SACW - 12 Oct 2016 | Sri Lanka: Nationalist mobilisations / Bangladesh: Islamism; Restricting NGOs / Pakistan: Shrinking Democratic Space/ India - Pakistan: US prevented escalation / India: Militarization; Murky role of minster of culture and tourism / Fascism in Italian Cinema since 194

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 12 Oct 2016 - No. 2912 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:
1. Sri Lanka: Nationalist mobilisations - First as tragedy, then as farce | Ahilan Kadirgamar
2. Bangladesh: The challenge before us | Mahfuz Anam
3. Space for progressive Pakistan is shrinking fast | Foqia Sadiq Khan
4. India: Debasing the Malayali food - Open Letter to Kerala’s Minister of Education
5. India: An Official National Defence Prayer ? Who will foot the bill for this nonsense?
6. Recent On Communalism Watch:
  - India: A year after Dadri, its lessons remain unlearnt and the murky role of Union minister for culture and tourism, Mahesh Sharma
  - India: Why I am not celebrating Durga Pujo (Dhrubo Jyoti)
  - Religious fundamentalists hate but imitate each other
  - India: Army Mute as BJP Election Posters Feature Soldier, Surgical Strikes
  - India: UP Government agreed to a Rs 25-lakh "compensation" for Dadri suspect's kin
  - India: Retrograde Gender Politics on the Bench
  - India: From cow to holy-cow govt
  - India: Patriot games - Mitali Saran
  - Biryani Policing and the Leadership Crisis in the Indian Police Service (Basant Rath)
  - India - Row over ‘Draupadi’: 70 scholars from UK, Europe support M’garh professors
  - India: India Cultural Forum Team and Janwadi Lekhak Sangh Condemn the Attacks on IPTA in Indore

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
7. How US prevented escalation of India-Pakistan conflict | Bharat Bhushan
8. Bangladesh: Restricting NGO freedom a slippery slope | Edit. Dhaka Tribune
9. Why India-Pakistan rivalry may spell the death of SAARC association | Jyoti Malhotra
10. The Indian government’s Twitter accounts are posting some surprisingly vile and jingoistic messages | Harish C Menon
11. Crisis of Islamist Extremism in Contemporary Bangladesh | Maidul Islam
12. Kashmir needs leaders who challenge India to rise above its zamindari mind-set | Gopalkrishna Gandhi
13. India -  Interview: Irfan Habib Debunks RSS’s Nationalism and Their Attempts to Rewrite History | Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
14. Nandini Sundar: Militarization of the imagination | Chitrangada Choudhury
15. India - Pakistan Border: Lives on the Lines - Almost every village on the LoC has a shelling story
16. Kedzior on Bobbio, 'Urbanisation, Citizenship and Conflict in India: Ahmedabad, 1900-2000'
17. O'Leary on Lichtner, 'Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945: The Politics and Aesthetics of Memory'

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1. SRI LANKA: NATIONALIST MOBILISATIONS - FIRST AS TRAGEDY, THEN AS FARCE | Ahilan Kadirgamar
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The polarising politics centred on the projection of victimhood and the call for international intervention is not new, the genocide resolution by the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) last year was one such instance. However, the Eluga Thamil protest requires careful analysis as it has not only kindled ethno-nationalist emotions, but also put people on the streets without any realistic political path ahead.
http://sacw.net/article12968.html

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2. BANGLADESH: THE CHALLENGE BEFORE US | Mahfuz Anam
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As a freedom fighter I remember, as I we sat glued to a one-band radio, on the evening of December 16 1971, along with others in a guerrilla camp, listening to the surrender ceremony of the Pakistani army to the joint command in Dhaka and shouting “Joy Bangla” (Victory to Bangla), I was certain that my new country would be a place of prosperity, freedom and religious harmony. Never again would a Muslim or a Hindu lose his or her life for religion.
http://sacw.net/article12970.html

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3. SPACE FOR PROGRESSIVE PAKISTAN IS SHRINKING FAST  | Foqia Sadiq Khan
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A civil society forum has been set up to collectively lobby for a transparent registration process to counter the ongoing harassment. NGOs require access to legal aid to deal with attacks from certain segments in the media. There is also a need for other civil society organisations such as the press clubs, labour unions, students’ organisations and bar associations to support NGOs/INGOs. However, most of all, there is an urgent and dire need to stop maligning and forcing civil society to prove its patriotism credentials.
http://sacw.net/article12969.html

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4. INDIA: DEBASING THE MALAYALI FOOD - OPEN LETTER TO KERALA’S MINISTER OF EDUCATION
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I was surprised to see the attached news report yesterday of one of your speeches where you have bracketed universal human food meat, fish and egg with illegal drugs (and alcohol and asserted that you don’t consume any of these) (Madhyamam 5.10 16). At a time when the fascist forces are playing havoc on the country in the name of meat eating, it is an insult to the Kerala society and its culture where hardly a meal is taken without fish/meat/egg to debase our food.
http://sacw.net/article12965.html

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5. INDIA: AN OFFICIAL NATIONAL DEFENCE PRAYER ? WHO WILL FOOT THE BILL FOR THIS NONSENSE?
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On instructions from Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, the Rajasthan Sanskrit Academy will organise a grand ‘Rashtra Raksha Yagna’ at Shri Mateshwari Tanot Rai temple near the Indo-Pak border on Thursday, to “protect troops from the enemy”. It will be conducted by 21 “patriotic Brahmins”.
http://sacw.net/article12966.html

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6. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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India: As Politicians Made Ram ‘Hindu’, Indian Muslims Lost Their ‘Maryada Purshotam’
India: Cultural practice does not recognise borders. Militarising it reduces it to a dangerous monolith (Githa Hariharan)
India: A year after Dadri, its lessons remain unlearnt and the murky role of Union minister for culture and tourism, Mahesh Sharma
Ambedkar and Hindutva Politics By Ram Puniyani
India: Why I am not celebrating Durga Pujo (Dhrubo Jyoti)
India: Law Commission seeks public opinion on Uniform Civil Code
Religious fundamentalists hate but imitate each other
India: Army Mute as BJP Election Posters Feature Soldier, Surgical Strikes
India: UP Government agreed to a Rs 25-lakh "compensation" for Dadri suspect's kin
India: Retrograde Gender Politics on the Bench
India: From cow to holy-cow govt
India: Patriot games - Mitali Saran
Biryani Policing and the Leadership Crisis in the Indian Police Service (Basant Rath)
India - Row over ‘Draupadi’: 70 scholars from UK, Europe support M’garh professors
India: India Cultural Forum Team and Janwadi Lekhak Sangh Condemn the Attacks on IPTA in Indore
The Indian government’s Twitter accounts are posting some surprisingly vile and jingoistic messages
India: Villagers drape Dadri murder accused’s coffin in Tricolour
India: Muzaffarnagar Ramlila starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui cancelled after local Hindus protest

 -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::

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7. HOW US PREVENTED ESCALATION OF INDIA-PAKISTAN CONFLICT
by Bharat Bhushan
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US diplomacy played a crucial role in ensuring that the tension between India and Pakistan was not escalated further in the aftermath of India's 'surgical strikes' against terrorists in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

When US National security Advisor Susan Rice called Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, apparently she did not do so to support India's 'surgical strikes' against Pakistan. [. . .]

According to those in the know, the US administration also reached out to Pakistan. 
http://www.catchnews.com/international-news/how-us-diplomacy-put-brakes-on-india-pakistan-escalation-after-surgical-strikes-1475750862.html

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8. BANGLADESH: RESTRICTING NGO FREEDOM A SLIPPERY SLOPE
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(Dhaka Tribune - October 11, 2016)

Tribune Editorial

Restricting NGO freedom a slippery slope

Bangladesh faces many problems, but NGOs are not one of them
Clamping down on NGOs would be massively counter-productive and is foolish in the extreme.
Bangladesh is tremendously indebted to NGOs for its development. Clamping down on their freedom, which includes the freedom to scrutinise and critique government activities, does not bode well for the country.
The legislation, to put it bluntly, smacks of authoritarianism.
Restricting the rights of NGOs is a slippery slope, and one we cannot afford to go down if we cherish the democratic and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of this nation.
While monitoring and regulation are desirable, and even necessary, what the Foreign Donations Regulation Bill seeks is problematic on many fronts. For example, the bill’s provision to take action against “malicious” or “derogatory” comments is too vague and open-ended.
Furthermore, it is not clear as to exactly what would constitute an offense that would be grounds for revoking an NGO’s registration.
There is also the question of why this bill would apply only to NGOs relying on foreign donations, and not local ones.
No good can from this law, and it will only hamper Bangladesh’s progress, and slow down our journey to becoming a middle-income nation anytime soon.
We urge the president to not sign off on this bill — Bangladesh can only succeed through empowered NGOs.
This bill would take us in the opposite direction.

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9. WHY INDIA-PAKISTAN RIVALRY MAY SPELL THE DEATH OF SAARC ASSOCIATION
By Jyoti Malhotra
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(Economic Times - October 09, 2016)

http://img.etimg.com/thumb/msid-54756987,width-310,resizemode-4,imglength-319442/untitled-13.jpg
Nepali cartoonist Rabin Sayami’s caricature in Nepal’s Republica daily — of two sharks called ‘India’ and ‘Pakistan’ dismantling the SAARC regional forum because they can’t look beyond their teeth and jaws and their long noses.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a cartoon can surely take the whole page.

Nepali cartoonist Rabin Sayami’s caricature in Nepal’s Republica daily — of two sharks called ‘India’ and ‘Pakistan’ dismantling the SAARC regional forum because they can’t look beyond their teeth and jaws and their long noses — is evocative; it tells the tale of how a smaller, third country in the region looks at the debilitating hostility between the antagonistic twin nations, separated at birth nearly 70 years ago.

Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has politer words for the same concern staring South Asia in the face these days, which is that the unpretentiously named South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) could be staring at its own end. “SAARC has to decide on two issues — cross-border terrorism and areas in which we can work together.

If we don’t do it, there is no future for SAARC,” Wickremesinghe said in Delhi earlier this week. From Dhaka, which takes pride in birthing this regional association in December 1985, came the blunt assessment by Selim Raihan, professor of economics in Dhaka University.

“The political rivalry between India and Pakistan has often constrained SAARC to become a regional forum,” he said, writing in The Daily Star.

A twist in the tale

With the covert strikes across the Line of Control in Pakistan a ringing success, certainly from the Narendra Modi point of view, it follows that the Delhi establishment has already thought of an alternative. In this telling, Pakistan the bad boy must be punished for being the spoiler, for persisting with cross-border terrorism despite the self-knowledge that it may be cutting its nose to spite its face.

So, in this season of renewal and victory of Good over Evil as manifested in the various festivals that dot the subcontinent, the message going out from India is: Let There Be SAARC Minus One.

Modi is determined not to let his leadership of the region be marred by Pakistan, so he has invited several SAARC nations to a gathering of world leaders in Goa on October 14-15.

The first day he will host BRICS (an association of five major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) leaders, namely Michel Temer, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Jacob Zuma. But, on the second day, Modi will host the hand-picked nations that surround the Bay of Bengal — from Myanmar and Thailand to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh — no matter that this meeting-without-a-name is taking place on the banks of the Arabian Sea.

After all, what’s a little twisting of geography between friends? But wait, the prime ministers of landlocked Nepal as well as Bhutan, Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Tshering Tobgay are also coming.

If the mind boggles at this new khichri in the offing, never fear. India is now masterminding a new sub-regional grouping called BBIN, which comprises the states of Bhutan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal.

It seems Chapter 7 of SAARC allows these quadrilaterals and trilaterals. Heard on the horizon is that India also wants to connect maritime neighbours, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, especially as it has ambitions in the Indian Ocean.

For the time being, though, Maldives’ president Abdulla Yameen is in India’s bad books as he has accepted a $10 million credit line from Pakistan to buy its weapons — a fact that may finally push Delhi into deciding to support opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed, although ironically it was Delhi’s inadequate foreign policy analysis in 2012 which allowed Yameen’s cohorts to throw Nasheed into jail.

But what of Thailand and Myanmar? Well, they may the poorer cousins of the tiger economies of South-East Asia, but they could easily reach across the Strait of Malacca and connect interested South Asian nations.

Remember, too, that the PM of Singapore, which is the head of the ASEAN-China dialogue this year, was in Delhi earlier this week.

Reinventing with Care

So, make no mistake, Modi is reaching out east and north and south and across Pakistan to Afghanistan.

There is talk of Delhi and Kabul creating some sort of an air-bridge that eases the movement of goods and people between the two countries, especially as Islamabad-Rawalpindi has refused, point-blank, to allow Indian goods to travel over Pakistani territory to Afghanistan.

If Delhi does this, it will substantially increase the pressure on Pakistan to mend its ways vis-à-vis South Asia. Certainly, it’s a bad idea to junk SAARC, no matter what furious policymakers in Delhi think.

Certainly, too, it’s a bad idea to reward Pakistan for its persistent negativity — for example, prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s assent to the decision at the last SAARC summit in November 2014 not to participate in SAARC road and rail travel, has cost Pakistan dear. This gave Modi the impulse he needed to reinvent BBIN — and now, informally launch it in Goa.

Modi’s flag-boys in Delhi are already joyfully urging the prime minister to dump SAARC. Perhaps this is a feint, another shifting shadow that countries and their fandom play.

But listen to Dilrukshi Handunnetti, commentator on South Asian issues and consulting editor of Sri Lanka’s Weekend Express: “SAARC cannot be dominated by the adversarial agenda of two countries…The cancellation of the summit means that India has effectively carved out a sub-region within SAARC, reliant on India for one reason or another. This is to the detriment of a grouping that represents some of the poorest nations of the world,” she says.

Truth is, South Asia has 40 per cent of the world’s poor living in it, although it comprises 23.4 per cent of its population. Some of these people live in Pakistan. If India really wants to lead South Asia into a new tomorrow, Modi must take these people along. There must be a better way to reinvent SAARC than marginalising your western neighbour.

(The writer is a senior journalist) 

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10. THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT’S TWITTER ACCOUNTS ARE POSTING SOME SURPRISINGLY VILE AND JINGOISTIC MESSAGES
Written by Harish C Menon
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(Quartz India - September 09, 2016)

Go, jackboot 'em all. (Reuters/Cathal McNaughton)

Something curious and dangerous is going on behind some social media accounts of the government of India. And it does not augur well.

On Thursday (Sept. 08), the Twitter handle of Digital India, one of prime minister Narendra Modi’s flagship programmes, tweeted a poem in Hindi. The tweet, captioned “Heights of #Patriotism..!!!”, by @_DigitalIndia chillingly called on the Indian Army to fire away at protesting Kashmiris.
India-Kashmir-Twitter
In cold blood. (@_DigitlIndia)

A typical stanza of the poem, first posted by one Abhay Kumar, went like this:

“Kill to your heart’s content, army!
Beat them till their bones break,
If Mehbooba calls in the police,
Modi shall handle the situation.”

The reference here is to the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and the prime minister himself. The poem goes on to warn Kashmiris that “this is just the beginning and expect a lot more firing by the army.”

The government of India is currently struggling to restore normalcy in the restive Jammu and Kashmir state. The killing of a young terrorist had sparked an unprecedented uprising in the state that saw dozens of protesters and security personnel getting killed during clashes over the last two months. The Indian home minister is now in the process of negotiating with all sections of the state to soothe frayed tempers. The stunning tweet, coming amidst such turmoil, obviously left the government red-faced. For, Digital India has more than 5.3 lakh followers on Twitter.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, the information technology minister in Modi’s government, expressed regret and said the contents of the tweet do not reflect the government’s views. He said the person who tweeted the poem had been suspended.

Prasad’s statement came after the vitriolic tweet drew flak.

    This is a shame. Those running this handle are illiterate or stupid. Worst of all, it maligns Army as mass-murderers https://t.co/mfWfe4Hnnr

    — Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) September 8, 2016

The whole fiasco, seemingly settled after Prasad’s prompt action, has heightened the unease surrounding the blatant belligerence displayed by the government’s social media managers. For this is only the latest in a series of such goof-ups.

A few days ago, All India Radio’s Twitter handle waded into an ongoing controversy over the killing of Mahatma Gandhi.

Mocking Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his shifting stands in a defamation case, @airnewsalerts asked: “Why he got scared earlier?”

The case was filed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) against Rahul who had referred to its role in the killing of Mahatma Gandhi. The RSS is the ideological parent of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While Rahul initially accused it of being involved in the murder, in court he apparently took a softer line and said that he had only spoken about RSS members being involved in the crime and not RSS itself. However, after he was lampooned for going soft, the Congress vice-president reverted to a more aggressive stand and prepared to face trial.

Though the tweet was later deleted, it strengthened the impression that official bodies that ought to stay off politics were being used to promote the government’s ideology and agenda.

    Unprecedented, unheard of that official broadcaster should attack Mr Rahul Gandhi! Shameful & unpardonable. pic.twitter.com/q8NHpq42is

    — Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) September 1, 2016

A few months ago, the Twitter handle of Startup India, another major Modi government initiative, was caught retweeting something targeted at sections of the Indian media perceived as being critical of the regime. This time, too, it was the Indian Army that was called upon to “take care” of #Presstitutes.

    Retweets by @startupindia – A Government of India Initiative pic.twitter.com/XbMiSW8ZO2

    — Joy (@Joydas) July 26, 2016

Incidentally, the term #Presstitutes itself was coined by Gen VK Singh, a former Indian Army chief and a current minister of state in the Modi government.

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11. CRISIS OF ISLAMIST EXTREMISM IN CONTEMPORARY BANGLADESH
by Maidul Islam
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(Economic and Political Weekly - Vol. 51, Issue No. 40, 01 Oct, 2016)

Maidul Islam (moidul.islam[at]gmail.com) is with the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.

Islamist extremism in Bangladesh emerged as a response to authoritarian populism and in the absence of a credible anti-establishment left-wing political project to articulate an alternative agenda to the existing status quo. Islamist extremists represent a politics of revenge and hatred with no clear objective to uplift the socio-economic conditions and livelihood prospects of the people.

On the evening of 1 July 2016, seven gunmen, allegedly associated with the Islamist extremist group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), had stormed into a Spanish cafe, Holey Artisan Bakery in the Gulshan area of Dhaka’s high security diplomatic zone. These militants took over the cafe, eventually killing mostly foreigners who were first taken as hostages. Similarly, on 7 July, a terror attack was organised with crude bombs and gun shooting before the morning Eid prayers in the Sholakia Idgah of Kishoreganj district in Bangladesh. Sholakia has the biggest Eid congregation in the country with at least two lakh people attending the Eid prayers. Both the incidents in Gulshan and Sholakia are organised forms of terror in the wake of recent attacks by a section of Bangladeshi Islamists who have adopted extremist methods to target civil society members, religious minorities (Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Bahais), Ahmadiyas, atheist bloggers, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and progressive political activists.

Before the twin terror attacks, militancy expert, Zayadul Ahsan (2016) reported that in the last 18 months, at least 47 persons have been killed by the Islamist extremists in Dhaka. Out of 47, eight persons were allegedly killed by the pro-Al-Qaeda group, Ansar al-Islam, previously known as Ansarullah Bangla Team, led by the dismissed Bangladesh army officer, Major Ziaul Haq. Haq triggered an attempted military coup within the Bangladesh army in 2012. Haq-led Ansar recruits are from various Islamist organisations like Ahl al-Hadith, Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Hefazat-e-Islam and are usually poor madrasa students. Ansar’s operation areas are generally in the northern part of the country and have so far targeted free thinkers, bloggers and gay rights activists.

In contrast, the pro-ISIS group, which has taken the responsibility of killing 28 persons in the last one and half years is led by a Bangladeshi–Canadian, Tamim Chowdhury alias Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif. This pro-ISIS group recruits relatively affluent and urban upper middle class professionals. It has close links with a section of Islami Chhatrashibir, the student wing of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. This group primarily targets religious minorities, foreigners and university teachers. It operates mainly in Dhaka and its surrounding suburbs, Savar, Tongi, Gazipur and Mirpur.

If terrorism makes symbolic statements then it is important to note that these terror attacks have occurred in a context where the Bangladeshi government has on record, denied the existence of the ISIS in the country.

Moreover, these attacks seem to be a violent response to the recent crackdown on the Islamist extremists by the Bangladeshi government. These attacks were also organised in the wake of a public fatwa (Islamic decree) issued by Maulana Fariduddin Masud, the Chairman of Bangladesh Jamiat-ul-Ulama and the imam (prayer leader) of Sholakia Eid prayers.

The above fatwa was signed by more than one lakh Bangladeshi ulema, condemning terrorism as “un-Islamic” and “forbidden,” while unambiguously stating that “Islam is the religion of peace” that delegitimises terrorist activities. The fatwa was also clear to state that the suicide squad members of terrorist organisations “will certainly go to hell” and even attending the janaza (religious prayers before the last rites) of terrorists is haram (forbidden).

According to a news report, Maulana Fariduddin Masud clearly pointed out that

    in the name of Islam, some quarters are spreading extremism and terror through misinterpretation of Quran and Hadith to gain their personal interests...Though many label the militants as jihadis, they are actually terrorists...Islam doesn’t support terrorism. And those, who are carrying out suicide attacks with the belief to go to heaven as martyrs if they die and live as heroes if remain alive, will not go to heaven according to Quran and Hadith...And those who will die taking stand against these militants will be regarded as martyrs. (Khokon and Loiwal 2016)

However, the recent spate of attacks by the Islamists is not new. In fact, right from the 1990s, a section of Islamists took recourse to such violent actions. The attention of international media towards Islamist extremism in Bangladesh started with a death threat to controversial author Taslima Nasrin, who had to flee from Bangladesh in 1994. Later, noted Bengali author, Humayun Azad was attacked on 27 February 2004 on the Bangla Academy premises during the Ekushe Book Fair by machete carrying JMB militants, as confessed by a JMB commander in court (Daily Star 2006).

In the last one and a half decades, the Hindu, Christian and Buddhist minorities in Bangladesh have been getting threats from several suspected Islamist extremist groups. According to a report by a senior South Asian security analyst, since 1999 Islamist militants in Bangladesh have unleashed a series of attacks on religious minorities and politicians in a context where “governance, rule of law, and provision of justice seem in short supply” (Ganguly 2006: 1).

In August 2004, the Islamist extremists tried to assassinate Sheikh Hasina Wazed, the then parliamentary opposition leader and the present Bangladesh Prime Minister in an Awami League political rally in Dhaka but the attempt was aborted. However, the grenade attack on the same venue took the life of prominent Awami League politician, Ivy Rehman.

The Islamist extremists are alleged to have assassinated S A M S Kibria, a former foreign secretary and foreign minister, in February 2005 followed by a countryside terrorist attack in August 2005. Some 459 time bomb blasts occurred in 63 districts in just 30 minutes that killed two persons and injured 100. The JMB claimed responsibility for the blasts through leaflets found with the bomb devices (Daily Star 2005). Such a ghastly act was followed by suicide bombings in Chittagong and Gazipur on 29 November 2005, where 10 persons, including two police officers, were killed (Ganguly 2006: 2). According to news reports, last year, from October till Christmas, at least 37 Christian priests were allegedly threatened by Islamist extremists (Daily Star 2015). On 15 June, the principal of Dhaka’s Ramakrishna Mission was allegedly given a death threat by supporters of Islamic State (PTI 2016).

Contextualising Islamist Violence

Today, Islamist violence is crossing transcontinental borders in a context when the Islamists are encountering an everyday challenge from the modern and postmodern lifestyles in an increasingly globalised and digitised world. At the same time, it is through this same process of globalisation of technology and media that Islamist groups not only form networks but also display their gruesome acts, creating a spectacle to tempt a section of the Muslim youth.

As evident, the Islamists have often attacked atheist bloggers, secular writers, gay rights activists or what they call “blasphemous persons.” A forceful assertion by the Islamists on the question of blasphemy in fact reflects the crisis of authority and insecurity of Islamists, since blasphemy fundamentally challenges the legitimacy and core beliefs of religion among members of the Muslim community. This insecurity of Islamists is rooted in the belief that if punitive action is not taken against the disobedient, disloyal and blasphemous person, then blasphemy can become a norm and precedence in the society, and in the long run, can challenge the very foundation of religious faith upon which authority of Islamist ideology is grounded.

Also, the very non-action against the blasphemous person might be seen as the weakness of the Islamic ummah (transnational community of Islamic believers). Since, blasphemy is regarded as a “revolt” by a member of an “authentic” community, it is generally repressed by the religious authority to maintain its hegemony over the “authentic” Muslim community. Thus, Islamists act assertively by ensuring the punishment or disciplining the violator of religious code of conduct (in this case the blasphemer), with violence without waiting for the last day of judgment according to Islamic belief.

This Islamist political assertion is a function of an orthodox faith that relies on a scriptural-dogmatic understanding of Islamic religion and cultural practices. In this respect, the Islamists would hardly pay any attention to the Quranic injunction that “there shall be no coercion in matters of faith.”1 Rather, the self-proclaiming jihadist strives to act on behalf of Allah and “punishes” the “sinners” (blasphemous persons and the non-believers).

Moreover, Islamists have an inbuilt narcissism, self-obsession and a sense of megalomania precisely because of the Quranic belief that Islam is the final apostle, the final holy book and is the rightful guidance for all of humanity. Such beliefs are core to the formation and construction of Islamism as a political ideology. In the Kantian sense, Islamism can be identified with dogmatism “without previous criticism of its own powers” (Kant 1933: 32). This dogmatic confidence of the Islamists as the bearer of an “absolute truth” and the right and complete way of life gets shaken when it encounters such challenges like atheism and blasphemy because these trends only ignore the path of Islam and instead critique it for being “backward,” “oppressive,” “irrational” and “regressive.”

In the face of such stiff challenges of atheism, blasphemy and consumerist hedonism; Islamists sometimes take refuge to violence to eliminate its opponent’s claims and opinions—in this case, the political articulations of atheism, blasphemy and consumerist hedonism. The ability to ignore disrespect and insult, instead of giving a violent reaction, actually shows the strength and confidence rather than the weakness of a person. In the case of the alleged disrespectful and insulting comments made by noted controversial authors and bloggers on Islam and the Prophet, one can notice how the Islamists were unable to ignore such anti-Islamic opinions and hence displayed their immense weakness and unstable nervousness rather than their strength while killing the secular bloggers and writers.

Moreover, political violence often unleashed by the Islamists in Bangladesh is also a result of absence of normative concepts of individual liberty and freedom within the specific ideological morphology of Islamism (Browers 2005). According to a prominent Islamist ideologue, Maududi, individual liberty and freedom is supposed to be submitted by humans to the creator and as loyal subjects, the obligatory duty of humans is to obey the rules of the creator because the humans or the created/creatures are born slaves of the creator (Maududi 1960).

Bikhu Parekh argues that the “fundamentalist discourse” is essentially a “moral discourse” (1994: 113). I would further add that it is a regulatory discourse as well. In the case of the attacks on secular bloggers and gay rights activists, a regulatory morality is governed and legitimised by a section of the religious authority and then justified in the name of the holy text. This tradition of silencing and repressing the revolt against any Islamic theological and spiritual authority like God or the Prophet is nothing new in Bangladesh.

In fact, much before the protests against certain novels by Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin, the anti-Ahmadi mob violence was organised in the early 1950s in the then Pakistan for an “authentic” Islamic system (Ahmad M 1991: 471; Ahmed R 1994: 680). In other words, there is a history of constructing antagonistic frontiers within the politico-ideological discourses of the Islamists in Bangladesh against what they identify as the non-Islamic politico-ideological discourse. In this respect, Islamism can be seen as a critique of ideas like nation state, nationalism and secularism, which according to the Islamists, carry the imprint of Western politico-ideological epistemology.

Islamists in Contemporary Bangladesh

As I have argued elsewhere, the emergence of Islamists as key players in Bangladeshi politics was due to several factors (Islam 2015: 171–80). First, Islamists gain ground as a response to the failure of secular–nationalist project of Sheikh Mujib that later resulted into a cult status of Mujibism (Mujibbad) to address socio-economic deprivation and corruption in a newly independent Bangladesh.

Moreover, Mujib’s policies took an authoritarian turn that first banned religious parties and then later, outlawed all other political parties except his newly formed Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BAKSAL), while replacing the parliamentary system with presidential form of government, multiparty system with totalitarian control and one-party rule, curtailing the powers of the national assembly. The judiciary lost much of its independence and the Supreme Court was deprived of its jurisdiction over the protection and enforcement of fundamental rights (Jahan 2000: xxv). Such repressive measures with virtually “one man rule” was accompanied by the absolute control of the parliament and the party and the rule of small coterie of nouveau riche close to Mujib. It came with stifling of political opposition, gagging of the press, declaration of emergency as a tool to repress political opponents, abolition of parliamentary democracy and the creation of single-party system with “megalomaniac” acts, and turning family affairs to almost state events (Rahman and Hasan 1980: 134–72). Mujib’s paramilitary force, the Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini, almost acted as a private militia (Rahman and Hasan 1980: 144) and became well known for its “intimidation tactics” (Uddin 2006: 122). In such a context, Islamists emerged in the Bangladeshi political scene as a reaction to such authoritarian approach of Mujibism.

Second, Islamists gain ground due to military patronage with calculated strategy of successive military regimes of Ziaur-Rahman and Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who often in their search for political legitimacy on the one hand, and in isolating the Awami League on the other, directly or indirectly prepared the conditions for the rise of Islamism in Bangladesh (Rahim 2001: 255). The successive military dictatorships under Zia and Ershad made religious education compulsory in schools and patronised madrasa education, besides encouraging religious leaders to play active role in politics of the country (Rahim 2001: 255).

Third, it rose to prominence in a context where an alternative political force like a strong and credible left was absent from the political scene.

Fourth, political economy factors were behind the rise of Islamism in contemporary Bangladesh. As one commentator argues, Islamism generally became popular in 1980s and 1990s among a section of middle peasants and a squeezed urban middle class and also among the disgruntled children of the state elite “who were looking for an ideological alternative to the discredited nationalism of their elders and who sought to establish new links with the people” (Schendel 2000: 69–70).

Fifth, the ideologically motivated, literate and dedicated cadre-based organisational strength of the Islamists, strong networks of Islamists among various sections of the population and attempts for mass dissemination and circulation of Islamist literature also contributed to the rebuilding procedures of Islamism in Bangladesh (Rahim 2001: 255–56).

Finally, international events like the Islamic revolt of Iran in 1979 and the success of Taliban regime in capturing political power in Afghanistan in mid-1990s, also rekindled Islamist politics in Bangladesh. These international events only reminded Islamist parties like Jamaat about the revolutionary potential of Islam in the contemporary world (Rahim 2001: 256–57). Similarly, external pressures from oil-rich Islamic countries that have been funding Bangladesh over the years through various forms of aid and financial grants also significantly helped to revitalise Islamic symbols in Bangladeshi politics (Rahim 2001: 256–57).

None of the above conditions, which contributed to the rise of the Islamists in Bangladesh from the second half of 1970s till the 1990s are absolutely absent in present Bangladesh. With the boycott of national assembly elections that were held on 5 January 2014 by the major opposition parties, the country has no parliamentary opposition. At the same time, one finds an increasing authoritarian and paranoid tendency of the current government with a vindictive attitude towards the existing opposition. For example, there were 14,000 arrests in just five days, including more than 2,700 members of the main opposition party—the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)—in the name of government crackdown on Islamist violence, which shows the vindictive attitude of the current government towards the opposition (Agarwal 2016).

Sections of the military have direct or indirect relation with the Islamists as evident by the role of dismissed Bangladesh army officer, Major Ziaul Haq in forming a pro-Al-Qaeda group, Ansar al-Islam, previously known as Ansarullah Bangla Team. The ideologically motivated and dedicated cadre-based organisational strength of the Islamist groups and the external funding from several oil-rich West Asian countries towards Islamic non-governmental organisations have certainly contributed to the proliferation of several Islamist groups in Bangladesh. Moreover, the establishment of the so- called “Islamic caliphate” by the ISIS in parts of Iraq and Syria as a major international event has also attracted a section of the Bangladeshi youth to identify with such a project of creating an Islamic state in Bangladesh through armed violence.

The democratic demands of the people linked to deprivation, discrimination and corruption have been largely ignored by the current Bangladeshi political establishment. The country, instead, has been locked up in polarised debates on nationalism and seems to have not moved beyond the 1971 war crimes. In fact, much of the recent Islamist militancy in Bangladesh is in response to the trials of 1971 war criminals by the International Crimes Tribunal. At the same time, the lack of a credible political opposition has also created conditions under which a section of even the elite Bangladeshi youth, while getting frustrated with the status quo, is attracted towards violent political ideologies like Islamist extremism. The absence of a credible left-wing anti-establishment politics due to the complete surrender of a depoliticised left solely dependent on the Awami League for its existence, has also created conditions where any alternative challenge to the two major political formations of Awami League and BNP is missing except in some form of an Islamist political articulation.

Contradiction of Islamists

However, the contradiction of the Islamists lies in their strife to unite Muslims globally with the call for the unity of the umaah (Islamic community of believers cutting across class, gender and national citizenship) under their banner, while they target Islamic holy shrines and oragnise terror attacks during the Eid gathering in Dhaka, killing scores of innocent people, in the holy month of Ramadan.

While Islamic theology considers the month of Ramadan as a puritan month where the Muslims are expected to remain calm and stay away from any violence or war, the Islamist extremists seem to disregard such theological injunctions. In this respect, the Sunni Islamist extremists are Wahabism’s own Frankenstein. They follow a distorted theology that has contributed to the formation of a destructive ideology where the enemy is omnipresent, harming both Muslims and non-Muslims. Islamist extremism is similar to an anarchist terrorist movement without any coherent set of demands but with an imagined goal of creating an Islamic caliphate.

This being said, one must acknowledge that Islamist extremists in Bangladesh are still marginal players, who although could certainly create momentary sensationalism in the country, do not have the support of the Bangladeshi people at large. In fact, all forms of Islamists whether it is moderate parliamentary, militant or extremists have failed to get significant support from the Bangladeshi people. This is evident from two facts. First, the Islamist extremists hardly take recourse in democratic mobilisations to place concrete demands or seek the support of the people through electoral processes. Second, even those parliamentary Islamists, who have consistently fought local and national elections like the Jamaat-e-Islami, have never got more than 13% of the votes and 18 seats in a 300-member national assembly in the entire history of independent Bangladesh.

In this respect, contrary to the sensationalised news reports of increasing Islamist militancy, the political, electoral and ideological crisis of Islamism in Bangladesh has actually deepened in the last two decades (Islam 2015: 219–34). The violent response of the Islamist militants, thus, must be seen in such a context of crisis of Islamist political mobilisation through democratic means. The Bangladesh government, currently run by the Awami League, has efficiently tackled the Islamist extremists after the Gulshan and Sholakia attacks with a series of police raids and encounters of suspected militants. This being said, the struggle against Islamist militancy is not over although the current situation in Bangladesh suggests that the Islamists are facing a crisis of political mobilisation.

Moreover, the struggle for secularism against Islamist majoritarianism is not going to be decided in one day, as building a substantive secular state is a long-term hegemonic project. It cannot be fought with an authoritarian populist agenda, which is susceptible to compromises and complicity with majoritarianism. A secularist project can only be facilitated on the basis of a firm commitment to democracy and formation of a hegemonic project with secular egalitarian political articulation from below with massive people’s participation in constructing such a project.

Note

1 2:256 of The Holy Quran; quoted from The Message of the Qurān: The Full Account of the Revealed Arabic Text Accompanied by Parallel Transliteration translated and explained by Muhammad Asad, complete edition (Bristol: The Book Foundation, 2003: 69).

References

Agarwal, Ravi (2016): “Is Bangladesh the Next ISIS Hotspot?” 21 June, Dhaka Tribune, http://www.dhakatribune.com/what-the-world-says/2016/06/21/is-bangladesh-the-next-isis-hotspot.

Ahmad, Mumtaz (1991): “Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat of South Asia,” Fundamentalisms Observed, Vol 1 of the Fundamentalism Project, Martin E Marty and R Scott Appleby (eds), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Ahmed, Rafiuddin (1994): “Redefining Muslim Identity in South Asia: The Transformation of the Jama’at-i-Islami,” Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, Vol 4 of the Fundamentalism Project, Marty and R Scott Appleby (eds), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Ahsan, Z (2016): “Militants Grow in Silence,” Daily Star, 7 June, http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/militants-grow-silence-1235527.
Browers, Michaelle L (2005): “The Secular Bias in Ideology Studies and the Case of Islamism,” Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol 10, No 1, pp 75–93.
Daily Star (2005): “459 Blasts in 63 Districts in 30 Minutes,” Daily Star, 18 August, http://archive.thedailystar.net/2005/08/18/d5081801011.htm.
— (2006): “JMB Also Killed Writer of Tangail,” Daily Star, 5 June, http://archive.thedailystar.net/2006/06/05/d6060501128.htm.
— (2015): “SMS Threats Continue,” Daily Star, 24 December, http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/sms-threats-continue-191800.
Ganguly, Sumit (2006): “The Rise of Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report, No 171.
Islam, Maidul (2015): Limits of Islamism: Jamaat-e-Islami in Contemporary India and Bangladesh, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
Jahan, Rounaq (2000): “Introduction,” Bangladesh: Promise and Performance, Rounaq Jahan (ed), London: Zed Books.
Kant, Immanuel (1933): Critique of Pure Reason [1781], Trans Norman Kemp Smith, 1929, London: Macmillan.
Khokon, Sahidul Hasan and Manogya Loiwal (2016): “More Than 1 Lakh Bangladeshi Clerics Sign Anti-terror Fatwa”, India Today, 19 June, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/more-than-1-lakh-bangladeshi-clerics-sign-anti-terror-fatwa/1/695764.html.
Maududi, Sayyid Abul A’la (1960): Towards Understanding Islam, translated version of Khutbat by Khurshid Ahmad and Dr Abdul Ghani, Lahore: Islamic Publications.
Parekh, Bhikhu (1994): “The Concept of Fundamentalism,” The End of ‘Isms’? Reflections on the Fate of Ideological Politics after Communism’s Collapse, Alexsandras Shtromas (ed), Oxford: Blackwell.
PTI (2016): “Bangladesh: Hindu Priest of Ramakrishna Mission Receives Death Threat,” Indian Express, 16 June, http://indianexpress.com/article/world/world-news/bangladesh-hindu-priest-of-ramakrishna-mission-receives-death-threat-2856149/.
Rahim, Enayetur (2001): “Bengali Muslims and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Jama’t-i-Islami in Bangladesh,” Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretative Essays, Rafiuddin Ahmed (ed), New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rahman, Matiur and Naeem Hasan (1980): Iron Bars of Freedom, London: News and Media Ltd for Book and Documentation.
Schendel, Willem van (2000): “Bengalis, Bangladeshis and Others: Chakma Visions of a Pluralist Bangladesh,” Bangladesh: Promise and Performance, Rounaq Jahan (ed), London: Zed Books.
Uddin, Sufia M (2006): Constructing Bangladesh: Religion, Ethnicity, and Language in an Islamic Nation, New Delhi: Vistaar.
- See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/40/commentary/crisis-islamist-extremism-contemporary-bangladesh.html

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12. KASHMIR NEEDS LEADERS WHO CHALLENGE INDIA TO RISE ABOVE ITS ZAMINDARI MIND-SET
by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
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(Hindustan Times - Oct 10, 2016)

We are not in a war yet, but there is a rumble of war drums in the air in both countries. And this is precisely the situation where nationalist intolerance of dissent or thought itself dons the garb of patriotism (Arun Sharma/HT PHOTO)

In a venue known for its liberal and secular ambience, the veteran columnist LK Sharma was bluntly told by a gentleman: ‘Go to Pakistan’.

‘LK’ as he is known was of course in distinguished company. Actors Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan have been similarly advised. And this same ‘order’ of exile to Pakistan had been issued, somewhat earlier, to the extraordinary thinker and writer U R Ananthamurthy. The ‘order’ on Ananthamurthy was accompanied by hate mails, hate calls and actual physical intimidation. Other less known, but not less shocked men and women, both Hindu and Muslim, have been similarly directed to seek refuge in Pakistan. Such hectorings occur routinely beyond media coverage or even media interest.

There need be no doubt that in Pakistan, too, those who do not believe India to be an unmitigated evil are similarly told: ‘Go To India’.

‘Pakistan’ and ‘India’ have become, each in the other country, metaphors for dissent.

Exile is an age-old punishment. It distances, destabilises, dispossesses. It makes a non-citizen of you. It makes you, in Indian terminology, an outcast. And it is particularly hard on the dissenter who in any case is in something akin to self-isolation.

War or war-like situations have seen dissent in terms of conscientious objection to the belligerence and ballistics of war. Contrarian thought in such a situation is promptly characterised as anti-national, subversive and treasonable.

We are not in a war yet, but there is a rumble of war drums in the air in both countries. And this is precisely the situation where nationalist intolerance of dissent or thought itself dons the garb of patriotism. Modi’s admonition to his colleagues not to do any ‘chest- thumping’ over our surgical strikes in Pakistan has come as a refreshing change in an atmosphere where nationalism is a heady mix of swagger and spite.

For instance, those Indians who suggest a variation, albeit ‘within the Union’ in the political status of Jammu & Kashmir, are deshdrohis. In Pakistan, the opposite holds. The Pakistan State and the bulk of the people believe Kashmir was never India’s, never will be. Those Pakistanis who would want to consider and suggest any variation to that are Ghaddars.

In both countries Kashmir is, essentially, seen as a piece of real estate, famously visualised in this forever phrase by Jehangir as agar firdaus ba-roi zaminast haminast-u haminast-u haminast …(If there be on earth, a paradise, it is this, it is this, it is this …) For the people of the Valley, however, Kashmir is not now firdaus. It was, it was, it was firdaus. They want that firdaus back. Who, on zamin or in firdaus, knowing the agonies of the Valley, can be surprised by that, who? If the call for azadi in Kashmir has united India in conformity, the concept of ‘Kashmir is India’s’ has united Kashmir in dissent.

When, in the 1950s and 1960s, Mridula Sarabhai and Jayaprakash Narayan suggested a dialogue with Sheikh Abdullah and put it to fellow-Indians that treating Kashmir as a piece of real estate owned by India was unethical and impractical, they were regarded as subversive, anti-national by elements in the State and large sections of the public. But Jayaprakash Narayan, than whom the people of the Valley cannot have a truer well-wisher, did not endorse azadi. He wanted change. He told India that it had been engendering fear in the Valley of Kashmir. And the corollary of fear, which is hate. In the same breath he asked the people of the Valley in words somewhat like this: Will azadi from India give you azadi from fear?

Fear is the Goliath in Kashmir. I do not know if there is a Perso-Arabic equivalent for Goliath but there is one for David – Daud. Jayaprakash Narayan was a David, a Daud against the Goliath of fear. Mridula Sarabhai was a Dauda.

A new Daud or Dauda is needed now to exorcise the Goliath of fear and re-invent trust. ‘Restore trust in Kashmir. ‘You must be mad!’, I can hear voices in the Valley telling me. ‘Do you know what it means to have your son disappear or get pellets zinging into your eye-sockets? Do you?’ And I can hear, not far behind those voices, another voice, that of the Pandits still in the Valley. ‘Can you even imagine the fear we are living in…Every hour, minute, second…?’ Hearing all of which I can only fall silent and recall, in that silence, what Wajahat Habibullah has written with bitter wisdom in his classic My Kashmir and what Omar Abdullah said to a Chennai audience earlier this year in a lecture bearing the same title – ‘My Kashmir’. And, more recently, what men of the brave perspicacity of Pratap Bhanu Mehta have written and thereby – hope.

Reading Shakir Mir on the existential crisis in the Valley and Shakil Romshoo on the future of Indus’s waters, I get the clear sense that Kashmir may yet give us a so far unknown Daud or a Dauda who will stun us with an unconventional leadership that challenges India to rise above its zamindar’s mind-set and challenges Kashmir to see its options with clarity.

I believe a group of concerned Indians should visit Kashmir with no mandate other than listening to people there. My ‘dream team’ would comprise Wajahat Habibullah, Yashwant Sinha, Kavita Krishnan, Bader Sayeed and Jairam Ramesh. If they were to spend a fortnight in the Valley (during which time another ‘Uri’ could well make their efforts seem hopeless) they could well have something transformational to tell the rest of India. Even if that entails their being conferred that high prize for dissent: ‘Go To Pakistan’.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is distinguished professor of history and politics, Ashoka University

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13. INDIA -  INTERVIEW: IRFAN HABIB DEBUNKS RSS’S NATIONALISM AND THEIR ATTEMPTS TO REWRITE HISTORY
By Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
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(The Wire - 9 October 2017)

“What RSS promotes is fantasy not history….There is nothing common between history and such mythology.”
Irfan Habib. Credit: Rana Safvi/ Twitter

Many prominent scholars have come forward in the last two years to condemn the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government for steering the Sangh parivar’s Hindutva agenda in autonomous public institutions. They have repeatedly pointed out that attack on independent thinkers and thoughts have increased under the BJP regime and this may portend an all-round attack on reason, free speech and scientific temper in society.

A life-long leftist and renowned historian, Irfan Habib, has been at the forefront of an intellectual resistance towards the Sangh parivar. The octogenarian historian has constantly called out BJP’s attempts to communalise history. Presently, professor emeritus at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Habib spoke to The Wire on a range of issues – from current political situation to contentious issues in history.

Professor Habib headed the Indian Council of Historical Research for many years and is a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, among many other awards. Out of the many significant books he has written, The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556-1707  has, for the last five decades, served as the most important text for history students to understand the decentralised nature of Mughal India.

Excerpts from the interview:

In the last few years, political debates have seen extraordinary polarisation, with hardly any middle ground. The discussions in the media, too, are conducted within binaries. Either you are a nationalist or a pseudo-secular; a patriotic or a terrorist-supporter. Many say the constitutional and erstwhile nationalistic values of secularism, welfare, respect for the other seems to be vanishing now. What do you think?

I do not think anyone’s name-calling should deter one from thinking rationally and speaking out what one believes to be right. It was expected that with the electoral triumph of RSS/BJP at the centre, there would be greater resort to communal hysteria and “nationalistic” rhetoric, and that has, of course, come to pass.

Do you think politics, irrespective of ideologies, has become devoid of the general principle of insaniyat over the last 70 years?

I am not sure what particular sense is to be attached to the word insaniyat, which in Urdu broadly means compassion, and I do not share the view that all post-independence regimes have necessarily lacked this quality. Indian “politics” during the last 70 years, has seen many turns and twists, but I do not see it as only a depressing story. After all, with all its shortcomings India is still a far better country in every respect than it was under British rule. We have preserved democracy and secularism, though the latter does face a grave threat under the present dispensation; and, I am not even sure if freedom of expression can really be safeguarded under the current surge of chauvinism. Yet, democracy and secularism are the gifts of independence which we must protect at all costs.

Do you see a general swing towards the religious right (not only Hindutva) in India? And does this trend have any connection with the phenomenon of increasing ‘corporatisation’ in the last three decades?

The use of religion by the West in the Cold War had its political consequences, seen initially in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia in 1990s. Once aroused and financed, the movement has led to Al Qaeda and ISIS. I have a feeling that the corporate sector instinctively trusts BJP more than the Congress, since the latter cannot, for the sake of its own popular base, disown the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru. Money, though essential, is not by itself sufficient for electoral success. The RSS and BJP are, therefore, bound to turn to communalism and chauvinism to gain or at least retain public support. Muslim fundamentalism, that has long received Saudi financing, has grown and this growth places an instrument in the hands of Hindutva forces to raise alarm, and turn the situation to their own advantage.

Many critics of the RSS and BJP have called it fascist or semi-fascist. Do you think the Sangh qualifies for that?

It is obvious that with the constitution still in place and most state governments out of BJP’s control, civil liberties and democratic rights are not abrogated though they are under attack through organised hooliganism. The RSS which controls BJP has a manifestly fascist ideology as can be seen from [M.S.] Golwalkar’s writings and RSS’s quasi-military practices. How long the present phase will last is anyone’s guess. If no united opposition is put against the present regime, the present state of balance may not last long.

In one of your recent interviews, you said that an all-round attack on reason and rationalism characterises fascism. We have seen murders of rationalists (M.M. Kalburgi, Govind Pandsare, Narendra Dabholkar) in the recent past.  

The murder of nationalists you mention certainly arose out of a desire to create terror so that critics of Hindutva are reduced to silence. Similar acts are committed in Islamic countries as well, e.g. Bangladesh and, most recently, Jordan. The delay in catching and punishing the culprits in the three cases you cite is reprehensible; and it is possible that ultimately those who inspired the murderers would go scot-free as in the case of the assassination of the father of the nation, even if the actual assassins are caught.

The economic right and the religious right seem to have converged at this given moment in Indian polity. What do you think?

Capitalism can happily exist in a democratic system where money controls press, radio, TV, etc., and also influences the electoral process directly. In India today, it sees in BJP a regime which is free from the idealistic vision of a welfare state, which the Congress finds in its inherited baggage. If that is replaced under BJP by communal rhetoric, a vote-catching device of equal promise, this seems to suit the corporate sector still better. Given this situation, one can say, as you do, that in India today economic right and religious right appear to converge.

You recently floated an idea to the Left to forge tactical alliances with secular, democratic groups to fight the Right. This includes aligning with Congress. But the Left has bitter experiences with the Congress before, and in the end stands compromised politically on many occasions because of such alliances. Your comments. 

The Left under all situations has to stand on its feet. If we have lost ground, say, in Bengal, it has not been because of our alliance with Congress, for we had no alliance with it when we lost power. In retrospect, it was rather our joining BJP in the no-confidence vote against the Congress subsequent to the nuclear deal that cost us dear in the 2009 parliamentary elections. Today, it is rather a question of deciding whether the defeat of the BJP is our major goal or not. If it is, then suitable electoral alliances with other secular parities must be considered.

Not only the Congress but practically all other non-Left parties have objectives different from our own. Shall we shun them all at every point? If not, then, we should decide what our tactical priorities are and settle the question of electoral alliances in their light.

While the Left’s actual fight on the ground in the last three decades has been to keep the Sangh parivar at bay, its ideological fight on paper has been one of resisting economic reforms. Many feel that Left’s inability to mount a political opposition on the basis of one principal contradiction – say something like Aam Aadmi Party and its anti-corruption drive – is one of the reasons for its gradual decline in the last three decades. What do you think?

Elections are not won only on paper programmes. The Left has had agrarian reforms and workers’ rights on its agenda, which theoretically should invite mass support. But there has been no corresponding growth of our organisations and ideological influence. The fall of the Soviet Union shook people’s faith in socialism, and this has doubtless had a negative effect on the Left’s position in the long term. However, the conditions that create the necessity for a communist and workers’ movement not only remain but have intensified, so we have no one to blame except ourselves if we have not worked hard enough. No strategy of alliances can act as a substitute for it.

A new stream of politics based on Dalit assertion as reflected in the movements of Una, Mumbai and other parts poses a significant challenge to the Right.  

I do not think attacks on Dalits represent any perception of a threat from Ambedkarites. Rather, it is an inevitable result of growth of caste prejudice that is inseparable from the Hindutva ideology promoted so diligently by the RSS and the other Hindutva outfits.

The Dalit intelligentsia is also critical of the Left for having ignored the caste question in India. While doing so, they see Ambedkarite politics as a progressive replacement to the Left. As a historian, what is your take on it?

I do not agree with the current Ambedkarite critiques of the national movement, as well as of the Left. The central question in India before 1947 was the overthrow of British rule which exploited all people of India including Dalits. The national movement sought to alleviate Dalit grievances through the Harijan movement (which, let us remember commanded the loyalty of the bulk of Dalits at that time). This is now denounced by Ambedkarites. Similarly, communist leadership of struggles of landless labour, which basically involved Dalits is belittled and the fact that many of the leaders came from upper castes is held against the communists. So it is wrong to say that Dalit interests were ignored in the national movement or by the Left. It is also wrong to belittle what has been done for Dalit upliftment since independence. Clearly, the Ambedkarite programme which looks only after the interest of 15% of the population cannot supplant the Left’s goal of socialism, which to borrow C.R. Das’s words, looks after the interests of 98%. Dalits are, of course, an important part of that 98% and their rights and interests must be protected.

There has also been a surge of agitations from dominant castes in which they demand reservation and other benefits from the state. How do you look at it?

It is clear that the upper/middle caste movements, such as those of Jats in Haryana, Patels in Gujarat and Marathas in Maharashtra, with a hidden or open anti-Dalit edge, suggest that casteism is now taking an open, unabashed form, which under the impact of the national movement would have once seemed unimaginable. While embarrassing momentarily for the BJP state governments, such movements ultimately are grist to the reactionary mill and narrow the space for genuine peasants’ and workers’ struggles.

Whenever BJP is in power, history writing seems to be the first casualty. There have been efforts to ‘saffronise’ history aggressively, not just officially but through a sustained social media campaign. How can professional historians intervene in this campaign?

Although the RSS-inspired attack is supposedly on the alleged machinations of “Left” or Marxist historians, the history they present is in total contradiction to what “professional historians” present, whether of Right, Centre, Left or of no known political views. The writing of R.G. Bhandarkar, R. C. Majumdar and D. C. Sircar, all three of solid Rightist views, is as alien to the “history” of Mr. [Dinanath] Batra and Swami Hawley, as that of D. D. Kosambi or R. S. Sharma. It is not correct to say that historians have neglected cultural history: just consider the mass of critical work on Sanskrit literature from William Jones to [Pandurang Vaman] Kane, or the study of the history of secular sciences. What RSS promotes is phantasy not history, trying to push back the date of everything to make Aryans the author of every invention or scientific discovery: the Pythagoras theorem becomes a “Hindu” discovery just by titling it “Baudhayana theorem”, and so on. There is nothing common between history and such mythology.

The Sangh Parivar thinks both the Mughal state and the Delhi Sultanate were anti-Hindu regimes – empires in which Muslims consumed the surplus produced by the Hindus. Your comments.

The exploiting classes in medieval India had an undoubtedly large Muslim component. But, first, this is far from saying that the Muslims as a community were rulers, or that any part of the surplus was sent abroad: all the loot, whether by sultans or rajas was spent inside the country. Secondly, among the landed magnates (the so-called “zamindars”) a large majority belonged to Hindu castes as one can see from the zamindar castes listed for each locality under Akbar. Thus the surplus too was shared.

A necessary question in today’s context. Do you think the cow being elevated to a holy position is historically inaccurate?

As for the question of cow-slaughter in ancient India, I think the writings of professors H. D. Sankalia and D. N. Jha have presented sufficient material to settle the point. However, there is no difference of opinion that the cow was held to be sacred in ancient as well as medieval times.

Today, we have many voices from the Sangh parivar who denounce Indian constitution (IGNCA’s chairman Ram Bahdur Rai and K. Govindacharya) in the name of nationalism. What was RSS’ role in the nationalist movement and constitution making?

The RSS, founded in 1925, played no role at all in the national struggle. Its main targets were Muslims and the Congress, not the British government. Its ‘nationalist’ pretensions are thus fabricated and merely a cover for hostility to democracy and secularism, which are the defining elements of our constitution.

One of the biggest private educators currently is the RSS running schools under different names with the theme of – Indianise, spiritualise, nationalise. As a prominent historian, will you blame it on successive governments’ declining expenditure on education?

The state should certainly increase both expenditure on education that is purged of superstition and ‘spiritualism’. Since school education is now a fundamental right, non-BJP governments should ensure that education is properly imparted to all pupils so as to promote a scientific temper and secular spirit. There should be no support or recognition given to RSS-sponsored schools or religious madrasas. 

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14. NANDINI SUNDAR: MILITARIZATION OF THE IMAGINATION
BY CHITRANGADA CHOUDHURY
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(livemint.com - October 07 2016)

The anthropologist Nandini Sundar on her new book on India’s war—and the failure of democratic institutions—in Bastar

Author and Delhi University professor of sociology Nandini Sundar at her home in Delhi. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint
Author and Delhi University professor of sociology Nandini Sundar at her home in Delhi. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint

In late September, Sonaku Ram Kashyap, 16, and Bijlu Kashyap, 13, were shot dead by security forces during a late-night, anti-Maoist operation at their aunt’s village in Bastar. The village protested the executions, pointing out that the two Adivasi boys were school students. Sonaku and Bijli are among the latest fatalities in a State-Maoist conflict which has been under way since 2005 in some of India’s most marginalized villages and has reportedly claimed more than 7,000 lives so far.

In her new book, The Burning Forest: India’s War In Bastar, anthropologist Nandini Sundar provides a harrowing narrative of the toll this decade-long conflict has taken on the lives of Bastar’s Adivasi citizens. Drawing on her experience of moving the Supreme Court in 2007 over the violence, Sundar also demonstrates how the Constitution and institutions of democracy have failed to address the human tragedy that has unfolded, in what has become one of India’s most militarized regions. Edited excerpts from an interview:

The Burning Forest—India’s War In Bastar: By Nandini Sundar, Juggernaut, 413 pages, Rs699.

Much of your prior writing on Bastar has been for academic presses. What made you write a book for a wider audience? You mention how the paramilitary and police, as well as Maoist rebels, have impaired access and information in Bastar. How did this impact your book?

There have been journalistic books on the Maoists and quite a bit of reportage on the human rights violations in Chhattisgarh. But I felt that there was nothing which drew them together against the wider canvas of Indian politics. What I wanted to do was to make people, for whom Indian democracy and institutions mean something, think about the places where it fails so utterly and completely, and how their own lives are connected to these other citizens. Had I done this book purely as a researcher, perhaps I might have got other kinds of material, especially on how the Maoists operate, but not the kind of first-hand experience I got, of how democratic institutions work or don’t work.

Can you recall what you saw in Bastar in 2005-06 as the conflict began? When you met people in government to draw their attention to the mass violence, why was there such apathy, from the prime minister down?

It was as if the police found the most abusive wife-beater they could and told him he had full licence to do whatever he wanted, because women were getting too uppity as a class. The people most responsible for Adivasi exploitation were given protection to exploit, by a State constitutionally mandated to protect Adivasis. Initially perhaps, one could have argued that the apathy in Delhi was because Adivasi lives don’t matter, and suppressing Maoists was left to the police or security establishment who convinced everyone they had a plan. But now it feeds into a nationwide deliberate strategy to cow down every kind of opposition.

In your book, special police officers (Adivasi men, even boys, illegally armed by the State) emerge as troubling, yet tragic figures. You write of how they have burned and killed with the State’s tacit approval, and attacked “outsiders”, from activists to CBI investigators. In private conversations with you, some complained about how the State treats them and sought efforts to bring about peace. Have they become a law unto themselves, or are they played by powerful interests who remain unaccountable?

It’s important to remember that SPOs, even if they are low down in the pecking order, are responsible for their actions. For the local people, it is they who are betraying relationships. At the same time, one needs to remember that they are not acting alone—their abuses are possible only because they are encouraged and condoned by higher-ups. And we have to bring in the concept of command responsibility, where those who design and oversee civil wars like this in the name of counter-insurgency are also held responsible, even if they don’t actually kill anyone themselves.

In Bastar, sexual violence has been deployed as a weapon of war. But it has received scant attention in reportage, policy and commentary, so much so that authorities deny it exists. I recall a police officer in Bastar dismissing specific accounts by women of being raped and molested by paramilitary and policemen, telling me, “My boys might beat (women villagers), they don’t rape.” Though India is witnessing a renewed discourse against sexual violence since 2012, it remains impossible for women in Bastar who undergo such violence to be seen as what your book calls “worthy victims” who deserve justice. Can this change?

Sexual violence, unlike encounters, can never be justified as “collateral damage” or passed off as done in the line of duty. This is why the police or security forces will never admit to any kind of sexual violence, even if it is widely reported. The problem today is not that rapes in Bastar or elsewhere are not being reported, it is that nobody cares. There is a coarsening of the public imagination, and a loss of the capacity for empathy and outrage.

Your book demonstrates how the very institutions that are held up as making India a democracy—political parties, the electoral system, courts, statutory bodies, even the news media and civil society—have reinforced “the abyss of impunity”, and the incredible violence Bastar’s Adivasis find themselves living through. It would seem, to Indian democracy, Adivasi lives don’t matter?

No, they never have.

In 2007, E.A.S. Sarma, Ramachandra Guha and you moved the Supreme Court over the mass violence unfolding in Bastar. The case is still under way. In a self-ironic account of this experience, you cite the mathematician and activist K. Balagopal, who wrote “desperation can be the only reason” behind the illusion of citizens that courts can right wrongs.

The Supreme Court has been very important in upholding principles, and the (B. Sudershan) Reddy-(S.S.) Nijjar judgement of 2011 banning Salwa Judum and State support to vigilantism was truly remarkable. With the passage of time, their arguments seem even more prescient. The problem is not with the court, at least in this case, but with the government’s willingness to follow court orders when it doesn’t suit them.

What has a decade of military conflict meant for the government itself, and for overground movements in Bastar around rights, resources and justice? How has the war affected the Maoists, and relations between the movement and its claimed constituents?

We see a great militarization of the imagination across the country—whether it is in the belief that a war with Pakistan will solve terror attacks, or the belief that political disputes like Kashmir or the Maoist conflict can be settled by arms. As for non-violent movements, it is not as if the government would have listened to them even otherwise. But now it finds it even easier to dismiss or repress such movements on the ground that they are propped up by the Maoists. The Maoists, on their part, seem to be imploding—not so much because of the State’s direct attacks, but because of the uncertainty and suspicion the government has managed to create, where everyone is potentially an informer. The space for open political dialogue has really shrunk—take, for example, the attack on the Communist Party of India and its (Bastar-based) leader Manish Kunjam, who have been fighting for Adivasi control over resources for decades. They are under threat from the police, from right-wing forces and even from the Maoists, who want to take over their cadre completely.

The past year has seen renewed attacks on villages, sexual assaults, “encounter” killings, deaths of security forces, fresh bouts of vigilantism, and the intimidation and jailing of Bastar-based journalists. This July, the government said it would form the Bastariya Battalion, a paramilitary unit of local Adivasis. Are we seeing a new phase of conflict?

Yes and no. The State’s activities have certainly intensified compared to 2012-14, but as I show, many of the processes that we see today—vigilantism, encounters on an almost daily basis, propaganda, attacks on journalists—have been going on since 2005. The big difference between now and the early period of the Judum is that people are not being displaced from their villages on a large scale, and that people are more conscious and willing to testify.

In your book, a paramilitary man says this will be an endless war since lives of footsoldiers like him are cheap, reflecting sadly, “If we die, more will come, then more.” You also narrate how there is little pressure on governments to address the grievances of Bastar’s Adivasis, or for the government and Maoists to negotiate. How might the armed conflict, and the casting of Adivasis as “collateral damage”, end?

There has to be a concerted demand for peace talks from civil society and political parties. That’s the only way.

Chitrangada Choudhury is an independent journalist whose reportage on the conflict in Bastar was named for the Lorenzo Natali journalism prize.


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15. INDIA - PAKISTAN BORDER: LIVES ON THE LINES - ALMOST EVERY VILLAGE ON THE LOC HAS A SHELLING STORY
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Starting from Chamb in Jammu northwards to the point where it disappears into the snow of the Siachen Glacier, the dotted line on the map is symbolic of the existential hostility between India and Pakistan that has played out for 70 years.
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/line-of-control-loc-shelling-india-pakistan-hostility-ceasefire-violations-poonch-uri-attack-surgical-strike-3072862/

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16. KEDZIOR ON BOBBIO, 'URBANISATION, CITIZENSHIP AND CONFLICT IN INDIA: AHMEDABAD, 1900-2000'
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 Tommaso Bobbio. Urbanisation, Citizenship and Conflict in India: Ahmedabad, 1900-2000. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. 221 pp. $145.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-317-51400-8.

Reviewed by Sya Kedzior (Towson University)
Published on H-Citizenship (October, 2016)
Commissioned by Sean H. Wang

A deeply contextualized account of urban growth in the twentieth century, Urbanization, Citizenship and Conflict in India examines the changing nature of citizenship and identity politics in the "shock city" of Ahmedabad. Tracing the city’s development from industrial expansion to postindustrial transition, Tomasso Bobbio provides an account of contemporary urbanization in which the renegotiation of urban space, citizenship, and identity are closely tied to the spread and normalization of communal violence. What distinguishes Bobbio’s account from other investigations of urbanization and identity politics in cities of South Asia (cf. Steve Inskeep’s 2012 Instant City) is his attention to the significance of a rural-urban dichotomy that reflects shifting notions of citizenship and modernity. Drawing on Raymond Williams, Bobbio views the growing city as both marked apart from, and constituted through, its relationship with the rural “hinterland” (p. 27).[1] He calls for understanding patterns of urban change first as products of rural change, and for seeing the city as embedded in these wider geographical relationships. Nowhere is this approach better exemplified than in Bobbio’s attention to both slums and slum dwellers as markers of this dichotomy. Slums subvert the official organization of urban space and stand as a symbol of the limits of urban planning. Labeled as “migrants” whose “rural activities” transgress the modernizing ethos of both Gujarat and the city, slum dwellers are at once both “out of place” in the city and fundamental to its functioning as a modern metropolis (pp. 53-54). The dichotomy breaks down in the practice of everyday life in the slums, where living in the city (being urban) means “being part of networks … between the city and its wider surrounding area” (p. 81).

In the tradition of David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, and others, Bobbio’s account centers on how the changing identity of the city itself--from colonial industrial hub through postcolonial decline to the consolidation of a nationalist postcolonial state--contributed to the renegotiation of urban citizenship and belongingness that set the stage for repeated outbreaks of collective violence.[2] Drawing on T. H. Marshall, Bobbio argues in support of a “broader meaning” of citizenship “as a principle of equality” (pp. 9-10). This view invites examination of the ways that political authority and urban development reconfigure access to different rights (e.g., right to housing, right to land tenure, right to public space) and justifies Bobbio’s focus on the experiences of slum dwellers and other marginalized populations of Ahmedabad. Here, the marginalized are not without agency--Bobbio is careful to document how their activities constitute and shape major functions of the city. But, this agency is exercised primarily in response to the state and often curtailed by the activities of the state.

The violence of the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, a right-wing Hindu nationalist party that captured power in Gujarat in 1998 and across the nation in 2014) serve as bookends for this text, whose investigation otherwise avoids providing direct accounts of these events. Bobbio’s task is notably not to explain individual episodes of collective violence, but rather to “understand the broader processes that lead to the creation of a potentially violent milieu” through careful attention to the “context of relationships” that have developed in a city where violence became normalized over the past few decades (p. 4). Bobbio argues that riots and other forms of urban conflict should be seen as manifestations of long-term dynamics of social mobility and cultural change that result from the history of urban transformation, the (re-)organization of public and private spaces in the city, and the struggle for control over the city’s economic and political resources. These dynamics consolidate collective identities and contribute to rising tensions between groups and between citizens and the public authority. These tensions are compounded by people’s experiences of inequality and discrimination, by their struggle to find space in the city, and by their casting as incomplete citizens. Together, these experiences lay the base for periodic violent events whose continuity results in the routinization of violence as a part of everyday life in the city.

Bobbio’s investigation rests on a “tri-level” analysis of planning policies and other “interventions” into urban development, official narratives of Ahmedabad’s political and economic history, and oral narratives of the “daily lives” of older slum residents. These sources provide insight into efforts, on one hand, by political elites to “tame the city” and to shape the image of the city’s “façade”, and, on the other hand, to see how the poor are dealt with by administrators and to understand their strategies for adapting to the urban environment (p. 12). Bobbio emphasizes the importance of examining the interplay between urban administration and slum dwellers for understanding the shifting discourses that accompany processes of urban change. Interviews with slum dwellers and others provide important commentary on broader processes and portray the “faces” through which Bobbio’s careful contextualization of events takes on meaning. Yet, despite the significance he places on oral history “testimonies”, they are too often relegated to the end of chapters and not integrated into the larger contextualization of the time period or theme on which they meant to elaborate. Here, they read more as counterpoints or illuminating afterthoughts, rather than key sources for his analysis.

Urbanization, Citizenship and Conflict in India is fundamentally an historical investigation into changing urban structures in Ahmedabad. The first two chapters track the growth of the city as an industrial hub of the British Empire, focusing on how patterns of settlement and segregation within the city set the stage for future marginalization. As the slum population of the city grows, political leaders begin to address the questions of who are citizens of the city, how they are incorporated into its infrastructure, and how they are accounted for in urban planning. The core of Bobbio’s analysis is found in the next four chapters, as new challenges emerge following the collapse of the textile industry and the subsequent closure and relocation of mills across the city. Here, he tracks the dialectic relationship between urban planning and the popular response of slum dwellers as the urban geography of Ahmedabad is reshuffled in the face of both the decline of mills and continued population growth. Chapter 3 examines how growth of the informal sector and new lines of segregation in city housing lead to reorganization of city space around the religious identity of its citizens. Chapter 4 investigates three early mass-mobilization events, not as isolated incidents, but rather as “moments in continuity with the overall process of [urban] transformation” (p. 87). Stressing this continuity allows him to explore “aspects of people’s struggle to find a place in the city and of the spatial transformations that resulted” from this chain of events (p. 87). Chapter 5 documents the growth and development of slums and their perception by urban authorities as both transitory and “rural,” or at least not part of the permanent urban fabric of Ahmedabad. Bobbio argues that, although slums and their residents are increasingly permanent fixtures deeply integrated into the functioning of the city, this logic of impermanence allows authorities to challenge the rights and citizenship of slum dwellers. Chapter 6 examines the “ghettoization” of the city’s Muslim population as a response to communal violence and the associated advancement of BJP religious nationalism. He argues that Hindu-Muslim conflict displaced caste politics in the city following the 1985 riots, and that this led to the creation of physical boundaries segregating populations of the city along sociocultural lines and geographically delimited spaces where municipal authorities were excluded or not active. In the final two chapters, Bobbio explores how the modernization of Ahmedabad results in increased spatial and economic discrimination against the lower class and slum dwellers. Chapter 7 argues that the glorification of the Hindu middle class, the promotion of a Gujarati work "ethos," and the liberalization of the land market, along with rising cultural intolerance promoted by the BJP, compound the marginalization and suffering experienced by these groups. He concludes in chapter 8 by arguing that the rising megacity hides the resulting stories of poverty, migration, and struggle behind “a façade of modernisation and global aspirations” (p. 178).

While the chapters advance chronologically from the post-Maratha British revitalization of the city as the “Manchester of India” to the twenty-first-century reenvisioning of Ahmedabad as a service-oriented modern megapolis, they read better as thematic investigations into various aspects of urban change. Staying within the chronology he sets out early in the book means that Bobbio frequently references themes across chapters and time periods (e.g., early housing preference by caste and income later shifts to housing preference by religion). While the reader appreciates this cross-referencing, at times it can feel more repetitious than useful. Novice readers of South Asian studies may find this approach appealing, as key points are consistently reinforced across the text. But, Bobbio’s account does not seem to be written for an audience unfamiliar with the history and politics of India. Despite Bobbio’s emphasis on the historico-geographical context of urban change, the book is full of uncontextualized references to significant national events (e.g., independence from British rule, Indira Gandhi’s Emergency period, Congress’s loss of power, and the election of Narendra Modi). Still, readers without this background will have no problem understanding Bobbio’s broader arguments about citizenship and identity politics. Geographers (and historical geographers in particular) should find much appeal in this text, though anyone with a geographical bent will likely find that the included maps leave much to be desired. 

The key contribution of this text is found in Bobbio’s careful attention to the history of urban development and communal conflict in one of South Asia’s fastest-growing cities. Bobbio documents how urban development compounds marginalization and violence in the city, and leads to the segmentation of urban space by community, class, and caste. His attention to slum development and growth, and to the shifting place of slum dwellers in the fabric of the modernizing city, provides a powerful account of new dynamics of urban citizenship and rights to space. Bobbio documents the casting of these and other residents of Ahmedabad as incomplete citizens and illustrates how the denial of their full participation in urban life lays the foundation for the inequality, discrimination, and periodic violence for which they often become targets. The repetition, permissibility, and brutality of collective violence provides evidence that these events no longer stand in isolation, but rather are increasingly constitutive of urban life in modern India.

Notes

[1]. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

[2]. David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (London: Edward Arnold, 1973); David Harvey, “The Right to the City,” New Left Review 53 (2008): 23-40; Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991).

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17. O'LEARY ON LICHTNER, 'FASCISM IN ITALIAN CINEMA SINCE 1945: THE POLITICS AND AESTHETICS OF MEMORY'
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Giacomo Lichtner. Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945: The Politics and Aesthetics of Memory. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. x + 262 pp. $90.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-230-36332-8.

Reviewed by Alan O'Leary (University of Leeds)
Published on H-Italy (October, 2016)
Commissioned by Matteo Pretelli

Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945 is a powerful and fluently written study of “the role that cinema has played in the evolution and transmission of Italy’s memories of … the long Second World War, which in Italy surely began with the Fascist takeover of power in 1922 and ended on 25 April 1945” (p. 17). Historian Giacomo Lichtner provides a summative and artfully shaped overview of his topic, and the style of the writing signals the character of the account being undertaken. The tone is that of the public lecture and works to establish a complicity with the (implicitly Anglophone) reader, appealing to shared values and assumptions in the articulation of what is, in effect, a condemnation of Italian culture and audiences.

Lichtner’s argument has two main strands: firstly, Italian cinema has been less interested in the history and the specificity of the Fascist regime than in the examination of Italian national character and identity; secondly, this focus on national character presents Italians as the victims of Fascism and has helped to create and perpetuate the myth of italiani brava gente--that is, good Italian people “fundamentally uninterested in war and immune to evil” (p. 13). Lichtner argues that these two strands traverse the various modes and moments of Italian cinema from the immediate postwar to the new century and that, apart from a few exceptional films, the Italian cinema downplays the seriousness of the Fascist regime in order to “absolve [Italian] society as a whole” (p. 99).

The book is divided into five sections--each beginning with an efficient summary of historical conditions and trends in cinema production, and each containing two chapters--followed by a short epilogue. Lichtner begins his account with the most recent films, a rhetorical move that exemplifies his belief that the films discussed are about the political interpretation of the present rather than the historical interpretation of the past. “Revisionism” introduces the book with a discussion of memory culture and WWII across Europe, speaking about “a carefully managed historical legacy” (p. 11) in the belligerent countries. This managed legacy facilitates the right-wing revisionist accounts that begin to thrive in the 1990s, when the far Right in Italy is admitted to government in coalition with the opportunist Silvio Berlusconi. As he does in subsequent sections, Lichtner introduces films that exemplify key tendencies in the period (in this case, those that disparage the anti-Fascist resistance or that recuperate the memory of “sincere” Fascists) before noting one or more exceptions to the scheme. By beginning at the end Lichtner is able to show how revisionist claims, in recent films, about Fascism and war are paradoxically enabled by the “tropes of … cinematic memory” (p. 45) established in neorealism, the humanist and sometimes left-wing cinema of the immediate postwar period. As he argues in the second section, “Resistance,” neorealism’s “longest-lived contribution to postwar Italy’s memory of Fascism and the war was establishing a narrative of martyrdom, resistance and catharsis that continues to frame the myth of italiani brava gente” (p. 61). Neorealism also established the trope of the evil Nazi as “a moral, rather than a national, counterpart” (p. 187) to the fundamentally good Italian. The third section, “Reconstruction,” is devoted to the tragicomic films of the so-called neorealist revival of the 1960s, the narratives of which tend to turn on the armistice of September 8, 1943, which ended hostilities between Italy and the Allied forces, with the result, says Lichtner, that the films block consideration of popular complicity with the Fascist regime in the preceding twenty years. The title of the fourth section, “Revolution,” refers to films made after 1968, which in Italy even more than elsewhere had been a time of protest and social and political ferment. For Lichtner, these films, often couched in a Freudian-Marxist idiom, used the past to critique capitalism and the forms that Italian modernity had taken. Lichtner astutely notes that these films show a shift from metonymy (the 1960s comedies focused on representative figures) to allegory (in the 1970s characters are made to stand for ideas). He also argues that, whatever their makers’ impatience with consolatory national stereotypes, the films fail to deal with Italy’s colonial history and wars of aggression and that they perpetrate the brava gente myth by locating national goodness in a mythologized working class. The final section of the book, “Recurrences,” summarizes the persistent motifs in memory and cinematic representation, and also identifies absences and silences in the Italian memory of Fascism. The book ends with a lament that, even today, Italy lacks a “thirst for self analysis,” and that Italians themselves lack “the curiosity to ask the question” about Italy’s Fascist and colonial past as well as “the self-confidence to deal with the answer” (p. 216).

Consistent with the sense that the book is composed as a series of public lectures is the self-consciously motley character of the methodology employed. The default explanatory mode is auteurist, emphasizing the intentions--often deduced from interviews or published statements--and creative expertise or clumsiness of a given film’s director; but the analysis also makes use of archive materials, box office or broadcast viewing figures, censorship reports, historical film criticism and reviews, and what the author calls symptomatic reading, of which his own astute close analysis of films is an example. No strict parallel comparison is made of each individual film or group of films: for example, censorship may be mentioned in one or two cases but not in others; critical reaction or box office likewise. The rationale for the introduction of the different kinds of material is (one surmises) to enthrall as well as to enlighten the reader with the choicest detail or anecdote, even when such matter might digress from the main analysis. The method works: Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945 is a lively and memorable work, and its disparaging and authoritative take on cinema, audiences, and the Italian memory of Fascism is likely to become a standard account.

Precisely because Lichtner’s argument may accede to orthodoxy, I want to offer a couple of dissenting comments on the assumptions that underpin the analysis. These comments are not intended to question the thrust of the argument so much as to trouble the confidence of its expression; a confidence, as I have suggested, that is of a piece with the character of the book as public history, a mode that requires strong outlines in the argument.

Lichtner’s impatience with the films he discusses and with their audiences derives in part from his disciplinary background. He writes as a historian and writes, as it were, in defense of history. Thus he states at one point that the elements of a group of films offer “an ample body of primary evidence in the historian’s favor” (p. 111)--as if the analysis was an agonistic struggle between cinema and scholar. Still, if Lichtner writes as a historian, his historical argument is to some extent built on taste rather than evidence. I have written above that he is concerned to establish a complicity with his reader; this is often done through an appeal to received aesthetic criteria, expressed in a series of critical judgments across the book. Realism is good, while melodrama is bad. Entertainment as such (in the form of action spectacle and even comedy) is likewise suspect. And so the television film Il cuore nel pozzo (The Heart in the Well, 2005) is derided as “tear-jerking melodrama” and “little more than a soap opera” (p. 31); Il sangue dei vinti (Blood of the Losers, 2008) is an “odd hybrid of melodrama, political exposé and murder mystery” (p. 36); and both are to be distinguished from the “gritty realism” and “historical honesty” (p. 39) of L’uomo che verrà (The Man Who Will Come, 2009). Una giornata particolare (A Special Day, 1977) is praised for its “understated realism” (p. 167) while Vincere (To Win/Victory, 2009) is a “melodramatic hodgepodge of sexual tension and fate” (p. 173). These aesthetic preferences are assumed to be shared by the reader. Sensible people, the tone implies, will feel thus about these films, and will do so on behalf of History.

Writing instead, as I do, from a film studies perspective, it seems to me that--if we insist on the agon--there is an argument to be made for this body of films against the historian-critic. One might begin by challenging the aesthetic criteria employed in the analysis. Melodrama (associated especially with women’s stories) is not a term of opprobrium in screen studies (nor is soap opera), but is recognized as a mode with its own dignity and capacity to narrate the desires of the individual constrained by society or, indeed, by history; while realism (so often identified with men’s stories and genres) has itself been identified as a version of melodrama. (The Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar once remarked that “when melodrama focuses on unemployment, they call it neo-realism.”) But I want to dwell on the book’s central reiterated point, which is the persistence across Lichtner’s corpus of films of the myth of italiani brava gente. The objection might be made that if the italiani brava gente myth is indeed such a constant across a corpus of films then it becomes a foregone conclusion for a viewer, and so taken for granted in the viewing of an individual film. It is the vehicle of the message, so to speak, but too banal to be the message itself.

An analogy (however inexact) might be made with the western: something of the myth of the American West is retained and inflected in every film so described, but individual films are thereby enabled to speak of a whole variety of themes, from ethnic hatred (The Searchers, 1956), to female power (Johnny Guitar, 1954), to neo-imperialism (The Magnificent Seven, 1960), to homosexual love (Brokeback Mountain, 2005). As a viewer one becomes competent in “reading” the western through its familiar tropes and motifs, just as one comes to recognize and read through the components of the italiani brava gente myth--as Lichtner lists them, Catholicism, humanism, the distrust of rules and rulers, the peasant tradition, and familistic individualism. These components become the means by which a film and its viewers access aspects of the past and discern their significance for the present. No doubt the portrayal of homosexual love is always-already doomed in Brokeback Mountain because the ideology of the western disallows the overt sexual expression of men’s regard for each other (it prefers violence for that); at the same time, the love story between the two men could, perhaps, only be told this powerfully and movingly as western. When the italiani brava gente myth is deployed in Novecento (1900, 1976), say, the political argument of the film is enabled by reference to the myth: if the peasantry are the brava gente in Novecento, then this is part of the rhetoric of the film, the persuasive means by which the director asserts the working classes to be the motor of history. Bertolucci’s use of the myth is not reducible to yet another affirmation that Italians are not to be held responsible for Fascism and its victims (see Lichtner’s account pp. 147-148). To put it another way, the italiani brava gente myth is the means by which interpretations of the past come to be communicated and known; it is not the interpretation itself.

I do not mean with these comments to cast doubt on the power and achievement of Lichtner’s study, but it does seem to me to beg a question. The conviction and persuasiveness of his argument leaves one wondering how Lichtner himself has escaped seduction by the all-pervasive brava gente myth. Lichtner writes that “the absences about Fascism in postwar Italian cinema have not been random but coherent, consistent and cogent” (p. 213). This reprises his earlier point about the carefully managed historical legacy of WWII and begins to suggest a model of sinister consensus approaching conspiracy. What is it that allows him to see beyond all this? Perhaps he would answer that he left Italy: Lichtner is a Roman who trained in the United Kingdom (a major British historian of Italy, the late Christopher Duggan, is approvingly quoted on the last page of the main text) and now works in New Zealand. But contrary to the book’s closing assertions, there are plenty of Italians living in Italy itself who regret the activities of Fascist colonialism and the gravity of the regime’s crimes at home and abroad, and acknowledge the place of popular consensus in permitting these. My point is that the catalyst of historical knowledge that is the brava gente myth in Italian cinema is one way the Fascist past has been made available for criticism by Lichtner and these other dissidents of memory. For this reason, the book seems to lack one half of what James E. Young has dubbed “received history.” Young means by this a double narrative that recounts both the history itself (Fascism) and the routes through which this history has been passed down to those who remember. Each of Lichtner’s four phases of filmmaking is a stage in the journey to Giacomo Lichtner and his or my perceptions of the Fascist past, but we do not represent a point of arrival or moment of enlightenment where the “historical gaze” (invoked on p. 140) is unimpeded by taboo, blind spots, or stereotypical convictions. Generic, even mythic modes of accessing the past are also the very means of accessing that past--or many aspects of it, at any rate. Not even the historian stands outside, above, or beyond those modes and he or she is disingenuous to disavow being to some extent their product and beneficiary.


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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
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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