Post, June 14, 2018), and by Gupta as an “influential voice of reason” (ANI, June 14, 2018).

Would Bukhari, admired so much by senior Indian journalists for his reason and moderation, have, like them, dismissed the UN report as beneath contempt? We have no way of knowing. But we do know that his paper, Rising Kashmir, carried an editorial on June 20, 2018 on UN report, which opined,
 

The 49-page maiden report on human rights situation in the state released by High Commissioner Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein has exposed the failure of the Government of India to curb HR violations and abuses in J&K. Instead of acknowledging the report and make way for corrective measures, the government’s outright rejection and branding it as ‘fallacious’ has added insult to the injury… The most interesting part in the UN report is that it mentions the rights violations in the last seven decades or 70 years, which vindicates the UN stand on Kashmir and draws attention to the resolutions passed by the premier world body in the past… A number of Indian media reports backed the government position, which is very unfortunate as it depicts the loss of credibility and objectivity while reporting on Kashmir conflict.

If Rising Kashmir is acknowledged by them as a “reasonable” Kashmiri voice, would Dutt or Gupta reflect on the paper’s rebuke to journalists of their calibre for choosing to compromise their credibility and objectivity by contemptuously and aggressively backing the Indian Government’s position on the UN report?

Contempt For Human Rights Concerns
Gupta’s response to the UN report is consistent with his well-established contempt for human rights work in general. In 2013 he rationalised custodial killings as “controlled killings”, and challenged the principle that “a fake encounter would always be illegal.” In 2016, he scoffed at student activist Kanhaiya for suggesting that members of India’s armed forces raped women in Kashmir, accusing him of “plugging (a) stereotype of (the) rough 90s.” He did not respond to attempts by feminist activists (including this writer) to point out that in 2013, the Justice Verma Committee, set up by the Government of India to recommend amendments to the rape law, had taken cognisance of the prevailing “impunity  for systematic or isolated sexual violence” by members of armed forces against women in conflict areas, including Kashmir, and had recommended many legal protections, including the scrapping of AFSPA to bring “Sexual violence against women by members of the armed forces or uniformed personnel under the purview of ordinary criminal law” and the appointment of special commissioners “for women’s safety and security in all areas of conflict in the country.”

What Gupta’s tweet dismisses as a “stereotype of the rough 90s” is what he references in his piece on the UN report as the “Kunan Poshpora mass rape allegations.” The problem is, that the Kunan Poshpora mass rape case is not a dead case that can (or should) conveniently be consigned to oblivion.  Its survivors are still battling for justice in the courts. If, in the era of “Me Too”, institutions and individuals all over the world are being held accountable for sexual violence that enjoyed impunity for over three decades, should India’s Army and courts not be held to similar standards? Should Indians not be at least willing to hear Kashmiri women say “Me Too” and challenge impunity?

Nor is sexual violence as a consequence of militarization a thing of the past in Kashmir. The Shopian case of 2009, the case of the Handwara girl , and most recently, the case in which a Major commended by the Indian Army and Government for a notorious “human shield” episode was caught trying to spend the night with a teenage Kashmiri girl in a hotel room point to the extreme vulnerability of Kashmiri girls and women to sexual exploitation and violence by members of armed forces.

Gupta’s journalistic track record on human rights issues (which displays an unfortunate readiness to allow ideology to trump accuracy) casts a cloud on the credibility of his contempt for a report authored by a UN Human Rights body, which he claims has been taken over by “NGO-type activists.”

Emotional And Embedded  
Dutt, on the other hand, does not identify herself with such contempt for human rights principles. It would perhaps be accurate to see her as a journalistic advocate of the “winning hearts and minds” posture adopted on occasion by previous Indian Governments towards Kashmir. If Gupta is openly unhappy that Modi’s Kashmir policy has taken India back to the decade of the 1990s when “UN and Western human rights pressures” on India were much greater, Dutt has not aligned openly with a position that international human rights pressure on India over Kashmir is necessarily a bad thing. In June 2016, in her column in the Washington Post ‘Why the world no longer cares about Kashmir’, she observed that “The absence of global criticism of the situation in Kashmir is partly a success of effective Indian diplomacy, as well as India’s growing international financial influence.” But while she analysed the reasons for the global silence on Kashmir, she did not express satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) at such silence.

Now that the international silence on Kashmir has been dramatically broken by the UN report highlighting human rights abuses (several of which Dutt herself mentioned in her 2016 article), why does Dutt immediately commend the Indian Government for rejecting the report? In doing so, is she not revealing her own alignment with the Indian State’s strategic and diplomatic goals on Kashmir, something that Gupta does more openly? If Indian journalists covering or commenting on Kashmir take the Indian Government’s success/failure in suppressing human rights scrutiny on Kashmir so personally, does it not raise questions about their objectivity? Does their use of such emotional adjectives (‘airy-fairy’, ‘idiotic’) to deride the UN report, not let slip how emotionally embedded they are in the Indian State’s own position? Liberal Indian journalists today are eloquent about how journalism’s job is to speak truth to power and refuse to be intimidated by accusations of being “anti-national”: why does it seem that this principle is abandoned when it comes to Kashmir, when loyalty to a particular “nationalist” position (even if it is distinct from the hyper-nationalist rhetoric of the current Modi Government) seems to colour journalistic accuracy and judgement?

Let us took at some of the arguments made variously by Dutt and Gupta, as well as representatives of the Government of India, justifying summary rejection of the UN report.

The Report’s Methodology
Gupta terms the UN report “idiotic” on grounds that its researchers “haven’t even been on the ground in Kashmir once, any side of the LoC.” This is true – but why mock the UN researchers for it? The Executive Summary of the report itself states that the High Commissioner for Human Rights has repeatedly sought access for his Office to Kashmir since July 2016, and that India rejected this request, while Pakistan offered access if India were to grant access. Denied such access, the OHCHR then did what it has a mandate to do and has done in many other parts of the world: prepare a report based on “remote monitoring.”

In his opening statement at the 38th session of the UN Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein commented on “the troubling failure by a number of countries to grant access” to his Office, adding that
 

refusals of access constitute a serious affront to our work, and where there is sustained denial of access, and serious reasons to believe violations are occurring, we will consider the option of remote monitoring. The Office’s mandate to conduct such monitoring is unassailable, and if the Government concerned fears there may be inaccuracies it should permit us in to see the situation on the ground.

Does The Report Gloss Over Terrorism?
What about Dutt’s claim that the “report pretends terrorism does not exist”? In fact, the report has an entire chapter on “Abuses by armed groups”, which notes “documented evidence” of various armed groups “committing a wide range of human rights abuses, including kidnappings, killings of civilians and sexual violence,” and observes that these groups “are believed to be based in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir.”

The report states that
 

Despite the Government of Pakistan’s assertions of denial of any support to these groups, experts believe that Pakistan’s military continues to support their operations across the Line of Control in Indian-Administered Kashmir.

In addition to devoting considerable detail to violence against “minority Hindus, known as Kashmiri Pandits” and the exodus of the Pandits, the report also observes that
 

Between January 2016 and April 2018, civil society organizations have accused members of armed groups of numerous attacks against civilians, off-duty police personnel and army personnel on leave, including the killing of 16 to 20 civilians. Some of the alleged attacks include the killing of activists of mainstream political parties and threats against their leaders.

It has been observed that the Indian Government’s rejoinder too
 

seemed to concentrate on the terms used by the United Nations rather than the substance of the report – it objected to the use of “Azad Jammu and Kashmir” and Gilgit Baltistan to describe territories on the other side of the Line of Control and to the phrase “armed groups” for what it calls “terrorist entities.

Is this justified?

The UN’s own definition of terrorism is any action that
 

is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.

Addressing the objection “that peoples under foreign occupation have a right to resistance and a definition of terrorism should not override this right”, the UN notes, “the central point is that there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians.”
So, the UN report is consistent with its stated position by pulling no punches in its counting attacks by the armed groups in Kashmir on civilians and non-combatants, including police or army personnel who are off-duty or on leave, as abuses of human rights.

What the UN report refuses to do – as indeed any credible fact-finding report whether by solely Kashmir-based or Indian rights organisations has refused to do – is to accept the Indian Government’s position that the anger and protests of Kashmiri people are indistinguishable from “terrorism”, and that these are a result of “instigation” by Pakistan. If any argument deserves to be termed “idiotic”, it is the current Indian Government’s claim in November 2016, for instance, that demonetisation would put an end to stone-pelting because Kashmiri youth pelted stones (even at the risk of blinding and death) at police and paramilitary vehicles for Rs 500 notes from Pakistan.

The late Shujaat Bukhari had been sharply critical not only of civilian killings by India’s armed forces, but of the the spate of encounters with militants celebrated by much of the media in India. Blaming India’s “policy of dismissing the frustration and despondency on the ground as merely Pakistan-sponsored,” Bukhari had concluded, “Killing militants has come at a huge cost. The forces may kill militants but will not kill the ideas behind militancy. The past 27 years have shown that repeatedly.”

Note: a ‘Control+F’ search command on Bukhari’s piece, as in the UN report, does not yield any results for the term “terrorism/terrorist.” Both have chosen to describe, analyse, and understand the situation using the far less “loaded” vocabulary of armed conflict, recognising that the huge civilian support for militancy in Kashmir makes it, in the main, a political issue. This, they did without in any way condoning or making excuses for acts of violence against civilians and non-combatants. In what way can Bukhari’s choice of words make him “sane and reasonable” while the UN report’s choice of words makes it biased and “airy-fairy”?

The Raw Nerve: Self-Determination
Finally, we come to the heart of the problem: the part of the UN report that has really touched a nerve among its critics. The report reiterates the principle “that the realization of right to self-determination is “an essential condition for the effective guarantee and observance of individual human rights and for the promotion and strengthening of those rights”.” And it then goes on to ask both India and Pakistan to “Fully respect the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir as protected under international law.”

Gupta says this recommendation is such a grave provocation that India can either ignore it as beneath notice, or declare war over it. War with whom? That’s not clear since Gupta admits that Pakistan too is not happy about the principle of “right to self-determination” for the people of Kashmir since this might expand the choices to include “independence”.

Article I of the UN Charter and the Statute of the International Court of Justice affirms that the purpose of the UN is
 

To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for  the principle  of equal rights and self-determination   of peoples,  and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen  universal peace.

Article I of the UN Covenants on Civil and Political Rights; and on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights respectively declare that
 

All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

India is a signatory to these Covenants; but India squares these international commitments with its position on Kashmir by interpreting the Covenants to be relevant only in the context of peoples under colonial rule, thus preventing peoples in sovereign nations from being able to claim self-determination as a right.

The only problem is that India has not been especially consistent with this rigid interpretation. When Bangladesh waged a battle for “liberation” from the sovereign nation of Pakistan, India was only too happy to offer its moral and military support. In doing so, India certainly supported the right of Bangladeshi people to self-determination. India’s attitude to the self-determination struggle of the Naga people, too has been distinct from its attitude towards the struggle in Kashmir. Governments of India, for instance, do not insist so emotionally on terming the Naga leadership as “terrorists” with whom no talks or negotiations are possible till they disavow the very principle of self-determination.

Human Rights Abuses  
Finally, why are the Indian Government and most Indian commentators unwilling even to address that part of the UN report that details the well-documented human rights abuses by India’s armed forces in Kashmir?

The argument is that India is quite capable of addressing and redressing these abuses through its own judiciary and other institutions and does not need to legitimise UN scrutiny and pressure. The problem here, of course, is that India has laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) that provide impunity from prosecution to armed forces accused of murder and even rape. And India is unwilling even to consider the UN report’s recommendations to “urgently repeal” AFSPA.

It is significant that during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of India’s human rights record in 2017 conducted by the UN Human Rights Council, the current Government had reassured the Council that there was an “on-going and vibrant political debate” in India about whether “AFSPA should be repealed.” In international bodies, the Government of India cites “vibrant political debate” to argue that international scrutiny or pressure is unnecessary given India’s own robust democracy and freedom of expression. But those of us in India who conduct this “vibrant political debate” are routinely subjected to abuse and the threat of violence, by representatives of the Government, ruling parties, and influential media anchors who brand us as little different from terrorists.

Those who advice raising “human rights abuses” of Kashmir within Indian institutions without touching the basic political issue of self-determination are being disingenuous. In 2016, when I visited Kashmir as part of a team of activists and journalists from India, I was present at our meeting with Nizamuddin Bhat, a leader of the PDP, the party which till the other day shared power with the BJP in Kashmir, and which has the reputation of being sympathetic to “separatists.” Bhat made it very clear that he was against any measures to redress human rights abuses (such as repealing AFSPA, amnesty to youth arrested for pelting stones, or even release of innocents arrested on false charges) because this would embolden the political movement for “Azaadi” (independence). He said
 

If AFSPA were to be revoked people would feel a sense of victory and achievement…If innocents are released, if amnesty is announced, does that yield benefit to the system and society?

(Why Are People Protesting in Kashmir? A Citizens’ report on the violation of democratic rights in the Kashmir Valley in 2016, May 2017)

In the past four years, this situation has become more acute. In Indian public and political discourse, the celebration of acts of torture, humiliation, abuse, and violence against Kashmiri people both in the Valley and outside it, has become so open, unashamed, and loud, that it has become difficult and dangerous even to criticise even the most blatant human rights abuses. The only hope now is that closer international scrutiny and pressure can, to some extent, curb the exhibitionist orgy of violence by Indian forces in Kashmir.

An Appeal to Reason And Sanity
The UN report, in this climate, is an unemotional appeal to reason and sanity. Those lamenting the loss of the voices of reason and sanity in Kashmir should, at least, not dismiss this report in such haste. As an Indian citizen, I see this report as an invitation to acquaint ourselves with the internationally recognised principles of “self-determination” and “human rights”; acknowledge the heart of the Kashmir problem as a political dispute rather than as “terrorism”; and recognise Kashmiri people as key stakeholders in a solution to the dispute. At the very least, Indians must read the UN report respectfully if not uncritically, and demand that our Government engage with it and allow a team of UN human rights defenders to access Kashmir. One hopes that the Government of India will, at least, refrain from criminalising Indian citizens who translate the UN report into various Indian languages in order to make it available for reading and discussion.

Kavita Krishnan is Politburo member of the CPI(ML) Liberation, and Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association. She tweets @kavita_krishnan

Courtesy: kafila.online
 

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Rabindranath Tagore, the composer of the poems that serve as the national anthems of India and Bangladesh, wrote an essay on nationalism in which he asserted, “it is my conviction that my countrymen will gain truly their India by fighting against that education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.” In a letter to a friend, he wrote, “I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”

My concern, as I watched Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi, was about how the film handles its central tension – between the values of humanity and patriotism.

The plot is, by now, well known: in 1971, with the Bangladesh war impending, the film’s protagonist Sehmat is approached by her father to take his place as an Indian spy who enjoys the confidence of the Pakistani military establishment. She agrees to the unusual arrangement: where she would be married to a Pakistani army officer Iqbal, who is himself the youngest son of a senior Pakistani army officer. The film follows this plotline to depart from the usual jingoism and demonization of Pakistan that usually marks spy thrillers. The Pakistanis in the film are humane, gentle, and upright, and the relationship between Sehmat and her husband Iqbal is tender and loving. Inevitably, then, the viewer finds it unusually difficult to empathise one-sidedly with the protagonist when she murders the family retainer who discovers that she is a spy, and then, to cover up that murder, cold-bloodedly follows orders from the Indian intelligence establishment and murders her brother-in-law who is on the verge of discovering the truth.

The viewer, like the protagonist herself, is torn with feelings of remorse for having caused such pain to her loving in-laws. She has sleepless nights, is haunted by the memory of the family retainer in her dreams, and is racked with sobs over and over at having had to kill her brother-in-law.

This tension is written into the script early on. During training, when Sehmat is taught by the Indian intelligence agent how to use a poison to ‘remove someone from the way’, she asks, ‘Remove someone? You mean kill someone?’ He responds, ‘Any problem?’ and she replies, ‘Shouldn’t I have a problem?’

The film disappoints in its resolution of this tension, because it falls short of courage. Instead of exploring the full moral and ethical implications of espionage and war, it falls back on formula: the reassuring idea that decent people of every country must inevitably jeopardise and betray every loving relationship (father-daughter, husband-wife) to obey the imperatives of espionage and war. Other commentators have already remarked on the fact that the film inverts the patriarchal notion that a woman, once married, takes on the identity and loyalties of her husband’s family: but is her father’s assumption that he has a right to use his daughter as a spy any less patriarchal? Sehmat answers her father’s doubts on this count by asking, why then do we send sons into war? That, indeed, is the profound question. But the film, after teetering on the brink of asking why war and espionage and its terrible human costs are inevitable – draws back from really looking into the abyss and facing the answers. It stops short of questioning the inevitability of wars that require the sacrifice of sons and daughters. It stops just short of asking hard questions about the ethical obligations of soldiers and spies in battle: should soldiers/spies follow orders to endanger or kill civilians and children and console themselves that such collateral damage is inevitable and permissible? This question is a serious one, that the world has made an attempt at answering. The Geneva Convention, for instance, that soldiers have “the right and duty not to obey” any order that involves violation of the Convention, for instance through custodial executions or forced disappearances. The film ‘The Reader’ explores the issue of the moral obligation of guards at a Nazi concentration camp to disobey orders they knew to be immoral. But Raazi turns away from these questions that stare it in the face.

The film has enough of tension between the impulses of humanity and patriotism to be extremely disturbing, however. Sehmat’s anger at her handler for ordering the killing of Iqbal (and the woman the handler thinks is Sehmat) is not assuaged by his answer, that “Many innocents are killed in war. In a war, nothing else matters but the war. Not you, not I, just the war.” She draws away, shaking her head tearfully and saying, “I can’t understand this world of yours – where there is no respect either for relationships or for life. I want to get out of this before I become completely like you. I want to go home.” Later, when she realises she is pregnant, she tells her mother, “I won’t abort Iqbal’s child. I can’t commit another murder.” The film also hints at the lasting mental trauma of the acts of violence and betrayal Sehmat committed: she is shown in an unknown bare room that could possibly be a mental asylum.

Were these acts of violence really needed by India? Did India really need to help ‘break off a piece of Pakistan’ (the phrase used by the Indian military officer in his speech in the opening shots of the film)? Whether we are Pakistani or Indian, must we not ask ourselves why our rulers demand that we sacrifice our humanity at the altar of ‘patriotic’ wars? Must we not seek to redefine love for our country in a way that makes it compatible with peace in the world?

The Pakistani army officers, shown laughing at Bangladesh’s demand for independence from Pakistan, point out that ‘mukti’ in the name Mukti Bahini refers to ‘azaadi’ (freedom). That, again, is a tantalising reminder of the cries of azaadi in Kashmir. In a film which showcases a Kashmiri woman as a postergirl of Indian patriotism, this scene could, possibly, serve to subtly nudge the discerning viewer to ask why India enabled Bangladesh’s azaadi from Pakistan but brands it intolerable even to give a sympathetic ear to the cry for azaadi for Kashmir.

Unfortunately, though, the film resolves this tension with the anodyne conclusion that country is, indeed, greater than the ideals of humanity: Sehmat’s and Iqbal’s son ends up as an officer in the Indian armed forces, and while the forces are encouraged to remember the human costs of war, the implication is that these consequences are tragic but inevitable. “Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die” – or kill, as it may be – this is the message the viewer is left with. I suspect, though, that the discomforts the film generates are too strong to be appeased with this message. This is a spy film, a war film, after all, that leaves you recalling the tragedy of the death of the ‘enemy’ soldier Iqbal for hours after you leave the hall. This is a film that has no antagonist, no villain whose downfall we are able to contemplate with satisfaction. You could imagine a ‘Strange Meeting’ between Sehmat and Iqbal, in which the latter tells the former, “I am the enemy you killed, my friend” – in the words of the great anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting.

As I write about Raazi, I recalled an exchange from the last few pages of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose set in an abbey in medieval Europe. Adso, the acolyte, asks Brother William
 

Isn’t affirming God’s absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?

What follows is this:
 

William looked at me without betraying any feeling in his features, and he said, “How could a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question?”
I did not understand the meaning of his words. “Do you mean,” I asked, “that there would be no possible and communicable learning any more if the very criterion of truth were lacking, or do you mean you could no longer communicate what you know because others would not allow you to?”

I wonder if, in our country today, questions about the human costs, ethical implications, and necessity of war and espionage can only be raised while genuflecting to the idea that patriotism must trump humanity. If so, we have moved backwards from the times of Rabindranath Tagore, who even as an anti-colonial freedom struggle was raging, could assert that humanity was greater than country – without being subjected to hateful abuse branding him ‘anti-national’.                  

Kavita Krishnan is Secretary, AIPWA, and Politburo member of the CPI(ML)

Courtesy: kafila.online
 

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It was after this that some miscreants set fire to a motorbike outside one of the BHU gates, and pelted stones, one of which reportedly hit a policeman. I am told by BHU students that it is a total fabrication that any of the student protesters pelted any stone or indeed indulged in any retaliatory violence. Rather the stone pelting and arson by the unknown men was a pretext for the police to rush into the campus and use tear gas, lathis and rubber bullets against protesting students – injuring several severely.
 
The BHU women students have been agitating for equality for a long time – against the rules imposed on them by the Vice Chancellor who is a proud member of the fascist RSS Their movement against sexual harassment is now making history. ABVP tries to tell BHU women to be “well-behaved” unlike JNU’s “anti-national, badly-behaved” women. But women everywhere are rejecting these attempts to divide them into categories of “sluts” and “sati-savitris,” “good women” and “bad women.” They’re rejecting the attempts to pit BHU women against JNU and DU and Jadavpur women. They’re refusing to allow anyone to tell them that demanding freedom from patriarchy is “anti-national.” Jadavpur and West Bengal 
 
JNU does, indeed, have a functioning, autonomous GSCASH that is widely recognized as a model for other campuses – and the JNU VC, another BJP appointee like the BHU VC GC Tripathi has just made an attempt to dismantle it and replace it with a puppet body that will basically function under his own thumb.       
 
RSS Deeply Resents Women’s Movements For Equality  
The RSS in fact wanted Manusmriti (which is anti-Dalit and which says women must be always subordinate to fathers, husbands and sons) to be India’s Constitution This is what Mohan Bhagwat means today when he says that India’s Constitution should be brought in line with “Indian values.” The RSS finds it impossible to swallow the fact that women’s struggles for liberation could and should be counted among “Indian values.” Bhagwat has said, elsewhere, that the RSS stands for “familyism not feminism” – and that’s the problem. “Familyism” offers so-called “protection” as long as “mothers, sisters, daughters” are willing to accept patriarchal authority and avoid asserting individual identity, autonomy, and independence. This is precisely what the ABVP tried to tell the BHU women students – but failed to get them to accept.     
 
What the RSS “familyism” means is also made clear by the UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath who quoted the Manusmriti in his ‘Matrshakti’ article, saying that “a woman is protected in her childhood by her father, by her husband in her youth and by her son in her old age — so that way a woman is not capable of being left free or independent.” In that piece he had said that women’s reservations in Assembly or Parliament should not be considered till there was an assessment of whether women’s reservations in panchayats had affected their “primary role as wives and mothers.” He had added for good measure that women who “acquire manly qualities” (i.e assert their independence and equality) become like “demons.” Is it any surprise that in Yogi’s UP, women students demanding freedom from patriarchy are being lathicharged?  
 
The RSS bid to ‘capture’ campuses requires them to suppress any demand for freedom by women. In November 2015, the Panchjanya (RSS organ) carried a cover feature which proclaimed that the inclusion of “human rights, women’s rights, religious freedom, discrimination and exclusion, sexual justice and secularism” in the JNU curriculum and the setting up of academic centres like the Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion, Centre for Women’s Studies and North East India Studies Programme was due to a conspiracy of Leftists. The article also described the JNU campus students’ movements for “secularism, minority rights, human rights, women’s rights and the rights of deprived sections of society” as “the flourishing crop of such poison” that “can be seen all over the University in the slogans, posters and pamphlets that cover its walls.”
 
 Clearly, the RSS see the demands of women or other oppressed sections for equality and liberation as ‘anti-national’ and ‘poisonous.’ This is why it scares them deeply to find that these demands are not confined to JNU; they are not even a JNU export: campuses from DU to HCU to Jadavpur to Mahendragarh (Haryana) to Thiruvananthapuram to AMU and BHU have seen similar movements that refuse to be shamed, silenced or suppressed.   
 
Like the BHU ABVP, other RSS and BJP voices too have expressed discomfiture not only about women students’ demands for rights, but about the very presence of women in higher education. BJP’s West Bengal President Dilip Ghosh, now a BJP MLA from the state, declared that Jadavpur University’s women students who accused ABVP members of molesting them, are “shameless” (behaya) and that women who did not want to be molested should not go out to protest. He said “Those who fear so much for their modesty, why did they go there? This is shamelessness. Making such allegations (of molestation) is very cheap” (Indian Express, May 15, 2016).

Modi says ‘Beti Bachao’ – but this is promise of paternalistic protection is dependent on the ‘daughters’ being docile and obedient and silent. If the ‘daughters’ speak up loudly and as equals, the ABVP mindset promptly says (see screenshot of tweet by an ex-ABVP supporter of Yogi Adityanath) that “Rogue daughters deserve this treatment” (i.e deserve to be beaten up by the police.    
It’s time to enlighten Modi and his ABVP cadre that Indian women do not have to “become like foreign women” in order to demand their rights. BHU women do not have to “be like JNU women” to demand their rights. Rather, women anywhere in the world are asserting the radical idea that they have a right to be treated as human beings – not as “mothers and sisters” who receive protection conditional on good behavior; not as “goddesses” to be worshipped in the abstract and beaten, raped and killed in the real world.
 
Salaam BHU’s women students: you have written a new, inspiring chapter in India’s women’s movement and student movement!    
 
(The author is is Secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association, AIPWA) 

Related Articles:

1. Harassment of Women in BHU Invites Mass Protest: Banaras

The post Bekhauf BHU: Inspiring Uprising By BHU Students For Gender Justice appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Times of India

1) The women's movement for long has been stressing that retaliation
and revenge, whether by the State or by non state actors, do not
constitute justice for victims of sexual violence. An organized
military 'retaliation' of this kind is very very different, also, from
any spontaneous resistance or self defence by a woman victim herself.
Such retaliation by the Maoists perpetuates the same macho masculinist
logic that the State also peddles when it upholds death penalty for
rape. Such retaliation says 'We're man enough to avenge our women.'
Like the State, the Maoists might argue that such retaliatory violence
will be a 'deterrent' and so on. Again, women's movements have long
argued against the so-called deterrent potential of draconian
punishments or retaliatory violence.

2) The Maoists' rationale smacks of the logic of collective punishment
– I. E it does not claim to bring individual perpetrators of rape to
justice, or even the individual commanders who encourage and enable
such rapes; instead it kills one lot of CRPF men in retaliation for
acts done by other CRPF men.

3) By claiming the Sukma attack to be retaliation by [read: "against]
sexual violence by CRPF men in Bastar, the Maoists have undermined the
painstaking work by women's groups to seek justice for those acts of
sexual violence. There are women's rights activists and human rights
defenders putting themselves in considerable peril to bring such
instances of sexual violence to light and helping the victims or
victims' families pursue the cases. The Maoists' rationale for the
Sukma action undermines this immensely courageous work.

Finally, some journalists have flagged the possibility that some of
the CRPF jawans' private parts were mutilated in the attack. The
police and CRPF officials have so far denied this. The Maoists have
also denied inflicting such mutilation. So, in this particular case
there is no confirmation yet that bodies were mutilated. But for the
record let us reiterate what we have said often before – that
mutilation of bodies whether by State or non State actors would be
nothing less than an atrocity. If the State forces – police or CRPF –
are covering up an atrocity of this kind anywhere please hold them to
account.
 

(The author is Secretary, AIPWA)
 

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