SACW | 26 Jan 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire   | 26 Jan.,  2005
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Pakistan: The great bakra genocide (Shakir Husain)
[2] The Dream of 'An Asian Century' - India's prosaic reality (Praful Bidwai)
[3] India: Farewell to Arms - Don't equate 
national strength with military might (edit., 
Times of India)
[4] India: Manufacturing Consent: How Thought 
Police States Are Created (Ashis Nandy)
[5] Calamity and Prejudice ! - The Long Forgotten 
Battle Against Untouchability (Subhash Gatade)
[6] India: Dark Clouds: A new govt order to 
scatter Tsunami survivors in Tamil Nadu (Babu 
Mathew)


--------------

[1]


The News International
January 26, 2005

THE GREAT BAKRA GENOCIDE

Shakir Husain

According to a press release by the Punjab 
Government one million "animals" were slaughtered 
in Lahore over Bakra Eid and 20,000 tons of 
animal waste was picked up by the city's 
sanitation workers. No such numbers are available 
for Karachi yet but given the fact that Karachi's 
population is double that of Lahore, it would be 
safe to assume that two million animals were 
butchered here.

This Eid low-end bakras started at 5,000 rupees a 
piece with "high-end" ones going for around 
10,000; and if you were in the market for 
imported ones then the sky was the limit. Placing 
the average at about Rs 6,000 per animal, a 
whopping USD 305 million was spent in Karachi and 
Lahore on the sacrifice of "animals"! This number 
can go upwards but not downwards given that we're 
using the placid bakra as our benchmark. If we 
count the rest of Pakistan, including Islamabad, 
Peshawar, Quetta, Faisalabad, and Sialkot to name 
a few other cities, this number can easily hit 
USD 500 million! Ladies and gentlemen, that is 
half a billion dollars, or to put it in 
perspective one third of Pakistan's defence 
budget.

Let's ask ourselves what the killing of these 
animals is really all about? Is it about 
sacrifice? Is it about tradition? Or has it 
become about showing off how much money you have 
and keeping up with the 'Khans'? It all boils 
down to a game of "mine is bigger than yours". In 
Karachi I have seen houses where for weeks before 
Eid the poor animals are placed outside the gates 
with spotlights on them so that everyone passing 
by could see the "decorations" that were about to 
be sacrificed. In the same vein, a new trend of 
sacrificing imported goats and cows from 
Australia and New Zealand is in vogue - starting 
at about a lac and then upwards these gora 
janwars are shipped to Pakistan to die an 
undignified death.

To truly understand the concept of sacrifice as 
it is supposed to exist in Islam, one should look 
at the era of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). At the 
advent of Islam, Arabia was a nomadic society 
where wealth was principally measured by the 
number of camels and goats one possessed. By that 
logic if someone sacrificed one camel out of ten, 
then effectively they had just sacrificed one 
tenth of their wealth to feed the poor. Today in 
the 21st century our principal measure of wealth 
is not goats and camels, but our bank balances 
(both onshore and offshore), the number of plots 
owned, and the number of cars parked in our 
garages. But we don't really see the 
"sacrificial" lot go donating one of their 
Mercedes for the welfare of the poor nor do we 
see long lines of people donating their plots so 
that schools or hospitals can be made.

Eid in Pakistan is becoming more and more bizarre 
by the year if anyone has noticed. This Eid in 
the Sohrab Goth Bakra Mandi larger vendors were 
accepting credit cards and people were actually 
happily swiping away to acquire their "janwars"! 
I wonder how they felt about paying interest on 
an animal that was going to be sacrificed for 
religious purposes? One vendor was trying to sell 
a white goat with a black Allah painted on its 
side for one lac, and swearing on everything that 
it was completely natural! I'm sure some sucker 
bought it by the end of the day. I don't see the 
MMA raising a hue and cry over such blasphemy. 
But such are the travesties of life in the land 
of the pure.

Thankfully I spent Eid day at a friends' farm in 
the interior of Sindh, and luckily those in rural 
Pakistan are much more civilized than their urban 
cousins as there was no bloodshed, no sounds of 
bleating sheep and goats the night before; they 
were all very matter of fact. Maybe this has to 
do with the fact that no one is engaged in trying 
to show each other up and maybe it's because no 
one can afford to pay 5,000 rupees for a bakra. 
Whatever the cause, all I know is that they don't 
share the concept of "my bakra is better than 
your bakra" that city folks seem to have caught 
onto.

At the end of the day Pakistan probably should 
enter the Guinness Book of World Records in an 
extraordinary image building PR exercise. We 
probably qualify for the country where the most 
number of bakras are killed in a 24-hour period. 
And while I love red meat, the sheer scale of the 
Eid slaughters, the blood on the streets, and the 
scale of the money wasted turns me into a 
vegetarian for a few days. Who says we're a poor 
country especially when we have half a billion to 
burn on meat!



______


[2]


The Praful Bidwai Column                              
January 24, 2005

THE DREAM OF 'AN ASIAN CENTURY'
India's prosaic reality

By Praful Bidwai

As we celebrate India's fiftyfifth Republic Day, 
we should take a dispassionate look at the 
country's achievements and failures. This is 
particularly necessary in view of the 
increasingly fashionable assertion that India is 
about to "arrive" as a Great Power and a leader 
of the coming "Asian Century". The term is used 
in the same sense in which the Twentieth Century 
was called the American Century. Look at some 
euphoric predictions.

In October 2003, investment consultancy Goldman 
Sachs forecast that by 2040, BRICs (Brazil, 
Russia, India and China) will emerge as economies 
bigger than the US, Japan, Germany, France, UK 
and Italy collectively. Now, National Intelligence
Council, a CIA think-tank, predicts that by 2020, 
India and China will "transform the geopolitical 
landscape" with their robust economic growth and 
military capabilities. This has generated a 
gung-ho mood amongst many Indian policy-makers 
and -shapers.

Before looking at the future, it's necessary to 
summarise our past performance. This, by any 
standards, is modest, at best moderate. Over the 
past 55 years, India's real per capita GDP has 
annually grown by 2.1 percent-by no means a 
dramatic rate. Despite growth, India saw its 
share of world output and trade shrink-in the 
latter case, from 2 to 0.6 percent. Average 
life-expectancy improved more impressively, from 
38 years to 64 years. But this was attributable 
more to growing availability of modern medicines, 
especially vaccines, than to an across-the-board 
improvement in health and quality of life.

More than half our people still live in want and 
poverty, which prevents them from developing 
their basic human potential. India's literacy 
rate has improved from 18.3 percent to 65.4. Yet, 
there are more illiterate people in absolute 
numbers than India's entire population 55 years 
ago. India's food production has almost 
quadrupled. Yet, recent per capita availability 
has been less than 50 years ago and of the same 
level as during the World War years, during which 
the Bengal Famine occurred.

Half a century ago, India held out great 
promise-of reinventing itself as a modern, 
egalitarian society free from blind faith and 
particularly odious and crippling aspects of 
social hierarchy, such as caste oppression and 
discrimination against Dalits, women and 
religious-ethnic minorities. It still remains 
mired in rigid casteist hierarchies. Superstition 
and religious dogma are spreading. Anti-Dalit 
discrimination persists, as does ruthless 
exploitation of the labouring poor. Women's 
oppression remains pervasive and the minorities 
are menaced by militant Hindu-majoritarianism. A 
modern middle-class has burgeoned. But a majority 
of Indians remain in social bondage and economic 
servitude. In many aspects, today's India is more 
divided and unequal than 55 years ago, with some 
of the highest indicators of income and regional 
disparity anywhere.

India's greatest achievement is the stabilisation 
and energisation of its democracy, which has 
brought hundreds of millions of hitherto-excluded 
people into public life. No less important are 
our social movements, with their rich traditions 
of people's self-organisation, innovative protest 
and daring questioning of power. An important 
component of India's democracy is self-assertion 
by subaltern layers, especially Dalits and Other 
Backward Classes.

There is growing realisation that democracy must 
be open to the voiceless: the weak matter. The 
underprivileged Indian has time and again humbled 
the powerful by voting them out of power. In 
roughly three-fourths percent of all elections in 
three decades, ruling parties have lost to their 
opponents, who in turn are voted out in the next 
contest. Few Third World societies, and not many 
First World countries, match India's record as a 
democracy-despite its aberrations.

Over the last two decades, India's GDP growth has 
accelerated, to 5-to-6 percent a year-although 
its population growth eats into a third of this. 
This acceleration has created the delusion that a 
bright future awaits India despite its rulers' 
failure to address the basic wants of the people, 
like land reform, employment, food, shelter and 
drinking water. Eight percent GDP growth is the 
latest mantra to create a prosperous, "developed" 
India.

Assume for a moment that India does grow at 8 
percent. Even so, over the next 30 years, India's 
per capita income will only rise to about $5,100 
(from $ 460 in 2001). This is only a fraction of 
the US's current level of $34,280, Japan's 
$35,610, Western Europe's $20,670, Singapore's 
$21,500 or even South Korea's $9,460. A majority 
of Indians will still be poor.

In aggregate size, BRICs might overtake the 
developed economies-provided many optimistic 
assumptions materialise. But their people's 
incomes will still be far lower. There is a 1:20 
income-differential between China and the 
developed world. There's no way the China can 
make up the gap in a lifetime-even if it grows at 
a scorching 7 to 8 percent, and there are no 
ecological limits to such growth. The second 
assumption is dangerously mistaken. The earth's 
resources cannot support a Western consumption 
pattern for the whole globe. Indeed, even OECD 
countries must cut back on their consumption.

The NIC's latest report too is full of doubtful 
assumptions, including that the world economy in 
2020 will be about 80 percent larger than in 
2000, and per capita income 50 percent higher. 
This presumes that such growth is possible 
without catastrophic effects like global warming 
and that global petroleum consumption can grow at 
least as fast as GDP. (Expert opinion says global 
oil output has all but peaked.)

Even more dubious are the NIC's political 
conclusions: China and India's rise as Major 
Powers will be similar to the emergence of 
unified Germany at the end of the 18th century, 
or the US a century ago; and second, with Brazil 
and Indonesia, China and India will "render 
obsolete the old categories of East and West, 
North and South, aligned and nonaligned, 
developed and developing". Germany's rise 
coincided with the colonial epoch in which Europe 
dominated the world more completely than any 
group of Powers does today. Similarly, the US's 
ascendancy preceded the First World War and 
Europe's ruin. That condition is missing. A 
century ago, today's developed countries followed 
growth-paths of their choice, including 
protection of industry, not to speak of colonial 
plunder.  

The second proposition is downright preposterous. 
The average North-South income differential has 
tripled over the past 50 years. Today, the 
world's 500 richest billionaires have more wealth 
than the total annual earnings of 3 billion, or 
half the global population. The top 200 
multinational corporations control more money 
than all the world's countries together barring 
nine. It's also hard to see how India and China 
will become the world's technology leaders. Most 
indicators, including the general state of their 
science, education, number of patents held, and 
IT capabilities, don't support such rosy 
assumptions.

We need a more sober view of India's (and 
China's) likely future than the NIC's analysis 
along the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, 
opportunities and threats) model. This model is 
meant to help the White House prepare for 
"probably challenges" and "to extend its 
advantages, particularly in shaping a new 
international orderŠ" But we should know better: 
India will emerge as a major global player only 
if it manages its social and political problems 
wisely and gives its people a stake and share in 
growth.

We must remember the larger reality relevant to 
people. High GDP does not mean a better life or 
more jobs for them. India's 5-to-6 percent growth 
is not producing enough jobs. The 
organised-sector workforce has actually shrunk 
during each of the past five years. It shed 4.2 
lakh jobs in 2001-02, and now accounts for a mere 
7 percent of total employment. Today, it has 9.1 
lakh fewer jobs than in 1997.

The fall hasn't been made up by the informal 
sector, in which employment has annually risen by 
just 1 percent over the past decade. The 
population growth rate is almost double this. 
Over one-and-a-half decades, overall employment 
growth in India has decreased from 2.7 percent 
annually to just 1.1 percent. In the past, an 
additional output of 10 percent meant 6.8 percent 
more jobs. Today, it means only 1.6 new jobs-a 
shocking 76 percent decrease!

Just over a year ago, we witnessed a terrible 
spectacle. Indian Railways held recruitment tests 
for Category-D employees. There were a 
mind-boggling 55 lakh valid applicants for a mere 
20,000 positions of khalasis/gangmen, the meanest 
of all Railway jobs-a ratio of 275 candidates per 
job. The competition was so fierce that 
candidates physically prevented "rivals" from 
other states from reaching examination halls. 
Over 50 people died in the orgy of violence in 
Maharashtra, Bihar and Assam.

That's not the kind of growth we want. That model 
spells unspeakable social regression. This is 
precisely the kind of cesspool of inequalities, 
disparities and discontent in which extreme 
Rightwing politics thrives. Nazism and Fascism 
couldn't have triumphed in Europe without the 
havoc wrought by the Great Depression.

This Republic Day is a good occasion to dedicate 
ourselves to a basic task: meeting elementary 
needs of all Indians, and build a compassionate, 
inclusive society in which citizens' welfare 
counts more than Reasons of State. Only such an 
India can serve as a world model.-end-



______

[3]

The Times of India
January 26, 2005 | Editorial

FAREWELL TO ARMS
DON'T EQUATE NATIONAL STRENGTH WITH MILITARY MIGHT

Over the years, Republic Day has been reduced to 
a meaningless display of state might. We are 
supposed to celebrate our democracy by swaying to 
the beat of jackboots and the whirr of tanks. It 
is time we defined nationhood in more civilised 
terms. Plainly put, it is indefensible that we 
spend over Rs 70,000 crore on defence when 350 
million people - or our total population at the 
time of Independence - still go hungry. A 
government that claims to have come to power on a 
pro-poor mandate must effect a major transfer of 
resources from defence to development. Reports 
that the government is planning to bridge the gap 
between the two, by effecting a major hike in the 
allocation for rural development, are heartening. 
To begin with, even a 25% cut in defence spending 
would act as a trendsetter in budget-making. The 
argument that higher allocations towards the 
creation of rural assets and social security 
would be nullified by corruption in the system 
does not carry conviction. The state, as a matter 
of principle, should provide for the health, 
education and livelihood of its people. As 
Amartya Sen says, growth statistics sound hollow 
when even one person goes hungry. It is not for 
nothing that the UN Human Development Report 
ranks India at 127, even as it is one of the 
fastest growing economies and largest armies in 
the world. How can one justify defence spending 
that amounts to nearly a fifth of total 
government expenditure?

We are one of the largest purchasers of armaments 
in the world, our present craving for weaponry 
surpassing our appetite during the Cold War 
years. India's defence expenditure has increased 
by seven times since 1990-91, even as it remains 
by far the biggest military power in South Asia. 
Pakistan's capabilities cannot ever match ours 
because it lacks the resources, both human and 
financial. We need not stock up stuff against 
China when we cannot take them on, anyway. So, 
why the arms fetish? It is clear that a nexus of 
weapon dealers, politicians and strategic affairs 
intellectuals virtually
determines the nature of the budget, and by 
implication our social and economic development. 
Expenditures on defence, interest payments and 
subsidies leave little room for addressing other 
concerns; the current emphasis on paring 
non-merit subsidies, while being justified, 
should not be used to deflect attention away from 
defence spending. We would have truly arrived as 
a Republic the day the government announces a 
rural development outlay in excess of that for 
defence.


______


[4]

The Times of India
January 15, 2005

MANUFACTURING CONSENT: HOW THOUGHT POLICE STATES ARE CREATED
Ashis Nandy

The future of censorship is very bright in India 
- in media, culture and intellectual life. Do not 
be taken in by political postures and academic 
correctness - politicians, the bureaucracy, the 
literati and the middle class love censorship. 
They all want freedom for their own ideas, 
lifestyles and moral codes; censorship for that 
of others.

It is obvious by now that modern democracies 
cultivate censorship as much as despotisms do. 
Indeed, a democratic state often goes farther. It 
creates a demand for censorship among vocal 
sections of the citizens, who come to believe 
that censorship is vital for their survival - 
political, cultural and moral. These sections are 
kept constantly anxious about national security 
and angry about the changing aesthetic, moral and 
sexual norms around them.

The nervousness of bureaucrats at the thought of 
open access to information is a simple matter. 
They fear openness because they fear loss of 
power, relevance and the right to extract 
favours. The created anxiety about security, 
creeping immorality or desacralisation is more 
complex. Security anxieties are the sharpest 
among those reduced to being passive consumers 
and spectators of politics and are entirely 
media-dependent for their political views. As 
their sense of personal efficacy declines, they 
begin to live in a more paranoiac world of 
traitors, enemies and conspirators.

The fear of immorality and desacralisation is 
deepest in those in whom traditions have weakened 
and who are secretly attracted by the new 
aesthetic and moral openness and irreverence 
around them. Their children and grandchildren 
live by standards that to them look too liberal 
and they themselves spend a lot of psychological 
effort to maintain severe controls on themselves. 
The censorship they demand is a way of fighting a 
losing battle within their own selves.

The modern literati support a different form of 
censorship, propelled by a deep-seated fear of 
the people. Often shaped by nineteenth-century 
social and political theories, they believe that 
most citizens are ignorant, superstitious, mired 
in religious and caste hatred. The literati are 
perpetually afraid of 'wrong' exposures that may 
help these god-forsaken ones to regress further 
into atavism and fanaticism. They love to 
prescribe for the latter a steady diet of 
educational TV, official documentaries, didactic 
cinema and politically correct editorial pages 
and handouts produced by the right kind of 
ideologues.

Censorship is going to stay and become more 
invidious. As the populous, culturally diverse 
democracies become more technocratic and their 
politics more professional, the electoral process 
becomes more media-dependent. Media gives one a 
chance to bypass the slow, painful process of 
building a political base by aggregating demands. 
It allows one to artificially create new demands 
and public consensus.

If you are a clever politician, through the media 
you can tailor for yourself a public persona that 
represents popular opinions, prejudices and 
allows some play for the untamed passions in your 
society, some of which you might have stoked in 
the first place. You can avoid painstaking, 
labour-intensive political work - trade unionism, 
social work, old-style grievance-articulation and 
party-building. Censorship becomes an easy way of 
manipulating public opinion.

The style, however, differs from country to 
country. Some countries wield censorship and 
secrecy clumsily, others subtly. Some beat up 
journalists or jail them on false charges or 
concocted evidence; others develop a 
sophisticated system of rewards and punishments 
to ensure self-censorship or manufacture 
consensus. The latter can be as effective as the 
former. In the United States, dissenting voices 
have always struggled to find a place in the 
mainstream media. Noam Chomsky may be an iconic 
dissenter in the university circuit, but no 
mainstream newspaper or newsmagazine wastes an 
inch of space on him. Not because Chomsky is seen 
as dangerous but because the consumers of 
political news are just not interested in him. 
Likewise, for years, the mainstream American 
press and television have been showing grisly 
pictures of the victims of Arab terrorism in 
Israel but not that of the Arab victims of 
Israeli atrocities. This is not an organised 
conspiracy, as many believe, but a 'normal' part 
of media-management in democracies.

In India, there is now a sizeable political 
constituency, reared on propaganda-driven 
insecurity and a numbing fear of the nation's 
enemies. This constituency is perfectly willing 
to bring all intellectual pursuits, research and 
arts under the control of a thought police.

Most data on Indian rivers are confidential; so 
are, it appears, all data on the health of prime 
ministers. As for non-state actors, about three 
decades ago, when a nondescript trade union 
declared Satyajit Ray's depiction of a young 
nurse in his movie Pratidwandi unfair and 
demanded re-censorship of the movie, it seemed a 
minor spat produced by high-voltage trade 
unionism typical of excitable Bengalis. The 
country had, of course, progressed much when, 
about a decade ago, a painting of Saraswati by M 
F Husain, provoked the vandals of Bajrang Dal. 
The best, I am afraid, is yet to come. The scanty 
media coverage of the extreme reluctance of the 
government of India to sign the international 
convention on torture and of the human rights 
situation in the north-east and Kashmir are 
signposts of the future.


______


[5]

CALAMITY AND PREJUDICE !
THE LONG FORGOTTEN BATTLE AGAINST UNTOUCHABILITY
by Subhash Gatade

[January 18, 2005]

There's something even an earthquake measuring 9 
on the Richter scale and a tsunami that kills 
over 1 lakh people can't crack : the walls 
between caste. ..That's why at Ground Zero in 
Nagapattinam, Murugeshan and his family of four 
have been living on the streets in Nambiarnagar. 
That's why like 31 other families, they have been 
thrown out of relief camps.  Š
( Indian Express - 7 Jan 2005)

There are some protagonists of Hinduism who say 
that Hinduism is a very adaptable religion, that 
it can adjust itself to everything and absorb 
anything. I do not think many people would regard 
such a capacity in a religion as a virtue to be 
proud of, just as no one would think highly of a 
child because it has developed the capacity to 
eat dung, and digest it. But that is another 
matter. It is quite true that Hinduism can adjust 
itself... can absorb many things. The beef-eating 
Hinduism (or strictly speaking Brahminism which 
is the proper name of Hinduism in its earlier 
stage) absorbed the non-violence theory of 
Buddhism and became a religion of vegetarianism. 
But there is one thing which Hinduism has never 
been able to do - namely to adjust itself to 
absorb the Untouchables or to remove the bar of 
Untouchability.
- BR Ambedkar
(Quoted in 'Holy Cow and Unholy Dalit' Siriyavan Anand, Himal, Nov 2002)

I
'Tsunami can't wash this away : hatred for Dalits 
: In Ground Zero, Dalits thrown out of relief 
camps, cut out of food, water supplies, toilets, 
Š'.The main news in one of the leading newspapers 
revealed it all. The centuries old prejudice 
against the 'lower communities' was perfectly 
intact despite an unprecedented tragedy called 
Tsunami. The report had details of the way 
Nagapattinam, one of the worst affected district 
in Tamilnadu, was coping with the changed 
situation.

Apart from the regular information about the 
relief work undertaken and graphic details about 
the plight of the victims the reporter had 
presented the flip side of relief which normally 
remains out of focus in any such coverage of 
natural calamity. It described the way in which 
dalits were discriminated even during relief 
distribution after the infamous Tsunami. It told 
how 'doors were being slammed in the face of the 
Dalit survivors here.' The role of the government 
which 'instead of 'ensuring justice, was 
reinforcing the divide' had also come under 
scanner.

It had details of  how Dalits from 63 affected 
villages from Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu were 
facing the brunt of the powerful Meenavar 
fishermen (a Most Backward Class): being thrown 
out of relief camps, pushed to the rear of food 
and water lines, not being allowed to take water 
from UNICEF facilities and in some cases not even 
being allowed to use the toilet. ( Indian Express 
January 8, 2005)

It does not need an expert's grassrootbased study 
to know that Nagapattinam is an exception. A 
roundup of the various relief camps can  reveal 
to any concerned observer that the division 
between the dalits and the rest of the populace 
sanctified by religion and legitimised by the 
graded hierarchy masquerading as tradition 
despite more than half century of living as a 
republic, runs quite deep. And the treatment 
meted out to the dalits was a 'logical outcome' 
of this.

Interestingly while the said paper continued with 
its exclusive story and even wrote an edit on the 
same theme asking the government to take action 
against the perpetrators of injustice to the 
dalits, the rest of the national media preferred 
to gloss over this aspect. Possibly the silence 
maintained by the others was in tune with the 
understanding expressed by the local district 
collector who 'did not want to disturb the social 
equilibrium' at this crucial juncture. A social 
activist present there indignantly told the 
reporter ,"..No one is willing to take up the 
matter at the field level as this could 
complicate things." It appeared that they did not 
want to precipitate friction between the two 
castes by trying to address it during this 
crisis. Ofcourse

It could be also be said that when an 
unprecedented tragedy was unfolding before their 
own eyes these 'wathchdogs of democracy' did not 
want to add to the emotional burden of their 
already anguished readers / viewers with a 
routine matter like caste discrimination. Perhaps 
they were true to an extent that the inbuilt 
caste and gender based discrimination with its 
incessant violence in our society has become so 
common that it has started appearing 'normal and 
routine.'

And this despite the fact that the dalits in 
Tamilnadu as in rest of the country were facing 
the brunt of caste oppression never seen 
before.It is only in recent times that we have 
been witness to some of the worst atrocities 
against them. Ranging from the killing of five 
dalits in Jhajjar, Haryana supposedly for 
skinning a dead cow to the forcible consumption 
of urine to three dalit youths in the recent 
incident in Abohar, Punjab; ranging from the 
killing of two dalit youths in Saharanpur, U.P. 
last year for winning a cricket match against the 
upper caste people to the branding of two dalits 
Murugesan and Ramasamy with hot iron rods and 
forcing them to feed dried human excreta to each 
other in Thinniam, Tiruchi district, Tamilnadu we 
have been witness to incidents after incidents 
wherein the people who consider themselves above 
the dalits in caste hierarchy have tried to wreak 
havoc on them to reinforce and perpetuate their 
ageold dominance in a brutal manner.

Ofcourse it need be underlined at this juncture 
that the growing atrocities against the dalits in 
recent times should not be construed as their 
continued submission to the dictats of the varna 
people in any manner. Rather it is an indicator 
of the fact that they have risen in rebellion at 
various levels and have challenged their 
dominance in all fields of life. For an outsider 
the revolt may appear disorganised and suffering 
from clearcut direction, 'experts from the 
academia' may castigate these subalterns for 
their 'opportunist leadership' which has turned 
them into 'vote banks', but all this criticism 
notwithstanding it is a fact as clear as sunlight 
that Dalits at various levels have refused to 
take it lying down. They have decided to chart a 
new path under the guidance of the thoughts of Dr 
B.R. Ambedkar or for that matter 
Marxism-Leninism. And this assertion has a long 
history.

Anyone familiar with the social history of 
Tamilnadu must be aware that the first massacre 
of Dalits in post independence times took place 
in Tamilnadu only (village Killevanamani, 
district Thanjavur) wherein more than 35 people 
mostly women and children were burnt alive by the 
marauders belonging to the locally powerful upper 
caste gentry way back in 1969. The pretext for 
the massacre is worth emphasising. The dalits and 
other oppressed people from adjoining areas had 
waged a powerful struggle for better wages and 
the upper caste landlords found it impossible to 
break the unity and solidarity of these people. 
And they preferred the shortest route of killing 
them and compelling them to surrender before 
their might.The way judiciary responded to this 
heinous massacre also shows how the various 
institutions of state have connived in the 
maintenance of the varna statusquo. The session 
court had then set all the accused free with a 
specious argument that since they belonged to 
upper caste it was not expected that they would 
have gone walking to the dalit hamlette.

An incident from the same Tamilnadu which 
happened two years ago is also indicative of the 
changed ambience. As Siriyavan Anand elaborates 
in his article ( Himal, November 2002) :
"On 7 September, Sankan, a dalit, was drinking 
tea with a friend at a shop in Goundampatti, 
Nilakottai taluq, Dindigul district when he was 
attacked by six caste Hindus. He was verbally 
abused and beaten up, after which an off-duty 
constable urinated in his mouth. Sankan had 
earned the wrath of the caste Hindu gounder 
community because he had aggressively pursued his 
right to a piece of land of which he had been 
cheated.."

It is true that repression breeds revolt and it 
engenders further repression. Same can be said of 
the forward march of the dalits interspersed with 
brutal atrocities as a last ditch attempt by the 
priviledged sections of our society to put the 
clock back. Ofcourse it is a marker of the 
'insensitivity' and 'inhumanity' which gets 
ingrained in everyone's minds vis-à-vis this 
supposedly great institution called caste that 
even a collosal human tragedy precipitated by a 
natural calamity does not compel them to rethink 
their archaic notions.

2.
  "[U]ntouchability, is a kind of disease of the 
Hindus..it is a mental twist.. I do not know how 
my friend is going to untwist the twist which the 
Hindus have got for thousands of years unless 
they are all sent to some kind of hospital.' Dr 
B.R.Ambedkar , 1954 (Quoted in Bhagwan Das, 95 
:53).


The plight of the dalits trying to come to terms 
with life alongwith other sections of reminded 
one of a few of the headlines which appeared in 
the mainstream newspapers around three years ago. 
These reports communicated to the layreader how 
post Gujarat quake relief and rehabilitation work 
had at places bypassed the dalits and the 
Muslims. There were reports about the siphoning 
of the relief material to the relief camps 
inhabited by the non dalit or upper caste hindus 
and how consciously these sections were left out 
of its ambit in many cases.

One thing is very clear in all such cases. Giving 
the exigencies of the situation no action would 
have been taken against neither those Gujarat 
people involved in discriminating against the 
dalits and Muslims nor one can expect any action 
against the Nagapattinam gentry which humiliated 
the dalits. It would once again vindicate what 
the n number of reports brought out by the 
National Commission of SC and STs or the National 
Human Rights Commission or independent groups 
committed to the defence of human rights have 
been repeating ad infinitum.  Their has been no 
divergence of opinion among them about the fact 
that the different institutions of the state 
ranging from the police to the judiciary have 
rather preferred to look the other way or have 
connived with the powers that be in saving the 
guilty when dalits and other oppressed sections 
were humiliated or were subjected to violence.

It is clear that whereas the state has formally 
abolished 'Untouchability' vide article 17 of the 
Constitution and has forbidden its practice in 
any form and made it punishable and despite its 
providing number of safeguards to protect it from 
all types of exploitation and ensure its allround 
development, the situation on the ground keeps 
reminding one of the bygone era. All of us are 
aware that Article 15 the constitution has 
mandated that no citizen shall on grounds only of 
religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any 
of them, be subject to any disability, liability, 
restriction or condition with regard to (a) 
access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and 
places of public entertainment; or (b) the use of 
wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of 
public resort maintained wholly or partly out of 
State funds or dedicated to the use of general 
public. But one has no other option but to 
concurr with the view of the  ex justice of the 
Supreme Court Mr V.K. Krishna Aiyar that the laws 
formulated for the protection of the dalits have 
been effetively been turned into 'paper tigers'.

The 'Report on Prevention of Atrocities against 
Scheduled Castes' (NHRC, 2004,Delhi) rightly 
underlined the way the 'state has failed in this 
respect' on 'several fronts'. According to the 
conclusions of the report the state has failed on 
'several fronts'. These are 'failure to 
effectively implement the laws relating to 
atrocities against SCs and STs' which is 
'reflected both in respect of preventing violence 
from taking place' as well as in the 'inability 
to punish perpetrators of violence after the 
crime is committed'; 'failure to act against its 
own agencies involved in the commission of 
violence ;' failure to strengthen the watchdog 
institutions' etc. 'The failure of the state 
vis-à-vis mobilization of caste Hindus in favour 
of social democracy embedded in the constitution 
and various laws and state policies' can also be 
considered palpable which has 'created 
ambivalence in its intentions and contradictions 
in its actions' .

.The Sixth Report of the National Commission for 
SCs and STs (1999-2000 and 2000-2001) had 
expressed its deep sense of dissatisfaction over 
the way all these measures are implemented. While 
commenting that "..the number of cases registered 
under Prevention of Civil Rights act and SC and 
ST (Prevention of Atrocities) act has been 
showing downward trend.. as a healthy development 
"it exposes the way this reduction in no of cases 
is achieved . According to the preface, " But 
from its reviews with various state governments 
the commission is of the view that a large number 
of cases go unregistered, mainly because of the 
reluctance on part of the police officers to 
register the cases and also because of lack of 
awareness among the members of these communities 
about the provisions of these acts.
In addition, there are delays in investigation, 
collusion with offenders and manipulation of 
witnesses and evidence which all contribute to 
reduce the effectiveness of these protective 
legislations." (See Preface Page II) In the same 
vein it tells us that in most of the states 
neither the meetings of the monitoring and 
vigilace committees are held regularly nor any 
special courts are set up to deal with cases of 
dalit atrocities.
It also adds: " The question of setting up 
exclusive special courts, particularly in the 
states having large pendency, needs serious 
consideration of the government. The rate of 
convictions in various states ranges from 5 to 10 
percent and it is necessary to examine the 
reasons for such low convictions rates and for 
taking urgent corrective action."(ibid) According 
to the commission ," The apex court has held that 
the Special courts cannot directly entertain the 
cases under these acts, without following 
commital proceedings. It is, therefore, necessary 
to amend these acts suitably to authorise the 
special courts to admit cases under these acts 
directly."(ibid).
One can go on mentioning the various schemes or 
the affirmative action programmes run by the 
government supposedly for the empowerment of the 
dalits and also give details about the systematic 
manner in which a conscious attempt is on to deny 
what is due to them. One would be surprised to 
know that not only thousands of posts which are 
meant for them especially from the upper class 
category have been lying vacant for years 
together but there are thousands and thousands of 
people belonging to the non dalit category who 
have manipulated jobs meant for these sections by 
procurring 'false certificates' and the concerned 
authorities are sitting over this despite 
repeated complaints by the aggrieved people. The 
seriousness of the phenomenon of false 
certificates can be gauged from the fact that the 
last two annual reports of the National SC and ST 
Commission ( since bifurcated) have devoted a 
chapter each to discuss the gravity of the 
situation arising out of this.
This makes it crystalclear that the state has to 
show firm political will , get ready to make 
amends to ameliorate the situation and move 
beyond pious rhetoric if it is serious about the 
commitments it made with the 'other people' 
exactly 54 years back while promulgating the 
constitution. But one cannot expect that their 
would be any radical departure from the way in 
which the state has been functioning.
The question naturally arises what is the way out 
for the dalits and all those forces who are 
fighting for the human rights dalits ? How does 
one address this typical situation where we have 
before us a state which has decorated its statue 
books with many a dalit friendly laws to showcase 
it to the civilized world and effectively sitting 
over them.
The message is clear that unless and until there 
is pressure from the people to implement the laws 
or correct the infirmities inherent even 'hundred 
Tsunamis cannot the break the wall of prejudice' 
between the communities. But whether the much 
trumpetted 'civil society' is ready for it !
3
".. you were born where you were born and faced a 
future that you faced because you were black and 
for no other reason. The limits of your ambition 
were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were 
born into a society, which spelt out with a 
brutal clarity, in as many ways as possible, that 
you are a worthless human being. You were not 
expected to aspire to excellence ; you were 
expected to make peace with mediocrity."
-James Baldwin, the African-Amercian writer, 
"Letter to My Nephew On the One Hundredth 
Anniversary of the Emancipation"
( Quoted in 'We, the other People" K.G.Kannabiran, The Hindu)


For an outsider it may appear surprising how the 
'social nausea' ( to quote Ambedkar) refuses to 
subside even in times of calamity also. But for 
someone who is familiar with the Indian social 
fabric the ageold doctrine of exclusion 
legitimised and sanctified by the Brahminical 
ideology culminating in such behaviour is a 
'routine matter'. There is need to understand 
that incidents of such nature (as witnessed in 
Nagapattinam) demonstrate how this ideology of 
purity and pollution has permeated deep down the 
social fabric our society. Discrimination on the 
basis of caste even while faced with a calamity 
is a logical outcome of the common sense which 
gets built up in such an ambience.

Ofcourse many people when confronted with such 
incidents of denial of basic human rights to the 
dalits and the institutionalisation of such 
practices prefer to comfirt themselves with a 
feeling that it is basically a 'rural phenomenon' 
They churn out statistics or give examples to 
demonstrate that how villages have become 
cesspools of backwardness and how they are the 
prime perpetrators of atrocities against them. A 
closer look at the situation makes us clear that 
this formulation is not true. Even a layperson 
can  understand that a particular social 
phenomenon with a centuries old history does not 
seize to operate on physical boundaries. Even our 
Metropolies exhibit this discrimination in myriad 
ways. A leading social thinker rightly underlines 
the fact that the prevalence of untouchability 
which impacts the dalits in its most brutal 
manner can be considered an added proof of the 
much much tommed 'unity in diversity' theme of 
our 'great nation'.

The fact is that a large majority of the people 
who have not yet shed their varna mindset do not 
want to concede this simple fact. They do not 
want to recognise that the doctrine of exclusion 
is an all pervasive phenomenon simply because 
they themselves are 'beneficiaries of the caste 
based order.' They have an interest in ( to quote 
the Report on Prevention of Atrocities against 
SCs and STs ) perpetuating "[t]he existing 
unequal social relations" and have "[f]rustrated 
attempts to democratize the society because 
through the customary arrangements the dominant 
castes are assured of 'access to cheap labour' ; 
'social control over people'; 'priviledged 
position with regard to development resources'. 
Obviously they are not bothered with the clear 
exposure of the the deep contradictions in social 
values which are for everyone to see wherein 
while they are ready 'to enjoy all rights and 
privileges which a democratic liberal society has 
given them' but deny the 'same very rights and 
privileges to the SCs'.

The benefits accruing to them for not recognising 
this reality are palpable. May it be the denial 
of seats to the dalits in academic institutions 
or the deliberate attempts to deny the benefits 
due to them vis-v-vis the programmes of 
affirmative actions or the refusal of the police 
to even register cases against their perpetrators 
etc they are the sole beneficiaries from  this. 
If the behaviour of the state leaves much to be 
desired the 'civil society' loaded with its varna 
mindset does not at all come out in flying 
colours. It is part and parcel of the conscious 
attempts to exclude them from all seats of power 
or privilege.

We are repeatedly told that the Indian society 
has been quite forthcoming in imbibing new ideas 
and new technologies and assessing opportunities 
resulting from the same. Our being the third 
largest humanpower of scientific and 
technological personnel is also trumpetted from 
rooftops. Rulers of this country in recent times 
have also been clamouring for 'superpower status' 
on the basis of these strengths.

But the alleged readiness our society to accept 
liberal or progressive ideas from all corners of 
the world to shape its own lives does not get 
reflected in its conscious attempts to weed 
itself of the structured hierarchy which is in 
existence since ancient times. Our 
intelligentsia may sing paens to our 'glorious 
past' and but has never been forthcoming in 
addressing the real problems faced by the 
disprivileged. Infact a close look at the social 
composition of our educational and different 
academic institutions or for that matter the 
different media houses which are inhabited by 
them makes it evident how they have remained 
inegalitarian till date.

We can call ourselves modern but with the 
continuance and perpetuation of outdated customs, 
traditions and the ever widening gap between our 
personal and social lives we have demonstrated 
once again that we have yet to come out of this 
ambivalence between modernity and tradition.
The wee hours of the 21 st century have presented 
before us a difficult task, the task of 
reordering our society which denies social 
equality to others and which exercises control 
over bodies and lives of other people.

All of us have been witness as well participant 
in the campaign to help the victims of Tsunami at 
some level or the other. We have demonstrated how 
people not only belonging to different faiths or 
denominations but also wearing their atheism or 
agnosticism on their sleeves came together to 
help affected people. But it is a moot question 
why 'Tsunami faced by the dalits daily' has 
escaped our attention till date.


( Subhash Gatade, M.Tech from BHU (1981) is a 
writer by profession and social activist by 
choice. Regularly writes for Hindi, English and 
Marathi newspapers and magazines. Edits a hindi 
journal 'Sandhan')


______


[6]

DARK CLOUDS: A NEW GOVERNMENT ORDER TO SCATTER TSUNAMI SURVIVORS IN TAMIL NADU
by Babu Mathew
[January 16, 2005]
http://www.sacw.net/Nation/BabuMathew16Jan05.pdf


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