South Asia Citizens Wire | May 11-12, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2403 - Year 9 [1] Bangladesh: Army Arrests Tasneem Khalil of Human Rights Watch + Tasneem Khalil's Blog [2] Pakistan: Bad news from Bagh (Daily Times, Editorial) [3] India - Gujarat: Taking moral policing to a new level ; () [4] India: 1857 rebellion : A selection of articles + select reading list: - Kill The White Man (Rudrangshu Mukherjee) - 1857 - 2007: 'Clash of civilisations' or people's resistance to imperialism? (Kalpana Wilson) - Who were the sepoys of 1857? (Amaresh Misra) - The Revolt And Its Historiography: An Overview (Biswamoy Pati) - 1857 Revisited (Rosie Llewellyn-Jones) - Lost and found (Dhirendra K. Jha) - One man's fight to save 1857 heroine's memory (Sudeshna Sarkar 2007) - 1857 a Malegaon story - Select Reading list on 1857, on the Mughals, on British India [5] Events: (i) The Free Chandramohan Committee: Public Meeting (Baroda, 12 May 2007) (ii) Artists Alert: Public meeting, Rabindra Bhavan (Delhi, 14 May 2007) (iii) Join Protest at Arts Faculty, (Baroda, 14 May 2007) (iv) Invitation workshop / seminar on Media and Communalism (Mangalore, 18-19 May 2007) (v) Performance - Ghadar (1857 - 2007) (Vancouver, 12 May, 2007) (vi) 150th Anniversary Commemoration of the First War of Indian Independence (Vancouver,12 May, 2007)
____ [1] Human Right Watch Press Release BANGLADESH: RELEASE JOURNALIST AND RIGHTS ACTIVIST ARMY ARRESTS TASNEEM KHALIL OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (London, May 11, 2007) - Bangladesh's military-backed care-taker government should immediately release Tasneem Khalil, an investigative journalist and part-time Human Rights Watch consultant, who was detained by security forces late last night, Human Rights Watch said today. Khalil, 26, is a journalist for the Dhaka-based Daily Star newspaper who conducts research for Human Rights Watch. According to his wife, four men in plainclothes who identified themselves as from the "joint task force"came to the door after midnight on May 11 in Dhaka, demanding to take Khalil away. They said they were placing Khalil "under arrest" and taking him to the Sangsad Bhavan army camp, outside the parliament building in Dhaka. "We are extremely concerned about Tasneem Khalil's safety," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "He has been a prominent voice in Bangladesh for human rights and the rule of law, and has been threatened because of that." The men did not offer a warrant or any charges, Khalil's wife said. Using threatening language, they searched the house and confiscated Khalil's passport, two computers, documents, and two mobile phones. "It is an emergency; we can arrest anyone," one of the men said. Another asked if Khalil suffered from any particular physical ailments. They drove Khalil off in a Pajero jeep. Khalil is a noted investigative journalist who has published several controversial exposes of official corruption and abuse, particularly by security forces. He assisted Human Rights Watch in research for a 2006 report about torture and extrajudicial killings by Bangladesh security forces. According to Bangladeshi human rights groups, the army has detained tens of thousands of people since a state of emergency was declared on January 11, 2007. A number of those detained are picked up in the middle of the night, as Khalil was, and then tortured. In Bangladesh, security forces have long been implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings. The killings have been attributed to members of the army, the police, and the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism force. The Human Rights Watch report Khalil worked on, "Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Torture and Extrajudicial Killings by Bangladesh's Elite Security Force," focused on abuses by the RAB. Killings in custody remain a persistent problem in Bangladesh. To date, no military personnel are known to have been held criminally responsible for any of the deaths. Khalil was called in for questioning by military intelligence last week, apparently as part of the military's campaign to intimidate independent journalists ahead of May 10, 2007, when the army's three-month legal mandate for ruling under a state of emergency came to an end. "The Bangladeshi military should be on notice that its actions are being closely watched by the outside world," Adams said. "Any harm to Tasneem Khalil will seriously undermine the army's claims to legitimacy and upholding the rule of law." o o o [SEE ALSO TASNEEM KHALIL'S BLOG] http://www.tasneemkhalil.com/ ______ [2] Daily Times May 11, 2007 Editorial: BAD NEWS FROM BAGH Following attacks and threats from "certain quarters", the United Nations office in Islamabad has announced closure of all its operations as well as offices in Bagh, Azad Kashmir. Why did the UN take such a drastic decision? It took the decision because the houses of two UN officials were torched by "extremists" who had been warning the UN and other NGOs "against employing females". Pakistanis who count all sorts of people as part of Pakistan's civil society and condemn the NGOs for being "foreign agents" should carefully read this. The Islamists who have forced the UN to stop its work in an area where Pakistan needs all the help it can get, are on the side of the state, not civil society. If you are not convinced, pay heed to what happened in the National Assembly when the minority MNA, Mr MP Bhandara, proposed an amendment to the Blasphemy Law and was told to shut up by the federal minister for parliamentary affairs. Not even our politicians are representatives of civil society which is completely at the mercy of the state and its "extremist" agents. When President General Pervez Musharraf was requested to stop some of the "extremist" jihadi organisations from taking part in rescue and reconstruction in Azad Kashmir after the quake in 2005, he did not listen. He did not react when a jihadi organisation began to take on the foreign humanitarian agencies helping the quake victims. Now the UN office says that all the mission staffers were under security threats for the last many months and it had become difficult to continue operations under these circumstances. The houses of two UN workers were burnt down in Bagh by a mob that was not stopped by the state. The UN will close its offices for two weeks, then talk to the government to ascertain if it is willing to protect the people who have come to help the poor of the stricken area. The government had enough time to prepare its reaction to the "extremists" that the president keeps talking about. It all started as far back as July 2006 when a local group, Awami Action Forum (AAF), warned the United Nations and other NGOs against employing females in the earthquake affected areas. Who was backing this AAF? According to the UN officials, "extremist religious leaders and members of an opposition party". What should the UN have done? Back down in the face of threats? It did not and expected the government to protect its workers. Hundreds of foreign and local NGOs are working for reconstruction and rehabilitation of earthquake-hit areas of AJK and NWFP. These organisations landed immediately after the natural calamity struck the region in October 2005, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands. The state of Pakistan, instead of being grateful and protecting them, allowed the local extremists to threaten them. Then signs of danger began to appear. Local goons harassed a female worker of the American Refugee Council (ARF) who was spending time with her cousin at a picnic spot. A UN driver, who was passing by when the extremists were harassing the girl, stopped and tried to rescue her. But he was beaten up by the mob. The next day they burnt the houses. The UN then decided to close down the operations and freeze all the funds badly needed by the people affected by the quake. What kind of role has the state of Pakistan played in this sorry drama? And what has the government done after hearing that the UN was being threatened under its very nose? What happened the same day in the National Assembly is instructive. A bill was moved by a minority MNA, Mr MP Bhandara, to amend the blasphemy laws in order to render them more rational and to include in them a mechanism that would prevent misuse of the law and wilful negligence of the "conditions" already attached to it at the administrative level to prevent innocent people from being victimised. The administrative "rider" to the law is that the police will not act on complaint but will consult the top bureaucrats of the district before registering an FIR under blasphemy. But no one abides by this provision. A group of people were arrested by the police in Karachi Monday after a magistrate thought that a book published by them was blasphemous. The press did not reveal the sectarian identity of those arrested but it was quite apparent from the title of the book (a classic) and their names that they belonged to the Shia community. President Musharraf should look at this very carefully. Blasphemy laws have begun to target the Shia and not only Christians and Ahmedis. What was the response of the government to Mr Bhandara's move in the National Assembly? The parliamentary affairs minister Mr Sher Afgan ruthlessly shot it down. What did he say while opposing the bill? "Pakistan was made in the name of Islam and is not a secular state". Mr Afgan should take a good look into his conscience and recall that not long ago he was counted as a liberal PPP politician. The Blasphemy Law was imposed by General Zia-ul Haq and unfortunately padded up to include the minimum punishment of death by the Muslim League under prime minister Nawaz Sharif. If today the state of Pakistan is hurting its own children it is because of turncoat politicians like the federal minister and a military ruler who cannot spare time from double-speak. One is also saddened by the rhetoric of President Musharraf who has such men on his leash but goes on lamenting the growth of "extremism" in Pakistan. * ______ [3] Indian Express May 12, 2007 BLACK FRIDAY: CHANDRAMOHAN'S CLASSMATES PUT UP EXHIBITION OF INDIAN EROTICA TO PROTEST HIS ARREST; CHANCELLOR SAYS CAN'T INTERVENE WITHOUT KNOWING FACTS MSU V-C seals Fine Arts dept Express News Service Vadodara, May 11: Taking moral policing to a new level, Vice-Chancellor of the prestigious Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Manoj Soni, today ordered the fine arts department to be sealed after defiant students put up an exhibition of Indian erotica to protest the arrest of one of their fellow classmates on Wednesday. The fine arts department, known the world over as a cradle for art expression, has never seen interference from any quarters. This is the first time in its 55 years of existence that it finds the BJP and VHP moral police brigade telling it what to do. Vice-Chancellor Manoj Soni, living up to his reputation as an RSS stooge, took the decision to seal the department after BJP municipal councillors complained about the erotica exhibition. On Wednesday, the BJP and VHP activists roughed up Chandramohan, a fine arts student, as they found his exam works put on display, objectionable. Chandramohan was later arrested by police. Marking a "black friday" in M S University's history, the V-C sealed the Fine Arts department's Regional Documentation Centre, and joined the saffron brigade in removing the exhibition comprising sculptures and photos. After gagging the faculty, Soni himself ducked all criticism and questions raised about his action by remaining confined to his cabin and not taking any calls. MSU's Chancellor Mrinalinini Devi Puar, grand daughter of Sir Sayaji Rao Gaekwad who founded the university, said she was out of town and could not intervene without knowing the facts. On Friday, instead of students, teachers and MSU senate members, it was BJP councillors and senate members (owing to their saffron affiliations) were the ones who called the shots both at MSU main office and Fine Arts department. Meanwhile, Chandramohan continued to be in judicial custody for the third consecutive day, with no one officially coming to his aid from MSU. Additional Senior Civil Judge M J Parashar on Friday deferred the decision on his bail till Monday in a hearing held in Vadodara local court, where Chandramohan is facing serious offences registered by BJP leader Niraj Jain. Fresh trouble began on Friday when Fine Arts students were putting up an art exhibition on Indian art erotica around 4.30 pm. "We are seeing people affiliated to certain political ideology, entering the campus and imposing their narrow viewpoint without knowing that the erotica/shringara/copulation as a part of the nava-rasas exist in traditional practices," said the Fine Arts student exhibition note. Sculptures, copies of erotica art in the department, photographs of erotica art from Khajuraho and from Geet Govinda were put up by the students. The news of the art exhibition had BJP councillors like Girish Parekh, Kishen Sheth, Ashok Pandya, Balu Shukla, Kishen Sheth and others trooping down into the University, but before that they had a meeting with the MSU V-C. While abuses were being hurled at the students and female lecturers by BJP councilors, MSU authorities ordered the removal of exhibition, which Shivaji Panikkar, incharge fine arts dean refused, asking for orders in writing. "We have received representations from several organisations and also society, which has requested us to intervene. It's a matter of prestige for MSU and Vadodara," said MSU pro V-C S M Joshi, who with university engineer N N Ojha, syndicate members Mukesh Pandya, S K Agrawal, technology faculty dean Bhuvan Parekh personally removed exhibits and sealed the department. In a late night development Panikkar was suspended from all the positions with immediate effect for three months. The suspension will be in effect till an inquiry committee, which is yet to be formed does not complete its inquiry, said the notice which was pasted at his residence around 10 pm on Friday. He has been also directed not to enter the campus. ______ [4] [Big celebrations on the 1857 rebellion are happening in India. Hardly any it seems in Pakistan and Bangladesh. They should have held joint celebrations; Events outside south asia are being organised by groups in the diaspora; Posted below is a compilation of articles on 1857 + a select reading list that should interest SACW readers. -HK] o o o The Telegraph May 10, 2007 KILL THE WHITE MAN - The revolt of 1857 was too violent an event to celebrate Rudrangshu Mukherjee Mani Shankar Aiyar at the inauguration of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the "First War of Independence", New Delhi, May 8 I must declare a vested interest in the revolt of 1857. Immediately after I finished my Master's in history, I decided, much to the surprise of all my teachers, save one, to write a doctoral dissertation on the revolt in the area the British called Oudh - a quaint anglicization of the name Awadh. The reason that all my teachers were surprised at my choice of subject was the belief, common among most historians in the Seventies, that there was nothing new to be said about the revolt. The subject was sterile and all that had to be said had been said in the centenary year and its immediate aftermath. The lone voice of encouragement came from Barun De, who believed that 1857 was an event which had not really been worked upon. There was another source of inspiration. This was the famous Cambridge historian, Eric Stokes, whose essays on the subject I had read with excitement and profit. I was to get to know Eric later and learn an enormous amount from him, till cancer claimed him very untimely. The point of this autobiographical sojourn is to set the context for my surprise at the sudden burst of enthusiasm among historians about the great uprising. There is nothing like a state-sponsored anniversary to stoke the interests of historians in a subject. The adjective, state-sponsored, is used advisedly. In a country with as rich and as diverse a history as India's, every year is an anniversary of something or the other. In June will come the 250th anniversary of the battle of Plassey. Is the Indian state celebrating that anniversary? The answer is no. The decision to celebrate the revolt of 1857 with some fanfare is based on the conclusion - put forward by some historians and accepted by the government of India - that the rebellion is worth celebrating because it represented India's first war of independence. I hold a dissenting view, since I believe that 1857 should be remembered but not commemorated. Let me try and explain my reasons for holding this particular opinion. The reasons are embedded in the events themselves. One hundred and fifty years ago today, the sepoys in the cantonment of Meerut mutinied. They killed their superior officers and every single British man, woman and child they could find. They burnt the bungalows in which the white people lived, and destroyed all government offices and buildings. "Maro firanghi ko [Kill the white man]" was the cry and the destruction was near total. A group of sepoys, after having cut the telegraph wires to Delhi, sped off towards the old Mughal capital. Arriving there on the morning of May 11, they entered the walled city and the Lal Qila. They asked the old Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah, to accept the nominal leadership of the revolt. Outside the Red Fort, violence and destruction reigned and Delhi passed out of British control by May 12. In both Meerut and in Delhi, common people, peasants from the surrounding countryside, artisans and the poor joined the sepoys in the killing, looting and destruction. A mutiny of the soldiery, as soon as it occurred, acquired the character of a general uprising. The fall of Delhi was followed by the spread of the uprising all over north India. In station after station and cantonment after cantonment, the soldiers mutinied and killed white men, women and children. In every place, common people joined the sepoys. All over north India - from Delhi to Patna and from the Terai to Jhansi, British rule, one British officer noted, had collapsed "like a house made of cards''. The Britons who had escaped the wrath of the rebels cowered in fear within the walls of the Residency in Lucknow, behind the "entrenchment'' in Kanpur and in the Ridge in Delhi. British administration was quick to recover from the shock and to retaliate. The shock grew, in the words of John Kaye, who wrote in the 19th century a magisterial history of what he called the Sepoy War, from "the degradation of fearing those whom we had taught to fear us''. The retaliation was brutal. In the summer of 1857, through a series of Acts, individual Britons were given powers to judge and to execute any Indian they suspected of being a rebel. The result was devastating. Kaye wrote, "It is on the records of our British Parliament, in papers sent home by the Governor-General of India in Council, that ' the aged, women and children, are sacrificed, as well as those guilty of rebellion'. They were not deliberately hanged, but burnt to death in their villages. Englishmen did not hesitate to boast that they had 'spared no one'.'' The events of 1857 churned around a vicious cycle of violence. The rebels killed mercilessly without considerations of gender and age. Witness the massacre on the river in Kanpur where nearly the entire British population was killed in a spectacular show of rebel power. The British killed indiscriminately to punish a population that had transgressed the monopoly of violence that rulers have over the ruled. The British won and, like all victors everywhere, they memorialized their triumph. In Kanpur, to take one example, they transformed the well into which the bodies of the victims of a massacre had been thrown into a shrine. A weeping angel carved in marble by Marochetti was placed over the well. The shrine was an exclusive preserve of the white man till August 15, 1947. On that day, people damaged the nose of the angel, which had to be removed. In its place, a statue of Tantia Topi was erected. One icon was replaced by another. Today, as the celebrations begin to mark the 150th anniversary of the rebellion, some questions need to be asked: is 1857 an occasion to celebrate? Can the Indian state uphold the violence that is inextricably linked to that year? Can the Indian state say that it is loyal to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, and in the same breath celebrate 1857 when so many innocent people, on both sides, were brutally killed? The questions are important because in India, there is no mode of remembering without celebrating. We commemorate to remember, sometimes even to forget. Eighteen fifty-seven is an event to remember, as all events of the past are; it is an event to comprehend and analyse because, as Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, it showed "man at his worst''. That comprehension and analysis is best done outside the aegis of the State. o o o 28.4.2007 1857 - 2007: 'CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS' OR PEOPLE'S RESISTANCE TO IMPERIALISM? A review of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857, by William Dalrymple, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006, 578pp. £25.00, ISBN 978-0-7475-8639-5 by Kalpana Wilson, Race and Class (forthcoming) William Dalrymple's new book on Delhi at the time of the uprisings against British colonial rule which swept India 150 years ago promises to present for the first time 'an Indian perspective' on the siege of Delhi and the experiences of 'ordinary people' who lived in the city at the time. Yet despite the work which Dalrymple and his colleagues Mahmoud Farooqi and Bruce Wannell have clearly put into translating a large number of 'virtually unused' Persian and Urdu documents stored in the National Archives of India, he striking fails to fulfil this promise, with the material forced awkwardly into a currently all-too-familiar framework in which 'culture' is viewed in isolation from power or material relations, and crucially, religion is emphasised in order to obscure the key questions of race and imperialism. 1857 saw uprisings spread across much of the northern half of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which were to continue for almost a year. At their centre was a massive mutiny by Indian soldiers (known as sepoys) in the British East India Company's army: of 139,000 sepoys in the Bengal Army, all but 7, 796 rebelled. But the uprisings were also marked by the breadth of popular participation which 'simultaneously drew together and cut through multiple religious, caste, and regional identities' [1]. Dalrymple's book focuses exclusively on the experiences of Delhi, the seat of the Mughal dynasty which had ruled for 330 years. Beginning a few years before the uprising when the Mughal emperor had already been reduced to a puppet ruler by the East India Company officials, his writ extending only as far as the walls of the Red Fort (and 'even there it was circumscribed'), Dalrymple argues that this period nonetheless represented the coming to fruition of a syncretic, tolerant, highly literary culture, which the Mughal court had encouraged among its subjects, both Muslim and Hindu. He then traces the events which unfolded after the first major rebellion of sepoys took place in Meerut and the insurgent forces headed for Delhi to claim the Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, as their leader, narrating the flight of the British from the city, the siege of Delhi, and the wholesale massacre of Delhi's citizens by the victorious British which followed. Dalrymple portrays the uprisings as primarily a 'war of religion' between Islam and Christianity: while acknowledging that the 'great majority' of the Sepoys were Hindus, he places unprecedented emphasis on the presence in Delhi of 'insurgents (who) described themselves as mujahedin, ghazis and jihadis' and who, towards the end of the siege, came to constitute 'about a quarter of the total fighting force' in the city. His graceless caricaturing of all Indian historians writing in English who have preceded him in this field whether lamenting the 'Marxists'' emphasis on British economic policy or the approach of the Subaltern Studies group who 'ingeniously theorised about orientalism and colonialism' (clearly not valid categories for Dalrymple) may appear to be simply a means of self-promotion. But it has significant contemporary political implications. Dalrymple claims to have uncovered 'jihad' in 1857, pointedly ignoring the work of many established Indian historians who have over the last thirty years documented the religious idioms through which resistance to imperialism was expressed among people of a variety of backgrounds. Most recently, an in-depth study by Ray [2] has described how, in the case of 1857, people sharing a syncretic culture but identifying with distinct religions consciously united to fight the British colonizers: 'it was, in their view, a struggle of the Hindus and Muslims against the Nazarenes - not so much because the latter were supposed to be determined to impose the false doctrine of the Trinity, but because the identity of "the Hindus and Muslims of Hindustan" was being threatened by the moral and material aggrandizement of the arrogant imperial power' (Ray, 2003:357). Dalrymple dismisses these more complex understandings of the anti-imperialist mass movements which pre-dated the emergence of bourgeois nationalism in India in favour of the notion of a 'clash of rival fundamentalisms'. This often flies in the face of his own evidence to the contrary: for example, he refers to the ambiguity and multiple meanings of the term 'jihad' itself, which is used, among others in the book, by a Hindu rebel general to describe the uprising; later, Dalrymple notes the concerted attempt by the British authorities to reconstruct the uprisings as an exclusively Muslim affair after their suppression, (this in fact marked the beginning of a consolidated colonial policy of rewriting Indian history along communal lines). Even more significantly, British actions both before and during the uprisings are attributed to the growing influence of evangelical Christianity, which allows the author to both downplay other changes in the character of imperialism in this period, and to romanticise an earlier era of British plunder under the East India Company from the mid-18th century onwards. Dalrymple contrasts his apocalyptic, proto-9/11 view of 1857 with a previous golden age where British officers of the East India Company adopted Indian dress and 'cohabited' with 'Indian Bibis'. Displaying a remarkable insensitivity to issues of power, race and gender, Dalrymple lovingly portrays these 'white Moghuls' with their 'numerous' wives as 'splendidly multicultural' and furthering an idyllic 'fusion of civilisations'. He ignores the fact that following the British victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, they presided over a century of intensive plunder and destruction of India's economy, through the twin weapons of rapacious taxation and coerced trade. Thus, for example, Warren Hastings, one of the 'orientalist' British scholars whom Dalrymple refers to with admiration (and so clearly wishes to emulate), is better known for his achievement of actually increasing the rate of taxes collected by the East India Company at the height of the 1770 famine brought on by the company's policies in Eastern India which killed an estimated 10 million people. The years leading up to 1857 however, saw major changes in the objectives, methods and dominant ideology of imperialism, of which the rise of evangelical Christianity was only a symptom. India was now seen not solely as a source of enormous tax revenues (and valuable consumer goods procured by force), but as a market for Britain's own manufacturing industries and, increasingly, a source of raw materials. By 1830, India's thriving textile industry had been all but destroyed, and by the middle of the century, India was importing one-quarter of all British cotton textile exports. In the decades which followed, Indian cultivators would be forced to grow indigo, cotton and wheat for export to Britain. Such policies required the expansion of areas of direct British rule and an enhanced colonial state apparatus with much larger numbers of British officials. This 'age of empire' saw the consolidation of the ideology of white superiority, racial segregation and the 'civilising mission'. While Dalrymple notes that by 1850, British army officers had 'become increasingly distant, rude and dismissive' to the men under their command, he completely ignores the dominant notions of racial supremacy which underpinned the daily racist abuse faced by the sepoys. To do so would be to shift attention from the media-friendly focus on 'religious fanaticism' and acknowledge the overarching structures of racialised imperial power within which missionaries and evangelical Christian preachers played a specific role. On several occasions, Dalrymple's own evidence only serves to confirm that for the British it was 'race' rather than religion which really mattered: for example (while British converts to Islam who fought alongside the insurgents were welcomed into their ranks) Indian converts to Christianity who had sided with the British described how they were repeatedly attacked and abused by British officers after the fall of Delhi. So how far does 'The Last Mughal' represent an'Indian perspective' on the events it describes? Unlike most British accounts to date, Dalrymple describes in detail the 'astonishing violence and viciousness' of the colonial response to the uprisings, which 'in many cases would today be classified as grisly war crimes'. In this he avoids the distortion identified in the British press coverage of the time by Karl Marx (who was a contemporary commentator) and still present in recent historiography, where 'while the cruelties of the English are related as acts of martial vigour, told simply, rapidly, without dwelling in disgusting details, the outrages of the natives, shocking as they are, are still deliberately exaggerated'[3] Yet despite this, Dalrymple seems unable to fully comprehend the nature of colonial violence. Thus, referring to the mass rapes of Indian women following the fall of Delhi, he comments that, 'believing that the British women in Delhi had been sexually assaulted at the outbreak - a rumour that subsequently proved quite false .British officers did little to stop their men from raping the women of Delhi.'. In the absence of an analysis of racism he can neither understand why the 'quite false' allegations of rape of British women by Indian men were so effective and so widespread at the time, nor can he acknowledge that with or without such allegations, the rape of colonised women has been an integral element in colonial repression across the continents and centuries. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that Dalrymple ultimately conforms to the dominant version of events: that British atrocities were carried out specifically as 'retribution' for the massacre of British women and children at Kanpur. In reality, the terror had already been unleashed in the countryside by Colonel James Neill whose troops, burning villages and hanging 'niggers', massacred thousands of men, women and children well before the Kanpur killings. And while Dalrymple enthuses about the 'street-level nature' of the documentation he has unearthed relating to 'ordinary citizens of Delhi', the fact is that the overwhelming majority of the book, where it is not revisiting the oft-cited accounts of various British officers and civilians in Delhi, is written from the perspective of the Mughul elite of the city. This perspective, while of historical interest, is also clearly limiting when it comes to the events of the uprising, ignoring as it does some of the most significant phenomena such as the formation of the semi-republican Sepoy Councils by the rebels. In fact, Dalrymple makes no attempt to portray the sepoys, who formed the core of the uprisings, in anything but the terms in which they were viewed by the Mughal elite: as 'boorish and violent peasants from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh'. At a time when the US establishment is trying to persuade us to view current events through the distorted lens of the 'clash of civilisations', Dalrymple, with his insistence that economic transformations are of no relevance to the lives of 'ordinary individuals', and his dogged emphasis on solely religious motivations, appears to be attempting to remake history in the same image. The real parallels between 1857 and the contemporary world, however, lie not, as he would have us believe, in a clash between militant Islam and Christianity, but in a struggle between an aggressively expansionist imperialism and people's resistance which is expressed in a multiplicity of forms. [1] Krishna, P., 'Who is Afraid of 1857?', Liberation, Vol.12, No.8, December 2006 http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year_2006/December/1857_who_is_afraid.html [2] Ray, R.K. The Felt Community Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism, Delhi, Oxford Univesity Press, 2003 [3] cited in Newsinger, J., The Blood Never Dried - A People's History of the British Empire, London, Bookmarks: 2006, p74 o o o [other recent material] WHO WERE THE SEPOYS OF 1857? by Amaresh Misra (Indian Express, May 09, 2007) http://www.indianexpress.com/story/30394.html THE REVOLT AND ITS HISTORIOGRAPHY: AN OVERVIEW by Biswamoy Pati (People's Democracy, February 04, 2007) http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0204/02042007_1857.htm 1857 REVISITED by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones (The Times of India, 10 May, 2007) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2020186.cms LOST AND FOUND Dhirendra K. Jha (The Telegraph, May 10, 2007) http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070510/asp/nation/story_7758714.asp ONE MAN'S FIGHT TO SAVE 1857 HEROINE'S MEMORY by Sudeshna Sarkar (Hindustan Times, May 12, 2007) http://tinyurl.com/23cnnt 1857 A MALEGAON STORY http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/TOIonline/India/1857_a_Malegaon_story/articleshow/2024177.cms + RECOMMENDED READINGS BY SACW 1857 REBELLION Jim Masselos and Narayani Gupta, Beato's Delhi 1857-1997, New Delhi: 2000 S.A.A. Rizvi and M.L. Bhargava (eds), Freedom Struggle in Uttar Pradesh: Source Materials, 6 vols, Lucknow: 1957-1961 P.C. Joshi (ed), Rebellion, 1857: a Symposium, Delhi: 1957 S.B. Chaudhuri, English Historical Writings on the Indian Mutiny, 1857-1859, Calcutta: 1979 S.B. Chaudhuri, Theories of the Indian Mutiny, 1857-1859, Calcutta: 1965 S. Chaudhuri, The Literature on the Rebellion in India in 1857-1859; a Bibliography, Calcutta: 1971 Barbara English and Rudrangshu Mukherjee, "Debate: the Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857," Past and Present, 142(1994) G.W. Forrest, A History of the Indian Mutiny, 3 vols, London: 1904-1912 Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India, 1857, London: 1978 J.W. Kaye and G.B.Malleson, Kaye's and Malleson's History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858, 6 vols, London: 1897-1898 Joyce Lebra-Chapman, The Rhani of Jhansi: a Study in Female Heroism in India, Honolulu: 1986 T. Metcalf, Aftermath of Revolt: India, 1857-1870, Princeton: 1964 Charles T. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi, Delhi: 1974 reprint Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt, 1857-1858: a Study in Popular Resistance, Delhi: 1984 Rudrangshu Mukherjee, "'Satan Let Loose upon Earth': the Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857", Past and Present, 128(1990) J.A.B. Palmer, The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut, Cambridge: 1966 M.N.Pearson (ed), Legitimacy and Symbols: the South Asia Writings of F.W. Buckler, Ann Arbor: 1985 S.N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven, London:1959 Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed, Oxford: 1986 THE MUGHALS M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, Calcutta: 1966 Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India, Delhi, 1986 Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Mughal State, 1526-1750, Delhi: 1998 Richard Barnett, North India between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals and the British, 1720-1801 New Delhi: 1987 Irfan Habib, Medieval India I: Essays in the History of India 1200-1750, New Delhi: 1999 Stephen Blake, Shahjahanabad: the Sovereign City in Mughal India, 1639-1739, Cambridge: 1991 Andre Wink, Al-Hind, Delhi: 1990 Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760, Berkeley: 1993 B. Gascoigne, The Great Mughals Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in Eighteenth Century India, Delhi: 1993 Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, Cambridge: 1999 John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire: the New Cambridge History of India, I:5, Cambridge: 1993 G.V. Scammell, The First Imperial Age; European Overseas Expansion, c1400-1715, London: 1989 Percival Spear, Twilight of the Mughals, Oxford: 1973 Jadunath Sarkar, The Fall of the Mughal Empire, 4 vols, Calcutta: 1932-50 BRITISH INDIA - 1750-1900 David Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras, 1859-1947, Delhi: 1986 C.A. Bayly, The Imperial Meridian, London, 1989 C.A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge: 1988 Seema Alavi, The Sepoy and the Company, New Delhi: 1995 Michael Fisher, A Clash of Cultures: Awadh, the British, and the Mughals, Delhi: 1987 Michael Fisher, Indirect Rule in India, Delhi: 1990 Philip Lawson, The East India Company: A History, Harlow: 1993 P.J. Marshall, Bengal: the British Bridgehead, Cambridge: 1988 P.J.Marshall, "Economic and Political Expansion: the Case of Oudh, 1765-1804", Modern Asian Studies, 9(1975) P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes; the British in Bengal in the 18th Century, Oxford, 1976 Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge: 1994 Rudrangshu Mukherjee, "Trade and Empire in Awadh, 1756-1804", Past and Present, 94(1982) J.A Moor and H.L. Wesseling (eds), Imperialism and War: Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa, Leiden: 1989 David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, London: 1994 D.M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in Early Nineteenth-Century India, London: 1995 John Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck; the Making of a Liberal Imperialist, Berkeley: 1974 Burton Stein, Thomas Munro, Delhi: 1990 Malcolm Yapp, Strategies of British India, Oxford: 1980 J. Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried - A People's History of the British Empire, London, Bookmarks: 2006 _____ [5] EVENTS: (i) THE FREE CHANDRAMOHAN COMMITTEE: PUBLIC MEETING, 12 MAY 2007 [BARODA] The Free Chandramohan Committee will hold a public meeting on Saturday, 12 May 2007, at 6 pm at Gallery Chemould Prescott Road, to protest against the arrest of the young artist Chandramohan by the Baroda police earlier this week. The meeting will be addressed by a number of speakers, among them noted cultural activists, commentators, film-makers, lawyers and artists, who will express solidarity with Chandramohan and draw up practical measures to secure his release. Among other issues, the meeting will discuss the ways by which the constitutional safeguards can be implemented, as well as legal redress by which the onus in cases of alleged incitement of communal disharmony can be placed squarely on demagogues who distort artworks for their own political ends. More significantly, a lunatic fringe cannot claim monopoly over public space. Let us resolve not to cede public space to the forces of intolerance. Date: 12 May 2007 (Saturday) Time: 6 pm Place: Gallery Chemould Prescott Road Queens Mansion (3rd Floor) A K Naik Marg Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Phones: 91 22 22000211, 91 22 22000212, 91 22 22000213 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (ii) http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/artists-alert-public-meeting-re-baroda.html Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 10:03:07 -0700 (PDT) From: ram rahman Subject: ARTISTS ALERT: PUBLIC MEETING, RABINDRA BHAVAN, DELHI, MON, MAY 14, 6 pm Dear Friends, While we were holding a press conference in solidarity with MF Husain at the Press Club in Delhi last Tuesday, the assault on the Faculty of Fine Arts and the arrest of Chandramohan took place in Baroda. Events now seem to be moving faster than we ever imagined and with Chandramohan having not been granted bail as yet, and the closure of the exhibit of reproductions of classical Indian Art by the University authorities in Baroda today, May 11th, we are holding a large protest meeting in the lawns of Rabindra Bhavan, Mandi House New Delhi. We urge all members of the arts community as well as other concerned citizens to join us to raise our voice against this rapidly widening censorship taking place through violence or threats of violence. The governments, both state and central remain mute spectators, and in almost every case, the perpetrators go scot free while their targets are enmeshed in legal cases for years. Ram Rahman, Vivan Sundaram for SAHMAT o o o (iii) http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/join-protest-at-arts-faculty-baroda-on.html Join Protest at Arts Faculty, Baroda on 14th May 2007 WE APPEAL ALL FRIENDS, FELLOW ACTIVISTS, YOUNG STUDENTS TO JOIN THE PROTEST ORGANISED BY VADODARA GROUPS. INFORMATION PASTED BELOW. SHABNAM HASHMI/ MANAN TRIVEDI - ON BEHALF OF ANHAD -- Dear All, You are all aware of the latest Sangh Parivar offensive against the democratic rights of the students and Faculty members of the well known Fine Arts Faculty of Baroda, M.S.University. The Fine Arts Faculty is one of the best institutions within the M.S.University, which has managed to retain high academic standards, in the face of the general academic deterioration within the University. The recent incident of hooliganism and blatant bullying unleashed by the Sangh Parivar has sent shock waves all over the country. It took place on Wednesday, 9th May 2007, at around 3 p.m. As part of the examination procedure underway in the Faculty, students are supposed to put up their works which are to be assessed by external examiners who come in from outside the city for this purpose. Accordingly, students had put up their installations around the Faculty campus. Some of these installations, (graphic prints) by Chandra Mohan attracted the wrath of the BJP leader Neeraj Jain, who barged into the campus with a bunch of goons and started disrupting the atmosphere, using abusive language and mouthing threats. They roughed up the Chandra Mohan and accused him of offending their religious sentiments, saying that he had portrayed Durga Mata in an obscene way. Not by any stretch of imagination did the prints actually portray any goddess. Under the leadership of Neeraj Jain (who had incidentally played a very dubious role in the May 2006 riots that followed the demolition of a 200 year old dargah in the heart of the city), and with the police in tow, they took Chandra Mohan and a friend of his away to the Sayajiganj police station. Shivji Panickkar, the acting Dean of the Fine Arts Faculty, was also threatened with dire consequences by Neeraj Jain and his goons. Chandra Mohan's friend was released later, but he was himself charged under sections 153 and 114. Later, on 10th May, when the bail application came up for hearing, two more charges were slapped on him, namely, Section 295 A and 295 B, and he was taken under judicial custody, and moved to the Central Jail. By now, Christian fundamentalists had joined hands with the Hindutvavadis. Alongwith the VHP and BJP crowds, reportedly, there were at least 40 priests in the court when Chandra Mohan's bail application came up for hearing. The priests were objecting to some painting to do with a cross - which, they thought offended their religious feelings. In the meantime, Shivji Panickkar met the Vice Chancellor, who basically, wanted him to make a statement that was nothing short of an apology for putting up offensive installations. Panickkar refused to do so. After this, the students submitted a statement expressing thier concern over such tactics, and with a set of their demands, which included police bandobast for the Faculty. Reportedly, Neeraj Jain barged into the Vice Chancellor's office on the same day, and threatened that he would make sure that the entire city would shut down if a single case is registered against him. As of now, all efforts are on to get Chandra Mohan released. However, what is of grave concern in this entire unfolding of events is the fascist agendas that underly the actions of the likes of Neeraj Jain. Citizenship and democratic rights face a grave crisis in the State of Gujarat and elsewhere. The nexus between the police and elements of the Sangh Parivar is so clearly established (it has been so since 2002) and it is also clear that fascist tactics affect everybody. In this instance, it is not only a matter for the artist community to agitate about. It is for ALL of us to sit up and take notice of what is going on in the name of religion. If we do not counter these tactics NOW, we are all going to be crushed sooner or later, either in our work arenas or within the confines of our homes. The dangers of giving in to or being cowed down by these forces cannot be underestimated. THE FACULTY OF FINE ARTS HAS PLANNED A LARGE DEMONSTRATION FOR 14TH MAY 2007, MONDAY WHERE ARTISTS, LAWYERS, DOCTORS, ORDINARY CITIZENS FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY WILL GET TOGETHER IN PROTEST AGAINST SUCH GAGGING OF EXPRESSION AND VIOLATION OF DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS. PLEASE DO COME FOR THE DEMONSTRATION, AND MOTIVATE OTHERS TO JOIN IT. THE TIME TO ACT IS UPON US, WE CANNOT ABDICATE OUR RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS SOCIETY, OURSELVES AND THE YOUNGER GENERATIONS. VENUE: FINE ARTS FACULTY, M.S.UNIVERSITY , FATEHGANJ, BARODA TIME: 2 PM ONWARDS CONTACT PHONE NUMBERS: BINA SRINIVASAN: 9879377280 SHIVJI PANICKKAR: 9898403097 Best Bina o o o (iv) http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/mangalore-workshop-seminar-on-media-and.html INVITATION TO WORKSHOP AND SEMINAR ON MEDIA AND COMMUNALISM 18, 19 May 2007 Shanti Kiran, Bajjodi, Mangalore Speakers include: Arundhati Roy, writer and activist, New Delhi Justice Rajinder Sachaar, New Delhi Praful Bidwai, senior journalist and columnist, New Delhi Saeed Naqvi, senior journalist and columnist, New Delhi Nupur Basu, filmmaker and journalist, Bangalore R.Poornima, Editor, Udayavani, Bangalore Gauri Lankesh, Editor, Lankesh, Bangalore The workshop and seminar is an effort to focus on the increasing communalization of society through out the Karavalli belt - the situation continues to remain communally tense with an incident of violence being reported every single day from the region. Media has a potential to effectively intervene in the public discourse during times of communal conflict, When infused with secular voices and with a realization of its responsibility, the media plays an important role in diffusing myths, misconceptions and hatred that is propogated in society by communal forces. The seminar and workshop is geared to address students, young journalists and activists in the attempt to understand the slow communalization of the public sphere through mainstream media. Do email us if you would like to register, food and accommodation will be available for those who register before hand. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more details, contact Deepu - 94483 67627 or Ashok - 94482 56216 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] o o o (v) GHADAR (1857 - 2007): MARKING 150 YEARS OF ANTI-COLONIAL RESISTANCE Saturday May 12, 2007, 7:00 - 11:00 pm Rhizome Café (317 East Broadway (near Main and Kingsway) [Vancouver] Organized by a group of South Asian Youth Ghadar: The Hindi/Punjabi/Urdu word for 'rebellion'. We use this word to refer to the 1857 rebellion against the British in South Asia, and the actions it has inspired since. It has been 150 years since Indian members of the British East India Company's army revolted. This grew into a full-fledged rebellion involving large segments of India's population opposing the British, which was met with unflinching brutality against civilian populations. The Ghadar's memory has continuously reinvigorated anti-colonial movements both in South Asia and beyond. We use this term to highlight the flame of resistance that led various segments of Indian society to reject and oppose colonialism. We wish to mark the anniversary of this fiery moment in anti-colonial resistance not only to honour a historic event but to highlight the importance of remembering the Ghadar as an ongoing mobilizing force against neo-colonial and imperialistic ventures today. In the spirit of ongoing resistance, we share a night of music and poetry, including works by Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Agha Shahid Ali, as well as performances by local artists. We will also feature clips of Bollywood representations of the Ghadar and an open mic for people to reflect on what the Ghadar means to them today, followed by dj'ing and dance. We hope you will join us to mark this anniversary and share in the spirit of resistance. Organized by a group of South Asian Youth For more information: Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Call 778 552 2099 (vi) And at the same date and time, and organized by East Indian Defence Committee: 150TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION OF THE FIRST WAR OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE, 1857-59 Saturday, May 12, 2007, 6 p.m. Bear Creek Community Hall 8580 - 132 Street, Surrey [Vancouver] East Indian Defence Committee cordially invites you to attend a memorable evening commemorating the outstanding heroism and sacrifice of patriotic Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalis, Sri Lankans, Bhutanese and Sikkimese and other nationalities of all religious denominations who fought against British colonialism and for genuine independence in the period 1857 to 1859. For further information contact: H. Cheema 604-377-2415; G. Thandi 604-583-4749; I. Purewal 604-583-7984: K. Bains: 604-270-3588. We in SANSAD endorse and support both events, and hope people will find it possible to attend one or the other, both happening at the same time. A big debate has been raging in the sub-continent, especially in India, if the year-long struggles of the people actually amounted to the "First War of Independence" or these were just the last gasps of a dying and decadent order. It is a futile, intellectually sterile, debate. So also are the many "Orientalist" assertions of the last 150 years that this glorious struggle was only a "Sepoy Mutiny" triggered by irrational religious beliefs around beef or pork fat. At the very least, these discussiona and asserttions ignore the vital fact that by 1857, the "the Honourable East India Company" had not only destroyed the economic base of India and its all-too-powerful and all-too-pervasive mercantialist bourgeiosie that had already emerged, but had also created a comparador class of landlords and intellectuals. One has to know as to what had been happening to the polity and economy of the subcontinent for at least 350 years before 1857 (the first European settlement on the Indian soil was established in 1498) in order to adequately grasp the significance of those struggles. It was a War of Independence, par excellance. We will circulate our analytical perspective on this very shortly, benefited largely by some ground-breaking research that has been carried out by historians. In the meantime, as we celebrate the anti-colonial struggles of the people of the sub-continent, it is important to recognize that while the people then were fighting only the East India Company, today - in the decadent and yet aggressive phase of imperialism - there are hundreds of "East India Companies" simultaneously emnating from the multitude of western societies, penetrating every aspect of the economy, culture, political establishment, and creating also a powerfully vocal class of comprador intellectuals. Remembering and Celebrating 1857 also means a firm commitment to develop comprehensive anti-imperialist struggles. The "independence" for which large number people fought and laid their lives in 1857-58, and since then, is still out there to fight for. hari sharma for SANSAD _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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 SACW@insaf.net http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net