[Corrected] SACW - 26 Jan 2015 | Pakistan - Afghanistan: Their Talibans / India: Bigots and charlatans control culture and education; Suicide of Dalit Student / How China is Destroying Its Own Water Supply / Social Medicine - The Latin American example

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 26 January 2016 - No. 2882 
[since 1996]

Contents:
1. Pakistan - Afghanistan: the two Talibans and how they operate - An Explainer | Michael Semple
2. Jinnah Institute Report on State of Religious Freedom in Pakistan and Release of the documentary film 'Strangers in Their Own Land'
3. Pakistan: Path to perdition | Irfan Husain
4. Widespread concern about arrest of Saeed Baloch, human rights defender, leader of the fishermen's trade-union (PFF) in Pakistan
5. India - Pakistan Relations: Fishermen's Union & Peace Platform Appeal for release fishermen from jails and for a 'No Arrests Policy'
6. India: Suicide of the Dalit Student Activist Rohit Vermula - Reactions by Academics, Scholars and Concerned Citizens
6.1 India: Appeal to University of Hyderabad from Academics
7. India's Hindutva Right Wing: They call us anti-national - Anand Patwardhan
8. India: Bigots and charlatans are controlling culture and education - Interview with Pranab Bardhan
9. India: Citizens oppose nuclear project during French President's visit
10. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - India: The swagger of khaki shorts (Latha Jishnu)
 - RSS persons threaten Sandeep Pandey on IIT-BHU campus ( 25 January 2016)
 - Malda Conflicts: Not a Communal Riot Between Two Communities say's NAPM fact finding Team
 - India: Who controls religion? Women across faiths are asking this question (Namita Bhandare)
 - Understanding Kashmir-Issue of Kashmiri Pundits- link to Youtube video and an article (Ram Puniyani)
 - India: Dalits and the remaking of Hindutva (Badri Narayan)
 - India - Hindutva's mirror: The problem with Mamata Banerjee's felicitation of Ghulam Ali in Kolkata (Garga Chatterjee)
 - India: Senior Journalist Siddharth Varadarajan not allow to speak on Allahabad university campus and held hostage by RSS student wing the ABVP
 - India - Hindutva militia: 15,000-strong ‘dharma sena’ in Uttar Pradesh readies for war with Islamic State (TOI report)

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
11. Bangladesh: A strike protesting accountability? - Editorial - The Daily Star
12. Nepal: Stop, think, then ink - Editorial, Nepali Times
13. Pakistan - India:  Pathankot Fallout | Najam Sethi
14. Back From The Enemy Country | Pervez Hoodbhoy
15. Pakistan: Breaking free of the primitive mindset | Sabina Khan
16. Suicide By Drought - How China is Destroying Its Own Water Supply | Sulmaan Khan
17. India: Banks Headed for Collapse ?
18. Book Review: Governmentality and Counter-Hegemony in Bangladesh by S.M. Shamsul Alam
19. Shailaja Paik on Kumar, Radical Equality
20. Calcutta, Marwaris, and the World of Hindi Letters (Rita Banerjee)
21. Social Medicine: The Latin American example | Dr Prasanna Cooray

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1. PAKISTAN - AFGHANISTAN: THE TWO TALIBANS AND HOW THEY OPERATE - AN EXPLAINER | Michael Semple
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The ustads who plot the Afghan Taliban attacks in Kabul and the TTP attacks in Pakistan developed their skills in the old camps of Waziristan. In a sense they are all graduates of the same “terrorist university”. Both Taliban movements are still able to mount a terror campaign because they have used the time since summer 2014 to relocate themselves, reorganise their logistics, train new fighters and go back into action.
http://www.sacw.net/article12299.html

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2. JINNAH INSTITUTE REPORT ON STATE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN PAKISTAN AND RELEASE OF THE DOCUMENTARY FILM 'STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND'
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http://sacw.net/article12272.html

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3. PAKISTAN: PATH TO PERDITION | Irfan Husain
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THE latest terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda is one more bloody event in a seemingly unending campaign against innocent young Pakistanis.
But we have seen so many of these horrifying assaults by crazed militants that they now merge into a single blur of pure evil. However, every once in a while, a particular incident remains stuck in the memory, not necessarily for the numbers slaughtered, but for the sheer horror it provokes.
http://sacw.net/article12298.html

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4. WIDESPREAD CONCERN ABOUT ARREST OF SAEED BALOCH, HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER, LEADER OF THE FISHERMEN'S TRADE-UNION (PFF) IN PAKISTAN
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According to reports received, Mr. Saeed Baloch was arrested on Saturday, January 16, 2016 by the Rangers, a paramilitary security force in Pakistan.
http://sacw.net/article12289.html

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5. INDIA - PAKISTAN RELATIONS: FISHERMEN'S UNION & PEACE PLATFORM APPEAL FOR RELEASE FISHERMEN FROM JAILS AND FOR A 'NO ARRESTS POLICY'
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Large number of Indian and Pakistani fishermen have been in jails in Pakistan and India since more than a year whereas the maximum sentence for them is six months. We urge you to take immediate action for their release.
http://sacw.net/article12291.html

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6. INDIA: SUICIDE OF THE DALIT STUDENT ACTIVIST ROHIT VERMULA - REACTIONS BY ACADEMICS, SCHOLARS AND CONCERNED CITIZENS
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a compilation of Responses by Academics, Scholars and Concerned Citizens to the suicide of the PhD student of University of Hyderabad in January 2016. Related articles are also included along with some background material from 2013
http://sacw.net/article12274.html

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6.1 INDIA: APPEAL TO UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD FROM ACADEMICS
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We, the members of academic community in India, urge the University of Hyderabad to take actions to restore the confidence of academic community by living up to its obligation to end institutionalized discrimination, to educate all students in a climate of respect and empathy, and to resist political pressures.
http://sacw.net/article12294.html

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7. INDIA'S HINDUTVA RIGHT WING: THEY CALL US ANTI-NATIONAL - Anand Patwardhan
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Their founding fathers came from the most conservative Brahmin castes, with enormous faith in the culture that empowered them.
http://sacw.net/article12278.html

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8. INDIA: BIGOTS AND CHARLATANS ARE CONTROLLING CULTURE AND EDUCATION - Interview with Pranab Bardhan
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Economist Pranab Bardhan, Professor at Berkeley coined the phrase “Bhagwat vs Bhagwati” for the growth vs Hindutva challenge facing the BJP government. He has recently published a collection of his popular essays entitled, ‘Globalisation, Democracy and Corruption: an Indian perspective.' He tells TOI's Sagarika Ghose that today Bhagwat co-exists with Bhagwati.
http://sacw.net/article12271.html

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9. India: Citizens oppose nuclear project during French President's visit
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The French President will be the Chief Guest at this Republic Day parade; but 1800kms from New Delhi, farmers and fisherfolk in Jaitapur will be protesting this week against Mr. Hollande's visit as the nuclear reactors that India is importing from France threaten their lives, livelihoods and the local ecology.
http://sacw.net/article12296.html

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10. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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 - India: The swagger of khaki shorts (Latha Jishnu)
 - RSS persons threaten Sandeep Pandey on IIT-BHU campus ( 25 January 2016)
 - Malda Conflicts: Not a Communal Riot Between Two Communities say's NAPM fact finding Team
 - India: The Space of Street-side Religiosity - Miniature Shrines in Chennai (Pushkal Shivam)
 - India: Who controls religion? Women across faiths are asking this question (Namita Bhandare)
 - Understanding Kashmir-Issue of Kashmiri Pundits- link to Youtube video and an article
 - India: Dalits and the remaking of Hindutva (Badri Narayan)
 - India: A respected journalist is gagged by goons on a university campus
 - India - Hindutva's mirror: The problem with Mamata Banerjee's felicitation of Ghulam Ali in Kolkata (Garga Chatterjee)
 - India: Senior Journalist Siddharth Varadarajan not allow to speak on Allahabad university campus and held hostage by RSS student wing the ABVP
 - India - Allahabad university: Union president invites prominent journalist to campus, ABVP on hunger strike
 - India - Hindutva militia: 15,000-strong ‘dharma sena’ in Uttar Pradesh readies for war with Islamic State (TOI report)
 - Malda Violence: Political Dynamics

-> available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/

::: FULL TEXT :::
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11. BANGLADESH: A STRIKE PROTESTING ACCOUNTABILITY?
Editorial - The Daily Star
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(The Daily Star, 25 January 2016)

Editorial
A strike protesting accountability?
Patients must come first

The recent physicians' strike at private hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres of Chittagong, in protest of cases filed against their colleagues for medical negligence, is in contradiction to the noble Hippocratic oath that all doctors are bound by. In one of the cases filed, the doctor mistakenly left the bandage inside the body of a patient during surgery. Such occurrences may be unusual but it is true that hundreds of patients have suffered or died due to medical negligence. Most patients do not file cases against medical practitioners, intimidated by the high cost of doing so and the fact that it is unlikely that the errant doctor will be punished. Now that cases have been filed against some of them for alleged negligence, doctors have gone for a punitive strike that has caused immeasurable suffering to patients seeking treatment.

Cases of negligence by any professional have traditionally been disposed of at court and through a judicial process. Why shouldn't this be the same for allegations of medical negligence? The striking doctors, spearheaded by Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA) Chittagong, have demanded a specialists' panel to investigate the allegations before any case can be filed. Such a proposal may merit discussion but not under the sword of a strike. 

Over the decades, our medical professionals have acquired greater expertise in their fields to the great benefit of the people. It is therefore all the more unfortunate that instead of trying to improve standards of healthcare by making sure incidences of negligence do not occur, doctors have chosen to hold patients hostage in a bid to force their agenda. This is not what we expect from members of this noble profession.

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12. NEPAL: STOP, THINK, THEN INK
Editorial, Nepali Times
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(Nepali Times, 22-28 January 2016 #792)

Protests about the shape and modality of federal provinces can go on, but not at the cost of further ruining the country

The Big Three and the Madhesi Front were close to a political deal last week in this roller coaster transition. Then, predictably, there was a hitch. The goal posts were moved again. The Front put forth another six-point proposal and the Big Three, particularly the ruling coalition leader UML, rejected it outright.

In retaliation, Madhesi negotiators promptly quit a joint taskforce formed to draft the deal, alleging that the establishment was not showing requisite flexibility. Prime Minister KP Oli, who is in the habit of firing first and asking questions later, bluntly accused the Madhesi parties of not being serious enough to end the impasse.

Despite an understanding between the two sides to set up an all-party mechanism to redraw boundaries of the proposed two provinces in the Tarai within three months, the negotiators are still playing hardball. Then there are the elephants in the room (various sections of the Indian establishment, intelligence and bureaucracy) that are sending conflicting signals to those at the table. The end result is that a deal that could end this senseless torture of Nepal’s 28 million people remains elusive even after 25 rounds of talks.

We suppose the delay is due to the need to appease hardliners. But if parliament endorses the first constitution amendment bill early next week without a deal with the Front, it won’t resolve anything. In fact, the uncertainties will be compounded as the agitators sharpen their knives to resume protests in the spring.

So, we suppose, the good news is that they are still talking to each other. The taskforce set up to negotiate has been dissolved, which is logical because it is the top leaders who take all important decisions anyway. A breakthrough is not only necessary but also inevitable now that both sides, and India, have run out of excuses to drag this on. They are just anxious not to be accused of perpetrating this crime against humanity.

Now the bad news. Even if a deal is signed, it may not end the street violence, political instability and economic crisis. The three month timetable just buys us time to resolve the provincial demarcation issue, it postpones the resolution. This means the two sides must use that time to build trust and work towards a durable deal.

The thorniest issue has always been the boundaries of the two proposed Tarai provinces. The Front is apparently willing to go along with a three-month hiatus, but is seeking a written commitment from the Big Three that the all-party mechanism will redraw boundaries of Madhes provinces exactly in the way it wants. That is not flexibility. That is negotiating with a gun to the temple, which in this case is a protracted border blockade.

We don’t know if the Madhesi Front can act on its own or has to wait for instructions from on high, but it must now join hands with the Big Three to pass the constitution amendment bill. The issue of federal boundaries should be kept open for discussion within the all-party mechanism. Even if the Front, with Indian backing, now forces the major parties to sign a deal to create two Madhes provinces, its implementation will be impossible. People in the disputed districts in the eastern and western Tarai which the Front forcibly wants to be included into the Madhes provinces will be up in arms.

It is time for Madhesi leaders to halt the protests, think wisely, participate in constructive debate within the all-party mechanism and then ink a deal on federalism. They should lobby for a strong and accountable mechanism that will reopen and revisit all the contentious issues relating to federalism.

Its recommendations will certainly be mandatory as the ruling parties have already agreed to authenticate it by getting it passed by Parliament. Madhesi leaders must realise that they are accountable not only to their constituencies but also to Nepalis living in the hills and the mountains. All the top four Madhesi leaders have become ministers in the past, and they must look beyond the narrow confines of their region which, by the way, is suffering more than any other from the Indian siege.

Nepal’s leaders have inflicted too much pain on the people by holding them hostage. They must redeem themselves by ending this cruelty, and work towards repairing what they have ruined. Our in-depth report on this issue shows that recovery may take decades.

Federalism is a work in progress, discourse on its relevance and protests about its shape and modality can go on, but not by strangling your own motherland.

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13. PAKISTAN - INDIA: PATHANKOT FALLOUT
by Najam Sethi
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(The Friday Times - 22 January 2016)

The Pathankot attack by Jaish-e-Muhammad jihadis based in Punjab, Pakistan, has pushed Indian and Pakistani leaders to try and salvage a dialogue to normalise relations. This followed a meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries recently in Lahore. Both sides say that the foreign secretary talks on the full range of issues confronting them, especially on terrorism, originally scheduled for 15 January, 2016, have been postponed pending a report by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by Pakistan. The soft “postponement” is a significant departure from past practice when an incident like this would have led to outright cancellation.

This time, too, both sides have been careful to send out the right signals to each other about their sincerity in trying to normalise. The Pakistanis have told the Indians that JM’s leader Masud Azhar and some of his lieutenants have been detained and the Punjab home minister, Rana Sanaullah, says the inquiry report of the SIT will be made public. The Indians say they have handed over details of the terrorists to the Pakistanis, including voice samples and transcripts of their conversations with their handlers in Pakistan, and will allow the SIT to visit the Pathankot air base in connection with the inquiry.

For both countries, these decisions weren’t easy to make. The Pakistani military establishment has rarely ticked off the jihadi organisations, let alone detain their leaders, because they see them as strategic assets in the asymmetric military equation with India pending a long term settlement of the core dispute of Kashmir. Even during the regime of General Pervez Musharraf, the likes of Masud Azhar weren’t detained, despite evidence that JM activists had a role to play in the two assassination attempts on Musharraf’s life. The Indians, too, have bent over backwards not to fling the usual accusations at the Pakistani military for sabotaging the peace process. Indeed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unusually remarked that he will not allow vested interests in Pakistan and nay sayers in India to dissuade him from continuing on the track of normalisation. In side-lining the Indian defense and home ministers, Manohar Parrikar and Ragnath Singh respectively, from making Pakistan policy – both had publicly opposed the proposed visit by the Pakistani SIT to Pathankot — Modi has sent out a powerful message. He has signalled his determination to move forward in the company of the Indian “establishment” led by NSA Ajit Doval, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar.

Nonetheless, the Pathankot incident cannot be brushed away easily by Pakistan. If the Pakistanis don’t quickly deliver concrete results to show their seriousness of purpose against the jihadis who perpetrated the attack, the Indians will revert to their traditional angry stance of distrust and hostility and the international community will side with them. The Mumbai inquiry and prosecution of Lashkar-e-Taiba activist Zaki ur Rahman Lakhvi is still pending in Pakistan with both sides accusing the other of lack of cooperation. Pakistan cannot now afford to take the same positions on the Pathankot attack without alienating world opinion and exposing its hypocrisy.

This is going to be a tough act for Pakistan to follow. While the jihadi tap has been officially closed for infiltration across the border into Kashmir since 2004 — when the military establishment under General Pervez Musharraf began to toy with out-of-the-box thinking on Kashmir — the jihadi organisations in Punjab and Azad Kashmir are very much alive, with hardliners splintering away to join the Taliban or launch attacks on their own against India as in Mumbai in 2008 and recently Gurdaspur and Pathankot. The establishment policy has been to keep a lid on these organisations under their existing leaders in order to maintain leverage. Any attempt to forcibly disband them or making sweeping arrests would have led to an armed revolt within these organisations against their pro-establishment leaders, with dangerous consequences for a military that already has its hands full containing terrorists from the TTP, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and IS, separatist insurgents in Balochistan, and criminal mafias in Karachi. The recent attack on Peshawar’s Bacha Khan University is a tragic and grim reminder of the enormity of the task at hand.

Under the circumstances, India needs to understand and appreciate the difficulties that beset the Pakistani military as it tries to steer Pakistan out of the clutches of its self-created Frankensteins in order to cope with their unintended consequences. But the Pakistani military cannot expect to get the benefit of the doubt from India and the international community without taking some tough measures. Regardless of its avowed inability to frontally “take on” the jihadi organisations, some concrete action must be taken against their hardliners who continue to create serious problems for state and society, along the lines of the calibrated action taken against the LJ. Indeed, any attempt to soft pedal or obfuscate the Pathankot incident like the Mumbai incident is only going to increase distrust and hostility in India and the international community and rebound on Pakistan.

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14. BACK FROM THE ENEMY COUNTRY
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
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(DAWN - January 23, 2016)

RARELY are Pakistanis allowed to cross their eastern border. We are told that’s so because on the other side is the enemy. Visa restrictions ensure that only the slightest trickle of people flows in either direction. Hence ordinary academics like me rarely get to interact with their Indian counterparts. But an invitation to speak at the Hyderabad Literary Festival, and the fortuitous grant of a four-city non-police reporting visa, led to my 11-day 12-lecture marathon at Indian universities, colleges, and various public places. This unusual situation leads me here to share sundry observations.

At first blush, it seemed I hadn’t travelled far at all. My first public colloquium was delivered in Urdu at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) in Hyderabad. With most females in burqa, and most young men bearing beards, MANUU is more conservative in appearance than any Urdu university (there are several) on the Pakistani side.

Established in 1998, it seeks to “promote and develop the Urdu language and to impart education and training in vocational and technical subjects”. Relative to its Pakistani counterparts, it is better endowed in terms of land, infrastructure and resources.

But there’s a still bigger difference: this university’s students are largely graduates of Indian madressahs while almost all university students in Pakistan come from secular schools. Thus, MANUU’s development of video “bridge courses” in Urdu must be considered as a significant effort to teach English and certain marketable skills to those with only religious training. I am not aware of any comparable programme in Pakistan. Shouldn’t we over here be asking how the surging output of Pakistani madressahs is to be handled? Why have we abandoned efforts to help those for whom secular schooling was never a choice?
The face of modern India is visible at the various Indian Institutes of Technology.

To my embarrassment, I was unable to fulfil my host’s request to recommend good introductory textbooks in Urdu from Pakistan. But how could I? Such books don’t exist and probably never will. Although I give science lectures as often in Urdu as English, the books I use are only in English. Somehow Pakistan never summoned the necessary vigour for transplanting modern ideas into Urdu. The impetus for this has been lost forever. Urdu, as the language of Islam in undivided India, once had enormous political significance. Education in Urdu was demanded by the Muslim League as a reason for wanting Pakistan!

A little down the road lies a different world. At the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) the best and brightest of India’s young, selected after cut-throat competition, are engaged in a furious race to the top. IIIT-H boasts that its fresh graduates have recently been snapped up with fantastic Rs1.5 crore (Indian) salaries by corporate entities such as Google and Facebook.

This face of modern India is equally visible at the various Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), whose numbers have exploded from four to 18. They are the showpieces of Indian higher education. I spoke at three — Bombay, Gandhinagar, and Delhi — and was not disappointed. But some Indian academics feel otherwise.

Engineering education at the IITs, says Prof Raghubir Sahran of IIT-GN, has remained “mainly mimetic of foreign models (like MIT) and captive to the demands of the market and corporate agendas”. My physicist friend, Prof Deshdeep Sahdev, agrees. He left IIT-K to start his own company that now competes with Hewlett Packard in making tunnelling electron microscopes and says IIT students are strongly drill-oriented, not innovative.

Still, even if the IITs are not top class, they are certainly good. Why has Pakistan failed in making its own version of the IITs? One essential condition is openness to the world of ideas. This mandates the physical presence of foreign visitors.

Indeed, on Indian campuses one sees a large number of foreigners — American, European, Japanese, and Chinese.

They come for short visits as well as long stays, enriching universities and research centres.

Not so in Pakistan where foreigners are a rarity, to be regarded with suspicion. For example, at the National Centre for Physics, which is nominally a part of Quaid-i-Azam University but is actually ‘owned’ by the Strategic Plans Division (the custodian of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons), academic visitors are so tightly restricted that they seek to flee their jails soon after arrival.

Those who came from Canada, Turkey and Iran to a recent conference at the NCP protested in writing and privately told us that they would never want to come back.

Tensions between secular and religious forces appear high in Modi’s India. Although an outsider cannot accurately judge the extent, I saw sparks fly when Nayantara Sahgal, the celebrated novelist who was the first of 35 Indian intellectuals to hand back their government awards, shared the stage with the governor of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. After she spoke on the threats to writers, the murder of three Indian rationalists, and the lynching of a Muslim man falsely accused of possessing beef, the enraged governor threw aside his prepared speech and excoriated her for siding with terrorists.

Hindutva ideology has put the ‘scientific temper’ of Nehruvian times under visible stress. My presentations on science and rationality sometimes resulted in a number of polite, but obviously unfriendly, comments from the audience.

Legitimate cultural pride over path-breaking achievements of ancient Hindu scholars is being seamlessly mixed with pseudoscience. Shockingly, an invited paper at the recent Indian Science Congress claimed that Lord Shiva was the world’s greatest environmentalist. Another delegate blew on a ‘conch’ shell for a full two minutes because it would exercise the rectal muscles of Congress delegates!

Pakistan and India may be moving along divergent paths of development but their commonalities are becoming more accentuated as well. Engaging with the other is vital — and certainly possible.

Although I sometimes took unpopular political positions at no point did I, as a Pakistani, experience hostility. The mature response of both governments to the Pathankot attack gives hope that Pakistan and India might yet learn to live with each other as normal neighbours. This in spite of the awful reality that terrorism is here to stay.

The writer teaches physics and mathematics in Lahore and Islamabad.


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15. PAKISTAN: BREAKING FREE OF THE PRIMITIVE MINDSET
by Sabina Khan
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(The Express Tribune, 25 January 2016)

The writer has a Master’s degree in conflict-resolution from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California and blogs at http://coffeeshopdiplomat.wordpress.com

The writer has a Master’s degree in conflict-resolution from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California and blogs at http://coffeeshopdiplomat.wordpress.com

Pakistan’s path to becoming a developed country relies upon breaking free of the primitive mindset that continues to oppress women and justify terrorism. So far 2016, declared to be the year when terrorism shall end, is off to a torrid start with the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) opposing the anti-child marriage bill as ‘blasphemous’ and a terrorist attack on a university in Charsadda. The CII is an advisory body and thus it only chimes in on select bills. When it does provide recommendations, many are not followed by the government. However, when it comes to issues like rights of women, child marriages and rape, guidance from the Council is adhered to without question. And then, as happens too often in our culture, men in our society end up using religion to keep women subservient. The National Assembly gets a free pass as women and children continue to suffer. Paedophilia is a crime in the rest of the world and should be looked upon with disgust in Pakistan as well instead of being ignored under the guise of religious/cultural norms.

Furthermore, as long as the likes of Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid fame are allowed to roam around free, there is clearly a problem with the government’s mindset. The girls’ madrassa of the Lal Masjid released a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and its leader. Just about any other nation in the world would have arrested these students, who openly voiced support for those who engage in rape and sex slavery. No military operation can eradicate this primitive mindset. It is fuelled by an obsession with a regressive ideology and an antiquated belief that women are sub-humans. Any organisation or madrassa holding such views should ideally be disbanded. But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

It is important to remember that the CII was established in 1962 as an advisory body. Since then, each subsequent amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan dealt a significant blow to any visions of the country blossoming into a liberal, democratic state. From Zulfikar Ali Bhutto imposing prohibition in the 1970s to General Ziaul Haq’s fanaticism, Pakistan has regressed. Each amendment further intertwined a certain interpretation of religion deep into the state’s laws and wreaked havoc on the rights of minorities and women.

As is the common practice, following the Charsadda attack, a day of mourning was declared for the victims and vows were made to wipe out terrorism. People will be hanged and prayers will be offered. But none of these actions have any permanence. They don’t do anything significant to tackle the extremist mindset. At the heart of the problem is the financial and ideological influence of nations that promote child marriage, trample upon women’s rights and even prohibit them from driving. A far cry indeed from the Quaid-e-Azam’s words: “I have always maintained that no nation can ever be worthy of its existence that cannot take its women along with men. No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world. One is the sword and the other, the pen. However, there is a third power stronger than both, that of the women.”

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16. SUICIDE BY DROUGHT - HOW CHINA IS DESTROYING ITS OWN WATER SUPPLY
by Sulmaan Khan
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https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2014-07-18/suicide-drought

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17. INDIA: BANKS HEADED FOR COLLAPSE ?
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SUPER RICH DEFAULTERS PUSH INDIAN BANKS TOWARDS COLLAPSE
by Dipu Rai
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-super-rich-defaulters-push-indian-banks-towards-collapse-2096523

YOU CAN BUY FIVE STATE-RUN BANKS FOR $1.5 BILLION
The volatile stock market, bad loans has stripped most public sector banks naked of their market capitalization 
by Tamal Bandyopadhyay
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Rwt3B8MUMncH7LEzwRtbWO/You-can-buy-five-staterun-banks-for-15-billion.html

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18. BOOK REVIEW: GOVERNMENTALITY AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY IN BANGLADESH BY S.M. SHAMSUL ALAM
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(LSE review of Books - 14 January 2016)

Governmentality and Counter-Hegemony in Bangladesh. S.M. Shamsul Alam. Palgrave Macmillan. 2015.

Governmentality CoverTheoretical eclecticism is rare in most mainstream academic circles. S.M. Shamsul Alam takes on this task by providing an interesting and much-needed synthesis of Michel Foucault’s idea of governmentality and Antonio Gramsci’s notion of counter-hegemony.  Throughout Governmentality and Counter-Hegemony in Bangladesh, Alam argues that counter-hegemonic movements can challenge and thus reformulate dominant forms of power. Alam applies this theoretical framework to Bangladesh, linking instances of resistance in the colonial and post-colonial periods to changes in forms of governance. From the Pakistani administration to Hussain Muhammad Ershad’s authoritarian government and liberal democracy, Alam’s work underscores the importance of understanding how changes in forms of governance arise.

In setting out his theoretical discussion, Alam draws from Foucault’s Collège de France lectures, describing governmentality as ‘the strategies a government ‘‘deploys’’ to control the ‘‘population’’ in an effort to achieve desirable outcomes and consequences’ (1). Governmentality is thus not a singular operation, but one that is deployed in multiple ways through various facets of government. However, Alam seeks to address the weaknesses in Foucault’s theorisation of governmentality, which he identifies as the inability to explain changes in modes of governance.  He therefore draws on Gramsci’s constructs of hegemony and counter-hegemony to provide the necessary link in explaining these changes in governmentality. Alam’s theoretical synthesis thus addresses the flaws in Foucault’s theorisation, while also applying the concept of governmentality in an innovative way. In developing his argument, Alam illustrates different categories of governmentality and their relationship to grassroots resistance movements throughout the book.

In his examination of the colonial period of Bangladesh, in which the state was under Pakistani control, Alam focuses on the role of Urdu language in the maintenance of Pakistan’s administration of Bangladesh. Springing from partition ideology and the ‘two nation’ theory, the Pakistani ruling elite linked the formation of Pakistan with an Islamic religious identity. The Pakistani elite attempted to impose Urdu as the lingua franca in both West and East Pakistan. Urdu in West Pakistan had a historic link to Muslim religious authorities and became tied to the formation of Pakistan’s religious state identity.

Alam argues that Bengali resistance to Urdu during the Language Movement must be understood as a counter-hegemonic movement. The Language Movement sought to establish Bangla as the national language in East Pakistan through various attempts at government policy reform. The author’s analysis of the Language Movement connects well to Gramscian conceptions of language, which emphasise the relationship between power and language. As was the case with Urdu, language is connected to the dominant class’s propagation of power and certain cultural expressions (22). In this way, the opposition movement to Urdu language in Bangladesh was more than just opposition to national language policies, but was also a direct challenge to Pakistani political authority. Alam argues that by rejecting Pakistani authority, the Language Movement in Bangladesh created space for the emergence of new political possibilities as new identities arose from having a national Bangla language. This supports Alam’s main argument by demonstrating how the Language Movement was integral to altering Pakistani colonial governmentality.
Shaheed_MinarImage Credit: Shaheed Minar in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The monument in Dhaka established to commemorate those killed during the Language Movement demonstrations of 1952 (Mostaque Ahammed)

In a second period, Alam examines the post-colonial context of Bangladesh, focusing on the use of religion in the creation of an Islamic governmentality (99).  After providing a historical analysis of Islam in Bangladesh, the author argues that Islamic governmentality used fatwa as a form of biopolitical control over women. Here Alam shows how religious laws attempted to regulate female bodies and sexuality. In response to this form of Islamic governmentality, Alam posits that women’s testimonials, in the form of poems and autobiographies, challenged the biopoliticisation of female sexuality. The author argues that writings about female sexuality in these works constitute a subversive act (123). While the author provides a clear analysis of the links between fatwa and biopolitics, Alam stops short of identifying how women’s testimonials led to a shift in Islamic governmentality.  This problematises his argument, as it is unclear whether women’s writings actually played an active role in transforming the position of women in society. This brings into question a larger theoretical hole in Alam’s work as the author never addresses why these particular counter-hegemonic movements have been successful over others at altering governmentality.

At the end of this book, Alam asserts that a new global form of governmentality has arisen in the form of neoliberalism. This goes a step further than his previous analysis of the changing forms of governmentality in the context of Bangladesh by offering a unique perspective on governmentality beyond the state. It remains unclear as to why Alam makes the leap to a globalised form of governmentality, but it is his most notable contribution in the work.  In this chapter he examines how poverty eradication programmes orchestrated through NGOs and international organisations offer new ways to monitor and control poor populations in Bangladesh. This adds another dimension to his application of governmentality as Alam provides a valuable analysis of how relationships of power also exist beyond the state level and operate increasingly on an international scale.

Overall, Governmentality and Counter-Hegemony in Bangladesh provides an engaging, theoretical read of Bangladesh. At times the work becomes repetitive and disjointed as Alam charts different forms of governmentality and instances of resistance through every chapter, often without providing clear links as to how the chapters interrelate. A more in-depth examination of Bangladesh’s history would help the reader make these connections as well as create a stronger correlation between instances of resistance and resultant changes in governmentality. Despite this weakness, the author makes a strong argument for the re-examination of existing theorisations of governmentality and provides a unique and intellectually rich theoretical rendition of the concept. Alam’s strengths shine through in the application of Foucauldian and Gramscian theory, which remains easily accessible throughout the work. Students and academics interested in political theory would greatly benefit from his analysis.

Alex Johnson holds a Bachelor’s degree from DePaul University in International Studies and Spanish with a concentration in religion and political conflict in South Asia.  He recently completed a Master’s degree in International Relations at the London School of Economics.  His interests include religions in South Asia and post-structural and post-colonial theory.  Currently, Alex works in Washington, D.C. as an Academic Assistant in support of a research centre at the National Defense University.

Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics. 

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19. SHAILAJA PAIK ON KUMAR, RADICAL EQUALITY
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Aishwary Kumar. Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and the Risk of Democracy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. 416 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-9195-3.

Reviewed by Shailaja Paik (University of Cincinnati)
Published on H-Asia (January, 2016)
Commissioned by Sumit Guha

Paik on Kumar, Radical Equality

In the last decade, scholars have sought to tackle the political and philosophical foundations of modern Indian thought and the intellectual roots of Indian democracy. But only very recently have scholars begun to devote book-length works to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s thought, who alongside Gandhi might be considered one of India’s most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. Aishwary Kumar’s Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and the Risk of Democracy traces the contours of the hitherto neglected nuances of Ambedkar’s political philosophy, contributions to anticolonial thought, and moral psychology. Kumar investigates the interconnected intellectual history of the encounter between Ambedkar and Gandhi, and seeks to demonstrate the broader--global--significance of that encounter. He traces conceptual innovations and linguistic choices to examine the junctures and disjunctures between European and anticolonial formulations of the political as well as the fraught relationship between Ambedkar and Gandhi. He traces the genealogy of what he terms “the Indian political” and investigates the tension between popular sovereignty and civic virtue and the two visions of democracy they embody. At the same time, he is concerned about mapping both the expansion and limits of European thought. Kumar explores “the tenuous distinction between the social and political, between aspiration and action, which sustains the internal exclusions of anticolonial moral and political culture” as well as the abstract and violent aspects of European concepts (p. 24). 

Kumar’s first aim, then, is to trace the political and philosophical conditions of Gandhi’s and Ambedkar’s thought, namely the complex set of moral, theological, and republican attitudes circulating in the interwar period. The second aim is to demonstrate the ways in which the ideas of the two leaders interacted, challenged and underscored each other, and extended the meaning of indigenous and European concepts. More so than the discontinuities between the texts and their authors, Kumar is interested in practices of reading, conceptuality, and reception. He explores the multiple meanings of concepts such as incommensurability, singularity, and sacrifice as they are mobilized and even renounced in Ambedkar’s and Gandhi’s thinking.

The focus on the leaders’ distinctive practices of writing and translation, limitations of language and linguistics, tensions in translations from the vernacular to English, and transliteration can actually open up productive philological spaces for intellectual history. To trace a “philosophical history of the political” the chapters provide a conversation between Ambedkar and Gandhi and an intellectual and literary exegesis of key concepts such as force (chapters 2 and 3), satyagraha (chapter 2), Gandhi’s idea of renaming former untouchables harijan (chapter 4), Ambedkar’s “annihilation” of caste (chapter 5), and religious politics (chapters 6 and 7). Kumar attempts a conversation between Gandhi’s popular writings in Hind Swaraj (1909) and Ambedkar’s undelivered speech “The Annihilation of Caste” (1936). He dwells on Ambedkar’s and Gandhi’s shared moral psychology, construction of resistance, “reformulation of means and force proper to justice” (p. 6), and sustained engagement with vernacular literature and epistemologies. To this end, he interprets some critical concepts in this frame: sacrifice, satya (truth), agraha (force), ahimsa (literally, nonviolence), samata (equality), swaraj (self-rule), ucched (annihilation), maitri (friendship), and shunyata (literally, zeroness and the Buddhist emptiness). This is an ambitious and exciting agenda. Yet, this higher aim is hard to fulfill given that Kumar seems to be relying on traditional English sources and translations to the complete neglect of vernacular materials. In other words, though Kumar seeks to analyze the leader’s mobilization of vernacular concepts in order to construct their rhetoric and conceptual discourse, his philological exercise seems limited by the fact that he privileges English-language materials in his analysis rather than Gandhi's writings in the Gujarati or Ambedkar's in Marathi. This is unfortunate, since we know that the translations from the vernacular to English were certainly challenging even for the leaders themselves, and would have been a wonderful point of discussion and departure.

In this vein, we may note the different ways through which scholars of Gandhi have dealt with Gandhi’s concept of ahimsa. Kumar seeks to complicate Gandhi’s ahimsa as “nonindifference” (p. 187). Here he echoes the historian Ajay Skaria’s interpretation of ahimsa as “neighborliness,” and notes that ahimsa is an “ethics of compassion acutely aware of, even vested in, difference and distance” (p. 45). Unlike Kumar, however, Skaria marshals evidence from both the Gujarati and English sources to explain “neighborliness” and to argue that these “practices of neighborliness differed on the kind of absolute difference being addressed … and sought to sustain friendship with the world based on distinctive Gandhian notions of equality and justice.”[1] Thus, ahimsa was a kind of politics to be deployed to produce neighborliness.

Ambedkar agrees with Gandhi on the “neighbor.” To Ambedkar there was no equality without the sharing of freedom and “communicated experience.” To him the social exists “by communication, indeed in communication,” and one’s failure is considered as justly sharable with others as one’s success (p. 138). To Ambedkar, in a true democracy, the sovereignty of the self is always mediated by one’s “reverence” towards the neighbor (quoted, p. 138). Perhaps this is the neighborliness that Skaria was alluding to in the earlier paragraph.

Gandhi cites that (the deity Ram’s warrior-brother) Lakshaman’s harijan is not an agent wielding arms but instead a figure that demands restraint and limit (p. 182). Ambedkar critiques Gandhi’s gesture that “Harijan is indicative of pity … pointing out their helplessness and dependent condition” (p. 234) and abhors the term. Most importantly, Gandhi excluded the unprepared Untouchables from practicing satyagraha. Unlike him however, Ambedkar forced open the doors of this spiritual rigor to the millions of Untouchables who performed degrading and polluting work with their hands. His satyagraha was for regaining human rights and here is the democratization of the will to speak the truth forcefully and with civility.

Ambedkar, like Gandhi, underscored that everyone must be a soldier and engage in war; Ambedkar however also notes that the caste structure prevents such a general mobilization because only the warrior castes are supposed to fight. Ambedkar is more inclusive and dwells on the building of social bonds of activities of everyday life which would lead to the love of truth. Ambedkar bitterly criticizes Gandhi’s and advaita (monist) Hinduism’s mantra of “the secret of living by dying” (p. 293). He instead underscores the equality of freedom and practice of maitri, fraternity or fellowship that “lies in sharing the vital processes of life: joys, sorrows, death, marriage, and food” (p. 294). It is the cords of such a fraternity that the traditional caste system cunningly cuts.

Historically, there is a circulatory logic between the theologico-political practices adopted by Gandhi and Ambedkar: Gandhi begins with religion and deploys it for political aims, and Ambedkar works from within state-centered politics, moving towards faith, belief, and reason of Buddhism. However, Kumar does not  mention these historical shifts even in a cursory way. He instead dwells on the “theologico-political” dilemmas of Ambedkar by illuminating the interconnectedness of caste identities, religious belief, and the emerging languages of rights-based politics. He seeks to construct a hybrid Ambedkar who draws upon and at times departs from Western thinkers like John Dewey, Emile Durkheim, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri Bergson, Karl Marx, and so on. Again, noticing this feature of Ambedkar’s thought is not very new. While Gandhi would insist that there was “no politics without religion” Ambedkar would investigate whether religion had not always been “an instrument of the founding exclusions of politics” (p. 116).

Despite the novelty and ambition of Kumar’s analysis, some key questions remain about how to understand this book as project of intellectual history. Firstly, Kumar chooses to follow a textual and philological mode of interpretation that makes gestures to European and Indian philosophical concepts and traditions, but he does not situate Ambedkar and Gandhi in a local intellectual context. But Gandhi and Ambedkar were not intellectuals and philosophers in any ordinary sense--they were more importantly political leaders, and in particular leaders of distinct social and political movements. Kumar’s analyses gives the impression that these leaders were functioning in a vacuum and in isolation. There is no mention of the role of associates or even “followers” in the framing of vernacular epistemologies. Kumar does mention Gandhi’s constructed dialogue with his reader at one point (on p. 11); however, there is a lack of such treatment for Ambedkar.

Secondly, though Kumar is innovative in reading Indian thought alongside Western philosophies, many a time he seems to overreach in these comparisons, and arguably reads too much into Ambedkar and Gandhi. For example, Kumar notes Ambedkar’s political and ethical conception of citizenship: “a citizen who might be governed but not mastered” (p. 225). It is important to note that this is not Ambedkar’s explanation of citizenship, but Kumar’s reading from Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner's edited book Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe that he applies to Ambedkar.[2] Kumar does not dwell on this important concept, and immediately moves on to the next idea. In the process, he fails to tell us the true nature of citizenship or svaraj for Ambedkar. Was it the same as Gandhi’s? Moreover, how were the excluded and boycotted Untouchables to actually become citizens? What did freedom actually mean to them and how did they articulate it in their own everyday vernacular Marathi, Hindi, or Gujarati languages? When and why were the categories of force, maitri (friendship), and shunyata (emptiness) so important to Ambedkar? Most significantly, how and why did the understanding of the terms change for Ambedkar? How are they important to global democracy, which is at the center of Kumar’s inquiry?

Kumar makes judgements, claims, and certain heuristic conceptions and interpretations regarding some categories. At times, Kumar thinks for the leaders even if they left their thoughts suspended so that it becomes mere speculation. For example, to grasp Ambedkar’s republicanism and to understand the risks inherent in republicanism, Kumar invokes Machiavelli. Scholars are in disagreement and have no direct evidence of whether Ambedkar actually read Machiavelli. How fair is it then for intellectual historians to make these big leaps? Kumar also deploys “touchability as the most intimate rendering of maryada” (p. 191), a term Gandhi barely used in his writings. Kumar engages in a philological exercise and translates touchability as sparshyata (p. 192). He not only constructs the term sparshyata but goes on to and explain its ontological axes, and even misspells the actual Marathi terms sprushyata and asprushyata (untouchability).

Furthermore, due to his central focus on leaders, Kumar fails to contextualize their writings in relationship to evolving historical and political situations that actually called for varying reactions. Clearly, the thoughts of the two political leaders and thinkers evolved and changed considerably over time. In addition, there is no mention of vernacular public spheres where these intellectual exercises actually flourished. Intellectual historians need to critically engage with the discourse in the vernacular, even if in translations. This is important, because it was here that contradictions, frustrations, language of rights, discussions, debates, and novel questions and answers emerged on the issues of social and civic rights, citizenship, self-rule, education, equality, and democracy. This is the perfect opportunity to connect intellectual and social history because ideas are constructed in specific social and political conjunctures and cannot be divorced from them. Nonetheless, this book is a significant contribution to anticolonial Indian political thought and the intertwined ethics of justice, equality, liberalism, and exclusion that have shaped the global life of democracy.

Notes

[1]. Ajay Skaria, “Gandhi’s Politics: Liberalism and the Question of the Ashram,” South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 4 (2002): 957.

[2]. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 370n10.

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20. CALCUTTA, MARWARIS, AND THE WORLD OF HINDI LETTERS
(Rita Banerjee)
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Dissertation Reviews - January 18, 2016

A review of The Bazaar and the Bari: Calcutta, Marwaris, and the World of Hindi Letters, by  Rahul Bjørn Parson.

The premise of Rahul Bjørn’s Parson’s dissertation, The Bazaar and the Bari: Calcultta, Marwaris, and the World of Hindi Letters, is an intriguing one. In the dissertation, Parson examines the history and reception of Hindi literary texts, particularly those produced about Marwaris and by Marwari writers from the 19th to early 21st centuries in Kolkata. In the latter half of his dissertation, Parson calls attention to the rise of Marwari women writers, and their role in shaping representations of their community, which had been historically, linguistically, and socially marginalized within the cultural metropole of Kolkata.

In the introduction, Parson makes a distinction between the Bengali concept of “baṛi” or home and the Marwari notion of “deś” or homeland. He notes that often in traditional Marwari households, the bazaar or market was part and parcel of the Marwari home, or baṛi. But neither the marketplace nor the home gave a fully accurate representation of the modern Marwari, whose identity and imagination was closely linked to a separation from the homeland, or deś. Moreover, Parson argues, the Marwaris, who were a merchant community from Rajasthan, “attracted a fair amount of resentment. The insular nature of their networks and the community contributed to the stigma of clannishness that was computed with a host of other stereotypes that attend to moneylenders” (5). He notes that texts such as the Hindi journal Chānd capitalized on stereotypes of the Marwari community in order to push concepts of gender, education, and capitalist reform. Parson also notes how narratives of victimhood and social marginalization were automatically attributed to Marwari women until Marwari female writers such as Prabha Kethan, Alka Saraogi, and Madhu reclaimed their own authorial voice in texts such as Pīlī Āndhī, Kalikathā: Via Bypass, and Khule Gagan ke Lāl Sitāre in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. In order to interrogate these stereotypes of the Marwari community within the Bengali-dominated cultural milieu of Kolkata and within the rising world of Hindi letters at the fin-de-siècle, Parson emphasizes the roles that Marwaris, a heterogeneous community, played in the economies of colonial and late capitalism as well as in the development of Hindi language newspapers, presses, libraries, and authors in Kolkata.

In Chapter 1, Parson interrogates the role that modernity and merchanthood played in the development of the Marwari identity and polity in the Barabazar district of Kolkata. The derogatory term used by Bengalis for a speaker of the Hindi language, “merua,” derived from the name Marwari, and “by the late 19th century, ‘Marwari’ became an ‘unwanted’ ethnic tag because of the stereotype that they were clannish, socially conservative, religious orthodox, and materialistic” (17). However, Marwaris in Kolkata at the fin-de-siècle built their identity on the communal principles of a high sākh (credibility) rating, frugality, religious piety, tradition, charity, and business reputation (17). Parson notes, that “these values enabled a high coefficient of trust amongst the Marwaris, which in turn facilitated massive networks of overland commerce and communication. But the very aspects of the features that Marwaris hold to be intrinsic of their self and social work, also carry the negative association that have concealed into stereotypes” (17). In the rest of the chapter, Parson explains these principles of Marwari identity in greater detail, notes the  19th and 20th century reform movements targeted towards Marwaris such as legislation on rain gambling, trade, and industrial monopoly, and demonstrates the Marwari contribution to the modern South Asian economy.

In Chapter 2, Parson explores the rise of Hindi literature and vernacular capitalism in Calcutta, with a particular focus on the scholarly contributions of Fort William College and the birth of the first Hindi language newspapers in the city in the 19th century. Parson quotes Carey, Ward, and Marshman of Fort William College in their observations of “the unique homelessness of Hindi” in that “Hindi has no country which it can exclusively claim as its own…[but] it is not always understood at the distance of only twenty miles from the great towns in which it is spoken” (39). Parson describes the influence of Braj Bhāṣā and Khaṛībōlī in the formation of modern standard Hindi, and notes that the first Hindi dailies of the 19th century appeared in parallel and at times in conversation with the great literary treatises and periodicals of the Bengali Renaissance. Concepts such as “sati, widow-remarriage, women’s emancipation, kulin polygamy, age of consent, and the sinfulness of sea-voyagers” which were central reform debates within the intellectual circles of the Bengali Renaissance soon found their way to the non-Bengali, Marwari residents of Barabazar in Kolkata (42-43). Many of these discussions on reform, religion, and women’s education and rights circulated in Hindi language newspapers such as Bhāratmitra (1878) and Mārwāṛī Gazette (1890-1898). Through these Hindi language newspapers, Parson argues, the Marwari community in Kolkata was able to engage with reform movements and intellectual ideas coming out of the Bengali Renaissance in the 19th century as they were able to politicize and become active members of the Swadeshi movement in the early 20th century.

In Chapter 3, Parson focuses on some of the most critical and controversial stereotypes of “the Marwari” as presented in Hindi texts such as Chānd (1896-1942), a Hindi language women’s literary journal, and in reformist journals of the 1920s such as Mārwāṛī Sudhār, Mārwāṛī Agrawāl, and Matwālā. Perhaps, the most troubling representations of Marwaris, as seen as an outsider community within Kolkata and within the larger sphere of Hindi letters, appears in Chānd’s Mārwāṛī Ank (1929), a special issue of the popular journal that was dedicated to reforming “backward Marwari practices.”  Parson notes that “these papers carried numerous articles on women’s emancipation, girls’ schools, widow remarriage, and the age of consent,” in addition to “economic-nationalist articles” targeting Marwaris to “reduce the drain of wealth and poverty of India by opening banks and factories and curtailing usury and imported piece good commerce” (62). However, the reform movements and rhetoric aimed at the Kolkata Marwaris, a community which had largely funded Hindi newspapers and publications in Kolkata from the mid-19th century onwards, was not always benevolent. As Parson observes, “Marwaris are discussed in the ank as parasitic vermin infesting the national body” (62). Mārwāṛī Ank provided visual and written caricatures of the Marwari community, targeting and ridiculing Marwari wealth and gender practices. Editorials in Chānd describe how the contemporary Marwari community in Bengal derived from the Maharajas of Marwar among other Rajasthani kingdoms, and how these Rajas had become economically and politically impotent under the British Raj, and prior to this defeat, had been depraved in their practices towards women and their subjects. Chānd ridicules contemporary Marwari culture at large: “then in Mewar – thousands of women singing dirty songs and men gathering around” (67, 72). Parson argues that the literary pieces in the Ank were thus “meant to illustrate Marwari backwardness and pitiable available forms of Marwari womanhood” (65). Thus, Marwari institutions, from vernacular capitalism to histories of purdah and child marriages to the role of women in contemporary Marwari society to even Marwari charity, were “dismissed as unclean” (71). By occupying a space between documentary reportage and social criticism, Chānd aimed to socially condemn and sensationalize the Marwari community for an already critically reform-minded audience.

In Chapters 4 to 6, Parson examines the writings of Marwari women authors, namely Prabha Kethan’s (1942-2008) novel Pīlī Āndhī (1996), Alka Saraogi’s novel Kalikathā: Via Bypass (1998), and Madhu Kankaria’s novel Khule Gagan ke Lāl Sitāre (2000), in light of discussions of Marwari identity, cultural stereotypes, points of reform, economic prowess, and financial identity. Parson argues that “movements in Hindi literature and also the influence of Indian feminists broadened the possibilities for the type of subject expression available” to Marwari women writers in the late 20th century, and that “this new literature [of the late 1990s] gives Marwaris a literary past in Hindi; one in which their collective history and identity can be imaginatively explored. And thus Hindi, for Marwari women, becomes a liberating medium…and is again implicated in the process of reform” (85). Kethan’s Pīlī Āndhī, which is narrated from the point of view of Kiśan, a male Marwari businessman, explores the conflicts between tradition and modernity, adopted homes and cultural deterritorialization, and between the bazaar and baṛi. In Kalikathā: Via Bypass, Saraogi also focuses on the livelihood and historical memories of Kishore Bābū, a Bengali-speaking Marwari man who demonstrates a complex relationship to his Marwari heritage as he struggles to fit into the political and cultural milieu of Kolkata. The novel switches back and forth between the flâneur-like Kishore Bābū’s memories of a politically active, anti-colonial youth in the 1940s to his present day disenchantment with the commodity-driven, Hindutva-influenced culture of the 1990s. In the fourth analepsis of the story, the novel does address the plight of Marwari women in the 20th century by showing how “the historical disjunction…is the shift from active women in the 40s to the passive women of the following decades” (132). However, Madhu Kankaria’s novel Khule Gagan ke Lāl Sitāre most directly addresses the role and representations of Marwari women in the 20th century. The novel focuses on Maṇi, “the first woman in her family to attend the university,” who becomes embroiled in the political radicalism of the Naxalite Movement during her college years at Presidency College in the late 1960s and early 1970s (140). Maṇi falls in love with Indra, a Bengali bhadralok revolutionary, who disappears during the height of the Naxalite revolution. Twenty-six years later, Maṇi tries to piece together Indra’s last days as the novel explores issues of female Marwari identities and agency directly while also dealing with “issues of Marwari identity, otherness, and deterritorialization in Bengal” (141). Parson argues, that “the poles of Bengaliness and Marwariness, Naxalism and Jainism, begin to dissolve in the first person narrator, Maṇi, in an almost inadvertent move towards the synthesis of Calcutta’s extremes…the narrative achieves this by examining the Naxalite legacy through a Jain consciousness and treating Jain practice through a Marxist lens” (141).

As a whole, Rahul Parson’s dissertation is an illuminating read. It presents the history of Marwari literature in Hindi and representations of the Marwari community in Kolkata in a complex and nuanced light. Of Parson’s research, his analysis and discussions of the Mārwārī Ank in its ridicule and marginalization of the Marwari community in Kolkata is most eye-opening, as are his readings and analysis of Madhu Kankaria’s novel Khule Gagan ke Lāl Sitāre, in which the central protagonist of a Marwari novel is a woman who redefines not only the contemporary the Marwari identity and community of Kolkata in the 1990s, but also interrogates Marwari gender roles, traditions, and oppressive social practices of the past. The dissertation also bridges the gap between historical and literary scholarship and delves into feminist criticism. It offers a fruitful read for anyone interested in regional literatures, languages, and identities in South Asia, especially those of marginalized communities and minor literatures.

Rita Banerjee
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie


Primary Sources
Hindi language journals from 19th and early 20th century, including:
Chānd (1924-194?, Allahabad);
Hindī Bangvāsī (1880-1921, Calcutta);
Kalkattā Samācār (1914-1922, Calcutta);
Mārwāṛī Gazette (1890-1898, Calcutta).

Dissertation Information
University of California-Berkeley. 2012. 175pp. Primary Advisor: Vasudha Dalmia.


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21. SOCIAL MEDICINE: THE LATIN AMERICAN EXAMPLE
by Dr Prasanna Cooray
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(The Island, January 21, 2016)

Over the years, Latin American social medicine has developed into a rich, heterogeneous discipline with appropriate advances in theoretical, methodological and strategic domains. Nevertheless, one feature that differentiates Latin American social medicine from traditional public health found elsewhere is its strong emphasis on theory. Practitioners of social medicine have identified a lack of explicitly stated theory in traditional public health as one of its weaknesses. They have been critical of the traditional public health model, which they brand as biological as opposed to (their own) social. The biological focus, it is said, reduces the unit of analysis to the individual and thus obscures social causes amenable to societal-level interventions.

Influenced by Italian Marxist doctrinaire Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937), Latin American social medicine practitioners associate theory with practice, which they term as "praxis", through which they ultimately aspire social change. In Latin American practice of social medicine trade unions, women's groups, native populations and community organizations are frequently considered as partners of change.

In Latin American context social class, within the rubric of economic production, is considered an important aspect of health-illness dichotomy. Practitioners of social medicine see that exploitation of labour is an inherent condition of economic production. Therefore, social class takes precedence over demographic characteristics such as income, education and occupation in its analysis.

A second focus involves the reproduction of economic production. Among the supporting institutions of reproduction, family stands out, especially through the assigned gender roles. As Marx and Engels had argued before, exploitation of workers is intrinsically associated with exploitation of women. Thus, economic production requires reproduction of labor force, mainly through the activities of women within families. In contemporary societies, women often bear the "triple burden" of wage labor, housework, and child-rearing. Thus, social medicine pays special attention to female workers and their roles in economic production and reproduction.

Going by the ideologies of Gramsci and Louis Althusser (1918 – 90), Latin American social medicine theorists identify "hegemonic" disposition of society (especially within health bureaucracy) as the third factor in "health-illness production". They believe that "demystification" of this dominant ideology is a task of the social medicine practitioners. Acting along those lines, Latin American social medicine activists time and again have encountered and squashed many a dominant paradigms of different times such as the "developmentalist" policies of the international lending agencies and the health policies of the World Bank with resounding success, practicing "praxis" to the last. They argued that these policies only meant to increase indebtedness, privatization, and cutbacks in public services, based on macroeconomic, market-based principles.

History of Social Medicine in Latin America

Most Latin American accounts on history of social medicine trail to Europe with Rudolf Virchow as the trailblazer. Proponents of Virchow's vision immigrated to Latin America around the turn of the 20th century and sowed the seeds of social medicine there. For instance, a prominent pathologist from Germany, Max Westenhofer, who later headed the department of pathology at the medical school of Chile, was instrumental in influencing a generation of students, including Salvador Allende, a future president of Chile.

Social medicine in Chile took a front-seat role after a series of nationwide strikes in 1918. A frontline trade unionist Luis Emilio Recabarren (1876 – 1924) paid special attention to malnutrition, infectious diseases, and premature mortality in his campaign. During the next three decades, Recabarren and his political allies agitated for economic reforms as the only viable route to improvements in patterns of illness and mortality that affected the poor. During the 1920s and 1930s, social medicine flourished in Chile, partly as a response to the demands of the labour movement.

Radicalism to Social Medicine

Argentine roots in Latin American social medicine began to spread across the subcontinent as Ernesto ("Che") Guevara (1928 – 1967) and his "revolutionary medicine" became popular. As a final year medico, Che’s famous tour in South America, Central America and Mexico on a motorcycle, where he gained firsthand experience on poverty and suffering of the masses, changed his life path irrevocably. He believed in revolution as a prerequisite for improving health conditions. In his speeches and writings on "revolutionary medicine," Che called for a corps of physicians who understood the social origins of illness and the need for social change to improve health conditions.

In Ecuador, origins of social medicine dates back to the 18th century, where the physician cum lawyer Eugenio Espejo (1747 – 95) linked his work to the revolutionary struggles against Spain. Like Virchow later would in Germany, Espejo believed that controlling epidemics, Espejo involved addressing issues of poverty, housing, sanitation and nutrition. Later, in the early 20th-century in Ecuador, Pablo Arturo Suárez's book on "the situation of the working class" analyzed adverse health outcomes of the workers as part of an overall political analysis. During the 1930s, the physician Ricardo Paredes Romero (1898 – 1979) studied occupational lung diseases and accidents among Ecuadoran miners. In addition to legislation that improved working conditions, Paredes's efforts led to a broad consciousness in Ecuador of the effects on health of "economic imperialism" by multinational corporations. Paredes, in 1932, founded the Ecuadorian Socialist Party – Broad Front of Ecuador.

Social Medicine vs Public Health

in Latin America

Latin Americans make a clear distinction between social medicine and traditional public health. Public health defines a population as a sum of individuals, whose specific characteristics, such as sex, age, education, income, and race/ethnicity, permit the classification of these individuals into groups. Thereafter rates for a population are calculated mathematically from the characteristics of individuals who compose the population. On the contrary, social medicine envisions populations, as well as social institutions, as totalities whose characteristics transcend those of individuals. Thus, social medicine defines problems and seeks solutions with social as opposed to individual units of analysis. In this way, the population can be analyzed through such categories as social class, economic production, reproduction, and culture, not simply through the characteristics of individuals.

Another distinction between the social medicine and public health concerns the static vs dynamic nature of health vs illness, as well as the effect of social context. Social medicine conceptualizes "health–illness" as a dialectic process rather than a dichotomous category. The epidemiologic profile of a society or group within a society requires a multilevel analysis of how social conditions such as economic production, reproduction, culture, marginalization, and political participation affect the dynamic process of health– illness.


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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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