SACW - 4 Oct 2015 | Nepal Constitution and border embargo / Pakistan: Law and Lawyers; honour for Sabeen / India: Concern for NMML ; Meat bans, mob justice and Dadri lynching; Hindu Software Code Bill / Wikileaks vs. the Empire
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Sat Oct 3 19:32:14 EDT 2015
South Asia Citizens Wire - 4 October 2015 - No. 2872
[since 1996]
Contents:
1. SAAPE welcomes new constitution of Nepal and condemns the trade and transport embargo imposed by India on the Indo-Nepal border
2. Pakistan - Law And Lawyers (Editorial, Dawn)
3. India's Attack On Free Speech | Sonia Faleiro
4. India: Concern for the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML): A STATEMENT
5. India: Meat bans, mob justice and Dadri lynching - Selected Editorials
6. India: A Note on Dadri | Mukul Dube
7. Cow Frenzy And The Dadri Killing - Aren't We Hurtling Down The Pakistan Road Too? | Faraz Ahmad
8. India: Pegging the minimum age for drinking at 25 is ludicrous and counterproductive (Editorial, TOI)
9. India: The inconvenience of the past | Janaki Nair
10. Recent On Communalism Watch:
- India: The State as fiefdom (Prabhat Patnaik)
- India: Beef, Hindutva and bigotry: Constitution has no place for it (Kamal Mitra Chenoy)
- India: Repatriation Storm Brews Over Brus in Mizoram and Tripura (Maitreyee Handique, 8 June 2015)
- Indian Muslims are living at the mercy of Hindus: The lesson from Dadri ‘beef lynching’ (Jyoti Punwani)
- Hindu neighbours helped Muslim family in Bisada escape mob (Gautami Srivastava)
- India: RSS leader Tarun Vijay's response to Dadri murder marks the death of the moral Indian (Ajaz Ashraf in scroll.in)
- India - murder of Mohammed Akhlakh in Dadri: VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi justifies Dadri murder, says beef-eaters deserve such treatment
- Shekhar Gupta: Mainstreaming the Lynch-Fringe (2 Oct, Business Standard)
- India: Dadri reminds us how PM Narendra Modi bears responsibility for the poison that is being spread (Pratap Bhanu Mehta)
- Liberal Hindus, arise: Reclaim your faith from extremists (Sagarika Ghose)
- India: Of Cows, Muslims, and the Right to Religious Difference (G. Arunima - 2 oct 2015)
::: RESOURCEs & FULL TEXT :::
11. Sabeen Mahmud honoured with the fifth Meeto Memorial Award in Kathmandu [3 Oct 2015]
12. Bangladesh: Yet another foreign national murdered - Editorial, Daily Star
13. Nepal - India Relations: Showing who’s boss
Editorial, Nepali Times
14. The Hindu Software Code Bill: They’re joined at the hip - the superficial modernity of Digital India and a deep, unspoken ‘Hindutva’ | Nissim Mannathukkaren
15. India: A Sewing Machine, Murder, and The Absence of Regret | Ravish Kumar
16. How Modi, RSS and other Hindu fanatics are crushing India's spirit | DN Jha
17. India: Beef, Hindutva and bigotry: Constitution has no place for it | Kamal Mitra Chenoy
18. Wikileaks vs. the Empire: the Revolutionary Act of Telling the Truth | John Pilger
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1. SAAPE WELCOMES THE PROMULGATION OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF NEPAL AND CONDEMNS THE TRADE AND TRANSPORT EMBARGO IMPOSED BY INDIAN GOVERNMENT ON THE INDO-NEPAL BORDER
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The South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE), a regional level civil society network encompassing all eight countries of South Asia, welcomes the new constitution of Nepal promulgated on 20th September 2015 by an overwhelming majority (90% votes in favour) of Constituent Assembly members. Although we had witnessed several problems during the constitution making process that the Constituent Assembly of Nepal had encountered, we welcome the result that followed the democratic processes during the constitution drafting and finalisation process. In this context, we express our solidarity with the people of Nepal and the genuine demands of Tharu, Dalit, Women, Janatis and Madhesis, which we urge the government of Nepal, the political parties, and groups that are protesting to settle through peaceful dialogue and by incorporating amendments in the constitution as appropriate.
http://sacw.net/article11710.html
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2. PAKISTAN - LAW AND LAWYERS (Editorial, Dawn)
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THE law in Pakistan is sometimes far from safe in the hands of lawyers.
http://sacw.net/article11707.html
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3. INDIA'S ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH | Sonia Faleiro
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It's hard to accept what is happening in India. It is easier to ignore or dismiss the attacks and the threats as a liberal persecution complex or a phase that will last only as long as the B.J.P. is in power. But the country is undergoing a tectonic shift that will have long-term repercussions. The attacks in India should not be seen as a problem limited to secular writers or liberal thinkers. They should be recognized as an attack on the heart of what constitutes a democracy
http://sacw.net/article11713.html
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4. INDIA: CONCERN FOR THE NEHRU MEMORIAL MUSEUM AND LIBRARY (NMML): A STATEMENT
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We call upon all concerned citizens to urge executive bodies of autonomous cultural and academic institutions such as NMML to protect the space for democratic discussion, dissent and minority views at these sites which exist for the of exchange of ideas. Equally, those who are appointed to run these institutions must have independent standing and sound credentials in their field and be given the room to work creatively while keeping their intellectual and professional dignity intact.
http://sacw.net/article11709.html
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5. INDIA: MEAT BANS, MOB JUSTICE AND DADRI LYNCHING - SELECTED EDITORIALS
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Editorial from DNA, The Times of India and The Indian Express over The murder of a 50-year-old man at Dadri, just 45 kms from Delhi, over rumours that his family consumed beef.
http://sacw.net/article11704.html
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6. INDIA: A NOTE ON DADRI
by Mukul Dube
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When I read of the killing, in Bisara village of Dadri, of a Muslim man by Hindus who suspected him of keeping beef in his house, I was taken back to the Gujarat massacre of 2002. That wound is fresh: the passing of a dozen years has done nothing to lessen the pain and the anger. Indeed, many more wounds have been added after Modi's election victory, which has enabled the underlying evil to spread its tentacles and grow more vicious. It is not surprising that people are reacting to Dadri with fear and loathing.
http://sacw.net/article11702.html
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7. COW FRENZY AND THE DADRI KILLING - AREN'T WE HURTLING DOWN THE PAKISTAN ROAD TOO? | Faraz Ahmad
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The entre civilized world felt outraged when a young Christian couple, daily wage labourers on a brick kiln at Kot Radha Kishan, 40 miles from Lahore were brutally murdered on November 4, 2014 on the mischievous and vicious unsubstantiated allegation plea of committing blasphemy. Ten months later a poor Muslim farm labourer at Dadri was bludgeoned to death and his young son, trying to save a middle aged father, equally brutally beaten up, two days after Baqrid festival, involving slaughter of goats. Dadri is closer to India's national Capital than Kot Radha Kishan was from the Pakistani Punjab capital. In both cases no one felt the need to ascertain the truth behind the allegation.
http://sacw.net/article11701.html
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8. INDIA: PEGGING THE MINIMUM AGE FOR DRINKING AT 25 IS LUDICROUS AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE (EDITORIAL, TOI)
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There are some laws that are observed more in the breach. The law on Delhi's permissible drinking age must be one of them. India recognises its citizens as responsible adults when they attain 18 years of age. You can vote, get a driving licence or join the military at 18; the legal age for marriage is 18 for girls and 21for boys. Yet it's illegal for you to have a drink in a public place before you turn 25.
http://sacw.net/article11705.html
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9. INDIA: THE INCONVENIENCE OF THE PAST | Janaki Nair
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For some time now, the votaries of the Hindu Right have maligned the approach of what they describe as Liberal-Left scholars, interchangeably described as anti-Indian, anti-national and anti-Hindu. Such historians are faulted for their focus on social and economic structures, for critical and evaluative rather than “pride-inducing” engagements with the past . . .
http://sacw.net/article11694.html
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10. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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- India: The State as fiefdom (Prabhat Patnaik)
- India: Beef, Hindutva and bigotry: Constitution has no place for it (Kamal Mitra Chenoy)
- India: Repatriation Storm Brews Over Brus in Mizoram and Tripura (Maitreyee Handique, 8 June 2015)
- Indian Muslims are living at the mercy of Hindus: The lesson from Dadri ‘beef lynching’ (Jyoti Punwani)
- Hindu neighbours helped Muslim family in Bisada escape mob (Gautami Srivastava)
- India: RSS leader Tarun Vijay's response to Dadri murder marks the death of the moral Indian (Ajaz Ashraf in scroll.in)
- India - murder of Mohammed Akhlakh in Dadri: VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi justifies Dadri murder, says beef-eaters deserve such treatment
- Shekhar Gupta: Mainstreaming the Lynch-Fringe (2 Oct, Business Standard)
- India: Dadri reminds us how PM Narendra Modi bears responsibility for the poison that is being spread (Pratap Bhanu Mehta)
- Liberal Hindus, arise: Reclaim your faith from extremists (Sagarika Ghose)
- India: HJS, Shiv Sena come out in support of Far Right Sanatan Sanstha
- India: Two main accused arrested in Dadri beef lynching case (Times of India report)
- India: Lack of political will to go after Hindu right-wing groups
- India: Of Cows, Muslims, and the Right to Religious Difference (G. Arunima - 2 oct 2015)
- India: A Sewing Machine, Murder, and The Absence of Regret (Ravish Kumar)
- India: I'll have the holy cow, medium-rare please (Mitali Saran in Business Standard)
- India: Joseph Dias claims to be offended on behalf of Mumbai’s Christians ‒ but he doesn't speak for me (Lindsay Pereira for scroll.in)
- Text of CPI(M) statement on Dadri Mob Killing
- "The Message of Sreenarayana Guru & Secularism" something that now a CPM Polit Bureau Member Pinarayi Vijayan speaks on - 21st Century Socialist Vision ?
- Does it matter now if someone was an Aryan: Romila Thapar (reported by Aranya Shankar)
- India: Political Meat and murder in Dadri (Supriya Sharma)
- India: Trail of mobile nos. links killings of 3 rationalists - hints at the possible connection between all three
- India: Anumeha Yadav's report on Ranchi communal tensions
- available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
::: RESOURCES & FULL TEXT :::
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11. SABEEN MAHMUD HONOURED WITH THE FIFTH MEETO MEMORIAL AWARD IN KATHMANDU [3 OCT 2015]
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http://www.dawn.com/news/1210654/sabeen-mahmud-given-south-asian-human-rights-award
Sabeen Mahmud given South Asian human rights award
Fazal Khaliq — Updated Oct 03, 2015 08:06pm
KATHMANDU: Late Pakistani rights activist Sabeen Mahmud was honoured with the fifth Meeto Memorial Award in Kathmandu on Friday.
“Sabeen was working for peace, harmony, rights, justice and peace so she is in our hearts and will always be. Though anti-humanity elements eliminated her body but her vision will always be alive so I salute her courage, I salute her vision,” Indian feminism activist Kamla Bhasin told Dawn.
She said Sabeen was the hope and message of love and courage. “Her message is an inspiring factor for us. Though, geographically, she was in Pakistan but what she fought against is the same beyond borders,” she added.
Mona Sherpa a representative of Sangat honouring Sabeen said that it was an unfortunate moment that the brave icon lost her life.
Related: Director T2F Sabeen Mahmud shot dead in Karachi
“If I remember one thing about her, it is her courage and saying 'fear is nothing but just a lie',” she said, adding, “If we really want to honor Sabeen then we have to have that fearlessness and live our lives as she did, being the voice of those people who are traumatised, those who are in very difficult situation.”
Hundreds of women from across the South Asian countries gathered in a ceremony held here in Kathmandu to honour the young Pakistani rights activists for her bravery and struggle for rights, peace and justice.
The ceremony was organised by civil society organisations in collaboration with Sangat, a South Asian Feminist Network.
The award is given to young South Asians whose work demonstrates a commitment to communal harmony, peace, justice and human rights.
Meeto Memorial Award was established to remember Meeto — Kamaljit Bhasin Malik — a young Indian activist who was working on how Ganga Jamna culture ended. She died at the age of 27.
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12. BANGLADESH: YET ANOTHER FOREIGN NATIONAL MURDERED
- Editorial, Daily Star
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(Daily Star - October 04, 2015)
Editorial
Law enforcers must act promptly and decisively
We are aghast at the killing of yet another foreign development worker on Bangladeshi soil, only five days into the murder of an Italian citizen in Dhaka. The Japanese national, Kunio Hoshi, was shot dead in Mahiganj area of Kawnia Upazila, reportedly in the same manner as Cesare Tavella.
We have no words to condone this dastardly act. Japan has been one of our closest development partners, and one with whom we have cultivated a long and fruitful relationship. This murder casts a dark shadow upon us all.
Although we do not have all the facts at hand, it is reasonable to conclude that this act of violence was carried out to hurt the image of the country. One could draw a link between the murders of Tavella and Hoshi, which is to create panic and convey a negative picture of the law and order in the country to a global audience.
At a time when the US, Canada and some European countries have already issued travel alerts to their citizens regarding Bangladesh, and the Australian cricket team has delayed its tour on grounds of security, the gruesome murders of two foreign nationals in such a short period of time will no doubt have very serious ramifications for Bangladesh.
It is thus crucial that the perpetrators and the motive behind these killings be unearthed immediately to allay any and all apprehensions both in the country and abroad about rising extremism in Bangladesh. This is the time for our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to prove their efficiency. Needless to say, they are now under international spotlight.
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13. NEPAL - INDIA RELATIONS: SHOWING WHO’S BOSS
Editorial, Nepali Times
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(Nepali Times, 2-8 October 2015, #778)
Editorial
It is in India’s strategic interest to ensure equilibrium and stability in Nepal, but the blockade has undermined that.
Nepal’s constitution was finally promulgated on 20 September by an overwhelming majority in a freely elected Constituent Assembly with a fair and proportionate representation of most ethnic, caste and gender groups. Less than 10 per cent voted against or boycotted the promulgation. Even rejectionists and die-hard critics of the constitution will admit that it was the product of a fully free and fair democratic exercise.
Which is why it is surprising that the world’s largest democracy and the United Nations have been so grudging in accepting this as a document that, while flawed, ended years of deadlock and can be the basis of an inclusive and durable constitution.
To express its misgivings about the constitution, India has obstructed the flow of food, fuel and goods entering Nepal, hoping that the hardships the Nepali people are forced to suffer will compel Nepal’s rulers to buckle.
What is hard to understand is why all the needless lies and deception? How does a thinly veiled border blockade help India’s national interest anyway? The move is foolish on so many levels that even sections of the international community, which had in recent years sub-contracted their Nepal policy to New Delhi, are aghast.
From what we can piece together, the Indian foreign policy establishment was understandably unhappy with the post-earthquake 16-point agreement between the four parties on 8 June to fast track the constitution. They made these misgivings clear to Nepali leaders visiting New Delhi, including Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Sher Bahadur Deuba who had assured them that Madhesi concerns would be taken into account. After all, Bijay Gachhadar’s MJF-D was on board at the time.
But when it became apparent that the federal delineation was not to his liking, Gachhadar was leaned upon to quit the alliance, and violent protests rocked the western and the eastern Tarai. The Indian Ambassador did some frantic lobbying to try to convince the NC, UML and UCPN(M) to postpone the constitution by four days to bring the Madhesi parties on board. The government waited out the weekend but went ahead with the process. Less than 48 hours before the promulgation, Foreign Secretary S Jaishanker was dispatched to Kathmandu for some blunt talk. The Big Three didn’t like the body language, and bulldozed the constitution through. That is where they made a serious miscalculation: they never thought India would go so far as to seal the border in retaliation.
Whatever reservations India had about the constitution, however much the new constitution had failed to address the concerns of Nepal’s excluded, it was a start. Critics have latched on to deficiencies that can be corrected in the future through future amendments, and have ignored many of the positive points in the document. The constitution thus became a lightning rod for everyone with a grievance, including politicians who lost the 2013 elections and needed constitutional guarantees of representation so they’d never again suffer such defeat.
It is difficult to understand how India stands to benefit from such a crude attempt to be mean and show who’s boss. Even critics within India have ridiculed it as a major mishandling of foreign policy, and there are indications in New Delhi of rifts within the establishment, the Hindu right, among intelligence agencies, and the bureaucracy, about the blockade.
In Nepal, it has undone the dramatic breakthrough in bilateral relations achieved by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here last year. Most Nepalis had forgotten two previous Indian blockades, but this past week has spawned a whole new generation of anti-Indian Nepalis. This cannot benefit India, or Nepal, in the long-term.
Nepalis from the plains have always suffered discrimination from the hill establishment, they have not been treated with respect, and their loyalty to the Nepali state is questioned every step of the way. This Indian intervention, however camouflaged, will now make it even more difficult for them.
New Delhi and Kathmandu both need to de-escalate. In the first sitting of parliament on Friday, Tarai MPs from the Big Three could push amendments to the constitution to address some of the concerns of the Madhesi parties and India, including the delineation of constituencies based on population broadly based on districts, re-insert ‘proportion’ and ‘Tarai Madhes’ in the wording, etc.
The new Prime Minister and his government have their work cut out for them. They have to rush earthquake relief delayed by politics and the blockade, they have to heal the serious rifts that have emerged between the hills and the plains, and they have to steer the country on a path to rapid economic growth.
This is still possible to do, and it would be in India’s own strategic interest to help Nepal attain equilibrium and stability.
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14. THE HINDU SOFTWARE CODE BILL: THEY’RE JOINED AT THE HIP: THE SUPERFICIAL MODERNITY OF DIGITAL INDIA AND A DEEP, UNSPOKEN ‘HINDUTVA’
by Nissim Mannathukkaren
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(Outlook Magazine - Oct 12, 2015)
“I know, to achieve the vision of Digital India, the government must also start thinking a bit like you (Silicon Valley).”
—Narendra Modi
“We will cleanse every area of public discourse that has been westernised and where Indian culture and civilisation need to be restored—be it the history we read, our cultural heritage or our institutes that have been polluted over years.”
—Mahesh Sharma
MoS for culture, Government of India
***
If there is one characteristic that can define India since 1991, it is the fundamental disjunction between the scientific-technical and the economic on the one side, and the ethical/moral and the social/public good on the other. The latter are sacrificial lambs at the altar of a neo-liberal, market-led model of development that can be essentially termed as technicism. In this conception, development is merely reduced to economic growth and progress in science and technology rather than a broader understanding of human or planetary well-being. Of course, science itself is not pursued for its revolutionary implications, while technology is merely a panacea for practical needs. Both are seen in a vacuum, quarantined from social contexts.
While this tendency is not unique to India, under the present Narendra Modi-led regime, it acquires a radically new feature. Technicism is married to a virulent and aggressive cultural agenda. A Digital India is sought to be ushered in, but premised on the revival of the great Hindu civilisation. The attempt to reach the pinnacle of economic and scientific development is accompanied by the project of cultural “cleansing”. But development and culture mirror each other—in yoking culture to technicism, culture itself becomes mechanical, losing its vitality.
Recently, the Financial Times, London, argued that Narendra Modi “embraces modernity...just not at home”. It sees a dichotomy between “India’s first tech-savvy, social media-enabled prime minister” and his party’s own culturally regressive agenda at home. On the one hand, there is the globe-trotting and internationalist PM, courting world leaders and business heads to “Make in India” and visiting the Silicon Valley to “Start-Up India”, and on the other, there is his party and fundamentalist supporters who seek to enforce an unmodern code when it comes to meat-eating, romantic relationships, school pedagogy, critical thinking, foreign culture, the religious “other” and so on. But this dichotomy between development and Hindutva, widely shared by even critical commentators, is a false one.
Even during the elections last year, this narrative was dominant that the majority of the people who voted for Modi wanted development and not Hindutva and that the BJP was following the cue. This misunderstands the nature of the BJP and its relationship with the RSS and the Sangh parivar, and underestimates the large numbers who might not be explicit supporters of Hindutva, but give silent assent to a majoritarian Hindu national identity by not actively rejecting or resisting Hindutva. Unlike common wisdom, the latter is more dangerous than the former.
More importantly, it misunderstands the unifying logic of both neo-liberal capitalist development and Hindutva (which is technicism). Both have an instrumental attitude, the former towards economic growth and science and technology, and the latter towards culture. Both thus miss the fundamental purposes of economic growth/science and technology and culture, and their vital progressive and critical aspects.
Thus seeing Modi’s seeking of economic and technological progress for India as “embracing modernity” is fundamentally a mistake. For modernity is not technicism or the expansion of the market, it is a larger project in which technological and economic betterment is only one aspect. More significant is the liberation of the human mind from the shackles of unreason (in which science is a mere aid), the seeking of the end of all oppressions, satiating the craving for liberty, equality and fraternity. Without this, there is no modernity.
It is wrongly thought that technicist development is somehow above culture; that it merely seeks to bring about economic progress and science and technology without any cultural accoutrements. That is why seeking from the BJP-led government just development and not Hindutva is seeking an Eden that does not exist. It is ironic to see commentators who had argued circa 2014 that Indian democracy and its institutions are strong enough to resist right-wing majoritarianism now lamenting the “closing of the Indian mind”.
Even the most modern of nation-building projects rely on myths of all kinds. What more cogent example of this than Nazi Germany, which used the most advanced forms of science and technology in the service of the most horrifying cultural agenda built on its own interpretation of Teutonic mythologies? Thus when the culture minister of India, who interestingly is a physician by profession, exhorts us to join the project of cultural cleansing and states that “I respect the Bible and Quran but they are not central to the soul of India in the same way as Gita and Ramayana are”, we are on familiar territory of myth-making by modernising nations.
The attempt to reclaim the glorious cultural essence and the nation’s own myths and “superstitions” is thus only seemingly opposed to (an instrumental) science and capitalism, but is almost completely in sync with them, and the technicist notion of development. That is why there is the great urge to assert that plastic surgery, genetic science and nuclear testing already happened in Vedic times; yogic farming is the best solution to India’s devastating agrarian distress; and that yoga has been adopted by the most developed of countries.
When the prime minister visits the Google headquarters and asks that Khagaul, Bihar, be pinpointed on Google Earth (Khagaul is where the ancient astronomer Aryabhatta was believed to have had an observatory), a Hindu India is claiming itself as the original repository of scientific and technical knowledge. Ganesha’s transplanted elephant head and Karna’s out-of-womb birth are not magical legends contradictory to a Digital India, but one in the long lineage of scientific achievements.
In drawing a tight line between Hindutva and development, we risk missing its linkages and affinities. As the scholar Thomas Blom Hansen presciently argues, Hindu nationalism is attractive for it fulfils the “desire for recognition” in a globalised world marked by complex cultural and financial flows and consumerist desires. More importantly, according to Hansen, it provides an anchor and order in a fractured social formation threatened by the political assertion of ‘lower castes’, and the fear of the Muslim.
In seeing Hindutva as a fringe element of the Yogi Adityanaths, Giriraj Singhs and Sakshi Maharajs, we miss the insidious and subtle growth of a Hindu national identity (which for all purposes is inflected by Brahminical and ‘upper-caste’ values) among the ‘modern’ sections of India, including its tech-savvy youth. That is why the hip NRI crowds of Modi cheer his eulogies to Sanskrit, Bhagavad Gita and yoga and his relentless mocking of secularism, a concept which is still enshrined in the Indian constitution.
Even if explicit Hindutva is not embraced, India is mainly conceived through a Hindu lens. India wants to become modern but not as deracinated India—faceless among the millions of moderns elsewhere, especially in the West. It wants to assert its place as a modern Hindu India. A digital and Hindu India converge when thousands of people change their Facebook profile pictures to one with tricolour hues in support of Narendra Modi’s Digital India initiative, and when the overwhelmingly Indian audience at the Facebook headquarters welcomes the PM with chants of “Modi, Modi” and the song Chak de India playing in the background. Many of these are not Hindutva supporters, but nationalists, who, keeping in line with the technicist compartmentalisation of ethics, close their eyes to depredations wrought by the idea of a Hindu India.
Thus the exhortation by the Financial Times to choose one among the two options (“Mr Modi may have to decide whether he wants to be leader of an ancient Hindu civilisation too proud to think it needs help from the outside world, or of a modern, outward-looking nation of young people even more tech-savvy than he is”) is unable to make sense of the kinships between a Hindu India and a globalised world.
As the technicist notion of development goes hand in hand with Hindutva’s instrumental notion of culture, the arts and social sciences are worthless except for some purposes of political propaganda. This is not a feature of a right-wing Hindutva regime alone, but the incendiary nature of its cultural project takes instrumentality to a new low. Thus the government wants to convert the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) into one which showcases ‘governance’, the pillars of which would, of course, be ‘smart cities’ and ISRO’s unmanned flight to Mars, the crowning glory of our scientific advancement.
What is more significant than the brazen bureaucracy at work in the government’s treatment of FTII (and other institutions like the NMML and ICHR) is the lack of resistance from the public and the value accorded to cinema and history in our society. While nations like Iran and China, despite their authoritarian regimes, have produced films which have touched the pinnacle of world cinema, our new economic and technical cinematic prowess, supposedly capable of taking on Hollywood, produces puerile films which earn Rs 700 crore at the box office.
Thus a development sphere gripped by technicism is the breeding ground for instrumental and mechanical understandings of culture, both feeding off each other. The apathetic responses to periodic health crises and farmer suicides, the scotching of critical thought by killing non-conformist thinkers, the continuous abridgement of cultural freedoms are parts of the same technicist puzzle.
India of the present, despite its abysmal levels of human development, has global power aspirations. These aspirations demand not only an unshakable faith in the power of science and technology but also in the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism. And now we are asked to embrace the cultural project of Hindu India along with it. Here culture becomes a mere appendage. As philosopher Theodor Adorno said, “Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men.” This spread of a superficial modernity—of capitalism and instrumental science—should not be confused with modernity. A Hindu India, barring some minor contradictions, is perfectly at home with the superficial modernity of a Digital India.
The seeds of a critique can emerge only in a counterculture of incessant questioning which is the fundamental basis of modernity as well as scientific enquiry. When Narendra Modi says his government wants to think like the Silicon Valley, this incessant questioning is not what he has in mind (nor is it in the minds of the digital corporations of Silicon Valley). For that, just literacy, digital or otherwise, is not enough; but critical forms of pedagogy which challenge dominant forms of thought which legitimise all forms of exploitation are an absolute necessity. This is impossible without abandoning an instrumental notion of culture. India’s future does not lie in a Hindu India, however digitised.
The author is with Dalhousie University, Canada.
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15. INDIA: A SEWING MACHINE, MURDER, AND THE ABSENCE OF REGRET
by Ravish Kumar
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(ndtv.com - 1 Oct 2015)
How can all this be normal? How can life on the streets of Basehara village go on, as if nothing happened here, and whatever happened was not wrong? It has just been two days since a massive mob pulled someone out of his house and killed him. Before killing him, they made him run to the farthest corner of his home. They broke down his door with such beastly force that instead of giving way at its hinges, it cracked right down the middle. They smashed a sewing machine and used it to beat the man to pulp. There were not just violent, savage people in that mob, but also angry and powerful men. Their blood boiled in such seething rage, and that hot blood flowed into their hands, giving it such inhuman strength that they bent the grills that barred the top-floor windows as if they were made of flimsy wire. The bricks that had been used to raise the heavy wooden bed had been taken out.
The bloody sights inside that room tell the story of how deep-seated was the hatred in the hearts of those who killed Mohammad Akhlaq. Could such fury, such bestial savagery have ridden on just a rumour that Akhlaq had eaten beef? Basehara village has never had any history of communal tensions that can explain this killing. There are no history sheeters or criminals in this village. Mohammad Akhlaq's home sits right in the middle of a Rajput settlement. Surely this means there must have been a semblance of harmony here. Then how could one sudden rumour cause Akhlaq and his son to be dragged out of their home and beaten, their heads smashed with bricks? The son is fighting for his life on a hospital bed right now. Doctors say his condition is critical.
Everywhere, it is the same story that can at any moment set fire to our country. An announcement is made on a loudspeaker. WhatsApp is used to spread videos of cow slaughter. A calf goes missing. People get angry. Then pieces of meat are discovered - at times outside a temple, and sometimes strewn outside mosques. How many riots have these pieces of meat caused, how many people have they killed? Both Hindus and Muslims. We all know how this works, and yet, each time, we become violent over these same stories. Who are these people who manage to create this hatred inside us?
Dadri is right next to Delhi. Basehara village is clean and well-maintained. How is it possible that no one looked bothered by what had happened here? How is it that I didn't find a single person who looked ashamed or had even a shred of remorse? Why was no one distraught that thousands of people from the village could have been transformed into a killer mob? By the time I reached Basehara, most of the village's young men had disappeared. Some said their sons are unwell. Others said their sons were not in the village. The villagers blame four or five outsiders for instigating the violence. An announcement was made over the temple loudspeaker, and within minutes thousands had collected. This narrow street would not have held them all. The mob must have spilled over, all across the village. Yet, when I asked why so many people listened to a small group of outsiders, I was met with silence. No one saw this massive crowd. No one recognised them. Everyone says those who have been arrested are innocent.
Only the courts can decide who is guilty, but the manner in which Basehara village has returned to normalcy makes me think that the police will never be able to identify the people who made up that murderous crowd. In any case, when have the police ever been successful in such cases? Even if forensic investigations identify whether it was beef or mutton, what difference will it make? The crowd has already delivered its judgment. It has already killed Akhlaq by beating him to pulp. How can Akhlaq's daughter forget how her father was beaten to death right before her eyes? His old mother was also beaten by the crowd. There are deep wounds on her eyes.
The Dadri incident will get lost under the glory of some foreign trip or some clever rhetoric in an election rally. But, those of us who can think need to think today. What has happened that we are unable to rationally explain things to today's youth? Elders in the village say, even if it was beef, it was for the police to take action. But the young men of Basehara go straight to the issue of sentiment and beliefs. The way they react to emotive issues clearly shows that someone has already done some spadework here. Someone has planted the seeds of a poisonous tree, which is bearing fruit in their minds now. They are not even willing to listen to the Prime Minister's statement that communalism is poisonous.
Prashant is a typical young man who wanted to click a selfie with me. He is handsome and works as an engineer. As soon as the selfie-session was over, Prashant said no one should play with anyone's sentiments. My colleague Ravish Ranjan Shukla interrupted him and said young people don't know how to speak to their parents in a civilised manner, but are willing to kill someone over sentiments and emotions. Prashant appeared to be a good boy, but it seems that he has no remorse about Akhlaq's death. Instead, he asked us that after the partition, when it had been decided that Hindus will stay here and Muslims will go to Pakistan, why did Gandhi and Nehru ask Muslims stay back in India? I couldn't help but feel dismayed. These are the typical beliefs that keep the pot of communalism boiling.
Prashant and I had a heated argument, but I lost. People like us are losing arguments every day. All I could do was ask Prashant to reconsider his views, read a few more books, but he looked self-assured that whatever he knows is true. It is final. I wonder who would have taught Prashant all this? Did someone come amongst these young men well before they coagulated into the mob of that Monday night? Who are those people who have left young men like Prashant to be misled by the purveyors of false histories? Who are those scholars who have left the Prashants of our villages behind to submit their own useless PHDs to earn accolades in foreign universities?
We are not understanding what is happening around us. We are not being able to make others understand. The sparks have been spread across our villages. Young men with their half-baked sense of history want me to pose with them for selfies, but are not willing to even consider my appeal that they give up their violent ideals. Our politics has become a collective of opportunists and cowards.
I had gone to Dadri to cover Mohammad Akhlaq's death. On the way back, I felt I was carrying another corpse inside me.
(Ravish Kumar is Senior Executive Editor, NDTV India)
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16. HOW MODI, RSS AND OTHER HINDU FANATICS ARE CRUSHING INDIA'S SPIRIT
by DN Jha
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(Daily O 24 September 2015)
History will remember the present government as one that led the country into a dark age.
My personal experience with Hindu and Jain fanatics (RSS, VHP and the extended parivar) goes back to 2001 when my book Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions was published. They threatened me with dire consequences, demanded my arrest, attacked me in the university campus, tried to vandalise my house, and burned copies of my book. They went to court at Hyderabad and got the book banned. But I challenged the ban and succeeded in getting it lifted; also I got the book published from London under the title The Myth of the Holy Cow. I defied the ban but I was in police protection for more than two years.
The Hindutva forces have been carrying out their agenda of "cultural purification" even before the BJP came to power in 2014. Their ideologue Dinanath Batra got A Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana dropped from the Delhi University syllabus and forced Penguin Random House to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s book on the Hindus from the shelves. Emboldened by the BJP’s majority in Parliament, the saffron brigade is now using organisations like the VHP, Hanuman Sena, Ram Sene, and Sanatan Dharma Sanstha for attacking, assaulting and even killing scholars whose ideas go against their beliefs.
Instances of the illiteracy of BJP governments at the Centre and states are multiplying every day. Beef has been banned in several BJP-ruled states, and in Rajasthan, the government has also declared cow urine as a substitute for phenyl which, we are told, will be used even in hospital ICUs. Then you have Sushma Swaraj saying that the Bhagavad Gita is India’s national book and, soon after that, we hear the Haryana government deciding to include Ramayana and Mahabharata in school textbooks. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently claimed, without any basis, that Ashoka belonged to the Kushwaha caste. Relevant sources do not refer to Ashoka's caste or to the existence of the caste called Kushwaha during his time. Then, we were told that Aurangzeb Road in Delhi must be renamed as it was named after a tyrannical and oppressive ruler.
One can argue that many Hindu rulers also had negative aspects. Even Ashoka, considered to be a "good" ruler, is said to have ascended the throne after killing 99 of his brothers. So why not change the name of Asoka Road? Why do you have roads named after Bhagwan Das and Man Singh who fought the Hindutva icon Rana Pratap? The purpose of renaming roads and cities is plain and simple: to black out the Islamic past of India.
In a recent move to communalise the history of India, the Sanskrit department of Delhi University declared its intent to push back the date of the Rig Veda to 8,000 BC by using dubious astronomical evidence and ignoring the inscriptional, linguistic, ethnographic and geographical information which form the basis of the accepted Vedic chronology. This is a mockery of research, for the department has already arrived at the conclusion before researching the facts.
The Modi government is trying to destroy the basic character of academic institutions by appointing mediocre people to head them: Y Sudarshan Rao, who is better known for his ignorance than for his knowledge of history, has been appointed chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR); Baldev Sharma, the former editor of the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya has been brought in to replace the well-known Malayalam writer A Sethumadhavan as chairman of the National Book Trust (NBT); and Gajendra Chauhan, a BJP functionary, whose claim to fame rests on his role as Yudhishthir in the TV serial Mahabharata, had been appointed chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), ignoring the stalwarts who had made huge contribution to the film industry. More recently, a well-known historian Mahesh Rangrajan has been made to resign as Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), to facilitate the induction of someone without any academic credentials.
The RSS and the Hindutva brigade, including Prime Minister Modi, attribute fantastic scientific achievements to ancient Indians. We are told that they had knowledge of stem cell research, plastic surgery and aircraft much before the West came to know of them. But none of their claims is supported by evidence. On the other hand, there is much in ancient Indian science we can be proud of, such as the contributions of Charaka, Shushruta, Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and Bhaskara. But the Hindutva brigade has seldom mentioned any one of them.
By the time the current regime runs its course, the BJP would have damaged Indian social polity irreparably and hijacked academic discourse to a level of abysmal ignorance. History will remember the present government as one that led the country into a dark age. With Modi at the helm, India has become a benighted nation.
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17. INDIA: BEEF, HINDUTVA AND BIGOTRY: CONSTITUTION HAS NO PLACE FOR IT
by Kamal Mitra Chenoy
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(Daily O - 3 October 2015)
This ban is not principled but opportunist.
Why did the BJP suddenly and selectively ban beef? They say it is in the Constitution. That is not quite true. In the Directive Principles Article 48 is titled "Organisation of agriculture and animal husbandry". It mentions that the State shall "take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle". Therefore there is no religious reason for the ban, it is to preserve and improve the breeds. Has that been followed? However, milch and draught cattle includes buffalos, mithun and yak, which are eaten in India, especially the first. That was no accident. But in every city, town and village, stray and emaciated cows, calves and bulls are seen feeding on garbage.
How far is Article 48 being followed in scientific breeding of cows and calves? Hardly at all. But it is crystal clear that there is no religious basis to the ban on cows including milch and draught cattle. In any case Directive Principles are not binding, unless they are supporting a Fundamental Right. This is clearly not the case here.
Also read: Should I be worried for the Muslim family in my neighbourhood?
There are other Directive Principles. Article 41 lays down the "Right to work, to education and to public assistance in certain cases" including "unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and other cases of undeserved want". Ever heard any pious Hindutva politician referring to this?
Article 39(b) "The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing that the ownership and control of the material resources are so distributed as best to subserved the common good;" Article 39(d) "that there is equal pay for equal work for both men and women; Article 44 "The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India." None of these articles have been completely implemented. Why not, after so many governments, political parties? They are clearly not interested. But all of these articles seek to empower the Indian people.
The beef ban, as the recent murder instigated by a Hindu priest in Dadri has shown, is not based on Constitutional principles but Hindutva. It is generated by debased communal sentiment not religion. And this is not new. It predates independent India. But VD "Veer" Savarkar greatly respected by the Sangh Parivar, had written that beef should be available as it was a source of cheap protein for the poor. The BJP has brought out a stamp of Savarkar, but seems to have selectively read his works.
In Kashmir, a Dogra king banned beef decades ago. But now there are demands for beef to be legalised. Yet, the same BJP has permitted beef in Goa, as the Congress-led front has allowed beef in Kerala. So this beef ban is not principled but opportunist. It is intended to communalise Indian society, to garner votes in coming elections, apart from cowing minorities and secular people.
If secularism and our Constitutional Rights mean anything, this challenge must be met. Reason not reaction must be our motto.
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18. WIKILEAKS VS. THE EMPIRE: THE REVOLUTIONARY ACT OF TELLING THE TRUTH
by John Pilger
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(counterpunch.org, 2 Oct 2015)
George Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
These are dark times, in which the propaganda of deceit touches all our lives. It is as if political reality has been privatised and illusion legitimised. The information age is a media age. We have politics by media; censorship by media; war by media; retribution by media; diversion by media – a surreal assembly line of clichés and false assumptions.
Wondrous technology has become both our friend and our enemy. Every time we turn on a computer or pick up a digital device – our secular rosary beads — we are subjected to control: to surveillance of our habits and routines, and to lies and manipulation.
Edward Bernays, who invented the term, “public relations” as a euphemism for “propaganda”, predicted this more than 80 years ago. He called it, “the invisible government”.
He wrote, “Those who manipulate this unseen element of [modern democracy] constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of …”
The aim of this invisible government is the conquest of us: of our political consciousness, our sense of the world, our ability to think independently, to separate truth from lies.
This is a form of fascism, a word we are rightly cautious about using, preferring to leave it in the flickering past. But an insidious modern fascism is now an accelerating danger. As in the 1930s, big lies are delivered with the regularity of a metronome. Muslims are bad. Saudi bigots are good. ISIS bigots are bad. Russia is always bad. China is getting wikileaksfilesbad. Bombing Syria is good. Corrupt banks are good. Corrupt debt is good. Poverty is good. War is normal.
Those who question these official truths, this extremism, are deemed in need of a lobotomy – until they are diagnosed on-message. The BBC provides this service free of charge. Failure to submit is to be tagged a “radical” – whatever that means.
Real dissent has become exotic; yet those who dissent have never been more important. The book I am launching tonight, The WikiLeaks Files, is an antidote to a fascism that never speaks its name.
It’s a revolutionary book, just as WikiLeaks itself is revolutionary – exactly as Orwell meant in the quote I used at the beginning. For it says that we need not accept these the daily lies. We need not remain silent. Or as Bob Marley once sang: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.”
In the introduction, Julian Assange explains that it is never enough to publish the secret messages of great power: that making sense of them is crucial, as well as placing them in the context of today and historical memory.
That is the remarkable achievement of this anthology, which reclaims our memory. It connects the reasons and the crimes that have caused so much human turmoil, from Vietnam and Central America, to the Middle East and Eastern Europe, with the matrix of rapacious power, the United States.
There is currently an American and European attempt to destroy the government of Syria. Prime Minister David Cameron is especially keen. This is the same David Cameron I remember as an unctuous PR man employed by an asset stripper of Britain’s independent commercial television.
Cameron, Obama and the ever obsequious Francois Hollande want to destroy the last remaining multi-cultural authority in Syria, an action that will surely make way for the fanatics of ISIS.
This is insane, of course, and the big lie justifying this insanity is that it is in support of Syrians who rose against Bashar al-Assad in the Arab Spring. As The WikiLeaks Files reveals, the destruction of Syria has long been a cynical imperial project that pre-dates the Arab Spring uprising against Assad.
To the rulers of the world in Washington and Europe, Syria’s true crime is not the oppressive nature of its government but its independence from American and Israeli power – just as Iran’s true crime is its independence, and Russia’s true crime is its independence, and China’s true crime is its independence. In an American-owned world, independence is intolerable.
This book reveals these truths, one after the other. The truth about a war on terror that was always a war of terror; the truth about Guantanamo, the truth about Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America.
Never has such truth-telling been so urgently needed. With honourable exceptions, those in the media paid ostensibly to keep the record straight are now absorbed into a system of propaganda that is no longer journalism, but anti-journalism. This is true of the liberal and respectable as it is of Murdoch. Unless you are prepared to monitor and deconstruct every specious assertion, so-called news has become unwatchable and unreadable.
Reading The WikiLeaks Files, I remembered the words of the late Howard Zinn, who often referred to “a power that governments can’t suppress”. That describes WikiLeaks, and it describes true whistleblowers who share their courage.
On a personal note, I have known the people of WikiLeaks for some time now. That they have achieved what they have in circumstances not of their choosing is a source of constant admiration. Their rescue of Edward Snowden comes to mind. Like him, they are heroic: nothing less.
Sarah Harrison’s chapter, ‘Indexing the Empire’, describes how she and her comrades set up an entire Public Library of US Diplomacy. There are more than two million documents, now available to all. “Our work,” she writes, “is dedicated to making sure history belongs to everyone.” How thrilling it is to read those words, which also stand as a tribute to her own courage.
From the confinement of a room in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, the courage of Julian Assange is an eloquent response to the cowards who have smeared him and the rogue power seeking revenge on him and waging a war on democracy.
None of this has deterred Julian and his comrades at WikiLeaks: not one bit. Isn’t that something?
The WikiLeaks Files: the World According to the US Empire is published by Verso
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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
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www.sacw.net/
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