Collected Works sell sans Annihilation of Caste and the Riddles in Hinduism!

Who is afraid of the writings of Babasaheb Ambedkar? Both, the Modi and Phadnavis governments respectively; or so it seems.

For an average social scientist, Ambedkarite, a student of Indian freedom and inequality, when discussing Ambedkar and his most critical works, some names come immediately to mind.

These are, or are they or not, the Annihilation of Caste, or Riddles in Hinduism?  Even State and Minorities , Shudras and the Counter Revolution, Women and the Counter Revolution ?  Not for this regime(s) however. This government(s) – Centre and Maharashtra — would have us believe that the seminal or important works of this man are only his writings on the Roundtable Conference or his works related to Poona Pact, or his debates with Gandhi.

Now imagine a set of books, the official collection, copyright of which is with the Government of Maharashtra, re-branded as the (truncated) Collected Works of Bhimrao Ambedkar (CWBA) but without these seminal texts that cast a sharp and critical look at caste-ridden Hindu society.

This is exactly the farce that is being played out at India’s premier Book Fair currently on in the capital right now. The Delhi Book Fair. The Ambedkar Foundation, a Government of India body under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, the sole publisher of Babasaheb’s writings and speeches in Hindi, is selling the Collected Works without 11 books from the set ! Among the missing books in the Collected Works in Hindi are Anhilation of Caste and Riddles in Hinduism.

The official explanation is that the Ambedkar Foundation is in the process of publishing a new set of the Collected Works –and in the intermediate period — this truncated Collected Works is what they have to offer to the readers. But none at the Foundation (whom this writer spoke to), knows exactly when the new set of books will be published. This is the status of the Hindi edition of the CWBA.

For the English originals, the situation is more complicated. As the Foundation has not received the No Objection Certificate or the NOC from the Maharashtra Government, the copyright holder of these works, the Foundation cannot publish the English versions of the CWBA. It’s intriguing that the Maharashtra government that holds the publishing rights for the writings and speeches of Babasaheb is resisting sending this NOC to the central government affiliated Foundation!

In the meanwhile, citizens of the country have no option but to buy a truncated set of the Collected Works.  These acts of the Modi and Phadnavis  governments come at a time when the year is being celebrated, nationwide, for the 125^th Birth Anniversary of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has himself taken the lead in these celebrations. The Indian Parliament has held a two days special session to mark this occasion; a special commemorative coin has also been issued.

Is this celebration, then, just a façade for the Modi Government ? On the outside there are clever moves to appropriate Babasaheb; the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have declared him a ‘thinker’ or a ‘Guru’. But in essence, while this shallow eulogising continues, the radical social scientist and critical thinker in Babasaheb is being white-washed.

Dr. Ambedkar, while delivering his concluding speech before the Constituent Assembly, had forewarned us about the problems with hero worship. This regime, adept at ‘event management’ is simply trying to appropriate an idol. By suppressing Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s critical works, the RSS driven regime is trying to rob the revolutionary essence contained in the writings of Babasaheb.  While both the BJP and the RSS want to appropriate Babasaheb, his writings are, in a sense, too hot for them to handle. As a symbol to garner votes, Babasaheb is a welcome appropriation to the Hindutva  pantheon. But their affection for him ends there.

Why are Ambedkar himself and the Ambedkarite movement a Catch 22 for the RSS and the Sangh Parivar ?  Because, it has always faltered in its dealings with the issue of Caste. The centrality of caste in the democratic discourse of Ambedkarite stream of thought is a stumbling block for the avowed objective of the RSS in establishing upper caste Brahamanic hegemony in the country. In the Anhilation of Caste, Ambedkar actually advocates the demolishing of certain Hindu religious texts to enable Hindus to be really free. His writings are therefore extremely problematic for any organisation that seeks to re-affirm or consolidate caste hegemony.

And therein lies the rub. With Ambedkar and his legacy of radical critical thought, a searchlight is shone on aspects of the Indian (read Hindu) social and political structure that reactionary forces like the RSS and the BJP would prefer to conceal. In this year of the 125^th Birth Anniversary of Ambedkar, the choice is clear. Dr BR Ambedkar’s writings and thoughts need to be recognised in their completeness. In toto. By hollowing out his Collected Works of their seminal portions, the regimes in Delhi and Maharashtra seek to sanitise this legacy. A strong vibrant Dalit tradition will not so easily allow this mis-appropriation.

 Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches

(The writer is a senior journalist, former managing editor India Today group and presently researching at the Jawaharlal Nehru Univreristy (JNU) on Media and Caste relations)

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I truly believe that I was born a Nehruvian child, even though born into a Bengali household which swore by Subhas Chandra Bose in the clichéd Bose vs Nehru misplaced debate. The atmosphere around me was replete with respect and adherence to an objective connect between Tradition and Modernism, where Tradition was inspected through Modernist concerns.

My very literacy began with children’s versions of Ramayana & Mahabharata, while in our drawing rooms, a healthy debate took place, on various moral positions of the epic characters of these mighty mythologies. Taking apart both the mighty and the mundane, critically, was most common. Thus these mythologies gained a deep, critical respect in my heart, never blind faith.

Every evening, the harmonium would come out and my mother would practice Rabindra Sangeet in all its romanticism, Atul Prasad’s ballads in their spiritualism & Kazi Nazrul’s lores, in their revolutionary zeal…so even the music that penetrated my soul was diverse, myriad and therefore progressive in its appeal.

Literature was, also, of utmost importance in our household and I was encouraged to read World Classics along with Bengali Children’s literature from age four. Thus Charles Dickension dissection of David Copperfield, caught in Victorian mores and the chaos of the Industrial revolution brushed shoulders with indigenous fairy tales, in my reading palette.

Cinema was even more interesting, family viewing being the rule. Mrinal Sen’s angry political films were as much within my five year old gaze as children’s films.

The point being , there was no contradiction in my growing up mind, between East or West , Local or Global, Traditional or Modern, Art and Entertainment, the Progressive and the Spiritual…they were part of the same stream, same civilisational values as represented by Rammohan Roy (social reforms) or Vidyasagar (educational empowerment) or  Vivekanand

(spiritual robustness) or Jagdish Bose (scientific outlook) or Satyajit Ray (humanist aesthetics).

All of this being my Bengali heritage and all of them, encapsulated in a Nehruvian vision.

When I started teaching & training in Theatre Studies, almost every play I picked to direct or act was anti-establishment, each one of them. The common fervour was intellectually questioning, the voices were consistently progressive. Thus there was no escape from developing a personal voice which was always critically introspective of every issue and every force…bhakti was beyond belief in my young adult cultural education.

Somewhere along the mid-nineties, a rabid neo consumerism was taking root and youth culture suddenly turned frivolously aspirational, completely nonchalant about the medievalisation of a young Nation by the dark revivalist forces; kicking into our existence with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement via the Rath Yatra culminating into demolishing a historic mosque, creating a militant fundamentalist movement, while the Indian youth was basking in an Internet boom…ironical isn’t it?

And the young budding ‘could have been ‘ playwrights, unlike their predecessors of the 1970s and 1980s were now writing for an expanding Television’s (often) Anti-Culture. The anti-establishment voices were no more mainstream.

The 2000s brought in even more harsh contradictions. The millennium clock was supposed to ring in the eradication of Borders, the world was supposed to get flatter and globalisation was supposed to be the reigning culture…all of it was true at a technological, commercial plane, while India was torn apart by an acceptance of genocidal culture and ideas of ethnic cleansing as demonstrated by Gujrat 2002 .

And around the same time, what did we see in mainstream entertainment— Saas Bahu sagas, joint family jostles, in sharp definition, highly regressive, never ending mega rating / money churning soaps keeping so-called globalised Indians enthralled. Neo liberal economy, technological leaps, global travels, went hand in hand with normalisation of Hate & Revivalism.

We all know that post 2014, the Cultural Fraternity, Entertainment industry sometimes grudgingly but most times willingly decided to collaborate with the openly xenophobic Manuvadi agenda imposed from the top.

I personally realised that it’s as much a personal battle as a professional one. Around 2005, I exited from my very successful and well-paying TV Career, to rely totally on a mix of Theatre and art house cinema, having fought a few fair battles on the sets of TV soaps, refusing to shoot scenes which denigrate female characters in any manner. Though my income plummeted, I have no regrets, as I could not breathe artistically in a vapid, rabid Entertainment Scenario.

Post 2014, even cinema joined the revivalist agenda of religious and cultural nationalism. Two out of three offers were in that category, yet I resisted the mainstream monetary glow and refused multiple projects which pushed the agenda, sometimes subtly but surely. But I completely understand and empathise with those who cannot.  I will never judge those who have chosen to be part of these propaganda vehicles,  out of professional necessity, political propaganda by itself not so much of a problem, promotion of Hate definitely is, polarisation being the death knell of our diverse civilisational fabric.

I recognise that the conditions which were nurtured over the last several decades for  such divide and collaboration, were enabled also due to the relative hard lines of so-called progressives, self- justifying hypocrisy of the privileged liberal class, an arrogance of the intellectual echo chambers and general delusion of the neo liberal ruling class (I cannot exclude myself ) for the fascist anti- cultural forces getting such a leg up and the  hidden vitriolic elements crawling out of the holes into our mainstream media and Entertainment space.

I still adhere to the belief, passed down by my mentors, the late Safdar Hashmi, Habib Tanveer, and Ebrahim Alakazi among so many others. That culture will always be a personal struggle of communicating what is inherently essential, with the hope that even if a minority of an audience, gets swayed by progressive aesthetics and ideas, you present, they may out of a sense of awakened consciousness, share it with others and thus the spread of these universal principles will no longer remain within a minority.

That is the hope I carry, with a very realistic outlook that, human society moves in cycles of progress and regress and human beings remain an embodiment of both good and evil.

Gandhi & Tagore appealed to the Good. We should continue to do so, as Artists or Intellectuals.

(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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Over the past weeks we have been performing our play Words Have Been Uttered (WHBU), which is an exploration of the idea of dissent. It’s not structured as a conventional play (one major theatre festival in India even rejected it because it didn’t fit into their definition of a theatre piece).

WHBU is eight of us, actors, and a musician, sitting in a shallow semi-circle, with our books, our texts, and musical instruments sharing with the audience a diverse selection of creative expressions of dissent. We read, recite, sing, and perform scenes from theatre, poetry, songs, satirical pieces, and even personal writings from across time, across cultures, across languages. These amazing texts question caste, gender, organized religion, superstition, authoritarianism, majoritarianism, notions of nationalism and much more, illuminating how nuanced the idea of dissent is, and how universal it is.

I usually introduce the evening to the audience to prepare them for what is to follow, and while doing so I acknowledge that the while the idea of dissent in our times seems particularly loaded and edgy, it has always been so. It is not easy for any society to deal with dissent, and it requires maturity and tremendous self-belief to engage with dissent in a positive and constructive way. Ideas need space to be aired, and people who are willing to listen. We need to be able to listen, agree, or disagree, and move on without fear of violence, humiliation, and threat.

We all agree that such spaces are shrinking, and we believe that theatre, in a fundamental way, offers such a space. The isolation of Covid-19 times brought into sharp focus what it means to be able to assemble and engage with live performance. A space where you enter as an individual and very quickly become a part of a group of people sharing a unique moment. Theatre is about story-telling, about personal experiences, and the use of metaphor. The mode of communication can be nuanced and appeal to mind and to the heart. Such a space can nurture ideas and open conversations – and be a radical counter to the frightening culture of hate, intolerance, violence and majoritarianism that we see around us. The overall response to Words Have Been Uttered by different kinds of audience validates this belief.

We are faced with challenges all the time whether it is censorship, cynicism, or of the threat of recrimination from the state. But the biggest enemy of arts practitioners which is perhaps the most difficult to overcome is self-censorship.

Over the past 10 to 15 years our work at Theatre Arpana, and Tamaasha Theatre has been across various genres of theatre practice and has been engaging with and presenting the complex nature of contemporary India, in conventional theatre spaces as well as in various alternative spaces. The work spans across themes and issues that concern modern Indian society, across class, caste, gender and other inequalities. Our choice of work has been possible because of an understanding of the theatre ecosystem in India, careful strategising, and a belief that theatre can respond to our times without losing out on audience engagement, and in fact, by celebrating the human spirit.

We may then wonder why the potential of theatre to play this role is not explored often enough. There are many different reasons why people make theatre. There is a large theatre practice which believes that theatre has to entertain and no more, a conviction shared with practitioners of other forms like cinema.  Unfortunately, the accepted norm is that entertainment and meaningful work cannot go hand in hand. This is not a place to argue that point, but I will add that cross overs have been tried, and several have succeeded. There are many examples in Marathi language theatre for instance where plays and theatre makers, both, have straddled the worlds of commerce and artistic practice. In our own work we have deliberately tried to place “our kind” of theatre thinking in mainstream spaces, and while we may not have been able to sustain this over time, our attempts have not been entirely unsuccessful.

Our 2012 production of Ramu Ramnathan’s play Cotton 56, Polyester 84 was a re-telling of the history of the textile mill workers of Mumbai. Told by two out of work mill workers, the play was developed by Ramu based on interviews with mill workers and their families, from court room trials where textile trade unions fought the powerful mill owners to secure the rights of mill workers, and Meena Menon and Neera Adarkar’s oral history of the history of Mumbai’s textile mills and trade unions. The play brought to light the suppressed history, subculture and marginalisation of the mill workers of Mumbai, whose plight was largely ignored in the raging public debate on the development of the mill lands.

As you can imagine Cotton 56 could be no stretch of imagination be called a conventional entertainer, and yet audiences in Mumbai and across the country responded to the play both intellectually and emotionally.

A few years later we made Sex, Morality, and Censorship written by Shanta Gokhale and Irawati Karnik, which dealt with the idea of censorship by examining the censorship of Vijay Tendulkar’s play Sakharam Binder in 1972. Using archival material from India and abroad, theatre history, arguments and scenes from Sakharam Binder, the play was again not conventional story telling. As a director I was very aware that we were constructing an argument about censorship of a play in the context of its times. Sex, Morality and Censorship went on to perform across the country, often in large auditoria, engaging with diverse audiences who seemed to connect to the ideas of the play.

In Loretta we adapted the colourful Goan Tiatr tradition to talk about narrow parochialism, language and identity, and linguistic purity and hybridity. This at a time when we were being asked to prove our “Indian-ness” by the rapidly growing ranks of right wing bhakts.

In Words Have Been Uttered we tried to push our own boundaries further by dispensing with frills and narrative support devices, and concentrate purely on the core idea of the play – dissent.

These and several other examples have convinced us that even audiences whose only exposure is to the conventions of mainstream theatre can surprise you with their acceptance of new ideas, non-conventional forms of theatre making. Unfortunately, there are gate keepers, in our own community, who show scant respect for audience “intelligence” and perpetuate the myth that audiences are not willing to engage with plays that have a more meaningful intent.

It is within the ecosystem of “smaller theatre” you are more likely to find work that is artistic in intent and responds to the time. The is the space we largely inhabit for a variety of reasons. To begin with, the economics and availability of smaller spaces are manageable. Often audiences that come to smaller plays and spaces are seeking something different, and hence are more open to new ideas and conventions. That’s half our battle won.

The downside? We get comfortable, even complacent, in a safe space, and you may be “preaching to the converted”. Of course, gatherings like these have importance too. There is tremendous value in people who share similar beliefs gathering and experiencing something that validates, or expands, the world of ideas they subscribe to. We know this doesn’t happen enough, and we must be careful not to take a cynical view of this. But the need to reach out to new audiences is critical, and difficult as it maybe, there is not getting away from it.

When we founded Tamaasha Theatre about ten years ago we did so with the clearly stated intent of working outside conventional theatre spaces, creating a theatre of ideas, and forging a different relationship with an audience. We expanded our definition of theatre beyond merely producing and performing plays, to training, study, and audience building.

Audience building is one of the most important aspects of theatre practice. This is not about merely publicising your performances where you look to get an audience into the performance space. It’s about building a longer-term relationship with people so that they see themselves as co-travellers in your journey. When we build audiences we also look to create diversity so that a broader representation of society engages with the work and ideas. Various strategies help this – pricing of shows, open sharing of ideas, diverse programming to cater to specific interest and so on.

We run a studio space in Mumbai, as an arts centre, where theatre practitioners, students, musicians, and occasionally dancers can meet, make work, and perform for audiences that are enthusiastic about engaging with the arts in more than a passive way.  In the last few years, we have often asked ourselves, how do we respond to the times. There is our own need, and also an expectation from our audiences and from our larger community.

These are our some of our dilemmas:

The space available for alternatives views, ideologies, and thoughts has always been limited, but in more recent times the situation has become much more fraught. It doesn’t take much for someone to take objection to a piece of work, or a thought, and for the authorities to slap rather serious charges on the hapless “offender”

We are not activists, so are we psychologically and otherwise prepared for this kind of an eventuality?

On the other hand, today more than ever before, the need for alternative narratives is critical.

Why do artists have an added responsibility? Can art provide the nuances that journalism cannot? Even the best of journalism? Can art resist the numbing influence of the mainstream? We believe the answer to both is yes.

And two events that took place at our studio validated this belief.

The first was when we did an evening of Urdu texts – poetry and fiction – that dealt with different ideas of Kashmir. The texts were written by some well-known writers both from within Kashmir, and outside, and some less known voices. As you can imagine, the evening was somewhat tense for us. We are open to all audiences and we exercise no control on who attends. There is a degree of unpredictability to an evening such as this. But as the texts unfolded within the framework of a context which was both literary and political, we sensed a mood of deep involvement and thoughtfulness in the audience. There was emotion, there was humour, there was on offer many ways of seeing a land, a culture, and a people over time. In the post reading discussion that followed we saw restraint and responsibility in the way people spoke. Not all views were similar, but everyone heard the other out, and discussion flowed outside the venue into our open terrace space.

On another evening we had a rendering of texts from Palestine and Syria, but we were careful to frame it within the context of a land under occupation, and how common images and ideas are often found in the cultural expressions of people under siege.

This time in the post-performance discussion, after the first polite questions, a dam seemed to burst, and there was an animated discussion.  A sense of relief at being able to speak was palpable in the room. This time connections were made to radical poetry from other parts of India and the world. There was an honesty and open-ness that was powerful.

We really are in no position to understand what happens after an evening like this. Perhaps the conversations are forgotten, perhaps they remain. It’s hard to say. Also, we have touched no more than 40 people in an evening. A tiny, tiny micro drop in our vast ocean. Are we deluding ourselves about the impact?

Difficult questions …

For those of us who learnt our theatre fundamentals in the 1970s and 1980s the times we lived in had a deep impact on our view of theatre. This was a turbulent period — the great railway strike in 1974, Jayprakash Narayan’s “total revolution” which led to the clamping of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, the birth of the human rights movement, emergence of the Dalit Panther party, and the textile strike of 1982. It was very clear to us that your work wouldn’t be taken seriously if it did not respond to its times. Today the situation is more fraught because authoritarianism is highly visible and resistance to it virtually invisible. There seems endless darkness. But we often remind ourselves of the inspiring words of the great writer Toni Morrison, 

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

(Sunil Shanbag is a Mumbai based theatre director and producer. He is the co-founder and artistic director of Theatre Arpana, and Tamaasha Theatre. Over the past 45 years, Sunil’s work spans across themes and issues that concern modern Indian society, across class, caste, gender and other inequalities) 

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‘In India, you become an engineer first and then decide what to do with your life.’

For those of us who grew up during the last decade of the 20^th century and the first decade of the 21^st century, one knows exactly what this means. The reason this adage holds true for millions of engineer-turned-whoevers in this country is because of the sheer incapacity of our systems to offer any freedom in choosing the purpose of our lives. We were made to find a purpose only within the economic realities of our class and the social realities of our caste.

Being a lower middle-class Savarna boy meant that we were to complete our engineering and find a job with a multi-national corporation (MNC) that would potentially offer us the opportunity to work in a first-world country. Once this dream was realised, we were to find a community to belong to and make that country our home. After that we were to re-produce, contribute in rearing an entire generation away from their roots and when they developed an identity in the new culture, guilt-trip them into accepting our roots as their own – basically exercise our patriarchal privilege on our off-spring, thus snatching away from them any agency over their own identity.

Nothing new, as far as middle class Indian parenting is concerned.

As somebody trying to break out of this cycle of hopelessness, I was successful in resisting this ‘Neo-liberal Indian Dream’ on two counts – one was a discovery, the other was a challenge.  The discovery was of finding a purpose in the performing arts. And the challenge was to break the cycle of guilt inherent to the Indian parenting set-up.

Resources were scant but hope was high. And of course, there were the good-old modern values. Those that taught you to look art as a mirror of society. And a society whose fault-lines were witnessed through lived experiences was the perfect candidate to be shown a mirror to.

Conflict

A mirror reflects, after all. Technically this meant that art is supposed to show society the way it is – the naked reality. It meant showing this naked reality with the intention of creating a shift in how one perceived it. It meant evaluating this reality against a human standard – a standard that a society set for itself.

At least, this was what we were taught by our earlier generations.

Questioning the standards that one is conditioned into needs a certain disengagement. Let us refrain from calling it objectivism. Because the first step towards being objective is to disengage. This disengagement is a long-ish process. And there are layers to it – emotional, psychological, physical. Moving from the personal to the social (and eventually political) needs, and takes, time.

That is why the initial expression of an artist is always localised. It comes from their immediate reality. And most of the times, it discounts privilege.

My earlier stories were thus about my immediate surroundings. Starting with a short film about the spirit of Bombay and then slowly moving on to cutting sarcasm about a certain police officer who would not allow the young to drink or romance peacefully were subjects that I thought were of prime importance. The Religious Divide bothered me but did not force me to question the reason behind it. Through one more short film, I had tried to connect it with the idea of God and its futility. But it did not address the consequent bigotry within humans.

And caste? That was completely out of the question – I was inert to it.

It took an incident like the death of Rohith Vemula for any understanding of caste privilege within me and the need to question the Savarna system that I was a product of.

What transpired in India after that had woken an entire generation up to a reality they were completely unaware of. The sheer apathy showed by the Indian media was followed by a counter-attack by powerful and regressive forces. This vicious counter-attack involved demonisation of the entire student community right after the JNU incident. These series of incidents were to have a lasting impact. This put into question the very meaning of art being a mirror of society.

The behaviour of the Hyderabad Central University Vice-Chancellor, Appa Rao Podille and the consequent response from the then HRD Minister, Smriti Irani, had led to the institutional killing of a bright student like Rohit Vemula. This shocker, for me, brought out the real meaning of what it meant to be ‘disadvantaged’ by birth in our country. Immediately after came the JNU incident. Student leaders were targeted by the State, misinformation was used as a major tool in manufacturing an ‘enemy of the people’ and very conveniently, this enemy was picked on the basis of their religion. This is more evident from the fact that of all the students who were targeted by the State at that time, Umar Khalid today happens to be the only one still behind bars after 1000 days of incarceration.

In such a scenario, it became immensely important as an artist (and more as a filmmaker since films have such a deep impact on the psyche of the Indian society) to respond to this new reality of the society around us. One could not just be satisfied expressing one’s immediate issues.

The idea of being ‘disadvantaged’ was gaining massive proportions – it was not just limited to a one-off incident that one could talk about, express concern and walk away. With new ways and waves of oppression came a greater understanding of the machinations functioning behind them.

Meanwhile social media started emerging as a powerful tool. And with its new ways of expression came a greater responsibility of cutting through the flak and standing out as a storyteller. Because story-telling had not remained the monopoly of those who had dedicated their lives to it. Now it was a house-hold item for consumption and the shorter the form, the better its reach. A story’s impact was evaluated through the number of hits on it and not by how deeply it affected one’s senses.

As a filmmaker, there was a double-edged challenge now – to understand my society at a wider level if I had to have any deeper understanding of it and to express that understanding in the quickest possible manner.

Epilogue

It is at this time when Annie Zaidi’s story ‘Two Way Street’ came to me. A ten pager that Annie had carved out while waiting for a meeting in an obscure office in Bombay spoke of all the changes I was seeing around me in a way that only Annie could. The depth of her understanding combined with the brevity of her thought was a breath of fresh air for a mind like mine that was still trying to find its own language of expression.

I started working on the script almost immediately. Through innumerable pitches to prospective producers, the drafts kept changing shape as the nature of tolerance around kept shifting. Every few days a new incident of intolerance towards minorities would come to the fore and a new attempt needed to be made to make the script relevant to this new low of hate that we were witnessing. After a few drafts, I actually gave up.

The more one tried to incorporate the intensity of the prevalent violence against minorities in the script, the more it started getting rejected by investors. Nobody wanted to touch it. Well, it was not a good business proposition to talk about prevailing hate, you see. A non-existent romance one can talk about. But not seething, burning hate. It just did not fall in line with market standards. Hate could be expressed on the streets but not spoken about in our stories. Unless one found a market for it. The script itself became an ‘untouchable’.

The next challenge was to then make the story palatable to the market. One good thing about capitalism is that its loyalty is only towards opportunity. While socialists fought for values, capitalists resisted for the sake of opportunity. And opportunity is a two way street (pun intended).

If the market was not conducive to one story, we decided to make it into four stories. Four stories of hate and prejudice. Then it becomes a package, you see? A similar package of lust was already famous in the OTT markets. A lot of people were working on such packages. It had just become the flavour of the season to deal with stories in packages. It was then that it dawned upon us that it was not that our stories did not find place in the market. It was how we were packaging them.

Consequently, it was not that our politics did not have a place in society. It was about how we were expressing this politics.

This intervention formed the backbone of the treatment for Two Way Street. We were living in an opportunistic time. Hate had become an industry that had a large market. If we spoke about it in exactly the same way as it was expressed on the streets, then we were to be of the same category as those who were benefitting from it. Hence, it was imperative for us to find a way of expression that was unique to our politics. If our politics stood for inclusion, it was because we believed that that was the inherent value on which our society was built. And so, our expression needed to derive itself from something that is inherent to the hate we were seeing around. And it’s projection needed to have an inherence that resonated with the market.

With this learning, we went back into the market. This time armed with an expression which was unique to our politics and a package that seemed familiar to those backing us. The trick worked and magically, we had a producer. Although they were funding only 50% of the costs, we were confident of building a team of artists who would work with us for the sake of our politics. The rest of the 50% would come from their labour. This calculation worked for the market and for us too. A win-win situation as they call it and today, we find ourselves on course to make an anthology of four short films around the subject of ‘Inherent Prejudice’.

The first film Escort dealt with the subject of ‘able-ism’. After winning Best Screenplay at the Venice Shorts, it is well on its way in the festival circuit.

Our second film, Two Way Street has had five selections and an award for Best Director. It is gathering the response that we expected.

It is a film that has taught us the importance of having a malleable stance in our expression while staying true to our values in these ever-changing and ever-shifting times. It is a film that evaluates the hate spread within our society and offers tools for resistance – tools that might seem miniscule when thought about but become larger when implemented, tools emanating from the values the founding fathers of our country set for us, tools that have helped us make this film in these crazy times.

The plan is to now carry this learning ahead and apply it to the forthcoming stories. After all, since Art is a mirror to society and the society of today is in more of a flux than ever before, it is imperative that our expression from now on keeps evolving itself and as artists we are ever ready to shape-shift based on what the universe around us becomes.

Art thus can also mirror a universal need. And I am glad that for now, in this moment, the work I am engaged in with and after Two Way Street, meets that need. 

(Asmit Pathare straddles the world of theatre and films. He is a screenwriter, filmmaker, stage lighting designer and a theatre-maker.)

The post Art must mirror an urgent need, the personal and the political: Asmit Pathare appeared first on SabrangIndia.

First published on:  28 Sep 2016

“The communists’ ideologues conveniently ignore the truth that the roots of Bhagat Singh’s ideology lie in the very concept of Hindu Rashtra,” claimed an article by Dipin Damodharan, published on the birth anniversary of Bhagat Singh, September 28, 2010.

Damodharan, as introduced at the end of the article, is a student pursuing Masters in Communication and Journalism (MCJ) at the Calicut University of Kerala. He argues: “To my knowledge, he sacrificed his precious life for a noble cause, for the liberation of Bharat from the invaders, for nationalism. Undoubtedly Bhagat’s legacy belongs to every Bharati. But for the communists (experts in transforming sheep to dog), he died for communism and not for nationalism. They are incessantly advocating Bhagat as their poster boy, for several years they have been using Goebbelsian tricks to claim Bhagat’s legacy.”

The author further argues, “They are injecting fake stories about Bhagat into the blood of youth who are ignorant about Bharat’s history. Discarding the historical facts, the communists become angry with the Sangh inspired organizations for propagating Bhagat’s ideals”.

To justify his claims, the author cites examples like Bhagat Singh was born in a family who were staunch followers of the Arya Samaj, was educated at Dayanad Anglo Vedic (DAV) School and National College of Lahore, was inspired by the sagas of two great patriots Chatrapati Shivaji and Maharana Pratap and finally, they link at his association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Of course, without any reference! To any of us who has read Bhagat’s writings, it is nothing but absurd or, if we go by Damodharan’s own definition — it is an attempt to transform sheep in to a dog.

Bhagat Singh himself, in his most famous writing, ‘Why I Am An Atheist’ clarifies the above absurdities.

Bhagat Singh wrote, “I deny the very existence of that Almighty Supreme being… My grandfather under whose influence I was brought up as an orthodox Arya Samajist. An Arya Samajist is anything but an atheist. After finishing my primary education I joined the DAV. School of Lahore and stayed in its Boarding House for one full year… Later on, I joined the revolutionary party… My previous faith and convictions underwent a remarkable modification… I had become a pronounced atheist.”

Dismissing Dipin Damodharan’s remarks as absurd and ignoring them is not what we should do, as these attempts are not abrupt. They are pre-planned and occupy various forms of mass communication. Communal forces are not letting go of any chance to misuse these heroes for furthering their communal agendas.

Last year (2010), a month before the Ayodhya verdict, the ‘Bhagwa Brigade’ (saffron brigade) gave a public call to recruit 10,000 Hindu youth from Madhya Pradesh (MP) for the mission to establish a Hindu Rasthra.

To do so, they issued a poster and pasted copies of it all over the state of Madhya Pradesh. Notably in the poster, with Sawarkar, Shivaji and others, one finds pictures of Bhagat Singh, Baba Saheb Ambedkar and Subhas Chandra Bose, being portrayed as Hindu revolutionaries! One might not have any objection in portraying Shivaji, Maharana Pratap, Jhansi ki Rani and Chandra Sekhar Azad as Hindu icons, but portrayal of Bhagat Singh, Baba Saheb Ambedkar and Subhas Chandra Bose in the same vein is really objectionable and very disturbing, because of their known commitment to secularism and for being non communal.

Like Bhagat Singh, it was very clear to Subhas Chandra Bose of who he was and what he wanted. In 1929, while delivering a speech at Lahore Students’ Conference, Lahore, he famously said, If we are to bring about a revolution of ideas, we have first to hold up before us, an ideal which will galvanise our whole life. That ideal is Freedom. But freedom is a word which has a varied connotation and even in our country, the conception of freedom has undergone a process of evolution. By freedom I mean all-round freedom i.e., freedom for the individual as well as for society, freedom for man as well as for woman, freedom for the rich as well as for the poor, freedom for all individuals and for all classes. This freedom implies not only emancipation from political bondage but also equal distribution of wealth, abolition of caste barriers and social iniquities and destruction of communalism and religious intolerance. This is an ideal which may appear Utopian to hard-headed men and women — but this ideal alone can appease the hunger of the soul.”

An archive photograph of Bhagat Singh in jail in Lahore. Image: The Hindu

Ambedkar converted to Buddhism  in protest of the jati-varna system of Hinduism, and was very clear about what he stood for. He repeatedly opposed the system of Hinduism let alone the ideology of Hindutva. He had asked his followers to stop the Hindu Rashtra from becoming a reality at all costs.

But again, Hindu communal political parties like the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), spread deliberate confusion about him by misquoting him and depicting him as ‘their’ leader. Last year (2010), on the eve of 6th December (anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition), on the walls on Jamia Nagar, a new kind of poster was seen.

The poster was put up by Bhartiya Janta Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of BJP, and read thus, ‘Yugh Purush Baba Saheb Ambedker ke nirvana divas par Dr. Bheem Rao Ambeker Cricket Tournament-10’, with a relatively larger picture of Baba Saheb (as compared to) other leaders of BJYM, who were shown promoting the event.

The event which was scheduled to take place in Malviya Nagar had absolutely no connection with Jamia Nagar, except that both finish on the same last name! While seeing the poster, one wonders what it has to do with Jamia Nagar. At the same time, the same or any other poster about the event was not seen in neighbouring Jullena or Sukhdev Vihar, which have a dominant non-Muslim population, let alone other areas of Delhi. But of course, it was put up for diverting the attention of the Muslims from the anniversary of demolition of Babri Masjid. Moreover, to my understanding, it was meant to convey a message to the ordinary resident of Jamia nagar (read Muslim) that either, Ambedkar was a leader of the BJP, or at least somebody who sympathised with its ideology and those of its allies, which is absolutely wrong and ridiculous, to say the least.     

Hindutva-waadis are hell bent on distorting facts and influencing the common sense through the medium of mass communication.

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, these forces spread a rumor that on  February 14, 1931, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru & Sukhdev were hanged till death by British government and we celebrate this day as Valentine day! Isn’t it surprising & painful? I am told by a journalist friend of mine from south India that, this is the standard question you have to counter if you say what is wrong with celebrating Valentine’s Day! This, when it is a well-established historical fact that Bhagat Singh, along with Sukhdev and Rajguru were martyred on March 23, 1931 and not on February 14.

The zealots don’t stop there. They have even tried spreading misinformation through Wikipedia, the preferable web dictionary for the net savvy, to know who is who and what is what.

According to a news report that had appeared in The Hindu, ‘the Wikipedia page on Bhagat Singh underwent many editing changes on February 13 and 14, Valentine’s day ’. The date of Bhagat Singh’s hanging had been changed from  March 23 to February 14, 1931. And it was due to such propaganda that an international news website, reported, “While the whole world observes 14th February as Valentine’s Day, not many Indians remember that the day was also when the Indian freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged to death by the Britishers in Lahore, Pakistan”. Similarly, this  February 13, (2011) Twitter was on fire with talk of the February 14 as Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom day next day, and even the editor of a Hindi news channel mourned that everyone was looking forward only to Valentine’s Day. He was shamed into apologising the next day.

We will have many days every year to remember Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Ashfaqullah Khan, Baba Saheb Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and others, on their martyrdom, death, and birth anniversaries. This puts greater responsibility on us—the responsibility of not believing in distorted facts, but to keep alive the belief of what these revolutionaries had lived and died for.

In order to pay our real tribute to the makers of modern India, we should counter the propaganda of communal forces at various levels. The choice is ours, whether we want to contest such vandalism or let it go uncontested until such time as the common masses have no option but to believe, A for Ambedkar – A for Advani, B for Bhagat Singh, B for Bhagwa, S for Subhas Chandra Bose, S for Savarkar…

Are we ready for that?

(Mahtab Alam is an activist and writer. He tweets @MahtabNama . This article was first published in Kafila.org on  March 23, 2011)

The post Freedom from Communalism & Religious Intolerance was Bhagat Singh’s Ideal, Never Hindu Rashtra appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Centre has opposed an application seeking life ban on convicts to be elected to the legislature. The application was filed in 2017 seeking amendment of an earlier writ petition, both filed by BJP leader and Supreme Court advocate Ashwini Upadhyay.

The application stated that just as public servants who are convicted of offences punishable under various provisions of various laws such as the IPC, PMLA, Protection of Civil Rights Act, UAPA, FERA, NDPS etc get debarred from service, similarly a legislator should also be debarred for life instead of only a specified period. The application also prayed that appropriate steps be taken by the government to debar the person convicted for the offences specified in section 8(1), 8(2), 8(3) [ dealing with the period of disqualification on conviction for certain offences] and 9(1) [Disqualification for dismissal for corruption or disloyalty for 5 years from the date of dismissal] of the Representation of Peoples Act (RPA) from contesting the MLA or MP elections, forming a political party or becoming office bearer of a political party.

Under section 8 of the RPA there are specific provisions of specific criminal laws mentioned and any elected representative who gets convicted of these offences is disqualified and/or debarred for a period of 6 years which means he/she at the most misses a chance to get elected for the next one or two elections.

The affidavit filed by Centre states that the plea is devoid of merits and does not justify the challenge of validity of certain provisions of RPA. Centre submits that in the original petition already sought uniform action against convicted persons from the legislature, executive and judiciary in the form of debarring them from their respective fields for life. Thus, the amending application filed in 2017 is not required and serves no purpose in enlarging the scope of the petition.

The affidavit states that the elected representatives are not above the law and equally bound by the provisions of various statutes in force. It further states that there is no apparent discrimination between public servants and elected representatives in so far as any offences committed by either are concerned.

Centre has also relied upon a previous judgment of the apex court in Public Interest Foundation v. Union of India whereby a five-judge bench held that the prescription as regards provisions for disqualification is complete in view of the language employed in section 7(b) and section 8 and 10A (Disqualification for failure to lodge account of election expenses) of the RPA.

Centre has stated that the Supreme Court has already dealt with the issue of criminalisation of politics and has issued certain directions in the past.

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Stick figure cartoons are a contempt of the Supreme Court!

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Goebbels was an interesting and effective man. Held responsible for many of the worst and most supremacist and violent ideas that guided Fuhrer Hitler’s reign, he is recalled in history, more as a frequently used adjective-term, to connote a particular kind of pernicious government propaganda based on lies, or at best half-truths (he headed the Propaganda Ministry of the Nazi government).

The broader issues raised in the speech by the Union Minister for Human Resources Development (MHRD) have already been effectively countered in The Telegraph : A [1]Fact Check on what HRD minister Smruti Irani said in Parliament [2] including countering systematic efforts at vilification and name calling.[3]

Here we put some Questions countering the Goebbelsian untruths surrounding the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula

Did or did not the central minister of the BJP, Bandaru Dattatreya write to Irani on August 17, 2015, a letter in which he clearly calls the activities and vision of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) as casteist and anti-national?  Letter can be seen here.

Was or was not Rohith Vemula’s Research Fellowship stopped (illegally) for seven months severely constraining and humiliating him?

Did or did not, on five occasions, bureaucrats of the MHRD under Irani write directly to the Vice Chancellor (VC) Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on the matter showing an unseemly interest in the case ?

(The letters are dated September 3, 2015 from the Under Secretary referring to comments by Bandaru Dattatreya, MOS, for Labour and Employment; another dated September 24, 2015, sent as reminder, signed by Deputy Secretary to the GOI; letter dated October 20, 2015, signed by Joint Secretary, MHRD; letter dated November 19, 2015, signed by Under Secretary to the GOI). Letters can be seen here.

Do or do not these letters show an obsessive interest by the Minister, MHRD that was, in effect, putting extraordinary pressure on the VC?

Is it or is it not true that a fellow student at HCU called the Health Centre immediately after learning of Rohith being hanged and within five minutes the CMO Health Centre, Dr P Rajashree reached the spot, felt his pulse and declared him dead nullifying the Goebellian lie to the nation in Parliament that no doctor or police were allowed to see Rohith till the next day? 
[The doctor certified Rohith’s death at 7.30 pm: UoH medical officer counters Smriti Irani’s statement – http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/doctor-certified-rohiths-death-730-pm-uoh-medical-officer-counters-smriti-iranis-statement#sthash.tdp9MlM4.dpuf]

Is it not true that Rohith Vemula was quietly cremated without family or friends as the authorities did not want to face up to the palpable anger on campus and outside?
 
Did or did not the newly appointed Vice Chancellor, Appa Rao receive a chilling letter from Rohith Vemula on December 18, 2015 –a month before his death –that clearly indicated a warning: that by the systematic exclusion and humiliation Rohith was being pushed, and reaching, the end of his tether?

[Rohith allegedly sarcastically said in the letter that every VC of HCU should “10 mg of sodium azide to all the Dalit students at the time of admission… [and] a nice rope to the rooms of all Dalit students.” This handwritten letter should have been read as a precursor to what was coming. In the letter, Rohith allegedly goes on to say, “I request your highness to make preparations for the facility [of] ‘euthanasia’ for students like me. And I wish you and the campus rest in peace forever.” ]

Does or does this communication not squarely put the blame on the university authorities and, first and foremost, on the vice chancellor ?
[The letter traces the officially sanctioned “social boycott” of Dalit students after they took on a member of the ABVP for making derogatory remarks about Dalits. “Donald Trump will be a lilliput in front of you..”]

Did or does the VC feel at all disturbed by this communication? Does the GOI? Was there any communication between the VC, HCU authorities and Rohith and the other four research scholars between December 18, 2015 and January 17, 2016?

Were or were not the five Dalit Research scholars locked out of their rooms from January 4, 2016 onwards, compelling them to start a protest and sleep out, on the street, rubbing salt on wounds so to speak: since their research fellowship stipends had been illegally cut off from July 2015 onwards?

Were or were not the five Dalit scholars ostracised on campus and asked not even to visit the library for research, further humiliating them?

Is it or is it not true that senior functionaries of the GOI, including two central ministers (both women) have questioned the authenticity of Dalit identity of Rohith? link[4] (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Rohith-Vemula-was-not-a-dalit-Sushma-Swaraj-says/articleshow/50788780.cms)

After January 17, 2016 and the tragic step that Rohith Vemula took, did or did not the GOI appoint Ajit Duval, National security Advisor the Task to investigate the real caste of Rohith Vemula?  (See Certificates)
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Ajit-Doval-gets-report-saying-Rohith-Vemula-was-not-a-dalit/articleshow/50749810.cms; also see http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/was-rohith-vemula-dalit-or-not-and-does-it-matter-explained-37936]

Did the trail not begin politically: with the Vice President, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Hyderabad,  Nandanam Diwakar writing to Central minister Dattareya, (August 10, 2015), seven days before the latter writes to Irani, a letter in which wrong and exaggerated accounts of ABVP student, Susheel Kumar’s injuries are given as well as a litany of political opposition to Ambedkarites listed? Here is the letter.

Is it not true that the claim that the University’s Investigation Team had a Dalit is untrue (Irani’s claim); there were no Dalits in the team and it was in fact headed by a Brahmin?

Is it or is it not true that all claims that ABVP student leader, Susheel Kumar “was beaten up by Rohith”, made repeatedly are actually, are untrue; HCU registrar and others have rejected Susheel Kumar’s story on violence relying on medical reports show that he was admitted to hospital for appendicitis?

 Is it not true that the executive council of HCU only decided to suspend the students, that too from their hostels (Irani said they were expelled by the EC!) and that the trigger was a falsified account of a physical struggle between the RSS-affiliated ABVP and the ASA; with the former screaming “assault” and the hospital records suggesting an examination for a prior medical condition?

While Irani was giving what some have termed as a star performance in the Lok Sabha– even India’s prime minister tweeted his jubiliation at her speech– Rohith Vemula’s mother, Radhika, was at a candlelight vigil at India Gate demanding justice for her  26-year-old son. Radhika Vemula was picked up and taken to a police station in the heart of the capital when Smriti Irani was telling Parliament how condemnable it was that a “child was being used as a political tool”.

Close to a month before, in a similar act the MHRD minister, Irani had, in a press conference, claimed that Rohith’s death had nothing to do with his being a Dalit.

Then Radhika Vemula had countered and I today recall those words, “I want to meet Smriti Irani and ask her ‘On what basis did you declare my son to be anti-national? Your Ministry had written that my Rohith and other Dalit students were anti-national extremists. You said that he is not a Dalit. You accused him of getting a false certificate. Should I say it is because you got false certificates for your educational qualifications that you think others do so too? You stopped my son’s stipend, you got him suspended from the university. You are the Minister for HRD, but you have no value for education. You can never understand how difficult it is for a Dalit to reach the stage of doing his PhD. You can never imagine the hardship, the struggle, the tears and sacrifice to reach that position. In three months, you destroyed what it had taken me 26 years to build. I am talking about my Rohith, he died at the age of 26.'”

Goebbelsian as the propaganda machine is, I do not really expect answers. There are two parallel streams at work here, one asserting, the other challenging the Indian Constitution. The war between truth, reality and propaganda is well and truly on.
 

The post Calling Smriti Irani’s Bluff: Twisted Truths in Parliament appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan has said that people in authority have to tolerate criticism and that any move to suppress it “is a sure fire recipe for policy mistakes”.“What makes India strong is its diversity, debate and tolerance. What makes it weak is narrow-mindedness, obscurantism and divisiveness,” Rajan said in a long LinkedIn post on Monday, two days ahead of the 150th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation. Rajan has been known to publicly make comments on the state of India’s economy and polity ever since he quit his post.

He also said that governments that suppress public criticism do themselves a gross disservice.

 “If every critic gets a phone call from a government functionary asking them to back off, or gets targeted by the ruling party’s troll army, many will tone down their criticism. The government will then live in a pleasant make-believe environment, until the harsh truth can no longer be denied,” he said.

“Undoubtedly, some of the criticism, including in the press, is ill-informed, motivated, and descends into ad-hominem personal attacks. I have certainly had my share of those in past jobs. However, suppressing criticism is a sure fire recipe for policy mistakes,” he added.

Last week, the Narendra Modi government had removed Rathin Roy and Shamika Ravi from the economic advisory council to the Prime Minister. Both had criticised some of the government’s policies. Roy had questioned the government’s decision to borrow funds from overseas markets through the sale of sovereign bonds. Rajan, too, had earlier cautioned the government about the consequences of raising funds through overseas sovereign bonds.

In his latest post, Rajan reposes great faith in the ability of India’s vibrant democracy to foster debate and make mid-course corrections.

“We have our weaknesses and our excesses, but our democracy is self-correcting, and even while some institutions weaken, others come to the fore,” Rajan wrote.

At one point, Rajan said: “…an attempt to impose a uniform majoritarian culture on everyone can kill minority community characteristics that can be very advantageous to growth and development. Cultural diversity can promote intellectual diversity and intellectual ferment, something every economy at the frontier needs.”

Rajan’s remarks have come at a time the government, which has seen economic growth tumble to a six-year low of 5 per cent in the first quarter ended June 30, has been hashing out a number of measures to kick-start the engines of growth.

But while putting into place a slew of post-budget measures, the government has not tried to foster a wider debate on some of its questionable policy prescriptions like the recent move to force banks to start a credit carnival to boost consumption, raising another spectre of bad loans just when financial service entities had started to clean up their books.

Rajan, who had significantly been a vocal critic of the idea of demonetisation when it was sprung on the country, had also recently argued that the Modi government’s move to consider the flotation of sovereign debt on overseas markets could prove to be disastrous, condemning India to the prospect of a perpetual cycle of debt. He had said the idea needed to be debated vigorously before any decision was taken.

“Constant criticism allows periodic course corrections to policy — indeed public criticism gives government bureaucrats the room to speak truth to their political masters. After all, they are not screaming the loudest in the room,” Rajan said in his latest post.

He said he was worried about three emerging developments in India. The first was a “tendency to look back into our past to find evidence of our greatness”.

“Using history to thump our own chest reflects great insecurity and can even be counterproductive,” he added.

His second concern was a tendency to regard foreign ideas and foreigners with suspicion.

“It seems a number of cultural and political organisations are trying to oppose anything foreign, not because they have examined it carefully and found it to be bad, but because of its origin,” he added.

“We cannot be so insecure that we believe allowing foreign competition will demolish our culture, our ideas, and our firms. Indeed, it is by erecting protective walls that we have always fallen behind, making us susceptible to total colonisation,” said Rajan, currently a professor of economics at the University of Chicago.

His third concern was the disquieting tendency to muzzle all debate. “A quick resort to bans will chill all debate as everyone will be anguished by ideas they dislike. It is far better to improve the environment for ideas through tolerance and mutual respect,” he said.

If India wanted to compete at the frontiers of production, he said it would have to stimulate debate rather than choke it off completely.

“It would be retrograde, indeed against our national interest, to give up this vibrant democratic society that tolerates and respects its diverse people and viewpoints for a more authoritarian, monocultural, majoritarian imposition,” he said.

Listing what one needs to do to keep the “idea factory” open, Rajan wrote: “The first essential is to foster competition (emphasis added by Rajan) in the marketplace for ideas. This means encouraging challenge to all authority and tradition, even while acknowledging that the only way of dismissing any view is through empirical tests.

“What this rules out is anyone imposing a particular view or ideology because of their power. Instead, all ideas should be scrutinised critically, no matter whether they originate domestically or abroad, whether they have matured over thousands of years or a few minutes, whether they come from an untutored student or a world-famous professor.”
 
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2. Hitler, the Indian Emergency, A Strong Government must respect Rule of Law: Raghuram Rajan

The post Diversity & Tolerance make India Strong, Divisiveness makes us Weak: Raghuraman Rajan appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Representational image. | Image Courtesy: Rediff.com
 

The post Why Modi and BJP Thrive on Politics of Fear appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As JNU Students’ Union Elections for this year approach closer, AkhilBharatiyaVidyarthiParishad (ABVP), the youth wing of the RashtriyaSwayamsevaksangh (RSS)has reportedly started indulging in its predictable intimidatory tacticsof perpetuating fear and violence on their political opponents.

The SFI JNU Unit Vice President VenkateshPosagallawas reportedly attacked by ABVP goons during the presidential debate that took place on September 4, 2019. Pictures emerged showing Posagalla bleeding profusely from the head. (More details awaited)

The elections are being watched as a tough fight betweencandidatesfrom different students groups. The elections have been scheduled for September 6, 2019 and are seeing excited debates around recent political developments. Some of these are abrogation of Article 370, the constitutional provision granting the state of Jammu and Kashmir a special status, high fees charged for professional courses like MBA and engineering programmes, freedom of speech on campus and attacks on minorities. The names of the students’ candidates were announced on August 28, 2019 by the JNU Students’ Union Election Committee.

On September 2, the United Left took out a huge procession called the MashaalJulus (Torchlight procession) saw a massive turnout of students and hundreds of students came out to support the left candidates.

In a key development for this year’s alliance, all the four left leaning students’ groups active on the campus, have formed a pre-poll alliance.  Left Leaning Students Groups i.e. Students Federation of India (SFI), Democratic Students’ Federation (DSF), All India Students Association (AISA) and All India Students’ Federation (AISF) have joined hands to contest the elections. Their key opponent in elections is RSS-affiliated AkhilBharatiyaVidyarthiParishad (ABVP). The United Left has nominated the following members for different posts in the students’ union.
 

Left candidates have vowed to focus on issues such as attacks on Dalits and Minorities udner the government as well as privatization of education sector, especially government universities and colleges as primary issues of concern. They will also seek revision in the high free structure imposed by government for professional programmes such as MBA and Engineering.

ABVP also has fielded candidates for all posts. Reportedly, the group claims that it has ensured that Rs. 91 crore from the DONER Ministry was allocated for the Placement Cell. Apparently, the group is demanding for sports quota in admission, access to libraries and new hostel for students. The groups is also focussing on a new campus for engineering and management students on campus.
 

 
On the other hand, the Congress affiliated NSUI (National Students Union of India), which saw its vote share dwindle in the recent union polls, has fielded a single candidate for the Presidential post. NSUI’s Presidential candidate Prashant Kumar said that NSUI is aligned with the larger issues faced by the students on campus and therefore it has decided to only field candidate for President’s post while backing candidates from other like-minded groups (BAPSA and the CRJD) for other posts. Among the key issues highlighted by him, he cited academic autonomy and freedom of speech as the primary issues for NSUI in this year’s election.

Priyanka Bharti of the Chhatra RJD will be contesting for President’s post while RishipalYadav, who is visually challenged, will be contesting for the post of Vice President for the students group. BirsaAmbedkarPhule Students’ Association (BAPSA) —has fielded two candidates for the posts of the president and the general secretary.

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