South Asia Citizens Wire - 2 March 2017 - No. 2929 [via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]
Contents: 1. Pakistan: God versus God | Ayesha Siddiqa 2. Pakistan: Tributes to Nigar Ahmad 3. India: Right wing Violence on Educational Spaces - From JNU to the Assault on Ramjas College in Delhi university 4. India: Rebellion to Reconciliation | Dilip Simeon 5. India: Towards a Citizens’ Movement - Some Observations by Anil Nauriya [1993] 6. A statement from India’s feminists in solidarity with women of Nagaland 7. Recent on Commnalism Watch: - India: Safe guarding the life and survival of Non-Migrant Kashmiri Pandit families - Representation to PM on Migration fresh registration - February, 2017 - How the Fight Between ABVP and DU Is Reminiscent of 70s Pakistan (Parth M N) - India: When the state looks away (Ashutosh Varshney) - India: All India Muslim Tehwar Committee call for boycott of Lipstick Under My Burkha, plans legal action - India: For your Rioting, Disruption, Vandalism Needs Hire ABVP - a video in Hindi by The Quint - India Today TV: All you need to know about the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) - India: The woman who lost 25 members of her family in the 2002 riots and went on to help other widows - India: 15 years after Godhra riots - The politics of hate still divides us - Photos from The Idea of India Collective event of 28 Feb 2017 in Delhi on mass violence of Gujarat 2002 - India: Why we need to worry about ABVP's 'nationalism' (Gunjeet Sra) - India: Right-wing group stops marriage in Church in Madhya Pradesh - India: War veterans’ battle for DU student Gurmehar Kaur whose social media campaign against ABVP drew a volley of hate - India: Statement by New Socialist Initiative (NSI) On Unleashing of ABVP Violence in Delhi University - India: Statement by Teachers of Lady Shri Ram College in Defence of Their Student Facing Intimidation for speaking up against the ABVP - India: Why Do So Many Gents Think Gurmehar Kaur has been Brainwashed? | Maya Palit - India: Eminent academics from various international universities write against ABVP, Ramjas college violence ::: URLs & FULL TEXT ::: 8. Post-war Sri Lanka: state, capital and labour, and the politics of reconciliation | Kanchana N. Ruwanpura 9. Bangladesh fundamentalists protest against justice goddess statue 10. Breakthrough in Bangladesh as unionists and garment workers are freed following international pressure 11. Pakistani capital under tight security while Muslim devotees honor man who assassinated a liberal governor 12. Pakistan: Apologia | Zarrar Khuhro 13. India: Vandals, Not Vidyarthis - Editorial, The Wire 14. India: No talking in the Hindu Rashtra - Lessons from the disruptions at Delhi's Ramjas College | Ananya Vajpeyi 15. India: University as Battleground - Editorial, EPW 16. India: Bulldozing Pragati Maidan’s buildings will extinguish our shared heritage and a million memories | Arun Rewal 17. Shrinking and Darkening, the Plight of Kashmir’s Dying Lakes | Umar Shah 18. India: This is not the ABVP we knew - What happened at Ramjas & why the Sanghis should be ashamed | Dilip Simeon 19. India: Lynch mob fascism | Shehla Rashid Shora 20. Remembering Baljit Malik | Pritam Singh 21. India: Exemplary violence - The ABVP aggression at Ramjas College can only be explained as a lesson intended for all universities | Satish Deshpande 22. Indian polls and the Enabling Act | Jawed Naqvi 23. Mutations of Fascism: an interview with Enzo Traverso | Olivier Doubre ======================================== 1. PAKISTAN: GOD VERSUS GOD by Ayesha Siddiqa ======================================== Sindh has long shown warning signs of becoming an ideological battleground http://www.sacw.net/article13123.html ======================================== 2. PAKISTAN: TRIBUTES TO NIGAR AHMAD ======================================== http://www.sacw.net/article13122.html ======================================== 3. INDIA: RIGHT WING VIOLENCE ON EDUCATIONAL SPACES - FROM JNU TO THE ASSAULT ON RAMJAS COLLEGE IN DELHI UNIVERSITY ======================================== (I) INDIA: AIFRTE STATEMENT AGAINST ABVP’S ASSAULT ON UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES Full text of statement issued by All India Forum Right To Education on 25 February 2017 http://www.sacw.net/article13120.html (II) INDIA: PROTECT UNIVERSITIES AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM FROM THREAT OF VIOLENCE AND INTIMIDATION - SAY HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS Authorities need to protect academic freedom, which is crucial to the right to education. Violence and hooliganism in the name of nationalism must cede ground to civil debate on Campuses. Violent actions by right wing student organisation ABVP on campuses must be halted http://www.sacw.net/article13119.html (III) INDIA: RSS - BJP AND THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION FOR HINDUTVA by Ram Puniyani Education has been the major area of work for RSS all through. Since it has a view of Nationalism which is opposed to the concept of Indian Nationalism, it already had made lot of efforts to promote its views through Shakhas, through Sarswati Shishu Mandirs and through Ekal Schools. It has set up organizations to influence the policies in the field of education like Vidya Bharati. It has also started putting its followers in the top positions in Universities and major research institutes of the country. The previous BJP led NDA regime had already started the process of saffronisation by changing the school books http://www.sacw.net/article13115.html ======================================== 4. INDIA: REBELLION TO RECONCILIATION by Dilip Simeon ======================================== This essay appeared in Published in B.G. Verghese (ed); Tomorrow’s India: Another Tryst with Destiny; commemorating 125 years of St Stephen’s College, PenguinBooks India, New Delhi, 2006 http://www.sacw.net/article13121.html ======================================== 5. INDIA: TOWARDS A CITIZENS’ MOVEMENT - SOME OBSERVATIONS BY ANIL NAURIYA [1993] ======================================== This paper by Anil Nauriya on the citizen’s movement in Okhla [New Delhi] was published in 1993 following the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya http://www.sacw.net/article13126.html ======================================== 6. A STATEMENT FROM INDIA’S FEMINISTS IN SOLIDARITY WITH WOMEN OF NAGALAND ======================================== We, the undersigned women’s organisations and concerned individuals take serious note of the fierce opposition to women’s reservation of 33% seats in Nagaland Municipal Councils by male dominated tribal bodies in Nagaland in the name of protecting their tradition and customary practices that bar women from participating in decision- making bodies. http://www.sacw.net/article13118.html ======================================== 7. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH: ======================================== - India: Safe guarding the life and survival of Non-Migrant Kashmiri Pandit families - Representation to PM on Migration fresh registration - February, 2017 - How the Fight Between ABVP and DU Is Reminiscent of 70s Pakistan (Parth M N) - India: When the state looks away (Ashutosh Varshney) - India: All India Muslim Tehwar Committee call for boycott of Lipstick Under My Burkha, plans legal action - India: For your Rioting, Disruption, Vandalism Needs Hire ABVP - a video in Hindi by The Quint - India Today TV: All you need to know about the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) - India: The woman who lost 25 members of her family in the 2002 riots and went on to help other widows - India: 15 years after Godhra riots - The politics of hate still divides us - Photos from The Idea of India Collective event of 28 Feb 2017 in Delhi on mass violence of Gujarat 2002 - India: Why we need to worry about ABVP's 'nationalism' (Gunjeet Sra) - India: Right-wing group stops marriage in Church in Madhya Pradesh - India: War veterans’ battle for DU student Gurmehar Kaur whose social media campaign against ABVP drew a volley of hate - India: Statement by New Socialist Initiative (NSI) On Unleashing of ABVP Violence in Delhi University - India: Statement by Teachers of Lady Shri Ram College in Defence of Their Student Facing Intimidation for speaking up against the ABVP - India: Why Do So Many Gents Think Gurmehar Kaur has been Brainwashed? | Maya Palit - India: Eminent academics from various international universities write against ABVP, Ramjas college violence - India UP Elections 2017: Mythical characters to Aligarh’s locks - Modi uses local icons for voter connect - India: Uttar Pradesh election 2017 - Why Brahmins give BJP a reason to smile - M.N. Roy Memorial Lecture: 2017 : Subject: 'FREE SPEECH, NATIONALISM, SEDITION' BY JUSTICE A.P. SHAH (Retd.) 5.30 PM, Tuesday, 21st March, 2017 at Speaker's Hall - Hindutva nationalism, democracy and fear of university speech | Mohinder Singh - India: Book review - Gujarat Violence And Struggle For Justice (T Navin) -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/ ::: URLs & FULL TEXT ::: ======================================== 8. POST-WAR SRI LANKA: STATE, CAPITAL AND LABOUR, AND THE POLITICS OF RECONCILIATION by Kanchana N. Ruwanpura ======================================== (Contemporary South Asia, Volume 24, 2016 - Issue 4) Abstract Sri Lanka has been through vicissitudes of change in the past three decades and its current political order gives the impression of the possibility for a different vision for Sri Lanka. Yet in order to appreciate the continuities and disruptions to Sri Lanka’s polity and the possibility of a politics of reconciliation, the contributors to this special issue argue that we also need to redirect our attention away from the state. It is an initial call that seeks to disentangle the ways in which the various constituents that make up the state, including capital and labour, are also implicated or suffer from a tragic perpetuation of an ethno-nationalist agenda that keeps morphing into various guises at fraught moments. A politics of reconciliation then, it suggests, cannot simply be limited to a political package that does not recognize the very economic disempowerment of large segments of people. The contributors to this special issue come from varying disciplines and adopt a range of methods to explore how this politics of reconciliation is understood, endorsed and contested in the everyday lives of Sri Lankan people. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09584935.2016.1240756?journalCode=ccsa20 ======================================== 9. BANGLADESH MUSLIMS PROTEST AGAINST JUSTICE GODDESS STATUE ======================================== (BBC News - 24 February 2017 Image caption Protesters say the statue contravenes Islamic teaching Thousands of supporters of a conservative Islamist group have protested in Bangladesh against a statue of the goddess of justice erected outside the supreme court. The protest in the capital, Dhaka, demanded its removal. The demonstrators say the figure, a variation on the Greek goddess Themis but in a sari, goes against Islam. The protest is another sign of tension between Islamic conservatism and liberal values in Bangladesh. Backers of the conservative Islamist group, Hefazat-e-Islam, gathered outside the Baitul Mokarram mosque after Friday prayers, carrying placards and promising further protests across the country if the statue was not removed. Idolatry The protesters say the figure, erected in December and holding the familiar sword and scales of justice in her hands, amounts to idolatry. "Statues or any kind of idols are completely banned in Islam," one demonstrator told the BBC. "There is no place for a statue in our religion. So Muslims can't allow a statue in the Supreme Court premises." Image caption The statue was installed last December There is growing tension in Bangladeshi society, and politics, between Islamic conservatives and more moderate, secular voices who want to defend pluralism and free speech, said the BBC South Asia Editor Jill McGivering. The protesters' demands present the government with a dilemma at a sensitive time, she added. Evidence of tension has come in the form of a series of murders of liberal writers and attacks by Islamist militants in recent years. ======================================== 10. BREAKTHROUGH IN BANGLADESH AS UNIONISTS AND GARMENT WORKERS ARE FREED FOLLOWING INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE ======================================== industriall-union.org 23.02.2017 The majority of the 35 Bangladeshi unionists and garment workers arrested since December last year have been released, and the remaining should be released shortly. This follows an international campaign led by IndustriALL Global Union and UNI Global Union against the Bangladesh government’s crackdown on the labour movement. A tripartite agreement was reached on 23 February between IndustriALL Bangladesh Council (IBC), the Ministry of Labour and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, providing the release of the arrested trade unionists and garment workers. According to the agreement, those remaining will also be freed and cases against them disposed of. IndustriALL Global Union General Secretary Valter Sanches welcomes the decision to release the jailed activists: "We have seen an incredible show of global solidarity and this is an important victory for garment workers in Bangladesh, sending a strong message to the country's industry to enter into a constructive dialogue with the trade unions. “The issue that sparked the crackdown on unions at the end of last year still remains. We will continue to support the fight for higher wages and will closely monitor the situation until all charges are dropped.” UNI Global Union General secretary Philip Jennings says: “Around the world, we have seen an effective global solidarity with protests in dozens of major cities across the globe. From Kathmandu to New York, people stood up to demand that Bangladesh respects human and trade union rights. “We welcome the release of the imprisoned unionists and hope we can begin to turn the page on Bangladesh’s aggressive crackdown on labour. However, we must remain on guard – the message to Bangladesh is to respect labour rights.” The agreement sets a precedent as it recognizes the IBC as a formal counterpart in negotiations. “As a legitimate representative of the Bangladesh garment workers we have a platform. We will continue to fight for our members,” says Amirul Haque Amin, President of IndustriALL Bangladesh Council and the National Garment Workers Federation. Background Union leaders and garment workers were arrested and union offices shut down in Dhaka's garment district, following demands for a higher minimum wage in December 2016. The Bangladeshi government and garment factory owners used the wage strike as a pretext to crackdown on the labour movement. IndustriALL and UNI Global Union launched the campaign #EveryDayCounts, which received massive support from affiliates and other actors in the labour movement. Hundreds of photos from all over the world have been posted on social media, and unions in more than 20 countries have sent letters to the Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, calling for the release of the detained garment trade union leaders and worker activists, and that all charges are dropped. On 15 and 16 February, there were protests and visits to Bangladeshi embassies in over 16 cities, including Berlin, Geneva, London, Brussels, The Hague, Washington D.C., New York, Ottawa, Kathmandu, and Seoul. LabourStart's campaign to free the jailed activists amassed more than 10,000 signatures. ======================================== 11. PAKISTANI CAPITAL UNDER TIGHT SECURITY WHILE MUSLIM DEVOTEES HONOR MAN WHO ASSASSINATED A LIBERAL GOVERNOR ======================================== (The Washington Post - March 1, 2017) People chant slogans during a gathering to mark the anniversary of Mumtaz Qadri’s death next to the shrine built over his grave outside Islamabad, Pakistan, on March 1. (Faisal Mahmood/Reuters) By Pamela Constable and Shaiq Hussain BARAKAHO, Pakistan — The Pakistani capital was shut down and on high alert Wednesday because of a regional economic summit. English-language posters lined the road from the international airport, welcoming foreign leaders and their partnership in development projects this impoverished Islamic republic desperately needs. But a few miles away, in this gritty, nondescript suburb, posters of Koranic verses welcomed thousands of devotees to a new shrine honoring a man they revere as a hero of Islam. His name was Mumtaz Qadri, and as a 26-year-old security guard in 2011, he shocked the nation by assassinating a provincial governor. He was convicted of murder and hanged in prison one year ago. “What he did was for the love of our prophet. He was a peaceful man who did a great service for his faith,” said Basit Ali, 36, an accountant who rode 250 miles in a truck to honor Qadri on the anniversary of his death. “You must understand. We are not people of bombs and guns,” he explained. “But when someone insults our prophet, we cannot bear it. It is a matter of inexpressible emotions.” The idolization of Qadri — a martyr to some Pakistani Muslims and a murderer to others — stems from his confession that he killed out of religious duty. Qadri believed that his boss, Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer, had committed blasphemy by calling for reforms in Pakistan’s draconian laws against insulting Islam or the prophet Muhammad; Taseer had especially spoken out in defense of a Christian peasant woman, Asia Bibi, who was sent to prison for blasphemy. On Wednesday, police secured much of the capital in an effort to prevent Qadri’s supporters from interfering with the regional summit. Most major streets were blocked off, and schools and government offices were closed after noon. Qadri devotees had planned to rally in a park in Rawalpindi City and make their way to the shrine 20 miles away, but the park area was sealed off and only a few thousand people managed to reach Barakaho. Authorities prevented any physical confrontation, but the coinciding economic and religious events seemed an especially stark illustration of the deep divide confronting Pakistan as its leaders struggle between contradictory pulls toward global outreach and political modernization, on the one hand, and religious fervor and radicalization on the other. Abroad, Pakistan’s government is often criticized for sheltering Islamist militias that attack Afghanistan and India, but at home its leaders must contend with the intense devotion of its Sunni-majority population, whose historically moderate views have become increasingly hard-line under the influence of fundamentalist clerics and teachings. Authorities have periodically cracked down on violent Islamist groups, usually after high-profile attacks such as the 2014 massacre that killed 141 students and teachers at an army school and the spate of deadly suicide bombings last month, including one in a crowded plaza in Lahore city and another at a famous Sufi shrine in rural Sindh province. The recent attacks prompted a nationwide anti-terrorism campaign by the army and the police. But when it comes to sensitive matters of faith, especially blasphemy, the state has largely given in to the hard-liners. Under Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws, any perceived offense against the prophet Muhammad or Islam — even a dropped Koran or a mild curse — can be punishable by death. Vigilante mobs often take matters into their own hands, and false blasphemy charges are often hurled at personal enemies or members of religious minorities. Members of parliament have repeatedly proposed amendments to moderate the blasphemy laws, but they have always been quashed amid strong opposition by religious party leaders. The state eventually convicted and executed Qadri, but it allowed thousands of devotees to parade his coffin aloft through the streets of Rawalpindi city, reinforcing his growing stature as a cult figure. “This is a visible sign of growing extremism in our society. If we eulogize the killers of innocent people, we wonder in what direction this country is going,” said Asma Jehangir, a leading human rights activist. “If these followers of Qadri call themselves peaceful, it is a blatant lie. There is no difference between them and the Taliban,” she added. “If the state doesn’t stop them, more and more people will take the law into their own hands and turn into heroes.” At the green-domed hillside shrine to Qadri, officials kept order among several thousand devotees Wednesday and screened everyone with metal detectors. Many of his relatives were there, including his widow and 5-year-old son. His elder brother Malik Qadri, a telecommunications technician, stressed that their religious movement, “Invitation to Islam,” opposes violence. He said that the government had executed Qadri because of “foreign pressure,” but that even his widow was “happy because he gave his life to protect the prophet.” Some speakers at the gathering, however, seemed to exult in the violent example Qadri had set and the renown his crime had brought. Among them was Allama Hanif Qureshi, a leader of the Barelvi sect of Sunni Islam. “Today there are millions of Qadri lovers, and there are many children named after Qadri, but there are none named after Salman Taseer or the apostate Asia Bibi,” Qureshi said. “The government tried to stop the people from participating in this gathering, but they cannot stop us forever. We will continue with his mission. We will not spare blasphemers.” The adoration of Qadri has been a factor in the growing rivalry between the relatively mainstream Barelvis, who oppose the Taliban and other armed militias, and the more radical Deobandi sect, which has spawned many such religious warriors. With more than 175 million Sunni Muslims in Pakistan, the competition for support is fierce, and Qadri’s martyrdom has become a huge draw for the faithful. “I am here for the love of a great man,” said Zafar Iqbal, 38, a flower seller from Rawalpindi who was visiting the shrine, and who said he had participated in the mass public funeral for Qadri a year ago. “The Koran is very clear that blasphemers are to be killed, and we respect and love him for that.” The impact on Taseer’s family and legacy has been conflicted in a different way. Taseer was a wealthy and outspoken liberal, and his views on blasphemy as the appointed governor of Punjab province were controversial. After he was shot 26 times by Qadri — his personal guard — while leaving a restaurant in Islamabad, the government proclaimed three days of national mourning. But in an indication of how powerfully the issue of blasphemy reverberates across Pakistani society, some Muslim clerics refused to lead his funeral prayers, and even some courthouse lawyers expressed sympathy for his killer. Seven months later, one of Taseer’s sons was kidnapped by Islamist militants and held captive for nearly five years. As for Asia Bibi, it has been seven years since the Christian field worker was convicted of blasphemy after arguing with Muslim co-workers who objected to her drinking water from the same bucket. She has remained in prison ever since, condemned to death despite international pleas for her release, even from Pope Benedict XII. She has been threatened with lynching if she ever leaves prison. Hussain reported from Islamabad and Barakaho. ======================================== 12. PAKISTAN: APOLOGIA | ZARRAR KHUHRO ======================================== (Dawn - 20 February 2017) IN keeping with the title of this piece, I’ll start with a pre-emptive apology of my own: I’m sorry if anything written here happens to hurt national security, democracy or your feelings. I’m sorry that this piece and countless others like it even have to be written. I’m sorry for the apologists; you know who you are. You’re the ones who, moments after the Sehwan blast, resorted to your false equivalence. You’re the ones who can’t even condemn mass murder without caveats and qualifications. You’re the ones who will say ‘yes murder is wrong, but so is dancing at shrines’, or (even better) ‘killing innocents is against Islam but so is what happens at Sehwan’. I’m sorry that your line of thinking is the first step towards enabling murder, that your opinions would be welcomed with a nod and a cadaver grin by Mullah Fazlullah and Abu-Bakr Baghdadi. I’m sorry that the words you speak are the air they breathe. I’m sorry that you can quote scripture at will and yet have no understanding of the basic codes it preaches. I’m sorry that your righteousness trumps your humanity. I’m sorry that we share the same species. It is in the shadow of our silence that evil thrives. I’m sorry that we’re on our own, that ultimately it is our own fault if we die at the hands of terrorists. I’m sorry that the management of Sehwan Sharif didn’t provide for its own security as so many of us (perhaps rightly) believe it should have. I’m sorry that the government didn’t have the will or foresight to instal walk-in gates or even a room where female devotees could be searched. I’m sorry that we spell sacrifice with the torn limbs of our children. I’m sorry for all our martyrs, uniformed and otherwise, whose deaths were meant to be wake-up calls and in whose honour we hit the snooze button, roll over and go back to bed time and again. I’m sorry that once again we will beat our chests, rinse the blood off our hands, and repeat. I’m sorry for the state too, with all its talking heads, branches, departments and boxes within boxes. I’m sorry that the slaughter of citizens forces our Great Leaders to trot out their easily recycled statements of condolence. I’m sorry that they have to take time out from their busy schedules to visit the broken and bereaved, to walk among the blood and the filth in their designer shoes. I’m sorry that they have to breathe the same air as the rest of us. I’m sorry that despite disappeared bloggers and banned Valentine’s Days we cannot stop the blood from flowing. I’m sorry that the government can spend millions of rupees of our tax money on prime time ads proclaiming the innocence of the First Family (now 100pc Panama-free!) but cannot and will not spend even a portion of that money on prime time ads countering the terrorist narrative and teaching us serfs what to watch out for. I’m sorry for the effort politicians have to put into their spin doctoring. For Punjab’s law minister Rana Sanaullah claiming that the Lahore protesters had themselves to blame — had they not been on the streets they would still be alive, wouldn’t they? I’m sorry we don’t have the insight and wisdom of PTI’s Punjab MPA Dr Murad Raas, who linked the Lahore blast to a reference filed against Shahbaz Sharif. I’m sorry that both these shining stars of our political firmament are in good company, their views echoed and parroted by legions of loyal and unthinking followers. I’m sorry for them too; these sheep who kiss with such reverence the knife that slits their throats, who so love the blade that shears their skin. I’m sorry for the living dead who shout of bias and conspiracy even as the remains of those slaughtered by monsters are thrown to the dogs. I almost feel sorry for the terrorists who, broken backs and all, take such pains to claim responsibility and explain why they feel the need to slaughter the infidels who — in their eyes — comprise 99.99pc of Pakistan’s population. I’m sorry that despite their best efforts so many of us still don’t believe them, and probably never will. But here’s what I’m not sorry for, and here’s what none of you should be sorry for either: for being loud and angry, for your outrage. Don’t be sorry for speaking up when someone in your presence, their eyes wild and blazing, tries to tell you that black is white and up is down and that the victims themselves are to blame. Because it is in the shadow of our silence that evil thrives, it is through our acquiescence that the incompetent and venal find their ways to the corridors of power. And if you do still remain silent, after all the horror and pain and loss, then the only ones you should be sorry for are yourselves. The writer is a journalist. ======================================== 13. INDIA: VANDALS, NOT VIDYARTHIS - EDITORIAL, THE WIRE ======================================== (The Wire - 23/02/2017) The Ramjas College violence is the clearest sign yet of what is in store for the country if such politically-sanctioned hooliganism remains unchecked. Students protests the violence by ABVP at Ramjas College. Credit: Nandini Sundar Students protests the violence by ABVP at Ramjas College. Credit: Nandini Sundar Using violent methods to stop a debate or settle political differences is a crime regardless of location but when violence is unleashed on a university campus – against students and teachers – the assault takes on an altogether more sinister dimension. The blatant acts of thuggery that the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad unleashed at Ramjas College, Delhi University this week is an attack on the idea of the university, on reason and wisdom, on the rights enshrined in the Constitution, and on the very idea of India. Though India as we know it will be imperilled without democracy, the ABVP – the BJP’s students wing – believes its attacks on democracy are somehow in the service of the nation. The organisation says it was objecting to the presence of two of the invitees at a literary event on campus but the methods it employed is proof that its real aim is to force conformity on students and academic institutions and stop them from criticising or even debating official policies. Wire-editorialUmar Khalid and Shehla Rashid were closely associated with the protests led by Kanhaiya Kumar early last year against attempts to criminalise debate and dissent at Jawaharlal Nehru University. The Modi government at the Centre actively stoked the fire in JNU, pushing the Delhi police to file trumped up charges against the student leaders and activists. Though the police case quickly fizzled out, the BJP and ABVP used the hysteria they had generated to stir the pot of narrow nationalism and circumscribe basic freedoms that students in universities must enjoy as they debate diverse ideas. Universities have the mandate to promote open discussion and that is why, historically, parties and politicians who dislike democracy tend to turn campuses into battlefields. The BJP and sangh parivar are no different. After coming to power in 2014, they have not taken kindly to the liberal spaces that have evolved in various universities over the years. The tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula, the attack on JNU, and the spate of incidents involving the ABVP at universities in Allahabad, Ranchi, Lucknow, Mahendragarh and Jodhpur speak to the rapid shrinking of such liberal democratic spaces. It is also an open secret that the ABVP enjoys the blessings of the very top – both at the party and government level – to act as moral police, even to the extent of taking the law into their own hands. The Ramjas College violence is the clearest sign yet of what is in store for the country if such politically-sanctioned hooliganism remains unchecked. First, the ABVP violently disrupted the literary event and forced not just the cancellation of Umar Khalid’s talk but the entire programme. Next, it attacked students in and around the college who had gathered peacefully to protest this assault on their democratic rights. The failure of the police to defend the victims of these unprovoked attacks is also, unfortunately part of a worrying trend evident across the country. Whenever an organisation affiliated to the ruling party at the Centre or state or enjoying the blessings of an influential leader violently objects to a lecture or film or play or exhibition, the police end up giving in to its intimidation. In Delhi too, the police’s role was shameful as it treated the ABVP goons with kid gloves – just as it had allowed BJP activists to go on the rampage outside the Patiala House courts when the Kanhaiya Kumar was to be produced for a hearing. The failure of Delhi University’s administrators to take a stand in defence of their students is also deeply disturbing. Universities must be sanctuaries where young minds can develop and be nurtured in an atmosphere that is free from violence and intimidation. If the government is unwilling to respect the idea of a university, other cherished ideas will all soon fall by the wayside. ======================================== 14. INDIA: NO TALKING IN THE HINDU RASHTRA - LESSONS FROM THE DISRUPTIONS AT DELHI'S RAMJAS COLLEGE by Ananya Vajpeyi ======================================== (scroll.in - 23 February 2017) What does the Hindu Right fear the most? Is it who talks? Or is it what is talked about? On Tuesday, I arrived at Ramjas College on Delhi University’s North Campus at 11 am to speak at a seminar on “Cultures of Protest” organised by undergraduates of the English department. I was on a morning panel titled “Mapping Subaltern Resistance”, with a senior academic and a young journalist. We started at noon. As I spoke about a confluence of environmental, arts and social justice movements I’ve been following in Chennai, the electricity started to come and go; shouts of “Bharat Mata ki Jai!” and “Vande Mataram!” could be heard. I paused briefly, made a joke about nationalist slogans, and continued without a microphone. The disturbances increased. When the next panelist stepped up, deafeningly loud Bollywood music began to play outside. Our voices were being drowned out. Somehow we completed our session. Before everyone could disperse for lunch, the department chair came on stage to announce regretfully that the college administration had been pressured by a mob of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad members and police officials who claimed to be helpless in the face of palpable tension on campus, to withdraw the invitation from Umar Khalid, a Jawaharlal Nehru University graduate student and political activist, slated to speak at a post-lunch session titled “Unveiling the State: Regions in Conflict”. We were told that Khalid had left JNU campus and was en route to Delhi University, when he had to be asked to turn back to ensure the safety of everyone present. The faculty advisors who had helped student organisers plan the schedule were clearly upset and angry. A couple of them addressed the gathering briefly, urging all of us – speakers, students and teachers – to strongly but peacefully protest this forcible withdrawal of Khalid’s invitation. We marched for a few minutes within the college, students shouting slogans of “Azadi” like the ones heard in JNU last spring. I suggested to colleagues that perhaps Khalid could join by Skype. Displays of physical aggression As we moved back towards the canteen area, where lunch was to be served and proceedings to resume, albeit sans Khalid, the small space was flooded with ABVP members again, shoving their way in and projecting physical aggression, especially towards women and faculty. The police started to arrive in numbers. There were construction materials and large cooking fires in a very cramped area, both of which seemed unsafe in the circumstances. I found myself pushed from one side to the other as I tried to take pictures, find familiar faces and assess the escalating situation. Young men stood ominously on the roof of the building, above the conference hall. They began throwing down branches and dangling steel buckets in a threatening way above the dense crowd gathered below. A student got hurt. At this point a face-off began between ABVP and college students. The police did little to defuse the violence in the air. An onrush of people surging helter-skelter in my direction sent me running back into the building. I decided to leave while I could. I discovered the parking lot to be full of police officers and official cherry-top cars; one vehicle had someone who appeared to be a Bharatiya Janata Party leader in the backseat, with a large saffron tilak on his forehead, talking on his cell phone. I requested him to let me take my car out. He nodded politely. As I drove away I saw more police heading towards the college gates. Subsequent developments on February 21-22 and continuing on Thursday, have been widely reported in the media. Those protesting the closure of the seminar, the aggression of the ABVP, the role of police and the restrictions on specific invitees, have been intimidated, attacked and injured. Journalists were roughed up and had their equipment broken. Many ended up in hospital. There were rumours that Section 144 had been imposed on the North Campus on the night of February 22 and that students received threatening messages asking them to stay in their hostel rooms. The ABVP has repeatedly insisted that it opposes the participation of student activists Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid in particular. There’s no doubt why a right-wing student union and a Hindu majoritarian administration targets these individuals: both have Muslim names, both belong to JNU and both are politically on the left. Moreover, they have over the past year spoken out on a range of issues from Kashmir to Dalit and tribal rights, all of which are considered off-limits by the BJP regime. It doesn’t help that these young scholar-activists articulate themselves with poise and confidence in Hindi and English, are academically brilliant, and have held their own repeatedly against bellicose interlocutors on TV and in public gatherings. Khalid went to jail in 2016 despite being innocent of any crime. Rashid (originally from Kashmir) has been relentlessly trolled and bullied, including most recently on the Aligarh Muslim University campus. What’s at stake Neither one has backed down in the least, not at Ramjas College now nor at any time since Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest on the JNU campus last year. Before our eyes both have grown from regular graduate students into promising organisers and leaders, as well as potentially influential teachers and intellectuals of the future. We should also worry that an entire seminar, featuring speakers who are scholars, journalists, artists, activists and educators, covering a whole range of issues from gender and sexuality to history and politics, to arts and culture, to media and conflict, has been brazenly disrupted. That a college campus was overrun by police – who then proceeded to openly side with the aggressors and failed to ensure the security of others. That a routine student-run event posing no danger to anyone was forcibly stopped. What does the Hindu Right fear the most? Is it who talks? Or is it what is talked about? Or is it the fact that citizens of this free country and world’s largest democracy expect to be able to talk at all? Are we supposed to drop that fundamental assumption regarding our freedom of expression, and just shut up? If speaking makes us anti-national, what kind of nation does that make India? Ananya Vajpeyi is a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. ======================================== 15. INDIA: UNIVERSITY AS BATTLEGROUND - EDITORIAL, EPW ======================================== (The Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 52, Issue No. 8, 25 Feb, 2017) India’s university students are reminding us that democracy means dissent. The vanguard of democracy is on the field of battle in our universities. Those who hold that universities are clearing houses for ideas, where young and curious minds ought to be permitted to explore, to articulate, to debate a range of ideas, confront those who see all expression that does not echo the official ideology of the state as “anti-national,” to be condemned and throttled. The latest site of such a clash was Delhi University’s Ramjas College where in an open show of bullying the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)–Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) disrupted a seminar on “Cultures of Protest” to which Umar Khalid, an activist and doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), was invited as a speaker. The following day, ABVP goons viciously attacked the students and teachers who had gathered to protest against the disruption with stones and bottles. Journalists were also attacked while the Delhi Police, present in full strength, did nothing to stop them. They also failed to register a first information report (FIR) against ABVP members and instead lathi-charged the protesters at the Maurice Nagar police station who were demanding that an FIR be filed. This incident is part of a discernible pattern of the current regime to silence all criticism, all voices that do not conform to its ideological agenda. It is part of the Sangh Parivar’s long-term strategy to subvert intellectual spaces, capture institutions of higher learning, not through debates, discussions, or the use of any logic, but through intimidation, harassment and violence, often with the aid of the state machinery. A similar situation arose earlier this year when a police complaint was filed against Nivedita Menon, a professor of comparative governance and political theory at JNU, by the registrar of the Jai Narain Vyas University (JNVS) in Jodhpur over her alleged remarks about Kashmir during a speech on campus. Her speech had triggered protests by ABVP members, who predictably called it “anti-national,” and led to the suspension of the main organiser of the event, Rajshree Ranawat, an assistant professor in the English department in JNVS. In September 2016, there was a similar demand for suspension and “severe punishment” of two faculty members, Snehsata Manav and Manoj Kumar of the Central University of Haryana for staging the adaptation of Mahasweta Devi’s short story Draupadi. The ABVP members had declared the play “anti-national,” as “it showed the Indian army in poor light,” even as Mahasweta Devi, after her recent demise, was being honoured for her lifetime’s work across the country. These campus spaces have joined the battleground that the University of Hyderabad (UoH) and JNU have been for more than a year now. In August 2015, before the 9 February 2016 incident at JNU—triggered by demonstrations marking the anniversary of the hanging of Afzal Guru—led to the binary of the “patriots” versus the “anti-nationals,” ABVP goons had vandalised the venue and stopped the screening of the documentary film Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai in Kirori Mal College of the Delhi University. As today, back then too they had called the film “anti-religious,” and objected to the “tenor” of the film. All these incidents separately and together illustrate how the Narendra Modi government, ever since it took office in 2014, has gone out of its way to bring institutions of higher learning under the influence of one ideology. Different means to this end have been used. From appointing individuals favoured by the RSS as heads of institutions like the Central Board of Film Certification, the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, and the Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi, to ensuring that vice-chancellors at UoH and JNU are ready to act at the bidding of the ABVP and the central government, the intellectual spaces of universities and centres for higher learning have been compromised to make the environment hostile to any voices of dissent or questioning. Teachers and students are routinely threatened to conform or face suspensions. The state and its ministers, through their persistent rhetoric about “anti-nationals,” have given legitimacy and confidence to the muscle power of their student wing to go on the rampage in universities. The message is clear: to be against the current regime, is to be against “the nation.” This culture of violence and intimidation threatens independent thinking and all those who are against the philosophy of majoritarianism of the ruling dispensation. This reign of intimidation is now no more the monopoly of the RSS–BJP, even though they, without doubt, are masters of the game. For example, while their student wing creates mischief in Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh, the students’ union of the Aligarh Muslim University recently cancelled a meeting of student activists on its campus, and filed a police complaint against Shehla Rashid, a student activist at JNU, for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad in a Facebook post. These incidences of growing friction at university campuses and shrinking spaces for freedom of speech, tell a distressing tale of growing narrow-mindedness, the very spirit against which a university stands. Universities are places where one can discuss diverse thoughts, formulate new ideas and challenge the horizons of what is known and accepted. When the agencies of state (or a mob) seek to destroy such spaces, we must stand with those who strive to prevent the demise of democratic dissent, the very ethos of our democracy. ======================================== 16. INDIA: BULLDOZING PRAGATI MAIDAN’S BUILDINGS WILL EXTINGUISH OUR SHARED HERITAGE AND A MILLION MEMORIES by Arun Rewal ======================================== (scroll.in - 23 February 2017) Can anyone imagine a similar challenge to the Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower, or the Guggenheim Museum? Change and continuity are constants in every city – but a good city is one that balances the two adeptly. It ensures that while developing and absorbing change, there is enough space for memories to persist, for the preservation of iconic heritage monuments. In a good city, the deep structures, the buildings that provide a continuum, are not built upon. Delhi has several deep structures, not least among them the historic Hall of Nations and Nehru Pavilion at Pragati Maidan – which the government is hell-bent on demolishing, despite opposition from heritage conservation groups and architects. The Hall of Nations Complex’s significance is deeper than the sum of its architectural magnificence and iconic image. In its structure is embedded a typological persistence that builds upon our rich heritage and, at the same time, accommodates the future. Back in 1972, when the buildings were first opened, they showed the world that modernity could be achieved even with minimal resources. The austere structures were different from the message preached in the rest of the world then – they announced that modernity in India was set in rich traditions, a value that the world today recognises as the basis for distinct places. The Hall of Nations and Industries Complex, along with the Nehru Pavilion, at Pragati Maidan were planned to commemorate 25 years of India’s independence. Designed by architect Raj Rewal and engineered by Mahendra Raj, both selected from an architecture competition, the three structures were built between the years 1969 and 1972. >From the very inception, they reflected structural ingenuity, and richness and >complexity in spatial and formal character. They evoked memories of lattices, >imbibed the shape of the mandala and provided an ingenious spatial >configuration that appeared new every time you visited them. A play between a >geometrical order and fluid reading offered them an inventive and >accommodative character. The structures shared abstracted elements from India’s rich cultural heritage. The Hall of Nations, for instance, drew from the plan of Humayun’s tomb, and the Nehru Pavilion was built low scaled and humble in character, like the ancient stupas. Embedded in a mound of earth, the Nehru Pavilion’s original displays included personal belongings of Nehru, his vision for modern India and the struggle for freedom. (Today it houses one of the few museums in Delhi relating to our freedom struggle.) Both the Hall of Nations and the Nehru Pavilion represented a period in the Indian architectural history where the new was developed rooted in cultural traditions albeit with modern materials. It was this cultural rootedness – along with the monumental scale of the buildings, their place-making technique, and austere character – that made them a design inspiration. Within decades, the Hall of Nations Complex – like Jantar Mantar, Humayun’s tomb and the Purana Quila before it – became part of Delhi’s memory. Carefully sited in relation to the central vista, the Purana Quila and the Supreme Court, the complex contributed as a landmark to the positive image of the city and provided a rare public exhibiting space, where millions of memories were formed. The buildings were acclaimed as an image of Progress, Modernity in India, and finally Indian Architecture. Acknowledged as icons, they found a place in the annals of architecture and Indian cultural history: models or drawings have been displayed or form a part of permanent collection of museums and galleries, including at the Pompidou Museum in Paris, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, as well as The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. It is no wonder then that today architects worldwide are questioning their destruction. Can anyone imagine a similar challenge to the Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower, or the Guggenheim Museum that transformed Bilbao in Spain? How can we as a nation morally accept that these monuments – which offer architectural inspiration, are portrayed on stamps, depicted in popular cinema and on the smart city banners of the Delhi Development Authority – are being condemned? What does this say about a state where the institutions meant to safeguard our shared heritage are destroying them instead? These monuments are emblems of modern India which can easily be upgraded and fitted with services to provide contemporary comfort levels. The government claims that it wants to build a convention centre in place of the complex in Pragati Maidan, but architects and planners have questioned the wisdom of this choice. A convention center is already being built near the Indira Gandhi International Airport close to the hotels in Gurgaon and Delhi, and another is planned in Dwarka. Yet another is slated for up-gradation in Greater Noida. Planners say that even if the authorities were to overlook the international model of building convention centres near airports and hotels, the secured edge of Safdarjung Airport provides a more viable option than Pragati Maidan – above all, it would not further clog Delhi. The proposed project has clearly not been thought through. The motive to tear down buildings becomes more questionable if one was to consider the empty tracts of land to the east of the railway tracks and to the south across Bhairon Road, characterised by makeshift parking areas and inefficient use of land. The Nehru Pavilion. Photo courtesy: Ram Rahman The Nehru Pavilion. Photo courtesy: Ram Rahman It is also apparent that the area around for Pragati Maidan will be choked with traffic. The issue is not just about providing parking but one of congestion at the point of access tunnels and ramps connecting to the city. The area around Supreme Court, High Court, Central Vista, Mathura Road and the Ring Road will be compromised, once there is a convention centre. Other consequences too will haunt all. The future will show how our heritage is being compromised to carve gains for private interest groups. There is strong support internationally to condemn such efforts – the Union of Architects, the design leadership in the US as well as nations in Asia and Europe, apart from concerned citizens, have initiated campaigns to conserve the Hall of Nations, Hall of Industry and the Nehru Pavilion. It is time we too stand up to protect our shared rich architectural and cultural heritage from demolition or abuse. These buildings must be upgraded and put to active public use. Arun Rewal is an architect, planner and urban designer. ======================================== 17. SHRINKING AND DARKENING, THE PLIGHT OF KASHMIR’S DYING LAKES by Umar Shah ======================================== (Inter Press Service) Fayaz Ahmad Khanday plucks a lotus stem from Wullar Lake in India’s Kashmir. He says the fish population has fallen drastically in recent years. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS SRINAGAR, Feb 22 2017 (IPS) - Mudasir Ahmad says that two decades ago, his father made a prophecy that the lake would vanish after the fish in its waters started dying. Three years ago, he found dead fish floating on the surface, making him worried about its fate. Like his father, Ahmad, 27, is a boatman on Kashmir’s famed Nigeen Lake, located north of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar. He says the lake has provided a livelihood to his family for generations, but now things are taking an “ugly turn”. “The floods of September 2014 wreaked havoc and caused heavy loss to property and human lives. That was the first signal of how vulnerable have we become to natural disasters due to environmental degradation." --Researcher Aabid Ahmad The gradual algae bloom in the lake, otherwise known for its pristine beauty, led to oxygen depletion. Fish began to die. Environmentalists termed the development the first visible signs of environmental stress in the lake. But no one was more worried than Mudasir himself. “We have been rowing boats on the lake for centuries. My grandfather and my father have been fed by this lake. I also have grown up here and my livelihood is directly dependent on the lake,” Ahmad told IPS. He believes the emergence of rust-coloured waters is the sign of the lake dying a silent death, and he holds everyone responsible. “We have built houses in an unprecedented way around its banks. The drainage from the households directly drifts into the lake, making it more polluted than ever,” Ahmad said. Blessed with over 1,000 small and large water bodies, the landlocked Kashmir Valley, located northern India, is known as the land of lakes and mountains. However, due to large scale urbanization and unprecedented deforestation, most of the water bodies in the region have disappeared. A recent study by Kashmir’s renowned environmentalists Gowher Naseem and Humayun Rashid found that 50 percent of lakes and wetlands in the region’s capital have been lost to other land use/land cover categories. During the last century, deforestation led to excessive siltation and subsequent human activity brought about sustained land use changes in these assets of high ecological value. The study concludes that the loss of water bodies in Kashmir can be attributed to heavy population pressures. Research fellow at Kashmir University, Aijaz Hassan, says the Kashmir Valley was always prone to floods but several water bodies in the region used to save the local population from getting marooned. “All the valley’s lakes and the vast associated swamps played an important role in maintaining the uniformity of flows in the rivers. In the past, during the peak summers, whenever the rivers would flow high, these lakes and swamps used to act as places for storage of excessive water and thereby prevented large areas of the valley from floods,” Hassan said. Fishermen cover their heads and part of their boats with blankets and straw as they wait to catch fish Kashmir's Dal Lake. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS Fishermen cover their heads and part of their boats with blankets and straw as they wait to catch fish Kashmir’s Dal Lake. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS India’s largest freshwater lake, Wullar Lake, is located in North Kashmir’s Bandipora area. It too is witnessing severe degradation due to large-scale human intervention. Wullar Lake, which claimed an area of 217.8 sq. km in 1911, has been reduced to about 80 sq. km today, with only 24 sq. km of open water remaining. Environmentalist Majid Farooq says large areas of the lake have been converted for rice cultivation and tree plantations. According to him, pollution from fertilizers and animal waste, hunting pressure on waterfowl and migratory birds, and weed infestation are other factors contributing to the loss of Wullar Lake’s natural beauty. The fish population in the lake has witnessed a sharp decline due to depletion of oxygen and ingress of pollutants. Another famed lake known as Dal Lake has shrunk by 24.49 per cent in the past 155 years and its waters are becoming increasingly polluted. The lake, according to research by the University of Kashmir’s Earth Science Department, is witnessing “multiple pressures” from unplanned urbanisation, high population growth and nutrient load from intensive agriculture and tourism. Analysis of the demographic data indicated that the human population within the lake areas had shown “more than double the national growth rate.” Shakil Ahmad Ramshoo, head of Department of Earth Sciences at University of Kashmir, told IPS that the water quality of the lake is deteriorating and no more than 20 percent of the lake’s water is potable. “As the population increased, all the household sewage, storm runoff goes into the Dal Lake without any treatment — or even if there is treatment done, it is very insufficient. This has increased the pollutant load of the Dal Lake,” he said. According to Ramshoo, when the study compared the past water quality of the lake with the present, it found ingress of the pollutants has increased and the lake water quality has deteriorated significantly. According to the region’s tourism department, over one million tourists visit Dal Lake annually and around 300,000 people are directly and indirectly dependent on the lake for their livelihood. The multimillion-dollar handicrafts industry of Kashmir, which gives employment to over 200,000 people, is also heavily dependent upon the arrival of tourists in the region. A study on the Impact of Tourism Industry on Economic Development of Jammu and Kashmir says that almost 50-60 percent of the total population of Jammu and Kashmir is directly or indirectly engaged in tourism related activities. The industry contributes 15 percent to the state’s GDP. However, Mudasir Ahmad, whose livelihood is directly dependent on the lake, says every time he takes tourists to explore the lake in his Shikara (a boat), he is asked about the murkier water quality. “My grandfather and even my father used to drink from this lake. The present situation is worrisome and if this goes unabated, tourists would cease to come. Who would spend money to see cesspools?” Ahmad said. Fayaz Ahmad Khanday, a fisherman living on Wullar Lake, says the fish production has fallen drastically in the last three years, affecting both him and hundreds of other fishermen. “Fish used to be present in abundance in the lake but now the scarcity of the species is taking toll. Every day we see dead fish floating on the lake’s waters. We really are concerned about our livelihood and the fate of the lake as well,” Khanday lamented. The fisherman holds unplanned construction around the lake responsible for its pollution. Aabid Ahmad, a research scholar in Environmental Studies, says Kashmir has become vulnerable to natural disasters as region’s most of the water bodies have either disappeared or are shrinking. “The floods of September 2014 wreaked havoc and caused heavy loss to property and human lives. That was the first signal of how vulnerable have we become to natural disasters due to environmental degradation,” Ahmad told IPS. But, for Shakeel Ramshoo, it is still possible to restore the lakes and water bodies of Kashmir. “Don’t move the people living on these water bodies out. You just allow them to stay in the lake. We have to control the haphazard constructions that are taking toll around these water bodies,” he said. “Hutments in the water bodies should be densified with STPs (Sewage Treatment Plants) installed in every household. Land mass can be removed and the area of the water bodies would increase. Also, the sewage treatment mechanism should be better so that the ingress of pollutants is ceased,” Ramshoo said. ======================================== 18. INDIA: THIS IS NOT THE ABVP WE KNEW - WHAT HAPPENED AT RAMJAS & WHY THE SANGHIS SHOULD BE ASHAMED | Dilip Simeon ======================================== (catch news - 24 February 2017) The violent attack upon a completely peaceful seminar at Ramjas College is unprecedented, not for the behaviour of the RSS-affiliated student body, which is to be expected, given their long-standing attraction to violence and intimidation. It is unprecedented for the shameless impunity afforded by the police, who allowed peaceful people to be assaulted with stones, a lady lecturer attacked and held under gherao for nearly 5 hours after with a chair being hurled at her, and numerous students and journalists manhandled, assaulted and abused. The police is duty-bound and empowered to take action, including arrest, in the case of cognisable offences such as rioting and causing injury. They could have acted on the spot, instead of which they allowed the criminal activity to go on for hours, treating the miscreants smilingly like mischievous children. A detailed account of the events is being prepared by the teachers, which I will post when available. I also have an immediate reaction by a senior Ramjas student who was eyewitness to the events. You can read it here. But the basic point is that there was no, and I repeat, no provocation by the participants of the seminar. They were merely speaking or listening. How can a Union Government minister talk of this college becoming an anti-India hub? Has he investigated what slogans were raised? This is an utterly irresponsible statement and shows the tendency of high officials of this government to justify violence in the name of their version of nationalism. Is it their job to encourage hooliganism? Did they see the agenda of the seminar and know in advance what was going to be said and discussed? No longer the ABVP we knew The ABVP today is not what it was some decades ago. When I was a teacher at Ramjas (1974-94) I remember ABVP boys attending my classes in Soviet history – perhaps they thought they would get a non-propagandist view of a heavily ideologised past. I am also reminded of a seminar in early 1988 on the Tamas serial at which they invited me to speak. I did not do so, but my friend Purushottam Agrawal did speak, that too in the company of the East Delhi BJP MP and student leaders of the ABVP. He gave a stirring rebuttal of their objections to the serial, but was respectfully listened to. Today he would be assaulted for what he said. Thereafter, in the face of many threats, we organised a meeting on Tamas in Ramjas, the story of which may be read here. At the very least the ABVP boys those days showed a basic respect for their teachers. I can also say that during the course of the Ramjas struggle (1981-83) over the victimisation of Sita Ram Mali by the college administration, many of them changed their values spontaneously, without any prompting from us. I have never propagated any ideology to my students, aside from the value I place upon ahimsa and a respect for human life. Today's ABVP has discarded the most basic values of respect for their teachers, some of whom are being abused and targeted by name. Is it part of Indian culture to assault and abuse your teachers, including lady teachers, all the while shouting Bharat Mata ki jai? This is no longer the Bhartiya Janta Party, it is Modi's Janta Party. May God help Bharat. Let ideas be Persons with objectionable ideas have the right to speak, whether or not we like those ideas. Under no circumstance should they be liable to violent assault. If people do not like certain ideas they are at liberty to question and even condemn the speakers. Under what law are they permitted to violently attack speakers and members of the audience? Is there some law under which you can commit violent crime by saying you are 'nationalists'? Is your so-called patriotism a permit to violate the law? The Sanghi's were infuriated that students protested against this disruption by taking out a peaceful rally inside the campus. The rally also called for freedom (azaadi) of speech and assembly – which slogan was deliberately misinterpreted as referring to secessionism. Now doctored videos are being circulated. The very use of the Hindi word for freedom has now been criminalised. Is the entire country and the use of language to be policed by the RSS? Will the Home Minister and the Delhi Police Commissioner kindly give us a dictionary of words and phrases acceptable to His Highness The Sarsangchaalak? How can police officers stand by and treat rioters with kid gloves while peaceful citizens are being assaulted? Are they the hirelings of the Sangh Parivar? Did they take an oath of office in the name of the Indian Constitution or to the government of the day? Every moment that a police official looks the other way when a criminal act takes place before his or her eyes contains the germ of fascist tyranny. The Ramjas incident This is what happened in Ramjas College. I witnessed some of it on Tuesday, 21 February, when I was due to speak (at 3PM) on the theme of the civic response to the massacre of 1984. I could not deliver my lecture because rioting was in full swing when I arrived on the campus. I have seen this kind of scenario many times when I was a Ramjas teacher. Stones were being thrown, glass shattered, abuses hurled. None of these activities could have taken place without instructions from the higher political controllers of the Sangh. Their activists are assured of soft handling – they know they can indulge in criminal activity and get away with it. These are crimes against the law, and in a broader sense, they signify an assault on our minds by activists of a totalitarian project. These persons wish to enforce their beliefs upon us and to use political power as a cover for violent activity. It is our duty as citizens to protect our constitutional rights. More such attacks are to be expected unless we protest vigorously. We all belong to Ramjas. This is a citation from a book on Nazism written in the 1930’s – Behemoth, The Structure and Practice of National Socialism by Franz Neumann. (republished 1963, p 27). A pdf file may be read here: "(The counter revolution)…tried many forms and devices, but soon learned that it could come to power only with the help of the state machine and never against it… the Kapp Putsch of 1920 and the Hitler Putsch of 1923 had proved this...In the centre of the counter-revolution stood the judiciary. Unlike administrative acts, which rest on considerations of convenience and expediency, judicial decisions rest on law, that is on right and wrong, and they always enjoy the limelight of publicity. Law is perhaps the most pernicious of all weapons in political struggles, precisely because of the halo that surrounds the concepts of right and justice…” ‘Right’, Hocking has said, ‘is psychologically a claim whose infringement is met with a resentment deeper than the injury would satisfy, a resentment that may amount to a passion for which men will risk life and property as they would never do for an expediency’. When it becomes ‘political’, justice breeds hatred and despair among those it singles out for the attack. Those whom it favours, on the other hand, develop a profound contempt for the very value of justice, they know that it can be purchased by the powerful. As a device for strengthening one political group at the expense of others, for eliminating enemies and assisting political allies, the law then threatens the fundamental convictions upon which the tradition of our civilisation rests. Edited by Jhinuk Sen The author is a former professor from Ramjas College. You can read his blog here ======================================== 19. INDIA: LYNCH MOB FASCISM | Shehla Rashid Shora ======================================== (The Times of India, February 25, 2017) Shehla Rashid Shora, a member of AISA, was one of the invited speakers at the Cultures of Protest event at Ramjas College. This is her firsthand account of the protest. This year, none of the Delhi University colleges made it to the list of top colleges in India. Ill-conceived measures such as appointment of faculty on adhoc basis, the forcible imposition of FYUP and then CBCS has robbed Delhi University of its fame. However, one of the DU colleges named ‘Ramjas’ has managed to make it to news for all the wrong reasons- lumpen violence on campus! As university students, if we have to throw bricks and stones, punch our opponents, pull their hair, show middle fingers to them and abuse them, then what is the point of education? If universities cannot be the spaces where we debate, discuss and dissent, then it is difficult to say whether there will be any space left for debate and discussion. A ‘University’, by its very definition, should encourage and nurture universal thought; it is a space that cannot be held hostage to narrow religious and jingoistic ‘sentiments’ – which, most of the time, are not even ‘sentiments’ in the real sense of the word. One can imagine a person with ‘hurt sentiments’ as someone sensitive, someone who is sulking, not someone who mobilises violent mobs and attacks students ruthlessly. As university students, we must get together to unanimously condemn acts of violence in campuses, not for the sake of political correctness, but for the sake of academics. No free thought can be nurtured in a space where you cannot guarantee that you won’t have to take a brick on the head for the crime of having an idea. This is as true for a campus where ABVP is dominant, as for a campus where SFI is dominant. Majority or dominance cannot be the justification for violence. Power, in fact, calls for humility and accountability. The students’ union in Delhi University has been in the eye of the storm in the past for openly flaunting guns on campus. Amit Tanwar, the DUSU President, shortly after being elected, held a condolence ceremony for his late cousin in the DUSU office, pictures of which his cronies openly shared on social media, flaunting the guns that they were holding. Several rallies by ‘Pinjra Tod’- a collective of girls seeking non-discriminatory hostel timings- have been attacked by the previous and present office-bearers of the DU Students’ Union. ‘Prostitute’ is the regular form of address used by ABVP hoodlums in DU for female activists. Last year, a DU student Abhinav was attacked by ABVP so badly that he lost hearing in one of his ears! His crime was that he was providing admission assistance to freshers in DU. He was attacked so that ABVP could monopolise the admission assistance process. And everyone knows the case of Najeeb Ahmed- a fresher in JNU- who was ruthlessly attacked by an ABVP mob after which he went missing. If debates are to be settled by mob violence and guns, then we might as well close down Universities and build boxing rings instead. One of the reasons for the decay in DU is the gradual closing down of critical faculties. Ill-informed ABVP members cry hoarse that they “won’t let DU become JNU”, not realising that JNU has repeatedly, in all ratings and assessments, been declared as the best Central University in India! Several people argue that groups of identified ABVP lumpens should not be called ‘mobs’ because that gives them the much-needed anonymity and impunity that they need for getting away with violent crimes. It is another thing that no one intends to punish them. The Delhi Police never turns a complaint against them into an FIR, no matter how severe the violence. Neither in the case of Najeeb, nor in the case of Abhinav, has any FIR against the identified ABVP members been registered. In the case of Abhinav, one of the persons who assaulted him, Himanshu Bidhuri, happens to be the son of BJP MP, Ramesh Bidhuri! In the recent Ramjas incident, three and a half hours of unilateral stone pelting was witnessed by the police, journalists were attacked, students were bleeding from their heads, girls were ruthlessly dragged by their hair but the police chose to be a mute spectator. Each such case of institutional impunity emboldens these murderous mobs even more, and the day is not far when we may witness a repeat of Dadri mob-lynching in one of the University campuses. Several people continue to debate whether this is actual fascism or whether these are ‘footsteps of fascism’. We might not be able to arrive at an exact answer if we draw exact comparisons between Mussolini’s fascist Italy and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Concentration camps and gas chambers won’t be set up. It is a new kind of lynch mob fascism that can turn the streets into killing fields. What transpired in Delhi University on February 21st & 22nd , 2017 was a riot. The ABVP, whose demand of not inviting certain speakers was met, unleashed violence nevertheless. The Delhi Police asked us to go home and not carry out a peaceful rally, cops forced the roadside vendors and shops to shut down, as stones were being showered from the ABVP side on our side and they enclosed us within a ‘Do Not Cross’ line as we were camping outside the Maurice Nagar Police Station demanding that an FIR be filed against the violence that took place in Ramjas College on the Feb 21st, 2017. However, the only thing that the Delhi Police stopped short of was detaining the ABVP cadres who were unleashing violence, reigning in the hoodlums and making the violence stop. Law and order is the domain of the police and whenever they abdicate it, or are made to abdicate it (by order of the Central Government who are patrons of the ABVP), the resulting situation is a riot. ABVP, on Feb 22nd, attacked anyone holding a camera. So much so that the CCTV camera installed at the Ramjas College bus stop was smashed. Journalists were thrashed and dragged by the hair. While the ABVP members on Facebook and Twitter are celebrating the violence, their charming spokespersons on TV deny the allegations. Their denial of the violence proves that the violence in DU is indefensible. When confronted with facts, they readily produce a justification that Umar Khalid is an anti-national. It is interesting that they leave out any mention of Anirban who was jailed along with Umar, on concocted charges of sedition, which is yet to be turned into a chargesheet. The same FIR that mentions the name of Umar also mentions Anirban’s name. However, their blood seems to boil only at the mention of a Muslim name, exposing the chronic anti-Muslim hatred of the Sangh. They seem to have tasked themselves with making people patriotic by hitting them with stones and sticks. However, they fail in their duty when they fail to protest against Dhruv Saxena, a prominent BJYM leader, who has been found to have ISI links. They fail to target in the same way, Prashant Paricharak- a BJP-backed MLC who recently called army wives unfaithful. They suspend their so-called nationalism when Ram Krishan Grewal raises the issue of OROP or when Tej Bahadur Yadav raises the issue of horrible work conditions on the border; the moment a foot soldier of the hate project of cross-border violence raises issues of parity in working conditions or wage, they are branded as being ‘demented’ and ‘alcoholic’ by the very same people who, till that moment, are not ready to hear a word about the human rights violations committed by army personnel. We need Azadi from such fake nationalism, so that we can begin talking about actual well-being of people which has been dealt a huge blow in two and a half years of Modi government’s misrule. (Shehla Rashid Shora is the former vice-president of JNU students union. She's a M. Phil scholar at JNU. She tweets at @Shehla_Rashid) ======================================== 20. REMEMBERING BALJIT MALIK by Pritam Singh ======================================== (The Tribune, Feb 23, 2017 - OBITUARY) He was truly an unforgettable person endowed with the best of human values A photo taken in 1988 shows Baljit Malik with daughters Sonya and Meeto. The news of the sudden and unexpected death of Baljit Malik, a well-known social activist and journalist, on February 18 in Delhi sent shock waves among his large circle of friends and admirers in India and abroad. Bal, as he was known to his family and friends, was born in Delhi on July 21, 1939 in one of the old wealthiest families of the city. His was an unusual life. He grew up in a social matrix of privilege but used the power and influence a life of privilege brings to support dissident groups and individuals opposed to the capitalist state in India. He spent his school years in Doon School in Dehradun and then went for university education to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Nanu Mitchell, his classmate at SOAS, says ‘he adored jazz and was such a cool cat in his young days’. He married Diana MacLehose in 1967 when he was teaching at Doon and she was working with Tibetan refugees in Mussoorie, and has a daughter Sonya Malik Butterfield and granddaughter Laila. His second marriage was with Kamla Bhasin, a very well-known feminist and peace activist. Their sprawling house on Bhagwan Das Road in Delhi was the nerve centre of many social initiatives and refuge for many rebels. Baljit belonged to the elite by social background but showed utter disdain and contempt for that elite. He often said that he knew the hollowness of the elite from inside. Baljit felt more at home with environmentalists, human rights activists, Indo-Pak peace campaigners and music lovers than with suit and tie-wearing business managers. As if to make fun of such tie-wearing yuppies, he wore, in the words of a friend, ‘floral printed salwars and outlandish long shirts’. He lived a lifestyle which some people called bohemian with different and conflicting meanings attached to bohemianism. It was a tag of honour for some but unacceptable social deviance for some others. In my view, his was an unorthodox life of a social rebel who defied many structures of traditions and practices. At a personal level, he was known for his friendship, warmth, generosity and affection. He combined his cosmopolitanism with deep attachment to Punjab and his Sikh heritage in his own way. He once wrote an article on how he felt attached to Guru Nanak, whom he viewed as a wanderer, restless seeker of truth, breaker of social conventions and hierarchies, political rebel, poet and a music lover. Sometimes, Baljit came up with absolutely original, perhaps even shocking, ideas and insights. One of them he shared with me a few years back was that Guru Gobind Singh was strongly influenced by Jharkhand’s tribal culture of weapon worship and social egalitarianism due to some years of Guru’s early childhood spent in the region. When I responded by suggesting that it was a new angle and that he should further explore it, he retorted with friendly warmth: ‘Nahin yaar, eh explore karan wala kam mera nahin, tera ai (my friend, this exploration is your task and not mine)’. He had many difficult moments in life. One of them was during the anti-Sikh carnage of 1984 in Delhi when every male Sikh, high or low, felt a danger to his life. Baljit cut his hair to disguise his Sikh identity and later wrote and published an article on that experience, which conveyed conflicting emotions of guilt and self-loathing for having surrendered to the fear, along with denunciation of the regime of governance in India that forced him to do this humiliating and self-negating act. Only he could write such a piece which denounced others, but was also deeply self-critical. The most painful blow in his life was the death of his beloved daughter Meeto Malik (from his former wife Kamla Bhasin), who was a history research student at Oxford. I was not formally supervising Meeto's work on Punjab’s history but had looked at everything she had written and had advised her whenever needed. Meeto told me that Baljit felt reassured about her academic wellbeing in the way she was able to interact with me. She was a brilliant young woman with a great potential. Her tragic death in 2006 was one of the most painful experiences in the life of Oxford’s South Asian academic community. Baljit did not really recover from this terrible blow. He tried to restart life. He married Mary, his house assistant for many years, and had a son Jonathan from this marriage. This did bring some happiness in his life. He also loved his seriously disabled son Jeet Kamal (aka Chhotu), who lives with Kamla Bhasin. Both Baljit and Kamla are an example of utter devotion in looking after a disabled child. He was truly an unforgettable person endowed with the best of human values. The writer is Professor of Economics at Oxford Brookes University, UK ======================================== 21. INDIA: EXEMPLARY VIOLENCE - THE ABVP AGGRESSION AT RAMJAS COLLEGE CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED AS A LESSON INTENDED FOR ALL UNIVERSITIES BY SATISH DESHPANDE ======================================== (Indian Express, February 27, 2017) Unlike doctors of medicine, doctors of philosophy love complications. “Too simple” is a devastating put-down in the academic world peopled by PhDs. But sometimes even we academics encounter an issue that is so utterly, undeniably simple that it is impossible to complicate. Violence has no place in a university. That is it, and that is all — no room here for any of the ifs, buts, or on-the-other-hands that we are always eager to invoke. Any discussion of what happened at Ramjas College and Delhi University on February 21 and 22 has to begin with a complete and categorical condemnation of the violence that has been displayed on social media and television screens. Students — and even teachers — were beaten, hit with bricks, pulled by the hair and comprehensively assaulted. Many of the injured had to be taken to hospital. Journalists were also targeted, often deliberately. An entire neighbourhood was terrorised over several hours. Contrary to filmy tradition, the police arrived early, but were so ineffectual as to invite accusations of complicity. And all of this happened because of a seminar or, if the defenders of this violence are to be believed, merely because of two specific invitees. Violence and intimidation negate the very idea of the university and there is no cause large enough to justify them — not subaltern classes nor oppressed castes, or as in this case, aggrieved patriots. The university cannot afford to accommodate violence precisely because it is meant to be an arena for the battle of ideas. This is the sense in which the university is indeed a privileged space set apart from the everyday world. It is not that the rest of the world lacks ideas or intelligence, but that it is permeated by power relations. In the real world, the ruling ideas are those that are dear to the ruling classes and dominant groups. Of course, power relations extend to the university context as well. In fact, all universities — including the ones perceived as radical — are, for the most part, supported by and in turn support, the existing power structure. This has been the historical condition for their survival as predominantly state-sponsored institutions. At the same time, however, the very design of the modern university requires that it set aside some space for cultivating and professing unconventional, dissenting or radical ideas and questions. Paradoxically, it is this small island of intellectual autonomy that defines an otherwise subservient and conventional institution. If even this island is violently coerced into subservience, the university can no longer play its crucial symbolic role in modern society as the great exception to the worldly rule of might is right. How, then, do we understand the events of February 21 and 22 at Ramjas College in Delhi University? One way is to see them as the culmination of an ongoing process of regime change, triggered by the landslide victory of the BJP in 2014. As is well known, the ABVP and its parent organisations have been involved in a series of confrontations across several universities in the past two years, the best known of which have been in Hyderabad, Allahabad, JNU, Jodhpur and now Delhi University. The overall effort on the part of the RSS-BJP-ABVP combine is to leverage their new-found state power to enforce their entry into, or consolidate their hold over, university politics. Ads by ZINC A second way of understanding the Ramjas College events would be to compare the pattern they are a part of with similar patterns in the past. Two instances that come to mind are those of West Bengal in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, and Bihar in the mid-1970s and 1980s. In Bengal, an established Congress regime was being challenged by a then ascendant CPM, itself facing a stiff challenge from Marxist-Leninist groups popularly known as Naxalites. In Bihar, the extended turmoil of Jayaprakash Narayan’s Sampoorna Kranti transitioned into the Lalu Prasad era of Yadav dominance. The latter case should be of particular interest to the Modi regime. Despite being one of the most astute politicians of our times, Lalu Prasad made the historic blunder of deliberately destroying the university system in Bihar because it was monopolised by his upper caste enemies. He failed to recognise the peculiar fragility of the university as a liberal institution that is easy to pull down but extremely hard to rebuild. Returning to the immediate context, it is clear that the most chilling aspect of the violence of last week is its deliberate and strategic nature. The stone throwing and manhandling of students on the afternoon of February 21 happened in spite of the fact that the main demand of the ABVP — namely, the exclusion of Umar Khalid from the seminar — had already been conceded by the college authorities. The more extensive mayhem of February 22 was a pre-planned effort to disrupt a proposed silent march in protest against the censorship imposed by the ABVP. This unnecessary and excessive violence can only be explained if it was intended to be exemplary, as a lesson for all universities. If so, it seems to be working. The stormtroopers of the ABVP have sent shock waves through the academic world, intimidating even liberal administrators and faculty into self-censoring themselves and their students. The irony is that these methods may win some battles, but will certainly lose the war. If the intention is to wrest the university from the enemy, then it is imperative to recognise that capturing it makes sense only if it can do for you what you think it has done for the enemy. But as a powerful yet strangely vulnerable institution, the university is a classic instance of a situation where the means matter as much as the end. Violent means will kill the university ensuring that what is ultimately won is but a shell. The organisers of the seminar which triggered these events can be justly proud of their prescient title — “Cultures of Protest”. There remains an unanswered question: Are such dire predictions prompted by the high stakes that academics like myself have in the university as a liberal institution — and little else? I would, of course, say “No”, but more credible answers can only come from others located elsewhere. The writer teaches sociology at Delhi University. Views expressed are personal ======================================== 22. INDIAN POLLS AND THE ENABLING ACT | Jawed Naqvi ======================================== (Dawn - February 28, 2017) IT was the Enabling Act signed carelessly by Chancellor Hindenburg that gave Adolf Hitler his sweeping powers to destroy Europe. A deeper, potentially fraught political strategy may be at stake rather than a mere popularity test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the clutch of state polls that were recently held or are currently under way in India. And such a strategy has to do with the election of the president and the vice president of India in July and August, respectively. Without the president’s assent Indira Gandhi could not have imposed her Emergency rule in 1975. That she went for elections after two years of dictatorship was her error of judgement. She thought she would win but was routed in the north, where battles for India are lost and won. The south stayed firmly with her. Despite subsequent changes written into India’s statutes to prevent an Emergency-like mischief, the president’s decision still remains vital if and when someone wants to suspend civil liberties or overreach the already fraying norms of Indian democracy. Worryingly, the judiciary too was complicit in endorsing the Emergency although a high court judgement first unseated Mrs Gandhi from parliament, ostensibly for building an election rally stage with state funds. It is not clear how easy or difficult it would be for a future Indian leader to sideline parliament on the way to absolute power. At present, there cannot be a civilian Emergency in India without the president’s assent. As for a military coup of the type that Pakistan and Bangladesh experienced, Indians claim something close to divine protection from it. Because suspension of democracy is not something to be ruled out or endorsed by the media, we may glean examples from history. Hindenburg was not a fascist but he assigned to himself a role in Germany in 1933 that enabled the suspension of democracy, crucially, through democratic means. It is not clear how easy or difficult it would be for a future Indian leader to sideline parliament on the way to absolute power. The fact that fascist mobs have acquired unhampered street power in the last couple of years in India has not left too much room for a considered discussion on the whys and wherefores of a Germany or Iran happening there. The Iran imagery is compelling. The anti-Shah movement of 1979 had most of the ingredients of the anti-Emergency campaign of 1977. Liberals, communists, right-wing Hindus and right-wing Muslims were all part of the anti-Indira Gandhi coalition. I remember a gaggle of communist students from Jawaharlal Nehru University faithfully followed the charismatic Comrade Suneet Chopra on a route march to Bhivani in Haryana to support some obscure candidate called Chandravati against Bansi Lal, a notorious adviser to Mrs Gandhi. Chandravati won, but we don’t know who she was and what role if any she played in the restoration of democracy. Similarly, a member of the erstwhile Jan Sangh was hailed as ‘Comrade’ Kunwar Lal Gupta who too won with communist support. In its generosity with the right, India’s left has often played the lactating mother. Communists were finished off in Germany and Iran just when they thought they had won it all. Once a mainstream force, Indian partisans have been reduced to two nearly dried ox-bow lakes in West Bengal and Kerala, and a village well in Tripura. Whatever is left of the mainstream left has distanced itself from the Maoists who are fighting on with self-belief sans an evident strategy to win popular support. People are fighting too but they are fighting on their own, as an inspiration perhaps that might cajole the rest into action some day. State assemblies will be involved in the vote for the next president of India. The assemblies also elect Rajya Sabha MPs who play a critical part in the choice of the president and the vice president. President Pranab Mukherjee was a Congress Party candidate without completely having the trust of the party’s leadership. Vice President Hamid Ansari is a former diplomat who has had two full terms as Rajya Sabha chairman, also a Congress and left candidate. Hindutva rules the Lok Sabha, but the opposition rules the Rajya Sabha, currently. One more crucial element is at stake. The Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha run their TV channels under the watch of the chairman and the speaker, respectively. Rajya Sabha TV currently offers rare scope for secular, scientific and democratic programmes, as does one private channel with Ravish Kumar as its popular anchor. Kumar’s NDTV-India is a precariously powerful Hindi channel. The rest are busy orchestrating India’s nationalist melee. Assembly elections for BJP-ruled Punjab and Goa are over. Congress-ruled Uttarakhand has also completed its polling. The most populous state of Uttar Pradesh is entering its final three legs in the seven-stage polls spread over a month. The north-eastern state of Manipur is due to vote soon and the races in Uttar Pradesh wind up on March 8. Results for all assemblies would be out on March 11. According to media punditry the outcome would eventually reflect on Mr Modi’s popularity. That’s a given. He is said to have lost his grip in Punjab and Goa, but Uttar Pradesh could be a tight race for the divided opposition. The disarray is reflected in the fact that the left parties have fielded scores of candidates in Uttar Pradesh. They may justify their electoral calisthenics but essentially will only cut into the secular, anti-BJP votes. Uttar Pradesh has always been the state that decides India’s political fortunes. It was their shocking defeat to Dalit leader Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh on Feb 25, 2002 that sent shivers down the spines of a Hindutva-ruled government in Gujarat. A gory train tragedy in Godhra became a handy tool for Hindutva to turn the tables on the Congress, which had won a promising cluster of municipal votes weeks before. At present liberal and leftist students are resolutely fighting a brutal assault from Hindutva. Results from Uttar Pradesh and other states could tilt the balance on the college campuses too. ======================================== 23. MUTATIONS OF FASCISM: AN INTERVIEW WITH ENZO TRAVERSO by Olivier Doubre ======================================== (Verso Books Blog, 28 February 2017) In Les Nouveaux Visages du fascisme, Enzo Traverso and Régis Meyran discuss the continuities and discontinuities between the fascist movements of the twentieth century and the "post-fascist" far right of today. Olivier Doubre spoke with Traverso for the 16-22 February 2017 edition of Politis. Translated by David Broder. You use the term "post-fascism" to characterise today’s far Right movements. What does this term mean? Enzo Traverso: The idea of post-fascism firstly serves to characterise a political movement that is shot through with contradictions, and which has an evident fascist matrix — for that is its history, where it comes from — and in the Front National’s case a dynastic line of descent. There is an undeniable fascist hard core in the FN apparatus, its activist base, composed of neo-fascist militants of all generations. They are very active in the FN and hold onto a good part of the organisation. So there is a rift between the organisational reality of this party — or even its anthropological fabric — and Marine Le Pen’s discourse in the media or the public sphere, which is of a xenophobic, nationalist, anti-neoliberal tenor but also comes out of a social Right. Yet if the FN were a neofascist sect, or even a neofascist party, I do not think that it would be considered likely to appear in the second round of the presidential election, or even capable of being France’s biggest party. This party is thus clearly transforming, and it is trying to operate a process by which it dialectically transcends its fascist character — but without entirely rejecting it. So in order to fight this party, we have to understand what it has become. But you also talk — as the title of your book indicates — of the "new faces of fascism"… Post-fascism is a transitory phenomenon still in mutation, and this term clearly indicates what its matrix is. There is a big debate on "Trump and fascism" in the United States. But we cannot say that fascism is really the main force driving Trump. For her part, Marine Le Pen knows that that is where her party comes from! And that is why she is trying to adapt her nationalist and xenophobic discourse to the present context, including that of the European Union. Today, post-fascist movements advance a nationalism whose targets are no longer — as in the 1930s — other nations, and in particular European ones, but postcolonial immigration and Islam. This change of targets has a lot of implications because it allows the FN to present itself with a democratic and republican rhetoric. Taking Islam as its target, it characterises itself as the defender of Western values. Indeed, you explain that while the FN tries to present itself as "just as republican as the others," this is not the case, including in the eyes of the traditional right… There is a difference of nature, on account of the simple fact that the far Right has far more organic links with the ruling élites than the FN has. Today, this party is not the choice of the globalised ruling classes. Yet it today presents itself as the defender of democracies against the threats supposedly bearing down on it, particularly Islam, fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism. And even as the defender of equality between men and women, or of homosexuals! In my view, the fact that it can appropriate republican rhetoric can only stir up questions on the notions of republic and republicanism. There are a certain number of elements in the republican tradition that allowed for this transplant operation. We cannot defend the Republic as if it were a sacred, immaculate entity; for its history is contradictory and includes nationalism, colonialism, xenophobia and what may be a rather questionable conception of secularism [laïcité]. This should push us to cast a critical look at the history of the Republic, rather than adopt this history wholesale, in an uncritical fashion. You speak of a "constellation" of post-fascist movements or formations. What holds it together, and what characterises its component parts? I speak of a constellation because all these movements present a series of common characteristics, beyond the sometimes considerable differences between them. These characteristics first of all include xenophobia and Islamophobia, and then a rejection of globalisation in favour of a socially regressive and nationalist protectionism. But I speak of a post-fascist constellation also in the sense that these movements have sometimes very different ideological matrices and origins. Certain formations have an explicitly neo-fascist profile, such as Greece’s Golden Dawn, or the movements appearing in Eastern Europe these last two decades who seek to revive the nationalist tradition of the 1930s. Some movements in Western Europe like the FN have neo-fascist origins but are trying to evolve by changing their discourse; others have different roots but are converging with this same orientation. Such is the case of the Lega Nord in Italy, UKIP in Britain and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)… While Trump is also a comparable case, unlike the FN, Lega Nord or AfD he has links with part of the world of finance. However, you say that if this "post-fascism" in mutation were to take power, it would certainly result in power being practiced in an authoritarian way… Let’s hypothesise that Marine Le Pen does win the presidential election. It is rather unlikely, but given the state of the Right with the Fillon affair we cannot rule it out a priori. The first consequence would be that the European Union would explode. We would doubtless witness a continental political but also economic crisis, with the Euro unable to resist and the EU’s social models splintering. But with this disintegration, everything becomes possible! The FN’s goal is to take power, and not to try to conquer an institutional legitimacy like that of the classical Right. That is where the danger lies. But the notion of post-fascism implies a mutation that has not yet been complete: it makes it possible that things will evolve in different directions. However, there is no doubt that the FN’s project is an authoritarian one: the Republic for which it stands is not the one we have today, for it questions jus soli and a whole series of civil liberties, and it would transform the institutional system into an authoritarian presidentialism, certainly meaning a limitation of counter-powers. Even if all that is still something different from the fascism of the 1930s. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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
