South Asia Citizens Wire - 25 October 2015 - No. 2874 [since 1996] Contents: 1. Sri Lanka: Full report of Maxwell Paranagama Commission report as tabled in the parliament on 20 Oct 2015 2. To reclaim its public spaces, Pakistan must first reinvigorate its public culture | Nazish Brohi 3. Afghanistan: Brief takeover of Kunduz leaves a trail of destruction 4. Violence and threats against Pakistani artists, writers and cricketers in Mumbai: Joint Statement by journalists in Mumbai & Karachi 5. India: Ghulam Ali’s forced absence is a blow to Mumbai’s capacious cultural space | S Gopalakrishnan 6. 2015 Rebellion by India’s literati against intolerance and growing assault on free speech 7. India: Text of memorandum submitted by the march of writer's from Mandi House to the Sahitya Akademi on 23 Oct 2015 8. Announced: Pratirodh - A convention of writers, artists, thinkers, academicians and all conscientious people (1 Nov 2015, New Delhi) 9. Behind the coup that backfired: the demise of Indonesia's Communist Party | Robert Cribb 10. India: 'Dadri lynching was premeditated' - Report of Visit by National Commission of Minorities team to Bisahda village (U.P.) on (15 Oct 2015) 11. Delhi Demo in Protest against Killing of Dalits in Haryana: Photos, Press Release & Memorandum (21 October 2015) 12. Statement by Angus Deaton to the Indian Press 13. Beyond India's beef with beef, new hatreds grow | Pankaj Mishra 14. Recent On Communalism Watch: - Support brave Kannada woman writer - Chetana Thirthahalli who has been threatened - India: The Mask Is Off (Editorial in EPW 24 October 2015) - India: Why reprimands of hatemongers by Shah and Jaitley are completely hollow (Kavita Krishnan) - India: Third Front and Left Front stand exposed in Bihar (Hargopal Singh) - India: Epidemic of Hindutva fascism (Kashmir Times, Editorial - 22 October 2015) - Goons don’t have brains – here’s why a Sena attack on Najam Sethi is ironic (Bachi Karkaria, Times of India, 24 Oct 2015) - India: Godse's Own Country (Tehelka, Editor's Cut) - Three Murders and a Lynching | Ram Puniyani - Interview with Sadanand Menon: It’s Time to Go Not by the Letters but by the Spirit (Chitra Padmanabhan) - The Rise of Hindrabia (Samar Halarnkar) - Online Petition: Ban Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) to save India
::: RESOURCEs & FULL TEXT ::: 15. Bangladesh: No place for bigotry | Dhaka Tribune Editorial 16. India: Fringe groups not spreading hate, BJP ministers are | Kamal Mitra Chenoy 17. India: Before anyone can debate the Sangh, it has to stop abusing its opponents - Interview with Romila Thapar (Ajaz Ashraf) 18. The Pak parallel (Apoorvanand) 19. India: Shabana Azmi is concerned that the right to dissent is under threat 20. In conversation: Kiran Desai meets Anita Desai 21. India: Planes over Aizawl - A cautionary tale for a government planning to use air power against Maoists | Ipsita Chakravarty 22. Rosalyn Baxandall obituary | Sheila Rowbotham ======================================== 1. SRI LANKA: FULL REPORT OF MAXWELL PARANAGAMA COMMISSION REPORT AS TABLED IN THE PARLIAMENT ON 20 OCT 2015 ======================================== On 15 August 2013, the former President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, established the Presidential Commission to Investigate into Complaints regarding Missing Persons comprised of three members former Judge Maxwell P. Paranagama (Chairman), Mrs. Mano Ramanathan and Mrs. Suranjana Vidyaratne (‘Paranagama Commission' or ‘PCICMP'). Maxwell Paranagama Commission report, officially known as the Presidential Commission of Inquiry Into Complaints of Abductions and Disappearances has been tabled in (...) - http://sacw.net/article11822.html ======================================== 2. TO RECLAIM ITS PUBLIC SPACES, PAKISTAN MUST FIRST REINVIGORATE ITS PUBLIC CULTURE | Nazish Brohi ======================================== There is a connection between people throwing trash outside their homes and women being groped on buses, and between low turnouts at civic protests and men using roadsides as toilets. And that is that no one takes ownership of public places in Pakistan. http://sacw.net/article11821.html ======================================== 3. AFGHANISTAN: BRIEF TAKEOVER OF KUNDUZ LEAVES A TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION ======================================== As they overran the city, the Taliban occupied government buildings and the headquarters of several news media, including Roshani Radio and TV, an independent broadcaster, where they torched and destroyed much of the equipment. http://sacw.net/article11768.html ======================================== 4. VIOLENCE AND THREATS AGAINST PAKISTANI ARTISTS, WRITERS AND CRICKETERS IN MUMBAI: JOINT STATEMENT BY JOURNALISTS IN MUMBAI & KARACHI ======================================== As journalists from Mumbai and Karachi who see each other as colleagues, we are dismayed at the recent violent disruptions and threats against Pakistani artists, writers and cricketers in Mumbai. http://sacw.net/article11779.html ======================================== 5. INDIA: GHULAM ALI’S FORCED ABSENCE IS A BLOW TO MUMBAI’S CAPACIOUS CULTURAL SPACE | S Gopalakrishnan ======================================== The unruly and unpredictable forms of collective violence that the Shiv Sena threatens against visiting artistes from Pakistan go against the very ethos of Mumbai and its cultural past. http://sacw.net/article11769.html ======================================== 6. 2015 REBELLION BY INDIA’S LITERATI AGAINST INTOLERANCE AND GROWING ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH ======================================== More than 40 authors have handed back major honours in a stand against ‘vicious assaults’ on cultural diversity http://sacw.net/article11766.html ======================================== 7. INDIA: TEXT OF MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY THE MARCH OF WRITER'S FROM MANDI HOUSE TO THE SAHITYA AKADEMI ON 23 OCT 2015 ======================================== WE, the writers, reading public and cultural activists who have assembled at the gate of Sahitya Akademi on the occasion of its Executive Board meeting dated 23-10-2015 express our protest and angst against the ever growing fascistic tendencies and violent intolerance in the country which has posed a danger to freedom of expression and other civil liberties guaranteed by our nation's Constitution. http://sacw.net/article11814.html ======================================== 8. ANNOUNCED: PRATIRODH - A CONVENTION OF WRITERS, ARTISTS, THINKERS, ACADEMICIANS AND ALL CONSCIENTIOUS PEOPLE (1 NOV 2015, NEW DELHI) ======================================== Resistance against attacks on reason, democracy & composite culture http://sacw.net/article11811.html ======================================== 9. BEHIND THE COUP THAT BACKFIRED: THE DEMISE OF INDONESIA'S COMMUNIST PARTY | Robert Cribb ======================================== In 1965, at the height of the Cold War, a communist victory in Indonesia seemed plausible. At the time, the Indonesian Communist Party was the third-largest in the world with three million members. In that year, however, the systematic destruction of Indonesia's Communist Party (PKI) began. http://sacw.net/article11805.html ======================================== 10. INDIA: 'DADRI LYNCHING WAS PREMEDITATED' - REPORT OF VISIT BY NATIONAL COMMISSION OF MINORITIES TEAM TO BISAHDA VILLAGE (U.P.) ON (15 OCT 2015) ======================================== The lynching of man in Dadri in Sept 2015 strongly appeared to be the result of "pre-meditated planning" under which people were incited to using a temple, says a report of the National Minorities Commission team. http://sacw.net/article11785.html ======================================== 11. DELHI DEMO IN PROTEST AGAINST KILLING OF DALITS IN HARYANA: PHOTOS, PRESS RELEASE & MEMORANDUM (21 OCTOBER 2015) ======================================== There was a dharna (Sit-in) outside Haryana Bhavan in New Delhi on 21 October 2015 to protest the burning to death of two small Dalit children in a Faridabad village by "high" caste people. http://sacw.net/article11784.html ======================================== 12. STATEMENT BY ANGUS DEATON TO THE INDIAN PRESS ======================================== I am thrilled to have been awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2015. I am even more thrilled that the Nobel Committee highlighted the work that my collaborators and I have done on India. http://sacw.net/article11783.html ======================================== 13. BEYOND INDIA'S BEEF WITH BEEF, NEW HATREDS GROW | Pankaj Mishra ======================================== Lynch mobs and assassins are on a rampage across South Asia. Days after a Muslim man was murdered in India, for allegedly eating beef, a Baptist pastor was stabbed in Bangladesh. It isn't just religious minorities that are under assault. In recent months, bloggers, atheists and rationalist intellectuals have been assassinated. http://sacw.net/article11782.html ======================================== 14. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH: ======================================== - India: Stop Attacking Dalits in Uttarakhand (press release by NAPM) - Support brave Kannada woman writer - Chetana Thirthahalli who has been threatened - India: The Mask Is Off (Editorial in EPW 24 October 2015) - India: Why reprimands of hatemongers by Shah and Jaitley are completely hollow (Kavita Krishnan) - India: Third Front and Left Front stand exposed in Bihar (Hargopal Singh) - India: Epidemic of Hindutva fascism (Kashmir Times, Editorial - 22 October 2015) - Goons don’t have brains – here’s why a Sena attack on Najam Sethi is ironic (Bachi Karkaria, Times of India, 24 Oct 2015) - India: Godse's OWn Country (Tehelka, Editor's Cut) - Three Murders and a Lynching | Ram Puniyani - Interview with Sadanand Menon: It’s Time to Go Not by the Letters but by the Spirit (Chitra Padmanabhan) - The Rise of Hindrabia (Samar Halarnkar) - Online Petition: Ban Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) to save India - available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/ ::: RESOURCES & FULL TEXT ::: ========================================= 15. BANGLADESH: NO PLACE FOR BIGOTRY | Dhaka Tribune Editorial ========================================= (Dhaka Tribune, 23 October 2015) There is an urgent need to shift our collective attitude back to how it once was and promote cultural harmony The recent social media attacks on national cricket player Liton Kumar Das reveal a disturbing level of religious intolerance in the country. It is a sad commentary on our society today that so many people still think it is acceptable to publicly make hateful comments about someone else’s faith. Hindus and other minorities, just as much as Muslims, have every right to practice their own religions and display their faith on social media. However, this kind of discrimination in any form is totally unacceptable. It is the sort of overt bigotry has no place in a religiously and ethnically diverse land such as ours, and can never be tolerated. Bangladesh has always been an accepting nation as far as minorities are concerned, but this sort of heinous disregard for one of our fellow citizen’s religious beliefs -- and a famous athlete no less -- is perhaps an indication of how we’re headed in the wrong direction. We are becoming woefully backward when it comes to tolerance of religious and cultural diversity. The intolerance is usually directed towards our minorities, as has been seen from our mistreatment of the various non-Bengali ethnic groups in Bangladesh. The abuse directed at cricketer Liton serves as a reminder that no one, not even a national celebrity, is safe from the pervasive bigotry. There is an urgent need to shift our collective attitude back to how it once was and promote cultural harmony. For too long the Muslim majority in this country has taken its own freedoms of religious expression for granted, while persecuting minorities for expressing theirs. If we are to promote true equality, we must stand beside Liton, and advocate thinking that allows us to live together in harmony. ========================================= 16. INDIA: FRINGE GROUPS NOT SPREADING HATE, BJP MINISTERS ARE by Kamal Mitra Chenoy ========================================= (Daily O - 22 October 2015) The serious intervention expected from PM Modi has not happened. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's name is scarcely mentioned nowadays. Narendra Modi is the flavour of the season. But after the persistent rise of communal incidents and a climate of intolerance which has driven writers, cultural activists, artistes to give up their awards in protest, memories of Vajpayee have come up again. Of course, it would be unfair to judge PM Modi by Vajpayee's standards, especially relatively early in his term. But he can be judged by the Constitution, the judiciary and international human rights and humanitarian law which India is party to. When Modi was CM of Gujarat, widespread rioting broke out in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra incident. About 1,500 Muslims were butchered. PM Vajpayee made it a point to remind Modi of "Rajdharma". But human rights defenders like Mukul Sinha and Teesta Setalvad were marked. Sinha died prematurely but Setalvad soldiered on. She was hounded on various charges all the way to the Supreme Court. She still faces charges. But troublingly, communal sentiments also began to rise. This was coupled with Hindutva. As Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, a Union minister of state, put it, India was divided into "Ramzadas" and "Haramzadas". There was a countrywide outcry, but unprecedentedly she was not removed from office. Also read: Shiv Sena is right: No Godhra means no Modi On September 29, in Bisada, near Dadri, a 50-year-old man Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched for cow slaughter. His son Danish suffered serious head injuries, and is now in the Army Hospital, New Delhi. There was no cow, no slaughter, but two forensic reports that verified that nothing illegal was done. The Thakurs (Ranas) including the local BJP in charge, played a major role. Union minister for culture and tourism, Mahesh Sharma who came to Bisada brushed aside any conspiracy, called it an accident, but also suggested that "Perhaps there was a trail of blood" from Akhlaq's house, inferring therefore that there had been cow slaughter. He also downplayed Danish's injuries, and claimed "that not a finger was raised against the girl" who was Akhlaq's daughter. Women's activist Kavita Krishan who came to Bisada, stated that the young woman had been pushed around. A BJP MLA Sangeet Singh Som, indicted in the Vishnu Sahay Commission of Inquiry report on the Muzaffarnagar riots, warned that if the "innocent" were arrested, this would not be tolerated. Both leaders had violated Section 144, thus being guilty under Section 188, a minor infringement. Incidentally, Som is a partner in a buffalo meat-exporting firm. After this the surviving family members of Mohammad Akhlaq decided not to return to their village. All this while there was not a word from the PM. Only after the president spoke out against this tragedy, was Modi finally willing to make a statement against intolerance, without naming Bisada or Dadri. After that there have been a flurry of statements largely from the secularists. But attacks increased in the name of cow slaughter even in Udhampur in which a young Kashmiri died. Also read: Dangers of what Modi doesn't say and what bhakts don't want you to say Official rhetoric continued to be provocative. Haryana CM ML Khattar warned that Muslims who ate beef would not be able to stay in India. He disregarded the fact that Goa ruled by the BJP permitted beef eating. He also warned women from going outdoors. Finance minister Arun Jaitley, dubbed the writers protest "manufactured" and a sign of "political intolerance". The president spoke again for the need for tolerance and communal amity. Yet a couple of days ago near Ballabgarh, Haryana, a Dalit family had fallen afoul of some Rajputs and was living under police protection. They were attacked, their hut burnt along with the two children. The police did not intervene. Yet the CM claimed that caste was not an issue, though it clearly was. The communal temperature and the spread of intolerance is rising. The serious intervention expected from the Union government and the BJP has not happened. It is the president who has intervened most clearly to defend the country's secular ethos. But there is no alternative to executive intervention. It may be wise, if not incumbent, for the PM to intervene personally in the trouble spots. If necessary, he should reschedule his foreign engagements. It is also clear that the problems have not occurred because of fringe groups. The BJP and its ally the Shiv Sena are involved. Corrective action has to come from the top. ========================================= 17. INDIA: BEFORE ANYONE CAN DEBATE THE SANGH, IT HAS TO STOP ABUSING ITS OPPONENTS - INTERVIEW WITH ROMILA THAPAR (Ajaz Ashraf) ========================================= (scroll.in - 20 October 2015) INTERVIEW Romila Thapar: Before anyone can debate the Sangh, it has to stop abusing its opponents The renowned historian discusses the growing intolerance in India, the religious Right's colonial idea of history, and asks if our opinion-makers ever read. Ajaz Ashraf · Romila Thapar: Before anyone can debate the Sangh, it has to stop abusing its opponents Photo Credit: Creative Commons Romila Thapar is one of India’s foremost historians. In this interview with Scroll.in, she discusses her new book, the rising tide of intolerance in the country, the Modi government, the Sangh Parivar’s reluctance to debate communalism, the ascendency of the religious Right, and its colonial idea of history. To counter the crisis facing India, Thapar says it is important to tell the public about the essential meaning of Indian plurality. Your book, The Public Intellectual in India, is based on your lecture, 'To question or not to question? That is the question', which you delivered on October 26, 2014. Do you find it gratifying that so many writers have registered their protest against the growing intolerance by returning their Sahitya Akademi awards? Well, what caused the protest is inexcusable but that there has been a protest by the writers has been so welcome that it has made the book seem somewhat unnecessary (Laughs). I am amazed and delighted that so many people have broken their silence and come out to make a statement. Your lecture was published and read widely. To what extent do you think the lecture was an inspiration for the writers to return the awards? I don’t think one lecture can spark off this kind of a protest. The sheer horror of what has been happening and its frequency in recent months has provoked this reaction. It was an expression of outrage. Do you think this outrage is over the lynching of a person in Dadri, or the killing of Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi, or the general ambience of the country? Assassination and lynching bring intentions into sharp focus. But there is the general ambience as it is developing these days. We are now a society that fears the terror of extremist groups. It is time we stopped calling them fringe groups. They are terrorists, their function is to evoke terror and spread fear in various communities by killing and threatening people, and their patrons in the mainstream protect them. There are connections within the umbrella of a similar ideological link, which is perhaps why their patrons do not speak against them. The pattern is common to such groups in many parts of the world. Over the last one year, there has been talk about the new government bringing in development and economic change. We have seen very little of that, at least not change affecting those that need it most. But what we have seen a lot of is what some people have referred to as the underbelly of the government. These extremist groups seem to have decided that it is a now-or-never situation for them. What seems to be happening is that the underbelly is increasingly becoming the dominant factor. What is your response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling the Dadri incident sad and yet accusing the protesting writers of resorting to the 'politics of polarisation'? Is sadness the emotion Dadri brings out? Isn’t there a stronger emotion than that? Like what? Outrage. But this is obviously not what the government feels since a member of the central government visiting Dadri said, “It was an accident." Don’t they know the difference between lynching and an accident? I believe they do know the difference and, therefore, one is surprised at the choice of the word. Another central minister Nirmala Sitharaman states that we need to have a debate on communalism. (Laughs) I couldn’t believe it. From the time before Partition till now, in all the social sciences, in films, in arts, in literature, one of the central themes has been the debate on communalism. If you look at the history written since 1947, one of the major strands has been the concern over communalism. Do these people not read? How can anyone say that we haven’t debated it, when the debate has been going on for almost a century. Of course, the difference is that all those who have entered the debate on communalism have done so with a certain understanding of the problem. But what we get from some elements of the Sangh Parivar is not a counter-debate, but objectionable personal abuse. Abuse is not an argument. If there has to be a debate with the Sangh Parivar – if that is what the minister meant – then it has to stop abusing its opponents. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has called the protest of writers a 'manufactured paper rebellion'. The word manufactured in this context is meaningless. You can say everything is manufactured. What is the difference between manufactured support and manufactured protest? If he intends to say that the protest is artificially put together then he seems unaware that it was quite evidently spontaneous because large numbers of people have reacted adversely to what has been happening. People have expressed their outrage over these recent events. There is nothing manufactured about it at all. Jaitley says he wonders why the same writers didn’t protest against the Emergency, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and the Bhagalpur riots of 1989. That is not true, many of us protested against the Emergency. We didn’t carry placards or organise sit-ins at Jantar Mantar. We do remember who protested strongly and who protested meekly, or who remained silent. To tar all with the same brush, or to try and smear those protesting today by saying they did not do so then is, I am afraid, completely untenable and, alas, so predictable. It is anyway no argument to imply that because you didn’t protest against the Emergency, your current protest doesn’t count. The Emergency was in any case, a different situation from the current one. Could you specify the difference? To put it at its simplest, the Emergency was not aimed at creating a Hindu Rashtra. It clamped down on freedoms and the protest was against that. What is happening now is again a clamping down on freedoms but added to this is that these are accompanied by attempts to assert the control of Hindu organisations over civil society, and this has introduced a strong communal content into their activities. This wasn’t the case with the Emergency where one was objecting to the denial of freedoms but these were not necessarily accompanied by communal prejudices. Different people protest against different things. You can’t judge those who protest today on the basis of what happened four decades ago. You say in the introduction to The Public Intellectual, 'The majority of current politicians are characterised by little, if any, vision of the kind of society they wish to construct, barring those that come with the limited concept of extreme religious nationalism.' Why is it that those with a limited concept of extreme religious nationalism have a vision, not the others? When I was teaching in Delhi University in the sixties, the conversation at the Coffee House was about the kind of society we were building. Many of us in those days had a vision of what was our workable if not ideal society. Today, people sitting in university coffee houses are not discussing this. They are talking about where the next buck is to be made and when the next promotion is coming – these are genuine concerns, legitimate issues. But let’s go a little further and talk about what is happening around us? Earlier, it used to be the people close to the extreme Left who believed they had a vision of what society should be, where citizens had equality and there was a guarantee of social justice. But today, the people who vociferously propagate the vision of their ideal society are those who want to establish a Hindu Rashtra, identified by religion and unequal rights of citizenship. It is they who have a clear idea of how they want to go about it. The vision of others tends to remain in the shadows. Why is it that the followers of Hindu Rashtra have remained steadfast, not others? Perhaps it is partly because no political party is galvanising people who are, so to speak, politically of the Left or are liberal, in the same way as before. This is less so with the Right-liberal, except that it can’t always keep a sufficient distance from the religious Right. The latter is a group that is fully galvanised at the moment. As I argue in The Public Intellectual, the watershed in India was 1991, when we decided to switch to a market economy and neo-liberalism. That brings about substantial change in the nation. For one, your sights cease to focus only on the nation you belong to, and you begin to see the global scale impinging on the national. At the same time, you are also not too sure where the nation is on the global scale. Second, your expectations soar. You think you will have an astonishing change incorporating social and economic mobility. Since that hasn’t happened, you now have extreme insecurity. This insecurity leads to desperation. Since the problem can’t be solved by economic changes as had been hoped, the other alternative is to say, that we Hindus have a special stake in the country, and we must assert our priority. This is tied into the question of thinking as a liberal, a democrat or secular democrat. In a way, this loosens the conventional vision of society and allows the freedom to think of alternate visions. There cannot be just one vision; and the vision of a Hindu Rashtra isn’t going to run away in a hurry. But people do need to gather together to discuss more openly, and concretely, what kind of society they want. This is not a decision that is once and for all. History records social change, and as a society changes there are bound to be modifications of the original vision. There has been an assumption over the last 30 years or so that we will somehow have secularism, that somehow we will have a democratic system, and that somehow this country will carry on as it always has. This assumption needs to be revisited if it is to approach reality. Don’t you think one failing of the public intellectuals is that they have vacated the religious space, leaving the Sangh Parivar to appropriate the role of being the principal interpreter of Hinduism? I tend to think so. Many of us had argued that religion isn’t important in a society, that it is a personal matter. Yes, religion is a personal matter. I lecture and write on secularism, trying to make people understand that secularism isn’t anti-religion. What it questions is the more socially fundamental condition, namely, the hold that religious organisations have over the functions of civil society. It is these that we as social scientists did not analyse in sufficient depth. Could you provide examples of what you are saying? Take the state schools. We tried to encourage the use of history textbooks that were not religion-oriented, that were secular. By this I mean that all of history was not explained only by the religious policies of the rulers. But simultaneously religious organisations and politico-cultural organisations ran schools where students were taught the reverse of what was in the more secular textbooks. Many of us requested the [Education] Ministry to do an evaluation of the contents of all the textbooks used, but this did not happen. Nobody has tried to examine what these textbooks contain. All that is required is to have professional economists, historians, sociologists, anthropologists and professionals in other disciplines, to evaluate the widely-used textbooks in their disciplines. Are these textbooks of quality? Will these books teach students to think independently, which is what education is about? Do they reflect the plurality of our cultures in a fair manner? Or are these textbooks some kind of catechism – a set of questions is given and an answer to each and that is all that the student needs to know. Every child must know the answer provided, and that suffices as education. The kind of control over civil society that is exercised by the organisations of all religions is what the state has to investigate. That control has to be decreased to the point of permitting the student to question the knowledge that is taught. A school can teach religion or impart religious knowledge, but in a secular society, the system has to be open to discussions from other perspectives. I realise this is a very difficult objective to achieve. The United States had the Monkey Trial in 1925, and the debate between the evolutionists and creationists has continued in some states, and now, the proponents of Intelligent Design have come in. This is a debate that will go on. But one does not want a single point of view from this debate to be the controlling factor. This is where secularism plays a very important part. My second contention is that religion in this country, as against religion in Europe, has been deeply entwined with caste. The social and the religious have often evolved together. Religion in India was never expressed in huge monolithic unities. It was always expressed through sects. Every religion – Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, you name it – spoke through sects and all these had relationships with each other. The sects were often geared around a cluster of castes, if not a large caste. This relationship has not been studied closely, neither by historians nor by sociologists of religion. This relationship between caste and religion complicates the study of the past. When you quote a chronicle from the medieval period that says, “Fifty thousand Hindus were converted”, what do you mean by the phrase 50,000 Hindus, apart from the fact that this number itself could be dubious? Which caste and occupation did they belong to? And when they were converted, what was their status in the new society they created? Keeping in mind that every religion in this country observes caste, that every religion has discriminated against the Dalits – you have Hindu Dalits, Muslim Dalits, Christian Dalits, Sikh Dalits – it becomes important to understand whether it was a purely religious relationship (in the sense of saying ‘I observe this ritual and belief but continue to live my usual life’), or whether there were other considerations of routine existence which were perhaps equally or more important, and that were affected by the change – assuming that there was a substantial change. My contention is that we haven’t looked at the reality of what the relationships were between people belonging to different sects. This would give us a different perspective on religion in India. You say, 'Democracy without its complement of secular thinking falls short of being a democracy.' What exactly do you mean by secular thinking? We have a democracy today, but we still have majority and minority communities identified by religion. These have privileges of one kind or another and the lesser ones have safeguards through this system. All citizens are not equal before the law and the continuance of privileges and safeguards becomes crucial. Is this a democratic way of functioning? We have inherited this from the colonial regime, as we have also inherited so many laws that we should dispense with if we are to call ourselves a secular democracy. In a democratic system when an issue comes up for discussion, people of different views come together and take positions. The majority view that emerges usually takes precedence. The same process is repeated for every issue. This means there is no permanent majority identified by religion or caste or anything. The majority is created each time an issue is discussed. That is not what is happening in Indian democracy. What we have now are vote banks identified by religion and caste. Today, when a public issue comes up, it is seen in terms of the opinions of the majority and minority communities and the views of political parties. It is not discussed primarily in terms of what it means to society as a whole and what is the majority opinion cutting across the existing identities of community. The media, for instance, seems unconcerned with assessing the actual majority opinion and merely projects the opinion of the existing divides. You define liberals thus: 'Being a liberal is an attitude of mind that determines the fight for space in a society when that society resists ethics and reasoned thinking.' Is India’s democracy increasingly becoming illiberal? It is becoming increasingly illiberal by leaps and bounds. You have all kinds of bans – on books, food, clothing, and censorship of creative expression. It is said that women are raped because they don’t behave properly, they don’t dress properly, they go out after dusk. Apart from actions, can such explanations be seen as evidence of a liberal society? Is this a liberal society? We are willing to suppress half the population through these diktats but are not willing to consider a change of the male mindset. Considering reasoned thinking is a benchmark of liberal thinking, what is your response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi claiming that plastic surgery, cloning, aviation technology, etc. were known to sages in ancient India? One’s initial reaction is: why is he making these fantasy statements? He doesn’t have to. He is after all the prime minister. Nobody expects him to know about ancient Indian science. But the next reaction as a thinking person is: Why are these statements being made, not just by him alone, but by a number of people? These are the people who don’t understand the functioning of science. In fact, science is something which evolves – you start with the germ of an idea, then it develops into a further idea, which undergoes fresh development, and by the time you get to the object you are envisaging or talking about, sometimes in the form of a new technology, you have been through a long period of discussion, stage by stage, to get there; a discussion controlled by logical, rational thinking. For instance, take the aeroplane. A reasonable person would say that if we had the aeroplane in 3000 BC, we should have texts on aerodynamics, which is a fundamental necessity before machines can fly. Similarly, take plastic surgery. There are references in the Indian medical texts to people whose nose had been cut and a flap of skin was grafted on. To say that an elephant’s head was sutured to a human neck or shoulder is going far beyond plastic surgery. It is going into an immense degree of fantasy. All these fantasies make for nice fairy tales. But the more important question is: Why do people believe and propagate these tales? One is that they don’t understand science, because if they did, they would not simply go to the end product, but examine the stages through which the end product is arrived at. These they would not find in the ancient texts. The second aspect of this, which is equally disturbing, is where is the need for us to make these claims unless it is that we are a society that lacks self-confidence. Do such statements spring from an inferiority complex? They come from a deep inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West and vis-à-vis those members of the society who understand science. What are the roots of this complex? Is it because of the colonial experience? It starts with the colonial experience. We were called an inferior culture. The nationalists reacted by saying that we may be materially inferior but we are spiritually superior, and that spiritual superiority overrides material superiority. That is at the root of it. From there it goes on. Since we are unable to become the superpower we keep talking about, we therefore have to say that all the current inventions of the West that we admire, are actually not new to us because we had already invented all of them in ancient times. In part, this is common to all nationalisms. It is not typical to India. As Eric Hobsbawm put it very nicely, “History is to nationalism what the poppy is to the opium addict.” All nationalisms have to have a golden age to which they can constantly refer. That becomes their utopia, which they want to recapture. This strengthens national identity. So statements about how we were scientifically much more advanced than the West is today, ties into extreme nationalist feelings as well. This is not the normal nationalism we all endorse but extreme nationalism. I think all of this comes into play. But has any nationalism used history to justify retribution in the present, in the manner the Sangh Parivar seems to? One of the essential tenets of the Sangh Parivar’s idea of Hindu Rashtra is to give primacy to the Hindus. To achieve this, it is preferable to downgrade the minorities. This is a complex matter because there has also been an emphasis on Hindu victimisation so those that tyrannised in the past were the people who mistreated the Hindus. I am amazed that there is so much talk about Hindus having been through a thousand years of slavery, tyrannised by Muslim rule. Once again one has to ask the question: Do opinion-makers not read any more? Leave aside the issue of whether or not Hindus and Muslims lived in harmony, an issue that historians have discussed at length and will continue to do, taking into account the complicated intricacies of these kinds of relationships. Let’s just look at what happened to Sanskrit and Hinduism in the second millennium AD, when supposedly there was a victimisation of Hindus by Muslims. How does one explain then that it was a period of great efflorescence in Hinduism. There were a range of philosophical schools and compendia composed on their views that stretched from the Charvaka materialists to the Vedanta type idealists, such as some groups discussed in the Sarva-darshana-sangraha of Madhvacharya; there were commentaries on the Vedic texts such as Sayana’s commentary on the Rig Veda; there were commentaries and digests on the social and legal codes incorporating new social laws and observances to accommodate changes in society such as the work of Kulluka; and some of the finest literary works and religious texts in Sanskrit, Prakrit and the regional languages were composed and known in these times. It was an impressive flowering of religion and literature. Various Hindu cultures moved in diverse directions – for instance, the Ramananda sect and the worship of Rama, the Krishna bhakti movement focused on Vrindavan, the rendering of the Rama-katha in Hindi, in Tulsi’s Ramacharitamanas, and in many other regional languages. Hindustani classical music, the Dhrupad, which is a combination of musical trends suffused with religion, emerged during this time as did Carnatic music given shape by the three great gurus. The extensive Bhakti movement in the North, that had propagators and followers all over, is entirely of the second millennium AD. Some of the major works in Sanskrit were translated into Persian under the Mughals and travelled westwards as well. There was a tremendous amount of interlinking, interfacing with new cultural developments in Eurasia. We should understand that this was also a period of acclaimed achievements in the study of astronomy and mathematics, and also medicine. Astronomers writing Sanskrit works were well-known in major centres elsewhere, such as Baghdad and later Samarkand. Their theories are quoted and are subsequently developed further and eventually some of them, it is thought, may have found their way to Europe. Is this the culture of a people enslaved? What are they talking about? Have they not read history? Or have they only read a selectively written history for purposes of propaganda? Don’t they take the trouble of reading other histories and asking that if it is claimed that Hindus were tyrannised by Muslims and victimised, what explains this flowering of Hindu cultures, religious sects, and the sciences in the last thousand years? But people like Indian Council of Historical Research’s YS Rao keep insisting that there can’t be one history, that… Of course, there isn’t only one history. Why did we counter the colonial history, or even aspects of nationalist history? That was because we were moving history from Indology into the social sciences. In the 1960s, ancient history that had been very much a part of Indology, began to familiarise itself with the methods of the social sciences. History eventually was recognised as one. Therefore, new sources became evident and new questions came to be asked. Hindutva history on the other hand remains rooted in the 19th century. Their understanding of history is that of the 19th century, with its single explanation for everything. Whereas today, we don’t deny that there can be different explanations of a historical situation creating variant versions of history, but we do insist that each such explanation must be based on reliable evidence and must be argued by using logic and rational thinking and the methods that accompany such analyses. Each version has to be evaluated before it can be accepted. And some of us would argue further that these explanations have to be seen in an order of priority. The important point is to debate these versions. For the last 50 years, professional historians have been doing so. Unfortunately, the entire debate has been dismissed by the other side who condemn it, saying, ‘Oh, they are all Marxists’. Being a Marxist is now used as a term of abuse, in the same way, interestingly, as it was also used by the McCarthyites in the USA in the 1950s. Needless to say none of the people who use it as abuse have any idea of what Marxism means. But if they were to read what has been written they would discover that contradictions of historical interpretations have been present within the Marxist tradition, not to mention non-Marxist traditions. Give an example of a contradiction in the Marxist tradition. The dismissal of Marx’s Asiatic Mode of Production by most Marxists is an example, but more to the point is the debate on whether or not there was feudalism in Indian history? The first time it was seriously discussed in the sixties was by Marxist historians. Various people took it up and explored the idea. A major critique of applying Marx’s theory of the feudal mode of production to India, came initially from another Marxist, not from a non-Marxist. The end result was a robust and vigorous debate among Marxists, later joined by non-Marxists, on what is meant by the concept of feudalism, and was there a particular kind of feudalism that characterised Indian society of that time. The exploration has gone into various other aspects of change, and what was once described as the dark age in colonial historiography has now become brightly illuminated. Today there are international debates on varieties of feudalism and there are also debates on the meaning of the concept. Some European historians deny its validity as a label describing medieval Europe. It is these debates that help us to expand our knowledge of the past and extend the different ways of understanding it. To merely dismiss it and say there was no such thing as feudalism without discussing it, and to describe every attempt at a secular explanation of the past as Marxist, is to demonstrate a lack of understanding the discipline. Accepting or rejecting theories of explanation in history – and that is what history underlines these days – involves an intellectual exercise. This in turn requires a wide reading of the sources as well as of those that construct theories of explanation. One wants these debates, and one wants these debates to be of certain intellectual quality. I am sorry if I sound arrogant when I say this, but you can’t have a debate with a wall that has no clue what you are talking about, nor can you with those who simply say, ‘You are a Marxist’ and that ends the discussion. Nor can you with those who tell you youare an ugly historian who is distorting the minds of young students, as I was described three weeks ago. Who made this accusation? I get these abusive emails regularly from the same bunch of people – some NRIs and some locals – and of course I trash them. But this abuse is milder than what I usually get. I am a target for two reasons – I am not only a historian who tries to analyse the ancient texts that we use as data instead of taking what they say literally, but I also apply these analyses to what are now regarded as the sacred texts of ancient times. I am not the only one doing so, but all of us are dismissed as Marxists. Additionally, I am a woman so I should not be permitted to do such analyses – Gargi and Maitreyi notwithstanding. So all this reduces the debate to the lowest level. You have written in The Public Intellectual, 'Colonial views on Indian history and society encouraged the emergence of religious nationalism.' Despite so many books challenging colonial views, why has religious nationalism grown in strength? One fundamental reason is that we are questioning the historical explanations first propounded by colonial scholarship of the early nineteenth century, but people don’t read the histories that were written in the latter part of the twentieth century that contested these views. If they were to read them their ideas would change. The other reason is that if you have a strong political ideology that claims to explain everything and it is not an ideology that is derived from history or political theory, but from other convictions, then you cannot allow yourself to doubt the ideas that make up your explanation. Should you have doubts, you brush them aside, otherwise your belief in that ideology evaporates. Doesn’t this have a lot to do with the decline in our educational institutions from the time, say, when you were young? Where did you study? I studied all over the place. My father was a doctor in the army and every third year he was transferred. So my childhood was in the North West Frontier Province, in places like Thal, Kohat and Razmak. You remember it vividly? Very much so, those were lovely times and we lived in the forts along the borderlands. Then we were in Peshawar for two-three years, in Rawalpindi for the next two years, and then my father was posted to Pune, which was where I had the maximum length of schooling at one place. I finished my school and joined Wadia College. On my father’s transfer to Delhi, I had to move with him here. I joined Miranda House. I enrolled for Philosophy Hons., but the course was dreadful, abysmal. I wanted to switch to literature or history, but was told that I would have to go to the first year again. Not wanting to spend five years doing my BA, I finally did it from Panjab University. Then I got admission to the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Fine, so isn’t there a huge difference between schools and colleges in your time and now? Enormous difference. Isn’t that part of the problem? Yes, the basic problem is there. At school, the student is meant to acquire information about the world, and even more important the student has to be taught to think independently and to ask questions about what surrounds him or her. We do neither. The information is generally out-of-date. In the absence of any training for the teacher, the teacher is not taught how to think and therefore cannot teach the student. This is particularly marked in many religious organisations controlling civil society institutions. Their schools are not expected to teach the child to think independently. The child is told what the truth is and has to accept it and not question it. So if you are not teaching the child to think independently, if you are not giving the child an array of information and do not teach her to think about what she is being taught, you are in fact producing a non-thinking person. This suits the kind of people who are ideologically blinkered. For them non-thinking people are always preferable. You do seem to think India is experiencing a major crisis today. Very much so. How does the current crisis compare to the other crises you have witnessed in the past? For me the most traumatic crisis was the assassination of Gandhi. One had grown up depending so much on his vision of society and politics. And then, suddenly, one day he was assassinated. I was shattered. I kept asking myself, “To whom do we turn now, what do we do?” Subsequent to that, the crises have been more about political and economic shifts that have occurred. And I suppose, as one grew up, it became a little easier to handle crises. But what has not happened before is this degree of wanting to alter the very foundations of Indian society. Many of us are wondering whether this crisis arises from the assumption that the basis of our society should be the Hindu Rashtra, an idea not universally acceptable. Therefore, what we need to do is that when we talk of the pluralities of Indian society, we need to discuss these more fully and openly in its multiple aspects. Plurality should not become a mere slogan. We have to try to get across to people the essential meaning of Indian plurality. Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores. ========================================= 18. THE PAK PARALLEL (Apoorvanand) ========================================= (The Indian Express - 20 October 2015) Like anti-blasphemy laws across the border, India’s legislation on cow slaughter and protection may have become a tool to harass and intimidate minorities. Yet another killing in the name of protecting cows. I am constantly having to revise my draft. When I first wrote this piece, it was in Himachal Pradesh. Now, the latest killing is in Jammu and Kashmir. Of course, it took 10 days for Zahid Ahmed Bhat to die after he was attacked. Days after Bhat was attacked, a killing took place in Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh, barely 80 km from the state capital. Noman Akhtar, allegedly a cattle smuggler, was transporting five cows and 10 bulls in a truck with four other people. Apparently, cow protectors informed the police about the smuggling and movement of the truck. However, they did not wait for action to be taken. They chased the truck on motorbikes, forced it to stop, and lynched the five “cow smugglers”. Akhtar was found in the nearby forest with multiple head injuries and died later in hospital. His four associates survived and have been duly arrested under laws prohibiting cow slaughter and cruelty to animals. Akhtar’s killers have not been apprehended. The survivors have not been able to identify the attackers. The police did what it could. There are laws against cow slaughter and cruelty to animals — and there were allegations against Akhtar and his associates. But there are questions, too. Was there a formal complaint against the four? Did the police satisfy itself that they were breaking the law? Could they not have been engaged in legitimate commerce? How do we conclude that the cows and bulls were being taken for slaughter? It cannot be denied that the five were chased and attacked by a mob. But where is the urgency in arresting the killers? Mind you, Himachal is ruled by the Congress. So please don’t rush to the Centre asking for justice. Before that, we must turn to Haryana, bordering Himachal. A day before the attack, its chief minister advised Muslims and Christians that if they wanted to live in India, they should give up eating beef. He is not a fringe element and was reportedly carefully picked for this post by the prime minister. Steeped in the RSS tradition, the Haryana CM is the official and inner voice of the BJP. Days before the lynching in Sirmaur and just after the murder of Mohammed Akhlaq in Dadri, a man in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, again a non-BJP state, barely escaped death after being brutally attacked for allegedly killing a cow. It was later reported that he was simply skinning a dead cow. But the charge still remains as he is a Muslim and was found handling the cow. The cow is to Muslims of India what the Quran and Prophet Mohammad are to Hindus and Christians of Pakistan. The cow has been declared an article of faith for Hindus. Others cannot touch it in any way. If they do, they blaspheme. We did not need a Zia-ul-Haq for a law against blasphemy. We did it here through liberal democratic means by instituting laws, state after state, which are now known as laws to prevent cow slaughter and cruelty to animals. Non-Muslims dare not go near the Quran or the Prophet in Pakistan for that may prove fatal. A similar situation is fast developing in India, where Muslims would not like to be seen anywhere near a cow. The cow is now a source of oppression and, in many cases, death for Muslims of India. Vigilante groups in Pakistan target and kill people in the name of protecting the Quran and the Prophet. The state cannot act against them. We find this uncivilised and unacceptable. Yet, here in India, we have hundreds of such vigilante groups in the name of “gau raksha samitis” and “gau seva mandals”. According to a story in The Indian Express, “Over 200 cow-protection groups work in the Delhi-NCR region and members… educated and fluent in social media — their preferred tool to network, share text and images, and mobilise — form its backbone. They are a far cry from the flag-bearing, slogan shouting activists and most of them channelise modern-day resources to bolster their cause.” It was found that in Dadri alone, there were six such groups. They should be declared unlawful as they have a clear intent to target people in the name of protecting cows. Not that these groups were formed only after May 2014, but as one cow protector put it, “Because of a BJP government at the Centre, groups like ours now feel empowered.” In rural India, the cow has long been a tool to settle scores with neighbours or rivals. The reality of the traditional Hindu attitude is best depicted in Godan, a novel by Premchand. Hira, younger brother of Hori, the tragic protagonist of the novel, poisons Hori’s cow out of jealousy. The whole village gangs up to force Hori to seek “prayashchit (penance)” for the death of a cow in his house. The heartlessness of his co-villagers ruins Hori. According to the RSS narrative, Muslims are the political rivals of Hindus — and also their neighbours. But since Gandhi and Nehru conspired to make them equal citizens of a Hindu country, ways have to be found to show them “their place”. The cow has proved useful for this. If Hindus hold it sacred, they can also kill whoever defiles it. And Muslims are the first suspects. The supremacy of the Quran and the Prophet in the Islamic world has been used in Pakistan to keep minorities in perpetual fear. The same is happening in India to keep Muslims and Christians terrorised. In Pakistan, we have seen brave politicians like Salmaan Taseer asking for anti-blasphemy legislation to be amended. He had to pay with his life for speaking up. His killer is revered as a saint, a saviour of Islam. After so many killings and statements legitimising them in the name of the cow by leaders of the ruling party, will we recall the courage of Gandhi and say that laws against cow slaughter have no place in a secular country like India? Will we petition the Supreme Court after so much evidence has come to light on the victimisation of Muslims and Dalits, and ask it to outlaw so-called cow protection groups? Will we call them by their real name — illegal grouping of potential killers? We cannot have private armies, even if to protect the holy cow. The writer teaches Hindi at Delhi University - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-pak-parallel/ ========================================= 19. INDIA: SHABANA AZMI IS CONCERNED THAT THE RIGHT TO DISSENT IS UNDER THREAT ========================================= (The Hindu, October 20, 2015) ‘Role of arts not just to entertain’ by Anuj Kumar Shabana Azmi is concerned that the right to dissent is under threat Shabana Azmi expressed concern that the pluralistic fabric of the country is facing threat. : “The role of arts is not just to entertain. It has the right to provoke as well,” says actor-activist Shabana Azmi. Condemning the Ghulam Ali episode, ink attack on Sudheendhra Kulkarni, Ms Azmi is concerned that the right to dissent is under threat. In a telephonic interaction from Azamgarh, where she is working for her NGO, Ms. Azmi says: “It is dangerous for the pluralistic fabric of the country. I was among the first ones to criticise the fatwa issued against A.R. Rahman for giving music in an Iranian film on Prophet Muhammad. I don’t want to be a problem. I want to be part of the solution and that is why I tried to reach out to Uddhav and Aditya Thackeray after the attack on Mr. Kulkarni but I didn’t get any response.” The former Member of Parliament maintains the current atmosphere doesn’t go with the Prime Minister’s thrust for “Make in India” policy. “It doesn’t make business sense. Who will like to invest in a country where there are unruly disruptions, eminent writers are returning their awards and people’s kitchens are under watch,” she asks. She says those who are calling it intellectual snobbery or manufactured dissent are deflecting the real issue. “My father Kaifi Azmi returned the Padma Shri when the then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Vir Bahadur Singh said that those who opt Urdu as second language should be made to sit on a donkey and paraded. He said he has written in Urdu all his life and if his State’s Chief Minister holds such views on the language, he, as a writer, must stand up for himself. What I am trying to say is it is not about which party is in power.” On whether she is contemplating returning her National Award, the five-time winner says she has no such plans. “At the same time, I respect the decision of the writers. There are different ways to put your point across.” Recently, Ms. Azmi returned to mainstream cinema with Jazbaa where she played the mother of a rape victim and the audience were in for a surprise when she turned out to be the kidnapper in the whodunit. “For a mainstream film it was a layered character. I watched the original Korean film and was impressed by the contours of the character. I didn’t talk about it earlier because I wanted the audience to go into the film and get surprised.” She was very particular about the interrogation scene where the lawyer tries to tarnish the character of the victim. “Through my character I wanted to bring out how a section of the society tends to pass the blame on girls for the way they dress up or for having male friends. And this kind of questioning in court means that the girl has to go through the turmoil twice,” relates Ms. Azmi. ========================================= 20. IN CONVERSATION: KIRAN DESAI MEETS ANITA DESAI (The Guardian - 11 November 2011) ========================================= 'As a child I must have been aware of all these vanished pasts and landscapes' Anita Desai and her daughter, Kiran Desai. Photograph: Graziano Arici/eyevine When I visit my mother, I catch the train from the Harlem stop and travel north along the Hudson river, named Muhheakantuck by the Indians, "the river that flows both ways". Her 170-year-old house has a silvery stone for a front step, horsehair insulation in the attic, wide floorboards of pine; they glow a fox colour in the light that is always luminous in this house, and is twinned to silence. It is a writer's house, an exile's refuge. Magazines and papers pile up, bookcases spill over. When we are together, I feel we are alone on a raft. Family is scattered, India is far. All that has truly persisted in my life is here. I sometimes used to buy India Abroad for my mother on the way, or mangoes from Haiti or Brazil, or typewriter ribbon. This time I dared a recorder from Radio Shack of which we were both scared, worried we would proceed to play out her novel In Custody, where Deven visits the poet Nur to record Nur's words. He fails, his tape recorder fails. But this one works, and I ask her to talk about her past. Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter Read more Her work has, over the years, centred on forgotten, vanishing worlds, art and language that exist on the margins. The epigraphs to her novels (TS Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Borges …) often make reference to the persistence of memory. She writes: "The ancient Chinese believed time is not a ladder one ascends into the future but a ladder one descends into the past." Her new book, The Artist of Disappearance, is made of three delicate stories about the frailty as well as the transforming power of art. Kiran Desai In Custody was set in the Old Delhi of your childhood, but what did you know of the Germany of your mother, the East Bengal of your father? Did you know your grandparents? Anita Desai No, so it was always a fusion of the known facts and imagination, because the known facts were so few. KD I remember you telling me about your father as a child in Bangladesh – did you tell me or am I remembering reading Tagore? How they would leave their villages and travel down the river … AD My father told me that, about that riverine landscape of East Bengal and how, for much of the year, the land was flooded and they would paddle back and forth in boats … Advertisement KD Even your father lived like that? AD Yes, as a boy he did, and he told me stories that I can't even imagine. The mailman would walk through the forest, ringing a bell to frighten away the tigers, and he would shout, "In the name of Queen Victoria, make way for the mail!" KD You must have told me this memory because I put that in The Inheritance of Loss. Reading Tagore's diaries must have seemed like reading their memories. AD Reading Tagore, I recreated my father's world, much more than by the few stories he told me. My father was very reticent. In the 1950s, I remember him taking me to a cinema house that used to show Bengali films in the mornings. He took me to see Pather Panchali, and when we came out, into that bright orange light of Delhi, his face was bathed in tears, he couldn't speak. I realised this was the world he'd left. It was his world. Those films of Satyajit Ray made a great impression on me. My mother talked about her childhood constantly. She could tell us every shop and house she passed on the way to school, the butcher, the baker, the tailor, obviously she went over and over it in her mind. Christmas and Easter in Berlin were more real to me than Diwali in our house. KD Was my grandfather ever my grandmother's family's lodger? Is that how they met? AD [Laughs] You're mixing it up with Vikram Seth's story! His uncle and aunt. My father went to Berlin to study engineering. One day he was just walking down the road and was stopped by a German who asked if he would please sit for his portrait. The artist was Georg Kolbe, a sculptor, who was very interested in Asian faces. My father sat for him and he did a bust and a torso. Kolbe knew my mother and her family, and he is the one who introduced them. In fact, he was best man at their wedding. There were pictures of the reception. The other photographs from those days were of my father with a society of Indian students when Tagore came to visit Berlin. All of the boxes and bundles of photographs were thrown away when we left Delhi. Advertisement KD We lost all our pictures, too. Remember, in Kalimpong, when the rain came through the roof … And then with each change of address. AD Travel means you lose your pictures. A leaky roof in our house in the Himalayas, 23 changes of address in my life, and my pictures have whittled into nothing more than a handful of half-destroyed prints. A German firm had employed my father. They gave him a very grand job to set up their branch in India. They lived first on Underhill Road, then Alipur Road, both old bungalows with gardens and low walls. KD Like the bungalow in Clear Light of Day? AD Exactly like that. KD Was there a Haider Ali? [Haider Ali is the glamorous figure with a library in Clear Light of Day.] AD No, he was inspired by the Urdu poetry and literature we grew up hearing. My father did have many Muslim friends, and some, having studied abroad, had European wives. But all of this didn't last very long because a German firm in British India could not have lasted in the 1930s. And then the war was going on in Europe, so it was also a very sad time for my mother. There were hardly any survivors of that war, no one in her family. In India, many of her German friends went into an internment camp near Dehradun. Those who weren't Indian citizens, they all went into camps. My mother had become an Indian citizen so she didn't have to go. And when Dhaka became the capital of East Pakistan, my father's ancestral home vanished too. He never went back either, so that was another lost land. Very little remained of either family – the families were scattered. As I child I must have been aware of all these vanished pasts, vanished landscapes. Not that it cast any shadow on my life, children don't take it as dark. KD You lost your grandparents before you knew them, your parents' landscapes, your own one of Old Delhi when Partition occurred. AD Yes, landscapes, languages. Something that survived for us was the language of Germany. My father had lived there for 10 years and spoke it fluently. Our nursery rhymes were German ones. But my father made no attempt to keep Bengali alive for us. KD You studied it as an adult? AD Yes, but for me there are all these lost languages. I've lost the language I used to speak as a child. My German wasn't good enough to write in, and my subject matter couldn't possibly have fitted the German language. No way to bring them together. Baumgartner's Bombay was the book in which I brought in German speakers, wrote English the way they would have spoken English, recovered some bits and scraps of German from my mother's past. That was my effort to bring it back to life. KD Your books often refer to a mix of languages. You quote Iqbal and Byron in Clear Light of Day. In Custody is about Hindi and Urdu. You quote a lot of literature in all your novels, mingle it with every geography. AD Yes, I always give myself away! Well, Urdu was what we heard spoken in Delhi, and it was spoken very beautifully in those days. Then there were the books we bought for ourselves. My father would read Byron and occasionally he would burst out and recite snatches of what he remembered from his schooldays, Byron, Swinburne, Browning, the same scraps over and over again. Oddly enough, he never brought Bengali music into the house, which was such a pity. But perhaps because he came from a political family – he had a soft spot for communism – he loved Russian music. I remember hearing "The Song of the Volga Boatmen" played and played on our gramophone, thinking it so oppressive and dreary. Oma brought back a piano with her, had whole albums of Beethoven and Brahms, Schubert lieder and also her German library, beautifully embossed leather books in the old German script. When my father died and she left Delhi, she gave her books to the library of Delhi University, which had a German department. Advertisement KD And when my own father died a few years ago, we donated our family library to Gargi College in Delhi. AD Now that you ask me – and others have pointed it out – why am I constantly writing about the past? Well, I probably couldn't approach the present directly, because I was carrying all of this past with me. KD Do you think this is why you became a writer in the first place? AD If I hadn't left India, if everything made sense and was continuous, perhaps I would not have found the necessity of putting all the bits together. I did most of my writing in India, but of course it was a changed India after Partition, the India of my childhood had gone. I began writing when I was in school, publishing while in college, writing regularly for journals in Delhi, like Thought, Writers' Workshop and Envoy, which was published in London but was about Indian affairs. I wrote book reviews, vignettes, short stories, and through the English language, somehow I was reaching out to the west already. Even as a child, at nine, I had been collecting pen friends all over. KD I remember the Laura Ingalls Wilder books that one of them sent you and that I read too when I was a child. What did you read later? What has survived, which writers have been by your side? I remember, when I was a child, you loved Virgina Woolf. AD She was such a huge influence on my writing, and I remember going to Atmaram's and buying the row of green Hogarth Press volumes with their yellow jackets. I used to read them over and over again. For a long time I would read a page or two before I started my morning's work because I was using her as a kind of tuning fork, I wanted to catch that exact note she would strike. Then I became quite frightened that I was trying to replicate her manner of voice, her tone, and that was holding me back from discovering my own. I stopped doing that but I still like to read poetry before starting my work. Rilke, Cavafy, Mandelstam, Brodsky … KD Poets of exile? AD Yes, all of them. Poets go directly to what they want to get across – they don't amble around, they cut to it with a tremendous immediacy that affects one. I don't know if could tackle the bulk of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or Proust again, but I would love to see if I could repeat the same wonderful experience of reading them. KD What was it like to read the introductions to new editions of your books that recently came out in India? [These are handsome navy and white volumes with introductions by Salman Rushdie, Suketu Mehta, Abraham Verghese, Rana Dasgupta, Kamila Shamsie, Daneeyal Muniuddin, MS Vasanji.] AD I was so grateful, they were so serious. It is astonishing that now a whole generation has grown up reading Indian literature in English. Nothing was being read when I was a student. We read no Indian writers at all. KD People always say you are a quiet writer, but I find great violence in your books, tremendous frustration, unhappiness, sometimes silenced unhappiness, but no less "loud" for that. AD Perhaps because it was such a struggle, one seemed to be going against the grain, which was not literary. I wrote almost secretly, and so it felt subversive. I could give myself away without restraint. KD You write so much about exiles, outsiders, travellers, translators, although I know you get terribly travel sick, in Baumgartner's Bombay, Fire on the Mountain, Journey to Ithaca, Zigzag, Fasting Feasting, Artist of Disappearance. Was it inevitable that you left first to live in the Himalayas and then that you left India? Does one live the lives one has written as much as one writes about lives one has known? Advertisement AD It was never my intention. I took one step, then another, thinking I would retrace my steps and return, but was drawn further on instead. So often one's writing is prophetic. When you write, you are in touch with another force, not the everyday force you employ, you retreat so deep into yourself, you don't suspect those feelings had been there. KD Did you ever feel the cost of a writer's life was too high? You grew up in a house of four children, and we were four children – why do we have such a sense of isolation? AD I wonder why that is – because we are writers? I'm sure you also feel a sense of envy when you see friends or siblings who belong so wholly to their lives in a way we don't. It is a great influence on one's thoughts to be always on the outside, not belonging. There was always a sense of loneliness because my family wasn't like others. KD You travelled to so many countries. Did that change the form of your thinking and writing? AD It was a frightening experience, and I think that fear is something you've often experienced. Your subject is elsewhere, and your fear is you may not be able to recover it. When we first came to America and I started teaching, I had an awful feeling that I would never write another thing. I was so far removed from India, the past, family, and what was around me was absolutely not mine, and then I wrote Fasting Feasting, going right back into the past, and the only way I can write is to keep recovering that past. KD You've been working on things I have been struggling with, switching between historical times, different points of view, different geographies. AD It's like having a jigsaw puzzle and having to see how to put the pieces together. Fasting Feasting was like having two different jigsaw puzzles and trying to make one from it. I inherited a fragmented world, you had a whole one that fragmented when you were 14 and we left India for England and then the United States, and you've had to find a way to fit it together, which is what you did with Inheritance. KD When you are creating a story, you find a form for it. AD In Baumgartner's Bombay, everything takes place in one day. The idea I had was this would be the last day of Baumgartner's life, I knew he would die, I didn't know how, so I had to crowd it in. That was one story that did have to be neatly ended, but he could have been killed by the very poor man on the streets, or by a thief, but it seemed right and proper that he should die the way he did. KD Do you envy Indian writers who work from a single, continuous landscape? AD Indian writers who inherit one world – one envies it, one world, one century. Like Tagore or Narayan. Well, my early books belonged to one world. Then the world widened, became more scattered, and dispersed. KD Do you regret this? AD Not in the least bit. Earlier I had always been described as the one writing about women, women's lives, being criticised for this. KD Why? There was so much else, a huge landscape even within the quiet bungalow in Clear Light of Day … AD Well, major events were taking place off stage in my novels, not on stage, so I was always criticised for writing about a very confined and limited world. Maybe it was resentment that made me open up the world. I definitely had a feeling, writing In Custody and Baumgartner's Bombay, of opening the door and stepping out into the street, walking, seeing, experiencing other places, other lives. If I'd lived my whole life in Old Delhi, I would feel so much frustration and anger that my world should be so limited by my very narrow experience. I wouldn't have wanted it otherwise. Was it wonderful? That is a different question. It was both wonderful and difficult. Advertisement KD Each landscape must have given you something different. England must have seemed like travelling to a part of the literary landscape of your childhood. AD I never wrote an English book about an English landscape, but all that literature I had read fed into everything I wrote. Mexico was different. It was such a strange experience, so entirely new. Never having learned anything about it living in India, I set off with the intent of exploring it, and found so much deeply familiar, with close connections between the Indian and Mexican, that was also, of course, an Indian world. KD You wrote about foreigners coming and searching for something, they didn't even know what, in India. Was there something of that in how you went to Mexico? AD Yes, remember the library in San Miguel, how much reading I did there, how much note taking, in the same way Europeans would once come to India with a very vague idea of what they would find, using very wishy-washy terms like the wisdom of India, ancient India, then stubbing their toes on the real India. It was strange what India meant to them – it wasn't the imperial adventure after all, it was other treasure they came searching for. They didn't even know what they were searching for. In the end, it was the experience. It was difficult to find a form for the Mexican book. I didn't want to put myself in the place of a traveller, which had been done so beautifully before by others. KD The novellas seem different to me, a different way of writing for you, fairytale-like – the hungry elephant ruining that old landowning family – reaching beyond past or present, very directly to some deeper, persistent human situation. AD They were found stories, not stories I had to develop. With Borges, each story is complete in itself. I think a short story is often a found story, a moment, an episode. A novella is closely related to that, in that you cannot bring in a great many diversions, digressions, so they have a quality of being whole and focused, even though these ones are open-ended. The details of time and place are left deliberately vague, so not only my imagination but also the reader's imagination must be exercised to enter this place. KD Do you find a pattern in your work when you look at it all together? AD I'd never sat down to think about it. Perhaps that line by Emily Dickinson sums everything up: "Memory is a strange bell – jubilee and knell." I suppose that's been ringing away in my head all these years. That is why I feel so alienated from the India of today, because it has so separated itself from the India of the past. KD With deliberate effort? AD Tearing itself, to destroy the past, to be rid of it. KD Doesn't that seem dangerous? AD Dangerous, and it takes a lot of nerve, ambition. There is the fear of losing so much, of having to abandon and leave it behind. That is perhaps what you felt writing Inheritance, the fear of losing something. KD Yes, the beauty of that landscape, what it feels like to spend a night in the kind of house that doesn't exist very much any more, the sounds, the quality of electric light when I was small. AD That is why you bring your character back, the cook's son struggles practically on his knees to get back. KD One doesn't want to lose the beauty … AD You'd lose all that. There may be great things to be found, but you couldn't help looking over your shoulder at all those treasures you have lost … or maybe not even treasures, but they were once living things, they once existed, how can you let them die? ========================================= 21. INDIA: PLANES OVER AIZAWL - A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR A GOVERNMENT PLANNING TO USE AIR POWER AGAINST MAOISTS by Ipsita Chakravarty ========================================= (scroll.in - 23 October 2015) In 1966, the Indian Air Force managed to crush the Mizo uprising. It also helped usher in two more decades of insurgency. In Bastar, the Chhattisgarh Police and the Indian Air Force are said to be preparing for air attacks “in retaliation” for Maoist strikes on helicopters. According to an Indian Express report, there have been choppers over Bijapur, engaged in strafing exercises. But Chief Minister Raman Singh denies any such plan and the IAF has repeatedly said it will never resort to air strikes on its “own people”. Yet the air force has opened fire on its own people before. In Aizawl in 1966, during an offensive that was to end an insurgency but gave rise to another two decades of violence. Nearly half a century ago, the incident was wrapped in the same secrecy and doublespeak, until it died out of the public discourse. It is only in the 2000s that writers and journalists have started to talk about the planes over Aizawl. Former insurgents, once imprisoned and tortured by the army, have also come out with their accounts of the unrest in the Mizo Hills and the crackdown that followed. But memories of the air raid are undercut by official history, and some aspects of Aizawl 1966 are still cloudy. When the bamboo flowered In 1959, the bamboo bloomed in the Mizo Hills, drawing out armies of rats. As the infestation spread into the surrounding crop land, a famine broke out. The Mizos have a name for it, Mautam, or bamboo death, which occurs when the plant flowers, once in 48 years. The Mautam of 1959 brought more than just rats to the surface. After Independence, the Mizo hills had become a reluctant part of Assam, though governed by their own district council and placed under the Sixth Schedule. The Mizo Union, the first political party representing Mizo interests, opted to merge the Hills with the Indian Union, with the caveat that they could opt out of it in ten years, if they chose. But soon afterwards, Assamese politicians began to speak of removing special provisions for the Mizos. In The Mizo Uprising, JV Hluna and Rini Tochhawng describe how poor governance by the district council and the lack of basic services sharpened the urge for self-determination. In 1959, the government was shown up as callous and incompetent once more, and the Mizo Anti-Famine Organisation was formed. It morphed into the Mizo National Front, led by Pu Laldenga and demanding a sovereign Mizo state. Denied by the Indian government, it turned violent. Storming the bastions On the night of February 28, 1966, the MNF launched Operation Jericho, simultaneous attacks on Assam Rifles garrisons in Aizawl and Lunglei. They hoisted the MNF flag at the Assam Rifles headquarters in Aizawl. Some insurgents also looted the Aizawl treasury, making off with the sum of Rs 350. The next day, rebel troops also took Vairengte, Kolasib, Champhei and a few other villages. Hluna and Tochhawng point out that it early reverses had scaled down the MNF’s plans. It was a deplate, ragged band of rebels that finally made it to Aizawl. Both the government and the army were taken by surprise, but the reprisal was swift and quite thorough. On March 2, the government declared it a disturbed area, on March 5, the IAF flew into Aizawl. Toofanis, or French Dassault Ouragan fighters, and Hunters were seen flying over the town, opening fire on key buildings and installations. On March 6, the MNF was declared unlawful and by evening the Indian army had arrived at Aizawl. The rebels were forced to retreat into the jungles of Burma and what was then East Pakistan. What bombs? In the days that followed the attack, there were questions that the government and the army could not or would not answer. Assam assembly debates in the wake of the uprising show a House demanding information and a government refusing to give any. A month after the attack, MLA Stanley Nichols Roy, who had toured the strife-torn region, stood up in the assembly with these words of indictment: “However, Sir, a stage came apparently from all the evidence we gathered that over and beyond a certain amount of force required, excessive force was used. That came about, we believe, on the 5th and 6th of March, when the Air Force was brought into play and was used for straffing [sic] and machine gunning, and as far as we can understand, bombing Aijal town.” But the diagnosis of excessive force relies on the number of rebel troops in the first place. Assam Chief Minister Bimala Chaliha reportedly said about 10,000 attacked Aizawl and Lunglei alone, while the Centre said there were 800-1,300 rebels across all scenes of attack. Nirmal Nibedon, in his book on the Mizo uprising, says, “True, they had 20,000 volunteers and many more in the north, but only an infinitesimal fraction of this would actually be engaged in Operation Jericho.” And what exactly was the air force doing there? A Hindustan Standard report from March 9, 1966, quoted Prime Minister Indira Gandhi saying they had been sent in to airdrop men and supplies. According to army records, they were sent in to escort army troops. Earlier attempts to fly in troops had failed, the army said. The choppers had been unable to land because of firing from the MNF. This version is contested. According to Hluna and Tochhawng, the flight of the planes over Aizawl and surrounding villages was not coordinated with any helicopter activity. And according to hundreds of people on the ground, the only “supplies” dropped by the planes were shells. Had the airforce bombed Aizawl at all? According to the army, there was only strafing. But survivors remember otherwise. This is what one witness has to say: “A powerful fighter (F 104 Phantom Z) had reached the Aizawl skies and was hovering above us. After a turn above it began pelting those places it believed housed volunteers with bombs and other ammunition, with absolutely no restraint...At that time, Aizawl was no longer a town - it was just a big fire. With flames and smoke, with corpses on the streets, it had become a battleground like other places in the world.” How to win a battle and lose a war How many people died in the uprising of 1966, how many people were displaced in the immediate aftermath? Those figures are probably lost to history. But this much is known, the departing fighter jets made way for an angry, brutal army, which ruled by force for the next two decades. Suddenly, an entire people were treated as a hostile population. The end of the Mizo insurgency saw the creation of Mizoram as a separate state, with Laldenga as its first chief minister. But that took 20 years in coming. In the meanwhile, hundreds of Mizo youth claimed they had joined the insurgency because of the bombing of 1966. Does the government really want a repeat in Bastar? ========================================= 22. ROSALYN BAXANDALL OBITUARY by Sheila Rowbotham ========================================= (The Guardian, 22 October 2015) Feminist historian and activist who helped to launch New York Radical Women Rosalyn Baxandall’s writing helped to create a women’s history The feminist historian and activist Rosalyn Baxandall, who has died of kidney cancer aged 76, was a redoubtable rebel who combined a fierce desire for individual freedom with a lifelong commitment to social justice and egalitarian community. In 1967, as the women’s liberation movement began, Ros helped to start the feminist protest group New York Radical Women, and later became a member of Redstockings. These groups started to redefine the scope of politics: women’s experiences of their bodies, of lesbianism, of housework, of childcare, rape or domestic violence ceased to be simply personal. They also broke taboos. Ros’s was the first voice heard at the dramatic 1967 abortion “speak out” in New York, describing undergoing an illegal termination. As a member of Witch (the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), an activist theatre group, she took part in the infiltration of a bridal fair at Madison Square Garden in 1969. Clad in symbolic chains, the protesters just had time to pronounce themselves “free human beings” and release white mice before the police came. The pandemonium was exhilarating, but raised political doubts. Was alienating other women the best idea? Creating Liberation Nursery, the first feminist day care centre in New York, was more constructive. Not only did it provide Ros’s son, Phineas, with some good friends, but it still exists. I met Ros in 1974 when American socialist feminists were connecting with new organisations among black and working-class women and reaching out to international women’s movements. Anecdotes, ideas, hopes and dreams criss-crossed continents. Ros, along with socialist feminist historians in the US and elsewhere, started to look at the past in new ways, with the aim of creating a women’s history. In co-operation with Linda Gordon and Susan Reverby, she produced the pioneering America’s Working Women: A Documentary History 1600 to the Present (1976). It chronicled not only work for wages but also unpaid domestic labour, and looked at consciousness as well as conditions. The revised edition in 1995 added new material on race and ethnicity. Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter Read more Ros’s Words on Fire (1987), about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, an organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and later a leading communist, indicated problems with equality for women in the libertarian left IWW, as well as within a centralised party structure. Flynn was a leading figure in both, but remained the exception. Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (2000), with Elizabeth Ewen, combined oral and written sources to reveal a reality that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) had missed. Female suburban pioneers had to conjure nurseries, schools and libraries from the mud left by speculative developers; exhaustion rather than ennui was their problem. Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement (2000), compiled with Gordon, featured original texts and images ranging from articles about work and welfare to a zany Wonder Woman with speculum, and was part of a wider project to demonstrate the radical scope and playful utopian subversion of the early movement. Advertisement Ros was born in Manhattan, New York. Her childhood was shadowed by the McCarthyite witch-hunt against the American left; she was a “red diaper” baby, with parents, Irma (nee London) and Lewis Fraad, who were prominent communists, and a great-uncle, Meyer London, who had been a Socialist party member of Congress. From this background Ros imbibed the courage to hold unpopular convictions, along with an optimism about the American people. Ros was to reject many aspects of the old left, but always respected what they had achieved. She became a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1950s, graduating in French in 1961. The following year she married Lee Baxandall, a writer on theatre and Marxist aesthetics. These were the early days of the new left when boundaries seemed to be dissolving and a joyous sense of creative possibility prevailed. Beats declaimed in little magazines, Bob Dylan sang protest songs in clubs and radical historians dressed like lumberjacks. Life, art and politics fused. Ros thrived in this bohemian melange and it marked her for life. The wild young rebel eventually became a distinguished teaching professor, at the State University of New York, Old Westbury, in 2004. From 2012, she taught Labor Studies at the City University of New York. Wherever she went, Ros agitated and organised. She also welcomed and cared for innumerable people. As Phineas says: “Her passion and energy went most into learning about people, connecting them with each other, teaching students, helping young activists and discussing ideas.” Ros’s marriage ended in divorce in 1978. She is survived by her partner, Howard Seeman, and by Phineas and two grandchildren, Julian and Nellie. • Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall, historian and activist, born 12 June 1939; died 13 October 2015 _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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/ ##### #### _\_ ________ ##=-[.].]| \ \ #( _\ | |------| # __| | |||||||| \ _/ | |||||||| .--'--'-. | | ____ | / __ `|__|[o__o]| _(____nm_______ /____\____ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. ===================================== _______________________________________________ SACW mailing list SACW@insaf.net http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net
