SACW | May 11-12, 2007 | 1857
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Sat May 12 03:29:32 CDT 2007
South Asia Citizens Wire | May 11-12, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2403 - Year 9
[1] Bangladesh: Army Arrests Tasneem Khalil of Human Rights Watch
+ Tasneem Khalil's Blog
[2] Pakistan: Bad news from Bagh (Daily Times, Editorial)
[3] India - Gujarat: Taking moral policing to a new level ; ()
[4] India: 1857 rebellion : A selection of articles + select reading list:
- Kill The White Man (Rudrangshu Mukherjee)
- 1857 - 2007: 'Clash of civilisations' or
people's resistance to imperialism? (Kalpana
Wilson)
- Who were the sepoys of 1857? (Amaresh Misra)
- The Revolt And Its Historiography: An Overview (Biswamoy Pati)
- 1857 Revisited (Rosie Llewellyn-Jones)
- Lost and found (Dhirendra K. Jha)
- One man's fight to save 1857 heroine's memory (Sudeshna Sarkar 2007)
- 1857 a Malegaon story
- Select Reading list on 1857, on the Mughals, on British India
[5] Events:
(i) The Free Chandramohan Committee: Public Meeting (Baroda, 12 May 2007)
(ii) Artists Alert: Public meeting, Rabindra Bhavan (Delhi, 14 May 2007)
(iii) Join Protest at Arts Faculty, (Baroda, 14 May 2007)
(iv) Invitation workshop / seminar on Media and
Communalism (Mangalore, 18-19 May 2007)
(v) Performance - Ghadar (1857 - 2007) (Vancouver, 12 May, 2007)
(vi) 150th Anniversary Commemoration of the First
War of Indian Independence (Vancouver,12 May,
2007)
____
[1]
Human Right Watch Press Release
BANGLADESH: RELEASE JOURNALIST AND RIGHTS ACTIVIST
ARMY ARRESTS TASNEEM KHALIL OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
(London, May 11, 2007) - Bangladesh's
military-backed care-taker government should
immediately release Tasneem Khalil, an
investigative journalist and part-time Human
Rights Watch consultant, who was detained by
security forces late last night, Human Rights
Watch said today.
Khalil, 26, is a journalist for the Dhaka-based
Daily Star newspaper who conducts research for
Human Rights Watch. According to his wife, four
men in plainclothes who identified themselves as
from the "joint task force"came to the door after
midnight on May 11 in Dhaka, demanding to take
Khalil away. They said they were placing Khalil
"under arrest" and taking him to the Sangsad
Bhavan army camp, outside the parliament building
in Dhaka.
"We are extremely concerned about Tasneem
Khalil's safety," said Brad Adams, Asia director
at Human Rights Watch. "He has been a prominent
voice in Bangladesh for human rights and the rule
of law, and has been threatened because of that."
The men did not offer a warrant or any charges,
Khalil's wife said. Using threatening language,
they searched the house and confiscated Khalil's
passport, two computers, documents, and two
mobile phones.
"It is an emergency; we can arrest anyone," one
of the men said. Another asked if Khalil suffered
from any particular physical ailments. They drove
Khalil off in a Pajero jeep.
Khalil is a noted investigative journalist who
has published several controversial exposes of
official corruption and abuse, particularly by
security forces. He assisted Human Rights Watch
in research for a 2006 report about torture and
extrajudicial killings by Bangladesh security
forces.
According to Bangladeshi human rights groups, the
army has detained tens of thousands of people
since a state of emergency was declared on
January 11, 2007. A number of those detained are
picked up in the middle of the night, as Khalil
was, and then tortured.
In Bangladesh, security forces have long been
implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings.
The killings have been attributed to members of
the army, the police, and the Rapid Action
Battalion (RAB), an elite anti-crime and
anti-terrorism force. The Human Rights Watch
report Khalil worked on, "Judge, Jury, and
Executioner: Torture and Extrajudicial Killings
by Bangladesh's Elite Security Force," focused on
abuses by the RAB.
Killings in custody remain a persistent problem
in Bangladesh. To date, no military personnel are
known to have been held criminally responsible
for any of the deaths.
Khalil was called in for questioning by military
intelligence last week, apparently as part of the
military's campaign to intimidate independent
journalists ahead of May 10, 2007, when the
army's three-month legal mandate for ruling under
a state of emergency came to an end.
"The Bangladeshi military should be on notice
that its actions are being closely watched by the
outside world," Adams said. "Any harm to Tasneem
Khalil will seriously undermine the army's claims
to legitimacy and upholding the rule of law."
o o o
[SEE ALSO TASNEEM KHALIL'S BLOG]
http://www.tasneemkhalil.com/
______
[2]
Daily Times
May 11, 2007
Editorial: BAD NEWS FROM BAGH
Following attacks and threats from "certain
quarters", the United Nations office in Islamabad
has announced closure of all its operations as
well as offices in Bagh, Azad Kashmir. Why did
the UN take such a drastic decision? It took the
decision because the houses of two UN officials
were torched by "extremists" who had been warning
the UN and other NGOs "against employing females".
Pakistanis who count all sorts of people as part
of Pakistan's civil society and condemn the NGOs
for being "foreign agents" should carefully read
this. The Islamists who have forced the UN to
stop its work in an area where Pakistan needs all
the help it can get, are on the side of the
state, not civil society. If you are not
convinced, pay heed to what happened in the
National Assembly when the minority MNA, Mr MP
Bhandara, proposed an amendment to the Blasphemy
Law and was told to shut up by the federal
minister for parliamentary affairs.
Not even our politicians are representatives of
civil society which is completely at the mercy of
the state and its "extremist" agents. When
President General Pervez Musharraf was requested
to stop some of the "extremist" jihadi
organisations from taking part in rescue and
reconstruction in Azad Kashmir after the quake in
2005, he did not listen. He did not react when a
jihadi organisation began to take on the foreign
humanitarian agencies helping the quake victims.
Now the UN office says that all the mission
staffers were under security threats for the last
many months and it had become difficult to
continue operations under these circumstances.
The houses of two UN workers were burnt down in
Bagh by a mob that was not stopped by the state.
The UN will close its offices for two weeks, then
talk to the government to ascertain if it is
willing to protect the people who have come to
help the poor of the stricken area.
The government had enough time to prepare its
reaction to the "extremists" that the president
keeps talking about. It all started as far back
as July 2006 when a local group, Awami Action
Forum (AAF), warned the United Nations and other
NGOs against employing females in the earthquake
affected areas. Who was backing this AAF?
According to the UN officials, "extremist
religious leaders and members of an opposition
party". What should the UN have done? Back down
in the face of threats? It did not and expected
the government to protect its workers.
Hundreds of foreign and local NGOs are working
for reconstruction and rehabilitation of
earthquake-hit areas of AJK and NWFP. These
organisations landed immediately after the
natural calamity struck the region in October
2005, killing and displacing hundreds of
thousands. The state of Pakistan, instead of
being grateful and protecting them, allowed the
local extremists to threaten them. Then signs of
danger began to appear. Local goons harassed a
female worker of the American Refugee Council
(ARF) who was spending time with her cousin at a
picnic spot. A UN driver, who was passing by when
the extremists were harassing the girl, stopped
and tried to rescue her. But he was beaten up by
the mob. The next day they burnt the houses. The
UN then decided to close down the operations and
freeze all the funds badly needed by the people
affected by the quake. What kind of role has the
state of Pakistan played in this sorry drama? And
what has the government done after hearing that
the UN was being threatened under its very nose?
What happened the same day in the National
Assembly is instructive.
A bill was moved by a minority MNA, Mr MP
Bhandara, to amend the blasphemy laws in order to
render them more rational and to include in them
a mechanism that would prevent misuse of the law
and wilful negligence of the "conditions" already
attached to it at the administrative level to
prevent innocent people from being victimised.
The administrative "rider" to the law is that the
police will not act on complaint but will consult
the top bureaucrats of the district before
registering an FIR under blasphemy. But no one
abides by this provision.
A group of people were arrested by the police in
Karachi Monday after a magistrate thought that a
book published by them was blasphemous. The press
did not reveal the sectarian identity of those
arrested but it was quite apparent from the title
of the book (a classic) and their names that they
belonged to the Shia community. President
Musharraf should look at this very carefully.
Blasphemy laws have begun to target the Shia and
not only Christians and Ahmedis.
What was the response of the government to Mr
Bhandara's move in the National Assembly? The
parliamentary affairs minister Mr Sher Afgan
ruthlessly shot it down. What did he say while
opposing the bill? "Pakistan was made in the name
of Islam and is not a secular state". Mr Afgan
should take a good look into his conscience and
recall that not long ago he was counted as a
liberal PPP politician. The Blasphemy Law was
imposed by General Zia-ul Haq and unfortunately
padded up to include the minimum punishment of
death by the Muslim League under prime minister
Nawaz Sharif.
If today the state of Pakistan is hurting its own
children it is because of turncoat politicians
like the federal minister and a military ruler
who cannot spare time from double-speak. One is
also saddened by the rhetoric of President
Musharraf who has such men on his leash but goes
on lamenting the growth of "extremism" in
Pakistan. *
______
[3]
Indian Express
May 12, 2007
BLACK FRIDAY: CHANDRAMOHAN'S CLASSMATES PUT UP
EXHIBITION OF INDIAN EROTICA TO PROTEST HIS
ARREST; CHANCELLOR SAYS CAN'T INTERVENE WITHOUT
KNOWING FACTS
MSU V-C seals Fine Arts dept
Express News Service
Vadodara, May 11: Taking moral policing to a new
level, Vice-Chancellor of the prestigious
Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Manoj Soni,
today ordered the fine arts department to be
sealed after defiant students put up an
exhibition of Indian erotica to protest the
arrest of one of their fellow classmates on
Wednesday. The fine arts department, known the
world over as a cradle for art expression, has
never seen interference from any quarters. This
is the first time in its 55 years of existence
that it finds the BJP and VHP moral police
brigade telling it what to do.
Vice-Chancellor Manoj Soni, living up to his
reputation as an RSS stooge, took the decision to
seal the department after BJP municipal
councillors complained about the erotica
exhibition. On Wednesday, the BJP and VHP
activists roughed up Chandramohan, a fine arts
student, as they found his exam works put on
display, objectionable. Chandramohan was later
arrested by police.
Marking a "black friday" in M S University's
history, the V-C sealed the Fine Arts
department's Regional Documentation Centre, and
joined the saffron brigade in removing the
exhibition comprising sculptures and photos.
After gagging the faculty, Soni himself ducked
all criticism and questions raised about his
action by remaining confined to his cabin and not
taking any calls.
MSU's Chancellor Mrinalinini Devi Puar, grand
daughter of Sir Sayaji Rao Gaekwad who founded
the university, said she was out of town and
could not intervene without knowing the facts.
On Friday, instead of students, teachers and MSU
senate members, it was BJP councillors and senate
members (owing to their saffron affiliations)
were the ones who called the shots both at MSU
main office and Fine Arts department. Meanwhile,
Chandramohan continued to be in judicial custody
for the third consecutive day, with no one
officially coming to his aid from MSU. Additional
Senior Civil Judge M J Parashar on Friday
deferred the decision on his bail till Monday in
a hearing held in Vadodara local court, where
Chandramohan is facing serious offences
registered by BJP leader Niraj Jain.
Fresh trouble began on Friday when Fine Arts
students were putting up an art exhibition on
Indian art erotica around 4.30 pm.
"We are seeing people affiliated to certain
political ideology, entering the campus and
imposing their narrow viewpoint without knowing
that the erotica/shringara/copulation as a part
of the nava-rasas exist in traditional
practices," said the Fine Arts student exhibition
note. Sculptures, copies of erotica art in the
department, photographs of erotica art from
Khajuraho and from Geet Govinda were put up by
the students.
The news of the art exhibition had BJP
councillors like Girish Parekh, Kishen Sheth,
Ashok Pandya, Balu Shukla, Kishen Sheth and
others trooping down into the University, but
before that they had a meeting with the MSU V-C.
While abuses were being hurled at the students
and female lecturers by BJP councilors, MSU
authorities ordered the removal of exhibition,
which Shivaji Panikkar, incharge fine arts dean
refused, asking for orders in writing.
"We have received representations from several
organisations and also society, which has
requested us to intervene. It's a matter of
prestige for MSU and Vadodara," said MSU pro V-C
S M Joshi, who with university engineer N N Ojha,
syndicate members Mukesh Pandya, S K Agrawal,
technology faculty dean Bhuvan Parekh personally
removed exhibits and sealed the department.
In a late night development Panikkar was
suspended from all the positions with immediate
effect for three months. The suspension will be
in effect till an inquiry committee, which is yet
to be formed does not complete its inquiry, said
the notice which was pasted at his residence
around 10 pm on Friday. He has been also directed
not to enter the campus.
______
[4] [Big celebrations on the 1857 rebellion are
happening in India. Hardly any it seems in
Pakistan and Bangladesh. They should have held
joint celebrations; Events outside south asia are
being organised by groups in the diaspora; Posted
below is a compilation of articles on 1857 + a
select reading list that should interest SACW
readers. -HK]
o o o
The Telegraph
May 10, 2007
KILL THE WHITE MAN
- The revolt of 1857 was too violent an event to celebrate
Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Mani Shankar Aiyar at the inauguration of the
150th anniversary celebrations of the "First War
of Independence", New Delhi, May 8
I must declare a vested interest in the revolt of
1857. Immediately after I finished my Master's in
history, I decided, much to the surprise of all
my teachers, save one, to write a doctoral
dissertation on the revolt in the area the
British called Oudh - a quaint anglicization of
the name Awadh. The reason that all my teachers
were surprised at my choice of subject was the
belief, common among most historians in the
Seventies, that there was nothing new to be said
about the revolt. The subject was sterile and all
that had to be said had been said in the
centenary year and its immediate aftermath.
The lone voice of encouragement came from Barun
De, who believed that 1857 was an event which had
not really been worked upon. There was another
source of inspiration. This was the famous
Cambridge historian, Eric Stokes, whose essays on
the subject I had read with excitement and
profit. I was to get to know Eric later and learn
an enormous amount from him, till cancer claimed
him very untimely.
The point of this autobiographical sojourn is to
set the context for my surprise at the sudden
burst of enthusiasm among historians about the
great uprising. There is nothing like a
state-sponsored anniversary to stoke the
interests of historians in a subject. The
adjective, state-sponsored, is used advisedly. In
a country with as rich and as diverse a history
as India's, every year is an anniversary of
something or the other. In June will come the
250th anniversary of the battle of Plassey. Is
the Indian state celebrating that anniversary?
The answer is no. The decision to celebrate the
revolt of 1857 with some fanfare is based on the
conclusion - put forward by some historians and
accepted by the government of India - that the
rebellion is worth celebrating because it
represented India's first war of independence.
I hold a dissenting view, since I believe that
1857 should be remembered but not commemorated.
Let me try and explain my reasons for holding
this particular opinion. The reasons are embedded
in the events themselves.
One hundred and fifty years ago today, the sepoys
in the cantonment of Meerut mutinied. They killed
their superior officers and every single British
man, woman and child they could find. They burnt
the bungalows in which the white people lived,
and destroyed all government offices and
buildings. "Maro firanghi ko [Kill the white
man]" was the cry and the destruction was near
total. A group of sepoys, after having cut the
telegraph wires to Delhi, sped off towards the
old Mughal capital. Arriving there on the morning
of May 11, they entered the walled city and the
Lal Qila. They asked the old Mughal emperor,
Bahadur Shah, to accept the nominal leadership of
the revolt. Outside the Red Fort, violence and
destruction reigned and Delhi passed out of
British control by May 12. In both Meerut and in
Delhi, common people, peasants from the
surrounding countryside, artisans and the poor
joined the sepoys in the killing, looting and
destruction. A mutiny of the soldiery, as soon as
it occurred, acquired the character of a general
uprising.
The fall of Delhi was followed by the spread of
the uprising all over north India. In station
after station and cantonment after cantonment,
the soldiers mutinied and killed white men, women
and children. In every place, common people
joined the sepoys. All over north India - from
Delhi to Patna and from the Terai to Jhansi,
British rule, one British officer noted, had
collapsed "like a house made of cards''. The
Britons who had escaped the wrath of the rebels
cowered in fear within the walls of the Residency
in Lucknow, behind the "entrenchment'' in Kanpur
and in the Ridge in Delhi.
British administration was quick to recover from
the shock and to retaliate. The shock grew, in
the words of John Kaye, who wrote in the 19th
century a magisterial history of what he called
the Sepoy War, from "the degradation of fearing
those whom we had taught to fear us''. The
retaliation was brutal. In the summer of 1857,
through a series of Acts, individual Britons were
given powers to judge and to execute any Indian
they suspected of being a rebel. The result was
devastating. Kaye wrote, "It is on the records of
our British Parliament, in papers sent home by
the Governor-General of India in Council, that '
the aged, women and children, are sacrificed, as
well as those guilty of rebellion'. They were not
deliberately hanged, but burnt to death in their
villages. Englishmen did not hesitate to boast
that they had 'spared no one'.''
The events of 1857 churned around a vicious cycle
of violence. The rebels killed mercilessly
without considerations of gender and age. Witness
the massacre on the river in Kanpur where nearly
the entire British population was killed in a
spectacular show of rebel power. The British
killed indiscriminately to punish a population
that had transgressed the monopoly of violence
that rulers have over the ruled.
The British won and, like all victors everywhere,
they memorialized their triumph. In Kanpur, to
take one example, they transformed the well into
which the bodies of the victims of a massacre had
been thrown into a shrine. A weeping angel carved
in marble by Marochetti was placed over the well.
The shrine was an exclusive preserve of the white
man till August 15, 1947. On that day, people
damaged the nose of the angel, which had to be
removed. In its place, a statue of Tantia Topi
was erected. One icon was replaced by another.
Today, as the celebrations begin to mark the
150th anniversary of the rebellion, some
questions need to be asked: is 1857 an occasion
to celebrate? Can the Indian state uphold the
violence that is inextricably linked to that
year? Can the Indian state say that it is loyal
to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of
non-violence, and in the same breath celebrate
1857 when so many innocent people, on both sides,
were brutally killed?
The questions are important because in India,
there is no mode of remembering without
celebrating. We commemorate to remember,
sometimes even to forget. Eighteen fifty-seven is
an event to remember, as all events of the past
are; it is an event to comprehend and analyse
because, as Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, it showed
"man at his worst''. That comprehension and
analysis is best done outside the aegis of the
State.
o o o
28.4.2007
1857 - 2007: 'CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS' OR PEOPLE'S RESISTANCE TO IMPERIALISM?
A review of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a
Dynasty, Delhi, 1857, by William Dalrymple,
London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006, 578pp.
£25.00, ISBN 978-0-7475-8639-5
by Kalpana Wilson, Race and Class (forthcoming)
William Dalrymple's new book on Delhi at the time
of the uprisings against British colonial rule
which swept India 150 years ago promises to
present for the first time 'an Indian
perspective' on the siege of Delhi and the
experiences of 'ordinary people' who lived in the
city at the time. Yet despite the work which
Dalrymple and his colleagues Mahmoud Farooqi and
Bruce Wannell have clearly put into translating a
large number of 'virtually unused' Persian and
Urdu documents stored in the National Archives of
India, he striking fails to fulfil this promise,
with the material forced awkwardly into a
currently all-too-familiar framework in which
'culture' is viewed in isolation from power or
material relations, and crucially, religion is
emphasised in order to obscure the key questions
of race and imperialism.
1857 saw uprisings spread across much of the
northern half of what is now India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, which were to continue for almost a
year. At their centre was a massive mutiny by
Indian soldiers (known as sepoys) in the British
East India Company's army: of 139,000 sepoys in
the Bengal Army, all but 7, 796 rebelled. But the
uprisings were also marked by the breadth of
popular participation which 'simultaneously drew
together and cut through multiple religious,
caste, and regional identities' [1].
Dalrymple's book focuses exclusively on the
experiences of Delhi, the seat of the Mughal
dynasty which had ruled for 330 years. Beginning
a few years before the uprising when the Mughal
emperor had already been reduced to a puppet
ruler by the East India Company officials, his
writ extending only as far as the walls of the
Red Fort (and 'even there it was circumscribed'),
Dalrymple argues that this period nonetheless
represented the coming to fruition of a
syncretic, tolerant, highly literary culture,
which the Mughal court had encouraged among its
subjects, both Muslim and Hindu. He then traces
the events which unfolded after the first major
rebellion of sepoys took place in Meerut and the
insurgent forces headed for Delhi to claim the
Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, as their
leader, narrating the flight of the British from
the city, the siege of Delhi, and the wholesale
massacre of Delhi's citizens by the victorious
British which followed.
Dalrymple portrays the uprisings as primarily a
'war of religion' between Islam and Christianity:
while acknowledging that the 'great majority' of
the Sepoys were Hindus, he places unprecedented
emphasis on the presence in Delhi of 'insurgents
(who) described themselves as mujahedin, ghazis
and jihadis' and who, towards the end of the
siege, came to constitute 'about a quarter of the
total fighting force' in the city.
His graceless caricaturing of all Indian
historians writing in English who have preceded
him in this field – whether lamenting the
'Marxists'' emphasis on British economic policy
or the approach of the Subaltern Studies group
who 'ingeniously theorised about orientalism and
colonialism' (clearly not valid categories for
Dalrymple) – may appear to be simply a means of
self-promotion. But it has significant
contemporary political implications.
Dalrymple claims to have uncovered 'jihad' in
1857, pointedly ignoring the work of many
established Indian historians who have over the
last thirty years documented the religious idioms
through which resistance to imperialism was
expressed among people of a variety of
backgrounds. Most recently, an in-depth study by
Ray [2] has described how, in the case of 1857,
people sharing a syncretic culture but
identifying with distinct religions consciously
united to fight the British colonizers: 'it was,
in their view, a struggle of the Hindus and
Muslims against the Nazarenes - not so much
because the latter were supposed to be determined
to impose the false doctrine of the Trinity, but
because the identity of "the Hindus and Muslims
of Hindustan" was being threatened by the moral
and material aggrandizement of the arrogant
imperial power' (Ray, 2003:357).
Dalrymple dismisses these more complex
understandings of the anti-imperialist mass
movements which pre-dated the emergence of
bourgeois nationalism in India in favour of the
notion of a 'clash of rival fundamentalisms'.
This often flies in the face of his own evidence
to the contrary: for example, he refers to the
ambiguity and multiple meanings of the term
'jihad' itself, which is used, among others in
the book, by a Hindu rebel general to describe
the uprising; later, Dalrymple notes the
concerted attempt by the British authorities to
reconstruct the uprisings as an exclusively
Muslim affair after their suppression, (this in
fact marked the beginning of a consolidated
colonial policy of rewriting Indian history along
communal lines).
Even more significantly, British actions both
before and during the uprisings are attributed to
the growing influence of evangelical
Christianity, which allows the author to both
downplay other changes in the character of
imperialism in this period, and to romanticise an
earlier era of British plunder under the East
India Company from the mid-18th century onwards.
Dalrymple contrasts his apocalyptic, proto-9/11
view of 1857 with a previous golden age where
British officers of the East India Company
adopted Indian dress and 'cohabited' with 'Indian
Bibis'. Displaying a remarkable insensitivity to
issues of power, race and gender, Dalrymple
lovingly portrays these 'white Moghuls' with
their 'numerous' wives as 'splendidly
multicultural' and furthering an idyllic 'fusion
of civilisations'.
He ignores the fact that following the British
victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, they
presided over a century of intensive plunder and
destruction of India's economy, through the twin
weapons of rapacious taxation and coerced trade.
Thus, for example, Warren Hastings, one of the
'orientalist' British scholars whom Dalrymple
refers to with admiration (and so clearly wishes
to emulate), is better known for his achievement
of actually increasing the rate of taxes
collected by the East India Company at the height
of the 1770 famine brought on by the company's
policies in Eastern India which killed an
estimated 10 million people.
The years leading up to 1857 however, saw major
changes in the objectives, methods and dominant
ideology of imperialism, of which the rise of
evangelical Christianity was only a symptom.
India was now seen not solely as a source of
enormous tax revenues (and valuable consumer
goods procured by force), but as a market for
Britain's own manufacturing industries and,
increasingly, a source of raw materials. By 1830,
India's thriving textile industry had been all
but destroyed, and by the middle of the century,
India was importing one-quarter of all British
cotton textile exports. In the decades which
followed, Indian cultivators would be forced to
grow indigo, cotton and wheat for export to
Britain. Such policies required the expansion of
areas of direct British rule and an enhanced
colonial state apparatus with much larger numbers
of British officials. This 'age of empire' saw
the consolidation of the ideology of white
superiority, racial segregation and the
'civilising mission'. While Dalrymple notes that
by 1850, British army officers had 'become
increasingly distant, rude and dismissive' to the
men under their command, he completely ignores
the dominant notions of racial supremacy which
underpinned the daily racist abuse faced by the
sepoys. To do so would be to shift attention from
the media-friendly focus on 'religious
fanaticism' and acknowledge the overarching
structures of racialised imperial power within
which missionaries and evangelical Christian
preachers played a specific role.
On several occasions, Dalrymple's own evidence
only serves to confirm that for the British it
was 'race' rather than religion which really
mattered: for example (while British converts to
Islam who fought alongside the insurgents were
welcomed into their ranks) Indian converts to
Christianity who had sided with the British
described how they were repeatedly attacked and
abused by British officers after the fall of
Delhi.
So how far does 'The Last Mughal' represent
an'Indian perspective' on the events it
describes? Unlike most British accounts to date,
Dalrymple describes in detail the 'astonishing
violence and viciousness' of the colonial
response to the uprisings, which 'in many cases
would today be classified as grisly war crimes'.
In this he avoids the distortion identified in
the British press coverage of the time by Karl
Marx (who was a contemporary commentator) and
still present in recent historiography, where
'while the cruelties of the English are related
as acts of martial vigour, told simply, rapidly,
without dwelling in disgusting details, the
outrages of the natives, shocking as they are,
are still deliberately exaggerated'[3]
Yet despite this, Dalrymple seems unable to fully
comprehend the nature of colonial violence. Thus,
referring to the mass rapes of Indian women
following the fall of Delhi, he comments that,
'believing that the British women in Delhi had
been sexually assaulted at the outbreak - a
rumour that subsequently proved quite
false
.British officers did little to stop their
men from raping the women of Delhi.'. In the
absence of an analysis of racism he can neither
understand why the 'quite false' allegations of
rape of British women by Indian men were so
effective and so widespread at the time, nor can
he acknowledge that with or without such
allegations, the rape of colonised women has been
an integral element in colonial repression across
the continents and centuries. Perhaps it is not
surprising, then, that Dalrymple ultimately
conforms to the dominant version of events: that
British atrocities were carried out specifically
as 'retribution' for the massacre of British
women and children at Kanpur. In reality, the
terror had already been unleashed in the
countryside by Colonel James Neill whose troops,
burning villages and hanging 'niggers', massacred
thousands of men, women and children well before
the Kanpur killings.
And while Dalrymple enthuses about the
'street-level nature' of the documentation he has
unearthed relating to 'ordinary citizens of
Delhi', the fact is that the overwhelming
majority of the book, where it is not revisiting
the oft-cited accounts of various British
officers and civilians in Delhi, is written from
the perspective of the Mughul elite of the city.
This perspective, while of historical interest,
is also clearly limiting when it comes to the
events of the uprising, ignoring as it does some
of the most significant phenomena such as the
formation of the semi-republican Sepoy Councils
by the rebels. In fact, Dalrymple makes no
attempt to portray the sepoys, who formed the
core of the uprisings, in anything but the terms
in which they were viewed by the Mughal elite: as
'boorish and violent peasants from Bihar and
eastern Uttar Pradesh'.
At a time when the US establishment is trying to
persuade us to view current events through the
distorted lens of the 'clash of civilisations',
Dalrymple, with his insistence that economic
transformations are of no relevance to the lives
of 'ordinary individuals', and his dogged
emphasis on solely religious motivations, appears
to be attempting to remake history in the same
image. The real parallels between 1857 and the
contemporary world, however, lie not, as he would
have us believe, in a clash between militant
Islam and Christianity, but in a struggle between
an aggressively expansionist imperialism and
people's resistance which is expressed in a
multiplicity of forms.
[1] Krishna, P., 'Who is Afraid of 1857?',
Liberation, Vol.12, No.8, December 2006
http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year_2006/December/1857_who_is_afraid.html
[2] Ray, R.K. The Felt Community – Commonalty and
Mentality before the Emergence of Indian
Nationalism, Delhi, Oxford Univesity Press, 2003
[3] cited in Newsinger, J., The Blood Never Dried
- A People's History of the British Empire,
London, Bookmarks: 2006, p74
o o o
[other recent material]
WHO WERE THE SEPOYS OF 1857?
by Amaresh Misra (Indian Express, May 09, 2007)
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/30394.html
THE REVOLT AND ITS HISTORIOGRAPHY: AN OVERVIEW
by Biswamoy Pati (People's Democracy, February 04, 2007)
http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0204/02042007_1857.htm
1857 REVISITED
by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones (The Times of India, 10 May, 2007)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2020186.cms
LOST AND FOUND
Dhirendra K. Jha (The Telegraph, May 10, 2007)
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070510/asp/nation/story_7758714.asp
ONE MAN'S FIGHT TO SAVE 1857 HEROINE'S MEMORY
by Sudeshna Sarkar (Hindustan Times, May 12, 2007)
http://tinyurl.com/23cnnt
1857 A MALEGAON STORY
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/TOIonline/India/1857_a_Malegaon_story/articleshow/2024177.cms
+
RECOMMENDED READINGS BY SACW
1857 REBELLION
Jim Masselos and Narayani Gupta, Beato's Delhi 1857-1997, New Delhi: 2000
S.A.A. Rizvi and M.L. Bhargava (eds), Freedom
Struggle in Uttar Pradesh: Source Materials, 6
vols, Lucknow: 1957-1961
P.C. Joshi (ed), Rebellion, 1857: a Symposium, Delhi: 1957
S.B. Chaudhuri, English Historical Writings on
the Indian Mutiny, 1857-1859, Calcutta: 1979
S.B. Chaudhuri, Theories of the Indian Mutiny, 1857-1859, Calcutta: 1965
S. Chaudhuri, The Literature on the Rebellion in
India in 1857-1859; a Bibliography, Calcutta: 1971
Barbara English and Rudrangshu Mukherjee,
"Debate: the Kanpur Massacres in India in the
Revolt of 1857," Past and Present, 142(1994)
G.W. Forrest, A History of the Indian Mutiny, 3 vols, London: 1904-1912
Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India, 1857, London: 1978
J.W. Kaye and G.B.Malleson, Kaye's and Malleson's
History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858, 6
vols, London: 1897-1898
Joyce Lebra-Chapman, The Rhani of Jhansi: a Study
in Female Heroism in India, Honolulu: 1986
T. Metcalf, Aftermath of Revolt: India, 1857-1870, Princeton: 1964
Charles T. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of the
Mutiny in Delhi, Delhi: 1974 reprint
Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt, 1857-1858:
a Study in Popular Resistance, Delhi: 1984
Rudrangshu Mukherjee, "'Satan Let Loose upon
Earth': the Kanpur Massacres in India in the
Revolt of 1857", Past and Present, 128(1990)
J.A.B. Palmer, The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut, Cambridge: 1966
M.N.Pearson (ed), Legitimacy and Symbols: the
South Asia Writings of F.W. Buckler, Ann Arbor:
1985
S.N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven, London:1959
Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed, Oxford: 1986
THE MUGHALS
M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, Calcutta: 1966
Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India, Delhi, 1986
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Mughal State, 1526-1750, Delhi: 1998
Richard Barnett, North India between Empires:
Awadh, the Mughals and the British, 1720-1801 New
Delhi: 1987
Irfan Habib, Medieval India I: Essays in the
History of India 1200-1750, New Delhi: 1999
Stephen Blake, Shahjahanabad: the Sovereign City
in Mughal India, 1639-1739, Cambridge: 1991
Andre Wink, Al-Hind, Delhi: 1990
Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the
Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760, Berkeley: 1993
B. Gascoigne, The Great Mughals
Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State
Formation in Eighteenth Century India, Delhi: 1993
Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, Cambridge: 1999
John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire: the New
Cambridge History of India, I:5, Cambridge: 1993
G.V. Scammell, The First Imperial Age; European
Overseas Expansion, c1400-1715, London: 1989
Percival Spear, Twilight of the Mughals, Oxford: 1973
Jadunath Sarkar, The Fall of the Mughal Empire, 4 vols, Calcutta: 1932-50
BRITISH INDIA - 1750-1900
David Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras, 1859-1947, Delhi: 1986
C.A. Bayly, The Imperial Meridian, London, 1989
C.A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the
British Empire, Cambridge: 1988
Seema Alavi, The Sepoy and the Company, New Delhi: 1995
Michael Fisher, A Clash of Cultures: Awadh, the
British, and the Mughals, Delhi: 1987
Michael Fisher, Indirect Rule in India, Delhi: 1990
Philip Lawson, The East India Company: A History, Harlow: 1993
P.J. Marshall, Bengal: the British Bridgehead, Cambridge: 1988
P.J.Marshall, "Economic and Political Expansion:
the Case of Oudh, 1765-1804", Modern Asian
Studies, 9(1975)
P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes; the British
in Bengal in the 18th Century, Oxford, 1976
Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge: 1994
Rudrangshu Mukherjee, "Trade and Empire in Awadh,
1756-1804", Past and Present, 94(1982)
J.A Moor and H.L. Wesseling (eds), Imperialism
and War: Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and
Africa, Leiden: 1989
David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, London: 1994
D.M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial
Armies and the Garrison State in Early
Nineteenth-Century India, London: 1995
John Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck; the Making
of a Liberal Imperialist, Berkeley: 1974
Burton Stein, Thomas Munro, Delhi: 1990
Malcolm Yapp, Strategies of British India, Oxford: 1980
J. Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried - A People's
History of the British Empire, London, Bookmarks:
2006
_____
[5] EVENTS:
(i)
THE FREE CHANDRAMOHAN COMMITTEE: PUBLIC MEETING, 12 MAY 2007 [BARODA]
The Free Chandramohan Committee will hold a
public meeting on Saturday, 12 May 2007, at 6 pm
at Gallery Chemould Prescott Road, to protest
against the arrest of the young artist
Chandramohan by the Baroda police earlier this
week.
The meeting will be addressed by a number of
speakers, among them noted cultural activists,
commentators, film-makers, lawyers and artists,
who will express solidarity with Chandramohan and
draw up practical measures to secure his release.
Among other issues, the meeting will discuss the
ways by which the constitutional safeguards can
be implemented, as well as legal redress by which
the onus in cases of alleged incitement of
communal disharmony can be placed squarely on
demagogues who distort artworks for their own
political ends. More significantly, a lunatic
fringe cannot claim monopoly over public space.
Let us resolve not to cede public space to the
forces of intolerance.
Date: 12 May 2007 (Saturday)
Time: 6 pm
Place: Gallery Chemould Prescott Road
Queens Mansion (3rd Floor)
A K Naik Marg
Fort, Mumbai 400 001
Phones: 91 22 22000211, 91 22 22000212, 91 22 22000213
Email: gallerychemould at gmail.com
(ii)
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/artists-alert-public-meeting-re-baroda.html
Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 10:03:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: ram rahman
Subject: ARTISTS ALERT: PUBLIC MEETING,
RABINDRA BHAVAN, DELHI, MON, MAY 14, 6 pm
Dear Friends,
While we were holding a press conference in
solidarity with MF Husain at the Press Club in
Delhi last Tuesday, the assault on the Faculty of
Fine Arts and the arrest of Chandramohan took
place in Baroda. Events now seem to be moving
faster than we ever imagined and with
Chandramohan having not been granted bail as
yet, and the closure of the exhibit of
reproductions of classical Indian Art by the
University authorities in Baroda today, May 11th,
we are holding a large protest meeting in the
lawns of Rabindra Bhavan, Mandi House New Delhi.
We urge all members of the arts community as well
as other concerned citizens to join us to raise
our voice against this rapidly widening
censorship taking place through violence or
threats of violence. The governments, both state
and central remain mute spectators, and in almost
every case, the perpetrators go scot free while
their targets are enmeshed in legal cases for
years.
Ram Rahman, Vivan Sundaram
for SAHMAT
o o o
(iii)
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/join-protest-at-arts-faculty-baroda-on.html
Join Protest at Arts Faculty, Baroda on 14th May 2007
WE APPEAL ALL FRIENDS, FELLOW ACTIVISTS, YOUNG
STUDENTS TO JOIN THE PROTEST ORGANISED BY
VADODARA GROUPS. INFORMATION PASTED BELOW.
SHABNAM HASHMI/ MANAN TRIVEDI - ON BEHALF OF ANHAD
--
Dear All,
You are all aware of the latest Sangh Parivar
offensive against the democratic rights of the
students and Faculty members of the well known
Fine Arts Faculty of Baroda, M.S.University. The
Fine Arts Faculty is one of the best institutions
within the M.S.University, which has managed to
retain high academic standards, in the face of
the general academic deterioration within the
University.
The recent incident of hooliganism and blatant
bullying unleashed by the Sangh Parivar has sent
shock waves all over the country. It took place
on Wednesday, 9th May 2007, at around 3 p.m. As
part of the examination procedure underway in the
Faculty, students are supposed to put up their
works which are to be assessed by external
examiners who come in from outside the city for
this purpose. Accordingly, students had put up
their installations around the Faculty campus.
Some of these installations, (graphic prints) by
Chandra Mohan attracted the wrath of the BJP
leader Neeraj Jain, who barged into the campus
with a bunch of goons and started disrupting the
atmosphere, using abusive language and mouthing
threats.
They roughed up the Chandra Mohan and accused him
of offending their religious sentiments, saying
that he had portrayed Durga Mata in an obscene
way. Not by any stretch of imagination did the
prints actually portray any goddess. Under the
leadership of Neeraj Jain (who had incidentally
played a very dubious role in the May 2006 riots
that followed the demolition of a 200 year old
dargah in the heart of the city), and with the
police in tow, they took Chandra Mohan and a
friend of his away to the Sayajiganj police
station. Shivji Panickkar, the acting Dean of the
Fine Arts Faculty, was also threatened with dire
consequences by Neeraj Jain and his goons.
Chandra Mohan's friend was released later, but he
was himself charged under sections 153 and 114.
Later, on 10th May, when the bail application
came up for hearing, two more charges were
slapped on him, namely, Section 295 A and 295 B,
and he was taken under judicial custody, and
moved to the Central Jail. By now, Christian
fundamentalists had joined hands with the
Hindutvavadis. Alongwith the VHP and BJP crowds,
reportedly, there were at least 40 priests in the
court when Chandra Mohan's bail application came
up for hearing. The priests were objecting to
some painting to do with a cross - which, they
thought offended their religious feelings.
In the meantime, Shivji Panickkar met the Vice
Chancellor, who basically, wanted him to make a
statement that was nothing short of an apology
for putting up offensive installations. Panickkar
refused to do so. After this, the students
submitted a statement expressing thier concern
over such tactics, and with a set of their
demands, which included police bandobast for the
Faculty. Reportedly, Neeraj Jain barged into the
Vice Chancellor's office on the same day, and
threatened that he would make sure that the
entire city would shut down if a single case is
registered against him.
As of now, all efforts are on to get Chandra Mohan released.
However, what is of grave concern in this entire
unfolding of events is the fascist agendas that
underly the actions of the likes of Neeraj Jain.
Citizenship and democratic rights face a grave
crisis in the State of Gujarat and elsewhere. The
nexus between the police and elements of the
Sangh Parivar is so clearly established (it has
been so since 2002) and it is also clear that
fascist tactics affect everybody. In this
instance, it is not only a matter for the artist
community to agitate about. It is for ALL of us
to sit up and take notice of what is going on in
the name of religion. If we do not counter these
tactics NOW, we are all going to be crushed
sooner or later, either in our work arenas or
within the confines of our homes. The dangers of
giving in to or being cowed down by these forces
cannot be underestimated.
THE FACULTY OF FINE ARTS HAS PLANNED A LARGE
DEMONSTRATION FOR 14TH MAY 2007, MONDAY WHERE
ARTISTS, LAWYERS, DOCTORS, ORDINARY CITIZENS FROM
ALL OVER THE COUNTRY WILL GET TOGETHER IN PROTEST
AGAINST SUCH GAGGING OF EXPRESSION AND VIOLATION
OF DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS. PLEASE DO COME FOR THE
DEMONSTRATION, AND MOTIVATE OTHERS TO JOIN IT.
THE TIME TO ACT IS UPON US, WE CANNOT ABDICATE
OUR RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS SOCIETY, OURSELVES AND
THE YOUNGER GENERATIONS.
VENUE: FINE ARTS FACULTY, M.S.UNIVERSITY , FATEHGANJ,
BARODA
TIME: 2 PM ONWARDS
CONTACT PHONE NUMBERS:
BINA SRINIVASAN: 9879377280
SHIVJI PANICKKAR: 9898403097
Best
Bina
o o o
(iv)
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/mangalore-workshop-seminar-on-media-and.html
INVITATION TO WORKSHOP AND SEMINAR ON MEDIA AND COMMUNALISM
18, 19 May 2007
Shanti Kiran, Bajjodi, Mangalore
Speakers include:
Arundhati Roy, writer and activist, New Delhi
Justice Rajinder Sachaar, New Delhi
Praful Bidwai, senior journalist and columnist, New Delhi
Saeed Naqvi, senior journalist and columnist, New Delhi
Nupur Basu, filmmaker and journalist, Bangalore
R.Poornima, Editor, Udayavani, Bangalore
Gauri Lankesh, Editor, Lankesh, Bangalore
The workshop and seminar is an effort to focus on
the increasing communalization of society through
out the Karavalli belt - the situation continues
to remain communally tense with an incident of
violence being reported every single day from the
region.
Media has a potential to effectively intervene in
the public discourse during times of communal
conflict, When infused with secular voices and
with a realization of its responsibility, the
media plays an important role in diffusing myths,
misconceptions and hatred that is propogated in
society by communal forces.
The seminar and workshop is geared to address
students, young journalists and activists in the
attempt to understand the slow communalization of
the public sphere through mainstream media.
Do email us if you would like to register, food
and accommodation will be available for those who
register before hand.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more details, contact Deepu - 94483 67627 or
Ashok - 94482 56216 or email
souharda.vedike at gmail.com
o o o
(v)
GHADAR (1857 - 2007): MARKING 150 YEARS OF ANTI-COLONIAL RESISTANCE
Saturday May 12, 2007, 7:00 - 11:00 pm
Rhizome Café (317 East Broadway (near Main and Kingsway) [Vancouver]
Organized by a group of South Asian Youth
Ghadar: The Hindi/Punjabi/Urdu word for
'rebellion'. We use this word to refer to the
1857 rebellion against the British in South Asia,
and the actions it has inspired since.
It has been 150 years since Indian members of
the British East India Company's army revolted.
This grew into a full-fledged rebellion involving
large segments of India's population opposing the
British, which was met with unflinching brutality
against civilian populations. The Ghadar's
memory has continuously reinvigorated
anti-colonial movements both in South Asia and
beyond. We use this term to highlight the flame
of resistance
that led various segments of Indian society to reject and oppose colonialism.
We wish to mark the anniversary of this fiery
moment in anti-colonial resistance not only to
honour a historic event but to highlight the
importance of remembering the Ghadar as an
ongoing mobilizing force against neo-colonial and
imperialistic ventures today.
In the spirit of ongoing resistance, we share a
night of music and poetry, including works by
Faiz Ahmad Faiz
and Agha Shahid Ali, as well as performances by
local artists. We will also feature clips of
Bollywood representations of the Ghadar and an
open mic for people to reflect on what the Ghadar
means to them today, followed by dj'ing and dance.
We hope you will join us to mark this
anniversary and share in the spirit of resistance.
Organized by a group of South Asian Youth
For more information:
Email uahmad at sfu.ca or gskambo1 at hotmail.com
Call 778 552 2099
(vi)
And at the same date and time, and organized by East Indian Defence Committee:
150TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION OF THE FIRST WAR
OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE, 1857-59
Saturday, May 12, 2007, 6 p.m.
Bear Creek Community Hall
8580 - 132 Street, Surrey [Vancouver]
East Indian Defence Committee cordially invites
you to attend a memorable evening commemorating
the outstanding heroism and sacrifice of
patriotic Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis,
Nepalis, Sri Lankans, Bhutanese and Sikkimese and
other nationalities of all religious
denominations who fought against British
colonialism and for genuine independence in the
period 1857 to 1859.
For further information contact: H. Cheema
604-377-2415; G. Thandi 604-583-4749; I. Purewal
604-583-7984: K. Bains: 604-270-3588.
We in SANSAD endorse and support both events, and
hope people will find it possible to attend one
or the other, both happening at the same time.
A big debate has been raging in the
sub-continent, especially in India, if the
year-long struggles of the people actually
amounted to the "First War of Independence" or
these were just the last gasps of a dying and
decadent order. It is a futile, intellectually
sterile, debate. So also are the many
"Orientalist" assertions of the last 150 years
that this glorious struggle was only a "Sepoy
Mutiny" triggered by irrational religious beliefs
around beef or pork fat. At the very least, these
discussiona and asserttions ignore the vital fact
that by 1857, the "the Honourable East India
Company" had not only destroyed the economic base
of India and its all-too-powerful and
all-too-pervasive mercantialist bourgeiosie that
had already emerged, but had also created a
comparador class of landlords and intellectuals.
One has to know as to what had been happening to
the polity and economy of the subcontinent for at
least 350 years before 1857 (the first European
settlement on the Indian soil was established in
1498) in order to adequately grasp the
significance of those struggles.
It was a War of Independence, par excellance.
We will circulate our analytical perspective on
this very shortly, benefited largely by some
ground-breaking research that has been carried
out by historians.
In the meantime, as we celebrate the
anti-colonial struggles of the people of the
sub-continent, it is important to recognize that
while the people then were fighting only the East
India Company, today - in the decadent and yet
aggressive phase of imperialism - there are
hundreds of "East India Companies"
simultaneously emnating from the multitude of
western societies, penetrating every aspect of
the economy, culture, political establishment,
and creating also a powerfully vocal class of
comprador intellectuals.
Remembering and Celebrating 1857 also means a
firm commitment to develop comprehensive
anti-imperialist struggles. The "independence"
for which large number people fought and laid
their lives in 1857-58, and since then, is still
out there to fight for.
hari sharma
for SANSAD
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
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