South Asia Citizens Wire | January 1-2, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2342 - Year 8 [1] Bangladesh / India: Two Nations and a Dead Body (Sajal Nag) [2] India: BJP - Back To Hindutva And Hatred (Praful Bidwai) [3] India : The tenable patriot (Shahid Amin) [4] Hindustani in the Time of Globalisation (Mukul Dube) [5] India: The ethos of teaching English - An educational agenda (Kancha Ilaiah) [6] India: Bhagat Singh Chair at JNU [7] Upcoming Events: 6th World Atheist Conference (Vijayawada, 5 - 7 January, 2007)
____ [1] Economic and Political Weekly December 16, 2006 TWO NATIONS AND A DEAD BODY MORTUARIAL RITES AND POST-COLONIAL MODES OF NATION-MAKING IN SOUTH ASIA by Sajal Nag The discourse on nationalism has rarely examined the nation-making processes in post-colonial, post-nationalist spaces. Although nation-making in these new states followed the familiar method of "appropriation and application" as in the west, the construction and legitimisation of a separate identity needed an entirely different engagement. This article studies such an endeavour that took place in post-colonial south Asia in the context of the death of a poet. The corpse of the dead poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam, became the contested site by two sovereign nations. The conflict over appropriating Nazrul and his legacy also took place at a crucial political juncture for Bangladesh, as it made the unlikely transition from democracy towards totalitarianism, from secularism to fundamentalism. http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=12&filename=10875&filetype=pdf _____ [2] Kashmir Times January 1, 2007 BACK TO HINDUTVA AND HATRED BJP'S UNRESOLVED CRISIS By Praful Bidwai If there is one political party in India which knows how to create the impression that it's laying down the national agenda when it isn't, it's surely the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That's the message its national council meeting in Lucknow sent out when Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee declared that "the road to power in New Delhi passes via Lucknow" and exhorted the party to win the coming elections to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. Senior BJP leaders themselves manufactured this upbeat appearance. They highlighted the issue of who would lead the party in the next Lok Sabha elections as if it were part of the real agenda. Mr LK Advani set the ball rolling in a recent television interview when he said he would be the natural candidate for the Prime Minister's job should the BJP come to power; yet he doesn't expect Mr Vajpayee to nominate him. Soon, Mr MM Joshi, another would-be PM, declared there's no dearth of prime ministerial candidates in the BJP. It was left to Mr Rajnath Singh, anointed BJP president for three more years, to put in the next claim. Mr Singh used colourful, semi-rustic imagery, of baratis (the bridegroom's party) only waiting to carry the bride, satta ki sundari (deity of power) to Delhi, and hinted that he himself might be the dulah (bridegroom). Meanwhile, Mr Narendra Modi strutted around as if he were Mr Vajpayee's successor, being the only senior second-generation leader to wield state power. However, it's preposterous to regard the issue of BJP leadership in 2009 as relevant today. One must be irrationally exuberant to be convinced that the BJP will probably return to power in the next general elections, or that leadership will be the main determinant of its fate. The BJP has been in steep decline since its 2004 Lok Sabha defeat. Many of its partners have deserted its National Democratic Alliance. The party's consistently poor performance in by-elections, its loss of power in Jharkhand, and the demoralisation of many of its state units all point to this. The murder of Pramod Mahajan, the party's brightest second-generation leader, by his own brother, and the defection of Ms Uma Bharati, the fiery leader with the widest OBC appeal, were major setbacks too. It's only in urban UP that the BJP has registered gains. During recent three-tier municipal elections, it won eight out of 12 large-city mayoral positions. (It had won six even in 2001.) In smaller towns, it was comprehensively defeated by the Samajwadi Party. Yet, BJP leaders presented these results as a triumph heralding the party's ascent to national power. In reality, the local elections weren't even representative because the Bahujan Samaj Party, one of UP's Big Two, didn't contest them. In fact, the BSP covertly backed select candidates, including many from the BJP, to defeat its principal rival, the SP. The BJP benefited from two factors: anti-incumbency against Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, and communal polarisation triggered by the Haji Yakub episode (in which he offered Rs 50 crores to kill the Danish cartoonist who had ridiculed Prophet Mohammed), and the government's refusal to ban the Students' Islamic Movement of India. Ironically, a strange confluence of interests has developed between the two rivals, BJP and SP. The harder Mr Yadav tries to woo the Muslim constituency that's now suspicious of him, the more the upper-caste Hindu vote shifts towards the BJP. It's not for nothing that Mr Yadav offered 5-star hospitality in Lucknow to BJP top brass citing "protocol", and they accepted it. Despite these advantages, the BJP only made modest gains in the local elections. It's unclear whether these will reverse its long downslide. The party's UP Assembly strength has plummeted from the 1991 peak of 221 (of 419 seats) to just 88 (of a total of 403), and its Lok Sabha tally from UP shrunk from 51 to only 10. For a party long in the Number Three slot in UP, a reversal looks highly unlikely. However, BJP leaders have taken heart from what they regard as the "Muslim appeasement" card played by the United Progressive Alliance government through the Sachar Committee, which recommends affirmative action for Muslims. In Lucknow, there was full-throated condemnation of "Muslim appeasement", warnings about India's "second partition", fanatical appeals to build a grand Ram temple at Ayodhya, and contrived bemoaning of the alleged reduction of Hindus to the status of "second-class citizens". Leader after BJP leader spewed venom on Muslims and hysterically warned against a "sell-out" on Kashmir and Siachen. The BJP should know better. Sachar is no Shah Bano. In 1984, the Congress government amended secular laws to please those clamouring against modest compensation for a poor, deserted old woman. The Sachar report is a serious, well-considered, solidly documented analysis of exclusion of and discrimination against Muslims. It pleads for diversity and pluralism-not for sectarian solutions. It should occasion sober reflection on Indian society's failure to prevent the creation of a new underclass of disadvantaged people and promote full representation of all social groups-without prejudice. It's extremely unlikely that the "appeasement" card will work given the present national mood, which favours integration and respect for inclusion and equity. The mood also frowns upon paranoid notions of national identity. There is widespread support for a durable and just peace with Pakistan and a border settlement and broad cooperation with China. It's even more unlikely that the Ayodhya plank will sell. As the Sangh Parivar's own countless futile attempts to organise yatras on the issue show, the public is simply not interested in this agenda of hatred and revenge. The agenda doesn't earn votes anywhere. The BJP's return to hardline Hindutva represents a terrible retrogression. It's not in the interest of democracy and pluralism that India's largest opposition party should embrace such a narrow, divisive, communal agenda. This demolishes the hope that leaders like Mr Vajpayee would somehow neutralise the RSS's malign influence and push the BJP towards moderation. If he couldn't do this while in power, it's ludicrous to expect him to do so after he's lost it. In line with this Rightward ideological-political shift, the BJP has also executed an organisational shift. It has amended its constitution so that all its secretaries at the national and state levels are pracharaks or full-time Sangh propagandists. The RSS influence has been starkly visible in all recent BJP campaigns. Mr Rajnath Singh has further strengthened this influence-not least because he lacks an independent base and needs the Sangh's crutches. The RSS in turn is only too happy at the revival of the three contentious issues-Ram temple, Uniform Civil Code, and Article 370-which were put on hold in 1998 for dishonourable reasons-expediency and greed for power. The Lucknow conclave leaves the BJP's structural crisis unresolved. Ideologically, the party is trapped between orthodox, Islamophobic, Hindutva typical of small-town traders and upper-caste groups, on the one hand, and pro-globalisation Big Business, on the other. Politically, it's divided between its identity as an ethno-religious movement, and electoral compulsions which propel it into opportunistic alliances. Organisationally, it cannot sever its umbilical chord with the Sangh Parivar. As this Column has often argued, the BJP's ascendancy from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s was founded on three mutually reinforcing factors. First, the Congress's long-term decline owing to its compromises with communalism and market fundamentalism. This, coupled with the Left's stagnation after the Soviet Union's collapse, shifted India's political spectrum Rightwards. Second, the BJP-VHP's mobilisation around Ayodhya in the late 1980s allowed Hindutva to percolate widely. For the first time, the BJP broke out of its narrow savarna Hindu-Hindi confines. And third, its "social engineering" strategy, of combining "Mandal" with "Kamandal", helped it attract OBC support in the Hindi belt. None of these factors operates today. The Congress has revived itself. The Left has expanded. Regional parties with subaltern agendas have grown. And the centre of gravity of Indian politics has shifted Leftwards. Social justice has displaced Ayodhya. The BJP is disoriented by all this. Until recently, it was in outright denial of its 2004 defeat It still has no political strategy to revitalise itself. Its leadership crisis remain serious. Its president is a narrow-minded provincial Thakur politician. He isn't even remotely acquainted with the India that's outside the Hindi belt. Lurking behind him is Mr Narendra Modi, who, sadly, enjoys a high level of acceptance within the BJP and behaves as its de facto Number Two, next only to Mr Vajpayee. The BJP is caught between aspiring leaders of such appalling quality, and geriatric veterans who are increasingly out-of-sync with reality, but refuse to fade out. It's likely to remain suspended in this unenviable state for some time. _____ [3] Magazine Section / The Hindu Dec 03, 2006 THE TENABLE PATRIOT by Shahid Amin As we approach the 60th anniversary of our independence, it appears that some Indians can claim to be born citizens by virtue of belonging to the Hindu majority, while others must remain citizens-on-probation all their lives. Despite legal equality, members of minority communities are repeatedly subjected to a cricket-match or a national-song test of loyalty. Is the idea of India to be reduced to such a war of backward-looking symbolisms? What is the true measure of patriotism? Patriotism for the oppressed Photo: Vivek Bendre Politics of language: A predominantly dalit slum in Mumbai. OUR balding nation-state, a majority of whose persons-in-communities are on the right side of 40, will soon turn 60. The consensual anxieties of inculcating a proper patriotism have begun already to yield sarkari fruit: a mixed bag of apples and oranges, to be sure. As the new year dawns, a long list of accredited past patriots will no doubt be drawn up, with a careful sprinkling of dalits, Muslims, women, Kashmiris, North-easterners and such like, i.e. those less empowered than their `naturally so' mainstream countrymen. Directives will flow down New Delhi's Raisina Hill; like-minded scholars will strive to ensure that a capacious yet stringent view from the Centre holds. Deifying English Could 19th-century peasants, whose vision, it is said, was no wider than the backside of their plough-bullocks, have been patriotic? Were Indian patriots the same as Indian nationalists? How are we to recognise patriotism before nationalism began to be talked about by our English-educated forbearers? The first President of the Republic was a Bihari democrat, but could Bahadur Shah, `the king of Delhi', to use the proper Company diminutive, conceivably have been India's first and last Mughal patriot? Or to shift focus: Is Chandrabhan Prasad, who recently launched a campaign for deifying English as a goddess, to be propitiated quite literally by the dalits of Hindustan, being simply gimmicky and provocative? Or is his proposal for a globalised English, personified as the kuladevi of all dalit households, announced on the 206th birth anniversary of Lord Macaulay, at bottom an unpatriotic act; a reneging from our common civilisational past; a deliberate turning away of dalits from things Hindi and Indian? The tenor of a recent televised debate between Prasad and two Delhi-based bilingual intellectuals, conducted by one of our foremost current affairs anchors, suggests that, when faced with a transgressive idea to move radically beyond the horizon of possibility, most of us reach instinctively for our copybook notion of India. And very often this means throwing aside the opportunity of thinking with and through adversarial positions that emanate as challenges from the margins to our very sense of Indianness. Prasad's utopia is for future dalit babies to arrive into this world to the sound of the English alphabet: mantras or azaan being ruled out, of necessity. This is an idea stunning in its novelty. I am sure that, had it been expressed in a 19th-century document about a tribal revolt in Jharkhand, it would have elicited our attention as illustrative of the hegemonic apotheosis of colonial English. Wasn't one of the leaders of the great Santhal Rebellion of 1855 apprehended with an English book of a technical nature, `an old book on locomotive[s]', as the official record has it! But as the debate with Chandrabhan Prasad unfolded over half-an-hour of late-night TV, no one engaged this dalit thinker on his own terms: how would poor, uneducated dalit parents in the villages of the north Indian cowbelt ensure that a Sesame Street version of fun alphabet-learning is beamed to the Sagri subdivision of Azamgarh District, where Chandrabhan grew up? Would it make sense for dalits to insist that the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, now fashion audio-visual materials for what he would no doubt wish to be christened the `Universal English Education Mission'? Would there be any place for a less Sanskritic Hindi in dalit households, or would it involve an even more subversive and utopian demand for the valorisation of only particular north Indian dialects as a second language of home, a new diglossia comprising globalised corporate English and, say, Bhojpuri? Instead, the discussion veered around such pan-Indian and patriotic concerns as: How would dalits then distinguish between maternal and paternal uncles, for English terms are so limited in their kin and affinal reach? What would happen to religions of and in India, if all of us (Prasad was concerned solely with dalits) spouted only English? Would not the resulting deracination harbinger fundamentalisms, as in Silicon Valley? Can English acquisition really put an end to deep-seated and long-enduring structures of caste oppression? But that was not, one felt like screaming though the picture tube, what the subversive proposal was about. For, except for the Pandits and Maulvis, no one lives by language alone. The dalit-English proposal is an unexpected challenge to the mainstream view of patriotism-in-an-Indian language, preferably a north-Indian language. And now that an American accent is de rigeur for luxury-item adverts on our TVs, whither linguistic patriotism? _____ [4] Indian Express, 1 Jan 2007 HINDUSTANI IN THE TIME OF GLOBALISATION by Mukul Dube I cannot afford to dislike English, and I would be an ingrate if I were to do that. As an editor, a writer and an academic, I have used the language to fill my stomach for three and a half decades. That stomach turns, though, if figuratively, when English words are gratuitously introduced into Hindustani speech even when perfectly adequate and sometimes better Hindustani words are to be had. Money makes the world go around. In our daily lives, we speak of it constantly. Few grocers in Delhi conduct their business in English: Punjabi is used, as well as Tamil and Bangla and so on in pockets, but Hindustani is the most common currency by far. When, after having completed my purchases of fruit juice and peanuts and safety matches and such things entirely in Hindustani, I ask how much I must pay, English jumps up like a Jack-in-the-box. "Seventy-two rupees" is the answer rather than "bahattar rupaiy." Similarly, when I ask a pretty young thing, in Hindustani, about her pretty garment or her pretty bag, she will say "Four hundred rupees" rather than "char sau rupaiy." Seldom is anything other than price mentioned, but that fact has nothing to do with language. A child in a shopping area who feels like putting away a soft drink will say to his mother, "Mamma, please ten rupees dena." Money is never, never spoken of without the application of the anglicised-globalised name of our legal tender. We live on food. It is only to be expected that Mrs. Khanna will say to Mrs. Tiwari, "Bhenji, paneer bahut tasty bana hai," throwing on to the heap of onion skins words like "svadishta" and "lazeez." To Mrs. Khurana, she might amplify with "vadda fine flavour hai ji." There was a time when davais were used to deal with bimaris and assorted health-related matters. That was in the past. For several years now, when our chemist has put together the coming month's supply of drugs for my mother and me, he telephones to say, "Sir, apki medicines ready hain." Always "medicines"-"drugs" is a no-no, though not for the same reason as "davaiyan" is. Personal adornment with "precious" materials- gold, silver, diamonds, etc.-is not new to India. When they are not displayed, such objects are hoarded and, of course, boasted about in words rather than visually. There has been a mushrooming of jewellery shops and brands of late, and on the channel which plays on my radio they are advertised constantly. The use of the words "gehne" and "zevarat" is apparently forbidden when listeners are invited to come and buy the glittering commodities. That there are still fools who believe that the joule is a measure of work done matters not: "jewellery" is pronounced invariably to rhyme with "fool+pee." Then there is the young woman who has learnt to operate the family car and is measuring how many kilos or seers her papa's permission weighs before she begins to drive herself to late night parties. English is, so to speak, the Bhasha Britannica of Delhi. ______ [5] Deccan Herald November 23, 2006 THE ETHOS OF TEACHING ENGLISH AN EDUCATIONAL AGENDA by Kancha Ilaiah The decision of the Karnataka Government to withdraw the recognition of 1400 English medium schools has set a tone for its backward move. It is also said that it stopped giving permission to any new English medium schools in the state. This only shows that the Kumarawsami's Government is effectively being run by the BJP. One of the key areas that the BJP has chosen to put the wheels of the nation backward is through the means of primary education. We have seen the efforts of Murali Manohar Joshi, as the Minister of Human Resource Development to saffronize the education. One of the ways in which they want to safronise the mass education is to see that English does not become a language of the masses. The Karnataka Government is doing exactly the same. Quite ironically even the top BJP leaders put their own children in English medium schools run by the Christian missionaries. This trend could be seen in every state where the elite keep beating their chest about the preserving the status of mother tongue vis-à-vis English. In Andhra Pradesh a similar debate is on. Those who have educated their children in English medium schools, saw to it that they settle down in America and Europe and their grand children have acquired the citizenship of the imperial nations, back home the grand parents keep working for the improvement of regional language. They work for closing down English medium schools in the villages and urban slums as they are defined as anti-national. These people oppose the caste-based reservations but at the same time work for managing seats for money under the NRI quota. This is a new quota worked out by the very same nationalists. The courts have no problem with that quota as that serves their families well. The forces that work around the right wing political parties are in the forefront of this duel mode of life. Not that the so called democrats oppose this process. They all see a danger to their regional culture in expanding English education. The very same people see a close nexus between regional culture and language. Expansion of English language into the rural locations is seen as ultimate danger to the linguistic cultural ethos. For a long time such social forces saw women as the engines that carry their cultural bogies. By and large the women among them moved into the realm of modernity with a process of English education. Now they see the rural masses, who study in Government schools, as the engines to carry the cultural bogies of their regional nationalism. For some time they defined English as colonial language. Now it is being defined as unethical globaliser of Brtish-American culture, which they think is harmful to their nationalist self. Who should save from this danger of uprooting of the local cultures? Who should protect that nationalist self from the onslaught of American imperialism? They think that the children of urban slums, rural peasantry and labourers by remaining native - Kannadigas, Telugus and so on-i.e. by remaining away from learning English, should protect their linguistic nationalism. Even the English media does not run a campaign against such Hippocratic nationalism, as this section constitutes the main English news paper readers and English TV channel watchers. It is this section that controls the corporate economy and the add finances. The dualism of the upper caste English educated is the main driving force of the Indian market economy. At the core of this dualistic social discourse and economic practice is keeping the competition within the corporate job market limited to their own children. They, therefore, oppose reservation in private sector and also oppose the expansion of English education among the vast lower caste masses. Since the lower caste mass children are not tied down to the Brahminic cultural ethos, they learn English more easily than the Brahminic kids can do. Since their cultural roots are not deep in Hindu ethos their modernisation and westernisation process would be quicker. For example, any Dalit-Bahujan boy or girl, who learns English at a right age and moves into global economy, does not suffer from vegetarianist hang-ups. They do not carry the Hindu idols with them to America or Europe. In one sense the fears of English educated globalised Hindu intellectuals (not just Hindutva) are genuine. The possibility of the social mass moving into English education may lead to dismantling of Hindu culture and caste system in a shorter span of time. From Phule to Ambedkar to the present English educated lower caste intellectuals have thrown Hinduism into deeper and deeper crisis. But the Hindutva forces and even the so called secular Hindus cannot stop this process because they are caught up in a cobweb of globalised English education and market systems. In this process of duel game of the cultural nationalists, the only way the Dalit-Bahujan social and political forces could get English education is by making uniform (both language and content) school education an election's issue. At least some political parties must make teaching 50 percent of the syllabus in English and remaining 50 percent in the regional language part of their electoral manifesto. The rural voters should also make it clear that unless their children are given English education they would not keep quite. Then the poor and lower castes begin to get the power of English. ______ [6] The Hindu Dec 22, 2006 BHAGAT SINGH CHAIR AT JNU PROPOSED Staff Reporter Plan forwarded by Prof. Chaman Lal of the Centre for Indian Languages NEW DELHI: A powerful figure in the freedom struggle and arguably one of the youngest and most charismatic revolutionaries, Bhagat Singh is all set to become "stronger". To give him a fitting tribute during his birth centenary year in 2007, a group of intellectuals have proposed to set up a Bhagat Singh Chair at Jawaharlal Nehru University here. The proposed Chair would focus on "the anti-colonial, anti-feudal revolutionary movements in India during 1757-1947". The proposal, spearheaded by Prof. Chaman Lal of the Centre for Indian Languages in JNU, seems to have found support from different quarters. Apart from leading historians Bipan Chandra and Mridula Mukherjee who have strongly endorsed the proposal, the Left leaders have also come out to lend their support. "It is a very worthwhile proposal to set up a Chair in a Central University like JNU. As far as I know, there is no other such Chair. It would be a good idea to set it up especially in the birth centenary year of Bhagat Singh,'' said Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat. But despite the enthusiastic response to the proposal, there is still the question of funds. With finance still a stumbling block in this dream to showcase the intellectual aspect of Bhagat Singh, it is being hoped that the committee responsible for the upcoming centenary celebrations in 2007 established by the Centre will be able to make it come true. "There is not a single chair or a university named after Bhagat Singh. All the other national leaders have educational institutions named after them. We are hoping that this committee, which is looking at the birth centenary celebrations of Bhagat Singh and the 60th year of Independence among others, will be able to provide us the funds. A member of the programme implementation committee has agreed to raise this in the meeting this Thursday,'' says Prof. Lal, who has also edited the freedom fighter's documents. Taking his legacy forward to reach out to the youth, it is also suggested that the Chair be made functional in the School of Social Sciences with a "multi-disciplinary" approach. It has also been suggested that the Chair concentrate on research and offer more fellowships as and when it generates more funds. With grand plans for the Chair, Prof. Lal believes that the Punjabi community abroad can also be tapped to generate funds for a library. "Bhagat Singh has always remained alive in the minds of people. He was well read and had a fine mind. The Chair will give us an opportunity to spread awareness about this side of him and do more,'' says Nehru Memorial Museum and Library director Mridula Mukherjee. ______ [7] 6TH WORLD ATHEIST CONFERENCE 5, 6 & 7 January, 2007 Atheist Centre, Vijayawada, A.P., INDIA "The Necessity of Atheism" Levi Fragell, Sonja Eggerickx, Dr. Veeramani, Roy Brown, Volker Mueller, Dr. P.M. Bhargava, Jim Herrick, Bill Cooke, Kjartan Selnes, Lavanam, Dr. Narendra Nayak, G.V.K. Asan, Prof. Dhaneswar Sahoo and many others will speak. Three day simple accommodation and food at the Atheist Centre Further details from Dr. Vijayam, Executive Director ATHEIST CENTRE, Benz Circle, Vijayawada 520010, A.P., India. Phone +91 866 2472330, Fax: +91 866 2484850, Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/ SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. _______________________________________________ SACW mailing list [email protected] http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net
