South Asia Citizens Wire - 29 August 2017 - No. 2949 [via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]
Contents: 1. India: Protect the right to life and stop deportation of 40,000 Rohingyas - Press Relese by Forum-Asia 2. India: Solidarity with Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar whose book The Adivasi Will Not Dance, has been banned by the Government of Jharkhand 3. Haunted by unification: A Bangladeshi view of partition | Afsan Chowdhury 4. Full text of Supreme Court of India Judgment ALL WP(C) No 494 of 2012 Right to Privacy [24 August 2017] + Commentary 5. Tribute to Vijay Nagaraj - Rest In Power, Vijay | Collective for Economic Democratisation in Sri Lanka 6. An Interventionist Foreign Policy Blurs the Line of Demarcation Between Neoconservatives and Neoliberals | Nyla Ali Khan 7. India: The Business of Godmen, Swamis, Gurus and such - selected commentary 8. Recent on Communalism Watch: - India: D-Day For Another BJP Patronised Godman Asaram Approaches? SC Asks Gujarat to Speed Up Rape Trial (The Citizen) - India: Dont forget, Kandhamal, a Wound That Is Yet to Heal | Apoorvanand - India: Will the Haryana government pay for failing to prevent violence in Panchkula ? (reports in scroll.in) - India: What is common between followers of Ram Rahim and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar? - India: Indian Council of Historical Research blocks manuscript that mentions the dark role of Hindutva groups during anti colonial struggle - India: For How Long Will Haryana Pay the Price for BJP’s Political Experiments? (Chander Suta Dogra / The Wire) - India: Madhu Kishwar's open letter to PM Modi on how to break the UCC stalemate - India: Dera Sacha Sauda: The journey so far (The Times of India) - India: Excerpt from Harish Kare's comment 'Not all deras are dens of debauchery' ::: URLs & FULL TEXT ::: 9. Burma: Satellite Data Indicate Burnings in Rakhine State - Protect Population, Investigate Abuses | Human Rights Watch 10. War crimes suits against Sri Lankan ambassador in Brazil | Peter Prengaman, Associated Press 11. Pakistan: Punishment of Ayesha Gulalai | Khaled Ahmed 12. Pakistan: Rethinking urban and rural | S. Akbar Zaidi 13. Still searching for peace with honour in Nagaland | Ramachandra Guha 14. India: Ram Rahim Was Used By Politicians - And He Used Them Right Back | Swati Chaturvedi 15. India: Battle half won - Triple talaq petitioner’s struggle continues, Editorial, The Times of India 16. Not my spokesperson: All India Muslim Personal Law Board must now make way for a more representative body | Saba Naqvi 17. India: Patriotic' rock shows soon at IITs, central universities 18. The Circus Man Who Knew Too Much | Nisha P R 19. Red Famine by Anne Applebaum review – did Stalin deliberately let Ukraine starve? A vivid account exposes the myths of the catastrophic Ukrainian famine of 1932-3 | Sheila Fitzpatrick 20. Mouton on Chalmers. Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women's Voices under Nazi Rule ======================================== 1. INDIA: PROTECT THE RIGHT TO LIFE AND STOP DEPORTATION OF 40,000 ROHINGYAS - PRESS RELESE BY FORUM-ASIA ======================================== The Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) strongly condemns the position taken by the Government of India to deport 40,000 Rohingyas back to Burma/Myanmar. In the face of allegations of gross human rights violations against Rohingya Muslims in Burma/Myanmar, this decision is not only a serious violation of customary international human rights law but also morally unpalatable. http://www.sacw.net/article13452.html ======================================== 2. INDIA: SOLIDARITY WITH HANSDA SOWVENDRA SHEKHAR WHOSE BOOK THE ADIVASI WILL NOT DANCE, HAS BEEN BANNED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF JHARKHAND ======================================== We are bewildered and dismayed to learn about the recent banning of Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s collection of short stories, The Adivasi Will Not Dance, by the Government of Jharkhand. This ban is absurd and sets a dangerous precedent. http://www.sacw.net/article13450.html ======================================== 3. HAUNTED BY UNIFICATION: A BANGLADESHI VIEW OF PARTITION | Afsan Chowdhury ======================================== In Bangladesh, 1947 is a distant memory, erased by the bloody 1971 liberation war against Pakistan http://www.sacw.net/article13434.html ======================================== 4. FULL TEXT OF SUPREME COURT OF INDIA JUDGMENT ALL WP(C) NO 494 OF 2012 RIGHT TO PRIVACY [24 AUGUST 2017] + COMMENTARY ======================================== 547 page ruling on the Right to Privacy by the Supreme Court of India on 24 August 2017 The Supreme Court pronounced that individual privacy is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. The ruling was delivered by a rare nine-member bench and is based on an array of petitions that challenge the mandatory use of Aadhaar cards which assign a unique 12-digit ID to every citizen. http://www.sacw.net/article13445.html ======================================== 5. TRIBUTE TO VIJAY NAGARAJ - REST IN POWER, VIJAY | COLLECTIVE FOR ECONOMIC DEMOCRATISATION IN SRI LANKA ======================================== The Collective for Economic Democratisation in Sri Lanka is deeply saddened by the untimely passing away of our comrade Vijay Nagaraj on Friday, August 25. http://www.sacw.net/article13451.html ======================================== 6. AN INTERVENTIONIST FOREIGN POLICY BLURS THE LINE OF DEMARCATION BETWEEN NEOCONSERVATIVES AND NEOLIBERALS by Nyla Ali Khan ======================================== President Trump’s address to the nation on August 21, 2017, in which he underscored his government’s stance vis-a-vis South Asia, gave me a sense of déjà vu. http://www.sacw.net/article13446.html ======================================== 7. INDIA: THE BUSINESS OF GODMEN, SWAMIS, GURUS AND SUCH - SELECTED COMMENTARY ======================================== which part of India has the most Godmen per square mile? http://www.sacw.net/article13448.html ======================================== 8. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH: ======================================== - India: D-Day For Another BJP Patronised Godman Asaram Approaches? SC Asks Gujarat to Speed Up Rape Trial (The Citizen) - India: Dont forget, Kandhamal, a Wound That Is Yet to Heal | Apoorvanand - India: Will the Haryana government pay for failing to prevent violence in Panchkula ? (reports in scroll.in) - India: What is common between followers of Ram Rahim and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar? - India: Indian Council of Historical Research blocks manuscript that mentions the dark role of Hindutva groups during anti colonial struggle - India: For How Long Will Haryana Pay the Price for BJP’s Political Experiments? (Chander Suta Dogra / The Wire) - India: Madhu Kishwar's open letter to PM Modi on how to break the UCC stalemate - India: Dera Sacha Sauda: The journey so far (The Times of India) - India: Excerpt from Harish Kare's comment 'Not all deras are dens of debauchery' - India: Up ahead, bigger battles loom over polygamy, personal laws | Swapan Dasgupta - India: Hindu Yuva Vahini goons climb atop mosque in Bulandshahr to hoist tricolour, chant Vande Matram (Janta Ka Reporter) - India: Dera chaos - Haryana government stands guilty of rank populism (Editorial, Times of India) - India: Scourge of selective secularism (Sadanand Dhume) - Video: Dera Sacha Sauda Extended Support To BJP during Haryana Polls - India TV - India: Dera violence - How BJP funded & promoted the monster called Ram Rahim Singh - India: BJP leaders blame everyone but Dera Sacha Sauda for violence in Panchkula -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/ ::: URLs & FULL TEXT ::: ======================================== 9. BURMA: SATELLITE DATA INDICATE BURNINGS IN RAKHINE STATE - PROTECT POPULATION, INVESTIGATE ABUSES | Human Rights Watch ======================================== (Human Rights Watch - August 29, 2017 ) (New York) – New satellite data is consistent with widespread burnings in at least 10 areas in northern parts of Burma’s Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch said today. The burnings follow a series of coordinated attacks by ethnic Rohingya militants on August 25, 2017 against dozens of Burmese government checkpoints and bases. The Burmese government should grant access to independent monitors to determine the sources of fires and assess allegations of human rights violations. “This new satellite data should cause concern and prompt action by donors and UN agencies to urge the Burmese government to reveal the extent of ongoing destruction in Rakhine State,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director. “Shuffling all the blame on insurgents doesn’t spare the Burmese government from its international obligations to stop abuses and investigate alleged violations.” Concerned governments should press for independent investigations of serious rights violations, or there will be many more victims. Phil Robertson Deputy Asia Director On August 25, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ASRA) militants attacked at least two dozen different police posts and checkpoints and one military base across three townships in northern Rakhine State. The government initially reported that dozens of people were killed in the fighting, including 11 members of the security forces. The reported death toll has since climbed to over 100, including many alleged Rohingya insurgents. The attacks follow a buildup of military forces with the deployment of the 33rd Light Infantry Battalion in northern Rakhine State, which is predominately home to Rohingya Muslims. The media reports that the government has intensified security operations in the area. Both ARSA insurgents and the Burma Army accused the other side of committing abuses. Thousands have fled their homes amid ongoing fighting. Satellites initially detected active fires in the early afternoon of August 25 in the village tracts of Zay Di Pyin and Koe Tan Kauk in Rathedaung township. On August 28, satellites located fires in another eight locations from mid-morning to early afternoon, including in Maungdaw town and several other villages in Maungdaw township. Human Rights Watch noted that many additional fires in northern Rakhine State might not have been detected during this assessment period because of limitations in the resolution of the environmental satellite sensors used and heavy clouds during the monsoon season. Human Rights Watch compared the locations of these fires with witness statements it has collected and media reports, and found a correlation with some reported incidents where residences have allegedly been deliberately burned. For instance, one man who fled to Bangladesh from Taung Pyo Let Yar village, near where Human Rights Watch detected active fires, said he witnessed security forces shooting people as they chased militants, and that homes were set ablaze: “Everything has been burned to ashes by now,” he said. Although it is not technically possible to determine the cause of fires detected with these satellite sensors nor exclude the possibility these are naturally occurring fires unrelated to the conflict, Human Rights Watch noted the information documented bears a close resemblance to that found during widespread arson attacks in Rakhine State during violence against the Rohingya in 2012 and 2016. Map depicting sites where satellite sensors detected active fires between August 25 and 28, 2017. © 2017 Human Rights Watch The overall area in which burnings were found is 100 kilometers in length, Human Rights Watch said, approximately five times larger than the area where burnings by Burmese security forces occurred from October to November 2016. Following the deadly attacks on police outposts by militants in October 2016, Human Rights Watch’s analysis of satellite imagery showed over 1500 buildings destroyed by arson. The Burmese government and army blame Rohingya residents and militants for the burning of some structures, but thus far have not presented evidence to support their allegations. Widespread burning of this sort in Rakhine State has not been seen since Rohingya militants attacked government security forces on October 9, 2016. The Rohingya militant group Harakah al-Yaqin, which later changed its name to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, took responsibility for those attacks. At that time, the Burma Army launched so-called “clearance operations” in areas where it assumed militants were hiding, committing numerous and serious human rights violations against the Rohingya. Human Rights Watch documented extrajudicial killings and the rape of women and girls, in addition to the burning of structures. The security force operations in October 2016 through March 2017 caused massive displacement, with more than 87,000 Rohingya fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh. A report issued by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on February 3 concluded that the attacks against the Rohingya “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity. In March, the UN Human Rights Council established an independent, international fact-finding mission with a mandate to investigate allegations of recent human rights abuses in Burma, especially in Rakhine State. The government has refused to cooperate with the mission and indicated it will deny visas to three experts appointed to the mission. “The Burmese government has repeatedly shown that it has neither the interest nor the skill to credibly and impartially investigate abuses in Rakhine State,” said Robertson. “Concerned governments should press for independent investigations of serious rights violations, or there will be many more victims.” ======================================== 10. WAR CRIMES SUITS AGAINST SRI LANKAN AMBASSADOR IN BRAZIL Peter Prengaman, Associated Press ======================================== (San Francisco Chronicle - August 28, 2017) The Sri Lanka embassy stands in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Aug. 28, 2017. Human rights groups in South America are alleging war crimes violations in lawsuits filed against a former Sri Lankan general who is now his Asian nation’s ambassador to Brazil and five other countries in Latin America. Photo: Eraldo Peres, AP / Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Human rights groups in South America are alleging war crimes violations in lawsuits filed against a former Sri Lankan general who is now his Asian nation's ambassador to Brazil and five other countries in Latin America. The suits against Jagath Jayasuriya are based on his role as a commander in the final phase of Sri Lanka's civil war in 2009. They allege Jayasuriya oversaw military units that attacked hospitals and killed, disappeared and tortured thousands of people. Jayasuriya has diplomatic immunity in the countries where he is ambassador: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Suriname. But the groups pursuing the suits hope they will compel regional governments to expel him. Carlos Castresana Fernandez, the lawyer coordinating the effort, told The Associated Press on Monday night that suits were filed Monday in Brazil and Colombia. Petitions also will be filed in Argentina, Chile and Peru in the coming days, he said, adding that authorities in Suriname refused to accept the suit. "This is one genocide that has been forgotten, but this will force democratic countries to do something," Fernandez said. "This is just the beginning of the fight." Calls to the Sri Lankan Embassy in Brazil's capital went unanswered Monday evening as did an email seeking comment. Jayasuriya's whereabouts were not immediately known. Fernandez said Brazilian justice officials told him Jayasuriya had left Brazil on Sunday. That couldn't be independently confirmed. The criminal suits, reviewed by the AP, were spearheaded by the human rights group International Truth and Justice Project, an evidence-gathering organization based in South Africa. The suits have three central aims: push local authorities to open investigations of Jayasuriya, remove his diplomatic immunity and expel him. Many of the nations where Jayasuriya is ambassador have their own dark histories of military dictatorships and torture. Fernandez, the coordinating lawyer, was one of the attorneys who worked on international cases against Argentine Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla and Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet. He has also helped indict many Guatemalan war criminals and organized crime members, including former President Alfonso Portillo. While lawsuits across international jurisdictions can be tricky to sort out, such moves can also pay off. In the case of Pinochet, he ended up being arrested and held for a time in England because of international suits filed against him. The civil war in Sri Lanka, an island off the southern tip of India, raged intermittently between 1983 and 2009. Fueled in part by ethnic tensions between Sinhalese and Tamil citizens, an insurgency against the government was led by a group called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. They fought to establish a separate Tamil state in the northeastern part of the island. The suits say Jayasuriya was commander of the Vanni Security Force from 2007 to 2009, one of the bloodiest periods in a war estimated to have killed more than 100,000 people. The U.N. estimates between 40,000 and 70,000 died in the final phase alone. According to the suits, Jayasuriya oversaw an offensive from Joseph Camp, also known as Vanni, which the papers claim was a notorious torture site. The International Truth and Justice Project said it interviewed 14 survivors of torture or sexual violence at the camp. According to the group, victims described hearing the howls of detainees at night, which the suits contend Jayasuriya would have been able to hear. Human rights groups have long been after Jayasuriya, but the Sri Lankan government has refused to try him or others allegedly involved in war abuses. A few years after the war ended, he retired from the military. Jayasuriya was appointed ambassador to Brazil in 2015 and the other countries were added to his purview over the following two years. ======================================== 11. PAKISTAN: PUNISHMENT OF AYESHA GULALAI | Khaled Ahmed ======================================== (The Indian Express - August 26, 2017) On the first of August, Member National Assembly (MNA), Gulalai, accused him of sending her messages of seduction from his protected Blackberry cellphone in October 2013. Pakistan is in the grip of a scandal. Ayesha Gulalai of Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party has accused her boss of sexually harassing her. If she can prove it, Khan, the charismatic leader, will lose his immunity from political damage. On the first of August, Member National Assembly (MNA), Gulalai, accused him of sending her messages of seduction from his protected Blackberry cellphone in October 2013. After the message, she said she took her father to meet Khan to know if he wanted to wed her, but Khan was not forthcoming. She said during a press conference on television that she was resigning from the party because “no lady is safe” from the immoral conduct of Khan and his “gang” of cronies in the party. Khan has several politically damaging court cases going on against him but his charisma and street power appear to have endowed him with impunity from any negative fallout. Will this scandal dent his popularity? Most probably not; it is Gulalai who will be punished. Anywhere else, the accusation would have kicked the pedestal from under Khan. His appeal among the masses, the youth, and significantly, Pakistani women, is such that his popularity didn’t fade even after his second wife went public on how she was summarily divorced soon after the wedding. His magnetism remains damage-proof as he takes the moral high ground to castigate his opponents for corruption. Khan’s street power keeps him secure against the police posses sent to arrest him by courts whose summons he routinely flouts. But this time, he could be in trouble, and if Gulalai decides to produce evidence of the lewd calls he allegedly made way back in 2013, even a judicial process could be set afoot by his political opponents to get him disqualified as an elected member of parliament under the “piety” Article 62/63 of the constitution of Pakistan. A prime minister has just been kicked out of office by the Supreme Court on the basis of Article 62 for an “irregularity” involving non-declaration to the Election Commission of a few lakh rupees from a foreign company owned by his son many years back. The Gulalai accusation may not go to court but it stands a better chance of piercing the impenetrable armour of Khan’s popularity in the months leading to the country’s next general election. But the accuser is receiving predictable fallout. Gulalai is accused of taking a big bribe of Rs 8 crore from “enemy” ruling party PMLN to do Khan down, a kind of revenge the deposed Nawaz Sharif was now determined to take. Khan’s Pashtun base in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa also reacted by threatening a fellow-Pashtun party-member with the burning of her house under tribal law; she could have her face scarred with acid which one partyman in Peshawar swore he would throw on her if she didn’t stop accusing Khan. It took no time for Gulalai to realise she was on the backfoot and needed protection. She hastily moved out of the place where she lived in Peshawar to Islamabad. She took the dubious decision of submitting to interviews with the TV channels till she realised that half of the anchors talked to her to embarrass her and to make her commit mistakes that could be exploited once the matter moved to court. Suspicion surrounded the PTI response to Gulalai when she disclosed that party spokesperson Naeemul Haq, close to Khan, too, had tried his luck with her on the phone, proposing marriage — unprepossessing Haq is a divorcee and thought he could get a leg-up in the party by marrying her. He blundered after she flagged his crudity. He first said there was nothing like sexual harassment in proposing marriage — in fact, it could be praiseworthy in Islam to propose to a woman still deprived of the blessing of marriage — till the party told him he had made a gaffe and bailed him out by stating that the proposal of marriage was not his but a plant through his hacked phone. Haq’s stupidity may finally nail Khan too. But the media is divided down the middle. The National Assembly has set up a committee to hear Gulalai’s charge against Khan but his partymen say the committee is filled with his enemies. This means that no solution will be found to the crisis created by this case of harassment. Women are already mostly arrayed against her and Pakistan is immune to accusations of harassment of women. Women have a low social status culturally but additional handicaps come from the way Pakistanis interpret Islam. ======================================== 12. PAKISTAN: RETHINKING URBAN AND RURAL S. Akbar Zaidi ======================================== (Dawn - 29 August 2017) THE most confounding finding from the provisionally released statistics from the latest census is that Pakistan’s population is still only 36 per cent urban, with so-called rural areas having a share of 64pc. For social scientists and for people who are familiar with Pakistan’s economy and demography, and for even those who travel across much of Pakistan, these figures reveal serious methodological issues in how concepts such as ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ are devised. Numerous sets of economic and social statistics not related to the population count, suggest how contentious, and incorrect this urban/rural dichotomy really is. The definitions, which are usually used to define ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ when a census is conducted, are based on administrative criteria. Administrative boundaries defining what a city or town is, which are infrequently revised, are based on the number of people residing in the limits of municipal, town committees, and such other classifications. Hence, the population of say, Karachi, would include those people who live in the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation area, but exclude the hundreds of thousands who live just a few feet outside this arbitrary boundary, and yet carry out all their economic and social activities within Karachi. Such administrative criteria delineating what a city is might make sense when it comes to municipal budgets and the provision of services, or who can vote in the KMC elections, but are not adequately cognisant of who an urban citizen is. Administrative boundaries exclude urban forms, practices and citizenry, since cities have expanded well beyond city limits. While it is easier to define ‘urban’, albeit incorrectly, since all this definition requires is an administrative order, what rural is, is actually more complicated. One reason why the recent census shows Pakistan’s population as 64pc rural is that anyone who does not live within urban boundaries is designated as a ‘rural’ dweller, a residual category. Hence, areas which social scientists and urban planners would call peri-urban, those huge fringes of city-size settlements that are formally located outside the boundaries of cities, would be called ‘rural’, although they are as urbanised as the rest of the city from which they are being excluded. It is clear that the classification used in our census for ‘rural’ is wrong. Traditionally, the notion of ‘rural’ is often associated with a mode of production and exchange which is supposed to be based on some form of agriculture. If one looks at other sets of statistics related to economic activity, it becomes clear that the classification used in our census for ‘rural’ is wrong. For example, agriculture now only contributes one-fifth to Pakistan’s GDP. Furthermore, much of the so-called rural areas now constitute a large, if not dominant, share of non-agricultural employment. Activities classified as ‘non-farm’ or ‘non-agricultural’ incomes, mainly services, constitute at least 60pc of total rural incomes, if we are to follow the definitions used for rural areas according to the Population and Housing Census of 2017. In other words, there is little agricultural activity taking place in rural areas. Moreover, services which were considered ‘urban’ some decades ago, such as electricity, education, access to television, communication and transport are now also very visible in so-called rural areas. The fact that one million mobile phones are added on each month in Pakistan, with nearly 75pc of Pakistanis having mobile phones, shows that even in remote and rural areas, such technology and means of communication are easily available. Whether urban or rural, Pakistan is heavily integrated. The meticulous research of Reza Ali, an urban planner from Lahore, who has looked at urban settlements in Pakistan for over four decades, shows how unproductive and incorrect our definitions of urban and rural areas are. He shows that the difference between urban/rural is largely a matter of definition, and many ad-hoc definitions are used which are often inconsistent, non-comparable and incomplete. He suggests that we begin to look at the urban/rural divide as a gradient rather than a dichotomy. Other scholars, notably, Prof Muhammad Qadeer, have argued that we now have ‘ribbons of development’ between cities, towns, industrial satellites and along highways, and even populations which have not formally and physically relocated to cities have adopted ‘urbanism as a way of life’ reflected in changing patterns of production, consumption and the use of services. Such critical reassessments of dichotomies like urban and rural, need to be further understood by planners and researchers, alike. It is important to emphasise here, that no argument is being made that ‘all of Pakistan is urban’. Far from it. But what is being suggested is that one needs to have very different criteria in the census to be able to plan and provide services, if that is one of the main arguments given for undertaking censuses. Perhaps one needs to look at densities of populations, rather than artificial administrative categories. Economic activities might offer another way of classifying populations. Access to services within cities by people living outside administrative boundaries constitutes yet another way of looking at populations. For example, areas with ease of access or within commuting radius of a city ought not to be considered ‘rural’, even if they are producing agricultural and dairy products which are meant primarily for residents in cities. With so much connectivity and integration of services, trade and even manufacturing, a hard divide between urban and rural becomes less tenuous. Perhaps more categories of settlements, as suggested by Reza Ali, need to be considered, such as those which are unambiguously urban, those which are peri-urban and integrated with cities, those which are in a speedy process of urbanising (as is much of rural Pakistan), and those by some residual criteria which could still be considered ‘rural’. One can only hope that once all the results of the 2017 census are made available to researchers, we will begin to critically rethink urban and rural. The writer is a Karachi-based political economist. ======================================== 13. STILL SEARCHING FOR PEACE WITH HONOUR IN NAGALAND | Ramachandra Guha ======================================== (Hindustan Times - August 27, 2017) That the ‘Kashmir problem’ is both serious and long-standing is true. But the ‘Naga problem’ is as intense, and even older. It began even before Independence and Partition when, in 1946, a group of educated Nagas claimed sovereignty for the areas they lived in When, some 20 years ago, I began research on a book on India’s journey since Independence, I quickly learned that history as it actually unfolded could be quite different from history as it was later represented. In the 1990s, as the country belatedly liberalised its economy, it was said that Jawaharlal Nehru, and Nehru alone, had kept Indian entrepreneurs in chains by imposing a system of State control over them. However, I found that when, in the 1950s, the Planning Commission consulted a panel of 24 independent economists on the model of development being proposed, 23 endorsed it. Even more surprising was the discovery that India’s leading industrialists had eagerly embraced State planning. In the late 1940s, GD Birla, JRD Tata et al authored a document, known as the Bombay Plan, which argued that economic growth in a poor country like India required the State to ‘exercise a considerable measure of intervention and control’. These capitalists went so far as to claim that ‘the distinction between capitalism and socialism has lost much of its significance from a practical standpoint.’ As they put it: ‘In our view, no economic organization can function effectively or possess lasting qualities unless it accepts as its basis a judicious combination of the principles associated with each school of thought’. Independent India’s economic history was more complex than was being represented; and so also its political history. When I began working on my book, the Valley of Kashmir was in the grip of a major insurgency. The flight of the Pandits had made Kashmir a burning question of national politics. In 1998, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, bringing the question of Kashmir to international attention. Books and articles were pouring off the press describing Kashmir as the oldest and most worrying of all the problems the Indian nation-state had to face. They informed us that for a full 50 years, ever since Independence, the dispute over the Valley had festered and lingered. That the ‘Kashmir problem’ was both serious and long-standing was true. But, as I soon found, the ‘Naga problem’ was as intense, and even older. It began even before Independence and Partition when, in 1946, a group of educated Nagas claimed sovereignty for the areas they lived in. The journal they published was significantly called The Naga Nation. Once the British left these hills, said the newly-formed Naga National Council (NNC), it should be replaced by ‘a government of the Nagas, for the Nagas, by the Nagas’. Some members of the NNC wanted full and total sovereignty. Others wanted autonomy within the Indian Union. The radicals won the argument, and launched an armed struggle for independence, which provoked fierce reprisals from the State. Through the 1950s the Naga Hills witnessed bitter and bloody battles between insurgents of the NNC and the Indian Army. Hundreds of lives were lost, many of civilians unconnected with either rebels or government. In 1956, the Naga issue was the subject of extended debate in the Lok Sabha, where the most eloquent interventions came from an MP named Rishang Keishing. Keishing was a Tangkhul Naga by birth, born and raised in the hills of the erstwhile princely state of Manipur. A socialist by conviction, he had cut his political teeth by struggling for representative government in his home state. Manipur was then ruled by bureaucrats from Delhi; in 1954, Keishing organised a major satyagraha demanding that they be replaced by an elected assembly instead. Two years later, Keishing spoke several times in the Lok Sabha in favour of an honourable truce between Naga insurgents and the Indian state. He chastised Prime Minister Nehru for not meeting a delegation of Naga citizens who had recently visited Delhi. And he came down hard on the violence committed by soldiers in uniform. ‘The Army men’, he remarked, ‘have shown an utter disregard for the sentiments of the local Nagas, for, they have tried to terrify them by carrying the naked corpses of the Nagas killed by them…’. At the same time, he did not spare the rebels either, for they had terrorised villagers who did not support them, while assassinating Naga leaders who did not approve of violence. Unlike the partisans of either side, Keishing saw clearly that excessive force had been used by both sides. ‘Who can boast of an untarnished record?’, he asked: ‘Who can dare fling the first stone and assert that they are not sinners? I ask this of the hostile Nagas as well as of the Government’. He recommended ‘an immediate declaration of general amnesty’, ‘because the continuation of hostilities means the ruins of innocent citizens’. In later years, Keishing himself served four terms as chief minister of Manipur, a striking achievement, since the state’s political system is dominated by the Meiteis of the Imphal valley. He died last week, aged 96. Unfortunately, the obituaries, while paying attention to the posts he held and the elections he won, did not mention his remarkable and still relevant interventions on the question of Nagaland. For 20 years now, an uneasy truce has prevailed between what is now the dominant Naga outfit, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, and the Government of India. But no resolution has been possible, because each side insists on seeing itself as blameless. However, as Rishang Keishing pointed out, neither the rebels nor the State can boast of an unvarnished record. Neither can fling the first stone. An acknowledgement of mutual responsibility, an admission of one’s own crimes and mistakes, is therefore a precondition for peace with honour in Nagaland — and, I might add, in Manipur and Kashmir too. ======================================== 14. INDIA: RAM RAHIM WAS USED BY POLITICIANS - AND HE USED THEM RIGHT BACK | Swati Chaturvedi ======================================== (ndtv.com - August 25, 2017) At a time when our elected leaders genuflect before self-styled godmen of every ilk, it took a court to take a stand. The self-styled 'Messenger of God', "Pita-ji of Bling" Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh of the Dera Sacha Sauda was convicted of rape by a Panchkula court today. Then, some towns in the states Punjab and Haryana saw his crazed followers attempting to deliver on their threat to "wipe out India" if their beloved cult leader was convicted. At least 20 people died in less than three hours after the violence. Crores of public property was laid waste in arson that spread from Panchkula and Sirsa to Delhi and towns in Punjab. In Haryana, the BJP government led by former RSS pracharak M L Khattar watched helplessly as the crazed followers attacked. This was an eerie replay of the Jat agitation early in 2016 when Haryana burned and nearly 20 people were killed in violence that lasted more than a week. ram rahim 650 Spiritual guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was today convicted of raping two women followers in 2002 (File photo) This was a story of a violence and death foretold, yet no preventive action was taken. Singh was flown to safety from Panchkula after the verdict in a helicopter and the entire top leadership of the BJP maintained a circumspect silence as the riots were unleashed. What is it about Rahim Singh that triggered the need for the army to be called in after thousands of his followers who call themselves "premis" surrounded the court? ram rahim violence 650 Violence erupted in Panchkula and other towns soon after Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was found guilty of rape Strength in numbers. It is not hyperbole on Singh's part when he says he commands crores of followers in his three main deras in Haryana, Punjab and Maharashtra; they worship him like a God and obediently follow his diktats when it comes to political support. Even after Singh was accused of rape and other serious offences such as murder and forcing his male followers to get castrated, no leader of any political party had any qualms about seeking the endorsement of Pita-ji for easy votes. This May, the Yoga Federation of India recommended his name for the prestigious Dronacharya award, the highest honour for sporting coaches who have guided their wards to glory on the world stage. Earlier, Haryana Sports minister Anil Vij during a visit to the Dera in Sirsa was so impressed that he granted Rs. 50 lakhs to Singh for his contribution to "traditional sports". anil vij ram rahim 650 Haryana sports minister Anil Vij announced a donation of Rs. 50 lakh to Dera Sacha Sauda in August last year Singh had quite a role in the BJP's 2014 sweep in Haryana. 44 candidates were shepherded to the Dera by Kailash Vijayvargiya, in charge of Haryana for the BJP, for Pita-ji's blessings. Their wish was granted and Singh also tweeted a picture of himself voting as the Dera let it be known that devotees should back PM Modi's party. Much before the BJP came in to power, Singh was granted Z-plus security which today saw him enter Panchkula with a mammoth entourage of 100+ cars. When the PM praised him from a public stage in Haryana during his campaign in 2014, it's not as if the line of cases against him had yet to be revealed; the PM later hailed his contribution through cleanliness drives for the Swachh Bharat movement with a tweet. ram rahim khattar 650 Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh at a cleanliness drive in Karnal (File photo) Singh who has acted and produced in three films and song the popular "Love Charger" recently used his Twitter account to acknowledge the election to the Rajya Sabha of BJP President, Amit Shah and Information & Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani. Before Singh extended support to the BJP, in the 2014 election, Shah had a one-on-one meeting with him. The prospect of captive vote banks ensures that politicians cosy up to all self-styled godmen who in turn gain proximity to political power. Criminal charges don't necessarily shake public support either. Asaram Bapu and his son Nityanand, jailed on charges of rape, continue to enjoy a huge following. In 2014, Jagat Guru Rampal-ji Maharaj's refusal to surrender to the police in his ashram in Barwala in Haryana led to a siege where four women died. ram rahim violence 650 28 people are reported dead and 250 injured in the violence in Panchkula In all these cases, including Singh's, followers are completely unfazed by their gurus' long and heinous rap sheets. They are convinced it's all a conspiracy against their God and gripped by a siege mentality. The godmen in turn waste no chance to prove the abject devotion of their followers to acquire political influence and power for themselves. Singh perhaps derived inspiration from "babas" such as Chandraswami and Dhirendra Brahmachari who wielded uber political clout. But those were behind-the-scene Rasputins. Well, perhaps not Rajneesh - remember his 100 Rolls Royces in an avowedly socialist India. But these days, the cult status and unbelievable wealth, complete with private aircrafts and luxury vehicles, is accompanied by over-the-top displays of political reach. ram rahim 650 Dera Sacha Sauda claims Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has 50 million followers So since they have a co-dependent relationship with politicians, it's upto courts to end the levitating of godmen over mere mortals. Even after the colossal violence unleashed by the premis, it was the Punjab and Haryana High Court that decided all the sect's property will be annexed to help pay for today's damages. Khattar and his government ended the day seeming as helpless in handling Singh as they did in the morning. An ominous portent for India. (Swati Chaturvedi is an author and a journalist who has worked with The Indian Express, The Statesman and The Hindustan Times.) ======================================== 15. INDIA: BATTLE HALF WON - TRIPLE TALAQ PETITIONER’S STRUGGLE CONTINUES, EDITORIAL, THE TIMES OF INDIA ======================================== (The Times of India, August 26, 2017) Editorials | Edit Page, India | TOI It was brave of Shayara Bano, Ishrat Jahan, Aafreen Rehman, Gulshan Parveen and Atiya Sabri to petition India’s apex court against instant triple talaq, because it meant going against powerful male authorities in the community. This week they won a great victory in court. But its euphoria is tempered by ground realities, where reform will take more time and enlightenment – and perhaps pain. Over in Kolkata for example Ishrat Jahan is battling a social boycott. The SC verdict has opened floodgates of expletives against her: like gandi aurat (dirty woman), enemy of men, un-Islamic. Her lawyer Nazia Ilahi Khan is being trolled online. But even as Ishrat is learning that the court judgment will not change society by itself, she is refusing to get dispirited. She has decided to remove her niqab, to say to other women that she is not a victim anymore and every ordinary woman can fight for her rights like her, to push for change within the community. Bengal minister Siddiqullah Chowdhury has meanwhile declared the SC verdict unconstitutional, actually urging Muslims not to abide by it. This is beyond irresponsible, pandering to fundamentalism and oppression of women as it does. Interestingly, even as SC has set aside talaq-e-biddat, there is no gender equality in talaq-e-ahsan and talaq-e-hasan either. Women will demand greater agency over time. Such demands will grow across religions, and successfully. Defending the sexist status quo or suppressing women’s voices is a medieval game. ======================================== 16. NOT MY SPOKESPERSON: ALL INDIA MUSLIM PERSONAL LAW BOARD MUST NOW MAKE WAY FOR A MORE REPRESENTATIVE BODY by Saba Naqvi ======================================== (The Times of India - August 28, 2017) After recent events in Haryana we should not underestimate the power of men of religion. I recently had the experience of sitting next to a furious mullah in a TV studio. Don’t want government money for madrasas, he hollered, don’t want modern syllabus, don’t want to produce doctors or engineers, just want to produce more maulanas and it’s my right to do so. He was banging his fists on the table and was in quite a state as he saw his freedoms being curtailed. Mullah saab is quite right in that like the Mormons or the Amish people in the US he has every right to do exactly what he wants and live in a separate universe – especially now that the right to privacy has been reinforced in a magnificent manner by the Supreme Court. Illustration: Ajit Ninan What the mullah should not have is the right to legally impose his views on others but actually he does have this right via the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), which has set itself up as the ‘sole spokesperson’ of the Muslim community. Founded in 1973, AIMPLB is a collection of clerics (with a few professionals thrown in) whose main purpose is to protect sharia law. Half its members are life members and ever since it compelled Congress to overturn the Shah Bano judgment in 1986, it’s grown in clout, even as it has created the ecosystem necessary to posit the argument of ‘appeasement’ of a particular community. Yes, the mullahs have been appeased, even as the people they claim to speak for head downwards on every social and economic indicator. Yet on every matter involving Muslims, including the Ayodhya case, AIMPLB is there positing its views. Now that they have been defeated in the triple talaq matter it’s a good time to ask, on whose mandate does AIMPLB claim to speak for the world’s third largest Muslim community? Did they descend from the heavens to represent India’s unfortunate Muslims till eternity? And why can’t AIMPLB be disbanded and a more representative body created? Although the triple talaq judgment disappoints in still upholding personal laws over fundamental rights, yet a process has begun where women can question men’s rights to determine laws. All the world religions have historically discriminated against women either on the basis of religious texts or social custom (after all Eve came from Adam’s rib, while virgins await men in paradise and till the last century it was acceptable in parts of India for women to burn themselves on their husband’s pyres). But the whole point of modern societies is equality before law, regardless of religion, caste or gender. We in India have in theory given all citizens equal rights but in practice personal laws (not just those applicable to Muslims) have been the backdoor route to disempowering women in matters of marriage, divorce, rights over children and inheritance. And because we were a nation born in the bloodshed and chaos of the Partition, those at the helm of affairs have also had a deep neurosis involving the Muslim community. Somewhere down the line, Congress, the dominant party to shape India’s narrative till recently, appeared to have taken the path of auctioning out ‘secularism’ to clerics, naturally all men, who were then expected to deliver the Muslim ‘herd’ as a voter bloc. It’s as if the great votaries of secularism could not dirty their hands by directly dealing with Muslims so they brought on the mullahs. Regional parties, most notably SP, BSP and TMC have taken this model of politics to the next level. The first two have been vanquished in the age of BJP while TMC is holding ground in Bengal – yet it is inevitable that its advocacy of conservative clerics will lead to a counter polarisation. Although secularism actually means a separation of state and church, we have evolved something of a perversion in India where the clerics have used the cover of secularism to keep retrograde personal laws in place and thereby their own relevance intact. And it’s not all motivated by divine impulses: Control over a social group also ensures control over whatever resources are available, most notably in the Waqf properties that are reservoirs of corruption instead of being a resource to serve the poor in the community. If our secularism appears to have been virtually flattened by the organised assault of right wing nationalism, it’s because there was a serious structural flaw in it to begin with. Let’s admit that. A few women have now given some oxygen to the Muslim identity that was being suffocated by the relentless presence of the mullah. This identity should always have been grounded in the reality of artisans and craftsmen who make beautiful things with their hands and in the great subcontinental reservoir of poetry and literature that questioned every structure and saw the mullah as an impediment to knowledge and liberation. Even today we live in an age of neurosis, where some accuse the women who fought the case of being pawns in a larger conspiracy scripted by BJP. To such commentators i would only say liberate your minds and regardless of whether BJP set a bait or not, equality is always worth fighting for. It is also true that personal laws may not be the most pressing matter confronting the Muslim community, although any set of rules that disempowers women should always matter. It’s good to see the self-appointed guardians of Islam put in their place. My mullah saab would still be fuming, but frankly, i don’t give a damn as he believes women must live at the mercy of men. ======================================== 17. INDIA: PATRIOTIC' ROCK SHOWS SOON AT IITS, CENTRAL UNIVERSITIES ======================================== The Times of India PTI | Aug 27, 2017, 15:01 IST File photo of IIT NagpurFile photo of IIT Nagpur NEW DELHI: Students at IITs and central universities across the country would soon groove to patriotic music by rock bands visiting their campuses. The HRD Ministry has asked these institutions to host music bands who would be performing patriotic numbers. As part of the programme named "Yeh India ka time hai", the government has identified certain bands which would be visiting campuses across the country and perform patriotic numbers, specially from Bollywood. "A private entertainment firm has been taken on board which has identified around a dozen rock bands. The shows will be planned in various institutions over the next month," a senior official said. The programme has been organised to celebrate 70 years of India's Independence and 75 years of the Quit India Movement this year. Earlier this month, the government had also asked all universities and educational institutions to take students to memorials of freedom fighters and residences of martyrs in the run-up to the 70th Independence day celebrations. The varsities and schools also organised an oath taking ceremony where students, teachers and non-teaching staff took a pledge to make the country a "terrorism-free, caste-free, corruption-free, uncleanness-free and poverty-free society". ======================================== 18. THE CIRCUS MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH | NISHA P R ======================================== (Economic and Political Weekly, 26 Aug, 2017) The Circus Man Who Knew Too Much Nisha P R (nichukomal[at]gmail.com) is currently SSRC Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellow at Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of the Witwatersrand. Keeleri Kunhikannan, known as the father of Indian circus and whose 160th birth anniversary was celebrated in Kerala in 2015, was “teacher” to countless performance artistes. More significantly, he transformed the rigid caste-based space and culture of the martial art of kalaripayattu into one where different castes, communities and even genders mingled. Years ago, when I started my doctoral research on the social history of circus in Malabar district in Kerala, the key predicament, as expected, was the lack of conventional archives. Thus memories and memorabilia of the circus community became the major alternative source for me. Indubitably the central figure in this archive was a man called Keeleri Kunhikannan (1855–1939), whom those in the circus community would always reverently refer to as “teacher.” Murkoth Kunhappa, the chronicler of Malabar, notes that in the first decades of the 20th century, in Malabar “teacher” meant nobody else but Kunhikannan (Kunhappa 1951: 35). The circus community in Kerala considers him to be the father of circus and circus acrobatics in that part of the world. Many of the artistes trained by him went on to perform around the world and teach circus feats to subsequent generations establishing a lineage of teachers, students, owners and performers. The most renowned of these would be his nephew, N P Kannan who became globally known as “Kannan Bombayo.” The story goes that in a show at Berlin in Germany, Adolf Hitler was stunned by Kannan’s spectacular performance which included the rope dance with double back somersaults on a simple slack rope. The Fuhrer is said to have exclaimed “Jumping Devil of India.” Indeed a remarkable historical moment demolishing Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy (Nisha 2015: 15–16). Kunhikannan was born on 12 August 1855 in Thalassery, North Malabar. His 160th birth anniversary was celebrated by the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi in his home town on 11 August 2015. This official celebration, supported by the state sports ministry, was initiated following a proposal submitted by this author. During my research I had realised the painful truth that the great teacher had no memorial in his home town and lived only in the memories of the “circus people.” Interestingly, the legend lingers on in local memory in innominate ways, for instance the town area where Kunhikannan and later his disciple M K Raman established their circus kalaris (training space) is still known among the people of the locality and autorickshaw drivers in Thalassery town as Chirakkara Kalari. I had a hard time finding the master’s home when I first went there about six years ago. Now, as part of the anniversary celebration the road that leads to this home has been named after Keeleri by the Thalassery muncipality. At the 2015 anniversary celebrations, 21 Malayali circus artistes and labourers, both retired and working, were honoured with a citation and cash award of ₹10,000. This was the first time in the history of the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi that circus artistes were recognised as performing artists and honoured. The awardees included the 103-year-old Thattari Lakshmi and the paralysed trapeze artiste Ajith Kumar who has been bedridden for the last 21 years after an accident in the circus ring. Subsequently, the Akademi incorporated all Malayali artistes presently working in companies around India into their health insurance scheme. The Akademi Chairman at the time, Soorya Krishnamoorthy, had promised to expand this scheme to include the retired artistes too. But with the change of government the Akademi administration has also been reconstituted and it has to be seen whether there would be a continuance of these steps. The circus community was utterly disheartened that the Kunhikannan birth anniversary celebration was not organised in 2016 as promised. As another birth anniversary of Kunhikannan teacher passes by the circus community in Malabar wait in vain for the better prospects promised to them. Kunhikannan was a gymnastics teacher in the Basel Evangelical Mission School in Thalassery. He also taught horizontal and parallel bars and the Swedish drill. Kunhikannan learnt kalaripayattu, wrestling, gymnastics and weightlifting and was also into games such as cricket, which had been popular in that colonial town. He underwent gymnastics training in Madras for a year under the Field Games Association and learnt kalaripayattu under Maroli Ramunni Gurukkal and later on under Unni Kurup. Mitavadi (January 1914) also notes that after gaining expertise in indigenous physical sports such as muchaan, otta, kettuvari, thotti, maravu, kunthapayatt, he travelled to Madras, Mysore, Trichi and Madhura and found teachers there to fulfil his learning: “He has also become skilled at Punjabi wrestling and foreign practices such as the cheti, baana, lejj and shankilipothu. He has been teaching all these to people in his native land.” In his autobiography, C H Kunjappa, writer and former editor of Mathrubhumi, warmly remembers the affectionate but strict teacher while recounting his student days in the Basel Mission School: When teacher is nearby no one needs to be afraid of anything. Those two hands would be always there to hold you. Any broken bone would be massaged and straightened by those hands. Whether it was trapeze or bar a child would fall only into those hands. (Kunjappa 2000: 74–77) His rendezvous with circus must have been an ordinary happening in Thalassery, a colonial hub, being a major trade point and the judicial centre of the British administration in Malabar. But there are different narratives regarding his “first” encounter and the subsequent mastering of the art. Kandambulli Balan (1961: 49), a circus company manager and writer, notes in his 1961 book Circus, probably the first and definitely the most comprehensive book on circus in Malayalam that Kunhikannan “happened to see India’s first circus, Chatre Circus, in 1888 at Thalassery.” Sreedharan Champad (2008: 129), retired circus artiste and author, argues that “it was in 1884 in Madras that Kunhikannan first saw a circus, some European circus.” Gemini Sankaran, retired artiste and owner of Gemini–Jumbo–Royal circus companies says that circus patriarch, Vishnupanth Chatre visited Kunhikannan Kunhikannan at Thalassery having heard about his fame. Chatre recognised Kunhikannan Gurukkal’s body skill and invited him to circus. (Gemini and Madayi 2012: 26) Transforming ‘Caste Space’ Since Kunhikannan had been adept in various physical cultures, the circus acrobatics he fostered had been a hybrid form where different bodily acts and performances were interwoven. This could be one of the reasons why his disciples got instantaneous recognition not only in Indian circus companies but also all over the world. Almost all the popular items such as horizontal bar, varmachattam (frog), trapeze, rope dance, weightlifting, rings, foot juggling, pole and wire items performed in the circus companies were taught in the circus kalari, except cycling, clowning and items with animals.1 After the completion of training, the acrobat could suggest the name of the company s/he wanted to join and the teacher helped them to arrange a contract for four to five years with that company. At times the companies from across borders sent agents to him for acrobats talented in some particular item. Kunnath Yesoda, one of the earliest women circus artistes, was trained in his circus kalari and enjoyed stardom in prominent Marathi companies such as the Chatre circus. His disciples, M Mannan and Raman who were renowned circus stars, had also established circus kalaris in 1937 and 1941 respectively. Raman’s circus kalari modelled on his teacher’s is the only one that still stands, as the remnant of a marvellous past.2 Most significantly, Kunhikannan’s passion for this “modern” form and the subsequent establishment of a circus kalari have a more radical reckoning to it. Kunhikannan, a kalaripayattu gurukkal himself, transformed the rigid caste-based space and culture of kalaripayattu into a circus kalari where different castes, communities and genders mingled. Malabar of those times, where stringent caste discrimination was practised even to the extent of seeing, such a space must have been impossible to imagine, let alone realise. Nettoor P Damodaran, a prominent statesman who represented Thalassery parliamentary constituency in the first lok sabha emphatically notes in his memoirs that the teacher “selected his pupils from underprivileged families stigmatised as untouchables by the upper castes” (Damodaran 1987: 11). The daring choices Kunhikannan made in his private life stand testimony to his constant seeking out for a better and equal world. Born into the Thiyya caste, he joined the Brahmasamaja challenging the caste system. The Thiyya Sabha had decided to declare those from the community who joined the Brahmasamaja as outcastes (Malayala Manorama 1903, 29 April, 17 June). But Kunhikannan’s will to defy the brutal Hindu caste hierarchy was tenacious and he converted to Christianity and remained one until his death on 22 September 1939 at the age of 81.3 He was buried at the CSI Gundert Church cemetery at Thalassery. The epitaph on his tomb says, Keeleri Karunakaran (Prof Keeleri Kuhikannan Teacher) Father of Circus who Spent his Life Time in the Service of the Poor and Needy Died on 22-9-1939 - Aged 81. He died as He Lived Every One’s Friend Till God Called Him Home. Notes 1 Interview, Gemini Sankaran, circus owner, Kannur, 29 October 2012; Kunhiraman, retired circus artiste, Melur, 24 January 2009; also see Sreedharan (2008: 131). 2 Interview, (late) V M Prabhakaran, retired circus artiste and union leader, Payyoli, 3 February 2009. 3 Interview, Edward Williams, grandson of Keeleri Kunhikannan, Chirakkara, 26 March 2010. References Balan, Kandambulli (1961): Circus, Kottayam: NBS. Damodaran, Nettoor P (1987): Anubhavachurulukal [Folds of Memory], Kottayam: NBS. Gemini, Sankaran and Thaha Madayi (2012): Malakkam Mariyunna Jeevitham [Somersaulting Life], Kottayam: DC Books. Kunjappa, C H (2000): Smaranakal Maatram [Memories Only], Thrissur: Current Books. Kunhappa, Murkoth (1951): “Circus: Malayalikalude Sambhavana [Circus: Contribution of Malayalis],” Mathrubhumi Illustrated Weekly, Vol 51, No 28, p 35. Nisha, P R (2015): “Jumping Devils: A Tale of Circus Bodies,” Occasional Paper Series, Perspectives in Indian Development, No 55, New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Sreedharan, Champad (2008): Circusinte Lokam [The World of Circus], Kozhikode: Mathrubhumi. ======================================== 19. RED FAMINE BY ANNE APPLEBAUM REVIEW – DID STALIN DELIBERATELY LET UKRAINE STARVE? A VIVID ACCOUNT EXPOSES THE MYTHS OF THE CATASTROPHIC UKRAINIAN FAMINE OF 1932-3 | Sheila Fitzpatrick ======================================== (The Guardian - 25 August 2017) The monument commemorating the mass famine of 1932-3 in Kiev. Photograph: Konstantin Chernichkin/Reuters The terrible famine of 1932-3 hit all the major Soviet grain-growing regions, but Ukraine worst of all. It was not the result of adverse climatic conditions but a product of government policies. This is, in fact, the case with many famines, as Amartya Sen pointed out in his classic study, Poverty and Famines (1981), though the deaths generally occur because of administrative mismanagement and incompetence rather than an intention to murder millions of peasants. The Soviet example is unusual in that Stalin is often accused of having exactly that intention. The famine followed agricultural collectivisation at the end of the 1920s, a formally voluntary process that was in fact coercive in its implementation. Along with forced-pace industrialisation, it was part of a package of breakthrough modernisation policies launched by Stalin in the first phase of his leadership. Industrial growth needed to be financed by grain exports, which collectivisation was supposed to facilitate through compulsory state procurements and non-negotiable prices. The problem was how to get the grain out of the countryside. The state did not know how much grain the peasants actually had, but suspected (correctly) that much was being hidden. An intense tussle between the state’s agents and peasants over grain deliveries ensued. That is a brief version of the rational account of collectivisation, but there was an irrational side as well. The Soviet leaders had worked themselves and the population into a frenzy of anxiety about imminent attack from foreign capitalist powers. In Soviet Marxist-Leninist thinking, “class enemies” within the Soviet Union were likely to welcome such an invasion; and such class enemies included “kulaks”, the most prosperous peasants in the villages. Thus collectivisation went hand in glove with a drive against kulaks, or peasants labelled as such, who were liable to expropriation and deportation into the depths of the USSR. Resistance to collectivisation was understood as “kulak sabotage”. Stalin harped on this theme, particularly as relations with peasants deteriorated and procurement problems intensified. Ukrainian officials, including senior ones, tried to tell him that it was no longer a matter of peasants concealing grain: they actually had none, not even for their own survival through the winter and the spring sowing. But Stalin was sceptical on principle of bureaucrats who came with sob stories to explain their own failure to meet targets and discounted the warnings. Angry and paranoid after his wife killed herself in November 1932, he preferred to see the procurement shortfall as the result of sabotage. So there was no let-up in state pressure through the winter of 1932-3, and peasants fleeing the hungry villages were shut out of the cities. Stalin eased up the pressure in the spring of 1933, but it was too late to avert the famine. This brings us back to the question of intention. In my 1994 book Stalin’s Peasants, I argued that what Stalin wanted was not to kill millions (a course with obvious economic disadvantages) but rather to get as much grain out of them as possible – the problem being that nobody knew how much it was possible to get without starving them to death and ruining the next harvest. But that was an argument about the Soviet Union as a whole. If you look at those regions against which Stalin had particular animus, notably Ukraine (with its border location and his paranoia about Polish spies) and the Russian North Caucasus (with its politically suspect Cossack farmers), the picture could be different. Certainly Ukrainians think so. In the version that has become popular since it declared independence, Stalin’s murderous impulse was directed specifically against Ukrainians. Holodomor, the Ukrainian word for the famine, is understood in contemporary Ukraine not just as a national tragedy but as an act of genocide on the part of the Soviet Union/Russia. As such it has become a staple part of the national myth-making of the new Ukrainian state. Celebrating the 88th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution on Independence square in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2005. Photograph: Sergey Chuzavkov/AP Anne Applebaum’s book takes her into this politically contentious territory, and her subtitle, “Stalin’s War on Ukraine”, may set off some alarm bells. An American journalist who has also worked in Britain (her husband, Radosław Sikorski, served as Polish minister for defence and for foreign affairs, and played a major role in sorting out the Maidan crisis in Ukraine in 2014, and advocated tough sanctions against Russia), Applebaum has been active as a political commentator highly critical of Russia and Putin’s regime. Her first book, Gulag: A History, won her a Pulitzer prize in 2004 but few friends among western Soviet historians, since she explained in her introduction that, as an undergraduate at Yale in the 1980s, she had decided not to join their ranks once she found out they allegedly had to curry favour with the Soviet authorities to get visas and archival access, a suggestion many saw as a slur on their professional integrity. Her remarks in the same introduction on the world’s failure to recognise Soviet atrocities as being on a par with those of Nazi Germany struck an anachronistic note. Currently she is a professor in practice at the LSE’s Institute of Global Affairs specialising in 21st century propaganda and disinformation, a subject she knows from both sides, having been involved in the mid-1990s in the Spectator’s exposé of Guardian journalist Richard Gott for KGB connections and, in 2014, and having been herself targeted by what she describes as a Russian social media “smear” campaign. Guardian readers may be inclined to approach a new book on Soviet atrocities by Applebaum warily. But in many ways it is a welcome surprise. Like her Gulag – which, if you held your nose through the introduction, turned out to be a good read, reasonably argued and thoroughly researched – Red Famine is a superior work of popular history. She still doesn’t like western academic Soviet historians much, but at least she mainly avoids gratuitous snideness and cites their work in her bibliography (although my Stalin’s Peasants is not included, but that is probably an oversight). Whereas in Gulag she tended to be grudging about her towering precursor, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose Gulag Archipelago was the pioneering work in the 1970s, in Red Famine she is appropriately respectful of Robert Conquest (his The Harvest of Sorrow came out in 1986). Alexander Solzhenitsyn arrives in Zurich after being deprived of his Soviet citizenship following the publication of The Gulag Archipelago. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images Applebaum has, of course, more material at her disposal than Conquest had, including large numbers of Ukrainian famine memoirs. Many of these are published by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, which has an obvious political agenda, but she is by no means offering an uncritical “Ukrainian” account of the famine. Though sympathetic to the sentiments behind it, she ultimately doesn’t buy the Ukrainian argument that Holodomor was an act of genocide. Her estimate of famine losses in Ukraine – 4.5 million people – reflects current scholarship. Her take on Stalin’s intentions comes closer than I would to seeing him as specifically out to kill Ukrainians, but this is a legitimate difference of interpretation. For scholars, the most interesting part of the book will be the two excellent historiographical chapters in which she teases out the political and scholarly impulses tending to minimise the famine in Soviet times (“The Cover-Up”) and does the same for post-Soviet Ukrainian exploitation of the issue (“The Holodomor in History and Memory”). The book has one odd quirk, namely its citation practice. As far as I can see, Applebaum has not worked in archives for this book (although she did for Gulag). Her footnotes are bulging with archival citations, however, because every time she quotes something from a secondary source that has an archival reference, she gives that as well – and then lists all these archives among the primary sources in her bibliography. This is not normal scholarly practice, though graduate students sometimes do it for effect before they learn better. But given that she was writing a popular history on a topic on which there is an abundance of recently published documents, memoirs and scholarly studies, there was no need for her to do original archival work in order to produce, as she has done, a vivid and informative account of the Ukrainian famine. • Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Mischka’s War is published by IB Tauris. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine is published by Allen Lane. To order a copy for £21.25 (RRP £25) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. This article was amended on 25 August to correct a spelling of Holodomor. ======================================== 20. MOUTON ON CHALMERS. BIRTH, SEX AND ABUSE: WOMEN'S VOICES UNDER NAZI RULE ======================================== Beverley Chalmers. Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women's Voices under Nazi Rule. Guildford: Grosvenor House Publishing, 2015. viii + 364 pp. $25.50 (paper), ISBN 978-1-78148-353-4. Reviewed by Michelle Mouton (University of Wisconsin Oshkosh) Published on H-German (August, 2017) Commissioned by Jeremy DeWaal In her new book, Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women’s Voices under Nazi Rule, Beverley Chalmers, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Ottawa, who has dedicated her life to studying women’s experiences of pregnancy, birth, and the early months of parenthood in many contexts across the globe, examines violence toward women during the Nazi regime. At the outset she clearly states that this book is neither a “German history text” nor a “history of the Holocaust,” nor is it a “theoretical speculation on the academic intricacies of interpretation that could be derived from any or all of the information contained in the book” (p. 2). Instead Chalmers aims to provide a “multi-disciplinary perspective incorporating social science, medicine and history” that uses the “voices of women as a lens through which to understand Nazi society” (pp. 4-5). Chalmers begins with an introduction that summarizes the core tenets of Nazi ideology and its racial basis for persecuting Jews. She then divides the book into two sections. In section 1, “Pregnancy and Childbearing,” she surveys sterilization and euthansia before turning her attention to motherhood for non-Jewish women. She then examines Jewish motherhood and birth in ghettos, in hiding, and in concentration camps. She concludes section 1 with a discussion of the medical profession and reproduction, in particular medical experimentation with sterilization in concentration camps. In section 2, “Sexuality and Sexualized Abuse,” Chalmers opens with a discussion of Nazi attitudes toward sex and sexuality among non-Jewish Germans. She then presents her extensive findings on the sexual abuse, sexual cruelty, and rape of Jewish women in ghettos, forced labor camps, partisan groups, and concentration camps. The strength of this book lies in the vast array of examples drawn from different contexts in which violence and cruelty targeted women and their reproduction. Chalmers has uncovered these examples in memoirs and diaries of women who lived through the Nazi era and in reports and memoirs of doctors, soldiers, and Nazi officials who witnessed and perpetrated violence against women. In section 1, she documents in great detail the ubiquitous violence directed against women’s reproduction and sexuality and the sadistic and misogynistic nature of those attacks. By drawing together examples of policy decisions that shaped motherhood, pregnancy, and birth in ghettos and concentration camps, she moves beyond the generally accepted fact that pregnant women were selected early for death. She shows how this reality played out for individual women, Jewish and German doctors, and Nazi and Jewish leaders. The story she tells reveals details of how decisions about abortion, forced abortion, and infanticide were made and carried out by individual women and doctors and highlights the moral dilemmas associated with them. Chalmers emphasizes that pregnancy should not be regarded as resistance during the Holocaust. As she states, pregnancy and childbirth “might have given hope (albeit false) to their ghetto or prisoner companions, [but] it was by no means a heroic or—probably in most cases—a deliberate act” (p. 94). In section 2, Chalmers gives voice to the ways that Jewish women could (albeit to a limited extent) use their sexuality to help them survive. She rejects the idea that Jewish women could enter sexual relations consensually, since often “sexual exchange” represented the “only way to survive” (p. 181). She touches on the question of survivor guilt, which was especially intense for women whose survival was associated with the use of sexuality. She also argues that while most of the violence and inhumane behavior perpetrated against women can be attributed to Nazis, some of the blame falls also on the Kapo (Nazi-appointed Jewish prisoners in concentration camps) and ordinary Jewish men. Chalmers notes that it is crucial that these experiences be told, since “the fact that human beings were treated so badly as to force the integrity and humanity of some to be expunged and replaced with vicious, dishonest or disrespectful behavior towards each other, says more about the perpetrators of such conditions than it does about the most basic human instincts for survival that emerged” (p. 209). The examples that Chalmers’s book provides underscore the magnitude of this crime against women and expands our understanding of Jewish women’s experiences during the Holocaust. The value of the book is greatly reduced by the fact that its author relies solely on English texts and translations. This limits her ability to contextualize, and leads to inaccuracies. For example, she often confuses Nazi policy with its implementation, a serious pitfall given the not infrequent discrepancy between Nazi policy design and its implementation.[1] Chalmers provides a new perspective on the prevalence and nature of violence against women, especially Jewish women, during the Holocaust, but not a new understanding of Nazi society as she lists as one of her goals, nor an explanation of why the violence against women happened in the context of the Holocaust. At various moments in the book, Chalmers emphasizes Nazi indoctrination, sexual indulgence, humiliation, racism, misogyny, dehumanization, and disrespect as factors enabling the Nazis to commit crimes against women. While these may indeed all have contributed, many other studies have advanced our understanding further into what enabled the Holocaust and its crimes to occur.[2] Chalmers emphasizes that her study demonstrates “our need to look squarely in the face of such actions and to recognize that it is not the actions of the doctors that should be condemned but those of the Nazis who imposed such horrendous conditions on them that they were forced into despicable moral dilemmas and consequent murderous behaviors” (p. 256). We know, however, that doctors and Nazis are not two distinct groups and that doctors and Nazis and Nazi doctors acted for many different reasons and with many different motivations. As a result, as individuals they bear different levels of responsibility. Finally, Chalmers ends her book with a warning that “the dangers of ideological fanaticism are globally evident today, as they were in the Nazi era, and are clearly to be feared” (p. 256). While the threat posed by ideological fanaticism is undeniable—both then and now—this statement implies an ahistorical similarity between the Nazi era and the present day that detracts from the strength and breadth of the cases she presents. Notes [1]. On these discrepancies, see, for example, Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilsation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986); Georg Lilenthal, Lebensborn e.V.: Ein Instrument nationalsozialistischer Rassenpolitik (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1993); and Michelle Mouton, From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Weimar and Nazi Family Policy 1918-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). [2]. Most notably, see Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998); and Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (New York: Mariner Publishing, 2014). _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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
