The post Stop using rape cases for communal polarization appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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

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

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

From Kavita Krishnan’s FB wall

The post We Walked, Walked, Walked and Talked to Kashmiris: Kavita Krishnan appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Veteran CPIML leader Comrade Srilata Swaminathan passed away in Udaipur (Rajasthan) in the early morning of February 5. She was 74. Comrade Srilata had suffered a brain stroke on  the night of January 28 and was rushed to a hospital in Udaipur where she breathed her last following a cardiac arrest.

Comrade Srilata was born in Chennai on April 29, 1944. After finishing college she came to Delhi and joined the National School of Drama and subsequently went to London to pursue her interests in theatre. But back in Delhi in 1972, her life took a decisive turn. She joined the CPIML and began organizing farm workers in Mehrauli region of Delhi. She also worked among hotel workers in Delhi. During the Emergency she was imprisoned in Tihar jail for a period of ten months following which she was interned in Chennai. For Comrade Srilata this only meant an opportunity to plunge back into trade union work among Port and Dock workers.

After the Emergency was lifted in 1977, Srilata returned to Delhi and shifted base to Rajasthan in 1978 to start working among Adivasis, women and various sections of working people from rural bonded labour and displaced people to trade unions in the mining sector and various industries. For a woman with an elite background and upbringing to adopt rural Rajasthan as her area of Marxist activism was a bold decision that typically reflected Srilata's revolutionary zeal and political courage. Till her last breath she worked to strengthen the revolutionary Left movement and spread and defend progressive ideas and values against the deeply entrenched feudal-patriarchal forces and communal-mafia nexus in Rajasthan.

Following the early 1970s setback to the CPIML, Comrade Srilata worked for some time with Comrade Kanu Sanyal, but the rise of the IPF in Bihar attracted her attention and following the highly inspiring Delhi rally of the IPF in October 1990, Comrade Srilata joined the CPIML along with Comrade Mahendra Chaudhary, her husband and comrade-in-arms, and hundreds of other comrades. She was elected President of the All India Progressive Women's Association in the mid 1990s. At the Varanasi Congress of the CPIML in October 1997, she was elected a member of the Central Committee, a responsibility she continued to discharge till she had to be relieved on health grounds at the Ranchi Congress in April 2013. She was also a Vice-President of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions.

Comrade Srilata was a remarkably versatile activist with great creative energy, infinite enthusiasm and strong political will. She withstood every adversity in life with characteristic resilience and powerful sense of humour. When her deteriorating health stopped her from attending the AIPWA National Conference in Patna in November 2016, she composed and sang a song for the delegates and sent the audio clip to the conference. With her wide-ranging concerns and activism, Comrade Srilata was a natural bridge between the CPIML and various streams of progressive democratic ideas and action. She had high respect for all struggles of the people for a progressive cause and had great hopes from the CPIML-led struggles in Bihar and Jharkhand. She had deep empathy for the people and felt deeply for all her fellow comrades working on various fronts.

Comrade Srilata's illustrious legacy will continue to inspire us to carry forward the struggles of the oppressed people for dignity, democracy and social emancipation.

Red Salute to Comrade Srilata Swaminathan!

The post Saluts to an Inspiring Revolutionary Journey appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The inaction of the police and university authorities is baffling.

It has been more than two weeks since a student – Najeeb Ahmed – disappeared from the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University in the national capital, following a brutal thrashing and threats at the hands of a group of students belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. The thrashing followed an altercation between Ahmed and an ABVP member, and was witnessed by many including by a hostel warden.

I say it again. A student vanished from a campus in Delhi after a thrashing by members of an organisation linked with the ruling party. This fact in itself is ominous and disturbing. But the response of authorities and media to it is even more ominous and disturbing.

Surely the JNU administration ought at least to initiate action against those who were seen beating up Ahmed? But it has not.

Surely the JNU administration should publicly issue a personal appeal to the missing student, assuring him of safety and due process? Instead its initial response echoed the ABVP narrative and referred to Ahmed as “the accused” in the initial altercation. In its latest bulletin, it has dropped the word “accused”. But this bulletin mentioned only the initial brawl and the allegation that Ahmed slapped a student. The bulletin omits even to acknowledge the severe thrashing of Ahmed by ABVP members in the presence of a warden and many others.

Surely the Delhi Police should have interrogated the students who were witnessed beating up Ahmed before he disappeared (many of these are named in the FIR) and checked the records of their calls and messages?
Surely Ahmed’s disappearance should have been a leading human interest story on all news channels, giving voice to Ahmed’s distraught family and asking hard questions about facts that the JNU administration and Delhi Police are seeking to play down or hide? Barring a few exceptions, the electronic media has ignored the story.
 

Some questions

A meeting of the warden committee of the concerned hostel on October 16 has recognised that Ahmed was subjected to a brutal assault on October 14 by a group including students as well as outsiders. The questions begging to be asked are:

• Why, even after an official body of JNU like the warden committee has taken note of the violence, is the JNU vice chancellor and administration silent on it?
• Why did the JNU administration not file a missing person complaint with the Delhi Police immediately after Ahmed disappeared?

It would seem that the impulse to shield the assailants weighs more heavily with the JNU administration than the responsibility to find a student who went missing after violence. The uncertainty and anxiety suffered by Ahmed’s mother and sister can only be imagined. Naturally, they would expect no stone to be left unturned to find the student. But certain stones are being left resolutely unturned: the university and police are united in their “no questions asked” policy towards the persons who beat up Ahmed the night before his disappearance.

Meanwhile, cynically, a toxic narrative is being crafted on social media and some sections of print media about Ahmed’s disappearance, building an image of him as a dangerous criminal on the run rather than a victim of violence whose disappearance is a cause for profound concern. Dainik Jagran carried a story suggesting mendaciously that JNU activists Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya (who had been charged with sedition in February) have had a hand in hiding Ahmed.
 

Double standards

This same JNU administration has been extraordinarily quick in initiating enquiries and action against student activists over democratic protests, which are a long-cherished tradition of the JNU student movement.

Take the case of Rama Naga, whom many outside JNU also have come to recognise as the quiet, good-humoured young man who, as the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union General Secretary, led the Stand With JNU protests. In July, he was informed by the JNU administration that there was a complaint against him received on May 7, accusing him of “blaring loud music” at the Administration Building on May 1. On September 27, Rama again received a show cause notice from the proctor’s office about the same event, accusing him of organising an event by the Ska Vengers and World Sound Power at which “blaring loud music” had been played. Rama replied, informing the proctor that on May Day, he had been on a hunger strike at the Administrative Building against the punishments meted out to JNU students without due process for the February 9 event. It was not Ska Vengers and World Sound Power, but another band, Delhi Sultanate, that had voluntarily come to show their solidarity on May Day.

He pointed out that ABVP also had had a hunger strike at the same site, where it had a permanent sound system installed and had blared loud songs night and day. How was it that their sound system playing for days on end had not disturbed residents but May Day music played for a few hours had?

Rama received no response, just a summary punishment. On October 21, an office order from the Proctor’s Office declared that an enquiry had found Rama guilty of “organising Ska Vengers and World Sound Power”, and “blaring loud music at night”. The order declared: “This act of Rama Naga is serious in nature, unbecoming of a student of JNU and calls for a strict disciplinary action against him.” However “keeping his career prospects in mind, the Vice Chancellor has taken a somewhat lenient view of the matter”, and so Rama was asked to pay a hefty fine of Rs 5,000, and “warned to be careful and not to get involved in such incidents in future” else “a more stringent disciplinary action will be taken against him”.

The enquiry failed even to get the name of the band right. Farcically, by repeatedly referring to the band as Ska Vengers and World Sound Power, it let slip that its conclusions were pre-scripted.
 

Effigy burning

On October 4, the JNU administration handed out show cause notices to Rama Naga and three other students – Abdul Matin, Manikanta and Praveen – for “effigy burning of Gujarat Government and Gaurakshaks”.
More recently, on October 12, the JNU vice chancellor tweeted about another effigy burning, this time of the prime minister.

This vice chancellor who tweeted promising investigation of an effigy burning of the prime minister, this administration that has imposed hefty fines on students for playing music for a couple of hours on May Day, which has initiated disciplinary action when students burn effigies of gau rakshaks or the Gujarat government, has failed to hand out a single show cause notice or initiate an enquiry or disciplinary action into students who introduced outside elements into a hostel to publicly beat up a student – even after the victim of the beating then disappeared.

The conclusion is inescapable. The JNU administration is making it its job to discipline and punish democratic protests by student activists against BJP governments at the Centre or states or Sangh outfits, while looking the other way even when ABVP members indulge in group violence with dangerous consequences.
 

ABVP is emboldened

Emboldened by a sense of impunity, ABVP action on campuses is growing.

In July, an activist of the All India Students Association at Deshbandhu College in Delhi University, Abhinav Kumar was beaten up by ABVP members so hard that he lost hearing in one ear. Police refused to file an FIR. Later that month, ABVP activists badly beat up a Sikh student at Hyderabad Central University, mistaking him for a Kashmiri student.

In 2015, two activists of Pinjra Tod – a Delhi University-based feminist collective that challenges sexist rules in women’s hostels – got calls from an ABVP member, threatening them with sexual abuse and violence for pasting posters on top of older ABVP posters on DU’s Wall Of Democracy.

More recently, a Night March organised by Pinjra Tod to assert the right of women students to be out on the city streets at night, was attacked by ABVP leaders including former Delhi University Students Union President Satender Awana. Taunting the activists as women of loose morals, they brandished a Rs 100 note to suggest that the activists are sexually available for money.

On October 27, I myself witnessed another such assault by the ABVP, led by no less than the DUSU president at a public meeting organised by AISA on The Idea of a University – a meeting held to demand justice for Najeeb Ahmed and think about the values for which a university should stand.

Surprisingly, the meeting ended on a note of hope – coming from the young woman who had been punched by the ABVP leader. In a five-minute speech to the students who were protesting the police-protected disruption of the event by the ABVP, Kawalpreet Kaur reminded us that the university belonged to everyone – including to those who attacked the public meeting. She expressed the hope that the day would surely come when universities would not be places where hate and violence could make a Ahmed disappear; universities would be places where love would flourish and the free exchange of ideas would thrive.

It is difficult to nourish hope when a student has been missing from a university campus for so long. Najeeb Ahmed’s fellow students did not celebrate Diwali on Sunday – instead, they held a Light of Hope vigil for their friend. Hope lies, perhaps, in raging with all one’s might against the dying light.

Kawalpreet Kaur after being punched in the face.

Kavita Krishnan is Secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association, a Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) and former joint secretary of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

The post Strange silences, skewed concerns: The heartbreaking disappearance of JNU student Najeeb Ahmed appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image credit:  Danish Ismail/Reuters

The post A road to empathy and solidarity: A reading list on Kashmir appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In workplaces today, we can see how capitalists in collusion with the State to extract as much surplus value as possible from the labourer – not only by pushing wages down but by pushing productivity up. The latter is done, in part, by denying workers the time to sit for a few minutes, to use the toilet, have a cup of tea or a meal, exchange a friendly word with a colleague, change a sanitary pad, breastfeed a baby or attend to a child. At the same time, the State’s own ‘welfare’ provisions (which should be called ‘social wages’ rather than ‘welfare’, since they enable social reproduction) are drastically being shrunk and slashed.         
 
Maternity Entitlements and Childcare Provisions in India
 A recent Convention in Delhi, organised by the Right to Food Campaign in conjunction with many women’s groups, unions and organisations, highlighted the demand for universal maternity entitlements and childcare provisions.
 
In India, 90% of women are engaged in informal or the unorganised sector. They do not get maternity leave, nor wage compensation during pregnancy and after childbirth; instead they can be thrown out of work for getting pregnant. The principal employers and contractors all shrug off any responsibility for maternity and childcare provisions. Even in the organised sector, the Maternity Benefits Act, like labour laws in general, is rampantly violated.
 
The fact that workers, especially in the unorganised sector and especially women, are not allowed to avail their right to organise and form Unions, also contributes to a situation where labour laws and maternity entitlements laws are violated.
 
The National Food Security Act 2013 was a significant breakthrough, since it entitled all pregnant and lactating women to a maternity entitlement of at least Rs 6000 per child birth. This amount is far from enough, and does not take wages, minimum wages or inflation rates into consideration, but it is nevertheless an achievement. But how far has this entitlement been implemented in the past two and a half years?
 
The NFSA maternity entitlement is provided through the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY). But the latter has undermined the universal nature of the entitlement. It is provided in just 53 districts, only to mothers above the age of 19 and for two live births – and also expects women to fulfil a range of conditionalities such as health check-ups, immunisation etc on their own responsibility in order to avail of the entitlement. This means that the State sits in judgement on women; and restricts the entitlement to ‘deserving’ mothers, blaming mothers for teenage marriages and pregnancies and for violating the neo-Malthusian ‘two-child’ norm. Perhaps most perverse is the manner in which mothers are blamed for not getting health check-ups and immunisation done or for failing to breastfeed babies – callously refusing to recognise the lack of basic healthcare provisions in vast tracts of India, and work conditions and chronic malnutrition that make breastfeeding difficult.         
 
Nine labour laws including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act mandate crèches at the workplace – but like other labour laws, these are routinely violated. 
 
Voices of Mothers and Fathers
At a Jan Sunvai (Public Hearing) session at the Convention, we heard more than 25 women and some men from all over India speak of their lives as mothers and fathers. The picture that emerged was alarming.   
 
Sunita Bharti, a garment worker in Delhi and a migrant from Bihar, spoke of how she lost her job during pregnancy because the resulting anaemia and weakness made it difficult for her to walk for half an hour to work from home. She is a contract worker, and the contractor provided no maternity leave or entitlements. When her son was a year and a half, Sunita resumed work, but had to leave her baby at home to be cared for by her 12-year-old daughter who, as a result, quit school. At work, a room is designated as a ‘creche’ as required by labour laws, but is usually kept locked – and is opened only when buyers visit the premises.    
 
Activists from Jharkhand presented case studies of women from Jharkhand, many of whom had been denied maternity entitlements because they had delivered at home; difficult forest terrain had prevented them from being able to reach a hospital for the delivery. One Adivasi woman, Monica Dung Dung, risked her own life and her baby’s, travelling to a hospital without cutting the umbilical cord, hoping that this would persuade them to register it as an institutional delivery. But they refused – and as a result she could not avail of the entitlement.  
 
Babita, a sanitation supervisor in JNU, spoke of how she was kicked out of her job by the contractor when she returned after her delivery, and remained out of work for some 8 months till JNU students and the AICCTU affiliated General Kamgar Union held a Ghera Dalo Dera Dalo protest, occupying the ad block night and day for weeks to force JNU to reinstate her in the same position. They tried to demote her but could not, under pressure from the agitation. Sonia, another worker at JNU, said she took leave to deliver her baby girl, and wasn't kicked out, but wasn't given wage compensation or ESI benefits either.
 
Babita asked, 'Don't the poor have a right to deliver babies? Why won’t JNU compensate me for the eight months I was forced to take a break in service after having a baby? There are 300 contract workers in JNU, yet no creche facilities for them, nor nursing breaks. I think every woman is a worker and should get maternity entitlements and every parent should get child care and creche facilities at the workplace.' (An aside – JNU is the University that the Hindutva right wing has branded as a ‘den of sex racket and sedition’. Babita and Sonia clearly saw the JNU students in a very different light – as allies in the struggle for dignity as workers and as women.)   

It was painful to hear Himesh Bhai Vankar, a worker from Gujarat, speak of his wife’s death after childbirth and his struggles to bring up his daughter Shreya alone. HimeshBhai and his late wife Gangaben both suffered disabilities thanks to kyphoscoliosis. During her pregnancy, Gangaben was never warned of the dangers of this condition. After delivering a baby and being discharged from hospital, Gangaben fell grievously ill. When she returned to the hospital, a cotton pad that had been left in the uterine lining was removed – but she died of the resulting infection. Subsequently, the Government and the various health agencies did not want to admit to medical negligence, and instead blamed her death on the kyphoscoliosis, alleging falsely that she had gone ahead with the pregnancy against medical advice.
 
The baby Shreya is malnourished and the natural weaning process is yet to happen even though she is two years old. One member of the Jan Sunvai panel asked HimeshBhai if he could possibly find enough time to personally feed the baby and try to wean her. His answer reflected such helplessness and anguish that it was painful to witness. He travelled a couple of hours each day to his workplace where he is a tailor; his mother, brother and brother’s wife all have to go to work as well. “If I don’t get any help from the Government, how will Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (the Modi Government’s call to save and educate daughters) become a reality,” he asked with tears in his eyes.           
 
Paternalism and Public Shaming of Women
At the Convention, the paternalism of the state and statutory institutions stuck out like a sore thumb. The current Chairperson of the NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights), instead of speaking of what her institution plans to do to enforce maternity and childcare provisions, delivered a lecture on how women must help themselves and not expect the Government to solve their problems. From the floor, however, her speech was met with vigorous slogans by participants, saying ‘We women are struggling for our rights, NCPCR we expect support from you!’
 
When Neelam, a woman worker, came to give her testimony about being denied maternity entitlements in her first two pregnancies, the representative of the National Commission For Women (NCW) interrupted to ask her if she was now pregnant with a third child. When Neelam said yes, the NCW representative (to the visible discomfort of other members of the Jan Sunvai panel) began to administer a prolonged public shaming and admonishment: “You belong to a women’s organisation, don’t you know better than to keep having babies, don’t you know there should be a gap of at least three years between babies?” The lively participants challenged this attitude from the floor though, with activists urging her to remember that she was there to give a hearing to the women and tell them what the NCW planned to do, not give the women a scolding.  
 
These episodes actually gave us a glimpse of the sheer humiliation and denial of basic human dignity to which women are subjected daily – not only at home and at work, but at the hands of hospitals, doctors, and a range of State institutions. Women are humiliated and shamed in patriarchal society for being barren or choosing not to bear children and for bearing girl children. And State institutions that supposedly work for women’s welfare also humiliate women in their turn; routinely deeming them ‘ineligible’ and ‘unfit’ for the entitlements they demand.       
  
The Central Government, the ruling party and its camp followers use the slogan of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ (victory to Mother India) to intimidate Indian citizens into ‘proving’ patriotism by performing ‘worship’ for the ‘Nation’ imagined as a Hindu goddess. But the Government and the ruling party is least bothered about rights of ‘Bharat ki Matayen’ (mothers of India), ‘Bharat ki mahilayen’ (women of India)  to life, to dignity, to control over their reproduction and their bodies, to food, maternity entitlements and childcare.       
 
(The author is Secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association) 
 

The post Mother’s Day 2016: What the State Owes Mothers, Parents And Women appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In the wake of the shocking declaration of the Modi Government that the Koh-i-Noor diamond was a ‘gift’, I noticed that some liberal voices (an example is the post by Renuka Narayanan – screenshot attached) have argued that colonial rule was beneficial and liberating to Indian women, who otherwise would have remained in bondage. I respectfully beg to disagree, since the facts simply don’t support such a claim. And I feel the need to elaborate, because colonial rule then – and imperialist wars and occupations now – like to claim they are ‘liberating’ ‘native’ women from the clutches of patriarchy. Whether we take British colonial India or the US war on Afghanistan, these claims are simply not true.

As an antidote to this grievously misguided claim, I will recommend that those interested, read the chapter on ‘Conjugality and Hindu Nationalism’ in Tanika Sarkar’s Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism, (New Delhi, Permanent Black) to get a sense of how the colonial state itself was not in any sense a feminist state, and the relationship between the colonial state and Indian patriarchy was not always confrontational and hostile. And the story of how self-critical and reformist strands among Indian intellectuals gradually gave way to revivalism that defined nationalism in terms of a defence of Indian patriarchy, is also a complex one.

I’ll quote some excerpts from the chapter, but it’s best that you read the fascinating chapter (I found an online file here http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/textfile.2008-07-22.3421675906/file) – and indeed the whole book – yourself. All emphases are mine.

The chapter points out that the colonial initiatives to ban sati or raise the age of consent were “generally a belated and forced surrender to Indian reformist pressure.” She notes that “colonial structures of power compromised with— and indeed learnt much from—indigenous patriarchy and upper-caste norms and practices.”

In fact, the late 19th century “had in England seen profound changes in women's rights vis-à-vis property holding, marriage, divorce, and the rights of prostitutes to physical privacy. Englishmen in India were divided about the direction of these changes and a significant section felt disturbed by the limited, though real, gains made by contemporary English feminists. They turned with relief to the so-called relative stability and strictness of Hindu rules. The Hindu joint-family system, whose collective aspects supposedly fully submerged and subordinated individual rights and interests, was generally described with warm appreciation. Found here was a system of relatively unquestioned patriarchal absolutism which promised a more comfortable state of affairs than what emerged after bitter struggles with Victorian feminism at home.”

The chapter recounts the chilling 1890 case of Phulmonee, the little ten-year-old girl raped to death by her 35-year-old husband. The Indian reformist campaign, in the wake of this incident, began documenting other similar instances and demanding that the age of consent be raised from ten to twelve. 44 women doctors prepared long lists of child-wives maimed or killed because of marital rape. The English judge ignored the evidence of Phulmonee’s mother and aunt, and exonerated her husband from the charge of culpable homicide.

“What needs to be particularly noted here is that, throughout the trial, the judge was saying nothing about a husband who insisted on sleeping with a child, or about the custom which allowed him to do so with impunity. Above all, he was not making any judgmental comparison between the ways of husbands, Eastern or Western. In fact, he bent over backwards to exonerate the system of marriage that had made this death possible: 'Under no system of law with which Courts have had to do in this country, whether Hindu or Mohammedan, or that formed under British rule, has it ever been the law that a husband has the absolute right to enjoy the person of his wife without regard to the question of safety to her.’

“Both the Hindu husband and the Hindu marriage system are generously exempted from blame and criticism. There is, in fact, an assertion about a continuity in the spirit of the law from the time of the Hindu kingdoms to that of British rule.” Not only that, even influential English doctors argued that in spite of the voluminous evidence amassed by reformists of the effects of marital rape of child wives, the colonial state must not meddle with the custom of child marriage, unless the “Hindus themselves expressed a great desire for change” :“A significant body of English medical opinion confirmed the clean bill of health that the colonial judiciary had advanced to the Hindu marriage system.”

The legislation raising the age of consent was enacted. But “The new legislation was conceived after the reformist agitation had convinced the authorities that the 'great majority' was ready for change. After the Phulmonee episode, revivalist-nationalists were maintaining a somewhat embarrassed silence; this was broken only after the proposed bill came along. During the interval the reformist voice alone was audible. Since this, for the moment, looked like the majority demand, political expediency coincided temporarily with reformist impulse and the government committed itself to raising the age of consent. At the same time, official opinion in Bengal did not extend the terms of the specific reform to larger plans for invasive change. On the contrary, it displayed a keenness to learn from the codes of Hindu patriarchy. Did a recognition that they were confronted with the most absolute form of patriarchal domination evoke a measure of unconscious respect and fellow feeling among the usually conservative, male English authorities, rather than the instinct for reform? As the secretary to the Public Health Society put it: 'The history of British rule and the workings of British courts in India manifest a distinct tenderness towards … the customs and religious observances of the Indian people.'”
And of course, it cannot be forgotten that “It is remarkable how all strands of opinion—colonial, revivalist-nationalist, medical-reformer— agreed on a definition of consent that pegged consent to a purely physical capability, divorced entirely from free choice of partner, from sexual, emotional or mental compatibility.”

But also, “It would be simplistic, however, to conclude that there was complete identity of patriarchal values between reformers and revivalists. Whatever their broader views, reformers always had to struggle along with a minimalist programme since nothing else would have the remotest chance of acceptability either with the legislative authorities or in Hindu society.” And of course, it’s painful and salutary to read the Hindu revivalist-nationalist defence of child marriage and marital rape of child wives in this chapter. The chapter ends by noting “several instances when cases were lodged at the initiative of the girl's mother, sometimes forcing the hands of the male guardians—for those times a rare demonstration of die woman's protest action. We also have a court deposition left by a young girl who was severely wounded and violated by her elderly husband.

'I cannot say how old I am. I have not reached puberty. I was sleeping when my husband seized my hand …. I cried out. He stopped my mouth. I was insensible owing to his outrage on me. My husband violated me against my will. When I cried out he kicked me in the abdomen. My husband does not support me. He rebukes and beats me. I cannot live with him.' The husband was discharged by the British magistrate. The girl was restored to him.”

Kavita Krishnan's Facebook Post, April 21, 2016, 3 p.m.

The post It’s A Myth That The British Raj Liberated Indian Women appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Is there no limit to the pettiness and vindictiveness that University administrations and their masters in the Modi regime’s MHRD (Ministry for Human Resources Development) can display towards young scholars and political activists?

 
Two days ago, on April 18, Chintu Kumari, an AISA activist and former General Secretary of the JNUSU (Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union), got a call from the JNU Administration that her MPhil degree and mark sheet had been “blocked” because of her participation in the February 9 event protesting Afzal Guru’s execution. Chintu is among those who received a show-cause notice from the Administration, but was not among the 8 students who had been ‘debarred from academic activities’ for some weeks.  
 
A few days ago, Shweta Raj, JNUSU Convenor of the School of Languages, submitted her fellowship form – to be told by the JNU Finance Branch that it has orders not to clear the fellowships of the ‘debarred’ students.
 
Soon after, the current JNUSU General Secretary Rama Naga and former JNUSU President Ashutosh Kumar also found that their fellowships are not being cleared by the JNU Finance Branch, even though these students are no longer ‘debarred’.
 
These students overcome huge social and economic hurdles and handicaps to make it to University, and in Universities like JNU and HCU (Hyderabad Central University), they are able to thrive and emerge as political leaders. It is nothing short of criminal that the Modi Government and its pliant Administrations choose to punish these students for their political activism.    
 
The Government wants us to see these students as one-dimensional ‘anti-nationals’. That’s good enough reason to look a little closer, and see who these students are, and what they get from JNU and what they bring to academics and politics that makes the Government want to end their education and their activism.   
 
Chintu’s father is a whole-time activist of the CPI(ML) in the Bhojpur region of Bihar; her mother sells bangles to sustain the family. Her father has had to live in hiding since 1996, since he is a target for the Ranveer Sena that massacred entire Dalit villages in Bhojpur in the 1990s.

At a recent protest in JNU, Chintu spoke with feeling about the serial killings of CPI(ML) activists in Bihar – in the past month itself, Comrades Mahesh Ram, Rampravesh Ram, and Garo Paswan who had been leading struggles of Dalit villagers for land that is rightfully theirs, were killed in Begusarai by feudal elements.  
 
Chintu was schooled in Delhi in the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya. She did her BA from IP College in DU, and then joined JNU for her MA and MPhil in Political Science. Her brother studies in Bhojpur; to get a sense of the struggles that students like him have had to wage (against mass expulsions and arson attacks) to get an education, do read Javed Iqbal’s piece, ‘JNU, HCU, and Once Upon A Time in Bhojpur.

Between Bhagat Singh martyrdom day on March 23 and Ambedkar Jayanti on 14 April this year, Chintu, Ashutosh, Anant, Rama and other AISA activists have campaigned intensively in villages and towns of India, as part of the ‘Utho Mere Desh’ (Arise My Country) campaign. Chintu spent much of the March-April month in Bhojpur, addressing street corner meetings, and appealing to people to come forward for a new India of Bhagat Singh’s and Ambedkar’s dreams (Naye Bharat Ke Vaste, Bhagat Singh-Ambedkar ke Raste). 
 
Last year, as JNUSU General Secretary, Chintu had visited Bhojpur to meet the young Dalit girls and women who had been gangraped in Kurmuri village by a former Ranveer Sena commander.

 
Rama Naga, the JNUSU GS, is the first graduate from his village. This is how the Telegraph described him in February, “Naga is a Dalit from Boipariguda in Odisha's Koraput district. His father sells bangles on his bicycle and his mother is a day labourer. …A graduate from Vikram Dev College in Odisha's Jeypore, Naga is shy except when he is on the dance floor. In Jeypore, he gave tuitions to fund his studies….His filmy dances during hostel and varsity cultural events drew crowds on the JNU campus. He's fondly called "Remo" after actor Vikram's character in the 2005 Tamil film Anniyan, which was dubbed in Hindi as Aparichit…. He has earned scholarships ever since he joined JNU.”

His MPhil is a critical study of the movements in his home state against land grab by the Baliapal missile testing range and the POCSO Steel Plant (POCSO has recently admitted defeat and withdrawn plans for the plant). For a young scholar and activist entirely dependent on fellowships, the freezing of his fellowship is a deliberate act of violence. Rama has posted on Facebook about how he, Shweta and Ashutosh are finding it difficult even to pay their mess bills.        
 
Ashutosh is the son of a rail worker in Barh in Bihar. Shweta, from Mughalsarai in UP, in addition to economic hardships, has the usual struggles most young women face, persuading their families to support her choice to pursue a PhD in Hindi literature and Left activism. JNU knows the clear young voices of Ashutosh and Shweta well – from the many struggles in which they have raised slogans and given powerful, inspiring speeches.       
 
The right-wing campaign derides JNU for wasting public subsidies. The likes of Anupam Kher jeer at JNU students asking them why they’re wasting their time doing PhDs instead of earning a living and supporting their poverty-stricken families. BJP MP Chandan Mitra, in a piece urging the Government to jump at any excuse to “shut down JNU” which he dubbed as “a factory that produces only spongers and malcontents.”

Meanwhile, the UGC is slashing funds and fellowships, while the PM himself is seeking to invite foreign universities to set up shop in India.    
 
Students like Rohith or Chintu, Rama, Ashutosh, Shweta and so many others, pose a threat to our rulers, because they refuse to look at education as a commodity; refuse to lose sight of the connections between science, social science, the humanities and society. They refuse to confine their reading and thinking to what can get them marks in exams – they refuse to seal off the classroom from the campus, the street or the slum. ‘Educate’, for them as for Ambedkar, goes hand in hand with ‘organise and agitate’. They know full well that when Bhagat Singh wrote a letter to youth, he didn’t ask them how much they would be earning, he asked them to organise study circles, distribute leaflets, build a revolutionary party, for “for the consummation of our ideal, i.e., social reconstruction on new, i.e., Marxist, basis.” And that’s why they know that Kher, Mitra and Co., would have jeered at Bhagat Singh and his comrades, too, as ‘spongers and malcontents.’ What, after all, is a ‘malcontent’? Neither Bhagat Singh nor Ambedkar preached being ‘content’ with a society ridden with inequality and oppression.

The BJP feels threatened when they see students from rural Bihar, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, UP express empathy for the people of Kashmir; organise workers on their campuses; and subject the Government to scrutiny. Above all, the BJP feels deeply threatened when young people refuse to accept the RSS attempts to define ‘nationalism’ in terms of Beef or the saffron-waving Bharat Mata baying for blood-and-bullets; and when students instead define patriotism as a concern for citizens’ rights, for justice, for democracy.  

Modi came to power boasting of support from the young. Now, wherever he goes, he seems as afraid of the young as the fairy tale Emperor was of the child who saw that he wore no clothes. Today’s students are the most vocal in piercing the balloon of ‘Acche Din’, in saying to him, in the words of Habib Jalib:
 
“Phool shaakhon pe khilne lagey” tum kaho,
“Jaam rindon ko milne lagey” tum kaho,
“Chaak seenon kay silne lagey” tum kaho,
Iss khule jhooth ko,
Zehn ki loot ko,
Main nahin maanta,
Main nahin jaanta.   
 
“Flowers are budding on branches”, that’s what you say,
“Every cup overflows”, that’s what you say,
“Wounds are healing themselves”, that’s what you say,
These bare-faces lies,
this insult to the intelligence,
I refuse to acknowledge,
I refuse to accept
 
(Translation courtesy Sana Saleem)

The Government and the University Administrations should have learnt their lesson by now – that every attempt to slap sedition charges, withhold fellowships and block MPhil degrees only adds fuel to a student movement that is growing in determination, and that is a refreshing vent of fresh air for a country suffocated by authoritarianism, betrayed promises and bigotry.       
 

The post A Vengeful State: JNU Administration Selectively Witholds Student Fellowships appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The apologia for Pachauri carried by the Observer (The Guardian's sister paper), quotes him saying it is suspicious that the complainant documented thousands of his messages. “What is disturbing [is] that right from the first day over a period of about 16 months she was creating and assembling an archive of messages, which to anyone would seem very unusual,” he says. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/26/rajendra-pachauri-hits-back-harassed-female-colleague-claims?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco 
 
If a complainant of sexual violence fails to show documentary evidence, she is accused of lying – why didn't she document it all, why did she delete a WhatsApp message she claims to have sent to a friend about the violence, why is she pretending not to know how WhatsApp works, she must be lying, etc. And if she DOES meticulously document prolonged sexual harassment, why, how suspicious, why would an innocent woman document messages from her boss! For a woman complainant, it is always Lose, Lose – because she is always The Accused.
 
Her behaviour is always suspicious. And if the accused is a big gun who can pull strings, and get international and national papers to carry versions slanted towards him, suggesting the complainant was both 'flirtatious' and part of a 'conspiracy' by climate change sceptics/communalists/secularists etc, if legal processes like chargesheets and trials are endlessly delayed in blatant mockery of the law, well, that's life, isn't it?

The woman complainant in the Tejpal case has just written to the Editor of the Mumbai Mirror about a slanted piece full of factual errors calculated to create sympathy for the accused, with zero journalistic concern for the complainant http://kafila.org/2016/03/28/response-to-shantanu-guha-rays-mumbai-mirror-article-on-tarun-tejpal/. The Mumbai Mirror piece http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/crime/Rape-charges-against-Tarun-Tejpal-Over-2-years-on-trial-yet-to-begin/articleshow/51488993.cms does not reveal that the author has a conflict of interest; it talks of the impact of a delayed trial on the accused – but does not bother to ask how such delay affects the complainant and witnesses, and it does not reflect on the fact that the delay is caused by Tejpal himself.
 
Tejpal has sought and obtained a stay from the Supreme Court on grounds that he has not been provided cloned copies of the CCTV footage, accuser's mobile phone, laptop etc. He got the stay in spite of the fact that the technology for such cloning is unavailable in India – would your average accused man, were he not a man with immense pull like Tejpal, be able to get such a stay on such grounds? Yet this piece talks of Tejpal as though he were the victim, the only one facing any suffering or loss to his career and life.  Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, in her TED talk on feminism, talks of how we make women feel that "being born female they're already guilty of something." https://vialogue.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/ted-we-should-all-be-feminists-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-at-tedxeuston-transcript/
 
And in case after case of sexual harassment and rape, women complainants are treated as though they must have been guilty of something, while the achievements and exploits of the 'great men' they have accused, are narrated to us over and over.
 
'He is a Godman, he is being falsely accused by secularists'; 'he is a well respected secular figure, the complainant must be a stooge of the communalists'; 'he is an environmental hero, the complainant must be on the payroll of climate change sceptics'… This goes on and on, over and over again, in case after case.
 
It seems we can never pause and say of our friends, our heroes, our gurus, 'He is a friend, he is someone I love and respect, and while it is difficult for me to say this and while I am concerned for this person and find it difficult to imagine him as a sexual harasser or rapist, I will not accuse and defame the complainant and assume she is lying. I will face the possibility that this 'great man' might in fact be guilty.
 
I will not interfere with due process by gossiping/writing about how the complainant must be guilty, even if I assume the accused to be innocent till proved otherwise. I will reflect soberly on the huge traumatic costs – in terms of her health, her personal relationships, her career, her finances – of making a complaint against a powerful person.
 
And above all, if I am aware that in fact, this friend habitually behaves with a sense of sexual entitlement over women, especially women employees, I will not make excuses for such behaviour and will not suggest that modern women should not make a big deal about unwanted sexual contact by a boss/friend/mentor.
 
I will not say Boys Will Be Boys, Men Will Be Men, Great Men Will Be Great Men, and unwanted, forced sexual contact is something women will just have to learn to live with."The occasions on which people take such principled stands are indeed rare. And until such stands become the norm rather than the exception, sexual harassment and violence too will continue to remain the norm, not the exception. 
 
(The author is Secretary, All India Progressive Women's Association, AIPWA) 

The post It’s A ‘Lose Lose’ Situation for most Sexual Harassment/Rape Complainants appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Why the current criticism of Charlie Hebdo is not only factually wrong but also dangerous
 
Kavita Krishnan’s recent article (https://sabrangindia.in/article/racism-not-anti-racist-%E2%80%98satire%E2%80%99) makes a scathing criticism of Charlie Hebdo’s alleged racism. This article and one other was shared widely on social media and Facebook, including by several left-wing writers, politicians and poets. Another such was in the Citizen: http://www.thecitizen.in/NewsDetail.aspx?Id=6499&CHARLIE%2FHEBDO%2FDOES%2FIT%2FAGAIN#comment
 
Why am I referring specifically to the left-wing? Not because I am against their views in general; quite the contrary. If such articles were written by some right-wing authors writing for a right-wing audience, I would not even bother to comment on a single FB posting, as there is little to no point trying to change any views there. (Just as it would not be possible to do so with a “better” cartoon in CH or elsewhere).
 
What bothers me, and what has prompted me to comment on Krishnan's FB postings to a point where she almost blocked me (Thanks to her for not doing so and apologies for having been a nuisance), is the fact that many sane and highly politically aware people are criticising a publication (Charlie Hebdo) that is by no means an “enemy”. In fact it is very much on their side; for freedom of expression, of the press, and of opinion.
 
The sad fact that they so strongly criticize CH in front of their own left-leaning audiences is what causes me to write this, as they provide these audiences with a totally incorrect and out-of-context view of this magazine and its intentions. What really puzzles me is the motivation behind trying to prove that CH is sexist and racist. What is to be gained here?

 
Such castigation not only goes against freedom of speech, it ultimately plays into the hands of those who have said all along that CH deserved what they got last year. As it were, these voices have already been seen in FB comments underneath the postings of Krishnan and others. It will be argued that CH is despised (not only) in the West as racist and sexist, plus they insulted the prophet, so it was right to kill them? I refuse to believe that is what Krishnan and others would advocate. But how else is one to understand the allegations?
 
Why is left-wing damnation of CH so problematic and why should it be clarified, and if possible, revised? Because such criticism of CH is in fact not a matter of opinion, but arises from a complete and utter misunderstanding of the cartoons themselves, their socio-cultural context, and the history of such specifically French satire, which is sharp and often extremely direct. To make things worse, a CH cartoon from 1970 (!) was also dug up to show their “sexism“, in another crass misrepresentation of facts, by way of a Facebook posting that has already been shared widely in the same left-wing circles and is being used to further criticize and “expose” the magazine. This however will not be discussed in detail here and now.

I will deliberately leave aside the question whether the recent CH cartoon – which supposedly alleges that Aylan Kurdi would have grown up to be a groper in Germany – is in good taste or not. Whether one approves of the way it uses the picture of a dead child for the purpose of a cartoon is a matter for debate, and it is clearly a matter of personal opinion more than anything else. But as argued above, what is definitely not a matter of opinion is whether this cartoon (and others in CH) may be considered openly “racist“, as Krishnan and others have claimed, based on how a hypothetical adult Aylan Kurdi is shown with the face of a pig running after a woman he wants to grope.
 
The cartoon is simply taken at face value here and the conclusion drawn that it shows the cartoonist's (and Charlie Hebdo's) own statement or conviction that this is what would have inevitably happened, had he not drowned. However, as context and history clearly show this is utterly wrong and therefore the accusations are baseless. Holding on to such accusations nonetheless will be self-defeating as argued above.

Before going into cultural context and quoting an example from the history of CH cartoons, it is important to point out that the allegedly racist cartoon has also been taken out of its editorial context (deliberately?) to score anti-CH points. This is but one of four cartoons in a column, appearing below a headline that reads, “France is not what people say”. The first one refers to a discussion in France on whether or not terrorists with double citizenship should be stripped of their French citizenship. French Justice Minister, Christiane Taubira, who is depicted here, and who has also been the subject of allegedly “racist” CH cartoons (more on that below), opposes this. The other politician says she will have to accept it or step back. The second cartoon is the one being hotly debated. The third one satirizes the fate of cartoonists. It says, “Since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, people no longer draw the same way”, with the man in the cartoon commenting, “We now do self-portraits”. The fourth one refers to protests against the construction of an airport, and says, “All united except in Notre-Dame-des-Landes” (the name of the place). The policeman's shield refers to “Je suis Charlie” and says, “So am I, normally, but not today”.

This context alone might provide ample evidence of the fact that the Aylan Kurdi cartoon can neither be viewed in isolation, nor taken at face value as a straightforward statement against the dead child. Instead, it clearly satirises and thereby criticises those who do hold such views, some of whom may have earlier shared the dead child's photograph out of compassion when it was first published. As an aside, this issue of CH also contains four drawings by the same cartoonist (‘Riss’), which are anti-clerical and anti-theist in nature, equally attacking Christian, Jewish, and Islamic clerics.
 
If this is not enough evidence, one will need to look at earlier cases of such CH cartoons that appear “racist” at first, but turn out to being the exact opposite if seen in the right political and socio-cultural context. I will pick one example, and provide a number of links for a better understanding of CH cartoons, as others have already analysed these in a way far better than I could.
 
It is important to realize first of all that CH cartoons never were, and still are not, meant to cater to the tastes of a streamlined global audience, and its expectations of what “good satire” may or may not be, say, or do. CH has a long history of saying the unsayable and thinking the unthinkable. For CH, whether or not global readers are able to personally relate to it must not become a basis for factually incorrect accusations of “racism”, “sexism” etc.
 
CH is specifically French not only in its language, but also in the way it makes its statements. Those who claim that good satire should not need an explanation might want to look at political cartoons in their own country and ask themselves whether these would be accessible to global audiences without a solid background knowledge of who is being portrayed how and in what context. This certainly applies to Indian cartoons (anything beyond Modi cartoons will likely not be understood elsewhere), but also to specifically American or British caricature. Obama and Trump will need no explanation, but what about Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders?

Now to a prime example of how CH cartoons are prone to be misunderstood if taken at face value: This is a cartoon showing the French cabinet minister Christiane Taubira. CH's then editor-in-chief, the late Stéphane Charbonnier, aka ‘Charb’, actually drew her as a monkey. Now, is that not blatantly racist? No. Not at all. A quote from the website ‘Understanding Charlie Hebdo' (now offline, archived version here
https://web.archive.org/web/20150905180008/  http://www.understandingcharliehebdo.com/) explains it as follows:

“The cartoon was published after a National Front politician Facebook-shared a photoshop of Justice Taubira, drawn as a monkey, and then said on French television that she should be ‘in a tree swinging from the branches rather than in government’ [Le Monde] (she was later sentenced to 9 months of prison). The cartoon is styled as a political poster, calling on all far right ‘Marine’ racists to unify, under this racist imagery they have chosen. Ultimately, the cartoon is criticising the far-right's appeal to racism to gain supporters”. (The red/blue logo in the corner is that of the neo-fascist French ‘Front National’, a kind of BJP/RSS/VHP conglomerate…).
 
Now Christiane Taubira not only did not criticize this cartoon, she later went to the CH cartoonists' funerals, and held a eulogy on one occasion, where she made the following statement: “Do taboos exist? Well, yes, according to them, it’s better to avoid drawing and caricaturing the CGT trade union for printers, for daily newspapers. [Laughter.] But otherwise no, no taboos. One can draw anything. Even a prophet. Because in France, in the France of Voltaire and of irreverence, one has the right to make fun of religions. A right. Yes, because a right, that’s what democracy is about. Democracy is the rule of law, according to the philosopher Alain.”
(http://www.steamthing.com/2015/05/christiane-taubiras-elogy-for-the-charlie-hebdo-cartoonisttignous.html)
 
This one example could suffice to show that one must simply not draw conclusions on CH cartoons from what one sees on the surface, much less make these conclusions the basis for accusations and attacks. Sadly, though, that does not seem to be the case. This is what leads Krishnan and others to publish scathing attacks, despite being presented with ample evidence (and personal statements directly from France) that clearly debunk these allegations. In the interest of the audiences they are catering to, and in the interest of the freedom of expression (regardless of personal tastes), I hereby request her and others to seriously reconsider their position, and better yet, publicly retract and correct the accusations and allegations against CH, which already have and will continue to do a lot more harm than good to the same causes they otherwise strongly defend.
 
A few more links for a better understanding of CH cartoons follow:
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/11/1356945/-On-not-understanding-Charlie-Whymany-smart-people-are-getting-it-wrong
• http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-charlie-hebdo-cartoon-about-aylan-kurdi-and-sexattackers-is-one-of-its-most-powerful-and-a6812346.html
• https://blogs.mediapart.fr/olivier-tonneau/blog/110115/charlie-hebdo-letter-my-britishfriends
• http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/01/15/in-defense-of-charlie-hebdosalan-kurdi-cartoon/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
• http://www.salon.com/2015/01/08/freedom_democracy_and_the_hidden_meanings_of_the_charlie_hebdo_massacre/
 
(The writer is a concerned reader from Germany, a staunch atheist, who spent two years in India, mostly in Delhi between 1985 and 1994)

The post For freedom’s sake appeared first on SabrangIndia.