It was a Monday morning, yesterday, April 3 that The Times of India, in a lead story, four column headlines announced the bare bone facts: that more than three decades, 900 hearings after 72 persons, all Muslims, were killed in cold blood, a local court acquitted all 39 accused. Advocates for the victim survivor families have alleged to Sandeep Rai of TOI that the judgement was delivered abruptly while evidence was still being led, evidence on the 34 post mortems of the victims had not been heard and the accused had not been examined under section 313 statements of the CrPC (power of court to examine accused to explain evidence adduced against him).

While survivors will now have recourse to appeal the case in the high court, these allegations of procedural misdemeanour have been refuted by the prosecution. Either way it should be a matter of record if the basic procedural requirements of considering post mortem evidence and recording 313 statements have, or have not been followed by the Magistrate. The Allahabad High Court, too will decide on these crucial matters in the pending public interest litigation file by Qurban Ali and Vibhuti Narain Rai that prays for a re-trial and monitoring of the case. In the famed BEST Bakery case related to the Gujarat carnage of 2002, the Supreme Court had ordered a re-trial and transfer of the case after a summary acquittal by the Vadodara court in June 2003. It is left to be seen if the Allahabad High Court follows this precedent, given that the petitioners had warned the forum of the huge lapses being tolerated in the trial court below.

The Maliana carnage had taken place on May 23, 1987, when hundreds of locals accompanied by a huge contingent of the Provincial Armed Constabulary, had entered the tiny village of Maliana, with guns and swords. All five entry points of the locality were allegedly blocked, and the massacre followed, claiming 72 lives. The day before the police and PAC had rounded up Muslims from a targeted area in Hashimpuira and shot them in cold blood.

The country was reeling under the onslaught of the Lal Krishna Advani’s blood soaked Rath Yatra in the late 1980s, a cynical mobilisation unleashed by the Bharatiya Jaanata Party (BJP) that has reaped huge political dividends after the core Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh-Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) combine “resolved” in 1986 to make the Ram Janmabhoomi (building a Ram temple where the 450 year old Mosque, the Babri Masjid stood) their counter attack on Indian democracy.

Qurban Ali, a journalist who covered the massacre at the time has narrated the sequence of events in his special article for Sabrangindia, 34 years after the massacre (2021). The district of Meerut had been simmering with tensions since April 1987 (see detailed account by Qurban Ali below) with intra-community clashes in the district and town. Both communities, Hindu and Muslim had suffered losses till this point when to an already existing force of 60,000 local police, 11 companies of the PAC (Provincial Armed Constabulary) were added. It was at this stage, Ali reports that the character of the riots that had, until then been between two communities, underwent a transformation and became a full-blown Police-PAC (even army) directed targeted violence against Muslims. Rai and other senior officials from India’s law enforcement have analysed this to be clear evidence of the seeping and corrosive phenomenon of the communal mindset within the Indian police and paramilitary. Accompanying the political ascendancy of the Hindutva right, India’s institutions saw the colouring of their functioning and impact by a partisan and unconstitutional worldview.

On May 22, 1987, in the parallel case of Hasimpura, where more than fifty Muslim youths were picked up by the UP Police and PAC on May 22, 1987, and later were killed in cold blood at the upper Ganga Canal in Murad Nagar and at Hindon river near the UP-Delhi border, the case was transferred to Delhi due to efforts by survivors and rights advocates. The Delhi High Court ultimately convicted sixteen accused PAC personnel and sentenced them to life imprisonment on October 31, 2018 though several others were spared. Maliana in Meerut was hit by violence the next day, May 23, 1987.

Also Read:

Who is to Blame?
India: Where mass murderers go unpunished
Meerut Mass Carnage: 34 years later, will there be justice?

The TOI report of April 3, 2023 was a ground report. The prosecution counsel, despite it being his responsibility on behalf of the state to ensure that the guilty are punished, Sachin Mohan, additional district counsel, blithely told TOI, “The court of additional district judge (court 6) Lakhvinder Singh Sood on Friday let off 39 accused as the prosecution could not produce enough evidence to prove their involvement in the case.” There were a total of 93 accused, of which 23 had died in the last 36 years of trial and 31 “could not be traced”.

The massacre had claimed 72 lives, all Muslim. According to eyewitnesses, “death was raining from all sides and no one was spared, including children and women.” “One burning child was thrown on a rickshaw while the charred body of a young woman clutching her two children was found inside her burnt dwelling. Eleven members of a single family were shot and thrown into a well,” a witness told TOI on Sunday, April 2. Alauddin Siddiqui, the lawyer for the victim survivors has questioned the sudden judgement and the procedural lapses it reveals. “It is an abrupt decision at a time when proceedings were still on. Hearing on the 34 post-mortems had not taken place and the accused had not been examined under Section 313 of CrPC (power of court to examine accused to explain evidence adduced against him). We will appeal in the HC.”

Survivor: Was carnage a figment of imagination?

Many residents of Maliana have termed the verdict of a local court in Meerut acquitting all 39 accused in the 1987 massacre as “a big setback”. Mohd Yaqub, 63, one of the survivors who had filed the FIR in the case, said, “I could not sleep the whole night after hearing news of the verdict. It has broken our resolve to fight. The macabre dance of death occurred right in front of our eyes. Entire families were wiped out. Yet, we have to keep our faith in the judiciary. Was this carnage a figment of our imagination?”

Residents have also recalled the events of that summer of 1987. On April 14, 1987, during the local Nauchandi fair, a cop on duty was struck by a firecracker after which he allegedly opened fire and two Muslims were killed. Another incident near the Hashimpura crossing in Meerut added fuel to the fire when an altercation over film songs being played at a religious function led to a clash between Hindu and Muslim groups that snowballed into arson, looting and rioting. Then, on May 22, 1987, a day before the Maliana carnage, another massacre took place in which 42 Muslims were rounded up by personnel from the PAC from the Hashimpura area in Meerut, taken to Upper Ganga canal at Muradnagar in Ghaziabad, shot and thrown into the water body. Though the verdict in the Hashimpura massacre was delivered by a Delhi court in 2018, leading to the conviction of 16 ex-PAC men. Neither the “FIR nor the Trial Court verdict in the Maliana verdict case have the PAC even been tried as accused,” commented Ali to Sabrangindia. He is confident that when the case does soon come up before the High Court, serious attempts will be made to set issues straight and get justice done.

“I was one of those who were rounded up and mercilessly beaten as the massacre was still on in which without any provocation, the PAC men began attacking houses while the mob indulged in looting and rioting,” he said, adding that his ribs were broken and he was in intense pain. “I was made to sign the police complaint and didn’t even know what was written in it. It was quite later I came to know 93 Hindus had been named in the FIR and there was no mention of PAC personnel at all,” Yaqub was quoted by TOI.

Failure of Justice, Substantive and Procedural:

The public interest litigation (PIL) was been filed before the Division Bench of Allahabad high court by Qurban Ali who penned this story for Sabrangindia and former Director-General of Uttar Pradesh police, Vibhuti Narain Rai IPS, a victim Ismail, who lost his 11 family members at Maliana on May 23, 1987 is the third petitioner. The fourth petitioner is a lawyer M A Rashid, who conducted the case in a Meerut trial court; the petition seeks a fair and speedy trial by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) as also commensurate reparation/ compensation to the families of victims. 

A division Bench of the Allahabad High Court on April 19, 2021 passed an order directing the state of Uttar Pradesh to file a reply as a counter-affidavit to the PIL after which a 800 page affidavit was filed by the state of Uttar Pradesh now under BJP’s Adityanath rule. Petitioners Qurban Ali and others have now filed their reply to this counter affidavit of the state of Uttar Pradesh. Pleadings are now complete and the final hearing is expected soon.

In this PIL in 2021, the petitioners had pointed out that for over three decades the trial court at Meerut was at a standstill because the court papers, including the FIR of the case, were mysteriously missing. In the meantime, UP Police and PAC personnel were accused of intimidating victims and witnesses not to depose. The trial had then been going on in the Maliana case in a session court in Meerut for the last 34 years. According to the petitioners, in this case, key documents, including the FIR, had gone missing, more than 800 dates have been given since proceedings began. At the time of filing of the PIL, the last hearing had taken place four years ago, in 2017! The decades since the massacre had seen governments of all hues, ideologies and colours rule Uttar Pradesh from the erstwhile rule of the Congress party in the 1980s to the subsequent rules by the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the BJP. None of these governments really ensured that exemplary justice would see the light of day in this case.

Long and Tortuous Road to Justice: In the May 22, 1987 Hashimpura massacre case in which Vibhuti Narain Rai, then SP, Ghaziabad is the complainant in the FIR, after a prolonged court process of more than thirty years, Delhi high court pronounced its judgment in the Hashimpura massacre case on October 31, 2018. It overturned a trial court’s decision to acquit 16 policemen of charges of murder and other crimes in the 1987 Hashimpura case in which 42 people were killed. The high court convicted the 16 Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) officials charged, and sentenced them to life imprisonment. A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel reversed a trial court’s verdict which had acquitted the accused. The high court termed the massacre “targeted killing” of unarmed and defenceless people by the police. While sentencing all the convicts to life imprisonment, the court said the families of the victims had to wait 31 years to get justice and monetary relief cannot compensate for their loss.

Though some measure of justice was done, the process has still left many questions unanswered: What about the Maliana killings where 72 Muslims were killed by the 44th battalion of PAC led by Commandant R D Tripathi on May 23rd 1987? These incidents took place the day following the Hashimpura killings.

Background: Journalists’ Eye witness account

Ali writes in Sabrangindia in 2021, “From May 19 to 23, the entire town of Meerut was under a curfew. On May 22, Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) rounded up several hundred Muslim men in the Hashimpura area of Meerut. Though not clear, it seems that some decision was taken at the ‘top’ to spread terror in the Hashimpura area. Pursuant to this on May 22, Hashimpura was surrounded by the PAC and the Army. The PAC then forced all residents out of their houses to the main Road. Then a house to house search was conducted. All residents were lined up on the main road and about 50 of them were asked to board a PAC truck. Another group of 324 were arrested and taken by other police vehicles. Most of the arrested were taken to the police station or jail but around a hundred men were driven to the Upper Ganga Canal. Once at the canal, the PAC lined up the man, shot them one by one, and threw their bodies in the water. The floating bodies were discovered after a few days, and two survivors chronicled the massacre. The Times of India then had commented:  “Here is a clear case of an organ of the state going out with cold-blooded calculation to raid and roundup a whole group of citizens, whisk them away, shoot them while in custody and then throw their bodies into the river.” The Hashimpura mass targeted killings is one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the Indian state depicting a callousness of unprecedented proportions. It was also an incident of mass custodial killing in the history of independent India.

“What the police did in Hashimpura is something that can never be lived down and the shame of this will continue to haunt any civilised Government. The way the residents of Hashimpura were treated was shameful. Hundreds of people were taken out from the locality and asked to sit on the road. Army personnel segregated men over 50 years of age as well as those under 12 to one side of the road and dumped the rest into waiting trucks. Out of 42, only 6 persons were traceable, others seem to have vanished into thin air.

“They were arrested together and taken in a truck to Muradnagar and when the truck reached the upper Ganga canal, they were shot by the PAC and their bodies thrown into the canal. More than 20 bodies were found floating in the canal. The second instalment of the same incident took place after an hour or so at the Hindon river near the Delhi-U.P. border where the rest of the Muslim youth arrested from Hashimpura were killed at point-blank range and their bodies dumped in a similar manner.

“Maliana a village in Meerut: The following day, the PAC arrived in the village of Maliana, under the pretext that Muslims from Meerut were hiding in the area. The PAC went on a Rampage, deliberately shooting unarmed men, women and children and burning some of the victims alive in their own houses. Eighty (80) bodies were found in the area believed to be those of victims of these killings. 

“An exact count of the number of dead as the result of the Meerut/Maliana massacre is still not known, although most experts agree that dozens of people were killed. According to official figures, from May 19 to 23, 117 people were killed, 159 persons injured, and 623 houses, 344 shops and 14 factories were looted, burned and destroyed. Another report notes that in the first three or four days of the riot, 51 Hindus were killed, and from May 21 to 25 at least 295 Muslims were killed, almost all by or under the active supervision of the police and the PAC. Violence, including bomb explosions and isolated incidents of killing and stabbing, continued until June 15.

“Those killed in the Meerut/Maliana massacre were Muslims. Their guilt or innocence of any kind was never an issue. Rather, the men who were killed at the upper Ganga Canal were picked up and arrested for one reason: They were Muslims. In Maliana, the killings were carried out in an entirely indiscriminate manner, with no regard for the gender or age of the victims. The Meerut/Maliana massacre was a genocidal massacre targeted against a particular ethno-religious group, clear and simple.”

Amidst the failure to deliver justice, substantive and procedural in so many cases of targeted mass crimes, where the victims are from India’s most marginalised sections, the recently concluded and hurried verdict –after a stalled trial –in the Maliana 1987 carnage case, is the sad but sorry latest. It is reflective of the deeply corrosive reality within India’s criminal justice system that denies any sense of justice to its people. 

Related:

Hashimpura a Blot and Shame, The Importance of Memory: Vibhuti Narain Rai
The Lemmings of Hashimpura – Vibhuti Narain Rai, retired officer of the Indian Police Force (IPS)
16 PAC Personnel Guilty of Targeted Murder: Delhi HC in Hashimpura Custodial Killings, 1987

The post Maliana acquittals 36 years after 72 Muslims massacred in cold blood, abysmal failure of justice, substantive & procedural appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The first attack through bullets hit and killed Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948. This attack was a declaration of intent[1] against India’s proud defiance of communal mobilisation and violence, and its adherence, despite the blood and pain of Partition to fashion itself into a secular, socialist, constitutional republic. Another body blow was dealt on December 6, 1992. Three decades down and counting, India has seen a steady downfall into an electorally driven majoritarian abyss.

Between the years, 1946-1950, the 299-day long debates of the Constituent Assembly –including the utter consensus on the Preamble and Fundamental Rights –were and are testimony to the grounded values outlined in India’s Constitution. The chapter III (Fundamental Rights) and Chapter IV (Directive Principles of State Policy) were brought in not just by the 1931 Karachi Resolution passed by the Indian National Congress (INC) but by a centuries long dialectic between the Brahman-Shraman exemplified in the birth and spread of Buddhism, the powerful Sufi-Bhakti poets and sants, the figures of Eknath, Namdeo, Basavannah, Tukaram, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Narayan Guru, Periyar, Phule –Savitribai and Jyotiba –and Ambedkar. Each and all of these, had from times immemorial challenged the hierarchies and exclusion of caste, gender and community insisting on a lived politics of emancipation. This rich tradition, marshalled by modern day –Indian and international –articulations and struggles like those of Bhagat Singh and Ambdekar, Adivasis, Forest Dwellers, Workers, further powered by international struggles and victories made up the Indian national movement that commanded a people’s document, the Constitution.

All that and more was frontally attacked on December 6, 1992 when, in full public view, while 3,000 police and paramilitary men watched, a place of worship –yes, a 400 year old Mosque– was demolished by a large, organised mob mobilised and trained to reach their destination by senior political leaders and provoked to undertake the illegal and unconstitutional act. Not only has this crime gone unpunished, but the public hate-letting, stigmatising and demonising of a section of our own people, Muslims has grown, unchecked. Since 2014 especially this hate-letting is, powerfully, if not officially sanctioned discourse.

Accounting for this time-frame of three decades needs appreciation of the manner and fashion in which both society and state have transformed into such a deeply driven discriminatory framework.

In the 1980s we saw how target blood-letting against minority populations be it Assam, Delhi, Aligarh, Muradabad, Maliana-Hashimpura, Bhagalpur, Ahmedabad, Bombay, Bhiwandi was eased and made possible by two factors, a brazen complicity of men and women in uniform and the sinister role played by hate speech and hate writing. The former phenomenon allowed crimes to erupt mostly unchecked, and the latter facilitated a climate that easily made possible a section among us to be made scapegoat and victim while the majority of us remained silent.

The assault on the Babri Masjid, exactly 30 years ago, was preceded by a politically driven astute campaign of firing up large sections of the Indian population. As LK Advani’s infamous rath yatra wound its way across India, violence broke out in its wake. The messaging was to build a temple to a beloved God, the actions were starkly contradictory: violent and crude, an othering of those meant to be confined to the margins of the citizenry. The lives and properties of thousands of Indian Muslims and Sikhs even (1984) fell to this onslaught of electorally driven majoritarianism.

If, until the 1980s a syncretic civility and some inclusion graced Indian public life and discourse, the build up to 1992 and its three decade long fall out has ushered in an aggressive alternative: a weaponised and militaristic faith-driven political language that has necessitated consistent use of threat, intimidation, rigidity and exclusion. Along with brutalisation of Indian minority populations, the past decades have also seen debasing levels of violence against Indian women and children. It is this version of a majoritarian faith that is now mired and legitimised within the echelons of state power as proponents of an ideology that found the Mahatma’s notions of syncretic and composite nationhood a threat –and assassinated him — now occupy seats of governance. Their books and their icons proudly state that the aim is to overthrown the Indian Constitution, to bring back a 2022 version of the Manu Smriti and to ensure that within this newly born Hindu-tva nation, the enemies are loudly proclaimed: the Muslim, the Christian, the communist (dissenter, journalist, independent thinker). It is on this precipice that India stands today.

Society, or a shrilly vocal side of Indian society, sits comfortably with this discriminatory hatred. Media driven by commercial-corporate-ideological considerations has bowed to dance to the master’s voice. India in the streets and in villages and neighbourhoods exists still as it once and always did, calm and inclusive, but how long will this be allowed to rest? The imminence of an all India NPR-NRC on the back of the application of a discriminatory CAA 2019 threatens social harmony and will bring uncontrollable turmoil. Are opposition spaces, political and social geared to the task of facing such an all-out onslaught and challenge?

How do we, will we, crawl back out of this abyss?

Hate is today a State Project in India where the political formation in power, its vigilante organisations & brown shirts are mentally and physically armed through hate propaganda to violently harm religious minorities, women, Dalits as targets.  Prejudiced Ideas, Acts of Prejudice, Discrimination, Violence –4 stages prior to Genocide—have been breached.  To act against this systemic hate is of course one step, given how persistent hate-spreading, like a virus weakens the wider community into a complicit silence.

Should actions be driven from the bottom or at the visible top? A multi-pronged strategy may be in order. Committed, gritty peace workers on the ground, armed with the Constitution –and an unshakeable conviction that its ideals are home bred, home grown and non-negotiable can and will strengthen efforts to reclaim lost ground from the top.

Our jurisprudence on hate letting has evolved too slowly. In the 1980s and 1990s courts a slew of election petitions filed in the Bombay High Court drew out path-breaking verdicts in three four cases. [2] Candidates and campaigners were de-barred from voting. The Supreme Court of India however overturned most or all these verdicts and the trend to hate-let, to discriminate, to stigmatise and demonise continued, unabated. Political leaders continued with this dangerous and heady mix of lacing public discourse with the pernicious poison of hate. Only of late has the Supreme Court of India made some sharper interventions.

The problem is not that there is a shortage of laws, alone. The problem is the complete absence of political will in these being effectively executed or effectively implemented. [3]

How does 2022 India effectively then implement constitutional principles, laws against hate speech? When you have in power adherents to a politics not of constitutionalism but of authoritarian majoritarianism? Are verdicts from the courts the only method out of an all-consuming hysteria? Or are sustained social and political campaigns against hate speech necessary? Where we make the viable and necessary distinction between the right to Free Speech (Article 19) and the right to live in equality and without discrimination (Articles 14, 15, 16 and 21) and underscrore –as a non-negotiable –that these are congruous rights, each with their own weight and footing. That one man (or woman’s) free speech cannot snatch away another’s right to a life with dignity and equality before the law.

In 2004, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the district administration in Tamil Nadu disallowing the entry of Praveen Togadia, then international general secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, not an outfit known for any sobriety. In 2018, in the Tehseen Poonawala case[4], the Supreme Court quoting from the 2017 Law Commission report recommended that the Indian parliament amend the IPC and insert these sections: new section 153C (Prohibiting incitement to hatred) and section 505A (Causing fear, alarm, or provocation of violence in certain cases). Before this, in 2014, was the seminal judgement that made a breakthrough in jurisprudence –understanding the phenomenon of hate speech was/is the Pravasi Bhalai Sanghatana[5] case in which a three member bench of justices B.S. Chauhan, M.Y. Eqbal, A.K. Sikri made a seminal breakthrough when they observed,

“Hate speech is an effort to marginalise individuals based on their membership in a group. Using expression that exposes the group to hatred, hate speech seeks to delegitimise group members in the eyes of the majority, reducing their social standing and acceptance within society. Hate speech, therefore, rises beyond causing distress to individual group members. It can have a societal impact. Hate speech lays the groundwork for later, broad attacks on vulnerable that can range from discrimination, to ostracism, segregation, deportation, violence and, in the most extreme cases, to genocide. Hate speech also impacts a protected group’s ability to respond to the substantive ideas under debate, thereby placing a serious barrier to their full participation in our democracy.”

Meaning that, the Supreme Court has clearly said, and this is important, that hate speech can lead to discrimination, it can lead to ostracism, it can lead to segregation, it can lead to deportation, it can lead to violence. And then the Supreme Court even went on to say that in extreme cases, it can lead to genocide. Yet the phenomenon continues unabated, as the battle between constitutional democracy and an electoral mob-ocracy continues, every day, unabated.

It is this war that is being waged between a governance structures – of state and society—premised on principles of equality, justice and non-discrimination and one –that has captured state power presently –that has no use for such niceties. There is no knowing how this battle will end, or when. This much is certain, however. The human cost has already been too heavy and is being paid, tragically, with every passing day.

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Within a year of the Modi 1.0 government of 2014 coming to power, the stage had been set for what has been a long period of confrontation. On July 18, 2015, Teesta Setalvad, journalist and civil rights activist had written this piece for The Indian Express. It remains relevant today

The tone of this government’s argument for the National Judicial Appointments Commission recalls how a former regime browbeat the judiciary in the run-up to the Emergency. What is starkly different is a chilling silence, except rare exceptions, from the Bar.

The formal declaration of the Emergency was preceded by a period when the government, bit by bit, in a sinister manner, eroded the independence of the judiciary. The separation of powers, on which the basic structure of the Constitution rests, is firm in the fundamental formation of both judicial autonomy and independence. It is this judicial integrity, autonomy and independence that are under assault and severe threat today.

The tone and tenor of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi when he made his arguments in support of the National Judicial Appointments Commission were not only unbefitting of the post but reflected the downgrading of the office, which has been reduced, by successive governments, from a constitutional authority qualified to advise the court (even if this militated against an act of the government) to a defence counsel, defending the policies of and individuals in the government.

So, among other things, Rohatgi said Parliament is supreme in our system and even the Supreme Court needs to bow before it. How inherently wrong this interpretation is. The appointment of judges, their elevation to the highest position as chief justices of high courts and chief justice of India, their transfer among high courts — all these moves manifest the inherent powers that must both be autonomous and independent. Appointments and transfers cannot be at the behest of a government, though, in a democracy, the government and opposition must play a significant role. That the present system requires correction is true; that the appointments of judges needs to be open to scrutiny and tests of representation is also valid; but the new path must answer to tests of transparency and accountability, not further obfuscate them.

Once before, between 1973 and the actual declaration of the Emergency, we experienced the brute overreach of executive power, manifest not just in the taking of political prisoners but in a move to manipulate the Supreme Court and, through it, India’s higher judiciary. On April 25, 1973, the government had, in a shocking move, superseded for appointment as chief justice of India the three seniormost judges, Justices J.M. Shelat, K.S. Hegde and A.N. Grover, and appointed Justice A.N. Ray. The reaction from the Bar was swift and instantaneous.

In Bar associations across the country the outrage was unanimous, and the expression of it, courageous.

Over the last few months, the country has been witness to the face-off between the government and the Supreme Court. In the next few weeks will come a decision from the court that will, whichever way it goes, have a lasting impact. There has been little substance and even less grace in the attorney general’s arguments. That our higher judiciary is facing a serious issue of credibility — a result of both perception and reality — makes this face-off even more sinister. The regime is riding high on this perception, never mind the fact that it represents a worldview that has shown, through past and present conduct, scant respect for fundamental rights or the Constitution.

Given this complex scenario, it becomes necessary to look closely at the present attempt (even more crass than in the 1970s) of the executive to browbeat our judiciary. We need to go back to the May of 1973, when a historic protest meeting was held in Bombay. The galaxy of speakers that addressed the meeting included M. Hidayatullah, J.C. Shah, C.K. Daphtary, H.V.R. Iyengar, K. Subba

Rao and, of course, N.A. Palkhivala. My grandfather, M.C. Setalvad, India’s first attorney general, was among the speakers. I was 11 at the time.

The speeches were inspiring and erudite. (They were reproduced later in a booklet, A Judiciary Made to Measure, published by Palkhivala.) Setalvad and Palkhivala had both reacted sharply to senior lawyer and Union minister M. Kumaramangalam’s speech in Parliament defending the government’s action. There is a chilling similarity between what was said then and what Rohatgi is saying today.

Kumaramangalam said that since Parliament was supreme in India, it was but natural that, when it comes to the appointment of the chief justice, the government would select a person who would uphold the government’s view of the Constitution. Setalvad critiqued this interpretation as partisan and misguided, since this meant that the government was bound to uphold not the philosophy underlying the Constitution but a particular government’s understanding of that philosophy.

Setalvad said: “We all know that when a judge takes office, including the chief justice, he takes an oath of office and his oath pledges him, among other things, to decide cases in accordance with the Constitution. Now if he looks at the Constitution and feels that its interpretation is, according to him, in a particular direction or it has a particular meaning, he has not to give that direction or meaning to the words of the Constitution. He has to apply to the words of the Constitution, contrary to his own understanding, the philosophy of the government… The philosophy of the government would mean the philosophy of the ruling party… Therefore, the judge or the chief justice has to keep track… not of the language and the words of the Constitution, but of the philosophy of the ruling party which may change from time to time.”

What could be the consequences of such a move? According to Setalvad: “Though the observations which were made in the Lok Sabha by Kumaramangalam refer to the office of the chief justice, they would apply all the way down to all judicial appointments. Every judge of the Supreme Court when making a decision in which government policy is in question will have to think of his prospects of being appointed the chief justice and bear in mind what the philosophy of the government of the day is… Nay, it will travel down further. Take the judges of the high court. Naturally and rightly, they all aspire, as soon as they grow senior, to be selected for the highest court in the land. But they must bear in mind that in order to be so selected they must also interpret the Constitution, not as they think it requires to be interpreted, but according to the philosophy of the government in power at the Centre.”

Succinctly arguing against the “pre-eminence of Parliament over the court”, Palkhiwala had said that “Kumaramangalam has argued that the government wants a chief justice who is able to recognise that Parliament is sovereign; that Parliament’s powers in relation to the future are sovereign powers… This ability required of the chief justice makes a mockery of the Constitution. Parliament has no unfettered sovereignty. The Constitution is supreme over Parliament; and not Parliament over the Constitution… The Supreme Court has itself held by a majority in the great constitutional case decided on April 24, 1973, that Parliament has no power to amend the Constitution in such a way as to alter the basic structure… Kumaramangalam’s statement amounts to a refusal to accept the law as laid down by the Supreme Court.”

In those dark days, the silver lining was the audible protest from the Bar. Today, when we await a verdict on which the future of India could hinge, a studied silence, by and large, prevails. Faced with a regime defined by its credo of vendetta-driven governance, the India that was built on the wisdom of men and women who had, through sweat, principles and toil, fought against a colonial oppressor, needs to give voice to a spirited resistance that reaffirms its fundamentals.

The writer is a civil rights activist and journalist.

(This article first appeared in The Indian Express on July 18, 2015)

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The case sent shock waves down the Indian Catholic Church and its aftermath has left fissures and with it, a deep questioning. Known by some as the Kuravilangad Case, it is more familiarly associated with the nomenclature, ‘(Bishop) Franco Mulakkal rape case’, as the former was accused and charged with the sexual assault of a nun, also the Mother General of the Missionaries of Jesus is a Diocesan Congregation. The Bishop (in question) is the supreme authority and patron of the Congregation and had full hierarchical authority over the Survivor. After a five year saga of uncertainty and trauma for the Survivor who first brought this to the notice to the church superiors in July 2017, a lower court in Kerala, Additional Sessions Judge G Gopakumar, acquitted the accused on January 14, 2022. The appeal now lies in the Kerala high court.

In short, a survivor nun belonging to the Missionary of MJ (Missionaries of Jesus) had accused her superior, Bishop Franco Mulakkal, of sexually assaulting her thirteen times between 2014 and 2016. The uproar caused by the case had led to the Boshop being suspended by the Vatican in September 2018.

What has also emerged from within the Church and Indian Catholic community, since July 11, 2017 when she first brought the series of sexual assaults to notice within her church by writing to Cardinal Alencherry, the head of the Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala, is a small and tightly knit group of Survivor Supporters, from within the religious and laity that has made bold to look power brokers in the eye and stand by the Survivor.

On September 26, in continuance of this gritty battle from within, the ‘Forum of Religious for Justice and Peace’ held its XVII National Convention at the Montfort Social Institute, Hyderabad, Telangana released a 56-page booklet, The Kuravilangad Case – A Critical Study. With detailed legal analyses and comments by advocates and feminist activists, Flavia Agnes and Rebecca Mammen, and also advocate and editor, LiveLaw, Manu Sebastian, the very publication of this case-study has raised the hackles within sections of the hierarchy.

The booklet has been edited by the rights activist and Jesuit priest, Father Cedric Prakash. Fr Prakash has been canvassing for intersectionality within human rights for decades. He is also recipient of the President of India’s Kabir Puraskar. Mamen-John and Sebastian had spoken, a week after the session court verdict acquitting the Bishop, on January 22, 2022 at a webinar organised by the Forum. 

Dorothy Fernandes PBVM, National Convener of the Forum of Religious for Justice and Peace has, among the others associated with this gritty initiative. She raises the question on the why of such a booklet and seminar discussions around this case within the Church are necessary. “The publication of this booklet (which also contains some other important documentation relevant to the case) we sincerely hope, will help clarify many doubts in the minds of the clergy religious and the laity at large. We also hope that women in the Church will try to enter into the trauma of a rape survivor and would have the courage to change their prejudiced lens and see the truth as it really and painfully is. Rape is rape, even if it happened once and it is a violation of the vow of celibacy. If adultery is a sufficient reason to deny sacraments to the laity, why is not defrocking also applied to Priests and Bishops?” Dorothy Fernandes asks in her foreword to the publication.

Rebecca M. John, a criminal lawyer practicing in the Supreme Court, has described the verdict as a travesty. “The verdict (of January 14, 2022) is a travesty, which has put the victim on trial instead of the accused. The verdict overturned the criminal law jurisprudence and completely disregarded the law of the land, said Rebecca Mammen John, noted criminal lawyer at a webinar held on January 22. John also bemoaned that the trial court went about nitpicking and disbelieving the victim “in a way which is impermissible in law.” The evidential value of a rape survivor, she explained, is different from other criminal cases and the court has failed to appreciate it, especially the fact that, as a superior in a diocesan congregation, the accuser was under a fiduciary relationship with the accused.

What does a fiduciary relationship mean?

The Bishop, who was the perpetrator, had full authority over her and the Congregation, and was capable of going to any extent to impose his will; all this paralysed her emotionally.

Advocate Manu Sebastian explains how, “In the evidence law we follow a principle that, even if a witness is saying some things which are not believable or exaggerated, that does not mean that the entire testimony of the witness should be discarded. This is based on common sense

because no person will be able to completely recount what happened a few years ago. There could be some lapses. The courts have the duty to separate the grain from the chaff. The court has to find out the elements of truth from what the witnesses are saying. In this case it is my humble opinion that the court has failed to extract truth from the testimony of the victim and the witnesses and rejected the entire testimony.

“Her character was put on trial. There are several paragraphs in the judgement to explain complaints made by a relative of the victim. The same relative later told the court that she had made a false complaint. But the court believed her. The court is disbelieving three nuns and believing another witness who admitted that she had made a false complaint. This is a contradictory approach by the court.

“The court said that the victim and the bishop had travelled together and attended a certain function and during the function she appeared to be happy and talking friendly to the bishop. From that the court presumes that she was in a friendly relationship with the bishops. There is a fundamental flow in this conclusion because Bishop Franco had no defence of consensual sex; he had not put forward a case of consensual sex. The court is taking up a case of consensual sex by referring to bishop and the survivor travelling together and exchanging some emails.

“The latest such verdict was December 1, 2021, when the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Phool Singh, a Madhya Pradesh man accused of rape, based on the testimonies of the survivor in the absence of a supportive medical certificate or other collaborative evidences.

“The Supreme Court said that in a case of rape, no self-respecting woman would come forward just to make “a humiliating statement against her honor.” It also warns courts not to overlook the “inherent bashfulness of the females and the tendency to conceal outrage of sexual aggression” while dealing with rape cases.

Dateline Complaint of Sexual Assault by Survivor Nun

After summoning much courage, the Survivor first wrote to Cardinal Alencherry, the head of the Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala on July 11, 2017.  On January 28, 2018, nearly six months later, she wrote to the Apostolic Nuncio to India. Having received no satisfactory answers to her first plea within her church hierarchy. Having received no satisfactory answers, she then directly wrote on May 14, 2018 directly to the Pope himself and to three Dicastries of the Vatican. What this booklet stresses, addressing every Indian Christian is, that the survivor nun first made every effort to resolve the issue within the Church. Finally, distinctly uncomfortable with her firm stance, it was Bishop Franco who filed false, fabricated cases against her and her family members. It was then that she approached the police.

Well known feminist legal scholar and Mumbai-based women’s right advocate, Flavia Agnes has a section in the booklet authored by her that addresses the issue both within scope of newly amended Indian criminal law jurisprudence and the cannons of the reformed religious texts within the Catholic Church hierarchy. Agnes is also part of ‘Sisters in Solidarity’, a group which has been providing socio-legal support to the survivor.

Paying a tribute to the survivor nun, who, after first raising the issue of Bishop Franco Mulakkal, of sexually assaulting her thirteen times between 2014 and 16, within the church in July 2017, finally filed a police complaint in June 2018. Agnes informs us that the grit and courage of the nun, at great personal cost, including slurs on her reputation, needs note and support.

Nuns are extremely vulnerable within the formal power structures of the church hierarchy and “bound by the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, a nun has no exposure as to how to ward of sexual abuse from her superiors, who she revers as the earthly embodiment of Jesus Christ. The mental shackles that she must overcome to acknowledge that what she is being subjected to is the crime of sexual assault, overcome the trauma that her vow of chastity is violated by this act, come to terms with the shame and stigma which will befall her when the abuse is brought to light, and her extreme vulnerability if disciplinary action is taken against her for her transgression, is something which those outside of these structures may not even be able to fathom.”

If the internal structures had been at all open to scrutiny and correction, they had ample time between the month of July 2017 when she addressed them and 2018, when she finally made the police complaint. The church, instead of responding with sensitivity, protecting the dignity of the survivor, seemed more concerned about its reputation, however.

Agnes critiques the internal processes of enquiry within church structures lack transparency. Bound by the provision of Pontifical Secrecy, seldom is there a judgement in the public domain that can be scrutinised to understand the canon law governing such transgressions, the procedure followed, the final outcome and the remedial measures adopted. Hence, there are hardly any lessons to be learnt or best practices laid down for future cases.

A measure of correction has been set in motion on December 6, 2019, when the current Pope Francis removed the archaic provision of Pontifical Secret, to bring in greater transparency while investigating sexual abuse within the church. In February 2022, the Pope Francis faced with myriad such examples of allegations of sexual abuse, gave a clear message to consecrated women to fight for their rights. “I invite them to fight when, in some cases, they are treated unfairly, even within the Church,” he urged, “when they serve so much that they are reduced to servitude —at times, by men of the Church.”

Acquittal does not mean Accused not Guilty

Flavia Agnes in her detailed and erudite analysis, also explains foe any acquittal in a criminal court does not exonerate the accused of committing the crime of sexual assault on a subordinate. It only proves that the prosecution was not able to prove the charge ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ as per the heavy burden imposed on the prosecution in a criminal trial. It nowhere establishes the innocence of the accused person. Further, it does not assure that the accused Bishop did not violate his own vow of celibacy, rendering him unfit to administer the holy sacraments.

She also states that, while it is true that this judgement may have dealt a lethal blow to all cases of clergy abuse by silencing hundreds of victims who might have received inspiration from this case to bring their abusers to task, there are crucial lessons to be learned. There is a crying need to create awareness and sensitivity within both church and state structures to bring justice to victims / survivors of clergy abuse.

Flaws in the January 20222 judgement

Flavia Agnes:

Instead of dealing with the issues mentioned in the FIR, the judgement, bases its conclusions on incidents which are extraneous to the facts of the case, in order to exonerate the bishop of all the allegations levelled against him. It seems to overlook that what is on trial is the crime of sexual abuse/rape by the accused and not the moral character of the victim. The judgement violates the legal mandate that a woman’s past sexual history (whether actual or fabricated) cannot be used by the defence to project the complainant ‘as woman of easy virtue’ and thereby to conclude that she is an ‘untrustworthy witness.

“Another major flaw is that the judgement ignores the amendments to the rape laws, introduced in 2013, after the gruesome rape and murder of a twenty-three-year-old paramedic in Delhi (popularly known as the ‘Nirbhaya case’), which had expanded the narrow definition of rape under $.375 of IPC to include various other forms of sexual assaults – finger penetration, oral and anal sex and forcing the victim to perform various sexual acts, etc. In fact, the term ‘rape’ itself was redefined broadly as sexual assault. So how can the victim be faulted for failing to use this archaic terminology when she confides about the abuse to her supporters or superiors?

“The various references to sexual acts while mentioning the abuse to her companions, church authorities, to the police and doctors, is discarded as ‘the victim did not mention that she was raped by the accused thirteen times’. Hailing from a conservative background, joining the convent at a tender age of fifteen and as a nun under the vow of chastity, it is but natural that she would shy away from using explicit language while disclosing the sexual abuse inflicted upon her. No adverse inference of discrepancy and inconsistency can be drawn from this.

“It is our experience that even in cases of child sexual abuse, the survivor or her mother, seldom ever uses technical / legal language while reporting the crime. Even the police officer recording the crime, while providing an elaborate background, describes the abuse in just one line as the abuser ‘did dirty things (kharab kaam) to her’ or ‘he spoilt her’ read as ‘he violated her’. The judge seems to be oblivious of this ground reality.

“The judgement contains graphic description of all that the victim was subjected to on the very first night on 5 May, 2014 in her court deposition. This is followed by the acts of sexual assault on all the subsequent instances, each of which constitutes sexual offences as per Section 375 of IPC. Even if a single act is proved, the accused would be liable for punishment under S 376 of IPC. (A reading of the judgement borders on pornography. This was totally unwarranted in a judgement which is in the public domain to protect the survivor’s dignity and bodily integrity.)

“The fact that the abuser was within a fiduciary relationship of power and authority over the victim as the patron of her congregation is also overlooked. After an elaborate discussion on this issue, the judgement concedes to the point advanced by the prosecution, regarding the fiduciary relationship between the victim and the abuser. Yet while appreciating the evidence of the survivor there is no reference to this finding. While the judgement hints at ‘consensual sex’ between the abuser and the survivor, whether it constitutes ‘valid consent’ or ‘tainted consent’ within a fiduciary relationship is not examined.

“The judgement fails to appreciate the power dynamics that prevails between them and the vow of obedience she is bound by which makes it impossible for the victim to resist the sexual assault by her superior. When a sexual act is established and the victim states that it is without her consent, there is a legal presumption in her favour, if the fiduciary relationship between the two is proved. The judgement ignores this well-settled legal principle while appreciating the evidence of the survivor.

 “There are several legal precedents where such hyper technical approach has been discarded by courts in India. Even if some part of the evidence is discarded, the remaining part which withstands legal scrutiny is relied upon to secure conviction. But a reading of the judgement indicates that the judicial intent for conviction was lacking and hence the legal doctrine of “grain and chaff” is used as the rationale to secure acquittal. By holding that it was impossible to separate the “grain” from the “chaff”, the court appears to have abdicated its judicial functions.

Proactive approach by the Court lacking

Above all, a pro-active approach of the additional session judge is completely lacking. Agnes points out, how, in an earlier judgement, the Kerala High Court had held that trial courts must take a proactive role at the time of taking evidence and that there should be serious engagement in discovering the truth, rather than remaining as a “mute spectator”.

Flavia Agnes:

“The present case had several unique features, which need a different approach to be adopted. She had to fight several battles before approaching the legal system. For a woman conditioned to a cloistered and submissive existence, coming out in public with these allegations must have been an unbearable ordeal. It ought to have been appreciated that the complainant will face something similar to a “civil death” on expulsion from the congregation. The accused was powerful and influential. He had the backing from strong quarters of the community, whereas the victim and the witnesses supporting her faced extreme social hostilities.

“The inaccuracies and shortcomings in the evidence ought to have been appreciated in the light of the power dynamics and uneven level field in the case.

The effort at canvassing the issue for justice for the Survivor Nun, including the publishing of this booklet, has raised, irrevocably not just the prevalence of sexual abuse within the hierarchy, but the resistance to face the widespread malaise. It is a brave and valiant effort battling women’s rights as human rights from within, using tools that are public and transparent.

More than anything else, it is in an easy to read, user friendly format. The Kuravilangad Case: A Critical Study while unequivocally making its stance clear on the (disappointing) judgement of the lower court in Kerala, seeks to answer commonplace questions used to discredit the Survivor in this case as also any complainant of sexual assault.

While appealing in clear conscious to the thoughtful and committed Indian catholic, the booklet also underlines the universal values of feminism and human rights.

Related:

Rape of a Nun: Bishop Franco Mulakkal Arrested

Kerala nun rape case: Court dismisses Bishop Mulakkal’s discharge plea

Key witness in Kerala nun rape case found dead in Punjab
Kerala Nun Rape Case: Vatican temporarily relieves accused Bishop of his duties
Rape of a Nun: Bishop Franco Mulakkal Arrested 
How the Church needs to change the way it addresses Sexual and Gender-based abuse

The post Sexual Assault & the Indian Church Hierarchy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The story of the communal violence that preceded the 2014 Lok Sabha polls continues to haunt even as the Assembly polls are underway in UP.

Why does every bout of brute, targeted violence inevitably become a battleground for sexual violence against the community’s women?

We saw this gruesome pattern during the bloodshed that surrounded India’s partition. Sikh, Muslim and Hindu women in equal measure were held to account, in revenge and wrath for what was perceived as the fault of the community they belonged to.

The same pattern has held true in various parts of India and South Asia thereafter – in the brute post partition anti-minority bouts of violence in India, including the violence suffered by Kashmiri Pandits in the Kashmir valley.

Unmatched in gruesome scale and scope were the Gujarat 2002 massacres, where by the state’s own admission, as many as 193 women and girls, of the Muslim minority, were targeted and attacked. (Independent assessments put the figure closer to 250).

Several lessons have been learned from the struggle for justice in Gujarat that has, to date, in an unprecedented “success rate” convicted over 172 powerful perpetrators. In three of the criminal trials, the narrative of gendered violence found space during the court proceedings.

The need for thorough recording of the first information report, independent investigations, time bound trials and a robust witness protection programme are the prerequisites of any struggle for justice as the robust Gujarat experience shows. Over 570 witness survivors, lawyers and human rights defenders, to date have such protection by the para-military, guaranteed by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s continuous monitoring the progress of the trials also ensured some degree of redressal as time wore on and the investigating agencies slipped into cruel lethargy.
 

Losing hope in western Uttar Pradesh

It is, this month, a decade and a half after the state-wide carnage in the western Indian state.
 

Three years and five months ago, four districts of western Uttar Pradesh that have just celebrated democracy’s ultimate festival, the Assembly elections in the state, saw just such an upsurge. Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Shamli and Meerut erupted nine months prior to India’s general elections in May 2014 with targeted violence.

Not only were more than 60 lives lost and several thousands of the minority community internally displaced (this author was witness to deaths by the cold, of women and children, in the open-field relief camps all over the districts) but women, as usual bore the brunt.

Seven courageous women complained and documented their tale. Despite the Supreme Court of India being seized of the matter, not once but twice, and even passing salutary directions on several pleas, the abject failure of state mechanisms to deliver real and substantive justice raises questions of institutional accountability towards the dignity, justice and the well being of its citizenry, especially if the victim survivor hails from the voiceless – uninfluential – section of our people.

Amnesty International’s detailed report of its investigation of this targeted communal violence, Losing Faith – The Muzaffarnagar gang-rape survivors’ struggle for justice, is a testimony to the courage of the survivors and an exposure of the hollow claims of the protection of constitutional rights by the Indian state. Celebrate as we do election time and the festival of the ballot, little do issues of human rights and dignities matter when the campaign trail blazes shrill and strong. In the immediate aftermath of the first phase of elections in Uttar Pradesh, exactly where the tragic tales of the rape survivors are located, will this narrative have any impact?

Of the seven rape survivors, one died in child birth last year. A month before she died, she said to Amnesty, “If those responsible are brought to justice, I will be happy in my heart. I will not live in fear anymore “(Esha, a gang-rape survivor, July 2016). Her evidence had not even been recorded before she died. A petition for the transfer of her case outside the district of Muzaffarnagar had been filed in April 2016 and is, shockingly, still pending. Of the other five, two have been forced by bitter court delays and the force of circumstance to turn “hostile”.
 

“Fair trial means a trial in which bias or prejudice for or against the accused, the witnesses, or the cause which is being tried is eliminated. If the witnesses get threatened or are forced to give false evidence that also would not result in a fair trial.”
— – Supreme Court of India, Zaheera Sheikh v State of Gujarat, 2006
 

The detailed narratives of all seven survivors reveal the utter failure of the state to preserve and protect witness testimonies. Not only was police protection denied to them but the deliberate and prolonged delays in the hearings and the constant intimidation and threats by the alleged accused have ensured a pervasive culture of impunity to the perpetrators.

In all seven gang-rape cases, the police took months to file charges, and even after they did so, trials have proceeded extremely slowly, making a farce of the famed 2013 amendment to Section 309 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that dictates “day-to-day hearings until all the witnesses in attendance have been examined, “ and completion of a trial, in rape cases “within two months”.
 

One of the complainants, Fatima, tried unsuccessfully to file an FIR on September 20, 2013 and finally succeeded only on October 9 that year. Another, Ghazala, sent her complaint as early as October 22, 2013, but the police registered an FIR only after the issue was raised before the Supreme Court, on February 18, 2014. Ghazala too has applied for her case to be transferred out of the district. She told a trial court in January 2016,
 

“I am extremely apprehensive of coming to the Muzaffarnagar District court as the accused persons and their family members who all belong to the dominant community wield considerable influence in this area. I fear that harm will be caused to me and my family when I go to give my evidence in the Muzaffarnagar District court.” 
 

The National Commission for Minorities, too, after a visit to the area in June 2014, has documented several complaints “about harassment of rape victims”.

Though the initial directions from the Supreme Court ensured that Rs 5,00,000 in compensation was paid to these survivors, the absence of any livelihood and continued threats and intimidation by perpetrators and even the police have rendered their existence fragile.

The continued need for robust and persistent legal aid, adequate reparation as also the enactment of a law to prevent communal violence (a task this country aborted mid-track in 2014), as also a witness protection programme are the need of the hour. Only through police reform will we reach a stage where there is thorough and independent investigation.

But the ruling dispensation in New Delhi remains blind to the fact that some of its cadres and party men even today remain accused of being the perpetrators of such hate-filled acts of vengeance and of further intimidating those who dare struggle for lasting peace through justice.

Teesta Setalvad is secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace.

The post No hope for Rape Survivors: Muzaffarnagar Riots 2013 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Part One of a series

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) took to the Twitter social media platform on Tuesday, September 27, to clarify allegations that it has included a ‘casteist’ text, in the Class 6 History textbook, which talks about the Varna system and went viral on social media. The Boards defense: CBSE, which acts as a board that sets exam and affiliation guidelines, is not a publisher of textbooks across the country and schools affiliated to them use NCERT curriculum, especially from class 9 to 12.

“The class 6 History textbook containing topics on Varnas has been wrongly attributed as published by CBSE. This is factually incorrect. It is clarified that CBSE does not publish History textbooks, thus the matter does not relate to CBSE. Team CBSE,” said the tweet by the national level of board of education. which received backlash from netizens and political parties such as Actor and Politician Kamal Hassan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, two prominent political parties in Tamil Nadu.

Who then published the errant text?

The Free Press Journal reported the controversy and the board’s clarification. CBSE, which acts as a board that sets exam and affiliation guidelines, is not a publisher of textbooks across the country. The book, which has the viral image of the text, was published by XSEED Education which is a publishing house based out of Singapore. The issue of tenders, costs and profits over textbooks is one that has dogged government text book boards for decades.

How did the controversy erupt?

The class 6 History textbook containing topics on Varnas has been wrongly attributed as published by CBSE. This is factually incorrect .
It is clarified that CBSE does not publish History textbooks, thus the matter does not relate to CBSE.

Team CBSE

— CBSE HQ (@cbseindia29) September 27, 2022

It was social media users shared a chapter’s page about the Varna System that went viral. According to the lesson’s text, the Brahmins were priests and instructors, the Kshatriyas were warriors, the Vaishyas were businesspeople, artisans, and landowners, and the Shudras were labourers who “assisted” the other three varnas, which created an uproar among netizens.

Caste in Indian textbooks has been a long standing issue, unresolved and unaddressed. In 2021, as reported by The Telegraph, an Odisha-based study revealed a strong bias against the oppressed castes in school curricula. The findings corroborate, with evidence, what many have said: School curricula erase Dalit and non-elite caste histories and lived experiences.

Details of the study:

A research group consisting of ISI Bengaluru and IIT Hyderabad experts analysed ten literature and social sciences textbooks taught to classes IV to VIII in Odisha schools. It found that only three of ten books ever mention Dalits, or only five per cent of the total pages that present Indian social life. This stark finding underlines the near invisibility of Dalits in our school curricula.

Textbooks, especially for the social sciences, formally open up the world for learners. This is why inclusion is crucial to representation and participation and exclusion perpetuates exploitation. Put differently, it is shadows and silences in our textbooks that hold a mirror lesson for teachers, students, families and society.

Exclusion as denial

From the late 1990s to presently, first Communalism Combat, now Sabrangindia have tracked these shadows and silences. Vimal Thorat, Convenor of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) and a former professor of Hindi at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), speaks to co-editor, Teesta Setalvad of her decade’s long struggle to ensure that Dalit literature from seven Indian languages (translated into Hindi) is available to MA Part II students at the IGNOU.

 “There will be no social transformation without the consistent and creative propagation of the fundamental values of equity and non-discrimination,” said Vimal Thorat. “If we want a society where there is camaraderie, fraternity, a sense of justice and equality, then these issues need to be brought in, inculcated and taught from standard 1 onwards; but we don’t have these basic constitutional values in our syllabus. Why?”

Excerpts from the Interviews:

“The first all girls school was set up by Savitribai Phule, a radical feminist in Pune in 1848; she challenged gender exclusion and the caste order and yet this narrative is absent from our textbooks….“There was a resistance even in the NCERT to ensure the inclusion of Phule, Jyotiba, Savitribai Phule and Ambedkar earlier. The first NDA government removed references to these radical thinkers in 2002; we had to struggle to get them back in 2012 but we are not sure what this government, given its orientation, will do.”

“Due to the strong Dravidian movement in the South, due to the heritage of rationalism and resistance led by Periyar and Narayan Swamy against Brahmanical hegemony, there was a strong impact in the social sphere and even in the area of education; there is a need for a new awakening in the north.”

“The period in India, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, was also a period wherein atrocities against Dalits in Punjab and Haryana also sharply increased…“This reached a terrible climax in 2013, when 42 Dalit girls were raped in Haryana and the organisation that I represent, the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) raised the issue consistently through mass meetings and campaigns. The incidents were shocking; they shook the nation. I recall when we held the Haryana Dalit Mahila Samaan Rally so many other cases came up before us. These should be the issues for the mainstream Indian feminist movement.”

The pain and exclusions experienced by Dalit feminist writers, expressed powerfully in their literature has not been foregrounded as Indian feminist writing.
​
How many Indian children in schools, or students at universities know the work of Kumud Pawde a Dalit Feminist who made a powerful statement in her essay, “The Story of My Sanskrit” an extract from her a autobiography Antasphot?
​
[The work traces the path of a Dalit woman in the public sphere of education and employment: bureaucratic apathy to in-egalitarianism and an absence of revulsion to untouchability]

“The issue of the Feminism of Dalit, Adivasi and Minority women needs to be considered carefully. The life experiences of Dalit and Adivasi women are different; they are life and death issues rarely seen and articulated in the middle class urban feminist movement”.
​
“Security is a key issue for Adivasi women as is becoming clear in the heart of the Adivasi areas. Dalit women face attacks almost every day and the issues faced by Muslim women are also specific. For the Indian feminist movement to be representative and meaningful, all these issues need to be represented. In 2013 in Haryana in the course of two months there were 42 gang rapes of Dalit girls and women”.
​
“Dalit feminist writing like that of Kausalya Baisantry (Dohra Abhishaap, Twice Cursed) speaks of the combined curses of untouchability and patriarchy”.
​
“Urmila Pawar’s autobiography Aaydan (2003) is seminal. She is also known for her short story writing in Marathi. She hails from the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. Urmila Pawar, Daya Pawar, Baby Kamble and Shantabai Gokhale are among the other prominent voices of Dalit literature. Her memoir Aaydan speaks of the weaving of cane baskets. It was the main economic activity of the Mahar caste to whom, she belongs”.
 
The symbolism of ‘Chani’ in Dalit women’s writing: ‘Chani’ is the name given to dried pieces of meat; handling of animals was an activity segregated to the ‘untouchables’ and therefore the women among them would perform this difficult task. The symbol of Dalit women, in their autobiographies speaking of carrying basketfuls of meat taken from dead animals on their foreheads even as the blood from the animals flows down the bodies. Hunger is the most compelling motive and to quell this hunger women would subject themselves to this. Then they would dry and cure the meat”.

2021 Odisha study of history texts 

Though the 2021 study focuses on schools in the state Odisha, there are suggestions hat the situation in many other states is no different. The invisibility of Dalit characters distances the texts from reality. It may also teach students to adopt a hierarchical approach in social interactions. In India’s social life, which is based on exclusion, notions of purity and pollution get enforced with (overt and covert) violence against the less powerful. The study refers to school texts in Gujarat, which call the caste system benign. In Rajasthan, too, caste is described as a good system based on professional differences.

In 1999, a study of the Gujarat state textbooks conducted by Khoj Education for a Plural India programme, (and published in Communalism Combat, October 1999) described the caste system as the ideal way to build society. “Of course, their [lower castes’] ignorance, illiteracy and blind faith are to be blamed for lack of progress because they still fail to realise the importance of education in life,” the book noted.

‘Caste is a precious gift’, 1999 Social Science Texts

The caste system receives generous treatment in Indian textbooks, as analysed by the Khoj study, be it the ICSE text books or the Gujarat board.

“ Even the section in the text book of the Gujarat state board that seeks to explain the constitutional policy of reservations makes remarks about the continued illiteracy of the ‘scheduled castes and tribes.’

“So, for instance, the same textbook pays lip service to political correctness through a fleeting reference to the fact that the varna system later became hierarchical, but in the same chapter, a few paragraphs later, literally extols the virtues of the intent of the varna system itself.

“There is also no attempt nor desire, either in this text or the ICSE texts to explain the inhuman concept of ‘untouchability’ (based on the notion, “so impure as to be untouchable”) that Jyotiba Phule and B.R. Ambedkar made it their life’s mission to challenge, socially and politically. In understanding and teaching about caste, both this text and other ICSE texts display a marked reluctance to admit or link the ancient-day varna system to modern-day Indian social reality.

““The ‘Varna’ System: The Varna system was a precious gift of the Aryans to the mankind. It was a social and economic organisation of the society built on the basis of the principle of division of labour. Learning or education, defence, trade and agriculture and service of the community are inseparable organs of the social fabric. The Aryans divided the society into four classes or ‘varnas’. Those who were engaged in the pursuit of learning and imparted education were called ‘Brahmins or Purohits (the priestly classes). Those who defended the country against the enemy were called the Kshastriyas or the warrior class. Those who were engaged in trade agriculture were called the Vaishyas. And those who acted as servants or slave of the other three classes were called the Shudras. In the beginning, there were no distinction of ‘high’ and low. The varna or class of a person was decided not on the basis of birth but on the basis of his work or karma. Thus a person born of a Shudra father could become a Brahmin by acquiring learning or by joining the teaching profession…In course of time however, the varna system became corrupted and ‘birth’ rather than ‘vocation’ came to be accepted as the distinguishing feature of the varna system. Thus society was permanently divided into a hierarchy of classes. The Brahmins were regarded as the highest class while the Shudras were treated as the lowest. These distinctions have persisted in spite of the attempts made by reformers to remove them. Yet, the importance of the ‘Varna’ system as an ideal system of building the social and economic structure of a society cannot be overlooked”. (Emphasis added).(Social Studies text, Gujarat State Board, Std. IX)

The only reference in this standard IX text to the indignities of the caste system as it exists today is through an attempt to blame the plight of the untouchables on their own illiteracy and blind faith.

“Problems of Schedule Castes and Scheduled Tribes: Of course, their ignorance, illiteracy and blind faith are to be blamed for lack of progress because they still fail to realise importance of education in life. Therefore, there is large-scale illiteracy among them and female illiteracy is a most striking fact. (Emphasis added). ” (Social Studies text, Gujarat State Board, Std. IX, 1999)

The ICSE texts are similarly non-critical and evasive. The New ICSE History and Civics, edited by Hart and Barrow, Part 1 has this to say.

“The Caste System: The division of society into four varnas (classes) had its origin in the Rig Vedic period. Members of the priestly class were called brahmins; those of the warrior class, kshatriyas; agriculturists and traders, vaisyas; and the menials, sudras. It is said that the caste system in the Rig Vedic times was based on occupations of the people and not on birth. Change of caste was common. A Brahmin child could become a kshatriya or a vaisya according to his choice or ability…

“Varna in Sanskrit means the colour of skin and the caste system was probably used to distinguish the fair coloured Aryans from the dark coloured natives. The people of higher castes (brahmins, kshatriyas, and vaisyas) were Aryans. The dark skinned natives were the sudras, the lowest class in society, whose duty was to serve the high class.

2019 New India

In 2019, the NCERT issued a circular announcing the culling of three chapters from its Class IX history textbook under a policy to rationalise courses. The topics were clothing and caste conflict, cricket history, and the impact of colonial capitalism on peasants. This would imply that the struggles of the Nadar women of Travancore in the early 19th century to wear upper body clothes to cover their breasts, or the discrimination against the talented cricketer Palwankar Baloo to lead the Indian cricket team as he was a Dalit, would not be spoken of in textbooks.

However, a 2019 study of how caste was communicated through textbooks for Class 6 and 10 students has found some improvements compared with twenty years ago. In 2005, NCERT textbooks tried to address caste in a more explanatory way. The author of the study, journalist Sumit Chaturvedi, credits the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005 and the Draft Learning Outcomes for elementary education, a document prepared by the NCERT in 2017, which spoke of sensitising students towards caste. Yet, Chaturvedi also notes some problems. The books focus on vulnerable caste groups and their lived experience, whereas dominant caste identities or the logic of the caste system is not interrogated. The perception is also created that caste is an issue of the vulnerable only, which supposedly indemnifies the dominant castes. Third, he notes, the books still allow the youth to claim they are “casteless”.

However with the coming and consolidation of the NDA I and NDA II governments, the NCF 2005 has been abandoned, texts slashed of their content and the New Education Policy (NEP-2020) implemented.

Though caste re-formulates over time, it is often taught as  a thing of the past that has no relation to or continuity with what happens today. It allows the dominant castes to distance themselves from recognising that caste-based exclusions and violence are an existing malady. It thus facilitates denial of the lived experiences of the Dalits and perpetrates violence against those who experience caste discrimination and bias.

Related

IIT-Bombay to introduce caste awareness courses
How do casteism, bigotry continue to thrive in IITs?
IIT Prof’s meltdown, abuse of students is a lesson on how not to teach
Kolhapur’s Rajarshi Shahu Maharaj and his battle for Dalit-Bahujan communities

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A half-baked secularism 

Despite the brutal loss of half a million lives when this country was partitioned on religious lines in 1047, the national leadership, after close and passionate debate decided that India would remain secular and a democracy. It was a principled decision, large enough to swell our pride, but along with that it was an intensely pragmatic one. If India emerged poor but powerful, handicapped yet large in its vision, it was thanks to this decision, pragmatic and principles. For no other way could such a vast and diverse people, diverse in language, ritual, tradition, culture and religion stay together but for this vision of oneness, a oneness moreover assured by equality. This vision of a oneness could not have been possible without the contribution of Untouchables to the pre-Partition debate, a contribution that drew from their own denials and segregation, a contribution that could see clearly that, from their understanding of Indian society, if genuine democracy, and secularism had to be attained, equality in citizenship and before the law was as vital as freedom of expression and freedom of faith which has implicit within it the freedom from faith, too.  This depth of understanding is absent today.

This oneness envisaged and assured in the Indian Constitution authored by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, is today deeply threatened. Despite being involved intensely in the struggle against the manipulation of religion in the pursuit of power, I cannot be sure that we will win. Eminent columnist, Khushwant Singh’s passionate book, The End of India, sees dark days ahead, India splintering into a thousand pieces thanks to bitter pogroms against the minorities led by the leaders of Hindu majoritarianism.

Historically, from the medieval ages right down to the modern, religion when it influences the state, and politics, have proved destructive and poisonous. For Christianity in the medieval ages, the inquisitions remain actions yet to be faced and lived down. Hundreds of thousands of women burnt at the stake as witches during the dark ages, alerts us to the fact that when the potent mix of religion and state takes place, the patriarchy of both turns first on women and their sexuality. The irreligious Jinnah tolerating poisonous speeches in the name of faith at Aligarh and other parts of UP that finally led to the bloody vivisection of the subcontinent may or may not be something that many wish to remember. But his cynicism and the League’s politics had a hand in altering, drastically, the politics of this subcontinent and also lived perceptions in the minds of ordinary Indians. Today the brand of political Islam prevalent in a majority of Islamic countries battling modernity and failed to divorce faith from the state is manifest as a pathetic absence of democracy. The figure of Bhindranwale, was propped up, through the violence and hatred that he generated by former Indian leaders themselves and we had to pay for it. For Indians committed to Indian pluralism and diversity, the plight of Buddhism, a religion born here but not allowed to survive has been a matter of deep perplexity, even shame. But hop across to Sri Lanka and you can see Buddhism influenced with all the negatives when religion and state intermingle. There is a blatant privileging of the majority faith and language too –Sinhala Buddhists. And, not to be left behind, the brutal  growth of forces that are manipulating the Hindu faith to gain state power in India and then transform Indian democracy to a fascist state, have used brutal genocide and violence to achieve their space and place. It was Advani’s bloody rath yatra that brought the BJP to power in the centre and Modi-like genocides that may keep it there if Indian resistance does not match this onslaught. Religion in the public sphere retains little of original faith – be it Christianity, Islam Sikhism Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism.

Are we witnessing in our life times, the end of India? Our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, astutely identified Hindu communalism as the greatest threat to Indian democracy. “If fascism were ever to come to India it would come in the garb of Hindu rashtra,” he both said and wrote. But as we battle on to assert secular principles in an India threatening to go under, the limitations of even this analysis or vision imbibed by the entire secular and left constituency stares us in the face.

Secularism is the separation of religion from state and equal respect  for all religions within society. Granted. To this narrow and limited extent, the battle for secularism is clearly articulated. Where we have singularly failed is understanding what faith in India and for the Hindu faith means. But this is, at best a half-baked notion of secularism in the Indian content. Put pithily, can you battle against the separation of religion from state in the Indian context without battling caste?

Here the deep-seated caste bias among left intellectuals and secularists hits us sharply in the face. We have responded ably with this half-baked secularism when assaults on religious minorities have taken place but remained paralysed and shamefully silent when caste violence erupts, Dalit women are paraded naked and violence in the name of caste is unleashed.

This paralysis and silence reveals a shallow understanding of religion within the Indian context. In India, we simply cannot speak of organised Hindu religion without dealing with, or battling caste. The individualistic and spiritual side of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Jainism or Buddhism may mean one kind of salvation from believer to believer, but each and every religion or faith has a political side, an organised side since men and women are both individual and spiritual and also political. This side of Hinduism is unassailably caste. In fact all faiths on the subcontinent have been influenced, or sullied by caste.

To speak, therefore of the separation of religion from state but not to link this separation with a concerted battle against the indiginities of caste and caste itself is not simply narrow and limiting it is constricting. In the sixth decade after Independence, the fact that such a narrow vision colours the battle for secularism also means that the vision is restricted by a deep bias.

Before Independence and after freedom was attained, deep schisms had emerged within the pioneers of the movement. Schisms that were consigned to dark recesses of historical evasion when a post-Independence Nehruvian vision blocked out the contribution of tribals and Dalits to this vision of a free India. The reason behind this relegation is abundantly clear. It s evident in what caused the schisms in the first place.

Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar as leader of the downtrodden, across the length and breath of the country, made his and his people’s presence felt in this battle for freedom. He struggled shoulder to shoulder and even, in some crucial areas went ahead. Be it him or Periyar, who split from the Indian National Congress because of Gandhiji’s withdrawal of the temple entry movement (the moment Brahmin clergy and their supporters among Indian bouguioise industry expressed deep discomfort of this move to radicalise from within), theirs was a deep questioning about who and what would be the beneficiaries of the freedom, hard fought and hard won.

Babasaheb said that 30 per cent of India at least, bedevilled by three thousand years of brutal denial was not simply interested in  political freedoms if social and economic freedoms were not woven, intrinsically, into this concept. Though history has proved him tragically right, our post-Independence visionaries had no problems not simply relegating him to the shadows of history but even –shamefully—dubbing him a traitor.

Consolation must be had from the fact that if Gandhiji had lived he may not have allowed this sickening labelling. But his followers, Gandhians, as much as progressives and leftists, heirs of the Nehruvian vision and legacy did not hesitate in once more segregating a politics and thought that had emerged from within a historically oppressed section, to the dustbins of history.

The wonderful thing about genuine historical thought is that it emerges to haunt us, again and again. This is what is happening now. So far, the battles for a democratised history have been confined to the narrow confines of Hindu and Muslim rule. They have not entered into the realm of Dalit history, tribal history or even, really working class history or symbols. Feminist history too in this country has not been genuinely radicalised since it has so far been restricted to the stories of upper caste, middle class urban Indian women. That this is beginning to change is largely due to the assertions of quality minds and quality struggles from within the deprived, segregated sections.

This exclusion continued while on the other hand Hindutva  or Hindu right wing began from the mid-eighties through the construction of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, of a falsely-driven ‘all Hindu identity. Maliciously driven as the motivation was –because Dalits and Tribals are used for violence while caste discrimination is not eradicated and caste violence is condoned—it was born out of a recognition that Hindutva cannot succeed without manipulating and mobilising all castes, especially deprived sections. The appropriation of Ambedkar is part of this attempt. Mayawati’s open alliance with the BJP in UP is another. When she campaigned in Gujarat, there were 36 BSP MLAs contesting. Throughout her whirlwind tour she appealed for votes (from Dalits) for Modi. Not once did she ask that BSP candidates should emerge victorious.

It would be easy to dub this as cynical powermongering by a hungry and deprived lot. Which is exactly what a great number of secularists and progressives are doing. This lot finds it easier to sup with Mulayam Singh –no less ‘casteist’—than dine with Dalits. Why?

The heart is this historically practised exclusion by the elite of this country, especially the progressive, secular elite. They believe that secularism in India is limited to celebrating the Urdu ghazal or the composite culture epitomised in Akbar. The historical deprivations and denials, especially the hidden apartheid of caste as symbolised in untouchability, do not challenge their notions of democracy or secularism. The fact that caste is sanctioned and defined by Hindu religion and is therefore a part of organised Hindu religion itself is also conveniently avoided.

The battle for secularism in India simply cannot be won without addressing the issue of caste. It is about time that the battle for secularism in the Indian context breathes this in and imbibes it. Can therefore the battle to separate religion from politics in India be de-linked from the struggle to anhilate caste itself?

The post A half baked secularism: Teesta Setalvad on caste and communalism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In 2003, Teetsa Setalvad was awarded the prestigious Nuremberg International Human Rights Award in recognition of her battle for justice for victims of the Gujarat carnage. Nurmeberg is the city where Hitler’s infamous racist laws were adopted with a genocidal intent as well as the city where the post-war trials of high ranking Nazi criminals was held. This is the text of her acceptance speech. It was first published in September, 2003.

Teesta Setalvad’s acceptance speech

Nuremberg, September 14, 2003

Can lessons from history, honestly learnt, and remembered, prevent unspeakable cruelties in the present and deeper schisms between man and man in the future? 

Nuremberg and Germany have had the courage to face their history, a history that not merely for the German people but for all of humanity raised then, and raises still, raw and brutal questions of the minds and hearts of men and women. And the darkness that can reside within. 

Yet we must have faith. This faith gets reaffirmed in the myriad or million small deeds and thoughts of a majority of one billion Indians and a third more of South Asians who dream and aspire to a belly fool of food; for fair access to quality learning for their young; to medical care against starvation and other epidemics; protection against flood, cyclone and drought.

For the kind of existence that about 60 per cent of their people already have. Indiscriminate policies of globalisation and liberalization that are resulting in the withdrawal of the State from sectors of education, health and social security, do not believe in the dignity and protection of labour and the marginalized sections of the third world. Marginalised by caste, community and gender. 

 But even as the bare existence of a third to forty per cent of our people in South Asia –in India alone this would mean 400 million people–is seriously under assault from a callous and irresponsible political, social and economic elite, the right to dream of a land free of bitter hatreds has over the past two decades slowly but surely been snatched away. Today with justice to the victims of perpetrated pogroms seeming distant, if not impossible, the now every day threat of mindless targeted violence has become a terrifying reality. 

We are faced in India with the threat of hatred and division impinging on every aspect of public discourse and life. Caste has been an unfortunate historic factor that has denied dignity and access, apart from perpetrating brutal violence on 25 per cent of Indians in the past.  Today a more blatant use of hate speech and writing against sections of Indians, on grounds of religious affiliation, has become the norm that precedes, and creates the climate for mass pogroms. Such discourse goes unchallenged by authorities though we remain a political democracy wedded to the rule of law. 

For human rights defenders engaged in the struggle for a more equitous system, through our engagements with, and challenges to, the institutions of the judiciary, police, parliament and bureaucracy –the lofty mandate contained in the words ‘We The People…’ in the Preamble to our Constitution, often seem reduced to a banality on a piece of parchment paper.  This extreme right wing politics, shockingly and painfully models itself on the ways of Mussolini and Hitler, and under democratic India executes and then celebrates pogroms against children, women and men of a particular faith. 

A stable, democratic and secular India –which means an India that can hold its head high —as we once could, when, though ‘poor’, we led the Non Aligned Movement in the world and did an honest job of assuring safety and security to all Indians —is vital for peace, for growth and yes, for the prosperity of the whole South Asian region. 

Our sheer size and pre-dominance demands this. Pivotal to this peace is a resolution of the Kashmir conflict after calling people from the Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh region to the negotiation table. It is a shame that instead of leading a discourse within the region on peace, on sanity, on tolerance, India today takes a part in articulating shrill noises against neighbours. We even led the sub-continent on its deplorable road towards turning nuclear. I would like to, at this stage, congratulate my co-recipient of the Nuremberg International Human Rights award for 2003, Mr. Rehman a Pakistani and a colleague in this struggle for the rights of all, albeit across the border. 

The history of the division of the sub-continent on religious lines took nearly one million lives and caused the forced migration of 15 million people. Lasting durable peace within the region, thanks to this history, is linked critically to peace within the countries of the region and their castes and communities. Those struggling for the rights of minorities across national borders have a need to link and sustain each other’s struggles. And they know it. 

Yet, despite all of this, we must carry on, firm in our belief that things must and will change. And the struggle for that glorious change if pre-determined by its duration is no struggle at all. The demands that such an indeterminate struggle, in time terms, makes on us, as individuals, as colleagues, as parents is enormous and the stake and cost, are high. On this precious occasion, I would like especially to remember our two children, Tamara and Jibran who have sacrificed much and lost so much time with us in their growing up years due to this engagement. I hope and pray to a God that I do not believe in, that they have learnt some and much more importantly, that they understand. 

My work in the past decade, that coincides with the decade of publication of our journal, Communalism Combat, would simply have been inconceivable but for the camaraderie and passion shared in this cause with my husband-colleague, Javed. As strength, as inspiration, as learning, this togetherness has made the work possible. I am thrilled that he is here with me to share the moment of glory of receiving particularly this award, which has a resonance and meaning far exceeding any other. I know that he has put up with the pressure of my own temperament and zeal for this work that catapults him and our wonderful team at Sabrang into sometimes impossible directions. 

The India of old has irretrievably changed and the secure foundations of glory in a shared past, in our literature, music and culture that we grew up with are not available for our children. Streaks of insanity and noises of hate impinge in the classroom and at school ominously making distinctions between the legitimate ‘us’ and the traitorous ‘them.’ History is being surreptitiously distorted to support the politics of exclusion and hate. The infamous Nuremberg laws that forbade marriage between sections of one people have not been forcibly enacted yet but Geetabehn, a Hindu, happily married to Salim, a Muslim, in Gujarat until April 4, 2002 last year was stripped and mutilated in public before being butchered alive on the streets of Ahmedabad,  Gujarat’s leading commercial centre. Victims of the Gujarat carnage, or Genocide as we have called it face exclusion in jobs and have been denied dignified return to their agricultural lands much less have they got justice. 

The language of fascism and its glorification of violence and extermination have

deeply disfigured Indian public life. We struggle today against it reaching a crescendo. In that struggle we try among other things to, in Martin Luther King Junior’s word, to break the silence of the good people who we believe are still numerically stronger than the wicked people who execute evil deeds.

 Thank You Nuremberg. Thank You Germany. For giving us hope that all in the faraway self-centred First World –and I refer here to the stance of the German foreign minister on the abhorrent war against Iraq—are not the same. The feeling, commitment and content of the speeches delivered today are refreshers for us who strive to make the Indian political class sensitive to human rights. Thank you for today. The outstanding music, the flower and chilly arrangements. Dr Maly, the Nuremberg City Office and Dr Hesselmann. For today and hopes for tomorrow 

Thank you, All.

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The really good professor of history and the social sciences tells us that the partisan or selective narrative underlying communalism – manipulation of religion towards political ends involves not just an incorrect or perverted history telling but deliberate erasure.[1] Such erasure and exclusion buttressed by an overwhelmingly vicious construct of a state that is both exclusivist and discriminatory is tantamount to criminality. It assumes an attack on democracy itself as the cultural rights of every section to find their cultures and histories reflected in the collective narrative of nation-building is deliberately snatched away.

No wonder then that the project of the re-fashioning of India’s texts by the Modi 2.0 regime involves the erasure of social ruptures like the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim carnage as also narratives around ‘Struggles for Equality’ (how Tawa Matsya Sangh fought for the rights of displaced forest dwellers of Satpura forest of Madhya Pradesh) and explorations into ‘Democratic Politics’ (wherein people’s movements and pressure groups influence politics) itself. Among the other erasures are significant mentions of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru and his appraisal of India’s first “engineering feat” (Bhakra Nangal dam), the Cold War and Mughal Courts.

And remember, these are the third set of erasures since 2017 as a detailed investigation by The Indian Express (Ritika Chopra, June 18, 2022) informs us, with a staggering total of 1,334 changes in 182 textbooks being made. The changes have been made in India’s premier textbook writing governmental agency, the National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT) and effected in its history, political science and sociology text books for Classes 6-XII.

Serious students of both history and political science are both informed and aware of how silencing and erasure are precursors to physical exclusion and extermination from societies and nations. Decades, close to centuries after a rapacious white population grabbed material resources and cultural validation from native, American Indian, Inca, Maori, Adivasi populations, serious acknowledgement and rectification, while happening in parts, remains a pipe dream. Propagandist, fascist regimes feel comfortable with re-fashioning historical contexts and understanding by removing any possibility of knowledge systems that buffet against propaganda working. The first step is cleansing the history, political science and social sciences text with content that explores and deepens these explorations with nuance.

Independent India’s tryst with textbook writing and history telling has reflected the evolution of a state as we have experienced it, a flawed democracy, acknowledging some exclusions, attempting periodic inclusions and corrections. Even as that experiment was afoot, and subaltern populations organised and grappled with getting their struggles read as a wider Indian people’s history –the struggles over land and agriculture by Adivasis and peasants under British colonial rule were barely recognised by post-Independent India’s history-telling, neither were the depressed caste child’s historical experience with caste exclusion—India was hurtled backwards by an ideology that sought to re-fashion the fundamentals on which we stood.

Post 1998-1999 we witnessed the first attempts to convert the Indian republic into a hegemonistic, mono-cultural theist state (NDA I under Atal Behari Vajpayee,1999-2004). Then, in 2000, this author had, in a long research paper recounted how “the votaries of hegemonised history had violently disrupt the Dussehra celebrations in Tamil Nadu (October 1998) that have always burnt effigies of Ram, not Ravana, as part of “their” glorious past and tradition… The project launched to ‘Hinduise’/Brahmanise history is also a project aimed to stifle democracy, variations and dissent in the rich area of culture and tradition and impose, in its stead,  a set of “moral and religio-cultural dos and don’ts” on a land and culture that had, hitherto defied such strait-lacing  nomenclatures.”[2]

The post-2017 cultural project of the same ideological orientation takes earlier efforts aggressively further. The changes in the texts are justified once again, in the name of un-burdening of the young mind, disturbed by two years of the pandemic. The NCERT has also claimed that the rationalisation was required to prune “overlapping or similar content” or “content which is irrelevant in the present context.” The subjectivity behind this assessment is there for all to see. Since when are the ruptures that have erupted in our recent history irrelevant? Is not the very purpose behind the study of History and Political Science as a discipline is to be informed about all aspects, even the violent ruptures of the past?

The portions that have been erased tell a bald and sordid tale, the crude desire of the rulers to ensure that an unthinking, unquestioning, population, un-enriched by accounts of the Indian people’s struggles with power, exclusion and injustice remains just that: khaki shorts and saffron shirts of a hollowed out regime.

But first, the details of the passages in the NCERT texts that were clearly pinching a falsified narrative sought to be built by the present regime. The latest passages to go include references to the Gujarat 2002 carnage where, in the Std 12 text there is detailed referencing of the reprisal killings of Muslims in the state under the then government’s watch after the mass arson of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra.

A former chief justice of India, Justice JS Verma’s scathing criticism of the Gujarat government’s failure to control the violence has now been relegated to the dustbin of history! The second page (now removed) carries a collage of three newspaper reports along with an excerpt of the NHRC’s annual report (2001-2002) on the Gujarat government’s (mis)handling of the riots.

Unsurprisingly, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s famous “raj dharma” remark in this section has also been removed: “My one message to the Chief Minister (of Gujarat) is that he should follow ‘raj dharma’. A ruler should not make any discrimination between his subjects on the basis of caste, creed and religion.” Vajpayee had said this at a press conference in Ahmedabad in March 2002 with Narendra Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, sitting by his side. The two had been visiting the 12,000-populated Shah-e-Alam camp in Ahmedabad.[i]

The passages in the NCERT texts that have been deleted, existed as attempts to educate young populations of ruptures that threaten the Republic, to learn from those that affect marginalized sections in the past. The bald desire to erase any references to serious flaws in the young Indian nation’s past is nothing short of a political project to prevent pining of accountability and the deepening of democracy. Few youth born over the past decades recall the horrors of 2002 or 1984, much like Partition related violence which has been relegated to selective community memory.

What we are seeing now is the re-fashioning of the Republic into a crude structure of a brute state, armed by an excitable mob, fed on propaganda not the rational discipline of history. Future textbooks will further this project. Any modern or cohesive identity of the nation or its people, secular and egalitarian as our Constitution outlines, has been fractured and dismembered to rubble, where narrow, chauvinist, misogynist identities have been encouraged to come to the fore.

This project to de-historicise history is not happening in isolation, it is accompanied by a destructive, violent present. It is the publicised images of the bulldozer leitmotif from MP’s Khargone to Delhi’s Jahangirpuri to UP’s Sahranpur, Kanpur and Prayagraj (Allahabad) that capture the period of history that we in India are living through. While television channels and sections of social media have recorded these as they selectively target the Indian Muslim, the narrative of the ruler seeks to erase even this brute exclusion and re-fashioning.

India 2022 is witnessing the ripping through, or ripping apart of the Indian nation as it was once constructed. The re-writing of history and political science texts is matched by the brutal violent ruptures of so many parts of north and central India, on the ground. Lynchings of minorities, criminalizing of their protests and dissent, socio-economic boycotts of their businesses, stigmatizing and demonizing of food and culture, selective demolishing of homes and properties.

Between the erasure post-Independent social ruptures of a violent kind (that targeted lives of marginalized minorities) and present day active violent, re-fashioning, there is a sordid connection.

The attempt to build a false narrative of modern Indian history and the birth of the nation that has little or no connection with reality. ‘The collapse of education is the collapse of the nation.’  India as we have known it truly stands on the brink.

The post Erasure, Dumbing & Collapse of a Nation: India 2022 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Barely 15 months before that fateful Sunday when India and the world watched, in anger and helplessness, as the 400-year-old, Babri Masjid was brought down in cold daylight even as 3,000 members of India’s paramilitary mutely looked on, the Narasimha Rao government had done little to protect shrines other than the one that Hindutva groups had then trained their guns on. Ram Vilas Paswan, a member of parliament (MP) from Rosera, Bihar, as Opposition member on behalf of the National Front at the time, had made one of the most forceful speeches in support of the proposed law.

The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act was passed by the Parliament and enacted into law in 1991 during the peak of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.  LK Advani’s blood-filled rath yatra had wound its way through the country, leaving violence and isolation in its wake. Then, the media, made of different orientations and characted, had warned of the dangerous build-up that was being cynically allowed to unfold.

The Places of Worship Act was brought by the Congress government of Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao at a time when the Babri Masjid was still standing. While introducing the Bill in Parliament, then Home Minister S B Chavan said, “It is considered necessary to adopt these measures in view of the controversies arising from time to time with regard to conversion of places of worship which tend to vitiate the communal atmosphere… Adoption of this Bill will effectively prevent any new controversies from arising in respect of conversion of any place of worship…”

Last president of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) before he expired in 2020, Ram Vilas Paswan, a five-time Member of Parliament from Bihar during the term of the Narasimha Rao government (that assumed office in June 1991) made a powerful speech supporting the need for such a law on September 9, 1991. Then finance minister, Manmohan Singh had introduced the bill in the Rajya Sabha and Uma Bharati (BJP), Ram Naik (BJP) and Madanlal Khurana (BJP) had, predictably opposed its passage. Paswan has had the unique distinction of holding a central ministry throughout his political career under different government except between 1991-1996.

Elected then from the Rosera parliamentary constituency in Bihar, Ram Vilas Paswan said that such a law was long overdue and chastised the Indian National Congress for not bringing in such a legislation earlier he said, “The Ram Janam Bhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute would not have been arisen here at all. There cannot be two opinions in this regard. I have been pointing towards this matter earlier also and you might have felt offended then. This Bill indeed has a very laudable objective.”

Paswan had also made some prescient points in his speech about the strange and sudden emergence of the politics of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. He had stated in his September 9, 1991 address in Parliament that, in 1969, there was a Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD) Government in UP, and in 1977, there was Janata Party Government at the Centre. He asked, “Both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Shri Lal Krishna Advani were Ministers in that Government, but why didn’t they raise that issue at that time? Why it has been raised only during the last two years?” He then criticised the erstwhile Congress government under prime minister Rajiv Gandhi for allowing such forces to raise their heads for “allowing them to conduct the ‘Shilanyar’ ceremony, and today the country is suffering on account of that.”

Ram Vilas Paswan also pointed how that, secularism, social justice and power to the poor constitute the very backbone of the country and it has been made amply clear in the 1989 manifesto of the National Front (when he was in were in the Janata Party) he had raised a demand that August 15, 1947 should be treated as a cut-off date to determine the ownership of religions places, so that all disputes relating to places to worship are settled permanently.

“… such a legislation had to be brought forward because India is the home of people belonging to many religious denominations. Our country is like a garden and here not one, but all the flowers will be given the opportunity to blossom. People belonging to many communities have made India their home. When Babar invaded India, which Hindu king was ruling the country? It was Ibrahim Lodhi, who was ruling the country at that time. Who came to India before Babur? The Aryans. There was no Hiudu-Muslim clash at that time. According to the religious people, there was war between the Gods and demons when churning of the ocean took place. Now, who were these Gods and who were these demons? Why was there a fight between Vishnu and Shiva? If we go deep into the history of all this, we won’t be able to safeguard the unity and integrity of this country. Therefore, this chapter has to be closed somewhere. We have far more important problems before us – the problem of poverty that of unemployment that of illiteracy, that of rural water supply. This country cannot affort to squabble over trifling issues like Mandir or Masjid,” said Paswan.

Reminding parliament and the country of the wise words of Smt. Savita Ambedkar, Ram Vilas Paswan had told Parliament that she had stated clearly that the “disputed site” was neither a temple, nor a Mosque, but a Buddhist place of worship and these people were saying that the site belongs to them.

Likening the situation to an episode in the Mahabharata, wherein Karna says that his funeral pyre should be lit at a place, where nobody has been cremated before and Krishna was in a predicament and he had to ultimately use his hand as a cremation site, Paswan stated that the present situation too is quite similar. He said, “Today, it is impossible to say, whether a place of worship, was a temple, a mosque or a Buddha Vihar. India attained Independence on August 15, 1947 and at that time, we had 56 crore Gods.”

Paswan added, “When we didn’t have a population of even ten crores. There are five Gods for one person, yet we have not been able to make arrangement for potable water in 5,76,000 villages in the country, but a country where there is only one God, everyone is prosperous and that country is progressing like anything. This is a religious issue. I have already said that I am not a believer. Let people believe in places of worship, according to their faith.”

“The country gained Independence on August 15, 1947. Before that, who were the masters at this country? We don’t want to go into history, and August 15. 1947 was a momentous day in the country’s history. It is such a date in the nation’s history that many among us… During the course of my speech, I have neither referred to any political party nor any political leader by name and nor do I intend to do so. The very objective of religion is to remove darkness and provide light and knowledge. A lamp can be used to light up a house as well as to burn it down. Unfortunately, today, religion is being used to spread hatred and disharmony. We will have to give a serious thought to it.”

“Mr. Chairman, Sir, ours is a country where we have people belonging to various faiths and walks of life and each of one of them should be given an opportunity to realize his maximum potential. I believe that this Bill is a right step, towards fulfilling this objective.”

“Every day, some or the other issue is raked up here. Arguments are put forward in defence of definitions of natives and foreigners. I believe that this matter is beyond the scope of argument. Today, we hear slogans like ‘Garva se kaho, hum Hindu hain’, ‘Garva se bolo, hum Musalman hain’, ‘Garva se bolo, hum Sikh hain’, but where is that soul-stirring slogan of ‘Garva se kaho hum Bharatiya hain? We are first Indians.”

Facing some interruptions from agitated sections among the BJP, Paswan’s speech is worth a read.

Paswan recalls examples of shared citizenship and sacrifice saying, “…Can anyone say that among our freedom fighters, the sacrifice made by Sardar Bhagat Singh was inferior to anyone. During the 1965 war, many of our jawans were decorated with ‘Vir Chakras’, but Abdul Hameed received the highest honour of ‘Paramvir Chakra’. Was his sacrifice, less than that of anyone? Will his sacrifice be underestimated just because be happened to be a Muslim? We attained independence on August 15, 1947. While some people chose the new State, the rest preferred to stay back. It is a fact that the country does not apprehend as much danger from Pakistan as from those within the country, who indulge in espionage and sell the country for a few silver coins. They are the worst enemies of the country.”

He spoke very presciently of the dangers of labelling sections of the Indian population anti-national and questioning their loyalty.

“Now, if people of my age, like Kumari Uma Bharti or myself start accusing the Indian Muslims of being Pakistani agents or the Indian Christians as British agents, it cannot be justified, on any ground. If one goes to U.S.A. and search for an original American, everyone would proudly say that he or she is an American. The Americans are a very united and patriotic people, irrespective of their enthnic origins. It’s high time, we too realized it and drew a dividing line between the patriots and traitors. That line cannot be drawn on the basis of religion or community, nor in the name of Ram. The issue of Ram is theirs and of those who believe in him. Dr. Ambedkar has also said a lot about Ram. I don’t want to go into that, including the fact that Sham-book was killed during Ram’s regime…”

“I want to say that there should be no objection if anyone wants to build a Ram temple, a mosque, a gurudwara or a church, But one wonders, where do these people want to take the country, by demolishing an existing structure and building a temple at that place. Do we want to take the country towards savagery?”

Uma Bharati, also a member of parliament had spoken uninterrupted before Paswan made his speech.

Paswan then said, “Madam Chairperson, I want to point out here that the proponents of Hindutva tend to forget the fact that Hindus are there not only in India but also all over the world. When on 30^th October, a rumour spread that the Babri Masjid had been demolished, some people in Bangladesh went to attack temples there. But when it came to be known that the Babri Masjid has escaped damage, the police opened fire on the rioters and about 20 people killed in the incident. But no temple was allowed to be damaged. Have the advocates of Hindutva ever thought of the repercussions on the Hindus in foreign countries, if a church or mosque is demolished in this country? Therefore, please don’t intermix politics with religion to the extent that it would prove disastrous for our own brethren…”

“Therefore, Madam Chairperson, through you, I would like to say that today the question is not of Hindu-Muslim, nor or temple, mosque or gurudwara. Today, the issue at stake is our Constitution. The issue is to save that India, for whose freedom, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians had fought together and it is the duty of every citizen to safeguard our Constitution. The issue involves not only Hindus and Christians, but each and every citizen of this country. This is a matter concerning the Constitution and I believe that whichever Government comes to power, will have to go by the Constitution. No decision can be taken by putting the Constitution at stake. On behalf of the National Front and the Left front, I would like to warn the Union Government of disastrous consequences, if it allows the Constitution, to be subverted, constitutional provisions to be violated or if it surrenders before those forces which are aiming at subverting the Constitution. We at the National Front and Left Front would from a human chain around the Babri Masjid to protect it from those intending to demolish it. They will have to walk over our dead bodies to reach the mosque. Therefore, I would like to appeal to my countryman that those who have complete faith in our Constitution and the cardinal principals of secularism should come forward, for today our very Constitution is at stake. Yunus Saheb, Shri Syed Sahabuddin and others will tell the House about the loopholes and drawbacks of this legislation, but we support this Bill, as it is in consonance with our demand in this regard, although we, too, believe that this Bill does not carry within itself, a complete solution to this problem.”

“However, it would prove effective in checking the growing communal feeling within the country and attempts by certain forces to incite violence by declaring certain structures belonging to one community has their own. I would like to repeat that so far neither the Government’s policies not its intentions were sincere and it has had its far-reaching consequences. At least now, the Government should rise above petty politics and formulate such policies that would act as a check on those forces, which till the other day, had abused Bhindranwale for mixing politics with religion and for using the Golden Temple for political purposes. But today they are themselves indulging in politics from temple and also justifying it. Therefore, no loopholes should be left in this law.”

“Hindus are in majority in this country and the secular forces within that community have very well seen through the games of the communalists and have understood the linkage between Ram and Politics.”

“The National Front is committed to protect secularism and I urge you to follow suit. I am thankful to you for bringing forward a legislation in this regard and I extend my support to this Bill.”

Re-visiting legislative history at a time when Indian Parliament has been held complete hostage to an autocratic majoritarianism is not just crucial; it could well help temper the winds that threaten to fan uncontrollable fires.
 

*Teesta Setalvad is a Human Rights defender, journalist and educationist. She is the co-founder of SabrangIndia and Secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP).

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