The old-timers, from the chief sub-editors to the linotype operators in the printing section, spoke of him with a reverence usually reserved for mythical heroes. They would lower their voices, as if sharing a sacred secret, and recount tales of a man whose courage and conviction had not only defined the paper’s finest hour but had also reshaped the very landscape of Indian journalism.

I was only 27 then, younger than he had been when he took the helm. For the first forty-five days of my tenure, I found myself shouldering the responsibilities of the editor, R.K. Mukker, who was away in Punjab for his daughter’s wedding.

The weight of the chair felt immense, not just because of the responsibility, but because I was acutely aware of the giant who had occupied it before me. As a Malayali and, like him, a chain-smoker, my colleagues were quick to draw comparisons. “You remind us of George Saheb,” they would say, a compliment that was both flattering and daunting. It was an impossible standard to live up to, for I knew him only as a legend, a byline from a storied past.

This burgeoning curiosity compelled me to seek him out. During a leave trip to Kerala, I made a pilgrimage to the Indian Express office in Kochi. The office, perched near the coast, carried the distinct, briny scent of the sea and drying fish—a sensory detail that has remained etched in my memory.

I was nervous, expecting perhaps a brush-off from a journalist of his stature. Instead, I was met with immense warmth. He greeted me not as a stranger, but as a colleague from a shared alma mater. His memory was sharp; he inquired about old comrades from The Searchlight. We spoke of Thampy Kakanadan, the writer he had brought to Patna as an assistant editor, tracing his subsequent journey to Indian Airlines.

In that small, fish-smelling office, the legend began to transform into a person—approachable, articulate, and genuinely interested.

Inspired, I returned to Patna and wrote a long, reflective piece about him, which I promptly sent his way. He acknowledged it with a gracious thank you. Years later, when a brief biographical note appeared on Wikipedia, I felt a quiet pride seeing my article listed among the write-ups on him. It was a small, invisible thread connecting my journalistic journey to his.

Our paths crossed again many years later in Chandigarh. My editor, H.K. Dua, called me to his room to introduce a fellow Malayali. It was George. By then, we had been both part of the Indian Express family, he in the South and I in the capital, so the recognition was mutual. Our conversation turned personal.

I mentioned that my younger sister was married to a man from Thumpamon, and that the family had immediately pointed out a connection to him. I stumbled, trying to articulate the exact familial link. With a characteristic wave of his hand and a voice loud enough for Mr. Dua to hear, he clarified, “We are relatives, as are all Syrian Christians. If any two of them talk for two minutes, they will find they are relatives.”

It was a typical George remark—dismissive of trivialities, yet profoundly affirming of a shared cultural identity. He was returning from Himachal Pradesh and had dropped in on Mr. Dua, another link in the intricate chain of Indian journalism. That was to be our last meeting.

Yet, our intellectual engagement continued. Once, deeply troubled by his stance on a particular issue, I felt compelled to respond. Under the pseudonym ‘Bharat Putra,’ I penned an open letter to him, critiquing his position. I sent it off, half-expecting, half-dreading a fiery rebuttal. But silence was his reply. Perhaps he saw through the pseudonym; perhaps he believed the argument did not merit one. I never knew.

The stories of his time at The Searchlight, however, were his true monument. My colleagues would recount, with undimmed fervour, how under George’s leadership, the paper became the unflinching voice of the people. When students across Bihar rose in protest against fee hikes and soaring prices, The Searchlight stood with them, its coverage bold and uncompromising.

The defining moment came during a violent Patna bandh. Instead of retreating, George devoted the entire newspaper to a saturation coverage of the agitation. The presses ran overtime, and the print order soared past one lakh copies—a staggering, unprecedented figure for that era.

The establishment, led by Chief Minister K.B. Sahay, could not let this defiance stand. George was arrested under the draconian Defence of India Rules. What followed was a spectacle that entered the annals of journalistic folklore.

The eminent V.K. Krishna Menon, a national figure, air-dashed to Patna to personally argue for George’s bail before the High Court. The court premises swelled with a crowd never seen before, a sea of silent supporters bearing witness. George’s release was a triumph, marking him as the first editor to be arrested—and vindicated—in independent India. Even from his prison cell in Hazaribagh, the journalist in him could not be silenced; he authored a penetrating booklet on the student unrest.

The political cost for Sahay was severe; he was trounced in the subsequent elections in 1967 from both Patna and Hazaribagh. Overnight, TJS George was a national hero. Yet, his principled stand also spelled the end of his Patna chapter. The management, fearing further reprisals, had overruled his instruction to keep the editorial column blank until his release. For George, compromise was a language he did not speak, and he moved on.

His was a restless, visionary spirit. After his foundational years in India, which began under the tutelage of another remarkable Malayali, S. Sadanand of the Free Press Journal in Bombay, he looked east. In Hong Kong, he conceived and founded Asiaweek, a magazine modelled on TIME and Newsweek but with a crucial difference: an Asian soul.

In many ways, his magazine surpassed its American rivals in its nuanced, authoritative coverage of the continent. George’s reputation was now international. A shrewd businessman as well as an editor, he understood the economics of publishing. When he eventually sold the magazine, he secured not just his legacy but also his fortune.

His return to India saw him join the Indian Express as Editorial Advisor. When the group split and the southern editions became The New Indian Express, George was their pillar of strength. His stature was such that he was granted a unique privilege: his personal column ran on the front page, a boldface declaration of his importance.

Even more remarkably, he was permitted to take positions that sometimes diverged from the paper’s official editorial line—a testament to the immense trust and respect he commanded. From my desk on the edit page in Delhi, where we shared content with the southern editions, I would often notice this delicate dance of opinions. Readers adored him for his fearless candour, and his bosses knew better than to interfere. It was in these years that the newsroom, in a mix of affection and awe, began calling him the “Holy Cow of the Express.” He had a good command of Malayalam also.

His writing was as prolific as it was profound. His Handbook for Journalists became a Bible in journalism schools, shaping the ethics and craft of generations of reporters. As a biographer, he combined elegant prose with penetrating insight, producing acclaimed portraits of complex figures like V.K. Krishna Menon, the actress Nargis, his mentor Pothen Joseph, and the celestial vocalist M.S. Subbulakshmi. His scholarly works on Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore and the rise of Islam in the Philippines were extraordinary achievements, demonstrating a Malayali journalist’s ability to dissect foreign societies with rare authority and understanding.

TJS George, who once wrote under the simple, powerful byline “GOG,” did not just practice journalism; he was its very embodiment. The saying goes that one has ink in their blood; for George, it was printing ink that coursed through his veins. He was not merely an editor; he was an institution—a beacon of intellectual courage, clarity of thought, and unyielding conviction.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

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Born in Barabanki, and having earned various degrees from, and having served in several American Universities (California, Chicago, Minnesota, etc.), C.M. Naim had a rich academic life.

For decades, I have been reading C M Naim, his essays, books, columns, translations…. And just a few months back (on January 4, 2025, to be precise), he wrote to me, on email, to encourage me to keep writing on Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

His email, verbatim, can be read here:

“Dear Prof. Sajjad,

I’m a retired academic, living now in Chicago.

I have been reading your ‘against the grain’ essays and notes in Urdu and was delighted to read your thoughts on Hameed Dalwai.

Muslim elite of all hues have been suffering this victimhood syndrome. They in fact revel in it. The poor, the helpless, those who had no choice in 1947 and their children and grandchildren have suffered. With no end in sight. While the so-called maulanas have flourished, safe in their sanctuaries. English-speaking Muslim public intellectuals have done the same, secure of acceptance and praise from the liberal non-muslim writers, who do a brave job countering their co-religionists opponents but never challenge Salman Khurshid, Talmiz Ahmad, and so many others who never challenged Nadvis and Tablighis.

Keep up the good work. AMU is a hard place to carry such opinions but someone has to be there to help the young think clearly about their lives in India. Our only bosses/clients in academe are our students. We must be honest with them.

Warm regards,

Naim”

Last year, few of us had thought of suggesting that the AMU requests his consent to accept the AMU-established, Sir Syed Excellence Award. He, however refused, rather bluntly, as he did not have very good memories of AMU! He had quit AMU having taught Linguistics briefly.

My 2014 book on Muzaffarpur begins with a quote from his 1999 book, Ambiguities of Heritage: Fictions and Polemics.

In 2014, there was a controversy around access to the central Library of AMU for the undergraduate girls of the Women’s College. I had written a column, disliked by many, particularly those pretending to be feminists or gender activists. They are those who never speak out against the tormentors of the likes of Shaha Bano (1916-1992) and Shayera Bano.

Naim’s letter to the editor in The Indian Express (13 November 2014) was a source of affirmation for what I had written, concurrently. My Rediff column, “AMU gender row: Reinforcing Muslim stereotypes”, was published (Nov 14, 2014). We were on the same page, on the issue.

Naim wrote:

“I am not an admirer of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) administration and am strongly opposed to having retired non-academic institutions simply on the basis of religion. But The Indian Express report (‘Row in AMU Over No Library Access to women undergrads’, IE, November 12) on the alleged discrimination at AMU was merely shrill and did not mention much that was highly relevant. First, the matter concerns only undergraduate students, not all women students. Second, undergraduate students are not denied use of the main library during daylight hours. Third, undergraduate girls live in the hostels of the Women’s College, a long distance away from the main library. For their safety after dark—a responsibility of AMU and a commitment to their parents- they will have to be bussed both ways. Fourth, the College has its own library and reading rooms. Have they been found to be inadequate for the undergraduate students? If so, what are the inadequacies for the undergraduate students and can they be easily removed? As far as I understand, the college library is sufficient for the needs of undergraduate students and also has the ability to obtain books for them from the main library if needed. Fifth, again, at issue are the needs of undergraduate girls living in hostels, many of whom would be considered, “minors” in other circumstances. Should we not seek the opinion of their parents, who have entrusted their daughters to AMU? The tweets and the report both displayed only politically correct reactions, not careful thought”.

1. M. Naim, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago

Soon after, he made an intervention into the EPW (Vol. 50, Issue No. 30, 25 Jul, 2015), through a letter to editor. Caption was “Muslim Communalism”. He wrote:

“While I fully agree with the editorial (“Resisting ‘Sustainable’ Communalism,” EPW, June 27, 2015) and appreciate its urgency and concern, I must point out that there is another similarly corrosive “sustainable” communalism, and that is of a large portion of the Muslim community. It is most obviously expressed in what is easily termed as “sectarian” bias and antagonism. This sectarianism has become more and more blatant in recent years. Then there is also that reflexive communalism that is directed against all Muslims who do not contribute to the sectarianism of these people nor to their exclusivism that is directed against all those Muslims whom they derisively call “secular.” It has been quietly accepted by many liberals in the media. Ordinary Muslim citizens of India need to be protected as much from the communalism of their co-religionists as from what is labelled majoritarian communalism.

C M Naim Chicago”

My friend, Syed Ekram Rizwi had reminded me of his 2010 essay, THE MUSLIM LEAGUE IN BARABANKI: A Suite of Five Sentimental Scenes. This was a wonderful read, full of insights, particularly with regard to the way things unfolded during august 1947 to January 1948 and after.

The same year Naim published a wonderful essay, “Syed Ahmad and His Two Books Called ‘Asar-al-Sanadid’”. This was in the formidable academic journal from the Cambridge University Press, Modern Asian Studies (2011). The chief questions that the paper explored, were, “How do the two books differ from some of the earlier books of relatively similar nature in Persian and Urdu? How radically different are the two books from each other, and why? How and why were they written, and what particular audiences could the author have had in mind in each instance? How were the two books actually received by the public? And, finally, what changes do the two books reflect in the author’s thinking?”

Naim’s EPW (April 27, 2013) essay, “The Maulana Who Loved Krishna”, on F H Hasrat Mohani, was a wonderful read, also carried by the Outlook weekly, in its slightly abridged version. This article reproduces, with English translations, the devotional poems written to the god Krishna by a maulana who was an active participant in the cultural, political and theological life of late colonial north India. Through this, the article gives a glimpse of an Islamicate literary and spiritual world which revelled in syncretism with its surrounding Hindu worlds; and which is under threat of obliteration, even as a memory, in the singular world of globalised Islam of the 21st century.

Another essay by him, “The ‘Shahi Imams’ of India”, Outlook, Nov 27, 2014, offered a historically informed critique of the authority handed over to these anti-historical, superficial characters (clergy), by the unsuspecting, gullible masses of Muslims, not without the support of the state actors of the Indian Republic.

C M Naim’s essays on the portal, New Age Islam, are:

(1) Seminar On Iran Held At Raza Library: Should Such Things Happen At A National Institution In India? (30 June 2012)

(2) “Muslim Press in India and the Bangladesh Crisis” (2 Sept 2013): In this he examined how Muslim public opinion responded to the Bangladesh struggle in 1971, how those responses compare with the reactions in Pakistan, and whether that crisis left any lasting effect on the thinking of Indian Muslims.

Going by what Shyam Benegal (1934-20124) argued in his essay, “Secualrism and Indian Cinema” that the film like “Garm Hawa” could have been made only after the Bangladesh (1971) issue which convinced the hitherto un-convinced Muslims of India that religion could not serve as a binding force of nationalism.

(3) “Another Lesson in History” (19 Sept 2013);

(4) “English/Urdu Bipolarity Syndrome in Pakistan” (19 Dec 2014)

(5) “Listen To Sonu Nigam, Please” (20 April 2017)

His essays are available on his website: https://cmnaim.com/; This includes his essays published in the Annual of Urdu Studies (Wisconsin, USA), which he edited too, and his EPW (June 17, 1995) essay, “Popular Jokes and Political History: The Case of Akbar, Birbal and Mulla Do-Piyaza“.

In 2004, he brought out a collection of his essays, Urdu Texts and Contexts. The book primarily focuses on Urdu poetry, offering fresh perspectives on diverse Urdu texts and their significance in India’s cultural history. It explores literary, social, and performative contexts associated with Urdu in South Asia and beyond, addressing themes such as Urdu poetry (including ghazal and marsiya), the sociology of literature, and the social history of Muslims in North India. The essays cover topics like the works of poets such as Ghalib and Mir Taqi Mir, the musha’irah tradition, and the role of Urdu in education and popular fiction. Naim’s accessible yet scholarly approach makes the book valuable for those interested in Urdu literature and South Asian cultural studies.

Naim’s latest (2023) book, Urdu Crime Fiction, 1890–1950: An Informal History, is a meticulously researched exploration of the origins and evolution of Urdu crime fiction, or jāsūsī adab, during its formative years in colonial India. The genre, initially inspired by 19th-century European and North American crime fiction, was adapted into Urdu through translations, transcreations, and original works. The book highlights key figures like Tirath Ram Ferozepuri (1857-1924), who translated over 114 titles (spanning 60,000 pages), and Zafar Omar, whose 1916 transcreation of Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin as Bahram in Nili Chhatri (The Blue Parasol) became a cultural phenomenon. Other notable contributors include Nadeem Sahba’i, known for imaginative Urdu pulp fiction.

Naim details how Urdu thrillers, with evocative titles like Khūnī Chhatrī (The Murderous Umbrella) and Mistrīz af Dihlī (The Mysteries of Delhi), captivated readers with their “wonder-inducing” and “sleep-depriving” narratives, selling thousands of copies.

These works reflected urban India’s modernity, incorporating elements like mannequins, cameras, and truth serums, while depicting secular spaces—railway stations, public parks, and cinemas—where diverse identities mingled. The book also notes the influence of Western authors like G.W.M. Reynolds and the absence of female Urdu crime fiction writers during this period.

Naim’s primary focus is on the genre’s development before 1950, slightly predating Ibn-e-Safi’s most prolific period. Naim acknowledges Ibn-e-Safi (pen name of Asrar Ahmad, 1928–1980) as a transformative figure who elevated Urdu detective fiction to new heights in the post-independence era.

While earlier writers like Tirath Ram Ferozepuri focused on translations or transcreations of Western works, Ibn-e-Safi’s original stories, blending suspense, humour, and social commentary, popularized the genre further, making it a cultural staple in South Asia.

We will miss the “against the grain” essays of C M Naim which were incredibly historically informed.

Rest in Peace Naim sahib!

Related:

One of Urdu’s Greatest Scholars, C.M. Naim, Passes Away

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Recalling her varied contributions, Aflatoon wrote on Meta-Facebook how Dr Sanghamitra worked with providing livelihood for the widowed Muslim women, survivors of the Gujarat 2002 carnage through sowing and dying cloth products with natural dyes. On the issue of nuclear energy Dr Sanghamitra Gadekar had made significant contributions working closely with her life partner Dr Surendra Gadekar on scientifically conducted surveys on the harmful impacts of nuclear energy and plants on health of those living in close proximity. Dr Sanghamitra was also involved as Medical Officer in Vasant Women’s University and also as a doctor at the Sanjeevani Hospital, Sarai Mohana, Varanasi.

Recalling her contribution to the peace movement on the sub-continent, film maker Anand Patwardhan recalled that Uma (Sanghamitra), Suren (dra) and Narayanbhai (Desai) featured in the 2002 film “War and Peace”. The global family of peace activists expressed condolences at her death.

In 2012, the partnership of the Gadekar’s had publicly challenged the decision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Rajasthan after it gave a clean chit to the Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant (RAPP) in Rawatbhata, ignoring the fact that there was heavy tritium leak in unit 6 of the plant early this year.

That year, on June 23 this year, more than 40 persons working at unit 6 were exposed to tritium. On July 19, four maintenance workers were exposed to tritium radiation while repairing a faulty pipe in the pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) of unit 4, which the agency members visited during the “in-depth safety review” from October 29 to November 14. The IAEA assembled the Operational Safety Review Team (OSART), led by Miroslav Lipar of the agency’s Division of Nuclear Installation Safety, at the request of the Indian government. The team comprised experts from Canada, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and the IAEA.

However, an Independent health survey conducted around the RAPP by noted experts Sanghamitra Gadekar and Surendra Gadekar, had revealed to the contrary: the scientists and peace activists said it revealed high occurrence of cancer, leukaemia and other diseases.
“This study was published in a reputed and peer-reviewed medical journal but the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) has ignored it,” the activists had alleged in a statement.

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My father was very fond of catching some strange kind of films shown on Doordarshan on Sundays, which didn’t fall into any of these categories We didn’t have television set at home in those days, not till my senior school days. My father used to go to friendly drawing rooms with TV sets (a rarity those days) to watch along with a neighbourhood, (quite common) these out of the box kind of films.

One day, he took me along. An obscure black and white film , with the kind of village I had not seen in commercial Hindi cinema (the real kind), with characters who looked too ordinary and too normal (my reference points were very glamorous and very large in attitude, declamation and action) going around, doing day to day things, exchanging glances and expressions. There seemed to be no recognisable plot, no formulaic occurrences, no set pieces of music and melodrama and no fist fights at all. Just some guy, who happened to be a young zamindar but looked nothing like Pran or Premnath in those palaces, some rural woman, who looked coy and silent and laboured away in a manner a Hema or Zeenat did not and another character, her husband, who was both deaf and mute, looked funny but far from behaving like a Mehmood or Jagdeep, just reacted to life with those large expressive eyes.

Some relationships seemed to be forming. The arrival of the Zamindar boy’s wife, seemed to add some tension. The rural woman gets pregnant, the deaf and mute husband of hers, goes to seek work from the Zamindar boy, who was busy flying kites with an enthusiastic kid, but seeing the approaching character, abandons the activity, gets a whip and starts lashing the deaf and mute mercilessly, while the pregnant rural labourer runs across the field to fall on her battered husband in protection, weeping, screaming, ” all he wanted was a little work, not any revenge for exploiting me…”.

The Zamindar rushes inside, bolts the door and pants and whimpers in a mix of guilt and rage. The kid who was so invested in flying kites with the young Zamindar, takes off from the plot, suddenly turning around, picking up a stone and throwing it at the house….the film ends…huhhhh.

I was puzzled, my pre-mature brain riddled with the images of that of angry young man Vijay jumping from six floors down to bash up a dozen goondas and avenging his family, while the police and heroine arrive at the fag end, with the theme song, announcing ‘The End’, on the faces of the happy escapist multitudes. That was my understanding of a climax and a resolution …but this throwing of a pebble by a kid?

What kind of resolution was that? I still remember what my father explained to me, then. The gist of it was, “this is the precursor to a revolution, the beginning with a stone, thrown by a kid, now awakened to existing class exploitation and hinting at a larger class conflict ” Huhhhh? Too heavy, too complex as compared to a simple individual heroic retribution?

But I understood this much. That it was a film about social churning, about an India which existed beyond the screens of mainstream Hindi cinema. The film was ANKUR, the director was debutant SHYAM BENEGAL and the theme was feudal class conflict and social injustice and the result was the eyes of a standard three student, opening wide.

That was the beginning of my tryst with Shyam babu’s didactic social realism, mirroring the resilience and resistance of the toiling masses: MANTHAN, the helplessness of the idealistic middle class in the face of a dominant feudal diktat. NISHANT, the emancipation of feminine expression in the face of patriarchy. BHUMIKA, the coming together of the masses across religion and region against colonialism, while the feudal lords remained blissfully immersed in debauchery. JUNOON, the politics of capitalism mirroring the Mahabharata, KALYUG and many, many more.

The peak being a television series unmatched anywhere in the in the world in its nuanced scope—THE DISCOVERY OF INDIA (Bharat Ek Khoj), an almost impossible narrative, to capture the long, complex and diverse history and myth representing spirit and soul of INDIA….which only a Man of unparalleled vision, profound sensitivity, titular intellect and tremendous understanding of the craft of images and words could wield and conjure….yes, SHYAM BENGAL epitomised the finest spirit and world view of our freedom struggle and subsequent nation building, otherwise understood as the NEHRUVIAN spirit, where tradition and modernism, the secular and spiritual, co-existed with an all-encompassing humanist outlook in seeking justice in a society riddled with the merciless bondages of feudalism and the shackles of capitalist greed.

Shyam babu’s passing away pulls the curtains on 20th century Indian modernism in art and aesthetics, flagged off by the likes of a Habib Tanvir and Ebrahim Alkazi in theatre, a Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain in music, a Sahir Ludhianwi and Amrita Pritam in literature, etc etc etc

Shyam Benegal the pioneer of parallel Indian cinema, advertising, documentation and above all, a guiding light for hundreds of apprentices across mediums, performed his final service to the nation with his series on the making of the Indian Constitution– SAMVIDHAN, an epic creative archive like no other.

Thank you, Sir. May our emotions on your passing, not end with penning obituaries but actually manifest the spirit of our Constitution which you so eloquently espoused.

Joy Sengupta

(The author, Joy Sengupta, is a well-acclaimed actor in theatre and cinema. Apart from awards won for performances in Hazar Chaurasi ki Ma directed by Govind Nihalani and for the portrayal of Gandhi in the ipic play, Samy  and the Bengali film, Bilu Rakhosh,  Sengupta has worked with legendary directors  Habib Tanveer and Safdar Hashmi. He is a teacher of Theatre in Education and used theatre for projects on literacy and social work)

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Adieu Sheela Barse- Salutes

I was informed last night of the passing on of Sheela Barse. I am fully aware that this name may not mean a lot to the new generation of activists. Law researchers may have heard of her and referred to orders with her name.

But for me, I am feeling a sense of loss. I have not met Sheela for over 30 years and yet I feel I never quite lost touch with her in my heart and mind. Every time I think of or mention juvenile justice, Sheela’s is the name that comes to my mind. I was delighted to find an interview with her in Live Law which was feisty as she has always been. I recall her as I think child labour- because that’s why I got to meet her in 1986!

It is impossible to write on children’s issues without citing Sheela Barse and all her PILs. Her work on women prisoners in the early eighties could be considered path breaking. A simple internet search is enough for that. But like many feisty fighters of peoples rights , she remains unknown to most of the larger public. I doubt that whether my own children or even my spouse recognise the significance of her life, despite their relationship with me. I realised as I spoke to many young activists, they were unable to recall her. How do we make people like Sheela Barse as much a national heritage in the minds of the public she spent her life fighting on behalf of, as the sportspersons and actors or even other ‘celebrities’? My yoga teacher, with whom I was talking about Sheela said, how come we do not know her….our children of course never will. That is so sad indeed!

It was 1986 and the draft child labour law was under way. Rajeev Gandhi was the Prime Minister and P.A Sangma the Labour Minister. The new terms – Prohibition and Regulation were to be added to the amended child labour law. My friend Neera Burra and I met at the Indian Social Institute, Delhi, where we both worked. Neera introduced me to Vasudha Dhagamawar, who had just set up Multiple Action research Group (MARG), and whom I worked with for 10 years. Neera and Walter Fernandes, the Director of Indian Social Institute, were busy with a research project on child labour. I knew nothing on the issue. But, as my first assignment with MARG, I was roped in to coordinate a huge national conference on child labour. I was given an assistant, a typewriter and a room. The mandate of the conference was to argue the draft law.

The luminaries who co-convened this conference were Tara Ali Baig (SOS Children’s Villages), Sharadchandra Gokhale (CASP) and of course Walter Fernandes and Vasudha Dhagamwar. I only remember being totally overawed by them all to begin with. Sadly except for Walter, we have lost all of them.

Among the invitees was Sheela Barse. She was already quite a legend. Even before she arrived there were stories about her – how she had jumped over factory walls in Bhiwandi to discover children working there, travelled alone into ‘dangerous’ spaces and filed cases in court.

When she arrived, she was direct and outspoken – and told off anyone she was unhappy with. She was a tall and imposing woman with a quicksilver mind and oozed confidence and stature. As co-ordinator of the national conference, I was expected to ‘deal’ with her. Anyone can imagine how overwhelming it can be for a 25-year-old to meet such person. I cannot remember, what she was annoyed with, but do recall the feeling of terror when she stamped her feet in irritation!

India would not have had a juvenile justice law had it not been for Sheela Barse who filed for children to be treated differently in criminal cases. She was relentless. (PIL on rights of children in custodial institutions Sheela Barse v. Children’s Aid Society & Maharashtra 1987 AIR 1987 SC 656, (1987) 3 SCC 50; Children below 18 years kept in jail, this Hon’ble Court called for complete information and directed strict compliance Sheela Barse (I) v. UOI (1986) 3 SCC 596; Physically and mentally retarded children and abandoned or destitute children kept in jails. Sheela Barse (II) v. UOI (1986) 3 SCC 632; PIL on behalf of children in police lock-ups (1986) 3 SCC 596 PIL against minor children in jail. Sheela Barse v. UOI (1987) 1 SCC 76; PIL against jailing of mentally ill children in West Bengal. Sheela Barse v. UOI (1993) 4 SCC 204; PIL against lodging delinquent children in regular jails. Sheela Barse v. UOI 25 ACC 370).

She was also one of the early activists to have reported and fought sexual exploitation of children. Remember the Freddy Peats Case in Goa? Her PIL against international organised Child Sex Exploiters Sheela Barse v. Goa & UOI, exposed the pedophilias in India. This led to the prosecution of the foreign perpetrators who were extradited and the German Police Tape recorded her evidence in Frankfurt where she was invited. She was part of drafting of several of the policies and laws in her life time and continued to fight for the causes she so believed in.

I remember you Sheela Barse! You are not forgotten ! zindabad!

Advocate Anurag Bhaskar did this interview on LiveLaw with Barse in 2020

(The author of the blog is Co- Founder and Former Co- Director of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights. I am an Honorary Professor- National Law University, Odisha. Ashoka Fellow. (2003).

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Child Rights Activists Appeal To Citizens To Vote For The Future Of ALL Children In India

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He once told me that if one does not have intellectual honesty, then there is no point in doing academics. I understood the full import of this comment very gradually. Over the years, I realized why he was not feted like other academic dons and why no government recognition was ever conferred on him. His intellectual honesty always meant that he was on the wrong side of the political establishment. Today, when I understand how leading academics tailor their research to be “politically correct” or remain loyal to a “network”, I understand Prof. Ahmad’s comment with more clarity. It is painful that a scholar of his stature was ignored not just by various governments but also by the academic establishment.

Prof. Ahmad’s oeuvre spans original writings on caste and religion in Indian Muslims, the specter of communalism, education, kinship systems, etc. It was through his writings that we understood the multiple identities which Indian Muslims inhabit. His edited volume on caste amongst Muslims is still the best resource for any researcher willing to interrogate the category. Towards the later phase of his life, he devoted special attention to the question of backward castes amongst Muslims. Today organized under the umbrella of Pasmanda movement, many consider him the most important reason why the talk of Muslim caste permeated the Indian academia and civil society. He not just wrote on the issue but also toured different parts of country to deliver lectures. He would invite empirical pieces on caste and collect them in an edited book in which he would write a long introduction laying thread bare the problem at stake. At times, some of the pieces would argue the exact opposite of what he was proposing in the introduction but like a true scholar, he would include the contrary view also. He argued that caste discrimination existed with the Indian Muslim society and that there was no point denying it. This certainly did not go down well the Muslim establishment whose politics, academically or otherwise, depended on the denial of caste within their society.

I remember his interjections when the Sachar Committee Report was published in 2006. The Report showed that as a community, Muslims lagged far behind others in crucial indicators like education, representation, etc. The reception of the Report among Muslim intellectuals and those on the left was along predicted lines. Both made common ground in accusing state discrimination as the primary locus responsible for Muslim backwardness. It was only Prof. Ahmad who brought some nuance to the debate. He reminded the upper caste Muslim intellectuals how their forefathers had declared English education to be the work of the devil and hence had shunned modernity for nearly 150 years. He reminded them that Muslims were late starters in accessing modern education and that historic lag was bound to show as inequality between different communities. He reasoned that since there is a very small percentage of Muslims who can be called middle class, higher educational attainments will continue to be low.

To those on the left, he subtly pointed out that the indices for West Bengal (which was ruled by the CPM for the longest time) was far worse when compared to Gujarat (which had a BJP government). He reasoned that it was not the government or the state which was solely responsible for Muslim backwardness but rather matters internal to the community should also inquired into. But then discrimination and exclusion were the buzzwords of the time and no one paid any heed to what Imtiaz was arguing. I must also add that he was one of the few scholars who had actually read the Report; others were just fluffing.

Indian Islam was another area which retained his abiding interest. In his Ritual and Religion in India, he had stipulated that Indian Islam was simultaneously local and universal. The local elements could be seen in the practice of visitation to various dargahs, use of amulets and even rituals and practices in common with Hindus. At the same time, Indian Islam was also part of the universalism of the faith, seen in practices like Salat, Saum, Hajj, etc. This was not an idea which was original to Prof. Ahmad; such theorizations had an old history in the discipline of social anthropology. But his original formulation was that both these tendencies will continue to co-exist in what he called “Indian Islam”. In other words, he was arguing that the average Indian Muslim was perfectly happy to co-exist in two simultaneous and at times contradictory worldviews: those of the local Hindu cosmology and that of the great tradition of Islam. The historian of Islam in South Asia, Prof. Francis Robinson got into a detailed argument with him over the issue. Other scholars weighed in with the result that today no serious researcher of Islam in India can overlook the debate initiated by Prof. Ahmad.

Prof. Ahmad always encouraged difference and plurality of views. In that spirit, I must say that he was too much wedded to the idea of Nehruvian secularism and a linear view of modernization. Many a time, he assumed that modernization will take care of the orthodoxy within the Muslim community. Today, we know that things are far more complex: that Muslim orthodoxy is on the increase even as the educational levels of the community are going up. He also assumed that religious pluralism was inherent in the Indian ethos. While this might be true, placing too much emphasis on it makes us oblivious to the processes, internal to religious communities, which lead to the very subversion of that pluralism.

After he retired from the university, he was regularly seen on television adding nuance to otherwise drab debates. He weighed in on the majoritarian turn which the country was taking but was always optimistic that this was a passing phase. Sadly, his belief in the innate moderation of Indian normative psyche might not have too many takers. But the conviction with which he uttered those words could only come from a man deeply weeded to the idea of India.

Anyone writing the story of Indian Muslims post-Independence will have to engage with Prof. Ahmad’s ideas. And that’s a legacy that very few academicians leave behind.

A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia. 

Courtesy: New Age Islam

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On August 15, Vimal Bhai, one of the most respected human rights activists of our times, breathed his last at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi after a prolonged illness.

According to a press release issued by the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), he had first been admitted to Safdarjung Hospital on August 10, and then shifted to AIIMS the same day following “severe complications related to lungs, liver, kidney, due to long covid, amidst reduced immunity.” He passed away after suffering multiple organ failure.

Vimal Bhai is perhaps best known for his activism with respect to rivers – whether it was the Narmada in Gujarat or the Ganga in Uttarakhand’s Tehri-Garhwal region where he worked to oppose pollution, and supported people’s rights to be involved in the ‘developmental processes’ as part of Matu Jan Sangathan.

He had also made a documentary titled Ten Years of Injustice in 2016, showcasing the impact of the Tehri Dam project on the local fragile ecology. “Until now, the problems arising in the Uttarakhand region and the Ganga Valley – much of which is caused by the number of small and big dams built – has been overlooked by the unjust greed for electricity; we have to save ecology and people’s rights over the natural resources provided by the Himalaya,” Vimal Bhai had said at a screening of this documentary in New Delhi in April 2016. He had criticised the Namami Ganga initiative which only looked at river pollution and cleaning, but evaded the issue of dams on the Ganga. “We will not give up until our rivers and our people get their rights,” he had said.

“From being an active organizer in the anti-dam and ecological movements to supporting basti-dwellers of Khorigaon, to helping anti-mining struggles in Rajasthan, being at the forefront of campaigns against hate and communal violence via Aman ki Pehel, to standing up for trans and queer rights, to supporting release of political prisoners and asserting the right to self-determination of Kashmiris, he was always with people and nature,” recalled NAPM of which he was one of the national co-ordinators and convenors for many years. “He participated with Pride in many LGBTQIA+ Pride Marches and was a key bridge between queer and other movements,” said the group paying homage to the activist.

It is also noteworthy that even amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Vimal Bhai “immersed himself in assisting thousands of families of Khorigaon who were brutally evicted by the Haryana Government and denied fair rehabilitation.”

In a letter dated July 25, 2022, to President Draupadi Mumru, Vimal Bhai had appealed to her to uphold and defend the rights of Adivasis and also to meet students of the Narmada Jeevanshalas, to understand the impact of the Narmada dam project on displaced indigenous communities.

Related:

Uttarakhand’s rivers quench the thirst of millions while its residents face water shortage

Ten Years of Injustice: Tehri Dam Survivors  

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Eminent Ambedkarite Mr Sadanand Fulzale passed away in Nagpur yesterday. He was 93. Born in the year 1928, Sadanand Fulzale came in touch with Baba Saheb Ambedkar and dedicated his life for the mission. 

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The death of Shri P S Krishnan is a big blow to the forces of social justice in India. He was a man of great conviction  who always stood with Dalits, Adivasis and OBC communities all through his life. A man who was responsible for developing the SC-ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, Krishnan was also part of the Ministry of Social Justice, during V P Singh’s short tenure when the Mandal Commission Report was accepted and implemented.

 

P S Krishnan held many a high office. He was also but nurtured by those politicians who were considered to be honest and pro social justice. Under V P Singh, he was responsible for organising centenary Celebrations of Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar. The late Arjun Singh as union minister for human resource development, sought his services for the implementation of reservationsat the higher level which was barred.

 

After his retirement, P S Krishnan continued with his support and advise to various organisations. He guided many a budding new officer and educating them on social justice issues, reservation issues and related issues. 

 

Down to earth and humble, he was that  rare breed among bureaucrats. P S Krishnan was of the generation and breed of another gentleman who I admire, S Shankaran and K Balagopal ( who was not a civil servant but people’s hero) who dedicated their lives for people and had no caste prejudices. They remain true to their convictions and constitution of India. We need more and more bureaucrats and lawyers who are dedicated to the spirit of constitution of India and do not suffer from the caste mind prejudiced towards the marginalised sections of society. The issue of the Dalit Adivasis and OBCs  can not be seen from the prism of being a ‘patron saint’ but issue of their fair representation at every layer of our administration as well as our socio-political and cultural life.

 

P S Krishnan lived a full life but there was not a single day he was not busy or concerned with the issues of the marginalised. He was a guiding force for all those who believed in social justice and human rights of the marginalised. His presence will be missed at various forums and spaces where his guidance meant a lot for the benefit of the people historically denied justice.

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And here we light a candle from the flames of a great writer’s righteous discontent that he kept articulating throughout his life, at times subtly through his art on the stage or the screen and when necessary directly through acts of protest played on the streets. Girish Karnad was born in a generation of rebellious Kannada writers and radical thinkers that included U R Ananathamurthy, P Lankesh, Chandrashekhara Kambara, AK Ramanujan and Poornnachandra Thejaswi who were all initially inspired by India’s independence struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi  and later by the socialist ideals of Ram Manohar Lohia and the anti-caste ideals of B R Ambedkar. But for them, this tradition went back to the twelfth century Shaivites like Basavaanna, Mahadevi Akka and Allama Prabhu who had created small models of an egalitarian society that interrogated the hierarchies of caste, class and gender thus sowing the seeds of radical spirituality with its contempt for material power, political as well as financial.  No wonder one of Girish Karnad’s finest plays, Tale Danda ( Punishment by Beheading) was inspired by the life of  Basava – that had also fascinated a great scholar like MM Kalburgi who proclaimed, after a profound study of Basava’s life and ideals that Basava was not ‘Hindu’ in the orthodox sense, for which he was first chastised and then murdered by the pedlars of an insular, hateful and casteist version of Hinduism. It was natural that the writer of Tale Danda was one of the first to respond to this callous act of cowardice and shocking intolerance.

This egalitarian political vein was strong in Girish Karnad’s work from the very beginning. Indeed, like many writers of his generation like Ananthamurthy, he was fascinated by the basic existential questions of being and becoming, freedom, choice, justice, gender, identity and death as is evident in his plays like Yayati, Hayavadana , Nagamandala and Agni mattu Male ( Fire and Rain); but myth, folklore and history never remained the same once he touched them. The image of the Emperor in Tughaq is not that of the idiosyncratic ruler many of us had grown up with, but that of a visionary idealist assailed by doubt and dilemma, defeated by his simple credulousness and trust in the opportunistic sycophants who had besieged his court. This allegory of the Nehruvian era gains a new relevance and meaning in our time when Nehru’s secular legacy is downplayed and his image deliberately deflated so that he is replaced by the parochial Hindu leaders of his time. Girish also retrieves Tipu Sultan’s real image as a fighter against the colonialists in his play named after him. We may recall, to the chagrin of many, including the political leaders of Karnataka, he had opposed the naming of the Bangalore airport after Kempa Gowda and suggested it be a memorial to the dauntless Sultan. The actor and the filmmaker in him only complemented the formidable playwright who had revolutionised Indian theatre along with the likes of Mohan Rakesh, Vijay Tendulkar and Badal Sircar.

Slavoj Zizek in a recent essay, ‘The Poetic Torture House of Language’ said that there are times when language has to be tortured to make it tell the truth. If language is the house of being as Heidegger says, when the subject that inhabits is evil, the genuine writer is compelled to create new structures of language, to make it strange and torment the language to make it speak the truth or leave the land of lies altogether as many German writers really did during the Third Reich.  Following this use of Elfried Jelinek’s violent imagery, Zizek points to the need to critically re-read the writings of the nationalists at a time when crimes and human right violations are committed in the name of a jingoistic and communal nationalism. Though he takes examples from his own fragmented and torn Eastern Europe, his exhortation for a careful re-examination of our textbooks of history and celebrated ‘nationalistic’ writings is equally applicable to India today. Like some of his contemporaries, Girish Karnad was acutely aware of this demand of truth that forced him to innovate alike the language and structure of drama as a literary form as well as theatre as a mode of physical communication. But he did not stop with a notional avant-gardism; he knew, as the theorists like Peter Burger or Jacques Ranciere or playwrights like Bertolt Brecht and Wole Soyinka did, that to be avant-garde is also to be political and to interrogate the existing ‘common-sense’ notions about life and society. And when called for, he did extend that politics beyond theatre and cinema and beyond his unconcealed preference for his mother-tongue as his first language of expression with due respect for India’s multilingualism and cultural plurality, as evidenced by  his resignation from the Chairmanship of FTII, Pune when Emergency was declared in India by the then-government , his consistently uncompromising  stance against the Hindutva hegemony, his open protest against the destruction of Babri Masjid, his sharp criticism of V S Naipaul’s Islamophobia at the Tata Literature Live Literary Festival in Bombay that had bestowed its ‘Life-time Achievement Award’ on the Nobel Prize-winning writer, his participation in ‘Not in My Name’ and ‘Me too an Urban Naxal’ protests, his irrepressible rage ‘against the dying of the light’ as expressed in his intense responses to the murder of MM Kalburgi , Gowri Lankesh and other thinkers and writers and his legitimate intolerance towards all forms of intolerance. Let me close my words with the translation of a few lines I chanced to write in my language following the planned day-light murder of MM Kalburgi, a friend and inspirer of Girish Karnad, equally applicable to Girish himself:

BEWARE (2015)
Beware of my silence!
It is heavier than speech,
A ceaseless river in search of
A new earth, like my Basava’s vachanas.

Beware of my words!
They can change the wind’s directions,
Restore to life every buried truth
Turn every pavement-stone into God,
Every sewer into Ganga
And every scavenger into a saint.

Beware of my magic!
It can transform your bullets
Into garlands for my master
Until he dances with your skulls
Over your ashes in the burning ground.

I will lend my voice to words
Your lexicons had silenced.
I will name planets
That were never in your orbit.
I will create new laws
For a new country none has seen
Where the first human will be born.

Beware of my words:
They have many tongues like the sea.
They are tomorrow’s seeds
Set to enlighten many more Buddhas.

My eyes are now polestars
And my breath, the borderless wind.

Beware! I am more alive now
Than when I was alive!
Beware! Beware!

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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