On January 3, 1831, 176 years ago Savitribai Phule, arguably India’s first woman teacher and forgotten liberator was born. With the first school for girls from different castes that she set up in Bhidewada, Pune (the seat of Brahmanism) Krantijyoti Savitribai as she is reverentially known, by the Indian Bahujan movement, blazed a revolutionary trial. There have been consistent demands to observe January 3 as Teachers Day. Without her, Indian women would not have had the benefits of education.

To mark the memory of this remarkable woman we bring to you her letters to life partner Jyotiba. Jyotiba and Savitribai were Comrades in Arms in their struggle against the emancipation of India’s disenfranchised people.

Translated from the Original Marathi with an introduction Sunil Sardar Reproduced here are the English translation of three important Letters – (originally in Marathi and published in MG Mali’s edition of her collected works, Savitribai Phule Samagra Wangmaya) – that Savitribai wrote to her husband Jyotiba in a span of 20 years.

The letters are significant as they write of the wider concerns that drove this couple, the emancipation of the most deprived segments of society and the struggle to attain for them, full human dignity and freedom.

This vision for a new and liberated society – free from ignorance, bigotry, deprivation, and hunger – was the thread that bonded the couple, arching from the private to the personal.

Theirs was a relationship of deep and shared concerns, each providing strength to the other. When large sections of 19^th century Maharashtrian society was ranged against Phule’s reconstructive radicalism, it was the unfailing and shared vision and dedication of his life partner that needs have been emotionally sustaining.  In our tribute to this couple and the tradition of radical questioning that they harboured, we bring to our readers these letters.

1856. The first letter, written in 1856, speaks about the core issue: education and its transformative possibilities in a society where learning, had for centuries been the monopoly of the Brahmins; who, in turn, used this exclusive privilege to enclave, demoralize and oppress. Away at her parental home to recuperate from an illness, Savitri describes in the letter a conversation with her brother, who is uncomfortable with the couple’s radicalism.

October 1856
The Embodiment of Truth, My Lord Jyotiba,
Savitri salutes you!

After so many vicissitudes, now it seems my health has been fully restored. My brother worked so hard and nursed me so well through my sickness. His service and devotion shows how loving he really is! I will come to Pune as soon as I get perfectly well. Please do not worry about me. I know my absence causes Fatima so much trouble but I am sure she will understand and won’t grumble.

As we were talking one day, my brother said, “You and your husband have rightly been excommunicated because both of you serve the untouchables (Mahars and Mangs). The untouchables are fallen people and by helping them you are bringing a bad name to our family. That is why, I tell you to behave according to the customs of our caste and obey the dictates of the Brahmans.” Mother was so disturbed by this brash talk of my brother.

Though my brother is a good soul he is extremely narrow-minded and so he did not hesitate to bitterly criticize and reproach us. My mother did not reprimand him but tried instead to bring him to his senses, “God has given you a beautiful tongue but it is no good to misuse it so!” I defended our social work and tried to dispel his misgivings. I told him, “Brother, your mind is narrow, and the Brahmans’ teaching has made it worse. Animals like goats and cows are not untouchable for you, you lovingly touch them. You catch poisonous snakes on the day of the snake-festival and feed them milk. But you consider Mahars and Mangs, who are as human as you and I, untouchables. Can you give me any reason for this? When the Brahmans perform their religious duties in their holy clothes, they consider you also impure and untouchable, they are afraid that your touch will pollute them. They don’t treat you differently than the Mahars.” When my brother heard this, he turned red in the face, but then he asked me, “Why do you teach those Mahars and Mangs? People abuse you because you teach the untouchables. I cannot bear it when people abuse and create trouble for you for doing that. I cannot tolerate such insults.” I told him what the (teaching of) English had been doing for the people. I said, “The lack of learning is nothing but gross bestiality. It is through the acquisition of knowledge that (he) loses his lower status and achieves the higher one. My husband is a god-like man. He is beyond comparison in this world, nobody can equal him. He thinks the Untouchables must learn and attain freedom. He confronts the Brahmans and fights with them to ensure Teaching and Learning for the Untouchables because he believes that they are human beings like other and they should live as dignified humans. For this they must be educated. I also teach them for the same reason. What is wrong with that? Yes, we both teach girls, women, Mangs and Mahars. The Brahmans are upset because they believe this will create problems for them. That is why they oppose us and chant the mantra that it is against our religion. They revile and castigate us and poison the minds of even good people like you.

“You surely remember that the British Government had organised a function to honour my husband for his great work. His felicitation caused these vile people much heartburn. Let me tell you that my husband does not merely invoke God’s name and participate in pilgrimages like you. He is actually doing God’s own work. And I assist him in that. I enjoy doing this work. I get immeasurable joy by doing such service. Moreover, it also shows the heights and horizons to which a human being can reach out.”

Mother and brother were listening to me intently. My brother finally came around, repented for what he had said and asked for forgiveness. Mother said, “Savitri, your tongue must be speaking God’s own words. We are blessed by your words of wisdom.” Such appreciation from my mother and brother gladdened my heart. From this you can imagine that there are many idiots here, as in Pune, who poison people’s minds and spread canards against us. But why should we fear them and leave this noble cause that we have undertaken? It would be better to engage with the work instead. We shall overcome and success will be ours in the future. The future belongs to us.

What more could I write?

With humble regards,

Yours,

Savitri

The Poetess in Savitribai

The year 1854 was important as Savitribai published her collection of poems, called Kabya Phule (Poetry’s Blossoms).
Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (The Ocean of Pure Gems), another collection of what has come to be highly regarded in the world of Marathi poetry was published in 1891. (The Phules had developed a devastating critique of the Brahman interpretation of Marathi history in the ancient and medieval periods. He portrayed the Peshwa rulers, later overthrown by the British, as decadent and oppressive, and Savitribai reiterates those themes in her biography.)
Apart from these two collections, four of Jyotiba’s speeches on Indian History were edited for publication by Savitribai. A few of her own speeches were also published in 1892. Savitribai’s correspondence is also remarkable because they give us an insight into her own life and into the life and lived experiences of women of the time.

1868. The Second letter is about a great social taboo – a love affair between a Brahman boy and an Untouchable girl; the cruel behavior of the ‘enraged’ villagers and how Savitribai stepped in. This intervention saves the lives of the lovers and she sends them away to the safety and caring support of her husband, Jyotiba. With the malevolent reality of honour killings in the India of 2016 and the hate-driven propaganda around ‘love jehad’ this letter is ever so relevant today.

29 August 1868
Naigaon, Peta Khandala
Satara
The Embodiment of Truth, My Lord Jotiba,
Savitri salutes you!
I received your letter. We are fine here. I will come by the fifth of next month. Do not worry on this count. Meanwhile, a strange thing happened here. The story goes like this. One Ganesh, a Brahman, would go around villages, performing religious rites and telling people their fortunes. This was his bread and butter. Ganesh and a teenage girl named Sharja who is from the Mahar (untouchable) community fell in love. She was six months pregnant when people came to know about this affair. The enraged people caught them, and paraded them through the village, threatening to bump them off.

I came to know about their murderous plan. I rushed to the spot and scared them away, pointing out the grave consequences of killing the lovers under the British law. They changed their mind after listening to me.

Sadubhau angrily said that the wily Brahman boy and the untouchable girl should leave the village. Both the victims agreed to this. My intervention saved the couple who gratefully fell at my feet and started crying. Somehow I consoled and pacified them. Now I am sending both of them to you. What else to write?
Yours
Savitri

1877. The last letter, written in 1877, is a heart-rending account of a famine that devastated western Maharashtra. People and animals were dying. Savitri and other Satyashodhak volunteers were doing their best to help. The letter brings out an intrepid Savitri leading a team of dedicated Satyashodhaks striving to overcome a further exacerbation of the tragedy by moneylenders’ trying to benefit.  She meets the local District administration. The letter ends on a poignant note where Savitribai reiterates her total commitment to her the humanitarian work pioneered by the Phules.

20 April, 1877
Otur, Junner
The Embodiment of Truth, My Lord Jyotiba,
Savitri salutes you!
The year 1876 has gone, but the famine has not – it stays in most horrendous forms here. The people are dying. The animals are dying, falling on the ground. There is severe scarcity of food. No fodder for animals. The people are forced to leave their villages. Some are selling their children, their young girls, and leaving the villages. Rivers, brooks and tanks have completely dried up – no water to drink. Trees are dying – no leaves on trees. Barren land is cracked everywhere. The sun is scorching – blistering. The people crying for food and water are falling on the ground to die. Some are eating poisonous fruits, and drinking their own urine to quench their thirst. They cry for food and drink, and then they die.

Our Satyashodhak volunteers have formed committees to provide food and other life-saving material to the people in need. They have formed relief squads.
Brother Kondaj and his wife Umabai are taking good care of me. Otur’s Shastri, Ganapati Sakharan, Dumbare Patil, and others are planning to visit you. It would be better if you come from Satara to Otur and then go to Ahmednagar.

You may remember R.B. Krishnaji Pant and Laxman Shastri. They travelled with me to the affected area and gave some monetary help to the victims.

The moneylenders are viciously exploiting the situation. Bad things are taking place as a result of this famine. Riots are breaking out. The Collector heard of this and came to ease the situation. He deployed the white police officers, and tried to bring the situation under control. Fifty Satyasholdhaks were rounded up. The Collector invited me for a talk. I asked the Collector why the good volunteers had been framed with false charges and arrested without any rhyme or reason. I asked him to release them immediately. The Collector was quite decent and unbiased. He shouted at the white soldiers, “Do the Patil farmers rob? Set them free.” The Collector was moved by the people’s plights. He immediately sent four bullock cartloads of (jowar) food.

You have started the benevolent and welfare work for the poor and the needy. I also want to carry my share of the responsibility. I assure you I will always help you. I wish the godly work will be helped by more people.

I do not want to write more.
Yours,
Savitri

(These letters have been excerpted with grateful thanks from A Forgotten Liberator, The Life and Struggle of Savitrabai Phule, Edited by Braj Ranjan Mani, Pamela Sardar)

Bibliography:

Krantijyoti : Revolutionary flame
Brahmans: Priestly “upper” caste with a powerful hold on all fairs of society and state including access to education, resources and mobility (spelt interchangeably as Brahmins)
Mahars:The Mahar is an Indian Caste, found largely in the state of Maharashtra, where they compromise 10% of the population, and neighboring areas. Most of the Mahar community followed social reformer B. R. Ambedkar in converting to Buddhism in the middle of the 20th century.
Mangs: The Mang (or Matang -Minimadig in Gujarat and Rajasthan) community is an Indian caste historically associated with low-status or ritually impure professions such as village musicians, cattle castraters, leather curers, midwives, hangmen, undertakers. Today they are listed as a Scheduled Castes a term which has replaced the former the derogatory ‘Untouchable’
Satyashodhak Samaj:  A society established by Jyotirao Phule on September 24, 1873. This was started as a group whose main aim was to liberate the shudra and untouchable castes from exploitation and oppression
Shudra: The fourth caste under the rigid caste Hindu system; these were further made more rigid in the Manu Smruti
Ati Shudra: Most of the groups listed under this category come under the untouchables who were used for the most venal tasks in caste ridden Hindu society but not treated as part of the caste system.
Jowar: The Indian name for sorghum

How the Education for girls was pioneered

The Phule couple decided to start schools for girls, especially from the shudra and atishudra castes but also including others so that social cohesion of sorts could be attempted in the classroom. Bhidewada in Pune was the chosen site, a bank stands there today. There is a movement among Bahujans to reclaim this historic building. When the Phules faced stiff resistance and a boycott, a Pune-based businessman Usman Shaikh gave them shelter. Fatima Shaikh Usman’s sister was the first teacher colleague of Savitribai and the two trained teachers who ran the school. The school started with nine girl students in 1848.

Sadashiv Govande contributed books from Ahmednagar. It functioned for about six months and then had to be closed down. Another building was found and the school reopened a few months later. The young couple faced severe opposition from almost all sections. Savitribai was subject to intense harassment everyday as she walked to school. Stones, mud and dirt were flung at her as she passed. She was often abused by groups of men with orthodox beliefs who opposed the education for women. Filth including cow dung was flung on her. Phule gave her hope, love and encouragement. She went to school wearing an old sari, and carried an extra sari with her to change into after she reached the school. The sheer daring and doggedness of the couple and their comrades in arms broke the resistance. Finally, the pressure on her eased when she was compelled to slap one of her tormentors on the street!

Once the caste Hindu Brahmanical hierarchy who were the main opponents of female education realized that the Phule couple would not easily give in, they arm-twisted Jyotiba’s father. Intense pressure was brought by the Brahmins on Phule’s father, Govindrao, to convince him that his son was on the wrong track, that what he was doing was against the Dharma. Finally, things came to a head when Phule’s father told him to leave home in 1849. Savitri preferred to stay by her husband’s side, braving the opposition and difficulties, and encouraging Phule to continue their educational work.

However, their pioneering move had won some support. Necessities like books were supplied through well wishers; a bigger house, owned by a Muslim, was found for a second school which was started in 1851. Moro Vithal Walvekar and Deorao Thosar assisted the school. Major Candy, an educationalist of Pune, sent books. Jyotirao worked here without any salary and later Savitribai was put in charge. The school committee, in a report, noted, “The state of the school funds has compelled the committee to appoint teachers on small salaries, who soon give up when they find better appointment…Savitribai, the school headmistress, has nobly volunteered to devote herself to the improvement of female education without remuneration. We hope that as knowledge advances, the people of this country will be awakened to the advantages of female education and will cordially assist in all such plans calculated to improve the conditions of those girls.”

On November 16, 1852, the education department of the government organised a public felicitation of the Phule couple, where they were honoured with shawls.
On February 12, 1853, the school was publicly examined. The report of the event state: “The prejudice against teaching girls to read and write began to give way…the good conduct and honesty of the peons in conveying the girls to and from school and parental treatment and indulgent attention of the teachers made the girls love the schools and literally run to them with alacrity and joy.”

A Dalit student of Savitribai, Muktabai, wrote a remarkable essay which was published in the paper Dyanodaya, in the year 1855. In her essay, Muktabai poignantly describes the wretchedness of the so-called untouchables and severely criticizes the Brahmanical religion for degrading and dehumanizing her people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(As told to Teesta Setalvad.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches

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

The post Who is afraid of the writings of Babasaheb Ambedkar? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Artists & Intellectuals must appeal to the Good: Joy Sengupta, theatre-film actor appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Rohith (right) carrying a poster of Ambedkar along with other belongings, after his suspension

Rohith Vemula will live on

Anguished and shocked at Rohith’s death, expelled students vow to continue the protest with support of others

Nationwide protests will take place following the suicide by Vemula Rohith, a Dalit student at the university of Hyderabad (UoH) on the evening of Sunday, January 17. The first protest, spontaneous and angry, took place at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) late night, about 9.30 p.m. on Sunday January 17, 2016 itself. Vemula Rohith left a poignant suicide note before he took his life by hanging himself in the room of a colleague-friend in Hyderabad.

The next protest will take place outside the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and its minister, Smriti Irani at 2 p.m. on Monday January 18. Irani had, according to protesting students and a letter written by a ruling party Member of Parliament (MP)—see https://www.sabrangindia.in/article/we-shall-not-be-silenced-protest-against-expulsion-dalit-research-scholars — obviously interfered in the matter of unlawful suspension of five PHD students and in protecting the student saffron wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

The students belonging to the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) of which Rohith Vemula was an active part, had been furthering a debate on issues related to social justice, including communalism, ensuring that they get effectively flagged on the campus. Irani’s alleged interference can be traced to a letter written by none less than Bandaru Dattatreya , Secunderabad BJP MP and Minister of State for Labour and Employment, to the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) dubbing ASA “casteist, extremist and anti-national”. The communication demanded that the “dynamic leadership” of Smriti Irani, Minister of Human Resources and Development, bring about a “change for the better” in the institution. The ‘change for the better’ in ideological terms (for the Sangh Parivar) meant overruling an earlier decision of former Vice Chancellor of the University RB Sharna who revoked an earlier suspension of the same students after the decision was found to be not in accordance with the decision taken by the Proctorial Board of the UoH (August-September 2015). Sharma soon retired after which the newly appointed and more politically compliant, Appa Rao ‘fell in line’ with Dattarayera’s communication and Irani’s interventions.

Anguished at the loss of life of one of their own, one of the five PHD students unlawfully suspended, students from the ASA and other students organizations including the Students Federation of India (SFI) told Sabrangindia that though deeply disturbed there is a steely determination among the students that the late night, sleep out protest will continue.

Vemula Rohith, was one of the five PHD students who had been expelled had been successfully protesting the high-handedness of the authorities, sleeping out in the open since the night of January 4, 2016, when the doors to their rooms were illegally locked though they had been quietly studying in their rooms following the suspension. Sabrangindia had carried a story on the protest on January 12. His colleagues were in a day-long meeting and it appears that Rohith Vemula hanged himself in another room of his friend-colleague on Sunday evening. The 28-year-old, hailing from Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, was a Ph.D second year student. His letter tells a poignant tale
 

“Good morning, 
 I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write. 

I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt. 
The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living. 
I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense. 

May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past. 

I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this. 

People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds. 

If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that. 
 Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive. 

 “From shadows to the stars.” 

 Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing. 
 
To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future. 

For one last time, Jai Bheem 

I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself. 

No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act. 

This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this. 

Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone. “

A Hindi translation of the note left by Rohith Vemula can be seen here
 
It is a battle for freedom of expression. The Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) decided to screen Muzaffarnagar Baqi Hai on campus last year (2015). The ABVP tried, unsuccessfully, to disrupt the screening. The saffron outfit began abusing students affiliated to the ASA on facebook and social media. Widespread protests by all students at this hate-mongering forced the student to submit a written apology. However, local BJP and RSS supporters joined with ABVP to force the VC to expel the ASA leaders on fabricated charges, although, a committee appointed by the VC had already given a favourable report finding no fault in the ASA or the students affiliated to it.

The persuasion in this communication appears to have worked. The Vice Chancellor buckled under pressure and without looking into the background of the case or even hearing the students, expelled them.

This expulsion from the hostel of five Dalit student leaders of the Ambedkar Students Association(ASA) at the Hyderabad Central University is illustrative of the manner in which politico-ideological considerations and governmental authority are being abused with impunity to suppress all points of view other than the self professed ‘nationalism’ of the Hindutva  brigade. Another reason for the expulsion was the claim that they had opposed the death sentence to Yakub Memon!

Several students groups from the university have also launched a legal battle. They have challenged the University of Hyderabad (UoH)’s decision to expel five Dalit scholars for allegedly attacking a student and a member of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).  Seeking justice, the suspended students, on December 18, filed a writ petition in the Hyderabad High Court. This development has come in the wake of university issuing orders, banning the Dalit scholars from hostels, barring their entry into common places in groups, administration building and disallowing their participation in students union elections as a punishment.

The unique sleep out research protest of the research scholars is backed by 10 student outfits on campus. Student supporters have been gathering singing slogans and participating in the seep out protests. All of us all over India most now organise protests and sleep out protests against the highhanded intolerance and authoritarianism of the present government.  The death of Rohith Vemula must not go in vain. 

The post A letter that should shake our world: Dalit scholar suicide triggers outrage appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Salim Shaikh
 
Jamalpur ke patang
Bareilly ya Surat ki dori
Aur ban gayee patang ki jodi*
 
Umarbhai (Mohammad Umar Mohammad Hanif Shaikh) has been in the business of kite making for 40 years.  For 16 years as a mazdoor  (labourer) and since 1990 as a manufacturer. His father worked in Ahmedabad’s textile mills. From the April of every year until the early hours of January 14, Uttarayan, Gujarat’s premier festival he makes and sells as many as 15 lakh kites. He is the manufacturer getting the painstaking work of crafting kites from households of women in Jamalpur, Kalupur and adjoining localities of Ahmedabad. Craftswomen are all Muslim as are 98 per cent of the manufacturers. The raw material, fine kagaz (paper) and kamaan (stick frames) come from wholesale dealers from Kolkatta. The mota kagaz (thicker paper) comes from the markets of Delhi. Only five per cent of the manufacturing of kites in Gujarat from Nadiad and Khabhat is with Hindus.
 
It is a small manufacturing hub with two of his ‘worker karigars’ and the genius of Mustufabhai, the design wiz who spins out the latest fantasies that fly in the sky. This year the motifs are from Bolllywood’s Bajranji Bhaijaan and South Indian cinema’s Bahubali which commandeer the popular imagination…’I love Taj (Mahal), Sallu Bhaijaan (Salman Khan) are also other popular slogans on kites. Narendra Modi’s popularity though not as high as before, has not dropped from the skies, entirely. “Allah ke karam se hamaare Mustufabhai ke design bahut chalti hai,” Umarbhai told us. (By the grace of the Almighty Allah, Mustifabhai’s designs really work).
 
Enter the kite markets of Ahmedabad’s Jamalpur on the nights of January 12 and 13 and the area is abuzz with late night dealings. Bright lights greet us. ‘Aftabbhai Patangwaala’  is just one of the brightly lit signs. Over 500 small and large manufacturers make up the hub here.  Here are some of the names of the famous kite designers and manufacturers:  Kudratullah Amanullah Pathan of Shahin Kites, Abdul Vahidkhan Pathan of Kanij Patang Centre, Aiyubkhan Hafizkhan Pathan of Shadab Kites, Yusuf Mohammedhanif Rangrej of BS Patang Makers and Rajubhai Hafizbhai Patangwala of Gujarat Kites.

Image: Salim Shaikh

Often some of the family businesses actually involved in the crafting are mobile,  also traveling to other parts. The annual schedule goes like this: In Gujarat, kites and manja (strong) are made  from August to January. Immediately after Uttarayan, some families move to UP, where they start with the same work for Ganga Dusshera festival which falls in June-end.” Once done with the ten-day Ganga Dusshera festival, the same group can moves to Delhi for two months (July-August), as kite flying is observed in Delhi on August 15 every year. While these families work hard, the returns are minimal. “During the eight months of work in Gujarat, the gross earnings reach Rs1 lakh, against a gross expenditure around Rs 40,000,” disclosed another manufacturer, who makes and sells kites in Kalupur. This implies an approximate income of about Rs 7,500 per month, on which the entire family depends. Each member of the family specialises in different activities. “Kite-making is laborious and cannot be done by machine. While my brother is quick in cutting paper/plastic, I do the work of sticking the thin sticks on it and my brother ties the tail to it. This way, we make around 1,000-1,500 kites in a day,” says another resident of the Jamalpur area.
 
The economics works something like this. Charges of the paper for one thousand kites is Rs 1,000 and labour charges approximate Rs 600 (per 1,000 kites).The break-up is elaborate but includes cutting of paper, threading on the kite, attaching the round/curved frame and final stick links, finishing etc. The rate at which the manufacturer sells to the wholesaler is between Rs 2,000-2,500 per 1,000 kites after incurring a cost of Rs 1600 per thousand kites. The profit therefore is between forty paise to ninety paise per kite. A pittance for the actual skilled worksmith and manufacturer; higher for the stockist and retailer. A kite can sell at Rs four to five in retail markets depending on the size.

Gujarat unfortunately known for its intra-community divide drops this side of its identity when it comes to doing business. “In 1992 and again in 2002 when communal sentiments were at their height, for a few months relations are strained,” says Umarbhai. Then things return to the proverbial, businesslike normal.
 
While the kites of Rampur, Jaipur and Jodhpur are famously made from other materials, the kagaz ki kalaakaari (art of paper made kites that fly high and far) rests solely with the women and men, Muslims, of Ahmedabad. Manufacturers sell to the stockists (wholesalers) from all over Gujarat; Umarbhai’s stock goes as far as stockists in Nadiad, Kalol and nearby Kalupur: Kalaa hamare haath mein hai, Vyapaar unke haat mein. (The manufacturing is with us, the trade is in Hindu hands)
 
The months after Diwali (around October-November each year) and Uttarayan ( kite flying festival on the occasion of Makar Sakranti) are the busiest. Each home, depending on the capacity of the women members, makes as many as 4-10,000 kites and is paid per piece). Designs are carefully chosen and dished out. While the paper-cutting. Designing and pasting is a Gujarati skill, the dori rangna (colouring of the maanjha, the string that flies the kites) is a skill handled by kaarigars (skilled worksmiths) from Kolkatta. Though many of these are Muslims, some are not; they come and station themselves in Ahmedabad for the tricky and skilled task of mixing ground glass paste and colours that are then coated on the strong that flies the kites. The proportion of the mix is crucial: too much can sear fingers that fly the kites, and too little glass can make you fail the Uttarayan  test: flying the kite and cutting down the one of your opponent. The most famous doris are from Bareilly and Surat. The Bareilly dori is available in markets there. the dori worksmiths from Kolkatta come in to Gujarat. But the final product is pasted together in and around Ahmedabd’s Jamalpur. Before they are flown high up in the sky.

*The kites of Jamalpur
The string of Surat or Barreily
That makes up the right kite combination

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The new proposals announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will not resolve the deep-rooted problems faced by the Indian economy.

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In 2015, India was termed as the ‘shining star’ in the global economy by Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman, then Commerce and Industry Minister when India continued to grow at a fast pace while major economies facing a slowdown. One of the significant competitive advantages that India has is its cheap labour cost, which makes its products competitive in the exports market, and Child labour is a significant contributor to the reduced labour costs. This statement might seem far-fetched at first, but the historical data tells a different story.

Child labour constituted 13% of the workforce in India as per the 2001 Census. While child labour is a widespread phenomenon in India, it is not understood correctly. Quite a few people are not sure about the legal age to work in India, while some believe that child labour is limited to the employment of children in hazardous occupations like mining etc. International Labour Organization defines it as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.” It includes work that impedes with the opportunity to attend the school or forces them to leave it prematurely.

Current Situation

According to the 2011 Census, 10.1 million children between the age of 5 to 14 years were engaged in child labour, and around 45% of them were girls. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar region alone have more than 3 million child labourers, and a significant portion of these children works in the hazardous hand-knotted carpet industry where, in the past, NGOs have reported cases of children being beaten by metal rods, burnt with branding irons and hanged from top of trees to discourage them from running. Both the central and the state governments have turned a blind eye to the situation as this carpet belt constitutes around 80% of Indian carpet exports.

Factors leading to Child Labour

There are deep-rooted problems in our society which are contributing to child labour. Poverty and illiteracy of parents are the major factors leading to child labour. They are also responsible for other problems such as lack of awareness about the harmful effects of child labour and inaccessibility to quality education, which compounds the problem even further. There are other issues as well like family indebtedness, which pushes a child into bonded labour.

Past Initiatives

Over the past two decades, several programmes and initiatives, such as calls for the boycott of goods involving child labour and introduction of social certification of products as child laboor free, are seen as potential weapons against the use of child labour. In the past, we had seen consumer boycotts across the globe, from the Swadeshi movement in India to boycotting products manufactured by slave labour in the United States. These movements were reasonably successful in creating awareness among the general masses.

Even in the recent past, boycotting campaigns by several NGOs against multinational companies regarding the working conditions of labourers employed by their suppliers have put pressure on these MNCs to take a step to improve the situation of these workers. When it comes to child labour, these practices have been ineffective and might aggravate the problem rather than mitigating it in certain circumstances. These are the possible drawbacks of these initiatives:
 

• When we boycott particular products, we are decreasing the demand for labour in that industry while the supply of labourers remains constant, which pushes the wages of adults down or worse, creates unemployment. This makes the condition of low-income families worse, forcing the children in these families to seek employment and thus increasing child labour in the long term.
• Consumer boycotts make the child labour undesirable or, at least it intends to, which leads to a drop in wages of children. In a country like India, where 22% of the population is below the poverty line, the income from a child’s work might be vital for the survival of most impoverished of the families. Thus, it might force these families to increase the number of children they send to work, which would lead to an increase in child labour.
• The pressure from the consumers to boycott the products might lead to the elimination of children from companies. These children might join other sectors to maintain the family income, which is more dangerous or less well paid. We witnessed a similar situation when Maharashtra government’s ban on dance bars pushed some bar dancers into prostitution due to lack of other employment options.
• These methods are ineffective against child labour in the informal sector, which we see in places like houses, shops and cafes etc. This is evident from the fact that child labourers had increased in urban India from 1.3 million in 2001 to 2 million in 2011.

Way Forward

The initiatives like boycotting of products are more of a band-aid solution to a problem which is deep-rooted in our society. We need some fundamental changes to make a difference on the ground level. It is a human rights issue because of which the children are deprived of the dignity they deserve and are not able to realize their full potential and to combat this issue we need the government to play a more pro-active role. India needs to adopt a uniform minimum age for employment of children, which is denied under the pretence of constitutional constraints. Other social institutions like NGOs should play the role of a watchdog in the process.

The provision of programmes for subsidies, like income-generating programmes, is required to pull these children out of the vicious cycle of poverty, illiteracy and child labour. We need effective policies from the government so that we will be able to provide improved schooling to the children from less fortunate backgrounds. Provision for food, cash stipends, cloths and skill development programmes should be adopted to encourage children to join schools.

We need better implementation of the policies that are already in place to make education truly accessible and affordable for everyone which can get children away from the exploitative workplaces to an environment which is conducive to their physical and mental development. The changes in economic policies should be augmented with overall social change in the attitude of general masses towards child labour and the spread of education, and only then we will be able to curtail the exploitation of young children.

References
 

• Child Labour | UNICEF. (2019). Retrieved 17 July 2019, from http://unicef.in/whatwedo/21/child-labour
• Caesar-Leo, M. (1999). Child labour: the most visible type of child abuse and neglect in India. Child Abuse Review, 8(2), 75-86. doi: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0852(199903/04)8:2<75::aid-car508>3.0.co;2-a
• What is child labour (IPEC). (2019). Retrieved 17 July 2019, from https://www.ilo.org/ipec/facts/lang–en/index.htm
• India a ‘shining star’ in global economy: Nirmala Sitharaman. (2019). Retrieved 17 July 2019, from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/foreign-trade/india-a-shining-star-in-global-economy-nirmala-sitharaman/articleshow/49051164.cms?from=mdr
• Ballet, J., Bhukuth, A., & Carimentrand, A. (2011). Child Labour and Responsible Consumers. Business & Society, 53(1), 71-104. doi: 10.1177/0007650311416070
• Zislis, E., Defense, C., & Walia, A. (2019). The Truth About Our Clothes & Where They Come From – What You Will Find In A Typical Western Home. Retrieved 17 July 2019, from https://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/02/08/the-truth-about-our-clothes-where-they-come-from-what-you-will-find-in-a-typical-western-home/

Courtesy: Counter View

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A woman is sometimes denied education just because there are no proper toilets in schools. She’s killed for making choices of her own.

Yet as a woman, the last five years have probably been more nightmarish than all the rest of my years of existence put together. For I see an eight year old Asifa raped and killed. I see her rapists defended by those in power. I have had leaders from the ruling party tell me to bear five children to protect Hinduism. I have had the ruling party’s women leaders tell me not to demand equality in all aspects. I have had someone preach to me about how rape can be “sometimes right and sometimes wrong” – and another one babbling about how rapes only happen in India, not Bharat. Probably because, in Bharat women are not allowed to step out of their homes and are advised to suffer marital violence silently – as a “woman of virtue” would.

From Surat to Muzaffarnagar, I have seen women bear the brunt of sexual violence, which is basically an ugly exercise of power over the defenceless.

It makes me sick to the stomach, to realise that I am living the horror of violence becoming normalised. Over the last five years, many have shed even the pretence of protesting against sexual assault. If a woman is raped, they say she “asked for it by staying out late or being dressed inappropriately”. If she is killed by her own family, they say she committed the mistake of “disrespecting” them.

While every government up until now has failed women one way or another, the ruling dispensation is ideologically predisposed to patriarchy. They deeply believe in the regressive idea of patriarchy and the Indian woman’s need to submit to it. If elected in 2019, they will perhaps cement the idea at all levels.

Under the current government which came to power in 2014, my battles became tougher. In 2019, I might lose them all together.

As I begin to write about why women should exercise their choice better in 2019, two women dominate my thoughts. Both of them would have been first time voters this poll season and both were killed by institutionalised forms of violence. S Anitha, a Dalit girl from Kuzhumur in Tamil Nadu, killed herself on September 1, 2017 after failing to pass NEET, despite having done exceptionally well in other exams. J Snowlin was killed by the police on May 22, 2018 in Thoothukudi along with twelve others – all of them protesting against the expansion of Sterlite Copper in their district.

To those women, this country owes a change.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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