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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Rohith’s death: We are all to blame appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Law, from any viewpoint, is the foundation of certainty, said the Italian jurist Giovanni Carmignani in his work Theory of the Laws of Social Security. This statement powerfully portrays the importance of the rule of law by connecting it to a sense of certainty. Here, we present a case for the upholding Constitutional supremacy as opposed to Parliamentary supremacy, arguing that, in order to maintain certainty in society, and through this equilibrium, the rule of law. Before this is discussed, it is important to understand why there is a necessity to discuss this seemingly well-established principle.

Recently, Vice President, Jagdeep Dhankar, addressing the All India Presiding Officers’ Conference, made vocal remarks on different institutions of Indian democracy.^[1] He (in) famously, said “You cannot script in legislature, a judgement of the court. Usi bhaavna mein(similarly) Court cannot legislate. It is as clear as anything else,” and he went on to talk about the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Kesavananda Bharati Case in which the Supreme Court laid out the Basic Structure Doctrine.^[2] The Vice President said, about this seminal judgement, “With due respect to the judiciary, I cannot subscribe to this. This house must deliberate. Can this be done? Can Parliament be allowed that its verdict will be subjected to any other authority?”

The Basic Structure doctrine is unequivocal – Parliament’s power to amend the constitution is not supreme since there is a basic structure that runs through the Constitution and Parliament cannot amend that basic structure. Elements like equality before the law, right to life, right to non-discrimination, the republican nature of the government, secularism etc come under the basic structure. The list is not exhaustive.^[3] In 2023, a high constitutional functionary openly challenging this established principle and saying that Parliament is the ‘supreme power yielding authority’ due to its representation of people; and, that ‘they’ (by which we take to mean the existing lot of parliamentarians) to one of the most significant judgements to be ever delivered by the Supreme Court is not just a warning signal towards where we may be headed. Dhankar’s words need to be engaged with.

Before we go further, it is important to present a clarification. This article or its arguments are not an argument to whittle down the powers of Parliament to either, amend the Constitution or to enact laws. That would be not be a fair reading of the Constitution with its fundamental sovereignty lying in the people.  The argument here is that the Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution does not extend to amend the basic structure, as underlined in the Kesvananda Bharati case. The exclusion of rich jurisprudence on basic structure, from this article, is deliberate because- quoting the Supreme Court or judiciary to support the argument that it must be the Supreme Court that is allowed to decide the constitutionality of cases on the basis of their standing with the basic structure doctrine- has already been attempted and accomplished multiple times. Moreover, given that the Vice President’s brazen declaration that he does not subscribe to the views of the Supreme court in the Kesavananda Bharati case, this is rather an attempt to engage with his statement irrespective of the rich jurisprudence the Indian judiciary has already produced.

This article is therefore about Society, the Constitution, Parliament and the Indian state rather than only legalities.

Certainty in a Society

Coming back to certainty, how important is certainty in a society? A simple and real life example would be the food security regime in India. Every month, crores of Indians are certain that food grains will be provided to them by the government. What does this certainty of receiving some amount of food grains do to the people? It provides them an opportunity to not fear starvation or dire conditions, gives them the freedom to look for jobs, perform at their workplace and in general, aim for a better quality of life. If not for the certainty i.e., distribution of grains every month, the scheme would not be beneficial. In fact, the absence of certain legal regime at the WTO level is preventing countries like India and China from bettering their Public Distribution Systems.^[4] Another example could be any nascent industry. Say for example, the Crypto or a Space sector industry in India. The foremost demand from these industries, to the government, has been that there should be legislation governing their sectors. Why is there such a demand? It is to ensure certainty in terms of how they are treated by the government.^[5] Such certainty provides them with a constant business environment and allows them to make better management and financial decisions. Although some scholars could argue that this kind of certainty facilitates the capitalist foundations and they are not wrong.^[6] However, certainty also benefits society as a whole and the facilitation of a capitalist foundation is a by-product. Uncertainty, on the other hand, brews discontent, disappointment and despair. There is no better example than the recent Covid-19 pandemic to demonstrate how disastrous absolute uncertainty can be. There is scholarship too, that argues that legal uncertainty leads to gender and “class-regressive and gender-regressive” side effects.^[7]

Certainty in Rule of Law and the Constitution

What then is Certainty in a constitutional sense or a legal sense? Rule of law denotes certainty in terms of how societies function and the rules they follow. For different relations between people i.e., between families, between individuals and state, between businesses, between the state and different sections of people- the law is the governing entity rather than a person or a group. However, if people and the relations are subjected to a constantly changing law, there is very little growth for such relations since much of the effort is spent in adapting to the new law. Therefore, one of the necessary elements of the concept of Rule of Law is certainty.^[8]

It is the Indian Constitution that lays down a clear line of some certainty for future generations of the kind of society and state India must evolve into. This has to be seen within the view of not merely the constituent assembly debates or the jurisprudence that has evolved since independence but also to be viewed within the context of the vast and myriad struggles against colonial rule and domination, the issues, concerns, demands and values they threw up. All these factors, then, united our people who are otherwise diverse and different, divided by regions, religions and languages. These certain elements of rule of law include Equality, Equality before the Law, Rights for All, Democracy, Secularism, Republican form of government, separation of powers and a commitment to the idea of India where citizens are empowered with rights, limitations are placed on the state to prevent it from engaging in excess etc. It is therefore important to have this certainty of a societal order, with respect to some very basic notions, so that Indian society can thrive.

The second moot question that needs to be explored is how the notion of Parliamentary supremacy will be or is, detrimental to this goalpost, of certainty.

Parliament is a volatile body. As an institution, it has the sanction of the Constitution but as a body, its constituents change within years and therefore, its agenda, functioning etc also changes. A simple example is how the Indian state is no longer wanting to engage in businesses which was an important function of it, in the era immediately after independence. Therefore, aided with this volatility, a Parliament can alter priorities and policies; however, controlled by temporal political forces, if it is allowed to do so, it can alter the basic (structure) principles and the certainty such principles provide.

Such change will only be detrimental to society because a Parliament changes periodically and with this change, basic principles also would and could change. If a Parliament at one time decides that the country has a state religion, and by the time people adopt it, another elected Parliament in another term roots for a state that is secular with no religion. Without the certainty of the basic structure, as provided in the Constitution, this changing notion of how countries (societies) should be, will have a detrimental effect on people since their relationship with each other and with the state will become subject to constant change without any time for adapting to such change.

In summary, societies need the Rule of Law to thrive. The Rule of Law needs Certainty. Certainty needs a Constitution’s supremacy to prevail rather than a Parliament’s volatile and fidgety nature.

A last question that needs to be answered in order to present a complete case for Constitutional supremacy. The question being that, since it is Parliament that is the supreme indicator of people’s will, why should a Constitution written decades ago, prevail over Parliament, a living institution? The answer is that the Parliament is a nascent institution that represents people’s choice between some political parties within an election whereas the Constitution is a culture machine that is not only living but also transforming itself to the changing needs of the society with the help of Judiciary.

If there is to be a fundamental change in the Constitution or in the Idea of India as a whole, that kind of change cannot be initiated or effectuated by a five year tenured body which was not formed for the purpose. The writ of the Constitution did not begin after the Parliament got elected. It was a separate, wide and distinct process which included public mass mobilisations, debates, public participation etc, then culminating into the formal process by the Constituent Assembly. Parliament’s purpose is to make laws while representing the people from all parts of the country. For Parliament to assume power to amend the fundamentals of the Indian constitution, it would need a wider, deeper sanction than a mere general election.

Conclusion

Parliament is given extensive powers within the constitution and for all practical reasons, many more powers have come to be vested with the Parliament and the Executive, since. In both of these organs, people and their ideas dominate for a fixed period of time, depending on people’s mandate, giving rise to potentially arbitrary decisions sometimes. For this huge (misuse of) power to be in check, the Judiciary acts as a protector of the Certainty the constitution provides for people.

While Law should not be rigid and be amenable, the processes to amend some basic principles which form the bedrock of societies should not and cannot be just placed in the hands of elected legislatures.

The post Rule of Law means Certainty that establishes Supremacy of the Constitution appeared first on SabrangIndia.

First published on: 01 Feb 2011

I am a journalist and given the timing of this meeting, I should probably first mention a disclaimer. Though I am from the English mainstream media, I don’t figure  in the Radia tapes. You may therefore hear me with a degree of indulgence. I don’t take dictation from any corporate lobbyists. I don’t toe any government line. If I travel with anybody, it is more with activists like Teesta Setalvad and I’m very proud to say so because I see no contradiction in this. I don’t feel compromised when I speak or when I espouse public causes. And Ayodhya is one such. And if I may extend the Radia tapes metaphor, Ayodhya has been a bit like the Radia tapes of our claim to be secular. From 1949 onwards, Ayodhya has been a major challenge which showed how hollow our pretensions are, right from the way in which the establishment responded to the 1949 episode.

I am very conscious of the fact that I am the third speaker here and that I come after Anupam Gupta who gave us such a comprehensive account of the systemic response to the 1949 and 1992 episodes concerning Ayodhya. So I will try not to tread over the same ground. I will try to deal with the few gaps that have been left in an otherwise very comprehensive exposition. One that comes to mind offhand is the reference made to the 1994 judgement of the Supreme Court, given during the follow-up to the demolition, on the law (the Acquisition of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act 1993) that the Narasimha Rao government came up with. What the Supreme Court gave to the nation smacked of a Hindu bias and this was underlined by the fact that it was a split verdict. The three judges who gave the majority judgement, and this is probably no coincidence, were all Hindus and the two who gave the dissenting opinion were non-Hindus, one was a Parsi and the other a Muslim.

The reason I make reference to this is because the Allahabad high court in 2010 likewise delivered a split verdict in the Ayodhya case. Much of the truth about the 1949 episode is reflected essentially in Justice Khan’s judgement even though it was absolutely central to determining who this disputed site should be given to. The whole basis for the claim arose from the illegal act that took place on December 23, 1949 and yet it was given short shrift in the two judgements delivered by the Hindu judges. And this should be a matter of great concern to us. There is a need for our judiciary to appear more assertive in displaying our secular commitment.

Another issue that has not been dealt with in great detail and which I will therefore take up concerns the criminal proceedings that followed after the 1992 episode. The manner in which the state responded to this crime was as strange as the manner in which it responded to the crime of 1949. The crime of 1949 was a turning point in the history of modern India; yet though a first information report (FIR) was formally lodged, it has never been investigated. This was an episode unlike any other in our history, an episode that has led to so many subsequent crimes; it has polarised the nation and continues to dog us even today. There has been no judicial finding on the illegality of what happened that night in 1949 or on culpability, on who was responsible for it.

Similarly, with regard to the 1992 episode, there have been FIRs – not one but as many as 49 FIRs – and the proceedings are still going on, there has still been no judicial finding on what happened on that fateful day, December 6. Of these 49 FIRs, only two really matter in the immediate context because the other 47 relate to attacks on journalists so I will dwell a little longer on these two. The first one, FIR No. 197/92, deals with the demolition per se, the run-up to it, the conspiracy that led to the demolition, the people who were involved in that demolition. The other FIR, No. 198/92, deals with the inflammatory speeches that were delivered by eight main leaders of the sangh parivar from a makeshift dais, Ram Katha Kunj Manch, erected not very far from the Babri Masjid as it stood that morning. The FIR dealing with the demolition did not name any accused persons at all. The police were probably justified in doing so because their focus was on the kar sevaks (who had been actively engaged in the demolition) and so this FIR, which was registered on the evening of December 6, names no names at all. FIR No. 198 names eight sangh parivar leaders. This is not the strange part. The strange sequence of events begins thereafter.

Much of the truth about the 1949 episode is reflected essentially in Justice Khan’s judgement of 2010 even though it was absolutely central to determining who this disputed site should be given to. The whole basis for the claim arose from the illegal act that took place on December 23, 1949 and yet it was given short shrift in the two judgements delivered by the Hindu judges

For some reason the centre, which had taken over the administration of Uttar Pradesh through president’s rule soon afterwards, chose to refer the demolition FIR, No. 197, to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) while the FIR dealing with the inflammatory speeches delivered by sangh parivar leaders, which is probably a more sensitive issue, more politically sensitive at least, was referred to the Crime Branch, Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID), of the Uttar Pradesh police. There was really no reason for the two to be separated. Both pertained to the same crime; there was a link, an organic link, between them. These inflammatory speeches were made not very far from the scene of the crime, where the demolition was going on, and they were addressed to kar sevaks who were gathered there while the crime was taking place simultaneously. And there were witnesses to all of this. It is very logical to infer that inflamed as they were by these speeches, those kar sevaks were encouraged to indulge in that crime. The two cases were linked yet for some reason the Congress government of Narasimha Rao – I mention this because there’s this rhetoric about the Congress being a secular party and so on and so forth – did this very strange thing, of separating the two cases. They were given to two different agencies. (While FIR No. 197 was handed over to the CBI, FIR No. 198 was to be prosecuted by the state CID in a special court in Lalitpur, later moved to Rae Bareli.)

Then a few months later it wakes up to the incongruity of this duality and it clubs the two cases together and gives them to the CBI. And then it also refers the two cases to one special court (a special CBI court set up in Lucknow). The reason I mention this is because it was in this special court that the CBI in 1993 first filed a joint charge sheet related to both FIRs, wherein these leaders, Advani and company, were named, in the context of the demolition, as conspirators. They were very much a part of the conspiracy and there was ample evidence of this. After all, in the run-up to the demolition there were the two rath yatras that converged in Ayodhya, one led by Advani, the other led by Murli Manohar Joshi, inviting people to come to Ayodhya in large numbers for the alleged kar seva; and on the eve of the demolition there was a secret meeting at the residence of Vinay Katiyar, the then MP from that area – which the CBI charge sheet refers to – where the finer details of this conspiracy were probably discussed. This charge sheet was filed in October 1993, nearly a year later.

In 1997 Judge Jagdish Prasad Srivastava of the additional (special) sessions court, Lucknow, frames charges. He passes an order prima facie accepting, taking cognisance, of all the charges made by the CBI so now there is a judicial stamp on these charges. A lot of the CBI’s findings were endorsed by this judge and he was poised to call each of the accused persons before court to read them the charges. It was at this stage that this legal process was interrupted. Some of the persons named in that charge sheet (a total of 49 persons were named in the charge sheet – somehow the figure 49 keeps recurring in this context!) went to court, the Allahabad high court, and got a stay order on proceedings.

This stay order was finally lifted in 2001 by which time the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power at the centre, by which time Advani was sitting in North Block as home minister and, if I am not mistaken, was probably even deputy prime minister of India. Whether he was, whether he had acquired that designation by then or not, he was very much a powerful leader. The Allahabad high court, speaking through Justice Jagdish Bhalla, said, look, there was a flaw, a procedural flaw, in referring the political leaders’ case, the inflammatory speeches case, to the special court at Lucknow but the saving grace is that it is a defect that can be cured. Now all that the then BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, led by Rajnath Singh, had to do in terms of the high court order was to issue a fresh notification so that the reference of that case, No. 198, was made in a proper manner.

After that, for weeks on end Rajnath Singh would keep saying, he would mystify it: “Oh, we are looking into it, we have referred this to our legal experts, they will do the needful.” And sure enough, they did nothing of the sort. That vacuum allowed the special sessions court in Lucknow, a sessions judge called Srikant Shukla, to separate the two cases completely. He said that the leaders, Advani and company, would no longer be tried for the demolition in this special court. They would be tried separately, if at all, for the lesser offence of inflammatory speeches.

The term ‘legal fiction’, so often used, has acquired a very perverse meaning in the context of Ayodhya. The legal fiction here is that we are today confronted with a situation where, even as we speak, proceedings are going on in the Lucknow special court dealing with the Ayodhya demolition while the special court in Rae Bareli deals exclusively, wearing blinkers, with the issue of inflammatory speeches. The fact that the two are linked is totally overlooked. The fact that you can’t talk about conspiracy without bringing leaders into it is overlooked. Look at the joke that is being played on us. I am not talking about the September 30, 2010 judgement of the Allahabad high court. I am talking about the related issue of criminal proceedings and the farce that is being perpetrated on us even today. There is so much hype about our being a rising power in the world and so forth but look at the manner in which more and more people are able to mock at all notions of the rule of law, of secularism.

The continuing joke is that in the Lucknow special court, accused persons whose names you have never heard of, whose faces you would not recognise, some anonymous kar sevaks, are being tried for the crime of conspiring to demolish the Babri Masjid all on their own, without the knowledge or involvement or instigation of any of these sangh parivar leaders, of the VHP, the BJP, the RSS, etc. That is the implication of their being tried in isolation, of only these unknown persons being tried for the demolition. And in Rae Bareli, you have the sangh parivar leaders being tried and being tried for what? Only for delivering inflammatory speeches which, as far as the courts are concerned, have nothing to do with the demolition because they will look at the issue of inflammatory speeches in isolation. And if that were not farcical enough, we must also bear in mind that we witnessed during the NDA’s reign a glaring instance of how the judiciary often does the bidding of the executive (just as, in the context of the Radia tapes, you have heard that journalists do the bidding of corporate lobbyists). So much for the independence of the judiciary.

We have seen how in 1986, in the context of the Shah Bano case and all the flak Rajiv Gandhi was getting for what he was doing to allegedly appease Muslim fundamentalists, he came up with this brainwave of doing a balancing act and got his administration to take the necessary steps to get the locks of the Ayodhya shrine opened. The Babri Masjid, which was kept under lock and key from 1950 onwards to keep the dispute under control, was suddenly opened. We have heard about the manner in which the then district judge, KM Pandey, referred to some divine inspiration that he got from a monkey, which he even mentions in his memoirs. This was an instance of courts doing the bidding of the government.

 
Similarly, in the NDA’s time when the inflammatory speeches issue was taken up and charges were to be framed, what does the court do? The Rae Bareli court? It discharges the person who for all practical purposes was the face of the Ayodhya movement, the so-called Ayodhya movement. The 1986 incident, of the locks being broken open and Hindu devotees being allowed to have darshan of Ram Lalla inside the Babri Masjid, gave momentum to this movement. And the face of this movement – especially after the BJP’s Palampur resolution in 1989 (openly supporting the VHP’s demand for building the Ramjanmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya) – was LK Advani. Minus Advani, minus his genius, his political skills, it would probably not have acquired these proportions. This leader was discharged. He was there on the dais but he was discharged while other leaders were still going to be prosecuted.

We have little evidence, documentary evidence, of the demolition. The 47 other cases that were registered by the police along with the two cases I have been talking about involved attacks on journalists. Why were these cases registered? Many of these journalists were there to do independent work and they were inconvenient to the kar sevaks, to the sangh parivar types. So while part of the telltale evidence of a conspiracy was the manner in which they stealthily removed the Ram Lalla idols before the demolition, further, very clear, evidence of it was the orchestration of events. It was not as if some people got carried away by their emotions and started attacking the Babri Masjid. On the contrary, while one section of kar sevaks was engaged in the demolition, there was another section that very systematically attacked journalists. As soon as they saw a camera, they would smash it, they would scare the journalists away, they would intimidate them, they would beat them up – there were actual instances of this nature. That is how those 47 cases of attacks on journalists arose. In spite of all the demolition, you only have little bits of evidence here and there, like the photograph of Uma Bharti hugging Murli Manohar Joshi, which have survived those attacks. This is because of the kind of crime it was, the mass crime that took place in Ayodhya, when even journalists were not spared.

Advani was discharged on the testimony of his security officer, one very upright young Indian Police Service officer called Anju Gupta. And what does her testimony say? In her testimony, and this is something that anybody who reads it will know, she is nailing his claims, his much touted claim that December 6, 1992 was the saddest day of his life. The author of this movement, the man who did whatever he could to bring things to that stage on December 6, had the gumption to say that that was the saddest day of his life. But she gave us a ringside view of what was happening on the dais, what the conversation was, how he was very much a part of the jubilation.

This lady goes on to give further evidence about how Advani was very much a part of all the jubilation and how there was a time when he was concerned about the kar sevaks who were on top of the structure, engaged in the demolition. His concern was not to stop them, his concern was not to bring them down and save the mosque. His concern, and this comes through very clearly in Anju Gupta’s testimony, was that because there were a lot of kar sevaks at the ground level who were simultaneously demolishing the structure, there was a great probability of those who were on top of the structure being hurt, of their falling down and getting hurt. That was his concern and that is why he sent Uma Bharti there to dissuade them, to tell them to come down. Those were his concerns; there was no anxiety being displayed by him to stop anything. This is what came through in her testimony.

Yet the special court in Rae Bareli, when it discharged Advani during the NDA’s reign, actually cited Anju Gupta’s testimony – the judgement was in Hindi, the judge used the expression “ati mahatvapurna (exceedingly important)” – as the crucial basis on which he was letting off Advani. So much for this rule of law that we all keep buying into.

When there was a change of regime in 2004, this farce was corrected. Advani was brought back into the case. And given the background circumstances, I dare say that this judicial correction would not have taken place but for the fortuitous circumstance of the government having changed at the centre.

In the Lucknow special court, some anonymous kar sevaks are being tried for the crime of conspiring to demolish the Babri Masjid without the knowledge, involvement or instigation of any of the sangh parivar leaders. And in Rae Bareli, the sangh parivar leaders are being tried only for delivering inflammatory speeches

These events are all interconnected. The fact that the 1949 FIR has never been followed up, that there have been no convictions, is no coincidence. And it doesn’t end there.

To come back to the Supreme Court and the judgement of 1994, there is more to it than the split verdict on the then government’s proposed new law. There was another very farcical aspect that pertains to contempt of court. During the run-up to the demolition this matter was also before the Supreme Court.

As we are now aware, the intelligence reports issued prior to the demolition were very precise and any administration would have known from those reports that there was imminent danger to the structure. So there was wilful negligence on the part of the centre, on the part of the Narasimha Rao government, in this regard. Simultaneously, there was a public interest petitioner, Mohammad Aslam Bhure, and his counsel, OP Sharma, who were very valiantly fighting a battle before the Supreme Court. Their applications were based on newspaper reports that said the same thing: that what was going to happen on December 6 was very serious, that the threats cannot be taken lightly – these were issues that were brought before the court. And more importantly, the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice MN Venkatachaliah had one very compelling reason to take these warnings seriously.

In July 1992 proceedings were underway before the Supreme Court, also at the instance of Bhure, on the construction of a platform near the Babri Masjid that was going on at the time. The court kept on ordering the Kalyan Singh government to stop this, to respect the status quo order, and yet the construction took place. The first contempt notice to Kalyan Singh was issued in July 1992 in this context and then, on December 6, this great crime takes place. These warnings should have been taken seriously. The undertakings given by the same Kalyan Singh who so wilfully violated and disobeyed the Supreme Court orders in July 1992 should therefore not have been taken seriously. Yet the Supreme Court in its wisdom decided to allow symbolic kar seva to take place.

How much of this was based on their commitment to the rule of law, how much of it was because they were Hindus, I don’t know. Despite the background, the Supreme Court trusted these fellows to perform a symbolic kar seva. And when this belief of theirs was belied, was completely shattered, sure enough, the Supreme Court, for national consumption, to the delight of our newspapers and TV channels, came up with some very strong observations: This is the greatest ever perfidy, there can be no greater instance of contempt of the Supreme Court, an otherwise mild judge really thundered in the courtroom, making someone like KK Venugopal, who was representing the Kalyan Singh government, say: I’m ashamed my lord, I was not privy to this conspiracy. When my clients said that they were going to observe the rule of law, that they were going to ensure that no damage would take place to the structure, I took their word for it. That was the kind of drama that took place in the court soon after the demolition. This was part of the same response.

And then, along with the 1994 judgement wherein the post-demolition measures taken by the government were examined by the Supreme Court, the court also dealt with the issue of contempt. The media and most people thought that the one-day sentence awarded to Kalyan Singh in that context was for the demolition but it was actually for the July 1992 instance of contempt, the first contempt notice. The judges wilfully kept clear of the act of contempt that was committed on December 6, 1992. To date, just as the 1949 FIR has still not resulted in a charge sheet and prosecution, this greatest ever contempt, as we were told it was subsequent to the December 6 incident, has still not been disposed of. No action has so far been taken. It is as if the judges don’t want to take chances with Lord Ram’s wrath.

Their inaction is not very different from the actions of Judge Pandey of the Uttar Pradesh judiciary who saw the hand of Hanuman, Hanuman’s benediction, in his decision to open the gates of the Babri Masjid. One cannot help seeing such significance in their eloquent silence on taking action against the December 6 act of contempt. And such silence is not an isolated instance.

We saw a similar silence in the context of the Supreme Court’s judgement on Hindutva in 1995. To make a brief reference to the Hindutva judgement… How do you talk about whether Hindutva is really liberal and in consonance with the Constitution without talking about what exactly Veer Savarkar, the man who coined that expression, had in mind: What was his definition of Hindutva, how did he propound this very pernicious theory that India belongs more to those whose birthplace and sacred land is India? This was an aspect that was totally glossed over by the Supreme Court in its Hindutva judgement as it merrily went along with the view that Hindutva is no different from Hinduism, the catholic, liberal interpretation of Hinduism.

I look at all of this as an outsider, as a representative of the media; I’m sure those of you who are from within the system can see this farce even more clearly than I do.

Archived from Communalism Combat, February 2011 Year 17    No.154, Section 1-Silence is Eloquent

The post When silence is eloquent appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Four social activists sent a complaint letter to Karnataka police on April 6, 2022, against the call for ban on Muslim vendors. However, complainants criticised the administration for its inefficiency in promptly registering an FIR.

A lawyer, engineer and two paralegals wrote a letter about State Hindu Janajagruti Samiti Coordinator Chandru Moger who took to Twitter to demand that Hindus prevent the “monopoly” of Muslim in the fruit-selling business. Signed under the name of Zia Normani, the complaint quoted Moger as saying, “There is a monopoly on the fruit businesses by Muslims. We are also seeing that they are spitting on fruits and bread before selling it.”He called this bizarre allegation “spitting jihad” and exhorted Hindus to only purchase from Hindu vendors.

The activists condemned this form of communalism calling it a threat to national security. As such, they demanded an FIR against the hate-monger for intentional insult and provocation, defamation, promoting enmity between religious groups and making statements that create a divide between different classes.

“These comments were made with a deliberate, malicious intention to harm, damage and undermine one particular community and invoke communal hate and violence. [They are] falsely accusing the Muslim community with the sole intention to destroy the communal harmony of the state and the nation at whole,” said Nomani in the letter.

However, Nomani claimed that far from filing an FIR, the Sanjay Nagar police in Bengaluru tried to dissuade the FIR by saying that “everyone has freedom of speech.” On April 7, Inspector Balraj told them that the police “are taking legal opinion which will take two to three days.” He recommended that the complainants approach the higher ups or file a complaint in the High Court.

Since then the activists have visited the Commissioner of Police Kamal Pant who directed them to DCP North. On April 8, they are to meet the Additional Commissioner of Police (ACP) Sandeep Patil with no assurance of the FIR being filed.

“These are cognisable offences. If the police and its legal help are taking two-three days for this, then they are not being very efficient. It doesn’t make sense to take two three days to file an FIR on this. God forbid, if a Muslim did this, the person would have been charged under the UAPA,” Nomani told SabrangIndia.

When asked about the cause of the delay, Balraj told SabrangIndia, “There is a confusion about certain details like where the event took place and when. The FIR may be filed within today or tomorrow. We are trying to proceed with this.”

Balraj assured that this delay will be addressed soon but as Nomani pointed out in his letter to Pant, the lack of action emboldens fringe groups to spread hate and disrupt India’s social fabric. The group resolved to approach the High Court if the meeting with Patil goes nowhere.

Related:

Are increasing calls for economic boycott of Muslims a sinister precursor to something worse?

How Halal is your harassment?

Bajrang Dal smells an opportunity in stirring the halal pot, pastes boycott posters

‘Halal food is economic jehad’: BJP gen sec CT Ravi cooks up fresh hate

The post Karnataka police allegedly delays FIR against claim of “spitting jihad” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Stan Swamy listed all the activities that have made him a ‘Desh Drohi,’ a traitor of the country, in his open letter after he was charged with sedition. This short note was written by Fr Stan Swamy after the Jharkhand authorities filed a case of sedition against him for supporting the adivasi Pathalgadi movement. He is one of 20 activists accused of sedition, a committed Jesuit priest.
 
During the past two decades, I have identified myself with the Adivasi people and their struggle for a life of dignity and self-respect. As a writer, I have tried to analyse the different issues they are facing. In this process, I have clearly expressed dissent with several policies, laws enacted by the govt in the light of the Indian Constitution. I have questioned the validity, legality, justness of several steps taken by the govt and the ruling class.
 
As for the Pathalgadi issue, I have asked the question “Why are Adivasis doing this?” I believe they have been exploited and oppressed beyond tolerance. The rich minerals which are excavated in their land have enriched outsider industrialists and businessmen and impoverished the Adivasi people to the extent there are starvation deaths taking place.
 
They have had no share in what is produced. Also, the laws and policies enacted for their wellbeing are deliberately left unimplemented. So they have reached a situation where they realised ‘enough is enough’ and are seeking to re-invent their identity by empowering their Gram Sabhas through Pathalgadis. Their action is understandable.
 
Some questions that I have raised are as follows:
 
1. I have questioned the Non-implementation of the 5th Schedule of the Constitution [Indian Constitution, Article 244(1)]clearly stipulates that a ‘Tribes Advisory Council’ (TAC) composed solely of members from the Adivasi community who will advise the Governor of the State about any and everything concerning the protection, well-being and development of the Adivasi people in the State. The Governor is the constitutional custodian of the Adivasi people and he/she can make laws on his/her own and can annul any other law enacted by the parliament or state assembly always keeping in mind the welfare of the Adivasi people.
 
Whereas the reality is that in none of the States during all these nearly seven decades has any State Governor ever used his/her constitutional discretionary power to reach out to the Adivasi people proffering the excuse that they have to work in harmony with the elected government of the State. The meeting of the TAC takes place rarely, and it is convened by and presided over by the Chief Minister of the State and is controlled by the ruling party. TAC has thus been reduced to a toothless body. Verily a constitutional fraud meted out to the Adivasi people.
 
2) I have questioned why the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act [PESA],1996 [No:40 of 1996] have been neatly ignored which for the first time recognized the fact the Adivasi communities in India have had a rich social and cultural tradition of self-governance through the Gram Sabha.                                                                                                                                     
Whereas the reality is this Act of the parliament has deliberately been left unimplemented in all the nine states. It means the capitalist ruling class does not want the Adivasi people to self-govern themselves.
 
3) I have questioned the silence of the govt on Samatha Judgment, 1997 of the Supreme Court [Civil Appeal Nos:4601-2 of 1997] which came as a huge relief to the Adivasi communities in Scheduled Areas. It came at a time when consequent to the policy of globalization, liberalization, marketisation, privatisation national and international corporate houses started to invade particularly the Adivasi areas in central India to mine the mineral riches. The govt machinery gave its full cooperation to these companies. Any resistance by the Adivasi people was put down with an iron hand. The judgment was meant to provide some significant safeguards for the Adivasis to control the excavation of minerals in their lands and to help develop themselves economically.
                                                                                                      
Whereas the reality is the state has ignored this verdict of the highest court. Several cases have been filed by affected communities but the ‘law of eminent domain’ of the colonial rulers are invoked to alienate Adivasi land and to loot the rich mineral resources.
 
4) I have questioned the half-hearted action of govt on Forest Rights Act, 2006: [Act of Parliament No:2 of 2007] jal, jangal, jamin, as we know, are the basis of the economic life of the Adivasi people. Of particular importance is their traditional rights in the forest have been infringed upon systematically over the decades. At long last, the govt came to the realization that a historic injustice has been done to the Adivasi and other traditional forest-dwellers. To correct this anomaly, it enacted this Act.
 
Whereas the reality is far from desirable. From 2006 to 2011 of its operation, about 30 lakh applications were made all over the country for title-deeds, of which 11 lakhs were approved but 14 lakhs were rejected and five lakhs were pending. Of late the Jharkhand govt is trying to bypass the Gram Sabha in the process of acquiring forest land for industrial set up.
 
5) I have questioned the inaction of the govt to carry out the SC order ‘Owner of the land is also the owner of sub-soil minerals’. [SC: Civil Appeal No 4549 of 2000] wherein it has said “we are of the opinion that there is nothing in the law which declares that all mineral wealth sub-soil rights vest in the State, on the other hand, the ownership of sub-soil/mineral wealth should normally follow the ownership of the land, unless the owner of the land is deprived of the same by some valid process.”
 
The rich minerals in their lands are being looted by the govt and private companies. The Supreme Court has declared 214 out of the 219 Coal-Blocks in the country illegal and ordered their closure and levied a fine on them for their illegal mining. But the Central & State Govts have found a way out by re-allotting these illegal mines through auction to make it look legal! 
 
6) I have questioned the reasons why SC observation is being ignored that ‘Mere membership of a banned organisation will not make a person a criminal unless he resorts to violence or incites people to violence or creates public disorder by violence or incitement to violence. [SC: Criminal Appeal No: 889 of 2007]. The court rejected the doctrine of ‘guilt by association’. 
 
It is common knowledge that many young men and women are held in prison on the suspicion of being “helpers of Naxalites”. After arresting them other penal clauses are added on. It is an easy label that can be put on anyone whom the police want to catch. It does not require any proof or witness. Supreme Court says even membership in a banned organisation does not make a person a criminal. How far removed are the law and order forces from the judiciary!
 
7) I have questioned the recently enacted Amendment to ‘Land Acquisition Act 2013’ by Jharkhand govt which sound a death-knell for the Adivasi Community. This does away with the requirement for “Social Impact Assessment’ which was aimed at safeguarding the environment, social relations and cultural values of affected people. The most damaging factor is the govt can allow any agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. So, any and everything can be included.
8) I have questioned ‘Land Bank’ which I see as the most recent plot to annihilate the Adivasi people.
 
During ‘Momentum Jharkhand’ in February 2017 the govt announced that 21 lakh acres in Land Bank of which 10 lakh acres is ready for allotment to industrialists.
 
Gair-Majurwa” land (uncultivated land) can be ‘khas’ (private) or ‘aam’ (common). As per tradition, individual Adivasi families or communities have been in possession and use this land [jamabandi]. Now the govt shockingly cancelled all ‘jamabandi’ titles and claims that all ‘gair-majurwa’ land belongs to the govt and it is free to allot it to anybody (read industrial houses) to set up their small and big industries.
 
People are in the dark about their land being written off. The TAC has not given its approval as is required by the Vth Sched., the respective Gram Sabhas have not given their consent as required by PESA Act, affected Adivasi people have not given their consent as required by Land Acquisition Act (2013).
 
Above are the questions I have consistently raised.   
 
If this makes me a ‘Desh Drohi’ then so be it!

The post I raise my voice for Adivasis, am I a Traitor? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

There are moments when I love my job or rather, my business of journalism – even I, a hard-nosed cynical hack of nearly three decades. It is because you love and cherish these moments that you are so grateful you are in this business. How else would I, a hopeless, hopeless philistine, hope to find myself on a rain-drenched terrace in old Varanasi with Ustad Bismillah Khan? As it happens, it was almost exactly the same time last year.

I can fill the rest of this space just describing the beauty of his face, his spirit, his talent, his madness, even his commercialism. To date, he is the only guest who demanded, and was paid – though only a very reasonable tribute – for appearing on Walk the Talk. He said he had a large family to support, even at 91, and could do with whatever money came his way. And when I reminded him, while leaving, that he had to come and perform at my children’s weddings, he said yes immediately. And then quoted the price: five lakh, plus air tickets and stay for seven people. You could touch his innocence with bare hands in the heavy monsoon air.

Khan Saheb let me down on this one though. He will not come and perform at my children’s weddings, whatever the price. But he left me with memories – and lines – that will never go away. What was the difference between Hindu and Muslim, he asked. What, indeed, when he sang to Allah in raga Bhairav (composed for Shiva) and brought to tears the Iraqi maulana who had just told him music was blasphemy, “evil, a trap of the devil”. Khan Saheb said, “I told him, Maulana, I will sing to Allah. All I ask you is to be fair. And when I finished I asked him if it is blasphemy. He was speechless.” And then Khan Saheb told me with that trademark mischievous glint: “But I did not tell him it was in raga Bhairav.”

Why did Khan Saheb not migrate to Pakistan with partition? “Arre, will I ever leave my Benares?” he asked. “I went to Pakistan for a few hours,” he said, “just to be able to say I’ve been there. I knew I would never last there.” And what is so special about Benares, his glorified slum of a haveli in a grandly named Bharat Ratna Ustad Bismillah Khan Street that had more potholes than footholds and more heaps of chicken entrails from nearby meat shops than garbage heaps from homes? “My temples are here,” he said, “Balaji and Mangala Gauri.” Without them, he asked, how would he make any music? As a Muslim he could not go inside the temples. But so what? “I would just go behind the temples and touch the wall from outside. You bring gangajal, you can go inside to offer it, but I can just as well touch the stone from outside. It’s the same. I just have to put my hand to them.”

How is that devotion in a week when our parliament was rocked by issues like the forcible, and criminal, chopping of a Sikh boy’s hair in Jaipur and the controversy over state-mandated singing of Vande Mataram in schools to launch the 150th anniversary of 1857? Or when we were all so outraged by the paranoia that caused the Mumbai bound KLM-Northwest flight to return to Amsterdam, the racial profiling of Muslims, particularly Asian-Arab Muslims and so on?

Khan Saheb’s was a talent worthy of a Bharat Ratna and immortality. But he also personified, so strikingly, the fact of how the Muslims of India defy the stereotypes building up in today’s rapidly dividing world. They may be poorer than the majority, or even other, smaller minorities, they may still live in ghettos of sorts, but they are a part of the mainstream, nationally as well as regionally and ethnically, more than Muslim populations are in most parts of the world. A Tamil Muslim, for example, is as much an ethnic Tamil as a Hindu or a Christian and certainly has more in common with his ethnic cousins than with fellow Muslims in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. India’s Muslims work in mainstream businesses where their interests are meshed inextricably with the rest, particularly the majority Hindus, even if they happen to spar occasionally.

That is why, unlike Bush’s America or the western world in general, India cannot even think of the diabolical idea of “Islamic” fascism or terrorism. No country can survive if it starts looking at nearly 15 per cent of its population as a fifth column. That is why India’s view of the war against terror has to be entirely different from the western world’s, more nuanced, more realistic and, most importantly, entirely indigenous.

It is a difficult argument to make in times when it is so tempting to tell America and Europe that see, the people who are terrorising you are the same as the people who have been terrorising us. So far you never believed us. Now with every other terror suspect being traced back to Pakistan and, more precisely, Jaish or Lashkar, accept and acknowledge that we have been in the forefront of the global war against terror for a decade before it hit you. The danger in that approach is, the Americans and the Europeans can choose that approach – though it is not working for them as well – because for them these Muslims are outsiders, different, and therefore candidates for racial profiling. You can racially profile a million people in a universe of 27 crore. Can you profile 14 crore in a universe of a hundred crore? Particularly when most of them, in their own big and small ways, are as integrated in the mainstream, as zealously proud and possessive of their multiple (ethnic, linguistic and professional) identities as of their faith?

That is why the key to fighting, okay, this wave of terror emanating from Muslim anger is to absolutely avoid the “global war on terror” trap.

The terrorists know it. That is why attacks in India, even by angry Indian Muslims, are not directed against some evil global power or its symbols. Nor are they meant to support some pan-Islamic cause, Palestine, or even, for that matter, Kashmir. Their objective, always, is to strike at our secular nationalism. Every single attack has had the same purpose, starting with the first round of Bombay bombings in 1993.

Sharad Pawar made a bold confession to me earlier this month that he parachuted from Delhi into a riot-torn Bombay then figured immediately that the terrorist plot was to kill a large number of people in Hindu localities to trigger large-scale mob attacks on Muslim areas where automatic weapons and grenades had been stored with their agents. Once the mobs were stopped with these automatic weapons it would lead to a carnage that would be uncontrollable. It is for that reason that, he says, he lied on Doordarshan that there had been 12 blasts (where there had been 11) and added the name of a Muslim locality as the 12th. Today we can all rue the fact that judgement in the case of those blasts is still awaited, 13 years later (this article was written in 2006). But we should also cherish the fact that in eschewing any rioting and actually returning to work the very next morning, Bombay had defeated the larger design of the terrorists.

Every attack since then, the temples at Ayodhya, Akshardham and Varanasi, Raghunath temple in Jammu, even the bombs at Delhi’s Jama Masjid, had the same purpose: widening that divide. But it is tougher in India where any notion of ‘Them versus Us’ is an impossibility given how closely communities live, work and do business together. It is one thing to say that we have learnt to live with diversity for a thousand years. It is equally important that we internalise the idea of diversity, equality and fairness that is in our Constitution and in the process of nation building make the very idea of a global war against ‘Islamic fascism’ totally alien and ridiculous for India.

There is a war on for us and there is no getting away from the fact that some of those on the wrong side today are fellow, angry Indians, and we have to deal with them firmly and effectively. But we will need to evolve an idiom and a strategy entirely our own, in tune with a society which loves equally Ustad Bismillah Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar, who both sing and pray to Allah and Shiva, Krishna in ragas composed for either. Today India enjoys great respect in the world because of its unfolding economic miracle. If India can get this nuance right, it could be the toast of the world tomorrow for an even greater socio-political miracle, a secular but deeply religious nation that defeated terrorism while taking its 14 crore Muslims along.

Courtesy: The Indian Express

Archived from Communalism Combat, August-September 2007, Anniversary Issue (14th), Year 14    No.125, India at 60 Free Spaces, Music

The post Khan Saheb in Kashi appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It has been 6 years since BJP has been in power at the Centre. While many of nominal schemes like ‘Make in India’, ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ (Clean India Mission), Krishi Kalyan have been popular, the outcomes of the same are however questionable.

Let us have a look at some of the parameters that determine the efficacy of the BJP government. Some of these parameters being economy, environmental health, employment, women safety, farmers’ issues, soldiers’ deaths, militancy and so on.
 

Unemployment at 4 decade high:

The National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) job survey for 2017-18 which was released in May 2019 showed that unemployment in the country has been at a four-decade-high. Unemployment was pegged at 6.1 percent, highest in last 45 years, unemployment being higher in urban areas (7.8%) than in rural areas (5.3%).

Air pollution

Greenpeace carried out an air analysis study which concluded that world’s 30 worst cities for air pollution are in India. Delhi was ranked the world’s most populated capital city and Gurugram, the most polluted city in the world. The report is based on 2018 air quality data from public monitoring sources, such as government monitoring networks, supplemented with validated data from outdoor IQAir AirVisual monitors operated by private individuals and organisations.

Soldiers are dying

As per data collected and compared by South Asia Terrorism Portal, death of jawans in terror attacks has risen 106 percent in Jammu and Kashmir between 2014 and 2018.

A rising trend was also observed in the number of people who were killed in terrorism-related activities in Jammu & Kashmir in these five years. A total of 1,315 people were killed in the state between 2014 and 2018 due to terrorism.

(Image Courtesy: Moneycontrol)

Kashmir worsened

In early 2019 it was reported Army officials in Jammu and Kashmir, 191 Kashmiri youths had joined militancy in 2018, a marked increase from 2017 figures when 126 locals had joined militancy. The figure was even lower in 2016 when 88 youths had joined militancy in Kashmir.

With the amendment of Article 370 and reorganization of the state of Jammu and Kashmir which led to it losing it anonymous status, the government also imposed severe communication blockade on the state which continues to some degree. This has only made matter worse in the state which saw the longest running internet blockade in a democracy.

No country for women

A global perception poll carried out by Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2018 surveyed 558 experts on women’s issues in order to assess nations on overall safety for women. The same poll carried out in 2011 had put India at fourth place and the same poll carried out in 2018 put India at first place. India had surpassed war-torn Afghanistan (2nd), Syria (3rd) as well as Somalia, a country that ranks significantly lower on human development indices.

Farmers’ woes

As per government data, Wholesale Price Index (WPI) data for December 2018 the WPI sub-component for primary food articles was in the negative since July 2018. WPI is a good indicator of farm-gate prices as farmers sell their products in wholesale rather than retail markets. This data meant that farmers suffered deterioration in terms of their trade and 2018-19 turned out to be a year of agrarian crisis for India; also proving to be the worst year for farm incomes in almost two decades. Doubling farm incomes was one of biggest promises of the Narendra Modi government after it assumed office in 2014.

Mob lynching

While National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) did not contain any data on deaths due to mob lynching, IndiaSpend conducted a content analysis of English news media in 2017 and found that Muslims were the target of 51% of violence centered on bovine issues over nearly eight years (2010 to 2017) and comprised 86% of 28 Indians killed in 63 incidents. More than half (52%) of these attacks were based on rumours.

As many of 97% of these attacks were reported after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power in May 2014, and about half the cow-related violence – 32 of 63 cases – were from states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Income disparity

India is the third largest by purchasing power parity in the world, after China and USA; however, this growth is not uniformly distributed amongst its population. According to Credit Suisse Research Institute’s Global Wealth Report of 2016, the top 1% of India’s population owns nearly 60% of its wealth, trailing Russia, where the top 1% owns 74%.

In India, the upper classes were the main beneficiary of the nation’s surging economic development and poverty rates are also significantly lower among the upper caste Hindus rather than the Hindu other backward classes, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and Muslims. One third of Muslim and Hindu scheduled castes and tribes are in poverty compared to 10% of the upper castes Hindu. Altogether, 28% or around 360 million Indians are living in conditions of severe poverty.

According to the latest data from Credit Suisse and Oxfam, the richest 10% of Indians own 80% of the country’s wealth. At the other end, the poorer half jostles for a mere 4.1% of national wealth. 

The Rupee slump

As per a report of Bloomberg Quint, in August 2019, Indian Rupee became Asia’s worst performing currency as it battled an unresolved global trade war between USA and China and fleeing foreign funds.

Source: Bloomberg

Environmental health

The Environmental Performance Index, 2017 released by Yale University and Columbia University in collaboration with the World Economic Forum ranked India at number 177 out of 180 countries, slipping 36 places down from its previous rank at 141 in the year 2016.

When the Supreme Court split for the first time ever

In early 2018, four senior most judges of the highest court of the land, held a press conference to bring to light the fact that the administration of Supreme Court was not in order. One of the judges, Justice Chelameswar said that unless the Supreme Court is not preserved, democracy will not survive. Justice Chelameswar was accompanied by Justices Ranjan Gogoi, M B Lokur and Kurian Joseph. Such press conference was unprecedented and the judges themselves called it an extra-ordinary event. They had said that the democracy is at stake, which holds true even today.

Religious intolerance

In 2017, Pew Research Centre analysed data of 198 countries and ranked India as fourth worst in the world for religious intolerance. Pew analyzed cases that involved hate crimes, mob violence, communal violence, religion-related terror, the use of force to prevent religious practice, the harassment of women for not conforming to religious dress codes, and violence over conversion or proselytizing.

Media freedom under threat

An article carried by Deutsche Welle (DW), a German broadcaster, analysed how India media had been losing its independence and is constantly under political pressure. It cited various incidents like the resignation of two prominent journalists from ABP news channel after the channel ran a story  about a villager in the central state of Chhattisgarh who claimed that she was told by a government official to lie to media that she had benefitted from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rural schemes.

In another incident, ABP’s news anchor Abhisar Sharma was taken off air for over a fortnight after he reportedly defied instructions from the management that he must not criticize PM Modi’s policies.

Journalists have claimed “self-censorship” has increased in news media after BJP has come to power at the Centre since 2014. The main reason being the growing string nexus between political parties and government officials and the media.

A starving India

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) report of 2019 revealed that India slipped to 102 rank from its position at 95 in 2018. The GHI examined 117 countries and India’s rank was lower than its neighbouring countries, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The report, prepared jointly by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and German organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe termed the level of hunger in India “serious”. The GHI score is calculated on four indicators — undernourishment; child wasting, the share of children under the age of five who are wasted (that is, who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition); child stunting, children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition; and child mortality, the mortality rate of children under the age of five.

Assortment of maladies

Indians, apart from being hungry, living in an environment of religious intolerance, living in unemployment and farmer crisis, have been surrounded by various other maladies, brought on to them under the aegis of the BJP government. While many international reports have proved the degrading state of affairs in India, even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), raised its suspicion on India’s tax revenue estimates and GDP growth target.

That is not all India even deviated from the Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDSS) prescribed by IMF as it caused delays in the release of it economic and financial data.

Even the Election Commission, one of the pillars of India’s democratic fabric, has been seemingly compromised. In PILs filed before the Supreme Court it has come to light that there were serious discrepancies between the number of voters in different constituencies, that is the voter turnout data collated and provided by the EC and the number of votes counted. discrepancies ranged from 1 vote to 1,01,323 votes, which is equal to 10.49 per cent of the total votes. The plea further said there were six seats where the discrepancy in votes was higher than the winning margin. The case is pending before the apex court.

India’s drastic fall in the World Happiness Index since BJP has come to power is reflected in India’s current state of affairs. In 2013, India ranked at 117 which came down to 140 in 2019 and which is very likely to plummet further in 2020 considering the ongoing protests against the divisive policies of the government and the highhandedness of BJP ruled states on these protesters.

India even fared poorly in Global Democracy Index, 2019. Its position fell 10 places compared to the previous year and for the first time ever, it scored lower than 7 in a range of 0 to 10.

Clearly, it is no coincidence that India has fared poorly on all of these numerous parameters which are pertinent to overall growth and development of the country which was what was promised to Indians (“Acche din” – Good days) before they voted BJP to power. With the economy slumping, international matter making it worse, the government has still not gone into the damage control mode which it should have by now and is instead employing its resources for futile exercises like NPR and eventually the NRC and using divisive tactics to create a communal divide to erode the secular fabric of the nation. While protesters and opposition parties are persistent, only time will tell how much more downhill can this party drive our country.

The post Saffron raising red flags since 2014? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“By Ram Rajya I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ramarajya Divine Raj, Khuda ki Basti or the Kingdom of God on Earth”  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi[1]
 
At the heart of the visceral animosity that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Hindu Mahasabha (HMS) and all the affiliates have against Gandhi is his deep, reasoned and passionate commitment to a composite Indian nationhood. His writings in Young India and Harijan are well-documented as also is his subsequent clarity on the issue which is unequivocal. [2]

Faced with the growing appeal of communalists across the religious spectrum, in the early-mid 1900s,  Gandhi remained firm in his commitment to equal citizenship based on human rights and dignity…..
…
Under Gandhi’s guidance and leadership, communal amity remained central to the constructive programmes of the Congress. Muslim intellectuals and leaders of national stature, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Dr Ansari Hakim Ajmal Khan, Badruddin Tyabjee, Maulana Shaukat Ali and Jauhar Ali were proud part of the Congress fold. While the larger national movement, represented by the Congress and Revolutionaries, was surging ahead with a wider vision and inclusive foundation of Indian nationhood, at play were majoritarian and minority communal forces, in parallel, pushing their narrow, hate-driven, communal agendas.

In 1937, at the open session of the Hindu Mahasabha held at Ahmedabad, V.D. Savarkar, in his presidential address asserted: “India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main – the Hindus and the Muslims.”[1] By 1945, Savarkar had gone to the extent of stating, “I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah’s two–nation theory. We, the Hindus are a nation by ourselves, and it is a historical fact that the Hindus and the Muslims are two nations”. [2]. It was this sentiment of separate and irreconcilable identities of the followers of these religions that led to the communal holocaust and the formation of Pakistan. 

If the Muslim League and Jinnah need to squarely be positioned for their responsibility in articulating a politics that eventually led to a communal bloodbath, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtritya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with their consistently divisive politics, cannot escape their share of the blame.

Arguably, as much as Gandhi’s and the larger, Congress’ commitment to secular and composite Indian nationhood, a deep source of resentment for the proponents of a Hindu Rashtra was the democratic and egalitarian agenda being articulated by the national leadership through the Karachi resolution. The attempts on Gandhi’s life that began in 1934 , were a response to the dominant political articulations on nationhood, caste and economic and other democratic rights that were in direct challenge to a hegemonistic and authoritarian Hindu Rashtra. 1933, the year before the first attempt on Gandhi’s life, he had declared firm support to two Bills, one of whom was against the abhorrent practice of Untouchability.

The run up to Independence and unfortunately, Partition, was the scene or battle ground for fundamentally different notions of nationhood. While over one hundred years of sustained movements and mobilizations to throw off British yoke were wedded in the united battle of all Indians against foreign rule, the early-mid 1900s saw the birth and emergence of sectarian and communal definitions of Indian and Pakistani nationhood. With the birth of the Hindu Mahasabha, the Muslim League and the RSS, these movements were in constant battle with the larger movement, significantly, at different points of time actually acting as collaborators with the British.
…..

Later, on January 27, 1935, Gandhi addressed some members of the Central Legislature. He told them that “(e)ven if the whole body of Hindu opinion were to be against the removal of untouchability, still he would advise a secular legislature like the Assembly not to tolerate that attitude.”.[1] On January 20, 1942 Gandhi remarked while discussing the Pakistan scheme: “What conflict of interest can there be between Hindus and Muslims in the matter of revenue, sanitation, police, justice, or the use of public conveniences? The difference can only be in religious usage and observance with which a secular state has no concern.” [2] From then until he was shot dead in cold blood on January 30, 1948, his responses and articulation on the disassociation of religion from politics became even clearer and sharper. This meant in effect he was a great threat to past and present day proponents of a Hindu rashtra.

[[As quoted by Nauriya, in the Hindu, 2003, in September 1946, Gandhi told a Christian missionary: “If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern!” Gandhi’ s talk with Rev. Kellas of the Scottish Church College, Calcutta on August 16, 1947, the day after Independence, was reported in Harijan on August 24:

“Gandhiji expressed the opinion that the state should undoubtedly be secular. It could never promote denominational education out of public funds. Everyone living in it should be entitled to profess his religion without let or hindrance, so long as the citizen obeyed the common law of the land. There should be no interference with missionary effort, but no mission could enjoy the patronage of the state as it did during the foreign regime.” This understanding came subsequently to be reflected in Articles 25, 26 and 27 of the Constitution.

On the next day, August 17, Gandhi elaborated publicly on the same point in his speech at Narkeldanga, which Harijan reported thus: “In the India for whose fashioning he had worked all his life every man enjoyed equality of status, whatever his religion was. The state was bound to be wholly secular. He went so far as to say that no denominational institution in it should enjoy state patronage. All subjects would thus be equal in the eye of the law.” Five days later, Gandhi observed in a speech at Deshbandhu Park in Calcutta on August 22, 1947: “Religion was a personal matter and if we succeeded in confining it to the personal plane, all would be well in our political life… If officers of Government as well as members of the public undertook the responsibility and worked wholeheartedly for the creation of a secular state, we could build a new India that would be the glory of the world.” Speaking on Guru Nanak’s birthday on November 28, 1947, Gandhi opposed any possibility of state funds being spent for the renovation of the Somnath temple. His reasoning was: “After all, we have formed the Government for all. It is a `secular’ government, that is, it is not a theocratic government, rather, it does not belong to any particular religion. Hence it cannot spend money on the basis of communities.” ]]

Excerpted from Beyond Doubt: A Dossier on Gandhi’s Assassination, Teesta Setalvad, Introduction by the author
 

  [5] Gandhi in Young India, September 19, 1929, p. 305.

The post Mahatma Gandhi: ‘My Ramrajya means Khuda ki Basti… but a Secular State’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The starkest lesson of the Kashmir problem hold for those intrested in preserving India’s unity is the pressing need to ensure apeople oriented devlopment.

First Published on: May 1, 1998

In the three months, Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed two of the worst–ever massacres in the state. The tragic incidents not only cast serious doubt on the ‘return–to–normalcy’ propaganda of the central and state governments, but also give an inkling of the intractable nature of the dispute and its potential to spawn a long-run insurgency.There are several factors contributing to the complex nature of the Kashmir problem that is becoming increasingly intractable. A way out of the stalemate lies in the holding of some kind of talks between all or at least two of the parties to the dispute. But neither India, nor Pakistan, nor the Kashmiris have shown much flexibility in deciding upon the modalities of the dialogue.

One factor that seems to have escaped much of the analysis of the Kashmir issue is that a straight-forward question of class conflict has being given, through militancy, an exclusively anti–Centre and anti–India turn. Kashmiri society is perhaps the most elitist of all in India, with only a miniscule and privileged section keeping a stranglehold on the resources of the state.

It would not be an exaggeration to state that many in the Valley cannot afford to entertain even the wildest hopes of upward mobility. For example, in many a village of the Tangmarg, people drink irrigation water, while the education and medicare systems are in a shambles. But it is not uncommon to find middle–rung government engineers owning palatial houses. The government spent Rs 11 crore on the Winter Games ‘fiasco’ in Gulmarg, which adjoins water–starved Tangmarg.

The consequence over the years of such exploitation has been that a large section has little stake in the stability of Kashmiri society. If, as alleged, ISI agents offer a poor villager a lakh of rupees and a gun to direct his resentment against the Indian State, many with few hopes otherwise of emancipation from poverty are willing to take up the offer.

The starkest lesson the Kashmir problem holds for those interested in preserving India’s unity is the pressing need to ensure a people–oriented development. For too many years the Centre has turned a blind eye to how the Kashmiri elite ran its affairs. Central funds, in fact, became a means to buy the political loyalties of the elite.

The Farooq Abdullah regime cites militancy to secure funds from the Centre but blocks questions or inquiries on how these are disbursed. The National Conference claim of being the ‘only Indians in Kashmir’ is opportunistic and aimed at remaining entrenched in power. It is convenient, periodically, to raise a cry about the dangers of secessionism. The Kashmiri elite is in fact flourishing in a sanitised environment in Srinagar while catastrophic battles take place in the villages. It is they who are victims of violence by the security forces or militants.

Sections of the security forces, too, have developed vested interests in the prevailing anarchy. For many, peace would entail a return to guarding India’s borders in more inhospitable climes. Sections of the army, down to the junior–most rung, are quite drunk with the absolute power they enjoy, a level that not even senior army officers in Delhi would command.The brunt of the people’s resentment welling up from this whole scenario is directed against the security forces who wield their authority with harshness and are the direct oppressors. The resentment against security forces has struck roots far too deep in the psyche, blinding people to all other realities contributing to the starkness of their lives.

For example, the National Conference leaders often talk of ‘the army killing our people’ while obliterating their own record of how they and their ilk have literally sucked the blood of their own people. It must be admitted that the security forces have not helped their cause through sophisticated and targeted action, adopting instead a high–handed attitude of indiscriminately savaging the civil population. A three–day encounter in a south Kashmir village recently destroyed 70 houses and led to 11 deaths. Meanwhile, Srinagar itself continues to be inundated with new–model Maruti 800s. The army’s strength ensures a subdued level of anarchy and this suits the elite fine. The National Conference government’s lack of enthusiasm for any kind of talks stems from the fear that any settlement with the militants may lead to its downfall, given the mass alienation of the people from its style of governance.

Militarily, the Indian army has admitted that it has reached its threshold limit trying to contain militancy. The costs of fighting are heavy. A conservative estimate puts Indian security–related expenditure in Kashmir at Rs. 13,000 crore annually. One common complaint among army officers is that the allied government agencies are not manning services with efficiency, leaving the forces with even such tasks as building bridges, conducting medical camps and repairing roads. A solution to the problem now rests on political, administrative and economic measures, but these have been given little impetus.

Money is coming into the Valley not only from Pakistan but other countries supporting the separatist and the ‘Islamist’ cause. Even as the number of local Kashmiri militants declines, Pakistan finds little trouble in pushing in the foreign insurgents, who come from Afghanistan, Pakistan and even the odd Sudanese. Unlike Punjab, the borders of the Valley are virtually impossible to seal. And, as long as a Pakistan — driven by the vengeance accumulating from Partition, the wars of 1947, 1965 and 1971 that included the loss of East Pakistan — chooses to send in armed groups, violence remains a grim reality.

The latest apprehensions stem from the prospects of reduced levels of conflict in Afghanistan following the ongoing peace talks. Military–trained Afghans freed from the battle there, Indian intelligence sources feel, could be sent into Kashmir, with Taliban elements, partial to the “Pakistan cause” at the forefront. The Kashmiri people have little say in the matter now. It is ironic that a movement that started off for freedom has led to a situation where to day the people have the lowest level of rights and freedom.

(The writer is based in Srinagar)
 

The post Whose Kashmir is it anyway? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

First published on: May 1, 1998

The killing of innocent Hindus by Pakistan-trained mercenaries in J and K is one more bid to convert the Kashmiriyat issue into a Hindu-Muslim problem

Islamabad has finally cast its hat in the ring. On April 17 this year, the Federal information minister in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s cabinet, Mushahid Hussain, paid an official visit to the camp of the Lashkar–e–Taiba (“Army of the pure”, the armed wing of the Markaz-e-Da’watul Irshad) at Muridke, 30 kilometres from Lahore. He was accompanied by Punjab’s governor, Shahid Hamid, and other officials. This was the first ever public visit by a Pakistani government functionary to the camps of the Lashkar that was set up in 1987 with an avowed aim to mount insurgency operations in both Afghanistan and Kashmir.I.A. Rehman, director of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), also a core group member of the Pak–India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), was among those shocked by the visit. “I am amazed by the visit of the minister”, he told Communalism Combat in a telephonic interview. “What did he want to say? What was the political intent behind the call? If the intention of the visit was to say that Pakistan supports the religious element, the communal element impinging on the Kashmir conflict, it must be unequivocally condemned because it will boomerang most strongly on the Kashmiri people.”

Rehman adds that any attempt to deepen the communalisation of the struggle in Kashmir which was a 75–year–old struggle of all Kashmiris — Hindus and Muslims, and others — for political rights against a despotic Maharaja must be condemned. He recognises that it was the same communal elements who had forced the Kashmiri Pandits to get out of the valley in 1989–90. “If Kashmiri fighters begin to brandish the sword of this religion or that it is very wrong.”

Until this widely publicised visit of the Pakistan minister to the militant camp — which has been interpreted by a wide section of observers within Pakistan as in India and elsewhere, as open ideological support to the highly questionable activities of the Lashkar — Pakistan had limited itself to stating, in international fora that it is providing “political, moral and diplomatic support to the movement for freedom of the Kashmiri people.” Indian intelligence and other independent reports since 1989 have been pointing at the involvement of a section of the ISI in the insurgency in the Valley. The Pakistan government had stopped short, to date, of openly admitting monetary or arms support to the mercenaries acting in the name of Islam.

During his visit, Mushahid Hussain, it is reported by the Pakistani press, not only hailed the activities of the Markaz (centre for preaching) which trains and maintains the Lashkar–e–Taiba, but also said that the true concept of Islamic jehad (CC March 1998) was being promoted by the Markaz. This was reported by the Urdu daily, Khabren.

It was in the presence of Mushahid Hussain at the camp that the chief of the Markaz, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed spoke openly “about the liberation of Kashmir.” Very significantly, it was on the same night, April 17–18, that 29 persons were brutally massacred in Prankote village in Udhampur district in the upper reaches of the Jammu region —the focus of recent militant activity sponsored from across the border. Unlike in the case of the earlier massacre of Kashmiri Pandits at Wadhwana in the Valley on January 25—the killers have not yet been traced, nor the killings been “claimed” by any outfit — the Lashkar–e–Taiba has claimed “credit” for the butchery in Prankote.

The recent killings, coupled with six other selective attacks on Kashmiri Pandits and other Hindus residing in parts of the region since late 1996, are grim pointers to the most recent manipulation of the inherently nationalist Kashmiri struggle for self–determination to convert it into a crude Hindu–Muslim battle.“What the Pakistan government is doing is utterly wrong and must be condemned,” said Rochi Ram, senior advocate from Sind, Pakistan and a prominent member of the HRCP told CC. “The movement in Kashmir is nationalist, not religious, not Islamist but for Kashmiriyat. Kya aap samajhti hain ki yeh hamari siyasat smajh sakti hai? (Do you think that the Pakistani establishment can understand that?). We may not have mainline parties that are openly Islamic or fundamentalist. But what about the propaganda allowed by the state from the mosques five times a day? ”

More critically, the recent manoeuvres of the Pakistani state come close to sabre–rattling when seen in the context of a heightened militarist discourse on both sides of the border in recent months. The Prithvi vs. Ghauri Ghaznavi (the Pakistani President Tarar would like the next missile in the Pakistani stable to be named after Babar) missile–talk between New Delhi and Islamabad has swiftly replaced the hopes raised by the ‘Gujral doctrine’ last year. This bodes ill for peace in south Asia. And, given the fact that with Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad and Vajpayee in New Delhi, both countries are headed by hard–line parties and leaders who have used the communal card to gain or retain power, the signs are even more ominous.

“What kind of peace are we talking about?” asked India’s former foreign secretary, J.N. Dixit, while speaking to CC. “Peace which is a compromise to the acquisitive, territorial interests of Pakistan? That’s not peace, that’s appeasement. Or peace with honour?”
For half a century, both Islamabad and New Delhi have unashamedly used Jammu and Kashmir and its people for their narrow political gains. The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been treated by both the Indian and Pakistani states as the “unfinished task” of Partition.
Despite the terms of the accession agreement, the Hindu Maharaja of a Muslim–dominated princely state agreed to cast its lot with secular India. Maharaja Hari Singh himself was against this accession, had to give in to the feelings of his people who were vary of a Pakistan that was uncomfortable with a distinct Kashmiri identity.

Mohamad Ali Jinnah, uncomfortable with the individualist and distinct ethno–cultural nationalist Quit Kashmir movement from the valley had dubbed it “a movement of goondas”. Leave apart full autonomy and plebiscite, assured to the J and K under the instrument of accession, New Delhi has never even trusted and granted to the state and its local leadership with even basic democratic rights. Since 1989, this basic lack of trust has several times been compounded with state-sponsored brutality of the civilian population reaching condemnible proportions (see accompanying story).

“The recent visit of the Pakistan minister to the militant camp is only a confirmation of what they have been advocating more covertly,” Dixit added. In my mind, this also signifies a stepping up of manifest support to the separatist movement. This will lead to even further resistance by the Kashmiri people, in particular, and India, in general, to the designs of Pakistan.”

The Pakistani state’s interest in Kashmir dates back to independence and Partition. The decision of the people of Jammu and Kashmir to accede to secular India defied the foundations of the Pakistan state based on a two–nation theory. Therefore, Pakistan has gone about its business in the region, sponsoring insurgency and violence. But what is far, far more questionable, is the attempt to impose a regimental Wahabi version of Islam on a Valley renowned for its Rishism (Sufism). Schools and madrasas run by the local Jamaat-e-Islami were rigorously used to attempt to transform the unique struggle for Kashmiriyat to visions of life under a Nizam-e-Mustafa (The Order of the Prophet).

The success of ‘Allah’s army’ has been severely limited by the culture and ethos of the region that has defied regimentation into the conventional “Muslim” and “Hindu” bracket. Even today, reactions of ordinary Kashmiris, Hindus and Muslims alike, defies this labelling. Reports of grieving Kashmiri Muslims over the massacres is the most potent proof of this.

Normal life in the Valley was paralysed when a general strike called by the All–Party Hurriyat Conference to protest the killings at Wandhama (KPs) in January proved to be a resounding success. A few days later, Ramzan Eid day, the ghastly massacre was condemned in mosques all over the Valley. Significant gestures by Kashmiri nationalist leaders like Yasin Mallick and Shabbir Ahmed Shah — visiting the sites of the massacres, attending the last rites — have been appreciated by the Jammu-based Kashmiri Pandit community.“Across the board, all persons have condemned the Wandhama and Prankote massacres,” said Yasin Mallick while speaking to CC. Formerly a general of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front( JKLF), he is today is one of the members of the All–Party Hurriyat Conference. “We have demanded that an international agency like Amnesty International be allowed to examine who was responsible for the killings. In our mind, it suits the Indian state as well to communalise the issue. Why was Amnesty refused permission? Why is the Indian government afraid of the truth getting out?”

 Schools and madrasas run by the local Jamaat-e-Islami were rigorously used to attempt to transform the unique struggle for Kashmiriyat to visions of life under a Nizam-e-Mustafa

Rajya Sabha MP and a staunch defendant of the people’s rights, Kuldip Nayar, who has been associated over the years with the region has just returned to New Delhi after visiting Reasi and Wandhama.

“At the local level there is shock, anger and despair in the Muslim survivors. They were the ones who performed the last rites of the victims of Wandhama,” he told CC. “My impression is that militancy has been more or less defeated. Therefore, the ISI–sponsored part of the movement knows it cannot succeed unless it divides the movement communally.”

The gutting of the 600-year-old shrine of Charar-e-Sharief on the road to Yusmarg in the Valley in May 1995 was mourned deeply by the people of the valley. Who was responsible? Pan–Islamic militants callous to the culture of the Valley or the Indian state, equally indifferent to the Valley’s proud and distinctive Kashmiriyat ? Folklore in the Valley even after the loss of Charar–e–Sharif revolves around the stories and songs about the close relationship between Sheikh Noor Adam and a Shaivite woman, Rishi Laleshwari. Is it insignificant that another 14th century shrine, Khanqah at Tral, a small town 39 km south of Srinagar and one more living symbol of the composite, Sufi tradition of the Valley was destroyed by another mysterious fire on December 18, 1997?

Authorities allege that a short–circuit caused the fire. But the Hurriyat leaders blame the authorities saying that the shrine was “set to flames as part of a well–planned conspiracy to demolish the centuries’ old Kashmiri culture and spiritual values of the Valley.” This 700–year–old historic shrine was that of Hazrat Amir–e–Kabir Mir Syed Ali Hamdani in Tral. It housed a mace of the Shahi Ramdan who is considered the founder of Islam in Kashmir.In the midst of state callousness and connivance and militant bestiality, the real ray of hope, for Nayar, is that despite sustained provocation and brutalisation, the people have not allowed themselves to get divided. “No force has yet been able to distort the basic culture of Sufi Islam. I have still the soundest hope that the basic culture of Kashmir will assert itself.”

Admiral Ramdas, former chief of the Indian navy who is today vice president of the India chapter of the PIPFPD, agrees that the movement has got communalised but blames the Indian state for failing to address the political dimensions of the issue. “Communalisation, whether overt or covert is reprehensible and needs to be condemned. The reasons for the brutalisation of the state of Kashmir is not due to the presence of the troops, as much as due to the callous neglect by the Centre which has succeeded in creating a situation warranting deployment of troops,” admiral Ramdas told CC. “This situation has been fully exploited by the Pakistani government and its extended arm, the ISI.”

Nayar, who has recently donated the entire Rs. 1 crore available to his as a MP to widows and orphans of violence in Srinagar, strongly argues for a quick political end to the issue through a three–party negotiated settlement. He also points out that the Indian government, by its intransigent and problematic stances now and in the past, has also contributed to the communalisation of the movement.

An example is the pre–election rhetoric of the NC and the Centre of “return of Pandits to the valley connected to ‘normalcy’ returning”. “Why should we connect the two?” he asks. The Kashmiri wants his rights, not ‘normalcy’ but he also wants his sisters and brothers, the Kashmir Pandits, back. By linking the two, we are asking for too much: for the Kashmiri to give up his legitimate struggle for genuine autonomy!”

Nayar strongly feels that the government of India must honour its commitment under section 370 of the Constitution and go back to the state assembly with all the legislation extended by the Centre to the state, with all the laws implemented after 1952–’53 and leave it to them to decide which they want to keep or abrogate. “Personally, the issue of plebiscite I feel is a far gone one now, 50 years too old and one apt to be converted to a religious pin–pong between two sides. No one can really afford it.”
 

The post How Green is my Valley? appeared first on SabrangIndia.