SACW - 8 Nov 2016 | Bangladesh: Brahmanbaria burns / Sri Lanka: Casteism vs. Social Justice / Pakistan: SAATH 2016 Declaration / India: Shrinking democratic space; Kashmiris feel abandoned

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 8 Nov 2016 - No. 2916 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:
1. Bangladesh: Violence in Brahmanbaria | Khushi Kabir and Enamul Hoque Chowdhury
2. 2016 Santasilan Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture - Casteism vs. Social Justice | S. K. Senthivel
3. The Future of Pakistan Conference - SAATH 2016 Declaration for Pluralism and Democracy in Pakistan (October 29, 2016)
4. Revival of Pluralism in Kashmir: Not an Outdated Concept | Nyla Ali Khan
5. Come and see Fukushima before signing India-Japan Nuclear Agreement: Japanese Women Appeal to Prime Minister Modi
6. India: Growing Attack on Media Freedom - Response to curbs on NDTV
  - India: Attack on Media Freedom - NDTV India off the air for a day - Statement by Editors Guild of India
  - India: SAHMAT Statement on censorship of NDTV
  - India: Day long ban on NDTV smacks of Ministry of Truth | T K Arun
  - India: Social Movements Platform Condemns Curbs on NDTV As Well As on Press in Kashmir, Chattissgarh
7. UK: BBC Asian Network facilitates the Islamist Project by silencing the feminist voice
8. Indian Maids in Raj-era Britian: The story of the abandoned ayah 
9. Recent On Communalism Watch:
  - India: RSS imprint on Khattar government runs deep in Haryana
  - India: The Debate on Triple Talaq Must be Based on Proper Research and Data
  - India: DN Jha’s ‘The Myth of the Holy Cow’ examined facts, and its detractors didn’t like that
  - India: ‘Uniform civil code should drop anti-women laws of all religions’
  - India: Karan Johar controversy mirrors rising populist politics
  - India: Electoral malpractices and “Hindutva” in the Supreme Court: Who argued what? [Bar & Bench November 2, 2016]
  - India: Uniform civil code good only if it seeks gender equality says NFIW
  - My name is Khan: Inter-religious marriages still draw questions and incredulity in India
  - India: Gutsy journalist Akshaya Mukul refuses to receive Ramnath Goenka award from Modi
  - 'History in India has been driven by identity': Dipesh Chakrabarty on historian Jadunath Sarkar
  - India: Bombay Christian group files complaint against Goregaon Social for pub's 'blasphemous' interiors

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
10. Empire shaped the world. There is an abyss at the heart of dishonest history textbooks | Moni Mohsin
11. India: Need to wage a war against warmongering - Civil society
12. A Generals' India - The politician ceding democratic space | Harish Khare
13. Why Kashmiris feel that India and the world have abandoned them | Bharat Bhushan
14. Burning the light of education in Kashmir | Arshia Malik
15. UK: 'I never thought I'd be terrorised by my fellow Sikhs at a wedding' ’ Nazia Parveen
16. Pakistan: Behind the image - Privatisations driven good governance in Punjab | Arif Azad
17. India: World Bank Funding the coal boom | Darryl D'Monte
18. India: Tribes at the altar of democracy | Sudeep Chakravarti
19. Rao on Paik, 'Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination'20. Through a charred landscape | Uddalak Mukherjee

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1. BANGLADESH: VIOLENCE IN BRAHMANBARIA | Khushi Kabir and Enamul Hoque Chowdhury
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The vicious attacks on Hindu homes, establishments and temples since October 30 indicates an increase in the level of bigotry among certain sections of the society.
http://sacw.net/article13009.html

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2. 2016 SANTASILAN KADIRGAMAR MEMORIAL LECTURE - CASTEISM VS. SOCIAL JUSTICE | S. K. Senthivel
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Santasilan Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture delivered by S. K. Senthivel at the Trimmer Hall, Jaffna on July 16, 2016. English translation by S. Sivasegaram
http://sacw.net/article13003.html

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3. THE FUTURE OF PAKISTAN CONFERENCE - SAATH 2016 DECLARATION FOR PLURALISM AND DEMOCRACY IN PAKISTAN (OCTOBER 29, 2016)
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Several prominent liberal, progressive and nationalist intellectuals, human rights and social media activists, and public figures from Pakistan gathered in London for a conference on ‘The Future of Pakistan’ organized under the banner of South Asians Against Terrorism and for Human Rights (SAATH), co-hosted by US-based columnist Dr Mohammad Taqi and former Pakistan ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani.
http://sacw.net/article13000.html

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4. REVIVAL OF PLURALISM IN KASHMIR: NOT AN OUTDATED CONCEPT | Nyla Ali Khan
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I have always viewed Kashmir as a palimpsest on which there are several overlapping discourses, most of which have valid historical and theoretical contexts.
http://sacw.net/article13007.html

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5. COME AND SEE FUKUSHIMA BEFORE SIGNING INDIA-JAPAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT: JAPANESE WOMEN APPEAL TO PRIME MINISTER MODI
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Mr. Modi, we would like to invite you to visit Fukushima and see its condition firsthand. The destroyed reactor, the towns where people can no longer live that have become like abandoned towns, the mountains of radioactive rubble, the towering incinerators, and children who can no longer play freely outside. After you have seen the reality of Fukushima, then we urge you to think carefully about the nuclear cooperation agreement.
http://sacw.net/article13010.html

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6. INDIA: GROWING ATTACK ON MEDIA FREEDOM - RESPONSES TO CURBS ON NDTV
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INDIA: ATTACK ON MEDIA FREEDOM - NDTV INDIA OFF THE AIR FOR A DAY - STATEMENT BY EDITORS GUILD OF INDIA
 The Editors Guild of India strongly condemns the unprecedented decision of the inter-ministerial committee of the Union Ministry of Information Broadcasting to take NDTV India off the air for a day and demands that the order be immediately rescinded.
http://sacw.net/article13005.html

INDIA: SAHMAT STATEMENT ON CENSORSHIP OF NDTV
 We strongly condemn the arbitrary and vindictive action by the Narendra Modi government, ordering the popular Hindi news broadcaster NDTV-India off the air for a twenty-four hour period. NDTV-India has been accused of violating a 2015 amendment to the cable TV rules, which obliged news broadcasters to restrict live reporting of anti-terrorism operations and confine themselves to facts revealed in “periodic” briefings by “designated” officials of the “appropriate” government.
http://sacw.net/article13006.html

INDIA: DAY LONG BAN ON NDTV SMACKS OF MINISTRY OF TRUTH | T K ARUN
The charge against NDTV India is patently absurd. It did not reveal any information of strategic importance that was not already in the public domain and was not reported by other news channels and newspapers.
http://sacw.net/article13008.html

INDIA: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS PLATFORM CONDEMNS CURBS ON NDTV AS WELL AS ON PRESS IN KASHMIR, CHATTISSGARH
http://sacw.net/article13011.html

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7. UK: BBC ASIAN NETWORK FACILITATES THE ISLAMIST PROJECT BY SILENCING THE FEMINIST VOICE
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A really sad day for BBC Asia Network whose journalistic inadequacies are all too evident and an even sadder day for feminists who are branded as unrepresentative of ‘Muslim’ women because they dare to talk in terms of secular universal human rights and to challenge religious power. How and why have black and minority women in the UK, who have achieved so much in terms of advancing our rights, arrived at this point of political bankruptcy?
http://sacw.net/article13004.html

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8. INDIAN MAIDS IN RAJ-ERA BRITIAN: THE STORY OF THE ABANDONED AYAH
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Imagine being abandoned at London’s King’s Cross railway station with just one pound in your pocket. In 1908, this is exactly what happened to an ayah who had travelled from India to Britain to look after a family’s children on the journey home.
http://sacw.net/article13001.html

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9. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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India: RSS imprint on Khattar government runs deep in Haryana
India: The Debate on Triple Talaq Must be Based on Proper Research and Data
India: DN Jha’s ‘The Myth of the Holy Cow’ examined facts, and its detractors didn’t like that
India: ‘Uniform civil code should drop anti-women laws of all religions’
India: Karan Johar controversy mirrors rising populist politics
India: Electoral malpractices and “Hindutva” in the Supreme Court: Who argued what? [Bar & Bench November 2, 2016]
India: Uniform civil code good only if it seeks gender equality says NFIW
My name is Khan: Inter-religious marriages still draw questions and incredulity in India
India: Gutsy journalist Akshaya Mukul refuses to receive Ramnath Goenka award from Modi
'History in India has been driven by identity': Dipesh Chakrabarty on historian Jadunath Sarkar
India: Bombay Christian group files complaint against Goregaon Social for pub's 'blasphemous' interiors
India: The non-inclusion of the word ‘secular’ in the original Constitution cannot be a reason to recommend its removal now
India: Break the myths - The tendency to stereotype communities alienates and fuels communal tensions (Sabir Ahamed)
India: Maharashtra Chief Minister Fadnavis isn't the first ruler to prop up Far Right's Raj Thackeray for petty political India: Here's why mixing politics with religion is a bad idea (Akshaya Mishra)

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

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10. EMPIRE SHAPED THE WORLD. THERE IS AN ABYSS AT THE HEART OF DISHONEST HISTORY TEXTBOOKS | Moni Mohsin
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(The Guardian - 30 October 2016)

Nearly 90,000 Indian soldiers laid down their lives for Britain in the second world war, yet the scale of that sacrifice – and the troubled history of the imperial project – is barely recognised

Indian soldier Bhandari Ram with his father after he was awarded the Victoria Cross in New Delhi in 1945. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

When I was a child in Lahore in Pakistan, my parents employed a driver called Sultan. Sultan, a retired soldier, was from a village near Jhelum. He was a cheerful man in his 60s who readily joined in our games of badminton. But to me the most interesting fact about Sultan was that he could speak Italian. A fragmentary, broken Italian, but Italian nonetheless, picked up as a prisoner of war in Italy. He called me signorina and taught me three Italian words: si, grazie and buongiorno. Decades later, when I told my children about Sultan, they were gobsmacked. What was a Pakistani villager doing fighting in Italy? He wasn’t Pakistani then, I explained, he was Indian. Sultan was one of more than two million Indian soldiers who fought for the allies in the second world war. “No! Really?” they breathed.

My children (daughter 17, son 15) were born and raised in London and have had the good fortune to attend fantastic schools where they have been offered, alongside the usual array of subjects, a rich diet of music, drama, art, sport and languages. Their extracurricular clubs include Arabic, feminism, astronomy, mindfulness and carpentry. In my convent school in Lahore, I had to listen in respectful silence. In London, they are encouraged to question and argue.

Yet, for all the range and candour of their education, they haven’t once encountered Britain’s colonial past in school. My daughter is now in her second year of A-levels. She has studied history from the age of nine, but the closest she has come to any mention of empire was in her GCSE syllabus that included the run-up to the second world war. While studying the Treaty of Versailles, she learned that some countries had colonies at the time and, as part of Germany’s punishment, it was stripped of its colonial possessions. Period.

Though she read about the brutal battles in the Pacific and North Africa, no mention was made of the 2.5 million Indian soldiers who volunteered to fight in the second world war – or the 1.3 million who served in 1914-18. There was nothing about the 87,000 jawans killed in 1939-45. She had no notion of the massive contribution India – and Britain’s other colonies – made to the war effort. Hence her astonishment at Sultan’s Italian connection.

Of course, my kids know that their grandparents, along with the citizens of almost half the globe, were once British subjects. But they have acquired this knowledge at home, not at school. Aged 11, my son learned in a geography class that one of the many reasons Ghana (the Gold Coast to its 19th-century British rulers) was economically less developed was because of its colonial past. It had been stripped of its wealth by the British. Just one bland sentence. Now, in secondary school, he is currently reading a past Booker winner, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. For half-term, his English teacher has asked him to read another novel about India. The list she has given him includes Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, EM Forster’s A Passage to India and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I imagine some mention of colonialism will be made when discussing those texts.

But even this is off-piste learning, the initiative of an individual teacher; it is not part of the curriculum. Last year, my daughter, who is studying history of art at A-level, was taken to see Tate Britain’s exhibition Art and Empire. Her teacher thought it important for the paper on orientalism and, something of a political activist in her youth, gave them an impassioned lecture on Britain’s imperial past. But the historical context was not obligatory in the curriculum. Students were required to restrict themselves to a technical visual analysis of the paintings they studied, not explore the political background that produced them.

Dr Mukulika Banerjee, director of the South Asia Centre and associate professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, talks of British students who “arrive at university completely ignorant about the empire, that vital part of their history. When we talk of Syria today, they have no knowledge of Britain’s role in the Middle East in the last century. When discussing burning political questions today, they have no historical context to  draw on that links Britain’s own past with those events. Similarly, they have no clue about the history of the immigration. They don’t understand why people of other ethnicities came to Britain in the first place. They haven’t learned any of it at school. So, in their second year at university, when my students discover the extent of their ignorance, they are furious.”

I don’t know whether this amnesia is due to embarrassment or fear of reparations or, indeed, a sinister desire to keep the electorate ignorant and pliable. Whatever the original rationale, the ugly xenophobia unleashed since the EU referendum has brought home the urgent need to reform history textbooks and address this abyss at their heart. Without it, they are distorted, dishonest. I used to laugh when British people asked me where I had learned my English. (Despite 20 years in this country, I still have a strong Pakistani accent.) Post-Brexit, I am not amused. And it’s no good pretending that the history of Malaysia, Nigeria, India or Kenya is world history and therefore not relevant to the modern British curriculum. It is British history. To quote Kipling, that controversial yet compelling poet of empire: “What should they know of England who only England know?”

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11. INDIA: NEED TO WAGE A WAR AGAINST WARMONGERING - CIVIL SOCIETY
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02 Nov 2016 07:11 PM, IST

Need to wage a war against warmongering: Civil society
L-R) Shabnam Hashmi, Gurmehar Kaur, Kavita Krishnan, Jhon Dayal, Priya Pillay, Maimoona Mulla at press conference in Delhi on 02 Nov 2016. (Photo - IndiaTomorrow.net)

Ghazanfar Abbas, IndiaTomorrow.net,

New Delhi, Nov 02: Eminent faces of Delhi civil society came together here today to express their deep concern on the current warmongering in the subcontinent particularly between India and Pakistan.

"Does a common citizen want war? Whenever there is a warmongering, it is said that it is people's opinion...Dialogue is the solution; war is not the solution. Common people on both sides want peace not war," said eminent environment activist Priya Pillai while addressing a press conference here along with civil rights activists John Dayal, Shabnam Hashmi and others.

The press conference was to brief the media about their upcoming campaign Joint Action Against Warmongering (2-9 Nov).

"This campaign is also to say - please don't do warmongering in my name. I don't war. Don't make your political gain on my name. This is your diversion tactics. Elections are coming in UP, so this tactic is to divert attention from real issues like oppression on Adivasi, land acquisition bill, Bhopal encounter case, Dadri case. Today there is no talk on development," said Priya.

Addressing the press conference, Shabnam Hashmi said, "This warmongering is a conspiracy to divert from the issues and all the hate is being spread to wage war against Pakistan. All this play of nationalism is going on because promises were not delivered."

"Don't use pen for war; rather against war. Common people don't want war," she said.

Civil rights activist Kavita Krishnan said, "War mongering is creating and spreading hatred among people in India. Pakistan and India should talk along with Kashmir. A soldier has just committed suicide yesterday here. If PM is really concerned towards soldiers he should see why soldiers are compelled to take such steps."

To lend her support to the civil campaign against war, Gurmehar Kaur, daughter of Capt. Mandeep Singh who was killed during the Kargil war in 1999, also came up and expressed her views against war.

"I lost my father in Kargil war. Four wars have already happened. No more. If you are a better citizen why aren't you working for country's development and to eradicate social evils," asked Gurmehar while talking to IndiaTomorrow.net.

"All the money which will be wasted can be spent on education and jobs and women safety," she said.

"I want to say the youth who are being targeted to make their mind for war -- Please improve those things which are needed for real development like women safety and cleanness of our cities. If you love your country do those things which develop your country rather to support war. And media people should take responsibility and tell the people how war will impact people's life as they are also the citizen of this country first," she said.

Dr John Dayal while expressing concern on shrinking space of dissent said, "If Admiral Ramdas speaks against war, he is called anti national. This kind of environment is in our country today."

Woman activist and member of AIDWA Maimoona Mulla said, "It is being played with the emotions of people. War mongering is to polarize people."

"Jang ke khilaf ye hamari jang hai (This is our war against war). The money is being invested on arms. If it is used for welfare of people, many good things can be achieved," she said.

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12. A GENERALS' INDIA - THE POLITICIAN CEDING DEMOCRATIC SPACE
by Harish Khare
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(The Tribune -Nov 4, 2016)

It is the Diwali day. The text message landed at 9.17 am: “Happy Diwali! Mins of YAS Sh Vijay Goel will celebrate Diwali with Army Jawans today 11.30am Rajputana Rifles Regimental Centre, Delhi Cant wid  NYKS students. Pl. cover.” At 4.30 pm, there is another text: Hello Kindly check your mail box for Press Release — “Vijay Goel celebrates Diwali with Army Jawans” along with pictures of the event. 

It is possible to infer confidently that other 60-odd Cabinet members were celebrating Diwali similarly in  the conspicuous company of this or that Army unit.  Nor can any one of them be chided for this PR overkill because they have been commanded to do so. In fact, advertisements had been appearing for days prior to Diwali, drawing attention to a PMO-directed campaign, called “Sandesh-to-Soldiers”, exhorting the citizens to remember this Diwali “our courageous jawans who constantly protect our nation. Lakhs of people have already sent their messages, have you?” 

A few days earlier, the Chief Minister of Punjab, Parkash Singh Badal, was reported to have decreed that all officers be appropriately respectful to the soldiers and ex-soldiers whenever they visited a government office.  The Economic Times (October 27) had reported how the BJP was preparing to send out Diwali greetings to soldiers' households in Uttar Pradesh. Both Punjab and Uttar Pradesh are due to have assembly elections in a few months’ time. 

And, then, a few days after Diwali, we had on Wednesday a retired Army Subedar committing suicide, in support of the demand for  one rank, one pension (OROP). That a retired Army man should commit suicide was sad enough; it is even sadder and uglier that professional political leaders should have sought to draw political mileage out of this tragedy.  Earlier, the non-BJP political leaders were tut-tutting the government for wanting to do a bit of khoon ki dalali, now it was the turn of the BJP to pretend that a veteran’s suicide was nothing to get excited about and that it was in bad taste that someone should want to “politicise” the death. 

How are the republican voices and constituency to view this extraordinary state-sponsored glorification of the military men, values and demands? Are we in the process of re-arranging the ensemble of institutional preferences? Examine, for instance, the Income Tax Department’s sales pitch. It takes out advertisements, showing a solitary solider standing guard over the forbidding mountainous border: “He is doing his duty…How about you?” The “he” is the Army Jawan, and “you” is the “tax deductor”, who is sternly reminded that TDS procedures must be totally complied with.  

It is not too complicated to break the code of a new civil-military chemistry.  Legitimacy, political respectability and electoral advantage are being sought to be derived from the soldier and his shahadat (martyrdom). Unthinkingly, new space, new respect and new autonomy are being ceded to the Army brass and other security forces.   

In the post-surgical strike days, various ministers and authorised spokespersons have made it clear: (1) it is for the Army to decide whether or not to give the lie to Pakistan's preposterous claim that there were no cross-border raids; (2) it is for the Army to decide what should be the response to provocations, if any, from Pakistan; and (3) that what the Army says or claims ought to be accepted, without any kind of reservation or dissent. 

   The Republic finds itself at a fork in the road, an unfamiliar stage which could, in the long run, produce only democratic unhappiness.  After all, all these years, generations after generations of Indians took pride in the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru and other democrats saw to it that the Army stayed in the barracks, and that the civil authority was firmly in control of matters of war and peace. 

The political crowd did not need to piggyback the soldiers. The fundamental reality was that the constitutional and political legitimacy accrued to the political elites only because they could garner for themselves a mandate to govern, and that too, in an open, fair and transparent electoral contest. There was a sacredness to this authority from the citizens and it entitled them to obedience and respect. “We, the people of India” were to be the ultimate and only sovereign. 

And, the political leader was deemed to be endowed with certain laudable skills and attitudes. He was respected as “a politician” because he undertook to understand the people's issues and grievances. A political operative who aspired to be recognised as a “leader” had to have the willingness to harmonise conflicting social values and claims to produce a kind of “public good.”  Coercion was not to be his calling card; persuasion and motivation were to be his first, second and third preferences.  Only autocrats rely on force and intimidation. 

All these years, there had been a complete consensus that the armed forces were a valuable institution, deriving its authority and parameters from the Constitution, and, that, as an institution, the armed forces were committed to democratic and secular values.  The armed forces, to be fair, never asserted that they were outside the ambit of democratic accountability; nor did they demand a lion's share in the national resources. Unlike in our neighbourhood, the armed forces never subscribed to a grammar of entitlements. This despite the fact that in the last three decades or so we have come to depend heavily on the coercive arm of the Indian state to restore a semblance of order in large parts of the country. 

Yet, we find ourselves witness to the process of re-arranging some of the working assumptions that have served the Indian republic well for all these years.  Unlike in Pakistan, where it were the Army Generals who made the judgement that the politicians were incompetent and incapable of safeguarding the best interests of their nation; we are not just deferring too much to the Generals, we are also redefining “competence”. Suddenly, it would seem that competence of a leader is to be judged by his willingness to allow the use of force. And, a willingness to let the “security forces” be the judge of how to use force, when to use it. 

And, once we let the “security forces” write their own ticket, the others who have capacity to initiate and inflict violence also take a cue. If the Army can give a “bloody nose to the Pakis”, so can the BSF; and if, the BSF can be allowed to over-react, why can’t the cops in Bhopal go on a shooting spree and gun down a few SIMI boys?  

All this adds up to a new but troublesome acceptance of violence. Nehru's India is forging a new identity under the shadow of joyful acceptance of conflict. Elements of a garrison state are being grafted on to the republic's escutcheon.

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13. WHY KASHMIRIS FEEL THAT INDIA AND THE WORLD HAVE ABANDONED THEM
by Bharat Bhushan
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(catchnews.com - 1 November 2016)

The situation in the Kashmir Valley is exceptionally grim. Not that there haven't been protests earlier holding security personnel responsible for civilian deaths. Schools have shut down before. Shops and establishments have also followed a centralised protest schedule dictated by separatist leaders in the past. The State has restricted the movement of separatist leaders many times before and jailed people under the notorious Public Safety Act.

Then why does the current political atmosphere in Kashmir have an unprecedented sense of desperation and despair?

There is a growing sense amongst the Kashmiris that no one in the international community has time for them. The attention of the world is engaged in West Asia where the larger Islamic world is in turmoil. Any misstep by Russia or the US in Syria can lead to unforeseen and disastrous developments for the whole world.

India's growing closeness with the US and its emergence as one of the potential engines of global economic growth has meant that the world wants New Delhi on its side. It is keen to woo India rather than reprimand it for any perceived domestic misdemeanours.

Pakistan on the other hand has become branded as the nursery of global terrorism, and its international credibility on India-related issues is severely reduced. In more proximate terms, the terrorist attack on Uri has damaged Pakistan and Kashmir more than anything else could have. The indigenous dimension of the Kashmir protests has been subsumed under a dominant public discourse of Pakistan inspiring terrorism against India, of which Uri is seen as the latest example.

Modi's Kashmir policy

Within India, the ascendancy of Narendra Modi had initially created some hope among the people of Kashmir as they thought he might take forward the Kashmir legacy of Atal Behari Vajpayee. That did not happen.

The Modi government's brand of politics has instead resulted in a discernible rightward shift in the national social and political discourse. Government policies - whether accidental or deliberate - seem to be moulding India into a national security state. Everyone is expected to be on the same page as the government on security issues - and Kashmir has been reduced from a political issue to one of national security and law and order.

This situation has been complicated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) government in Jammu and Kashmir. It legitimised the entry of the BJP into the governance structures of Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of Hindutva ideology. As a result, the BJP thinks it is all right to see Jammu and Kashmir as a Hindu-Muslim problem and the state's governance as contest for loaves and fishes between Hindu-dominated Jammu and Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley.

"Tendency to blame Pakistan for everything ignores the need to recognise disaffection among Kashmiris"

India's problems with Pakistan have further impacted the public perception of the Kashmir situation. Dissident Kashmiris can now be equated with Pakistanis and everything that happens in Kashmir can be blamed on Pakistan. This obviates the need to recognise the disaffection among the Kashmiris simmering for nearly seven decades. Once the discourse is oversimplified and the perception is created that Pakistan pulls all the strings (not that it is uninvolved in Kashmir), then every protesting Kashmiri can be dubbed a pro-Pakistani fifth columnist. It doesn't matter then how the 'enemy' is dealt with shot guns or pellet guns.

The mainstream media - especially TV news channels and the Defence and Home Ministry correspondents of national dailies - have become a force-multiplier for this narrow, self-serving propaganda of the State. Narrow, because it cannot lead to a proper diagnosis of the problem and, therefore, cannot provide any remedies. It is also self-serving, because it helps the political interests of the party in power by boosting its image as the sole defender of national interest. The frighteningly simplistic question every critic of the government gets asked is whether (s)he is with India or against India.

"TV channels and defence reporters have become force-multipliers for the State's narrow propaganda"

The changes that this emerging reality has brought about in Kashmir and its people are profound and worrying.
Despair

Today, there is unprecedented despair and desperation among the people. The Kashmiris think that they have fallen off the map, including amongst Indians, and that nobody cares for their fate.

When people in the rest of India showed little or no concern for the grief and hurt of Kashmiris, there was bound to be disillusionment and loss of faith in a tired political rhetoric that describes Kashmir as an integral part of India.

Kashmiris see such talk as nothing more than political posturing. One often hears them say that India is only interested in the land and not in the people of Kashmir. They believe that TV and the government in New Delhi have conditioned most Indians into seeing them through anti-Pakistan lenses.

When Atal Behari Vajpayee talked of 'insaniyat and jamhooriyat" (Humanity and Democracy), Kashmiris believed that he was sincere. This was also evident in the various initiatives taken by Vajpayee.

Today, people view Prime Minister Narendra Modi with skepticism when he repeats the same phrases.

Why is it, they ask, that people in rest of India do not get upset when 4 to 12 year olds get blinded by pellet guns or when nearly a hundred people die in police firing in just four months? And why are pellet guns used for crowd control only in Kashmir when they were not used against Jats who went on a rampage including indulging in gang rapes in Haryana or against those who burnt more than one hundred buses and other vehicles during the Cauvery water dispute in Karnataka?

The government may have some rationalisation for its actions but these questions ought to shame ordinary Indians. That they don't is worrying the Kashmiris.

The most significant change that has taken place in Kashmir is that among the youth the fear of the Indian security forces has diminished significantly. An anarchic element has sprung up on the streets while the separatist leaders were locked up in jail. There is speculation that militant elements belonging to Pakistan-based groups are sheltering behind this chaos and fanning it further.
"Among Kashmiri youth, the fear of the Indian security forces has diminished significantly"

People in the rest of India may say that stone pelting will lead nowhere but that is not the perception in Kashmir. Kashmiris believe exactly the opposite. They claim that the stone-pelting children have shaken India - after all they forced a discussion on the Kashmir issue and the use of pellet guns in Parliament. They will tell you that the world has also noticed - even if it did nothing - what Indian security forces have been doing in Kashmir. The point, however, is that the streets

today are ruled by teens who dare the army saying "shoot us, blind us" and not by the older generation of less impetuous and thoughtful political leaders, even though they espouse separatism.

There are those who talk of dialogue with India but increasingly people do not see the dialogue process as seeking a permanent and amicable resolution to the Kashmir tangle. They view it as a way for vested interests to bargain for personal benefits.

That is what makes the situation in Kashmir virtually intractable

Bharat Bhushan @Bharatitis
Editor of Catch News, Bharat has been a hack for 25 years. He has been the founding Editor of Mail Today, Executive Editor of the Hindustan Times, Editor of The Telegraph in Delhi, Editor of the Express News Service, Wa...

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14. BURNING THE LIGHT OF EDUCATION IN KASHMIR | Arshia Malik
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(The News - November 03, 2016)

   Now faced with a civil war in their midst with families pitched against families again after a cycle of 26 years, Kashmiris watch in horrified silence as 25 schools are gutted in the last few weeks

I am reminded of this story of  Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe, a 19th-century, British missionary and educationist working in Kashmir. His Wikipedia entry writes:

    'In the late 19th century, Kashmir was a princely state made up of a Muslim majority ruled by a Maharaja and his Hindu minority. The Maharaja often utilized the services of British and European experts, though Kashmir was an independent kingdom. Seeing the squalid conditions and caste system as a serious problem, Tyndale-Biscoe aimed to use his own Christian values and western civic ideals to improve Kashmiri society.

    Tyndale-Biscoe's educational philosophy was one in which conspicuous intellect, or "cleverness", was valued less than the acquisition of more profound attributes and abilities. His schooling placed emphasis on physical activities – boxing, boating, football – which would stimulate senses of courage, masculinity, and physical fitness. The pupils were also engaged in civic duties, such as street-cleaning, and in helping deal with flooding and cholera. Enforcing participation in team sports and activities in a highly socially stratified culture had significance beyond the replication of Tyndale-Biscoe's English public school educational experience.

    By his later years, Tyndale-Biscoe had founded six schools with 1,800 students. In 1912 he received the Kaisar-I-Hind Medal, and an additional bar in 1929.' 

    Morning Assembly at Mission School, 1950s

The story which is common lore goes like this. Biscoe was himself involved in the construction of the first modest school houses in Kashmir. Legend says that he was not allowed to get bricks to the designated place one day which he had piled on a tonga (horse-driven cart) common in South Asia. The next day he arrived with the sack of bricks on a horse. The locals created a scene because they had heard about this 'missionary' and were not sure of what he wanted to achieve. The next day he walked with a sack of bricks on his bare back. The locals by now realized the man was determined and quietly watched him get to work as he started the foundations of a school room. 

The Mission School, Fateh Kadal, 1890

I am proud of this story but prouder of the lore in the women of my family about Miss Mallinson. The Mallinson Girls Higher Secondary School was founded in 1912 by Miss Violet B. Fitze as the Girls' Mission High School. Its name was later changed to Mallinson Girls' School in honor of Miss Mallinson, a missionary who served in the school from 1922-1961. Renowned as the state's most prestigious educational institution, the Mallinson Girls Srinagar was established at Fateh Kadal in 1912 at the time when there was no concept of education among the people of the valley. 

Miss Mallinson, sometime in 1970s

My aunts told stories of how Miss Mallinson would go and visit the local families and encourage the parents to send their girls to school. The conservative and superstitious Kashmiris were reluctant but Miss Mallinson's fortitude and determination prevailed after she reached a compromise with the families. The girls and young women would attend school if and only if a purdah covered shikhara (boats used on the waterways and lakes of Kashmir) picked and dropped them off. 

She didn't stop at that and any girl playing truant found Miss Mallinson at her door in the evenings, with ''nun-chai'' (salt-tea) in hand and the famous Kashmiri tsechewour (baked croissant, my rudimentary translation) talking delicately to the village headman and the mohalla (community) elders about the philosophy of education and its importance for the girls. 

Mallinson Higher Secondary School, Sheikh Bagh, 2016

There is a certain stand alone pride among pass outs of the first Mission Schools like Biscoe, Mallinson, Burnhall Boys School and Presentation Convent, recognizing the pioneering efforts of the missionaries in imparting education to the masses and trending the graph of literacy in the State of Jammu and Kashmir upwards and rising with girls surpassing boys in the Matriculation Results and enrollment data.

When Malala Yousufzai's story first hit the news stands and social networking websites in 2012, I remember contempt and disgust among families across Kashmir which took pride in the education of their daughters. Families from Kargil, Leh, Dras, Kishtwar, Rajouri, Doda, Poonch, Uri, Kupwara, Srinagar, Budgam, Anantnag, and other newly formed districts in J&K expressed utter horror at this despicable act. Editorials, letters to the editors, school essays, Parent-Teacher-Meets, and the usual social networking sites were abuzz with the deplorable act and the expose of the face of the Taliban. Slowly and gradually, Kashmiris started to make the connection to the tehreek movement, the early 90s militant diktats and the interesting divide between the strike calendars that the Hurriyat issued every summer and their own children getting a stable education outside the conflict-torn Valley. 

16 December 2014 was the final light bulb for Kashmiris when 7 gunmen affiliated to the Tehrek-i-Taliban (TTP) conducted an attack on an Army Public School in Peshawar. Militants shooting schoolchildren in cold blood before confirming whether their fathers were in the Army or not; one lone class 9 survivor from the entire 9th grade because he did not go to school - all of this is not fathomable to the silent, moderate Kashmiri who vacillates between ''India is bad'', ''Indian dogs go back'' and goes rabid when National Highway NH-1 the sole link to Udhampur and Pathankot and India beyond is not opened up in time by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) due to snow and landslides and the everyday supplies brought in. 

Now faced with a civil war in their midst with families pitched against families, brothers against brothers again after a cycle of 26 years, Kashmiris watch in horrified and cynical silence as 25 schools are gutted in the last few weeks and reports of banks and vehicles being targeted coming in. A school is a sacred place for Kashmiris, be it the maktabs, madrasas and peeths before the European Missionaries structured the whole education system or the government run schools or private and public schools or even the Army Goodwill Schools under Operation Sadhbhavana. They resented the CRPF and other paramilitary troopers occupying schools in the 90s and didn't mind them taking over the huge cinema houses until most of them were gutted or converted to hotels or hospitals, depending. They will never tolerate their schools being gutted daily especially those that cater to the lower rung of society, the financially impoverished. Of course, they will never come out on the streets protesting this because of the ever present threat of the ''unidentified gunman'' and intimidation to family members by thugs. But just like the underground movement of the Arabs after the failed Arab Spring, their resentment will increase and when it will really matter be it a controlled voting day or the elusive plebiscite, they will speak.

Govt. School burnt by arsonists in Chatawan, Shopian, Kashmir, 2016

Whatever the Pakistan establishment is planning to do next in collaboration with their proxies in Kashmir, they better not target the civilian population. Whatever media reports may show, there is a silent majority being kept away from the intifada factory of the Press Enclave at Srinagar, or some choose to stay away and pull on the famous Kashmiri resilience in the face of bad days. After all, ''paan kemus chu kharaan?'' - who dislikes one's own self!   

More by Arshia Malik

Arshia Malik is a Srinagar-based writer and social commentator with focus on women issues and conflict in Kashmir. She makes her living as a school teacher and is an avid collector of literature. She is currently writing a book about her life as a female in Kashmiri Muslim society

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15. UK: 'I NEVER THOUGHT I'D BE TERRORISED BY MY FELLOW SIKHS AT A WEDDING' ’ Nazia Parveen
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(The Guardian - 3 November 2016)

When interfaith marriages take place, UK temples now often hire security guards to protect weddings from demonstrators

A Sikh wedding at a London temple. Photograph: Photofusion/UIG via Getty Images

The ceremony in Leamington Spa is a lot smaller than the newlyweds had hoped. Just close family and friends – those they can really trust. The marriage takes place in secret, on a Friday afternoon.

It’s a beautiful, bright day at the town’s Gurdwara Sahib temple, but there is an anxiety in the air that is more than typical pre-wedding jitters: the young couple have been forced to marry under “oppressive circumstances” after previous weddings were disrupted by protesting religious men who do not want Sikhs to marry out of the faith.

The protesters dress in hoods, cover their faces and intimidate guests at the temple. Yet they are Sikhs – a religion readily associated with peace and inclusivity.

“I have got through the days of being called a Paki and a nig-nog,” the registrar Bhopinder Singh tells the Guardian. “I never thought that the day would come when I would be frightened and terrorised by people of my own faith.”

The most recent incident at the Sikh temple was on 11 September when women, children and committee members feared for their safety after 55 men with their faces covered in black cloth flooded into the temple. The temple was held under siege and the couple who were due to marry were forced to cancel their nuptials.

Among those trying to keep the peace that day was the 79-year-old Green party councillor Janet Alty, who was questioned under caution for allegedly calling one protester a terrorist. No further action was taken against Alty. Those who run the temple say protests have become an unfortunate recurrence during the wedding season.

Eventually the disrupted wedding did take place under a shroud of secrecy the following Monday, but the protest has sent shockwaves through the close-knit community.

When an interfaith marriage now takes place, the temple is forced to hire security guards to protect couples and their families. To avoid trouble, some couples are choosing to get married on weekdays, which are less likely to be disrupted.

Five weeks after that last protest, the Guardian was invited along to the temple for Friday’s secret wedding.

The bride is a follower of Jainism, an ancient Indian religion similar to Buddhism, and her groom is a Sikh. The couple do not want to be identified for fear of repercussions.

At the temple, volunteers cook sabzi and chapattis in the kitchen, preparing to feed the forty or so people of every faith who will walk through its doors to attend the wedding.

Upstairs, in one of the prayer rooms, the couple – both 29-year-old professionals - and their relatives are anxious.

The Gurdwara Sahib Leamington Spa & Warwick. Photograph: Ben Gurr for the Guardian

The bride says she received a phone call that morning and was told her wedding would have to be a day sooner than planned, for her own safety.

“We have been educated here and are moderate and should be free to marry whomever we wish,” she says. “I had to rush up from London – this is no way to be. There is a fundamental problem with the way [the protesters] are behaving and it will not be accepted.”

Her new husband says: “We have had to get married under oppressive circumstances. We were forced into this. The other option was to have a bigger wedding but hire security and we didn’t want to do that.

“These guys have a wicked PR machine and they post videos of supposed ‘peaceful protests’ online all the time. But they are not peaceful – they are threatening. They come with hoods on, with larger than normal kirpans [Sikh daggers] and act in an abusive manner.”

One relative, Simon Gronow, a Christian solicitor from London, married into the groom’s family 12 years ago. “This temple has decided to welcome interfaith marriage, but there is a group who want their way to prevail and there is an inevitable conflict,” he says.

“I have always found Sikhism a welcoming religion and I am still Christian but also take part in Sikh traditions. It has never been an issue before and this is a new thing for all of us to come to terms with.”

Mota Singh, a councillor and former mayor of Leamington Spa, calls the protesters “fundamentalists”. Singh, 77, says because of his moderate outlook he has received repeated threats from the group online and in person and has even had a brick thrown through his window.

He was present at the temple on the morning of the protest on 11 September. He said the protesters arrived at the temple at 6.30am, forcing their way past hired security guards into the main atrium. The couple were warned and did not attend. Armed police eventually cleared the protesters, all of whom were arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass.

Warwickshire police said no further action would be taken against 50 of the 55 people arrested. A 28-year-old man from Coventry was given a caution for religiously aggravated criminal damage. A 39-year-old from Birmingham and two men aged 33 and 36 from Coventry have been re-bailed until the end of November. No further action was taken against a 31-year-old from Oldbury.

The protests had been organised by a group called Sikh Youth UK and were part of an increasingly active youth movement within the community.

Deepa Singh, who describes himself as a Sikh Youth UK co-ordinator, said the group had thousands of members including teachers, barristers and accountants. Others estimate membership to be in the low hundreds.

Another member, Shamsher Singh, previously told the Guardian: “More and more young people are becoming interested in the true interpretation of what it means to be Sikh.

The prayer hall at the Gurdwara Sahib temple in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Photograph: Ben Gurr for the Guardian

“The elder generation arrived [in the UK] and fitted their faith round the need to assimilate, survive and to get work. This led to a stripping back of the spiritual nature of what it means to be a Sikh to a series of symbols.

“Now younger people want to reclaim Sikhism as a deeply spiritual, peaceful and encompassing religion and this is why we are seeing these protests.”

Mota Singh, the councillor, said he first became aware of two Birmingham-based groups who have been involved in protesting, Sikh Youth UK and the Sikh Federation, around six years ago. He claims that they have strong links to the Sikh Council, an organisation set up in 2010 to deal with issues affecting the Sikh community in Britain and Europe. The council denies any affiliation with the group, and say they have no involvement in the organisation of protests.

Shortly after the Sikh Council was formed, it issued an edict saying weddings between Sikhs and non-Sikhs could not take place in temples, arguing that the Sikh wedding ceremony, Anand Karaj, should be reserved only for Sikhs.

Marrying people of other faiths is acceptable, they say, but conducting that marriage in a Sikh temple is not. Non-Sikhs can only be involved if they accept the Sikh faith and change their name to include Singh or Kaur, the council insists.

Around 10 of the estimated 360 Sikh temples in the UK are thought to be affiliated to the council. However, many in the Sikh community are wholly opposed to these rules, saying Sikhism is a faith of acceptance and equality.

Mota Singh believes there has been a “cultural change” where young British-born Sikhs are “attracted by fundamentalism … They stick together and they want their own societies which exclude other groups.
The Guardian view on interfaith marriage: a human right | Editorial
Read more

“They are different to their parents – the first generation immigrants – who wanted to integrate. They want the religion to remain ‘pure’.

“They have been born in Britain, have had a British education yet they don’t believe in democracy and free will and allow mixed marriages to take place. It has staggered some of the older generation. They are shunning the moderate way. Their fathers were clean-shaven and wanted to integrate. This is a whole new breed of Sikhs.”

The temple’s registrar, Bhopinder Singh, said he was pleased the wedding season was almost over for the year. “I have been in this country since the age of nine and have lived through the football hooliganism of the 1970s. These guys were far more scary than football hooligans,” he said. “They were foul-mouthed and intimidating and I have never experienced anything like this.”

Other temples across the country have been less robust under pressure from the protests groups and no longer hold interfaith marriages. But the temple committee in Leamington is adamant that they will continue. “On the face of it what they are protesting is against mixed marriage – but it is deeper than that,” said the temple trustee Jaswant Singh Virdee. “They want to control the temple with their own people and with their own extremist views.

“It is seems these protests apply only to England. Throughout the rest of the world this is not happening. Ultimately, it is a way to gain power.”

Balraj Singh Dhesi, the first Asian mayor of Leamington, said the protests were a British phenomenon. “Interfaith marriages have been taking place since the birth of Sikhism hundreds of years ago. These prejudices, which are growing and are very concerning, will cause damage to British society. They are indigenous to this country but yet have an obvious disregard for integration.”

Friday’s wedding passed off without incident, but there is a grim irony in a couple spending the biggest day of their lives praying for it to be totally uneventful.

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16. PAKISTAN: BEHIND THE IMAGE - PRIVATISATIONS DRIVEN GOOD GOVERNANCE IN PUNJAB
by Arif Azad
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(Dawn - 3 November 2016)

PUNJAB is considered the epitome of good governance by many donors, the media and political classes. A large part of this perception is formed by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s hyperactive managerial style: his on-the-spot sackings or demotions of officials found negligent, his personal immersion in mega infrastructure projects and his fondness for target-heavy presentations given by development experts.

Together, these defining traits constitute a perception of a better-managed province. Beyond this, however, is little scrutiny of Punjab’s so-called good governance agenda. In fact, emerging trends show that the good governance agenda is laced with an unbounded privatisation agenda, and that the privatisation of state entities in the name of efficiency is being pushed through without consultation.

Without wider public and political discussions on privatisation, the notion of a public service delivery ethos in public entities is corroded. Political parties have made the occasional, feeble noises, but to little effect. The PPP — normally a party of state-delivered public services — is conspicuous by its absence in the province’s political field. Thus, no sustained or coherent critique of the current governance model comes from the social democratic party of the PPP coloration. The PTI — caught up in its accountability verbosity — is miles away from the political tide when it comes to offering opposition to the privatisation agenda.
In Punjab, privatisation is being dressed as good governance.

Although part of a larger ideological agenda (as is the case in other countries), privatisation is most visibly being forced through the education and health sectors at breakneck speed. With education, the plan involves the privatisation of education at all levels. Primary schools are being privatised with little or no opposition; the plan involves handing primary schools over to NGOs and the private sector. The teachers union offered only desultory opposition. In this move, critics see the stripping of state assets, such as infrastructure and expensive lands on which some of the schools are situated, with the involvement of the land mafia.

Privatisation of the primary education sector is being pushed through, in part, to drive up enrolment figures. This has seen some success. Yet, the policy of public-private partnerships is muddled. In some cases public-private partnerships are working at cross purposes when it comes to enrolment drives. There are instances where NGOs are working with donor funding to enhance enrolment figures in government schools, while the government is incentivising donor-funded provincial education foundations to enhance enrolment in private schools in the same area.

With limited numbers of primary schoolgoing students in the project area, there is often a shift from the state school to the foundation-funded school where enrolment is financially incentivised. This tends to demoralise state-sector schools, staff and students. The unspoken message here seems to be that private schools are better than state schools.

Post-graduate colleges are similarly being forced down the path of privatisation. The net effect of runaway privatisation of post-graduate colleges is an unaffordable fee hike for poorer students, thereby pricing them out of higher education.

Also under the privatisation hammer is the health sector. Here, again, there is an unseemly and unreflective haste to slash and burn everything that stands in the way of a supposedly efficient private sector. There may be evidence that some NGO-managed basic health units work better than health department-managed BHUs, yet these examples hardly give licence to the government to attempt to dismantle the public sector and abdicate its responsibility of providing universal affordable healthcare.

Curiously, this is happening in Punjab at a time when the neo-liberal consensus on the so-called infallibility of the market has been vigorously challenged in the West. This trend has seen the return of social democrats and socialists to power on the back of public ownership agendas. In the UK, for example, some parts of British Rail are already back in public ownership. Similarly, calls for abolishing the private market in the National Health Service are gathering momentum. The British government has already retreated from its policy of turning state schools into private academies.

Yet Punjab is headed down this path, irrespective of cautionary tales from other places. Add to this an utter lack of regulatory control over the privatised entities, and the socially unequal impact of full-blown privatisation on affordable access to education and health, and it becomes too glaring to ignore. Therefore, it is vital that a proper audit of Punjab’s privatisation experiment be undertaken and appropriate caution exercised in expanding the private sector’s role in education and health. Good governance can only be delivered by a high-performing and incentivised public sector.

The writer is a consultant and policy analyst. 

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17. INDIA: WORLD BANK FUNDING THE COAL BOOM | Darryl D'Monte
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(India Together - 1 November 2016)

India figures as the lead story in a report this October by a little-known United States of America organisation, Inclusive Development International (IDI), titled Outsourcing Development: Lifting the Veil on the World Bank Group’s Lending Through Financial Intermediaries in October.

It questions how the World Bank, contrary to its affirmations to the contrary, has through its affiliate, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), funded coal power plants in India and other developing countries.

The study has been co-authored by three other organisations, including the Bank Information Centre, which scrutinises the World Bank’s operations for violations of environmental and other laws.

The coal plant in Singrauli, MP. Pic: Joe Athialy

Sub-titled Disaster for us and the planet: how the IFC is quietly funding a coal boom, the report begins with the case study of an impoverished farmer, Lalshah, in Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh.

Financing the pollution

The district is known as the Energy  Capital of India due to proliferation of thermal power plants and coal mines which blot the landscape. It accounts for a full tenth of the country’s thermal power capacity. Emissions and dust from the 1,200 MW Mahan power plant near Lalshah’s home have affected his health, his fields and crops.

The power plant is built by Essar Power, which resumed generating power in May this year after a 17-month hiatus due to people’s protests. Essar received “substantial financing” from two Indian financial institutions, ICICI and IDFC, to build the plant.

The IFC channelled money into the Mahan plant despite claims from the World Bank that it is no longer funding such projects. In 2013, the Bank made history when it pledged to get out of the coal industry for good, except “in rare circumstances.”

After decades of funding coal, the environmental consequences of continuing to do so – catastrophic global climate change, rapid deforestation, air and water pollution – were just too severe, states IDI.

This May, World Bank President Jim Kim was unequivocal in his remarks. Building more coal plants, in particular in Asia, where there has been a boom, would lead to catastrophe. “That would spell disaster for us and the planet,” he said.

According to the report, the World Bank continues to be a major funder of the coal industry, and the ramifications extend far beyond India’s Singrauli district.

It says,"..Billions of dollars in IFC funds have quietly flowed into new coal projects around the world through multi-layered financial transactions that exist beyond the scrutiny of the public. The IFC is funding coal through its highly opaque support for commercial banks and private equity funds. These financial intermediaries received $40 billion in IFC funding between 2011 and 2015. They now represent over half of the IFC’s lending portfolio, a proportion that has steadily increased over the past decade."

Thanks to the IFC, these financial institutions have gone on to fund many of the largest and dirtiest coal projects and companies in the world. The IFC does not publicly disclose the details of most of these transactions, but IDI was able to follow the trail of money during  months-long forensic investigations.

According to IDI, IFC supported financial institutions have funded at least 41 new coal projects – either the facilities directly or the companies that own them – since the World Bank announced its coal ban in 2013. The investigation tackled only a small portion of the IFC’s sprawling financial-sector portfolio. As such, there are doubtless many more projects yet to be uncovered.

In total, these projects account for 56,137 MW of new coal capacity. Adding fuel to the fire, these projects have also decimated some of the world’s forests. Coal plants, and the mines that feed them, are a leading cause of deforestation globally, further contributing to climate change.

Thermal plants are a major source of pollution. Pic: Joe Athialy

IFC’s support for the Mahan power plant is “a microcosm for how it funds coal around the world”. In 2005, the IFC loaned $50 million to IDFC in order to help meet its “growing needs for disbursements in infrastructure projects as well as to diversify its borrowing sources,” according to publicly disclosed project documents.

The following year, IFC loaned ICICI, a large commercial bank, $150 million to support its “capital requirements to finance growth”.

At the time, IDFC and ICICI were major players in India’s infrastructure and industrial sectors. The IFC loans, and the resulting prestige conveyed by a World Bank Group investment, put them in an even better position to fund the kinds of mega-projects they have been financing for years.

The IFC’s support for the project did not end there. Essar, in need of a source of coal to fuel the plant, entered into a joint venture with Hindalco, owned by the Aditya Birla group, to establish a mine nearby. The companies received approval from the government to establish the project, even though environmental groups warned that the mine would destroy one of the largest and oldest indigenous forests of sal trees.

In addition, Greenpeace found that the mine would displace or otherwise harm 50,000 people who lived in the forest or depended on it for their livelihoods like Lalshah, whose dilemma begins the report. “Without the forest, we would lose our major income source. It would be like living as a dead person,” he says.

In 2011, ICICI was one of four banks to provide an $888 million syndicated loan to Essar Power to build the Mahan coal plant. In 2014, ICICI Bank was one of six banks to provide a $163 million syndicated loan to Essar Power MP Ltd, a special vehicle created by Essar Power to develop the Mahan coal plant.

Also in 2014, when Essar faced cost overruns on the project, it secured another massive loan from five banks, including ICICI and IDFC, for the plant. In total, these two IFC-supported banks provided approximately $1.9 billion in financing to build the Mahan coal plant.

Axis Bank, after receiving a $100 million investment in an infrastructure bond from the IFC in 2014, participated in a $1.5 billion syndicated loan to Hindalco. Yes Bank, another recipient of IFC funding, underwrote $570 million in Hindalco bonds.

The company was free to use the capital from these transactions any way it chose, with no strings attached, including to fund the Mahan mine project.

Mint reported on October 26 that Axis Bank recorded  a 71 per cent rise in quarter-on-quarter bad loans and there was “more pain in store”. Some Rs 7,288 crores of assets had turned bad in the three months ending September. The list of bad debts is “dominated by the power sector, which comprises 41 per cent”.

According to Greenpeace, company representatives began surveying and demarcating land for the mine without the consent of people living in or depending on the forest, a clear violation of India’s Forest Rights Act and the IFC Performance Standards.

Opposition and overcapacity

Local residents quickly organized themselves into a resistance movement.  The situation came to a head in 2014, when activists formed a human chain around a survey team. “We were fighting for our constitutional rights. Our forest was not for sale,” Lalshah said. As a place of spiritual importance, losing it was unthinkable. “Our gods live in that forest,” he said.

Local residents are suffering from the air and water pollution caused by the coal plants. Pic: Joe Athialy

Following the protest, Lalshah and other activists were arrested. He spent 28 days in jail. Despite these setbacks, the movement made an impact. Facing bad press in India and abroad, the government cancelled clearance for the mine – though not the power station - in 2015, only the second time in history that it had done so. It was a major victory for the activists.

The IDI report comes precisely the same month as a Greenpeace India study which reveals that India would be wasting Rs 3.23 lakh crores to build 62 gigawatt (GW) of idle coal power plants by the year 2022.

Overcapacity appears to be endemic and the banks are partly to blame for lending funds to projects which are environmentally and financially unviable.

By contrast, Chinese leaders have called a halt to construction work on 30 large coal-fired power plants with a combined capacity of 17 GW — greater than the UK’s entire coal-powered stations. This unprecedented move indicates just how serious the Chinese authorities are about bringing the country’s coal power bubble under control.

Another 30 large coal plant projects in China, for which transmission lines were already under construction, are being axed. Spending money to complete these unneeded coal plants would have been even more wasteful— it would likely have cost well over $20 billion.

On October 25, Business Standard  reported that the demand for power in India had reached a new low. Some 30 power generating companies which have been contracted to purchase 400 million tonnes of coal from Coal India are sourcing far less. Some were only buying 4 per cent of their commitment and were facing penalties.

The two adverse reports also come at a time when bidders for solar power projects are quoting Rs 4.30 per kilowatt hour (kWh), cheaper than electricity from coal!

Darryl D'Monte, former Resident Editor of The Times of India in Mumbai, is Chairperson of the Forum of Environmental Journalists of India and founder President of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

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18. INDIA: TRIBES AT THE ALTAR OF DEMOCRACY
by Sudeep Chakravarti
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(Live Mint - Nov 03 2016)

Tribals account for less than 10% of the population and have accounted for over 40% of all project displacement in India since Independence

The court has also cautioned against govt and businesses being complicit in human rights violations. Examples abound in Chhattisgarh’s iron-ore rich south, and coal-rich north. Photo: Reuters

Perhaps the ongoing fracas in the US with the Sioux tribe in North Dakota protesting an oil pipeline within polluting distance of their homeland and traditionally sacred spaces, will, in the spirit of globalization, give tribal folk in India some reflected recognition.

Perhaps we will learn to not call our tribal folks ‘Naxals’ or ‘Maoists’ or ‘primitive’ when they defend their constitutional, and very human, rights.

Last week, nearly to the day the North Dakota protests flared up, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the National Tribal Carnival 2016, a government-sponsored jamboree in New Delhi. Tribals heard from Modi about how in tune they were with nature, how much they conserved nature.

“Nobody should have the right in this country to snatch the land of Adivasis,” Modi declared in Hindi. “Nobody should have the opportunity… And to ensure it, the government supports the strictest application of law and we are doing so…” The Twitter handle @narendramodi reinforced it: “Tribal communities must get their rights. No one has the right to snatch the land of tribal communities.”

He then mentioned Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh and praised his initiative to aggregate funds for the development of tribals. It was a remarkable, and ironical, acknowledgment as Singh’s administration has in the past decade been accused of several violent acts against tribals, some under the guise of combating insurgency. Even the Supreme Court has censured Chhattisgarh.

The court has also cautioned against government and businesses being complicit in human rights violations. Examples abound in Chhattisgarh’s iron-ore rich south, and coal-rich north. Examples also abound in Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, among other states, which have harassed, attacked, displaced without consent, provided scant rehabilitation—and continue to strong-arm tribal communities for mineral and project development, bypassing or attempting to bypass a community’s denial to projects.

Modi followed up with a palliative. “We have to save our forests, we have to save the land of our tribal communities, we have to also protect whatever economic means they posses, so we wish to with modern techniques strengthen the process of underground mining. So that the jungle remains as it is, lives remain as they are. We ought to dig deep for minerals like coal, et cetera, so difficulty doesn’t accrue to lives and livelihoods. The government of India is determined to pursue this direction of applying modern techniques.”

Politicians—prime ministers—routinely say whatever they wish to please a particular audience. The virus is party-agnostic. But this was ironic by any standard: artful, eco-friendly mining.

The central government buried a May 2014 report by a “high-level committee on socio-economic, health and educational status of tribal communities of India”, submitted to the ministry of tribal affairs. The report made several fine suggestions about healthcare, education, development, empowerment, and—as I have written earlier—resolution of the root causes of conflict in tribal areas.

Perhaps it’s on account of observations, as in the chapter titled Land Alienation, Displacement and Enforced Migration which pointed out several weaknesses in the 2013 land law—the community-consent parameters of which the current Bharatiya Janata Party-led government aggressively attempted to circumvent last year with ordinances, and failed.

“The definition of ‘public purpose’ in the new law is very wide and will only lead to greater acquisition and displacement in scheduled areas,” the report stated. “The exercise of ‘eminent domain’ and definition of ‘public purpose’ should be severely limited.”

The report added: “Government agencies acquiring land with the ultimate purpose to transfer it to private companies for stated public purpose, should be kept outside the ambit of the new law, as the public-private partnership mode of acquiring land is simply a backdoor method…” Exactly what Modi’s government attempted to do, and his senior ministers have since encouraged states to do.

Tribals account for less than 10% of the population—though they are more than 100 million in absolute numbers—and have accounted for over 40% of all project displacement in India since Independence. Three-fourths are estimated as not being rehabilitated; many have gone from being marginalized to being impoverished. “We have to sacrifice ourselves for our country,” a tribal gentleman in Jharkhand, personally scarred by mining, told me not long ago. “This is democracy.”

Tribals know the truth. And it hurts.

Sudeep Chakravarti’s books include Clear.Hold.Build: Hard Lessons of Business and Human Rights in India, Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country and Highway 39: Journeys Through a Fractured Land. This column, which focuses on conflict situations and the convergence of businesses and human rights in India and South Asia, runs on Thursdays.

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19. RAO ON PAIK, 'DALIT WOMEN'S EDUCATION IN MODERN INDIA: DOUBLE DISCRIMINATION'
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 Shailaja Paik. Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination. Routledge Research on Gender in Asia Series. New York: Routledge, 2014. xiv + 356 pp. $160.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-49300-0.

Reviewed by Anupama Rao (Columbia University Barnard College)
Published on H-Asia (November, 2016)
Commissioned by Sumit Guha

Dalit Women in India

Shailaja Paik has written an elegant and nuanced book about women’s education and its centrality to Maharashtra’s Ambedkar movement. A signal contribution to the field of critical Ambedkar studies and South Asian histories of gender, Paik’s book focuses on Dalit women’s continued struggles to claim educated selfhood while navigating complex inequities of caste, patriarchy, and inherited privilege. The work is enriched by a rare focus on working-class and middle-class women whose experience of caste and gender discrimination is modulated by two things, the political economy of class and the spatialization of caste.

Paik describes her method as follows: “Rather than ‘going where women are,’ or ‘recovering’ women through oral histories,... the book illustrates how Dalit women were formed within the limits of historically specific practices, what [Michel] Foucault calls ‘modes of subjectivation’: the very processes that secure a subject’s subordination are also the means by which she becomes a self-conscious identity and agent” (p. 8). Voice and experience have become the unfortunate focus of much critical engagement with Dalit literature, which views such writing as inherently ethnographic, a window into the life and times of otherwise inaccessible subaltern subjects. Paik instead challenges the categories of experience and embodiment, which constitute the privileged ground of feminist and Dalit history, to argue that the question of Dalit women must be posed, at the outset, as a problem of representation. Here liberal feminism’s inability to confront the exclusions of caste meets with Dalit history’s focus on the community’s emancipation at the cost of ignoring the specific needs of its women. Paik tempers her admiration for B. R. Ambedkar’s enlightened and far-reaching response to the woman question with her own focus on “Dalit women’s ideas and practices, as they not only actuated but extended and critiqued Ambedkar’s feminist praxis by challenging the politics of local leaders and men inside the household, howsoever limited” (p. 13). The signal contribution of Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India thus lies in tracking this double movement, modes of subjectivation and the refusal and resistance to them, as dialectical processes with contingent and often-unanticipated outcomes.

The book is divided into two sections each containing four chapters. Paik situates the oral narratives that constitute her main archive for the second half of the book in a complex economy of forces—caste reform, colonial modernity, struggles over institutional access, and movement history. Thus the first section of the book explores the contradictions of mass intellectuality in a society governed by a founding cleavage between intellectual and manual labor, and Dalit and non-Brahmin struggles against this social divide.

Paik’s thickly documented first chapter contrasts ideologies of class mobility and access to knowledge as these confronted the economic power and social resentment of Brahmins in the interwar, when the relationship between caste, colonial state, and Dalits underwent a major shift. Paik draws on personal recollections, newspaper accounts, and administrative reports to explore how Dalit demands for free and compulsory education were foiled, from the rise of novel practices of spatial segregation, to the psychological implications of the everyday repulsion that upper-caste students reflected back to Dalit and lower-caste students by refusing to share food and drink with them.

The 1813 Act tasked the East India Company government with the advancement of education. Decades later, in 1882, government-aided schools were opened to the public at large. Simultaneously, missionary societies dedicated themselves to Dalit schooling. However, both initiatives were subject to an implicit “go slow” policy as they faced social resistance from upper castes who withdrew students from “integrated” schools. Private initiative fared no better. Paik offers numerous accounts of efforts by Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s Servants of India Society to encourage Dalit education, albeit without allotting adequate funds for that purpose. Reformist commitment to mass education by reformers like N. G. Chandavarkar, M. G. Ranade, and R. G. Bhandarkar was coupled with apprehension about the social hygiene and mental fitness of Dalit students. Meanwhile conservative voices, such as B. G. Tilak, emphasized a tracked system of education, appropriate to the manual labor performed by the lower castes, that could curtail rebelliousness. Furthermore, resistance to mass schooling found an ingenious ally in quasi-participatory colonial institutions, such as the municipalities, which were controlled by Brahmins, and later, by economically well-off non-Brahmin communities, not to mention local school boards. Paik notes that with the onset of dyarchic government in the 1920s, “the transfer of power to school boards was brutal for Dalits” (p. 65): commitments to equal access were foreclosed by the inequities of political and economic power, and the persistence of caste dominance in new forms and spaces.

Dalits were far from docile. Paik tracks the growth of Dalit protests at social exclusion in schools after 1920, especially challenges to the separate drinking water system. This chapter records the unfolding of a student strike against that system in Foras Road Municipal School in Bombay in 1929, which saw counter-response by upper castes who shut down the stock exchange and a protest against uppity Dalits by the upper-caste headmaster of the Agripada school. Such protests were a response to private initiatives, including by Ambedkar’s Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha (Society for the Welfare of the Excluded), which followed upon numerous local initiatives by Dalits across the region, and by V. R. Shinde’s Depressed Classes Mission to establish separate schools, though these were never as numerous as in Bengal, or the Tamil country. Ambedkar also argued for free and compulsory schooling, and struggled to mobilize public funds for that purpose. While the chapter focuses on the issue of Dalit schooling under conditions of severe inequity, it ends by noting efforts by Congress to shift focus away from the issue of free and compulsory education toward the cause of education for girls. Indeed by 1940, “upper-caste men appeared to reason that by replacing government high schools with girls’ schools, they would set women against Dalits, creating a rivalry between the two marginalized groups” (p. 66).

The third and fourth chapters of this section on Dalit women’s education precede a chapter that asks what education meant for Dalits and lower castes. Paik notes that Ambedkar’s focus on integrated schooling was distinctive when compared to Jotirao Phule’s arguments half a century earlier for developing intellectual confidence among Dalits and lower castes through separate schools, and when contrasted with Gandhi’s argument for separate schooling as a stopgap measure while generating upper-caste consent to integrated schooling. Paik connects these projects of transformative education with such thinkers as Antonio Gramsci, Franz Fanon, Paulo Freire, and John Dewey, whose investment in civic education and the autonomy of critical thought had a deep impact on Ambedkar.[1]

Dalit women’s education was forged in this context of viewing education as the right to think.[2] Across two rich chapters Paik addresses the unique relationship that was forged between Dalit reform, women’s public participation in politics, and the quiet but profound transformations that ensued from becoming educated. She argues that concerns with sexual respectability and bourgeois morality compromised the project of female education from the start. “There was a major concern with women’s ‘difference’ that resulted in much public debate about curricula, syllabi, textbooks, and even the best location for girls’ education. Hence, a major issue in women’s education was the emphasis on a ‘feminised’ curriculum” (p. 117). The idea of curricular distinction between men’s and women’s schooling was an idea supported by Hindu reformers, such as B. G. Tilak and V. S. Chiplunkar, while only a handful of men, such as G. G. Agarkar and the sexologist R. D. Karve, supported coeducation and a single curriculum. Meanwhile, ideas of “protection” pervaded institutions like Pandita Ramabai’s Seva Sadan (1889) and Karve’s Hingne home (1896) for deserted widows and upper-caste women fleeing abusive circumstances. The fact that there were only two women from the Depressed Classes against a total of sixty-eight women in Karve’s home testifies to the “double discrimination” Dalit women faced.

Paik’s analysis of the different emphasis of Dalit women’s education, its focus on svaabhimaan (respect) and svaavalamban (self-reliance) is the crux of her argument. She reminds us that the Starte Committee noted in 1927 that of 1,983,415 girls from the Backward Class, 5,739 girls were receiving primary education, while another 159 girls were in middle school. Only one girl was in high school, and none was receiving university education (pp. 125-126). Dalit women were all too aware, and demanded educational equality, not merely differential access. “Caste identity, rather than gender, was the primary framework of political identity. While Dalit women battled to recover their individual and collective self-esteem, and to uplift their community, they also faced social discrimination at the hands of their upper-caste ‘fortunate’ sisters” (p. 132). Indeed the unmarked universality of liberal feminism confronted Dalit women’s claims to equality through struggle and solidarity: when they elided caste to claim gender equality, upper-caste feminists found themselves confronting Dalit women’s demands for a practical illustration of equality across the divide of caste, class, and gender.

Paik introduces us to the spate of organizational activism in which Dalit women were involved, from participation in the All-India Dalit Mahila Congress, to the establishment of an Untouchable Women’s Society in Amravati in 1921, and participation in the important temple-entry satyagrahas of the 1920s and early 1930s. The climax came in 1942, at the Women’s Conference of the All-India Scheduled Caste Federation (AISCF) in Nagpur when Sulochana Dongre and Shantabai Dani spoke before twenty-five thousand women. This was soon followed by a Women’s Conference in Kanpur in 1944 attended by Dongre, while Dani was the chairperson of the Women’s Council of the AISCF that organized that Kanpur meeting, and functioned as secretary of the Bombay branch of the Scheduled Caste Federation. Paik notes that while Dalit communities privileged sexual respectability and bourgeois morality, they were also adamant about the significance of female political participation and public visibility in the Ambedkarite project to create a “confident, masculine Dalit womanhood” (p. 176). There was surely a deep and enduring contradiction between the focus on emancipation as a collective project by streepurush (women-men, the term coined by Phule in the later nineteenth century to signal gender equality) and efforts to regulate female sexuality in the cause of gender modernization. Paik accepts this struggle to conceive a viable subject of political feminism but she argues, nonetheless, for a Dalit feminism that grew out of experiences of social exclusion and Ambedkarite revolution that was markedly different in character from liberal feminism.

Paik’s second section, “Paradox of Education,” is a tour de force, which considers the ongoing effects of caste and class in shaping Dalit women’s subjectivity. She focuses on women’s experience of gendered precarity and spatial inequality as mutually entailed, structuring forces. Through a discussion of the geography of Pune’s and Mumbai’s slums, Paik argues that young Dalit women who are subject to repeated insult and humiliation in the classroom, correlate identity with the inhabitation of stigmatized space, as do upper castes who enact forms of “urban indifference” and outright casteism. The book’s focus on the social disciplining of the senses—smell, speech, dress, gait—is a profound exercise in social psychology; Paik shows us that this is coeval with these young women’s fierce desire to better their lives, often via access to government incentives, to escape grinding poverty.

Escaping to the middle class is a key aspiration, and it marks an important milestone within the life of the community. Yet Paik reminds us, across three powerful chapters, that Dalit women’s aspirational mobility requires a daily confrontation with caste stereotype in public, and fraught engagements in intimate life with husbands, in-laws, and children. “The middle-class Hindu ideal of marriage, the unacceptability of divorce and the agony of perpetual oppression by men thus affected many women” (p. 309). New sites of struggle appear even as earlier paradigms are left behind.

Paik’s book is a profound meditation on the enduring effects of caste, class, and gender as these affect individual lives contingently, but through the path dependency of Maharashtrian social history. One wishes, at times, for a better sense of the complicated intellectual and political histories that shaped the terrain Paik describes, but then we would lose sight of the everyday, and the embodied experience of Dalit gender she provides. I would opt for the latter any day given the sheer paucity of such work, and the sophistication of Paik’s analysis.

The publication of Paik’s book coincides with a rise in Dalit activism. Many will recall the suicide of the doctoral student Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad after a lifelong experience with caste discrimination and social exclusion. That suicide has mobilized young Dalits to challenge social exclusion and intellectual invisibility. Set against this history of the present, Paik’s book is a powerful and enduring reminder of why the project of mass intellectuality is among anti-casteism’s most lasting legacies.

Notes

[1]. Arun Prabha Mukherjeee, “B. R. Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Meaning of Democracy,” New Literary History 40, no. 2 (2009): 345-370. Mukherjee’s article offers an important textual analysis of Ambedkar’s engagement with Dewey’s writing.

[2]. The political philosopher Jacques Ranciere reminds us that the right to think also involves the right to think otherwise as he engages with what might be termed an intellectual history of subaltern thought. Jacques Ranciere, Proletarian Nights: The Worker’s Dream in Nineteenth-Century France, trans. John Drury (London: Verso, 2012).

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20. THROUGH A CHARRED LANDSCAPE | Uddalak Mukherjee
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(The Telegraph - 4 November 2016)

THE BURNING FOREST: INDIA'S WAR IN BASTAR By Nandini Sundar, Juggernaut, Rs 699

In a recent interview, Ashis Nandy, one of India's foremost commentators, was asked whether he foresaw a future - say, in the next 100 years - in which India, following the American model, would succeed in consigning its indigenous people to designated reserves. Nandy replied that India's tribal people have been systematically displaced and "atomized", and, contrary to perception, there is a possibility of indigenous communities being exterminated. Nandini Sundar's book etches the chilling contours of the mechanism of their elimination in Bastar.

The Maoist insurrection - 'India's single biggest security threat' in the words of a former prime minister - has attracted the attention of writers, journalists and researchers. Sundar's book stands out in this body of work because it lays claim to being one of the most rounded accounts of the strife. Sundar draws on her long years of field work to give her book a depth that has eluded most other narratives. She also honours the fundamental tenets of anthropological enquiry. Even though Sundar experiences the horrors - vicariously or otherwise - that are being perpetrated on a vulnerable people, she refrains from taking sides. Yet, this distancing is not shorn of empathy. It is this rare balance that enables the book to capture the voices of a people trapped between a predatory State and its resilient enemy.

A Maoist sympathizer had once described his comrades as 'spirits of conscience'. Their secretive ways, brought about by State persecution, have contributed to their spectral presence in the public imagination. (In her insightful and moving essay, "Walking with the Comrades", Arundhati Roy recounted receiving nothing more than a cryptic note as a sign for her to travel to Bastar.) Sundar's research plugs the gap in public knowledge with her detailing of rebel organizations and their functions. In the documentation of the Maoist hierarchy, Sundar notes - not without irony - that their antagonism for State paraphernalia notwithstanding, the Maoists have ended up emulating some of the State's ritual trappings, such as a flag as well as a calendar of commemorative events.

Sundar's chronicling of the Salwa Judum's depredations is exhaustive. The Cherla Testimonies - public accounts of the murders, rape and arson committed by the Judum - would force readers to confront India's claim of being an unsullied democracy. The tales of Judum's excesses have, over the years, slowly trickled into the public domain. The importance of Sundar's research lies in providing the larger context to the violence of democratic institutions. Sundar contends, not without reason, that Maoist opposition to the State's design to strip Bastar of its mineral wealth has brought about this vicious response. India's earlier experiments in Mizoram, where the State let loose its army on armed dissidents, causing death, destruction and mass displacement - "grouping" is the term used to describe the resettling of people into fortified camps - served as the template for security operations in Bastar and Dantewada. The 'collateral damage', the expression used to describe the deaths and human rights abuses by smug security analysts and urban commentators, is now there for all to see. Sundar draws our attention to other - less discussed - aspects of the conflict. Health services have been crippled; literacy rates have plunged; the landscape has been fragmented - "The highways became Judum territory, and the villages became Maoist country" - and there have been disturbing demographic shifts. There has been a surge in immigration of non-adivasi groups and tehsils have become urbanized: Bhairamgarh, which had a negligible urban population, is now a statutory town.

The book accommodates varied, undocumented voices belonging not just to State representatives and their adversaries but also to those who occupy the lower rungs in the warring camps. The Special Police Officers emerge as troubled, tragic figures. They talk of having escaped trials for their crimes but concede that their lives, nonetheless, are marked by meagre pay, ethnic discrimination and the constant terror of retribution at the hands of Maoists. Women SPOs - the victims of entrenched patriarchy - are worse off, preyed upon by the police and allotted menial tasks inside the camps. Where these diverse voices, those of the victims and the perpetrators, intersect is in the projection of the conflict as a futile, unrelenting war. A CRPF official tells Sundar, "If we die, there will be more where we came from... And if they die, there will also be more where they came from. As long as the forces are... replenished the war will continue."

The discourse on Bastar's civil war has, expectedly, been appropriated by the government. The narrative has been simplified - the benevolent State battling insurgents opposed to development - by successive dispensations. But Sundar diffuses the lines, thereby making it difficult for citizens and readers to choose sides. The Judum's perversity has, on occasion, been matched by Maoist retaliations. The exploration of Chhattisgarh's parallel economy also reveals significant areas of collusion among the stakeholders - the Maoists, politicians and businessmen.

Sundar takes care not to reduce her narrative to an account of the Maoists and their struggle. Her book is a thorough examination of a democratic State's ruse to project a contest over the denial of rights and distributive justice as a law-and-order problem. This sleight-of-hand, Sundar argues, would not have been possible without the State's aggressive agenda exemplified in the militarization of the collective imagination and the co-option of the media, law and human rights organizations.

Sundar remarks that the book had been written as a response to the rage she felt at the "annihilation of a people and their way of life". The bleak tone is warranted, given the erosion in dialogue and the profits accrued from the conflict. The dystopian future that Ashis Nandy predicted may be nearer than we think.


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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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