For over four decades the resonant voice of Ameen Sayani was the voice of Indian radio entertainment. On Radio Ceylon’s Geetmala and then All India Radio or Akashwani’s Vividh Bharti, Sayani’s radio hours brought us the pick of Hindi film songs interlaced with his attractive commentary in Hindustani. A child of the freedom movement, born into a family that hailed from Gujarat and was especially influenced by Gandhi, Ameen Sayani journeys through 60 years of India’s experiment with public broadcasting, culture and entertainment.

I was initiated into radio broadcasting at the age of seven by my elder brother Hameed who was a very fine broadcaster with the English section of All India Radio (AIR), Bombay. He used to take me along with him for smaller programmes and gradually I started lending my voice to radio plays and later on, to other broadcasts. It was not until 1949-50 that I shifted towards full-fledged broadcasting in Hindustani. I was a student from the Gujarati medium, then an English broadcaster and later I graduated towards broadcasting in Hindustani.

In expanse, my career has spanned decades of broadcasting. Geetmala was aired on Radio Ceylon for 38 years after which, in 1989, it started as a half-hour programme on Vividh Bharti. The material was the same in both but the songs were reduced in length for the half-hour version. On Radio Ceylon the entire song was played but as reception of Radio Ceylon became difficult in later years, I shifted to AIR. Vividh Bharti ran until quite recently, 1993-94. In fact, we celebrated Geetmala’s 42nd birthday on Doordarshan through a 31-episode series. I was also producing programmes and commercials for seven or eight countries across the world, countries like the UK, Mauritius, Fiji and Canada, Swaziland and Dubai.

The atmosphere at All India Radio in those days, pre and post-independence, was special. A motto hung over the entrance of the building: “Bahujan Hitai Bahujan Sukhai” – for the benefit of the people, for the happiness of the people – this was the proclaimed aim of broadcasting. AIR had, in those days, an army of the best writers, performers, musicians, and the best producers. The cream of talent used to gravitate towards AIR and it was considered a matter of great pride to be able to participate in any AIR programme. This was through the late forties and early fifties when AIR was perhaps one of the finest broadcasting organisations in the world, on par with the BBC.

They broadcast fabulous plays and features backed by first-rate newsreaders. Though the formal name, Akashwani, was adopted later, AIR was indeed like an akash wani (broadcast through the skies). Anything that was broadcast on radio was the absolute last word. It carried weight and creativity.

It was only about a decade after independence that AIR started receiving the first shock waves of bureaucratic and political interference that slowly began to affect its functioning. The first shock came of course with partition, the greatest tragedy we faced. Partition took the best of our talent away; many writers and producers migrated to Pakistan.

Finally, after all that bloodshed, on the night of August 14-15, with the hoisting of the national flag for the first time, I heard Nehru’s great “Tryst with Destiny” speech. Less than six months later, in January 1948, it was the shattering news of Gandhiji being killed that AIR broadcast on its airwaves. For us in the Sayani family, passionately fond of and devoted to Gandhiji, for me, growing up in the laps of the great leaders of the freedom movement, it was a very personal tragedy. Why this man, who was so peaceful, so non-violent, a man who spread love and goodness and goodwill? Why did anybody have to kill him off? As a schoolboy, my reaction was one of pain and bewilderment.

At the New Era School in Bombay, where I studied for seven years, I learnt Gujarati from the Balpothi (primer) from kindergarten onwards. These formative years were critical. Our school song, for instance, it was in Gujarati and its words, which made a lasting impression on me, embodied a fantastic concept of unity – love, affinity, neighbourliness and humility – it’s all there. I remember at New Era we also had a four-line motto that was, in fact, a four-language motto because it had all the four main languages of Maharashtra! The first was English, the name of the school, which was in English, the second was a Gujarati line, the third line was in Marathi and the fourth line was in Hindi. This is how it went: “New Era, Nau Jawan Badho Aage, Aami Jagat Che Nagreek Ho, Bharat Bhumi Jai Jai Ho (New Era; Youth, forge ahead; We are citizens of the world; Hail, hail to India)”.

So this fusion has always been part of my life and a part, I think, of the life of all Indians. As I keep saying, if we had been more inclusive and creative on the issue of language there would have been less separateness, less tension, we would have engendered an ability to understand the other. The maulvi saheb who used to teach me taught me about the opening prayers in the Koran, “Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alamin”, which means, Praise be to Allah, lord of the worlds – master of the entire universe, not only the god of Muslims. Similarly, in the Rig Veda you will come across a line, “Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti” – there is only one truth, we look at it from different points of view. There is also a famous Sanskrit saying, “Vasudeva Kutumbam” – the whole world is one family.

As a schoolboy and a keen listener of the radio, I remember listening to all the beautiful film songs in all the farmaishi (request) programmes. The farmaishi list would be about a mile long and in school all of us youngsters used to wait in the common room hoping that our names and choice of song would sometimes feature. What music it was, the golden years of Hindustani music!

Slowly, with the golden age of Hindi cinema producing songs and music of incredible quality, I shifted over to broadcasting film music. I started with Radio Ceylon where thanks to my brother I got my breakthrough. Initially, it was difficult, as I had to speak neither English nor Gujarati but Hindi and I did not know Hindi or Urdu very well.

I inched my way into broadcasting in Hindustani with determination and hard work. I did have a background of written Hindustani. My mother was a shishsya (student) of Gandhiji and he had instructed her to start a regular publication, a fortnightly on adult education for neo-literates. Inspired and guided by him, she began it from our home and ran it for several years. Gandhiji had instructed her to start it in three scripts, the Hindi script (which is the Devanagari script), the Urdu script and the Gujarati script, which were the three main scripts used in Maharashtra. What vision! What simplicity of integration! Whilst three distinct scripts were used, each line read the same in simple, spoken Hindustani. It sounds trite and obvious but it was this vision that made Gandhiji what he was. It was an incredible stroke of genius from Gandhiji and reflected his awareness of the importance of a common language, a simple language that can bring people together, through which they can communicate with each other, which can build up a sort of affinity and integrate people into one whole body of people.

You see, in those days the only lingua franca was English and although Hindi, Urdu, were widely used and simple Hindustani was being promoted quite a bit, it was not officially the Indian language. I remember that at a very important session of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), Gandhi proposed that Hindustani be the national language, not Hindi. But at a subsequent CWC session after his death, by a majority of just one casting vote from the president, Hindi was chosen instead of Hindustani. Thereafter, we began to use a language that was barely understood by millions of our people.

So when the challenge of broadcasting in Hindustani was thrown at me, I found that my mother’s publication and its basis in and affinity with Hindustani helped me to slip into the role of broadcaster quite easily. Through Radio Ceylon I was communicating not only with Indians and the whole of Asia, Radio Ceylon used to be the popular radio station as far as the east coast of Africa. As producer and presenter of Geetmala, my main programme, I was learning how to speak simple Hindustani. I already knew how to write it but I was learning the correct accent of speech and the communication and nuances along with my listeners, using rich material that my mother used in Rahbar (Showing the Way), the magazine she published from our home right up to 1960. I used a lot of the material she used, the philosophy of life that this fascinating experience, the publication of Rahbar, provided, to link my Geetmala programme between songs, thematically.

My own experience with the Hindustani language, my learning it, grew with my programme and with my listeners. My listeners would write back with their choice of film songs and their views, sometimes in Marathi or in Punjabi or Gujarati or Telugu or Bengali. Gradually, as the programme grew in popularity, Hindustani was the language that the listeners shifted to.

My listeners and I grew together with a simple, common denominator language that was a tremendous connecting point between them and me. I believe that if the simple language of Hindustani had been our national language, many of our complications as a nation would not have arisen.

There is a very simple saying in Hindustani that has been part of my life and also an intrinsic part of the leadership of early India, “Todo Nahi, Jodo” – Don’t break, Unite.

All my life in broadcasting, which spans four decades, that’s what I’ve been trying to do, simplify concepts and communicate them with social relevance as connections between songs.

Why break up this beautiful nation, why break up this lovely conglomeration of cultures, of philosophy, of social habits, of colours, taste and attitude? There is no country anywhere in the world with so many diversities, so many colours and so much variety.

Instead of getting all that dynamite together, moulding it into an actual Saare Jahan Se Achcha, Hindustan Hamara (Our India, Unequalled in the entire universe), we have been breaking it, dividing its people. What is the point of the Sensex booming if our farmers are committing suicide? There are two or three main reasons for this disparity, this tension, this hatred. We do not know our own faith or religion and neither do we know the faith practices of our neighbours. I can say this because of my experience in holding the listener through Geetmala; my programmes always had an undercurrent of social relevance. No entertainment can ever exist or succeed without being close to life and no socially relevant programming can ever be successful unless it has a little or lots of bits of entertainment, a little bit of lure. So there has to be a mix, of both good and bad. Whether calamity or great achievement, both always got talked about on my programme.

For instance, man’s first step on the moon, Armstrong taking the first step, I made a whole programme on Geetmala, weaving this theme through everything with couplets referring to the moon, references to the moon, what repercussions this would have on us and so on. If there was a famine or calamity or a great leader died or a big festival, it was reflected somewhere in the programme and interspersed with songs or listeners’ comments.

In all my broadcast programmes, communication for me was the essence. I never let my listeners feel that I was preaching any kind of integration because integration can never be preached. For example, during the emergency, the government introduced its 20-point programme when an order was issued to both Doordarshan and AIR to make programmes on the 20-point programme! There were hundreds of proposals but none saw the light of day. Another time, there was this bureaucrat who called all of us producers and directed us to produce a television programme on humour! I remember saying, Sir, humour is always the soul of all conversation, you can put humour into as many things as you like, why do you say that you want only a humorous programme? Say you want an interesting programme. How interesting programmes are made is the producer’s lookout. If you like it, take it, if you don’t like it, don’t take it but don’t put a kind of maniacal handcuff on them, it will not work. Good work originates from within.

All India Radio still has the potential, it has the physical potential, it also has a tremendous number of excellent people still there and if they were allowed to come together and work in a conducive and creative manner it could have tremendous scope and reach, giving the new FM channels (whose chatty styles are quite interesting, actually) a run for their money.

So as a broadcaster I would narrate anecdotes, poetry, which spoke of my experience of our people, the goodness, sweetness, beauty, gentleness, affinity, getting together is the big thing for me. This is what I tried to do everywhere, I can’t pinpoint that I did this or that for integration. Everything I was saying was for integration.

When we started the programme it was as an experiment and I got to have a go at it because I was the juniormost in the group and they were only going to pay 25 rupees to the person who presented, produced and scripted the programme and even checked the mail it received! After the very first broadcast, we got 9,000 letters in response and I went mad checking them. Within 18 months, when the weekly listeners’ mail jumped to 65,000 letters a week, it became impossible to faithfully monitor so we decided to convert it into a simple countdown show.

We used our unique way of rating the most popular songs. First, we tied up with the 20-25 major record shops all over India that used to receive clear reports of popularity ratings and sales. We then discovered that we could still miss accurate ratings because there was often about a fortnight’s gap between demands for records (78 format) being expressed and stock being delivered. We then started depending upon the farmaishi list but realised at the end of six months that a lot of pulls and pushes were influencing this selection – film producers, music directors, who bought postcards in bulk and sent them to us (postcards, some ostensibly from Pune, some from Delhi, some from Kanpur, some from Madras, had actually been posted from one post office in Kalbadevi, Bombay, the postal franking showed us!).

So finally we hit upon a very good idea – lining up several small groups of listeners from all over India who were writing to us very regularly. They had formed radio clubs and they met every week, listened to the programme together and engaged in other related activities. So I started encouraging them and we built up as many as 400 clubs all over India, which used to regularly send us their weekly or fortnightly ratings and numbers. We used these as a basis to be collated with sales reports from record shops and voilà, we got 99.9 per cent accurate ratings.

Coming back to my form of communication, my method was simple, my language was simple. See, I feel communication must be straightforward, honest, understandable and simple. There should be no double meanings; there should be no kind of equivocation as they say. It should be a direct matter of one heart to another. You say what you mean and the other person understands what you are saying. There are two things wrong with our country, our lack of understanding of each other’s faiths coupled with our very confused communications. Especially official communication. I have also started a movement on the need for a national anthem that is understood by one and all.

(As told to Teesta Setalvad.)

Archived from Communalism Combat,  February 2008  Year 14    No.128, Culture

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(In March 1994, as part of our campaign to track the parochial processes that deter even ‘secular’ governments from fair explorations into history, we had interviewed Dr Arvind Deshpande, then chairman of the Maharshtra State Text Book Board. We reproduce excerpts from that exchange)

Since its inception in 1980–81, the main objective before the Maharashtra State Text Book Bureau that we were part of was that the ‘secular element should be jousted up in our history books…’ Shivaji, for example, has always been depicted as a Hindu hero. But the moment you do this, unknowingly, unconsciously, the bias creeps in.

For the first four to five years we were extremely conscious of this. So we did our utmost to remove these biases in order to prevent their creeping into the curriculum. Soon enough, we were faced with the consequences — opposition either from the minority or the majority community.

This was our bitter experience with a Std. IV textbook. In 1986, with the introduction of the New Education Policy, the entire syllabus was revised. In history, too, new elements were added: Regional History, Indian Culture and Civics. In preparing and publishing textbooks, we are severely restricted by the cost factor. As they have to be affordable for lakhs of SSC students throughout the state, the books are restricted to 96 pages. Now, while looking at the Std. IV history textbook, we found that 80 of these 96 pages dealt with Shivaji alone. This left little room for any other element that we wanted to
introduce.

In keeping with our objective of introducing a new value system, in the revised draft we had to rewrite portions of it, reduce the section on Shivaji. Professor Bhosale (RR Bhosale, another bureau member) also agreed. Paragraphs were changed, some re–drafted. Meanwhile, someone leaked information to the press. Even before the re–drafted book was released or published, merely on surmises and guesswork, we had to face a vicious media campaign led by Kesari (Marathi daily). We were charged with “removing the inspiring part of history and making it insipid.” Until then, we had only had a trial reading of the book for three days with 60 teachers, two from each district in Maharashtra. During this, no one seemed to have any objection. But suddenly, after the vicious campaigns in the press, the same government that had entrusted us with the task of “jousting the secular and humanist element in history” completely backed out.

This was in 1991, when the Sudhakarrao Naik–led minority government was in power. Defending our work on the floor of the house, the state education minister said that we were only trying to de–individualise history, that all of Indian history had been personality-oriented, that history should focus attention on the social forces at work and not only on individual personalities. But the chief minister succumbed and promised the agitated legislators, who cut across all party lines, that not one word in the 25–year–old textbook would be changed. As a result, the communal overtones remain; the incitement to violence is still there. All the work that we had put in for the revised draft is lost forever. We were all asked to surrender our copies to the government.

The key question is, why are issues of history being raked up again and again?

(Dr Deshpande spoke to co-editor Communalism Combat, Teesta Setalvad in 1994; this account has been archived from the earlier editions of Communalism Combat, March 1994 and October, 2001)

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Supply Sodium Cynanide and a Rope to every Dalit student-Rohit to the VC a month before he took his life

This letter, dated December 18, 2015 has not been so widely quoted nor has it gone viral. It is a comment on all of us, especially those of us in the media, that we failed to read the warnings or feel the anguish.  After all it is since August 2015 that the social boycott and ostracizing of Dalit students, including Rohith was systematically afoot. That is close to five months ago.

Nearly a month to the day that he tragically gave up the struggle to live and took his own life, on December 18, 2015, a hand-written letter from Rohith Vemula to Vice Chancellor Appa Rao says it all. Taunting and tragic, the note will now be read as a precursor of what was to come. In a hand-written scrawl that hints at acute desperation, he says, “Your Excellency (addressed to the Vice Chancellor Appa Rao) “make preparations for the EUTHANASIA for students like me from the Ambedkarite movement…and may your campus rest in peace forever.”

The letter traces the officially sanctioned “social boycott” of Dalit students after they took on a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for his derogatory remarks to the Dalit students. “Donald Trump will be a Lilliput in front of you,” Rohith tells Appa Rao then offering a piece of chilling advice. “Please serve 10 miligram of Sodium Azide to all the Dalit students at the time of admission…Supply a nice rope to the rooms of all Dalits students..”The text of the letter can be read here and a scanned hand written copy seen here.

Now we know, and fret over the fact that his Rs 25,000 per month stipend (as of all his other suspended colleagues) was stopped after suspension and he had to borrow money, even from home, to survive the struggle. Now that he is dead we listen to the plight and anguish of his family. Why did we not listen before? As the isolation and anguish built up to make Rohith take a step so final that it signalled no return? Yes, we are all to blame.

“After the stipend was stopped, his family was struggling to support him. He borrowed Rs 40,000 from a friend and was living frugally. Almost every day, he used to say that his money was stuck,’’ said Velmula Sankanna, a fellow PhD scholar and one of the other five students who were suspended. “In December, Rohith wrote an angry letter to the V-C, sarcastically asking him to provide euthanasia facilities for Dalit students. Since then, he was scared to go to the administration building and ask about his stipend. He became silent and withdrawn. He said that he was falling into depression because he was being defeated by the system at every turn. He blamed himself, his caste, and the circumstances around him. He did not take much interest in anything except studies,’’ added Sankanna, a close friend.

We did not rise to feel, see or appreciate the seriousness implicit in the warnings. In August 2015, a questionable mode of ‘suspension’ of five singled out students of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) followed by the arbitrary stopping of their scholarship stipend, further followed by their being locked out of their rooms from January 4, 2016. Yet they fought on, sleeping out near the shopping complex in the cold. Awaiting fair hearing, democratic space for protest(s) and justice.

From the night of January 4, 2016 until today the sleep out protests continue.

After the tragic and unnecessary loss of the life of a budding science scholar, a proud Ambedkarite, will justice and fair hearing happen? Yesterday in a fully articulated representation to PL Punia, Chairperson of the National Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Commission, the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, University of Hyderabad (UoH) has demanded:

• Punish the Culprits under the SC/ST Atrocities Act:
• Banadaru Dattareya, Union Cabinet Minister of State for Labour and Employment
• P Appa Rao, Vice Chancellor
• Professor Alok Pandey, Chief Proctor
• Susheel Kumar, ABVP President
• Ramchandra Rao, MLC
• Remove P Appa Rao from the post of Vice Chancellor
• Employ a family member of Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad and give his family Rs 50 lahs in compensation
• Drop the fabricated cases against five Dalit Research Scholars immediately and unconditionally
• Revoke the suspension of Students immediately and unconditionally

The Anger Spreads; Demands for resignation of Vice Chancellor Appa Rao

Anger and grief are potent combinations and both were visible in plenty at the mortuary of the Osmania Hospital on Monday, January 18 where Rohith Velumal lay, a day after he tragically ended his own life. His mother’s anguished cry says it all, ““I used to proudly tell everyone in my village that my son was doing PhD at Hyderabad University. Today, I have come to collect his dead body.’’ The family is from Gurazala near Guntur, his mother a tailor and father, Manikumar a security guard at the Hyderabad University. Rohith has two siblings, an elder sister and a younger brother.

Over 1200 students of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) participated in a rally on Monday evening and have resolved to protest on Tuesday, January 19 and not allow the university to function until the current Vice Chancellor, Appa Rao steps down. Before the rally, his close friends and colleagues, along with his family were present at the cremation of Rohith in Hyderabad. (see Image story)

Simultaneous and spontaneous protests continued through the day yesterday at Hyderabad, Vishakhapatnam, Mumbai and Delhi. The road outside Shastri Bhavan, the office of Smriti Irani, the Ministry for Human Resources Development (MHRD) was cordoned off akin to a war zone (see pictures). In Hyderabad, a visit from the chairperson of the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes Commission allayed feelings somewhat.

Though it is Rohith is the one who has made the most recent and most tragic sacrifice, the question is whether it will still open India’s eyes and hearts?

We read every other day not just of the social boycott of Dalit children in the mid day meal schemes. In ‘Dravidian’ politics ruled Tamil Nadu colour bands on Dalit students brand them with their caste. There is little political, social or cultural outrage. The television channels, packed as they are with ‘journalists’ most of whom sport a myopic caste consciousness of the elite Indian that simply excludes any mention of discrimination or exclusion while badgering home ‘the banner of tolerance’, rarely flag anti-Dalit atrocities as an institutional ill to be faced squarely then remedied.
In ‘progressive’ west India the discrimination takes similar forms, and examples abound. In Phugana, three young Dalit children, one a baby was burnt alive in a burst of Rajput rage.

Just like the Blacks fought (and have barely won) the Civil Rights battle in the West – last year’s incidents at Fergusson are evidence of how thinly layered this success is –it is privileged India, caste Hindus who need to hang their heads in acknowledgement, first, and the, shame.

We need to internalize what Dalit students experience when they enter schools, colleges and universities and break the glass ceiling and enter India’s famed institutions of higher learning, the IITs, the IIMs and Universities.

Not only is the percentage of Dalit students who enter higher educational institutions small. They are subject to insidious caste practices and exclusion that batters the hard earned self-esteem. A dangerous argument of ‘meritocracy’ cloaks well organized money and caste induced privilege.

This everyday institutional and societal exclusion and othering needs to be acknowledged squarely by each and one of us.

It is time we ask difficult ourselves some hard and uncomfortable questions.

What kind of history do we teach? Who are our heroines and heroes?
How many Dalits are there in the media, print and television?
How many Dalits in Institutions of power and governance?

The Dalit experience says that entering the corridors of elite educational institutions like Indian Institute of Technologies (IIT) and Indian Institute of Managements and Central Universities for scores of Dalit students is like walking into a living hell, where the fear of being shamed and humiliated hangs heavy on the heart and soul of every student.

Before Rohit, we lost Senthil Kumar and Nagaralu Koppalas, also in the Central University of Hyderabad. Have these earlier losses, deaths of young men in their prime been internalized and taught the UoH any lessons worth learning? The recent and continuing unfair suspension of Dalit scholars would appear to suggest that no lessons have yet been learned.

Is India willing ready and able to accept her Not So Hidden Apartheid?

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Brutal: A painting of British soldiers shooting civilians in Amritsar on April 13, 1919

Jallianwala Bagh

One of the worst political crimes of the twentieth century was committed in Punjab during 1919. Popular resentment had been accumulating in Punjab since the beginning of the War (World War I), mainly due to the ruthless drive – by the British — for recruiting soldiers and forced contribution to the war fund. Gandhiji’s call for a country-wide hartal to protest against the Black Acts received a tremendous response from Punjab on March 30 and again on April 6.

The agitated mood of the people and Hindu-Muslim solidarity demonstrated on the hartal (strike) days and on April 9 celebration of the Ramnavami festival made the Lt.Governor Michael O’Dwyer’s administration panicky.

Gandhiji’s entry into Punjab was banned: two popular leaders of Amritsar. Kitchlew and Satya Pal, were arrested. These provocations led to hartals and mass demonstrations in Lahore, Kasur, Gujranwala and Amritsar.

In Amritsar, the police firing on demonstrators provoked some of them to commit acts of violence. The next day the city was handed over to Brigadier-General Dyer. Dyer began his regime through indiscriminate arrests and ban on meeting and gatherings.

On April 13-the day of Baisakhi festival – a meeting was called in the afternoon at the Jallianwala Bagh a ground enclosed on all sides. Thousands of people, many of whom had come from surrounding villages to the fairs in Amritsar and were unaware of the ban order, gathered in the meeting.

Suddenly Dyer appeared there with troops and without any warning to the people, ordered firing on the completely peaceful and defenceless crowd. The fusillade continued till Dyer’s ammunition ran out. Atleast about a thousand people, if not more, are estimated to have been killed. This cold-blooded carnage, Dyer admitted later, was perpetrated ‘to strike into the whole of Punjab’. The massacre stunned the people and became a turning point in the history of India’s struggle for freedom.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Wrote a Strong Letter of Protest to the Viceroy, dated May 31, 1919, renouncing his Knighthood
“….The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised governments…. The accounts of insults and sufferings undergone by our brothers in the Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of India and the universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers,-possibly congratulating themselves for what they imagine as salutary lessons….the very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when the badges of honour make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen, who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings….”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

The Hunter Committee

The Hunter Committee was appointed by the British government. Halfway through its proceedings, the Hunter Committee had also suffered the setback of being boycotted by Indian nationalists, represented by the Congress, because of the government’s refusal to release Punjab leaders on bail.

Of the eight, the Hunter Committee had three Indian members. The conduct of the Indian members is a study in principled independence and courage.
 

Example of the Cross Examination of General Dyer

Brigadier Reginald Dyer was in charge of British troops and ordered the massacre in Amritsar

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘You took two armoured cars with you?’
Dyer: ‘Yes.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘Those cars had machine guns?’
Dyer: ‘Yes.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘And when you took them you meant to use the machine guns against the crowd, did you?”
Dyer: ‘If necessary. If the necessity arose, and I was attacked, or anything else like that, I presume I would have used them.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘When you arrived there you were not able to take the armoured cars in because the passage was too narrow?’
Dyer: ‘Yes.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘Supposing the passage was sufficient to allow the armoured cars to go in, would you have opened fire with the machine guns?’
Dyer: ‘I think, probably, yes.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘In that case the casualties would have been very much higher?’
Dyer: ‘Yes.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘And you did not open fire with the machine guns simply by the accident of the armoured cars not being able to get in?’
Dyer: ‘I have answered you. I have said that if they had been there the probability is that I would have opened fire with them.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘With the machine guns straight?’
Dyer: ‘With the machine guns.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘I take it that your idea in taking that action was to strike terror?’
Dyer: ‘Call it what you like. I was going to punish them. My idea from the military point of view was to make a wide impression.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘To strike terror not only in the city of Amritsar, but throughout the Punjab?’
Dyer: ‘Yes, throughout the Punjab. I wanted to reduce their morale; the morale of the rebels.’

Chimanlal Setalvad: ‘Did it occur to you that by adopting this method of “frightfulness” –excuse the term-you were really doing a great disservice to the British Raj by driving discontent deep?’
Dyer: ‘I did not like the idea of doing it, but I also realized that it was the only means of saving life and that any reasonable man with justice in his mind would realize that I had done the right thing; it was a merciful though horrible act and they ought to be thankful to me for doing it. I thought I would be doing a jolly lot of good and they would realize that they were not to be wicked.’
 
This erudite exchange on the pointed killings ordered by Dyer on April 13, 1919 – the Jallianwala Bagh massacre– took place during the hearings of the Hunter Committee. The hearings took place in Lahore on November 19, 1919. These questions were part of a detailed and rigorous cross examination of General Dyer. It was Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, a lawyer from Bharuch, Gujarat based in Bombay who had conducted this particular cross-examnation.

The bullet marks are still visible

Setalvad’s cross examination followed Lord Hunter’s and that of one more British member. Dyer had already admitted to Lord Hunter that although ‘a good many’ in the crowd might not have heard of his ban on the public meeting, he had ordered the firing at Jallianwala Bagh without giving any warning. He went further when he said before the Committee that, although he could have ‘dispersed them perhaps even without firing’. He felt it was his ‘duty to go on firing until (the crowd) dispersed’.
 
An eight-member committee headed by Lord William Hunter, former solicitor general in Scotland constituted the Inquiry Committee. Apart from Setalvad, then Vice Chancellor, Bombay University,  two other Indians were part of the Committee. Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, Pandit Jagat Narain, Member of the Legislative Council of the Lt. Governor of U.P. and Sultan Ahmed Khan, Member for Appeals, Gwalior State.
 
Lord Hunter, Justice Rankin and WF Rice, Add. Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, Major-General Sir George Barrow, Commanding the Peshawar Dn and Smith, Member of the Legislative Council of the Lt. Governor of U.P. were the members. The questioning was done, in turn, by eight members.
 
Following up on the admissions by Dyer to the two British members before him, Setalvad probed Dyer on the two armoured cars that he had been forced to leave out. Dyer’s callousness stood exposed: even after the firing had left almost 400 dead and many more injured, when asked by Setalvad if he had taken any measures for the relief of the wounded, Dyer replied, ‘‘No, certainly not. It was not my job. But the hospitals were open and the medical officers were there. The wounded only had to apply for help.’
 
All three Indian members of the Hunter Committee displayed a remarkable degree of independence faced with sharp differences with the British members. The differences arose over the recording of conclusions.
 
The Hunter Committee ended up giving two reports – the majority report by the five British members and the minority report by three Indian members.
 
Both reports indicted Dyer, in no uncertain terms. The differences were in in the degree of condemnation, in so far as Jallianwala Bagh was concerned.
           
The report by the British members’ report condemned the action by Dyer on two counts: that he opened fire without warning and that he went on firing after the crowd had ‘begun to disperse’. Though his intention to create a moral effect throughout Punjab was ‘a mistaken conception of duty’, the British members thought it was ‘distinctly improbable that the crowd would have dispersed without being fired on’. Even the British members of the Hunter Committee, rejected the official stand that Dyer’s action had ‘saved the situation in the Punjab and averted a rebellion on a scale similar to the (1857) mutiny’.
 
The minority report, drafted by Chimanlal Setalvad, on behalf of all the Indian members was not only more severe in general. It specifically condemned Dyer for ‘suggesting that he would have made use of machine guns if they could have been brought into action.’ Members expressed strong anguish at the fact that even after the crowd had begun to disperse, Dyer had continued the firing ‘until his ammunition was spent.’
 
Citing Dyer’s own admission in cross examination, the Indians disagreed with the opinion expressed by the British members of the Committee that the crowd was unlikely to have dispersed without the firing. In conclusion, the Indian members of the Hunter Committee described Dyer’s conduct ‘as inhuman and un-British and as having caused great disservice to British rule in India’.
 
Faced with both reports, the then Viceroy of India, Chelmsford conceded that Dyer ‘acted beyond the necessity of the case, beyond what any reasonable man could have thought to be necessary, and that he did not act with as much humanity as the case permitted’. Dyer had no option but to resign and return to England in disgrace.
 
Apologists for the Raj in Britain however, bought into Dyer’s claim that it was this bloody firing by Dyer that had saved the Raj in India. This not only reduced the punishment meted out to Dyer, he was also treated as some sort of a hero on his return.  In fact, the inquiry itself could only be instituted only after in indemnity law had been passed protecting Dyer and other recalcitrant officers from criminal liability.
           
Setalvad had been knighted by the British monarch, just a few months before the Jallianwala Bagh inquiry. He was then vice-chancellor of Bombay University. In his memoirs published in 1946, Recollections and Reflections, Setalvad disclosed that within the British and Indian members of the Hunter Committee had developed ‘a sharp cleavage of opinion’.
 
(Large portions of this article have relied upon excerpts from the autobiography of Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, Recollections and Reflections; Sir Chimanlal Setalvad was the great grandfather of Teesta Setalvad )

The post Bloodbath on Baisakhi: The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, April 13, 1919 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The blurred, bloodied and barely recognisable body of 38 year old Idrees Pasha sprung on to the country’s consciousness three days after his brute murder, lynch death committed by Hindutva serial hate offender Puneeth Kerehalli in the Sathanur police station area of Ramanagara district of Karnataka, on April 3, 2023.

Three days later, cameras zoomed in on another Muslim from the state, elderly Shah Rasheed Ahmed Quadri, an expert craftsman of the Bidri craft of northern Karnataka being awarded the Padma Shree. Rasheed, overwhelmed, said, on the occasion where luminaries of the union government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were visible, that “he never expected prime minister, Modi to assent to the award to a Muslim craftsperson”, and that he was therefore proven wrong in his misconception. Modi laughed in response, reports said.

Why the connection? What is the irony behind the dual, contradictory imagery?

Karnataka goes to the polls for one. In just another month’s time. And along with Abdul Rasheed’s beaming gratitude, the ghastly death of Pasha, laced with the consistent calls for the socio-economic boycott of Muslims and their businesses in the state has coloured the electoral campaigning on the political landscape. Pasha’s gruesome death is not the only tale of minority lives lost to targeted gore.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that captured power after a money-induced tussle (read 2019 Operation Kamala!!) has left virtually no stone unturned to permit a grossly divisive politics in the public sphere in the state. Young Muslim women were denied education by targeting the ‘hijab’ (veil), a misguided section within the community making it worse by pushing for the recognition of the veil as an essential religious practice. Open calls for the boycott of businesses run by Muslims were allowed unchecked. And Tipu Sultan, that symbol of a resistance against British colonial rule, is selectively and culturally demonised. Not to mention the national level exclusions at the policy level, purging Indian history text-books selectively, of Gandhi’s assassins and the entire period of Mughal rule. A stony silence from the regime’s leadership marks these unrelenting “changes”. The political opposition, stuttering and hesitant when it comes to all issues related to representation, rights and secularism is muted in its criticism. Anything and all that is Muslim then, past, present (and future?) is sought to be erased. In the midst of this hate, a soppy palliative, the calming image of gifted Abdul Rasheed, the bidri master craftsman swirls around the airwaves.

The connections are not tenuous but obvious, between the hate offenders and the hate mongers. As The Wire  has reported, Puneeth Karehalli, the leader of the March 31 lynch mob that killed Idrees Psha, is the president of a “far-right Hindutva outfit called Raastra Rakshana Pade (literally, ‘national security organisation’)”, which was involved in campaigns against halal food and demanding the expulsion of Muslim vendors from areas near Hindu temples. On his social media platforms, Kerehalli proudly shares several photos of him with prominent BJP leaders like Tejaswi Surya, Kapil Mishra, K. Annamalai, and C.T. Ravi. Both Surya, Mishra and CT Ravi are themselves aggressive hate mongers themselves. It is almost like a cruel re-play of the Stockholm Syndrome, a twisted psychological condition in which hostages, or victims develop a “bond” with the captors; a phenomenon that is supposed to result from abusive relationships built on power-imbalances. Throw in then, the additional spectre of a muted national and regional opposition –on these issues at least—that renders the offenders a false sense of invincibility.

A well-crafted eco-system then, this generation of targeted hate-letting that systematically spirals then from prejudiced attitudes, acts of prejudice, discrimination, violence and then, lo and behold, all out genocide. It encompasses the omnipresent Whatsapp factory, large sections of the electronic media, troll army on social media, non-state actors and speeches by elected officials in the public sphere, inaction by law enforcement and individuals and, finally we reach the peak: mass targeted acts of violence. All this sinister build-up, this hate-letting is and has been met with a stony unaccountable silence from the pinnacle of the pyramid, the most powerful among the regime’s leadership. Leaving it open for this section to play footsie with palliative tokenisms.

The Stick of Second Class Citizenship, the Carrot of the Award

So, as long as fear, servility and invisibility are accepted by the marginalised and “different”, some rewards are guaranteed. The vast community is slurred while stray individuals are handpicked. The aggression of the speech in the public sphere ensures a silence, self-restricted assertions of fair and equitable participation from the whole, so voices who, defiantly, do express this inalienable right, are dubbed shrill and sectarian.

That the blood and gore of the pre-dominant images of othering, the lynch mob, the murder of Muslims, the targeting (albeit differently) of Christians, the rendering of second class status through strident calls of boycott, are today sought to be calmed, placated by last Wednesday’s (April 5) image of a gratified Muslim master craftsman. Four days after this, on Easter Sunday, the big chief of the present regime, the prime minister, even made a customary and ritualistic visit to the Sacred Heart Church in the capital.

Does this imagery work? For a beleaguered and battered Muslim community splintered on class, caste and gender lines, some recognition, a slim sign of hope– even in the form of a gratuitous acknowledgement of nation building through craft– surely cannot be grudged. For the minute Christian minority that harbours its own problems and concerns, similar sops are welcomed. What moral or political right do the rest of India and Indians, especially silent witnesses to hate politics and hate killings –the vast majority—have, in expecting an exclusive resistance from the minorities?

As 2024 looms and state elections pepper the way, only expect more. More such dual stroke imagery where targeted loss is sought to be quietened by tokenisms of gratitude. A deeply fractured and divided Indian people will be selectively patted and pruned. While a seething mass of deprivation and disenchantment swirls. It is only the clarity of a united voice of resistance, based on principled recognition of allyships, between sections and the whole, of the marginalised and more that can resoundingly give an answer. To the cynical and overplayed politics of divide and rule.

Related:

Karnataka’s Shame: Cattle trader, a Muslim, beaten to death by cow vigilantes

Cow vigilantism continues with impunity in northern states of India

Under the guise of cow protection: reports of assault, illegal restraint against Muslims

Worsening Spiral of Communal Hate: State’s role in rising violence against minorities

The threat and lawlessness of “Gau-Rakshaks” in North India

Muslim truck driver allegedly attacked by cow vigilantes in Palwal, Haryana

The post Images in Contrast: Bloodied body of 38 year-old Idrees Pasha, a beaming Abdul Rashid appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Srinivasan’s are an unusual yet utterly typical Indian middle class family, based part in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Their Tamil origin sits gracefully with their imbibed Bengali culture where Tram Baba, the village story teller was the re-incarnate of their lost grandfather in regaling them with stories of yore.

Three Rama’s, Saguna for Amma Meenakshi S, Maryada Purshottam for Shobha di and Nirguna for garrulous Venkat, who put his Ma’s anguish into cleansing positive action. At Ashirwad in Bengaluru this writer was privileged to break fast with the faithful of all colours last Saturday, share Amma’s precious thoughts, nibble dates and khajoor and then after forty five minutes of soul enriching conversation partake of the inevitable delicious Kareem ki biriyani!

What was so unusually precious about this Iftar? We too participated in several last year, in Malad and Kurla and Bandra as communities came together in our very own Mumbai and stood up and firm against the politics of hatred being perpetrated in the name of Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti! Worse were the hate wounds being inflicted because both last year and this, on the Muslim community, piously and sincerely observing the fasting in the Holy Month of Ramzan. Yes we spoke then through Iftars and campaigns and we continue to do so now.

The special difference between our efforts and the Srinivasan’s was and is the stoic reverberations of an individual’s convictions, religious and spiritual that moved her family into action. Meenakshi Srinivasan’s faith in Ram means love, respecting, a shared humanity. Meet her in person this mathematical, football loving septuagenarian and you are awed by her multiple dimensions evidence of a life richly lived! She was, and is agitated by the unseemly targeting if hijab-clad young women in her home state of Karnataka because both as a woman and mother she knows what it takes for a girl and woman to navigate family social mores to experience the joy of books and education.No wonder then that evening, just day before yesterday, we heard wise words of course from the family (see videos below) but also young stars like Nisha and Nasreen. Nisha poignantly hit the nail on the head. “Check in,” she told the audience. “Check in on your Muslim friends, Muslim neighbours. You have no idea what conversations are going around in Muslim homes. Venkat checks in. Please all of you must check in.  Young champion of AltNews Mohd Zubair was there giving a zing to the gathering. I was humbled to be a part and be asked to speak.

The evening has left so much more than a feeling of peace and positivity. For me personally, it has redeemed my faith in the Hindu. A faith and followers who so urgently and desperately need to speak up! 

https://youtu.be/zvBGpu6RHa0

Amma’s Iftar 2023

During our trip to Yercaud 2022, we learned of the riots on Ram Navami through YouTube videos. This news caused concern for my mother, who was looking forward to spending the holiday with friends from Bangalore. This was our first holiday after the pandemic. The organised nature of the riots hinted at deeper motives beyond what was visible.

The news disheartened my mother; something significant to her was being taken away. I spoke to my sister, Akka, who was also uneasy and struggled to articulate her thoughts. Violence and hatred contradicted our fundamental values as a family.

We were taught that the purpose of religion is for self-reflection and praying for others, as praying solely for oneself could be viewed as selfish in the eyes of God.

Years later, I realised that our household of three had two Rams (pedantically two and a half). My mother saw Ram as sagun (has a form), embodying the qualities of Maryada Purushottam, who guided her to be mindful of her responsibilities towards herself, her family, her relatives, and society. Those who know her would know Maryada is “responsibility & dignity.”

In contrast, my understanding of Ram was Nirgun, discovered through poetry, love, travel, and interactions with inspiring people. My sister seamlessly switches (conveniently) between the two interpretations, and Sagun Ram of my mother, Nirgun Ram of my world, and Akka’s Ram all represent love.

Through this lens, Kabir and Surdas occupy the same shelf in the library of love.

In this context, we felt we must respond; it was obvious the answer to hate is love; we said we would have an iftar party and celebrate an evening with Muslims. Iftar is also a way for the family to reflect on how we fight this hate; as a family, we do not know it yet but feel it must start with a show of love and solidarity.

We hosted an Iftar party in 2022, and people came over; All attendees reminisced fondly about the conversation and the delicious biryani served during the event. 

Amma said in Iftar, 

“Lord Ram resides within every individual, and thus hurting others goes against the teachings of Ramayana (and Mahabharata). Amma encourages everyone to practice kindness and compassion towards all, as it reflects the teachings of all faiths.”

We invite people to Iftar on 08 Apr 2023 in Bangalore.  

Iftar organised by a Hindu family | India stands for unity in diversity | Ramadan 2022 

Related:

Iftar observed by students of all faiths; Muslim students break their fast while non-Muslim students serve food and beverages

The post Three Rams—Amma’s Iftar that celebrates them all appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Indian political history is peppered with instances of religious processions that led to communal strife, riots, inexcusable violence, arson, destruction of property and the tragic deaths of innocent residents of the riot-hit areas. This phenomenon has occurred regardless of the party in power and has much to do with the absence of professionalism and direct executive influence on the state police forces. 

Despite other factors as provocations, the failure of the police, administration and governments to regulate routes of such processions (religious) has been the single-most recurrent cause of such communal tension and violence. Even before independence this occurred, but since too, there appears to be a failure of institutional memory to implement steps for prevention.

The route then is the contentitious issue and the route then is what the police and administration — with dominant political groups and pressures—the state refuses to regulate.

The Indian Penal Code has recognised this. Enacted in 1860, Section 153 prescribed a punishment of six months imprisonment for wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot, and one year if the provocation resulted in rioting. Section 188, which made it an offence to disobey an order duly promulgated by a public servant, contained an illustration, which demonstrates at least one form of disobedience:

“S. 188. Disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant.

Illustration: An order is promulgated by a public servant lawfully empowered to promulgate such order, directing that a religious procession shall not pass down a certain street. A knowingly disobeys the order, and thereby causes danger of riot. A has committed the offence defined in this section.”

Besides, a clear reading of the law as it stands demands adequate preventive action

The Preventive actions that need to be undertaken by the Police are detailed in Chapter XI of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CRPC) wherein Section 144 empowers a district magistrate, a sub-divisional magistrate, or any other executive magistrate empowered by the state government, to issue orders to prevent and address urgent cases of apprehended danger or nuisance. Sections 149 onwards are related to preventive action that a police officer is required to take to prevent the commission of cognisable offences. The petition enumerates only some of the legislative measures available to the law enforcement.

The Indian Penal Code (IPC) even contains definitions of offences under sections 295A and 296 relating to deliberate acts aimed at disturbing religious assembly. The Indian Arms Act (1959, amended in 2016) has strict guidelines precluding sale and transfer of arms (read in context of Trishul deeksha—distribution of tridents). Further, the Police Act, 1861 has provisions under section 30 for “regulation of public assemblies and processions and lice sing of the same”. The Police Acts of the respective states have similar outlined measures (including Gujarat and Delhi) and these have been modified and amended in the 1950s to date.

What has been our history post-Independence?

As has been studied and analysed by this author since 1992-1993, when Bombay burned post the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, the violence that we have faced in in diverse parts of India, under different political regimes, and the vast majority of these have been caused by the deliberate choice of communally-sensitive routes by processionists, and the deliberate reluctance of the Police in dealing with such demands. Often this reluctance has in effect been collusion and connivance in licencing such routes.

A glance at some illustrative examples of such riots will make the point published in Sabrang Communications publishing of the Justice BN Srikrishna Commission report in 1998 with an Introduction by this writer will make the point. On ground coverage by this writer in the weeks following the violence revealed that, unlike what sections of the media made out, violence erupted in Bombay not with “angry Muslims demonstrating and rampaging the streets on December 7” but on the evening of December 6, 1992 itself when this writer recorded:

“But at 2.30 p.m. on December 6, 1992, the first communal incident that took place in Mumbai after the demolition of the mosque at Ayodhya was in Dharavi, where it was not angry Muslims but rampaging Shiv Sainiks led by Sena leaders Baburao Mane and Ramkrishna Keni who caused the first provocation. The local police allowed Shiv Sainiks to conduct a cycle rally of 200–300 persons. The rally passed through several communally–sensitive, Muslim–dominated areas in Dharavi and terminated at Kala Killa, where a meeting was held and addressed by the local activists of the Shiv Sena. Provocative speeches were made at this meeting. (Pgs. 7, 94 & 197)

“Besides, Dharavi was kept simmering by the local wings of both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena through Ram Paduka Poojan Karyakrams and chowk sabhas between July and December 1992. Two Muslim organisations, the Tanzeem–Allah–o–Akbar and the Dalit–Muslim Suraksha Sangh, also organised meetings in the period of the run–up to the kar seva.

The police was a mute spectator. The state absent.

Lets go back even further.

Sholapur, 1967

The city of Sholapur in Maharashtra presents a curious picture of how certain religious processions have led, not unintendedly, to communal flare-ups, riots, and deaths. As found by the “Commission of Inquiry on Communal Disturbance at Sholapur – September 17, 1967”— chaired by Justice Raghubar Dayal, former judge of the Supreme Court, the Commission included Col. B.H. Zaidi, M.P., and retired bureaucrat Shri M.M. Philip — communal outbreaks had occurred on the occasions of ‘Rath Processions’ in 1925 and 1927, in connection with ‘Ganapati Immersion Processions’ in 1927 and 1966, and 18 cases of stabbing were spurred by the shouting of objectionable slogans during a procession by the Arya Samaj Satyagraha in 19391. Other mass stabbings took place in August, 1947, but those stemmed from the violence of Partition and the refugee crisis.

Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad, 1970

Bhiwandi, a powerloom centre barely 37 km from Mumbai, was the tragic site of large-scale communal disturbances and riots on May 7, 1970, which resulted in the loss of 78 lives, 59 Muslim, 17 Hindu, and two undetermined. As found by the “Commission of Inquiry to Inquire Into the Communal Disturbances at Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad in May 1970”, a one-man Inquiry by sitting Bombay High Court Judge, Justice D.P. Madon, these riots were the direct consequence of a massive Shiv Jayanti Procession comprising about 10,000 processionists armed with lathis, which insisted on a route which passed the Nizampura Jumma Mosque. The Bhiwandi riots led instantly to copycat riots on May 8, 1970 in Jalgaon and Mahad, two cities that had nothing in common with Bhiwandi; 43 died in Jalgaon, 42 Muslim and one Hindu; fortunately, no lives were lost in Mahad.

Justice Madon found that 1963 was an important year in the communal history of Bhiwandi, for that was when the Hindus started taking out processions which did not stop playing music while passing by a mosque. He found that 1964 was the year when the Shiv Jayanti Procession began its practice of stopping in front of mosques, shouting provocative and anti-Muslim slogans, and throwing excessive ‘gulal’. Coincidentally, this was also the year when the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, predecessor to the BJP, established its Bhiwandi branch. He found that these provocations were amplified in 1965, when for the very first time a procession other than a purely Muslim one went past the Nizampur Jumma Mosque.  Not surprisingly, the year 1967 witnessed the very first communal riots in Bhiwandi, which took place as the Shiv Jayanti Procession was passing by the Nizampura Jumma Mosque.

In 1969 the diverse, Shiv Jayanti Utsav Samiti was rendered defunct when 15 Jana Sangh members walked out, along with one Shiv Sena member and three of indeterminate political leanings, and formed the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal (R.U.M.), which set the stage for the 1970 processions. Justice Madon found that “the immediate or proximate cause of the Bhiwandi disturbances was the deliberate misbehaviour of the processionists in the Shiv Jayanti procession, which was taken out in Bhiwandi on May 7, 1970, in order to provoke the Muslims and the fact that at the instance and instigation the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal the majority of processionists, particularly the processionists from the villages, had participated in the procession carrying lathis to which Bhagwa flags and banners were tied in order to circumvent the ban under section 37(1) of the Bombay Police Act, 1951, prohibiting the carrying of weapons, so that the processionists would be armed to meet the contingency of the Muslims starting any trouble either on their own or as a result of the deliberate provoking of the Muslims by the processionists”.

Jamshedpur, 1979

In 1978, the RSS/VHP insisted that the traditional Ram Navami procession should follow a new route that would pass through the congested Muslim area of Sabirnagar. Anticipating communal trouble, the authorities asked them to use a route that bypassed Sabirnagar, but the procession organisers persisted in their demand. They refused several alternate routes offered, even though Sabirnagar was not the most direct, nor was it an open or convenient route, as it involved a diversion through a kachha rasta and private fields to use that route. When the authorities did not give in, the RSS/VHP mounted a protest, holding the government to ransom, refusing to hold the procession for an entire year, to build up pressure on the administration.

Finally, the Karpuri Thakur-led Janata Party Government (a coalition ruling at the Centre and in Bihar State, with the BJP a prominent member in both) caved in, and in 1979 the local administration was persuaded to agree to allow the Ram Navami procession on a route through Sabirnagar. A “compromise” was arrived at, on the promise that the main procession would continue on the normal roads and highway, while a small “sample procession” would pass through Sabirnagar, accompanied by local Muslim elders, and would then rejoin the main procession on the highway.

When this “sample procession” was being escorted by Muslim elders and a small posse of the police into Sabirnagar however, a massive 15,000-strong main procession suddenly broke away from its licenced route and followed the “sample procession” through private fields into Sabirnagar, and once they reached the Sabirnagar Masjid, they were halted by BJP MLA Dinanath Pandey, who refused to allow the procession to move, and insisted that they had a right to remain there. He stood making incendiary anti-Muslim speeches.

Agitation and the inevitable stone-throwing ensued, followed by rioting and arson by the 15,000 processionists. This led to a widespread violence all over Jamshedpur, culminating in 108 deaths, 79 Muslim, 25 Hindu, and 4 unidentified. Widespread looting, destruction of property and arson accompanied the riots, and since the epicentre was Sabirnagar, the Muslims quite naturally suffered a disproportionate impact of the loss of lives and livelihoods.

A commission of enquiry headed by Justice Jitendra Narain, a retired judge of the Patna High Court, found the RSS and Dinanath Pandey primarily responsible.

Kota, 1989

For a city that had not seen any riots in 1947, nor in the five decades that followed, 1989 proved the potency of targeted processions in fomenting riots. On this occasion, and in this calm oasis of Rajasthan, it was the Anant Chaturdashi procession for the immersion of Lord Ganesh that was used to light the communal fires. On September 14, 1989 the procession was deliberately taken on a route through a congested Muslim mohalla, and halted in front of the largest Mosque, enabling the processionists to shout communal slogans and hurl abuses at the Muslims. Inevitably, this resulted in counter-slogans, and the confrontation then descended into stonethrowing and ultimately assaults with deadly weapons. By the time the day was done, 16 Muslims and 4 Hindus were dead, thousands of Muslim street vendors and traders had had their businesses torched, and widespread arson had destroyed homes and shops in the Muslim area.

The cause of this man-made disaster was pithily summed up by the one-man “Commission of Inquiry on Communal Riots in Kota in 1989”, consisting of sitting Rajasthan High Court Judge Shri S.N. Bhargava (he was Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court when he submitted his Report):

“53. … … In all 20 persons died out of whom 16 were Muslims and 4 were Hindus. … … As is apparent from the evidence on record, the trouble started on account of shouting of objectionable and provocative slogans by the processionists reciprocated by the Muslim community. … … Taking an overall view of the evidence on record, I am of the view that it was the processionists who had started shouting objectionable and provocative slogans and it was only on account of the provocation by these objectionable slogans that the Muslim community also reciprocated the same.”

Bhagalpur, 1989

This time it was a Ramshila procession on 24th October, 1989 that was diverted from the licensed route and taken through the congested Muslim area known as Tatarpur. Ramshila processions were by their very nature provocative and triumphalist, as these processions carried bricks (shila) consecrated by priests over a holy fire, ostensibly to be used for the construction of a Ram Temple which was proposed to be built after the proposed destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya (the actual demolition of Babri Masjid was not to take place until three years later in 1992).

A commission of enquiry consisting of Justice Ram Nandan Prasad, Justice Ram Chandra Prasad Sinha, and Justice S. Shamsul Hasan, retired judges of the Patna High Court, found that though tension over Ramshila processions had already been building up in Bhagalpur for at least a year prior to 1989, yet the Administration and Police had turned a blind eye to it. The Commission noted that there was no application to route the 1989 procession through Tatarpur, and that the licence issued to the procession’s organisers did not mention Tatarpur (para 578).Yet the “mob consisting of thousands of miscreants” was permitted by the Police to deviate from the licenced route, enter Tatarpur, and wreak havoc against the defenseless Muslim populace.

“The Muslims of Bhagalpur and the surrounding areas were inflicted by divine wrath through marauding mobs in close alliance of the district police”, recorded the Commission in para 567 of its Report, and that this “is manifest by over 900 corpses with injuries and also over 900 individuals in handcuffs and manacles”. The Enquiry Commission found that “there were sufficient indications since more than a year before the commission of the riot…The District Administration as we have said, suffered from culpable amnesia, deliberate indifference and patent communal bias, incompetence in not anticipating the riot. Lack of impartiality in the District Administration also compounded the problem” (para 570).

This violence in Bhagalpur in 1989 cost a tragic 900 lives (Muslims), over three decades ago but as bad or worse is the legacy of state impunity in allowing “permissions” or “licenses” to such aggressive organisations   to pass through most congested and diverse areas. The fact that such practices result in escalated tensions around festivals, Hindu and Muslim, does not seem to affect governments. Since 2022, both Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti, falling as they did during the month of fasting for Muslims, Ramzan, these processions are allowed to carry exposed weapons and are accompanied by high-decibel concert-level music systems and DJs playing obnoxious and objectionable lyrics in front of mosques, all opening insulting to the minority community. Inevitably a provocation occurs, and violence results.

Today, from a lax complicity of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s the State has turned active aggressor with the police in most part being either a mute spectator or weaponised itself through ideological bias.

Related:

Hindutva’s role in riots and official complicity

What was CJP’s PIL seeking directions for implementation of law for regulation of religious processions all about?

The post The contentious route, a common factor in inciting violence during religious processions in India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Across the length and breadth of Maharashtra with a determined and heightened focus since December 2022, professional hate mongers have descended on the state and offensive videos of their egregious and provocative speeches that can with impunity target minorities through acts of violence and discrimination, regularly surface. With little expectation from the political leadership of the ruling establishment in Delhi, the stony (almost complicit silence) from the newly sworn in Maharashtra chief minister and deputy chief minister bodes ill for social harmony in the state.

Elections to the Lok Sabha (Indian Parliament) are 15 months away and state assembly polls will be held three months after that. Stakes of those parties that only bank on demonisation and stigmatisation of India’s religious minorities rest on divisive sentiments generated by such hate speech among the state’s polity. Will this cynical time-tested strategy work? Or will Maharashtra that has determinedly thrown of its past communal yoke –refreshingly visible not just during the pandemic when the rest of the country (especially BJP-ruled states) were reeking with the poison of media-generated venom but even in the years after 1992-1993 when the capital, Bombay had burned after the singing fires post Babri Masjid demolition –succumb to this numbing national trend?

Schedule III of the Constitution, rarely read, much less understood by either political enthusiasts who queue for ‘tickets’ to state and national elections, or more ordinary mortals, is endearingly candid and simple.

For a member of parliament (MP) and or one who takes office as minister of the union of India under the Third Schedule [Articles 75(4), 99, 124(6), 148(2), 164(3), 188 and 219], the Oath is straightforward: whether sworn in the name of God or the Constitution, the MP or Minister must only be wedded to true faith solemnly affirm and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established and function in accordance with the Constitution and the law, without fear or favour, affection or ill will. The wordings of the oath for a member/legislator of the state assembly, MLAs as they are known are disarmingly similar and unequivocal. They are sworn not to any arcane hate-filled ideology but to the Constitution and the Constitution alone. Regardless of what their ideologues may teach, or their political training preach, once elected it is only the Indian Constitution that matters: equality, non-discrimination and justice for all.

Time then is it not for Maharashtrian Indian citizens to demand from each and all of those guardians of electoral, representative power, that they—simply put—abide by this oath? That within their remit, the constituencies that they command and are elected from, they stop the hate-mongers! Now!

Citizens for Justice and Peace (cjp.org.in) has been running arguably the most consistent and persistent campaigns, petitioning relentlessly the law enforcement authorities to prevent and prosecute hate mongers. It is time now for us to take this to the next level. Time for us, in a constituency by constituency approach and demand of our MLAs and MPs that they uphold the Oath through which they have assumed political power and clout.

Same does it go for members of the Indian Police Forces (IPS) and bureaucracy (IAS officers). They too, once they don the uniform and wield its clout, are wedded to ensure that the remit of the Constitution rules. Time for us citizens to demand this of them, now!

December 14, 2022 was when it all began. Then, as a slow burning sizzling fire, over the past two months, the state has seen increasing number of permitted events where hate speech is delivered by known previous repeat hate offenders at events organised by (no more) fringe groups and far right wing organizations

So far, to repeat, Maharashtra had majorly stayed aloof from the hate wave that had plagued the country over past years. Credit needs to be given to the unique formation of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi leadership (MVA) that despite its past history and colours was unequivocal when it came to constitutional governance.

While India was splattered with the poison of hated, while rampant instances of hate speech and socio-religious meets were held and were allowed across western and northern India, especially in BJP ruled states, sansads that threatened Muslim women and men with genocide, Maharashtra has/had not fallen prey to the same under the MVA government.

However, come December 2022, barely 5 months after the sudden toppling of the earlier government, under the new regime, the tides have turned and hate is being fanned, even in the urbs prima, Mumbai.

As we look at the increasing number of such events being held, it is clear that some (no more) fringe groups are involved who organise events across many districts and carry out rallies and invite speakers known to have delivered hate speeches in the past. Many of the speakers are previous offenders, new wine in old bottles so to speak, delivering shrill homilies of the vision of ‘Hindu Rashtra’ (a notion that is itself fundamentally anti-Constitutional), distorting and manipulating history to further stigmatise, target and incite violence against the Muslim community; Christians too have not been spared.

It is time that ordinary progressive Maharashtrians step in, speak up. Take delegations and protests to the elected representatives in their areas, especially where such events have either been planned or have already taken place and demand that these MPs and MLAs, the SPs and the DGP honour the Oath to of Allegiance to the Constitution. Before it is too late.

Here is a quick mapping of the Maharashtra 2022-2023 Hate Map:

On February 15, 2023, in Panvel, members of Hindu Janjagruti Samiti held a public procession and raised slogans of Hindu Rashtra and made calls for laws against ‘love jihad’. They also raised slogans of “Hang Love jihadis”. They repeatedly raised these slogans amidst a busy street.

On February 19, 2023, in Latur, BJP MLA from Telanagana, T Raja Singh, made explicit calls for violence and killing of Muslims only so that a Hindu nation can be established. The speech was made in the presence of thousands on the occasion of birth anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

On February 15, 2023, in Pune, Suresh Chavhanke was speaking at an event celebrating “Asaram Bapu divas” he stressed on the importance of keeping weapons and falsely claimed that the Constitution allows you to keep weapons. He said we have phones but nobody has weapons for self-defence. He added, “in the coming days the situation that is going to arise, you should think about it.

On February 14, 2023, (Valentine’s Day) Bajrang Dal members held a rally in Nagpur, Maharashtra, and conducted a mass recitation of the Hanuman Chalisa at the Durga Mata Temple in the Sadar area to protest against Valentine’s Day. The rally ended at Samvidhan Square, where tributes were paid to the CRPF personnel killed in a terror attack in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, on February 14, 2019.

On February 11, 2023, at a Hindu Janakrosh Meet held in Khamgaon, Buldhana, Pravin Togadia, President of Antarashtriya Hindu Parishad, said that those who bent before the Mughals were coward Muslim and those who didn’t were sons of Chhatrapati Sambhaji. He further said that we have the power to rule over the entire world, not just Bharat.

On February 12, 2023 members of Sakal Hindu Samaj assembled at a Ram Mandir in Aarey Colony in Mumbai, to carry out a rally till Marol. While Aarey Police did not allow them to carry out the rally, the speakers, assembled at the Ram Mandir Shriraj Nair, Mohan Salekar elaborated on how they “are committed to stop the construction of the cemetery at any cost and appealed to Hindus to remain united”. The protest morcha was being held against the alleged construction of a Muslim burial ground (kabrastan) near Ram Mandir.

On February 9, 2023 Kalicharan Maharaj again spoke at Hindu Jangarjana Morcha, this time at Baramati Pune. He said Muslim want to convert everyone into Muslim because those who are not Muslims are kaafirs and it is written in Quran that you should kill a Kaafir. “I am kaafir which means I am eligible to be killed (by them),” he said. He said, “wives of kaafirs are stolen property and one woman being raped by 50 men is not a big deal.” He again repeated the same speech that he had made in Nandurbar about women raped in Kashmir and told his audience to watch the movie “Kashmir Files”. Citizens for Justice and Peace had filed a complaint seeking preventive action against this event with the DGP, Maharashtra as well Baramati Police and a memo was also sent to Baramati MP, Supriya Sule. However, no such preventive action was taken and nor was Kalicharan booked by the police for his publicly made hate speech.

On February 6, 2023 Kalicharan Maharaj spoke at an event organized by Vishwa Hindu Parishad in Nandurbar where he said, “Muslims are prepared. When mosques and Madrassas are raided, swords, AK-47 and RDX are recovered. If temples are raided are any guns or swords ever recovered?” He then went on make wild and baseless claims that in Kashmir about 30 years ago, 5 lakh women were gang raped. He said if we are not prepared, this will become Kashmir. He then said that lakhs of temples were destroyed and Qutubuddin destroyed Kashi Vishweshwar temple and urinated on the shivling and built a mosque there. He went on to distort history by claiming Muslim kings destroyed many temples across India to build mosques.

On January 30, 2023 at Parbhani, a rally was organized by Sakal Hindu Samaj in Mumbai called ‘Hindu Jan Aakrosh Morcha’ (rally for Hindu people’s fury). The rally, purportedly organized against ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’, ended with a provocative speech by Goshamahal MLA T Raja Singh calling for a boycott of Muslim owned businesses and for Hindus to ‘slit throats’ this Morcha has originated from Parbhani in Marathwada region from November last year and several such rallies organized across over 20 districts in Maharashtra, including Parbhani, Nanded, Ahmednagar, Kolhapur, Gadchiroli, Satara, Karad, Sangli, Solapur, Pune, Dhule, Jalgaon, Nagpur, Amravati, Hingoli, Buldhana, and Jalna. Along with ‘love-jihad’ the other issue that the protest tried to foreground was an odd concept called ‘land-jihad’.

On January 22, 2023 at an event held at Nagar, Maharashtra, Suresh Chavhanke delivered another anti-Muslim hate speech. He instigated people to go against the Supreme Court by administering the oath to establish the Hindu nation with him. The video starts with Suresh Chavhanke shouting “Kon chale re kon chale? Hindu Rashtra ke liye Chale (What should we go for? Let’s go for a Hindu Rashtra).” “Arre lana hoga lana hoga, Hindu Rashtra lana hoga (We have to bring in, we have to bring in a Hindu rashtra.)”

He then spoke in Marathi and said- “Should I speak in Marathi? Pigs don’t understand Marathi, so I will speak in Hindi sometimes”

He added, “Safaed chaddar par chadhaya gaya har rupaya tumhare safaed kaffan ki vyavastha karega, savdhaan reh jao. (Every rupee offered on a white sheet will arrange for your white shroud, be careful.)”

On January 13, 2023, at a Shaurya Path Sanchalan event, held in Boisar, Maharashtra, Senior Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Shankar Gaikar made a hate speech making reference to the past Mughal and Maratha leaders of India and also the history of Islam while making hateful statements. Referring to Bajrang Dal’s stick he said that it will be sued against those “who work against the nation, insult Bharat Mata, wield a sword on the chest of Mother India and use a knife. This stick will be useful for that purpose.)”

He further said, “No one has the power to take away the daughter of a Hindu. Keep in mind that the bitterness is in their blood. Hindu is never cruel, Hindu is always angry, and he fights from the front.” Further referring to the Muslim community he said, “they have a tradition of cruelty for thousands of years”.

On January 7, 2023 over a dozen graves and crosses were desecrated at St. Michael church graveyard in Mumbai.

On December 25, 2022 Sudarshan News Editor-in-Chief was speaking at Hindu Janajagruti Samiti event held in Jalgaon, Maharashtra. Continuing his Islamophobic trope he said, “From Jalgaon to Khandwa if you take a train, you can see land has been captured, ‘Land jihad’ has occurred. It feels like the train is passing through Pakistan.” Further he started referring to Christians as it was Christmas day and said, “There are 2% Christians in India, at least the ones who tell their real names, leave aside the fake ones. The festival of these 2% is being imposed on the 98% people.”

Then he spoke to Buddhists as well, giving them examples of Myanmar, “I want to say to the Buddhists of India to learn something from Buddhists of Myanmar. They kicked out and chased away the Rohingyas from their country. They said your Jihad will not work in our country.”

On December 14, 2022, at another Hindu Jan Aakrosh Morcha’ held in Ahmednagar, Hate offender Kalicharan Maharaj made false claims about cases of ‘love jihad’ presenting them as facts and also propagated black magic and superstition by suggesting remedies for ‘love jihad’. He even warned his audience that Christianity and Islam are “not religions”, and that Muslims have an “800-year-old plan” – the Ghazwa-e-Hind – to “convert India into a country of Muslims”.

Hate can be doused by consistent interventions by a vast majority who owe allegiance to the values and good sense enshrined and imbibed in and from the lived principles of the Indian Constitution. Silence of the good majority is our greatest peril. This silence needs to be broken and protests for peace and fraternity need to flow on the streets.

Related:

CJP COMPLAINT TO DGP, MAHARASHTRA AND NCM AGAINST MISLEADING AND ISLAMOPHOBIC SPEECH BY KALICHARAN

Hate Speech: Kalicharan spews hate against Muslims in protest for “Love-Jihad” law, Maharashtra

Christmas of the 2% is being imposed on the 98%, says Suresh Chavhanke

The post Maharashtra: The new breeding ground for hate, oaths of allegiance to the Constitution brutally violated appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Navigating Uttar Pradesh (UP) opaque procedures meant delays in accessing documents and even getting the case listed but the grounded work by his legal team, a support group and his wife have ensured his release. Thereafter it took a month for the ‘verification’ of documents of eminent citizens who stood bail surety for Kappan.

Siddique Kappan and three others were arrested in October 2020 while on their way to Hathras where a Dalit woman died allegedly after being raped

One whole month after he was finally granted bail on December 23, 2022 and more than two years after he was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police while heading to the Hathras home of a young Dalit woman who died after an alleged gang rape, journalist Siddique Kappan was released from a Lucknow jail on Thursday (February 2, 2023) morning.

This was confirmed by Lucknow senior jail superintendent Ashish Tiwari to The Indian Express. Kappan was finally released at 8.30 am on Thursday. “All his paperwork was completed, and then he was released,” said Tiwari. Kappan’s release comes more than a month after he was granted bail on December 23 by the Allahabad High Court in a money laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate.

Speaking to the media after his release, Kappan said that it was a “long fight” to acquire bail and be released. “After 28 months and a long fight, I am out today. I got a lot of support from the media and I am happy,” he said. He has consistently denied all allegations levelled by the police against him, he said, “I had gone to do reporting there (in Hathras). What is wrong with that?…Nothing was found on me except my laptop and mobile phone. I had two pens and a notebook too.” Kappan and three others were arrested in Mathura on October 5, 2020, while heading to Hathras. There were also serious allegations about Kappan’s harsh treatment on the day of his arrest.

The high court in an order passed by Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh had said that “except for allegations that Rs 5,000 was transferred to the bank account of co-accused, Atikur Rahman, there is no other transaction, either in the bank account of the accused-applicant or in the bank account of co-accused”. The High Court also stated that Kappan was entitled to be released on bail as the “proceeds of crime is less than Rs 1 crore and there is no likelihood” of Kappan “to commit the same offence in future”.

Kappan had been granted bail by the Supreme Court on September 9, 2022 in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act –UAPA –case after being booked by the UP Police for alleged links with the radical Popular Front of India– the outfit and its affiliates were banned by the Centre on September 28. Senior constitutional lawyer, Kapil Sibal appeared in the apex court both for Kappan’s bail and before that on a habeas corpus petition.

While granting Kappan bail in the UAPA case, the Supreme Court inquired what exactly had been found against him, and also noted “the length of custody undergone”. In December 2023, a Lucknow court framed charges against Kappan and six others in the case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The other accused are K A Rauf Sherif, Atikur Rahman, Masud Ahmad, Mohammad Alam, Abdul Razzak and Ashraf Khadir.

Support Group for Siddique Kappan

Sabrangindia spoke at length to a member of the support group that spontaneously emerged for journalist Siddique Kappan. Says Geeta Seshu, senior journalist who runs Free Speech Collective, and is a part of this unique mobilisation for Kappan,

“A number of journalists and human rights activists helped support the campaign for Kappan’s release. They include the Kerala Union of Working Journalists in Delhi, the Siddique Kappan Solidarity Committee and its convener, senior journalist NP Chekutty in Kerala,  Sevanti Ninan, founder editor of The Hoot, journalists like Geeta Seshu from Free Speech Collective who took on the campaign after Kappan was transferred to an NIA court in Lucknow in 2021.” She adds, “Siddique Kappan was always very particular that he would only take the help of journalists and journalists’ organisations or press freedom groups because he was a journalist and travelling for his journalistic work.

Kappan worked for Tejas, a publication in Kerala when Chekutty was editor. But, says Seshu, it is the amazing legal support that the support group could muster for Kappan that is worthy of mention and note. This Support group that included senior journalist, Geeta Seshu, was and is conscious of the huge service or contributions made by a group of efficient and committed lawyers (advocates) who worked pro bono. In Kappan’s team, IB Singh, senior lawyer at the Lucknow bench of the High Court who was in fact out of the country when Geeta Seshu contacted him, did not take more than a few minutes to accept and agree. These are advocates of highly respected seniority.. then his son Ishaan Baghel stepped in with his team at the PMLA and NIA courts in Mathura and Lucknow. While bare expenses were paid through this support group no legal fees were charged. The Bail Application, Discharge application and Quashing Petition, applications to access case papers, were all handled by Singh and his wider team.

After the Mathura court rejected the bail in November 2021, the matter/case (scene) shifted to the NIA Special Court in Lucknow.  After his bail was rejected in Nov 2021, the PMLA case was filed and these dual proceedings became predictably the double-edged sword. This is when Ishan Baghel stepped in with his team to ensure that this case was followed up meticulously.

“The lessons learned are profound and lasting. Professional journalists are usually clueless about the complications related to legal and court procedures and therefore the first and critical steps are to ensure credible, senior level legal support that has a standing. Kappan like so many others just did not have lawyers, did not have access to lawyers,” elaborates Geeta.

Then there is the emotional support that the family of those jailed need: there are multiple issues involved here, especially in a state like UP. Getting access to the jailed journalist with his/her family: to navigate the fear (legitimate) that relatives have. A bitter experience that one of the co-accused in this case was shocking. Barely reported in the media bar some, the fact that the family was from Kerala and Muslim was enough to get them jailed themselves! Their crime? They came to Uttar Pradesh with a RTCPR (Covid-19 test) that was not from “a recognised health facility.”!

Sabrangindia: How was it navigating the legal quagmire in UP?

Geeta Seshu (GS): The real struggle was accessing documents – for months, Kappan was not given access to the entire charge-sheet  of the 5,000 pages. This defies the very basic tenets of Indian criminal law and due process when an accused is denied information on why and on what grounds his personal liberty has been challenged. Then there were/are the listing problems often cases such as these are not listed on the dates scheduled, there is no accountable system of ensuring transparency and promptness on this. The final blow was the ghastly delay in the verification of documents once we had managed to put together persons who were willing to stand surety.

The crucial assistance to find people to stand surety came from the Rihaii Manch in Lucknow, Sandeep Pandey and Arundhati Dhuru, the Press Club of India president Umakant Lakhere and journalist Kumar Sauveer who stood surety and came to court to sign the verification documents even though he had suffered a stroke just a day after agreeing to stand surety!

Sabrangindia: Where and what were the hurdles that he, his legal team and the support group faced in actually navigating these different hurdles and complications?

GS: First of all, we need to recognise there is no operative basic rule of law in Uttar Pradesh. Every institution of law and order and justice delivery functions arbitrarily. Then, there is a huge sense of prevalent fear in Uttar Pradesh that all persons in jail experience and have to overcome, but especially those from the marginalised sections, the minorities. Then there is black hole of procedure where we get no information, there is no transparency, where the police are not accountable to even the courts for inordinate delays (in verification of documents etc.). This is a challenge for us, the media, the human rights movement to re-calibrate and re-think our strategies. The endless delays we faced, since first September 2022, then November 2022 to just get official documents ‘verified’ is frustrating, shocking and frightening for the average person. And here we are happy and successful (as we should be) that Siddique Kappan is finally out.

Background

In September 2022, when former pro vice chancellor of Lucknow University publicly declared that she would stand surety for journalist Siddqiue Kappan, her statement was received with awe and appreciation by the journalist and human rights community. Prof Verma had then told the media, “I am not completely aware of the details of Kappan’s case, but it looks that opening my mouth is a serious crime. He was heading to cover a crime incident in Hathras, but the scribe is arrested and suddenly serious offences Acts and sections such as UAPA, money laundering are slapped on him. Further, he becomes suspected of having links with notorious outfits. Such back-to-back developments to tighten the noose create doubts in citizens like me, and it seems that action against Kappan is motivated. I may be proven wrong if Kappan is indeed found guilty by court, but still at this moment, his right to bail cannot be suppressed.”

Related

Ex-LU VC, Roop Rekha Verma stands as bail surety for journalist, Siddique Kappan

The post Journalist Siddique Kappan’s release after 28 months in a UP jail, where a black hole with opaque procedures affected release appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The murder of Mahatma Gandhi, or more dramatically put, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi was the first act of terror committed in independent India, as I wrote in the introduction to the volume, Beyond Doubt-A Dossier on Gandhi’s Assassination (2015, Tulika). It was also, I wrote, a declaration of war and a statement of intent.

It was a declaration of war by a section of society which remained largely on the fringes during the independence struggle and was committed to religion-based nationhood, and wanted India to become a Hindu rashtra. This was a section that bore visceral dislike toward the idea of composite culture and inclusive nationhood advocated by the Mahatma.

It is this ideology that unashamedly rules India today.

Any discussion on the assassination, therefore, needs to address the issues around the killing, the motives of the assassins. It should also examine further why Gandhi and what he stood for posed such a dire threat to the worldview of the killers.

Whenever the murder is discussed, and the factors responsible for the killing tossed around, public memory can often become carelessly selective, unwarrantedly perhaps spawning a dangerous ambivalence. I refer here specifically to the July 21 article that deliberately or otherwise skips crucial bits of the event. There are also several inaccuracies in the report that has carelessly quoted from earlier published articles.

Setting the record straight
There is need to set the record straight. The killing of Gandhi was not an isolated act but the last successful one of a series of attempts that began as early as 1934. Since the first attack on June 25 1934, there had been a total of five attempts on Gandhi’s life: in July and September 1944, September 1946, and January 20, 1948, ten days before he was actually shot dead.

Nathuram Godse was involved in two of the previous attempts besides the last one – that is, in a total of three, completely upsetting the comfortable narrative of Godse’s actions not being pre-meditated and coldly and carefully planned.

This aspect is completely missing from the article that fails to ask (while superficially relying on a sinister justification for the killing that Godse’s belief that “Gandhi helped create Pakistan” was the reason behind the killing) why some groups of persons found Gandhi and his beliefs so thoroughly repugnant that they had to eliminate him.

It was Gandhi’s commitment to composite nationhood as opposed to a religion-based state (Pakistan or Hindu Rashtra) and his support for the law against untouchability (he made a historic speech in the Central legislature in 1935) that made him enemy No 1 for all those who dreamt then – and conspire even today – to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra.

One of the crucial reasons for editing the volume Beyond Doubt was to bring to readers in English the seminal work of senior journalist and writer Jagan Phadnis who researched the killing back in 1998 as also the important contribution of Chunibhai Vaidya from Gujarat. These works along with historian YD Phadke’s analysis of the Kapoor Commission Report published in Communalism Combat are crucial reading for serious readers on the subject, and are included in the volume.

That the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was banned by the government of India within two days of the assassination, through a Government Resolution dated February 2, 1948, is surely a critical part of the narrative, which is absent in its recounting 68 years later. The language of this resolution, reproduced in Beyond Doubt, is unequivocal when it speaks of the determination of the government of India

“to root out the forces of hate and violence that are at work in our country and imperil the freedom of the Nation and darken her fair name. In pursuance of this politics [the GR says] the GOI has decided to declare as unlawful the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the Chief Commissioner’s Provinces. Similar action is also being taken in the Governor’s provinces.”
The banning of the RSS within five months of India becoming independent and within two days of the dastardly killing of Mahatma Gandhi has been linked to the ‘undesirable and even dangerous activities carried out by individual members of the Sangh who have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found, “circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military….The objectionable and harmful activities of the Sangh have, however, continued unabated and the cult of violence sponsored and inspired by the activities of the Sangh has claimed many victims. The latest and the most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself.” The GR was first published in the August 2004 issue of Communalism Combat, as part of the cover story, titled Hey Ram.

Ban and lifting the ban
The story does not end here. The communications between the Government of India through then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Home Minister Vallabhai Patel with the RSS also show up the falsehoods perpetrated by the Sangh, which has tried to distort even this part of history.

On September 11, 1948, the famous letter written by Patel to RSS chief MS Golwalkar strongly decries the systematic hate tactics of the Sangh before and after Gandhi’s assassination. This letter has been quoted in full in Desraj Goyal’s Rahstriya Swayamsevak Sangh (First published in 1979, Revised edition in 2000, Radhakrishna Prakashan Pvt Ltd, New Delhi).

More importantly, this and another letter written by Patel to the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee dated July 18, 1948 make clear the links between the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha.
The September 11, 1948 letter is of particular significance as it outlines the kind of activities the RSS was observed to indulge in.

“But the objectionable part arose when they, burning with revenge, began attacking Mussalmans. Organising Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing……..All their speeches were full communal poison. It was not necessary to spread poison and enthuse the Hindus and organise for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the valuable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of sympathy of the Government or of the people no more remained for the RSS. In fact the opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death. Under these conditions it became inevitable for the Government to take action against the RSS.”

A government of India press note of November 14, 1948 relates to the outright rejection of a representation by Golwalkar to lift the ban on the RSS by the Home Ministry, refers to the “anti-national, often subversive and violent activities of the RSS”.

This press note, also obtained from the archives of the government of India, was first published in the August 2004 issue of Communalism Combat, as part of the cover story, titled Hey Ram.

The government of India took into account the considered opinion of provincial governments before arriving at its decision to ban the RSS. An article of The Indian Express dated February 7, 1948 reports that an RSS leader from Nagpur who had presented Godse with the revolver with which he killed Gandhi had been arrested. Other persons arrested included Professor Varahadpande of the City College, Nagpur.

This news report states that another professor of Nagpur had told his students a day before the assassination that “Gandhiji would be murdered”. An associate of the gang of conspirators, Devendra Kumar, was reported by the same newspaper to have surrendered to the District Magistrate, Mirzapur and taken to Lucknow under armed escort.

There is more such material which forms part of the annexes to the Kapoor Commission which will form part of the second volume of Beyond Doubt that I am currently annotating and editing. For the record, towards the end of the judgement in the Gandhi Murder case, Special Judge Atmacharan made the following remarks in regards to the conduct of the police with relation to the bomb attack on Gandhi on January 20, barely ten days before the day he died.

“ I may bring to the notice of the Central Government the slackness of the police in the investigation of the case during the period between January 20-30,1948… Had the slightest keenness been shown in the investigation of the case at that stage, the tragedy could have been averted.”

The terms of reference to the Kapoor Commission clearly show that it was not within its ambit to investigate whether or not the RSS was involved in the murder. It would be pertinent to again quote from the Government communiqué dated 11 July, 1949 provided in Appendix IV to Desraj Goyal’s Rahstriya Swayamsevak Sangh which laid down the conditions for lifting the ban on the RSS.

“The RSS leader has undertaken to make the loyalty to the Union Constitution and respect for the National Flag more explicit in the Constitution of the RSS and to provide clearly that persons believing or resorting to violent and secret methods will have no place in the Sangh..”

Among other conditions was that the RSS would function only as a cultural organisation.

Hindu rashtra

A genuine understanding of the motivations behind the ideology that killed Gandhi cannot skirt around the fundamental issue of religion-based nationhood. The contempt for the Indian Constitution is writ large in MS Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts, which is proudly available on the RSS website even today (for example, see Page 119).

Despite its assurances to the government of India, the Indian tricolour remained anathema to the Sangh for 52 years after India became independent. It was only on January 26, 2002, that the RSS hoisted the tricolour on its headquarters. Until then it was always the bhagwa dhwaj, representing the Hindu nation.

In fact, the English organ of the RSS, Organiser (dated August 14, 1947) carried a feature titled “Mystery behind the bhagwa dhawaj” which, while demanding hoisting of the saffron flag at the ramparts of Red Fort in Delhi, openly denigrated the choice of the Tri-colour as the National Flag in the following words:

“The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country.”

It became even more brazen once the first RSS-driven government in New Delhi under Atal Behari Vajpayee came into power as the organisation’s mouthpiece Organiser proudly advertised the books published by Surya Bharati Prakashan, Gandhi Ji’s Murder and After by co-accused and brother of the assassin, Gopal Godse, as also May It Please Your Honour, by Nathuram Godse.

Both the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha have made money by glamourising the killer of Gandhi and claimed proud privilege for the reasons for the killing.

The crux of the issue for the Sangh and those who have opposed its supremacist ideology has always been about who has or has not the right to equal rights and citizenship in the India of today. On this issue Gandhi and the RSS stood on the extreme opposites ends of the spectrum. Not only can no one deny this, but it is this crucial issue that remains central to the debate around which forces were responsible for the murder of the Mahatma.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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