The 50-50 Shot: Gogoi’s Hindu card gamble is biting back – with the Bodos – By S.N.M. Abdi (Sep 3, 2012, Outlook)

First things first: thrice as many Muslims have been killed in Assam in July-August than Hindu Bodos whose cause the BJP is so passionately advocating nationally. Some 56 Muslims lost their lives, compared to 17 on the Bodo side. Rampaging Bodos also mistook two Bengali Hindus for members of the minority community and shot them, but these two murders are still a state secret. The official death toll, 84, includes the nine unidentified bodies rotting in the police morgues. Chief minister Tarun Gogoi, speaking to Outlook, refused to divulge the exact number of dead Muslims and Bodos; he mumbled endlessly in the pin-drop silence of his study about how the publication of community-wise casualty figures would hurt national interests and hamper the return of normalcy in the Bodo Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD), where the savagery started in late July, forcing lakhs of people from both communities to flee their homes. “The burning question today is: will the Bodo terrorists again get away with murder as they have always done in the past, or will they be made to pay for their heinous crimes against humanity?” asks Devabrata Sharma, leading civil rights campaigner and professor of English at Jorhat College. Political analyst Noni Gopal Mahanta believes that Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, who rushed to the bleeding state, besides despatching P. Chidambaram and Sushil Shinde, might compel Gogoi to crack down this time on the Bodos, at least to assuage Muslim sentiments across India ahead of general elections. “There is so much at stake that I even foresee Gogoi losing his job if he doesn’t deliver,” says Mahanta.

Classified Special Branch figures accessed by Outlook reveal that whether their targets are Muslims or Adivasis, the Bodos have invariably inflicted more casualties than they have suffered. The reason is quite simple-the AK-47s Bodo militias were supposed to surrender after signing the 2003 peace accord but didn’t. An Assam government official disclosed that extremist groups like the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) and National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) have as many as 350-400 automatic weapons in their arsenal in the four districts comprising BTAD-Kokrajhar, Chirang, Udalguri and Baksa. As killings spiralled in recent weeks, the Union home ministry had directed the Assam government to immediately launch a deweaponisation programme. But the administration is still dragging its feet. To be sure, the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF)-the political party launched after the peace accord-is a coalition partner in Gogoi’s government. But the BPF, like the BLT and NDFB, also enjoys the full backing of the BJP in its blatantly communal campaign against so-called Bangladeshi ‘infiltrators’. The nexus between BPF lawmakers – some are now in the dock for the anti-Muslim pogrom – and BJP leaders ranging from Guwahati MP Bijoya Chakraborty to L.K. Advani and Nitin Gadkari is an undeniable reality. On August 7, BPF MPs S.K. Bwiswmuthiary and Biswajit Daimary, Bodoland Territorial Council deputy chairman Kampa Borgoyari and All Bodo Students Union president Pramod Bodo shared the stage with Gadkari and retired Lt Gen S.K. Sinha during a seminar on ‘Bodo Hindus-Refugees in their own land: Bangladeshi Muslim infiltrators-the new kingmakers in an Indian state’, organised by the Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation in Delhi. C.K. Das, retired chief secretary of Assam and now a BJP full-timer, is known to liaise with the BPF leadership on behalf of the Sangh parivar.

Gogoi parried questions about the BPF’s cosy relationship with the BJP while sharing power with the Congress. “I have nothing to say at present because all political parties have agreed upon a ceasefire for the sake of peace. But being the CM, I am certainly not in the dark about what’s going on in Assam or Delhi,” he said. In the 2011 assembly elections, Gogoi easily got the better of both Hindutva parties-the BJP and AGP-by pandering to Hindu voters. Realising that the Muslims had deserted the Congress for the Ajmal Badruddin-led aiduf, Gogoi pulled out all the stops to court the Hindu constituency with stunning results. “Gogoi projected himself as the saviour of Assamese Hindus. His rhetoric put even the VHP and Bajrang Dal in the shade. Naturally, he stole the BJP-AGP’s thunder,” says Rashid Chowdhury, prominent high court lawyer and the brains behind the Citizens’ Rights Preservation Committee (CRPC). The Congress won an absolute majority, bagging 78 seats in a house of 126. “It suits Gogoi politically to pile pressure on the BPF to part company with the BJP…which poses a challenge to the Congress anyway,” adds Chowdhury. “But the BPF, which has its own extremist-supremacist agenda, might not comply; let’s not forget that the BPF is irresistibly drawn to the BJP.” The Bodos chose the terror path way back in 1987 with the slogan, ‘Divide Assam 50-50’, leaving behind a grisly trail of death and destruction. The first tripartite peace treaty between the Bodos, the Centre and state government was signed in 1993; the Congress ruled in both Delhi and Dispur then but the pact collapsed in no time under the weight of its own contradictions. So another accord was signed in 2003 when the BJP was in power at the Centre and Gogoi ruled the state. It had L.K. Advani’s blessings but was destined to be disastrous because the BTAD, covering some 8,795 sq km area, was handed on a platter to the Bodos who comprise merely 20 per cent of the population. And in the newly-created self-governing body called Bodo Territorial Council (BTC), 30 out of 46 seats were reserved for Bodos!

Devabrata, who is the chief advisor of the leftist United Revolutionary Movement Council of Assam (URMCA), says, “Nothing could be more undemocratic and discriminatory (than the creation of the BTAD-BTC). Democracy is all about majority rule. BTAD-BTC is just the reverse of that principle. How can 20 per cent rule over 80 per cent? Because the Bodos do not enjoy numerical majority, they are resorting to ethnic cleansing, targeting Muslims, Adivasis, Rajbanshis and even Assamese caste Hindus. The Bodos have become a law unto themselves. We stand for the dissolution of BTAD and BTC to stop the rape of democracy. Bodos comprise a little over six per cent of the state’s population but are demanding 50 per cent of Assam for the Bodoland of their dreams. Muslims comprise over 30 per cent of Assam’s population. Yet they have so far displayed exemplary patience despite grave provocations. What will happen if Muslims and other victimised communities unite and retaliate?” Sharma’s depiction of Bodo belligerence is borne out by Anjali Daimari’s response to Outlook’s poser about the ways and means to restore the peace. Daimary, convenor of the Bodo National Conference, an umbrella organisation of 25 Bodo outfits, replied: “Obviously there is no place for illegal migrants in BTAD. What’s even more crucial and non-negotiable is that all non-Bodos living in BTAD should be mentally prepared to meekly accept the leadership of the Bodos.” Asked to elaborate, she added: “There is simply no room in BTAD for bodies like the Anabodo Suraksha Samity, or Non-Bodos Protection Committee. Who are these Mahantas and Kalitas running the Samity? Assamese Hindus, Muslims, Bengalis, Rajbanshis, Adivasis, Nepalis or Saranias residing in BTAD must curb their egos for their own good. That’s it.” Clearly, the Bodos are a very confident lot today, having grown from strength to strength since 2003. They have reaped huge dividends from their investments in both the national parties. Besides running the BTC, they have extracted tangible and intangible benefits as partners in two successive Congress-led coalition governments in Assam since 2006. In 2006, out of the 10 BPF MLAs three were made ministers by Gogoi (whose regime was a bit shaky at that stage because the Congress had only 53 seats in the 126-strong legislative assembly). But in 2011 the Congress tally shot up to 78 seats. Now there are 12 BPF MLAs, but only one, Chandan Brahmo, is a minister. Significantly, the BPF has leveraged its political clout to send an MP to the Rajya Sabha (Biswajit Daimary), instal a Bodo judge in the Gauhati High Court (P.K. Mushary), a Bodo chairman in the Assam Public Service Commission (Gita Basumatary), a Bodo governor in the Shillong Raj Bhawan (Ranjit Sekhar Mooshary) and even a Bodo election commissioner (H.S. Brahma).

The recent massacre of Muslims has reopened the debate over the wisdom of signing peace accords with “agents of violence wearing a fig-leaf of ethno-nationalism”, to quote Ravindra Narayan Ravi, one of the Intelligence Bureau’s foremost experts on the Northeast. Ravi, who retired as special director in April, says, “The situation has worsened since 1993 when the state started appeasing radical ethno-nationalists for political gains and inaugurated as many as 21 ethnic-centric constitutional, statutory and administrative autonomous councils. Hiteswar Saikia (former CM) spawned seven. Gogoi has fathered 14. The BLT, responsible for much of the recent bloodshed, was supposed to have disarmed itself in 2003 but its core armed capability has remained intact with the tacit nod of the state. The government’s patronage of non-state agents of violence, alluring them with incentives for their smash-and-grab politics and the total collapse of the criminal justice system have created a criminogenic environment in Assam.” “The new councils have overnight created a large mass of disgruntled others who share the habitat but feel institutionally discriminated against by the state. Innumerable faultlines, hitherto latent or non-existent, emerged and unleashed centripetal forces of varying magnitude. Communities that peacefully existed for long are now gunning for each other. In the last two decades, Bodos, Muslims, Adivasis, Koch-Rajbanshis, Rabhas, Garos, Karbis, Dimasas, Nagas, Kukis, Hmars, Morans and Mishings have clashed frequently,” he adds. According to Ravi, “the Centre that underwrites Gogoi’s misadventures is a partner in his sins; the state government today is like a zombie with a Kalashnikov in one hand and wads of cash in the other-both generously supplied by the Centre!” Wajahat Habibullah, one of India’s most respected civil servants who now heads the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), has given the prime minister in writing that there is every danger of the Muslims in BTAD becoming militants in the future if their security is not ensured. The NCM report submitted after visiting Assam states that jehadi elements from the rest of the country might start sending lethal weapons to the troubled region if remedial action is not taken quickly. Devabrata, on the other hand, invoked Shakespeare. “The bard wrote that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The same can be said about Assam today.”

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282078

SEE ALSO: 

• Assam’s tragedy – By Harsh Mander (Aug 25, 2012, The Hindu)
  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/article3820732.ece
• There We See Only The Stumps – By Kishalay Bhattacharjee (Sep 3, 2012, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282079
• The Assam tangle – By Samudra Gupta Kashyap (Aug 26, 2012, Indian Express)
  http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/993140/
• Achieving Just Peace In Bodoland – By Tanweer Fazal (Aug 26, 2012, Countercurrents)
  http://www.countercurrents.org/fazal260812.htm

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Hate begets hate – By Harsh Mander (Aug 20, 2012, Hindustan Times)

The country is once again dangerously adrift in a stormy sea of competitive hate politics. The signs are both ominous and familiar – the systematic creation of hatred against people because of their ethnicity or religion; rumours and hate propaganda choking the internet; the public moral justification of violence against targeted communities on grounds of ‘larger’ alleged wrongs; and weak-kneed State action against people and organisations which preach hate and organise slaughter and arson. In what is probably the largest displacement of human populations by hate violence after Partition, four lakh Bengali Muslim and Bodo people are driven away from their homelands after attacks and the burning of their villages. They are living fearfully in cramped makeshift relief camps. In Mumbai, mobs protesting the Assam attacks and slaughter of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, run amuck, criminally set aflame public property and attack media and police personnel. Rumours of retaliatory attacks by Muslims against people from Northeast India in many southern cities have led to a panic exodus of migrant students and workers.

In district towns in which I have worked, I observed during the 1980s how dedicated communal organisations skilfully spread rumours, which manufacture hatred locally and provoke communal attacks. But hate propagandists are today equipped with sleek new vehicles of cyberspace and mobile phone technology, which they deploy to transport provocative falsehoods, rumours and emotive messages of hate across the country – and indeed across the world. These recast people of different ethnic or religious identities as the dangerous ‘other’, and foment suspicion, dread and loathing against them. Morphed pictures of bloody corpses near robed Buddhist monks in Myanmar, circulated through the internet and mobile phones, provoked protestors who gathered in Mumbai. Messages claiming that people from the North-east would be attacked in retaliation for the killings in Assam led to their panic exodus.

Even more hazardous is the creation of an alternative moral universe in which violent attacks on people of specified communities is accepted as defensible, even justified. The underlying ethical assumption is that it is acceptable to physically attack people who belong to a community which has committed a real or perceived wrong. The same rationale was meted out for the slaughter of Sikhs in 1984, ‘understandable’ anger against all Sikhs because two Sikh bodyguards murdered Indira Gandhi. Even today I hear people say that the carnage against Gujarati Muslims in 2002 was a natural outcome of spontaneous mass anger because Muslims allegedly burned the train and killed pilgrims in Godhra. The demolition of the Babri Masjid and the years of violence which accompanied it were explained by warranted anger because Muslims had demolished temples in medieval times. Whenever Christians are attacked, people immediately speak of missionary ‘conversions’, as though this in any way is cause for the killing of Christians.

In Assam, the violence of indigenous Assamese against the Bengali Muslim community is described by leaders of the BJP, All Assam Students Union and the Sangh organisations as righteous anger against ‘outsiders’. Economic refugees are emotively described as ‘infiltrators’ from Bangladesh, and although scholars estimate that only around 10% of the Bengali Muslims in Assam are illegal residents, by implication the attacks and ethnic cleansing of the entire community is rationalised. Likewise, radicalised Islamist leaders use persecution of Muslims to provoke and justify mindless violence of the kind witnessed in Mumbai. It is long overdue that the people of this vast diverse nation affirm that nothing – nothing – can justify the shedding of blood of even a single person, or sexual assault, or the burning of her properties, for no reason except that she belongs to the religious or ethnic community of a perceived wrong-doer. We cannot be selective in our espousal of non-violence, democracy and rule of law. If, for instance, we believe that there are illegal residents in Assam, the only legitimate demand is not mass violence and ethnic cleansing, but for due process of law to identify the illegal residents and if proved to return them to their homeland. This clouded moral universe is further blurred by compromised or weak-kneed political and administrative leadership, which fails to uphold the equal rights of all persons, regardless of their faith, caste or ethnic identity.

In Assam, the government entered into an accord with the Bodos for autonomy in Bodo-dominated areas. Bodo militants drove out Santhal descendants of tea plantation workers and Bengali Muslims in successive waves of attacks since 1993, and 1.75 lakh displaced people continue to live even today in refugee camps, for nearly two decades. The government did nothing to restore these displaced people to their homelands, and thereby incentivised ethnic cleansing. It is terrifying to consider the destinies of people now in fresh camps, if they, too, are not firmly assisted by a fair and caring state to return to their villages. But amid these storm clouds, hope still shines through. In a blog, Siddharthya Roy reports a meeting called by the Police Commissioner of Pune regarding the fear exodus of Northeastern people. He reports that the hall was full of Muslim people who unequivocally said ‘my home is open for them’. A maulvi mourned that 30 Assamese workers cleaned and repaired the old Masjid, left suddenly yesterday. “How am I to celebrate Eid without them?” The Mufti said, “If you receive an SMS that tells you to get angry about what’s happened in Assam, delete it. We will not fight battles in the name of Assam in Pune.” In Bangalore, Akbar Ali, convener of the Muslim Welfare Association appealed to people from the Northeast who were fleeing the city, “Those who feel unsafe in their homes are welcome to come to our homes and mosques to take shelter. We will protect you, but please do not leave the city. It is your city as much as ours.”

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/916730.aspx

SEE ALSO: 

• How communal forces have eaten into Mumbai – By Rajdeep Sardesai (Aug 24, 2012, IBN)
  http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/63836/how-communal-forces-have-eaten-into-mumbai.html
• For an equal force – By Sujata Anandan (Aug 22, 2012, Hindustan Times)
  http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/917519.aspx
• Minorities vs. Minorities: The new right-wing game plan for 2014 – By Amaresh Misra (Aug 22, 2012, Times of India)
  http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/the-mainstream-maverick/entry/minorities-vs-minorities-the-new-right-wing-game-plan-for-2014
• Loops And Holes In The Narrative – By Uttam Sengupta (Sep 3, 2012, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282076

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Sowing the whirlwind in India – By Aijaz Zaka Syed (Aug 24, 2012, Twocircles.net)

Insanity in individuals is something rare, suggested Nietzsche, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it’s the rule. The world didn’t have to wait long to see the wisdom of the German philosopher in action in his own homeland. And shades of the same madness are seen in India these days. Indeed, this appears to be the season of mass hysteria. A strange, unprecedented panic has seized the great republic. As the New York Times memorably put it, like a fever, fear has spread across the country, from big cities like Bangalore to smaller places like Mysore, a contagion fueling a message: Run. Head home. Flee. And that is what thousands of economic migrants from the country’s lately troubled Northeast are doing in what is being termed as the biggest exodus since the 1947 Partition. Tens of thousands of workers quietly earning their bread in melting pots like Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai have been swarming railway stations and airports in their desperation to get out, totally baffling the authorities and just about everyone else. The collective panic was ostensibly sparked by some mysterious email and text messages warning of massive reprisals for the recent attacks on Assamese Muslims. The crisis acquired such epic proportions that several additional trains had to be pressed into service to deal with the rising sea of spooked humanity even as ministers and senior government officials went about reassuring and promising security. The administration has also banned the bulk email and text messages to check the 50-paise terror, as a newspaper put it, radiating fear and panic although it was a classic case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

This Eid day, when I tried to text my friends, I got the following message in typical officialese: “As per Govt direction, only 5 SMS per day is allowed, till 31-Aug. You have sent 5 SMS today. SMS service will resume tmrw. Regret the inconvenience.” It was indeed an ‘inconvenience’ but was apparently necessary to quell the “rumor-mongering by miscreants,” as the minister put it. Social media and the blessings of technology have clearly made the job of merchants of hatred a lot easier and exciting. No one knows what and who started it all. The most perplexed have been the people on whose behalf the madness was seemingly started. Nonetheless, the Muslims in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai have responded to the crisis quickly, going out of their way to support and plead with the panicked lot to stay on. A befuddled government has been quick to blame social media and the ubiquitous foreign hand for the phenomenon. Websites based in Pakistan have been accused of fanning the firestorm by spreading the “morphed images” of violence in Myanmar as those of Assam. Maybe there’s some truth in there. There have been reports of some overzealous sympathizers posting on Facebook pictures of Asian tsunami victims as those from Myanmar. What happened in Assam is not the invention of a feverish imagination; it’s a reality that has been reported by India’s mainstream media. Right now at least 400,000 people, who fled the violence last month, are living in relief camps in appalling conditions even as there are reports of continuing violence. Even if some websites are responsible for those morphed images, what explains those text messages and emails? Who started those? Who’s sowing the seeds of hatred in the name of Muslims in Assam and elsewhere in the country and why?

Harsh Mander, a member of National Advisory Council known for his peace efforts in Gujarat, explains in his Hindustan Times piece: “The country is once again dangerously adrift in a stormy sea of competitive hate politics. The signs are both ominous and familiar-the systematic creation of hatred against people because of their ethnicity or religion; rumors and hate propaganda choking the internet; the public moral justification of violence against targeted communities on grounds of ‘larger’ alleged wrongs; and weak-kneed State action against people and organizations which preach hate and organize slaughter and arson. “In districts and towns in which I have worked, I observed during the 1980s how dedicated communal organizations skillfully spread rumors, which manufacture hatred locally and provoke communal attacks. Hate propagandists are today equipped with sleek new vehicles of cyberspace and mobile phone technology, which they deploy to transport provocative falsehoods, rumors and emotive messages of hate across the country. These recast people of different ethnic or religious identities as the dangerous ‘other’, and foment suspicion, dread and loathing against them. Even more hazardous is the creation of an alternative moral universe in which violent attacks on people of specified communities is accepted as defensible, even justified.” Mander isn’t alone in his conclusions. Hindustan Times and The Telegraph, two of the most respected, establishment papers, have warned of the Hindutva parties “fishing in Assam’s troubled waters” to fuel a communal divide across the country ahead of the crucial 2014 poll battle, supposed to be fought between the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi and Gujarat’s Modi. The threats to the Northeastern people are being portrayed as “anti-national” forces siding with the “foreigner,” says a HT report by Vikas Pathak (August 17).

In another report, Radhika Ramaseshan of The Telegraph says that the Hindutva groups are using the Assam violence and exodus of Northeasterners to try and rebuild its base. She says: “Repeating a familiar strategy, the RSS and VHP are overtly talking of a Hindu-Muslim divide in Assam while the BJP has confined itself to the more politically correct illegal immigrants issue, targeting the Congress for treating them as “vote banks. The collective objective is the same: driving a wedge between Hindus and Muslims and projecting the BJP as the sole “savior” of the former.” Painting all Bengali-speaking Muslims, living for generations in Assam, as Bangladeshi infiltrators and warning of the ‘coming Islamic invasion’, RSS-VHP-BJP rabble rousers are trying hard to raise a perfect storm of communal frenzy as they did in the 80s and 90s. The “Muslims are coming” is the new mantra of the Sangh and its allies. The massive show of strength and hate fest in Mumbai by Raj Thackeray, the nephew and inheritor of Bal Thackeray’s toxic legacy, this week would have made Hitler proud with his antics and rhetoric egging on the Hindus and Marathas against the “traitors and infiltrators.” No wonder social activist and Planning Commission member Dr Syeda Hameed, sees a grand design and agenda to “destroy the secular fabric (of the country) which has held us together for centuries.”

Coming days and weeks could be critical for India and for its minorities. The Muslims are bracing themselves for the coming storm after years of relative calm since the Gujarat pogrom a decade ago. A dispossessed and voiceless community languishing on the margins of society which cannot protect itself has been transformed into a ‘clear and present danger’ to the great republic and its 800 million Hindus. Knives are being sharpened once again in the shadows. It’s time to move in for the kill. A clueless, callous government quietly bleeding itself to death doesn’t help. It seems the end is nigh. In Yeats’ evocative words: Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

http://twocircles.net/2012aug24/sowing_whirlwind_india.html

SEE ALSO: 

• Exodus 2012: Rout Cause – By Pushpa Iyengar, Madhavi Tata (Sep 3, 2012, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282077
• India’s Shame – Editorial (Sep 1, 2012, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://www.epw.in/editorials/indias-shame.html
• Bodoland Politics & Myth of ‘Foreigner’ – By Archana Prasad (Aug 26, 2012, Peoples Democracy)
  http://pd.cpim.org/2012/0826_pd/08262012_6.html

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Imagining a new national politics – By Yogendra Yadav (Aug 22, 2012, The Hindu)

There is at last some clarity on the politics of the anti-corruption movements. Baba Ramdev’s dramatic call for Congress-hatao and the ‘political turn’ of the Anna movement have confirmed that a movement aimed at rooting out corruption cannot defer a direct encounter with party politics for very long. The manner in which both decisions were announced left something to be desired. The announcement by ‘Team Anna’ invited serious criticism that it was a hasty afterthought, a face-saving device or, worse, a sinister design. Baba Ramdev’s flip-flop and final dalliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and other non-Congress forces irrespective of their own record on corruption were hardly expected to add to his credibility. Yet this clarity is to be welcomed, for it opens an unusual window of opportunity for people’s politics. Right from its beginnings last year, the anti-corruption movement comprised three tendencies. One section was staunchly opposed to all parties, all politicians and all forms of politics. More pronounced in the first phase of the movement, this anti-politics tendency had worrisome authoritarian overtones. The second tendency translated anti-corruption as anti-Congress and did not care if its actions ended up aligning with the opposition parties, especially the BJP. Eventually owned up by Baba Ramdev and briefly preferred by Team Anna last year, this tendency has evoked suspicion about the hidden hand of the sangh parivar in the anti-corruption movement.

The third tendency, which has finally prevailed within the Anna movement, though not without dissent, searched for its own, alternative form of politics. While this has generally been understood as forming a new political party, the impulse underlying this tendency awaits more careful elaboration. A formal separation of this third tendency from the politics of anti-politics and mere non-Congressism may appear to have weakened the popular upsurge and let the ruling class off the hook. Seen in a wider context, however, this development has opened up the possibility of new ideas, energies and allies for alternative politics of people’s movements. A political vacuum marks the people’s movement sector. Ever since its emergence in the 1980s, the movement sector – comprising farmers’ movements, Dalit movements, women’s movements, environmental movements and the movements for information and deepening of democracy – is one of the most vibrant spaces in the democratic arena. These movements are inherently political in that they seek to challenge the settled relations of power. They have quietly shifted the terms of political engagement and brought new issues to the foreground. Legislation and policies like the Right to Information, the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Forest Act and the new Land Acquisition and Rehabilitations Act are a tribute to the power and creativity of these movements.

Yet these movements have not succeeded in posing a direct challenge to mainstream politics. Attempts to establish political parties representing the movements failed to cross the high threshold of viability in our electoral system. These include the Samata Sangathan and Karnataka Rajya Rayyata Sangha in the 1980s, the Samajwadi Janparishad and Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha in the 1990s, and the Loksatta Party, Women’s Political Front, Uttarakhand Jan Vahini and Sarvodaya Karnataka in the last decade. Attempts at forming a grand coalition of these movements in electoral politics did not work in the last two Lok Sabha elections. These efforts have involved some of the finest activists and thinkers of our time. There have been many creative organisational experiments and ideological innovations. Yet, they remained largely invisible: most educated and politically informed Indians may not have heard about these. Even the most powerful mass movements failed to translate their support in electoral terms. In order to give effect to their political agenda, these movements remained dependent on the very political establishment they critiqued and struggled against.

During this period, mainstream politics became more insulated from popular struggles and movements. Here’s the paradox though: ever since the sudden decline of the Congress in 1989, the third space has expanded while the third force has shrunk. The failure of the Janata Dal in the early 1990s and the collapse of the United Front experiment in the mid-1990s meant that much of the expanding political energy of the third space drifted towards the two poles represented by the United Progressive Alliance and the National Democratic Alliance. The Left used to be a natural home for popular struggles and movements, but its ideological dominance, moral authority and political presence have been severely eroded. The energy of the third space is in search of a national political vehicle of its own. This is where the anti-corruption movement offers something of a breakthrough. It is after more than three decades that a movement outside the organised party sector has registered a nationwide presence and visibility. More than the number of people that participated in highly visible protests in Delhi, what matters is that the Anna Hazare-led movement spawned smaller protests in a large number of towns and even villages. A fairly large proportion of citizens who did not participate in any protest heard about it and sympathised with it. The activists, supporters and sympathisers of the anti-corruption movement constitute a larger pool of potential support for alternative politics than generated by any other popular movement in recent times. After a very long time, a movement promises to cross the high threshold of viability required for creating a national political alternative.

At the same time, this is no more than a promise of a breakthrough. The support was not based on any grassroots mobilisation and was almost entirely triggered by extraordinary media coverage in August last year. Therefore the support base is very mixed and variable and could well be ephemeral. Besides, a good deal of the support for the anti-corruption movement may not translate into support for alternative politics. There are ideological issues here. A single issue like corruption could serve as the focal point of mobilisation of otherwise contrary forces in a movement. This was a smart choice: the more ‘classical’ radical issues do not permit cross-sectional mobilisation, nor do they resonate in popular consciousness. At the same time, corruption understood in a narrow way cannot be the centre-piece of an alternative politics. Minimally, an understanding of corruption needs to go beyond bribery of individual politicians and bureaucrats; corruption embedded into policies and perpetuated by the system needs to be addressed. There have been legitimate concerns about where this movement stands vis-à-vis bigger questions like communalism, caste-based injustice, crony capitalism and ecological destruction. Anna’s movement was wise to distance itself from communal and anti-Dalit positions, but it is to be seen if it can expand its ideological bandwidth to include larger issues raised by people’s movements in the last couple of decades. …

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article3804296.ece

SEE ALSO: 

• New calculations – By Purnima S. Tripathi (Aug 25, 2012, Frontline)
  http://flonnet.com/fl2917/stories/20120907291703300.htm
• Walking the tightrope – By Soumitro Das (Aug 19, 2012, Hindustan Times)
  http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/916334.aspx
• Talk to the hand – Editorial (Aug 21, 2012, Indian Express)
  http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/990776/
• A Political Alternative To Alternative Politics – By Prashant Bhushan (Sep 3, 2012, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282060

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UPA’s Tunnel Vision – By M.J. Akbar (Aug 24, 2012, India Today)

Light is too powerful a concept; it suggests hope. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did promise Indian Muslims some solace at the end of a long and silent tunnel. That will probably be recorded as his biggest political mistake. When you raise expectations of a fragile community and then shatter them without remorse, each shard develops a poison edge. Indian Muslims believe, with good reason, that it was their massive mobilisation in the 2004 General Elections that made Dr Manmohan Singh the most unexpected Prime Minister in India’s electoral history. Those whose eyebrow has already risen may want to note a significant truth about Indian politics. It is expected that non-Congress PMs will be unexpected, which makes every surprise very unsurprising. But when Congress deviates from its well-established ground rules, we have a story.

It took three degrees of surprise to catapult Dr Singh into his present chair: He had to overcome one probability, one certainty and one possibility. First, the probable winner of the 2004 General Elections, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, lost. Then, for reasons that still have not been made entirely transparent, his certain successor, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, stepped aside, leaving the Congress dazed and Opposition bemused. Finally, Mrs Gandhi discarded the claims of the senior-most Congress leader, Pranab Mukherjee, and pushed Dr Singh, who would have been content with the finance ministry, forward. That sort of dream triple wins you the lottery of a lifetime. Dr Singh sent a thank you note to Muslims soon enough. It was called the Sachar Commission. Justice Rajinder Sachar shocked the establishment with his honesty. First, he delivered his report very quickly. He did not linger in order to enjoy the various benefits that came with the appointment, as so many of his peers have done: There are instances that are shocking beyond belief. The Sachar Commission’s report was an exercise in depth as well as profound and discerning empathy with its subject. It quickly became embedded within the Muslim political consciousness as a defining document. The Left Front never recovered from its revelation that Narendra Modi’s Gujarat had a far higher percentage of Muslims in government employment than Marxist Bengal. Sachar etched a portrait of a community left in neglect by those political parties it had trusted.

The Muslim response was dual: It spurred a momentum that had already been building up, motivating a thrust towards education as the only means to reach out towards economic opportunity. Simultaneously, Muslims began to demand reservations in government jobs to compensate for the gap that had built. Self-help brought rewards. Education among Muslim girls, for instance, has multiplied at a geometrical pace. But the Congress Government which sired the Sachar Commission did nothing about its recommendations. Instead of job reservations, Muslims got the old and stale retinue of gimmicks. Come elections, and the promise of reservations went into the first paragraph of speeches. Once votes had been counted, this promise went into a dustbin.

The Muslim voter’s faith in Dr Singh did not wane easily; in fact it peaked in 2009. But a pinnacle, thanks to its height, offers clarity; illusions melt very quickly. When Congress continued to do nothing even after the substantial endorsement in 2009, Muslims began to slip away from the party, with devastating effect. The consequences of Congress’ demolition in UP are still playing out. Assam turned this slippage into a fall. The politics of Assam is not simple. Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi wore his heart literally on his sleeve during visits to Muslim refugee camps when he chose to flaunt a Bodo scarf. Muslim reaction has also changed. Anger used to be diluted by fear, but fear has evaporated. SMS, and its more sinister cousin MMS, have eliminated the distance between Bodoland, Bangalore and Mumbai. Technology has also opened the market for mischief: Between the photoshop and visual cropping, murder on the Indus can be easily distorted into death on the Brahmaputra. Reality is harsh enough. Malice, exported by certain elements in Pakistan according to the home ministry, gives it a vicious twist.

For our Government, alas, the most volatile problem becomes an opportunity, not for a solution, but for another veil over misdeeds. Officials began to censor tweets critical of the Prime Minister, thereby managing to increase the intensity of criticism from all sides. Technology is community-neutral. The collapse of hope in Congress has driven various Muslim communities into disparate political camps. Mulayam Singh Yadav was a major beneficiary, but the next question is more worrisome: Where do UP Muslims go if the Yadavs also disappoint? In Assam and Kerala, they have banded around exclusivist flags, which is bound to inspire a reaction, sooner rather than later. Desegregation divides communities with rivulets of suspicion. Instead of controlling this drift towards danger, the UPA Government has disappeared into its own tunnel of silence.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/india-today-editorial-director-m-j-akbar-on-muslim-voters-losing-faith-in-manmohan-singh/1/214546.html

SEE ALSO:

• ‘Muslims in India have reason to believe they are being persecuted’ – NC Asthana and Anjali Nirmal with Kunal Majumder (Sep 1, 2012, Tehelka)
  http://www.tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ne010912Muslims.asp
• Reservations for Muslims in India – By P S Krishnan (Aug 18, 2012,Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://www.epw.in/special-articles/reservations-muslims-india.html
• Forcing dress code on Muslims part of BJP poll plan? – By Imran Khan (Aug 25, 2012, Tehelka)
  http://www.tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ne250812Forcing.asp

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‘Unclean’ and outcast – By Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed (Aug 11, 2012, Frontline)

On the mud track leading to Dodda Gollarahatti, a village in Yeraballi panchayat in Hiriyur taluk of Chitradurga district in Karnataka, two women in their mid-thirties lounged listlessly outside a one-room structure built some 50 metres away from the rest of the village. With their unkempt hair and crumpled clothes, they presented a marked contrast to other women of the village who were consciously avoiding the duo as they walked down the track. A watchful passerby warned: “If you talk to these women or even if their shadow falls on you, you can enter our village only after taking a bath.” A small crowd had gathered near the temple looking curiously at our car, which had driven into the village of around 120 houses. On being asked about the women living outside the village, Nijalingappa, formerly vice-president of the gram panchayat, said: “It is their time of the month and they are not allowed inside the village for three to five days. During this time they cannot work, bathe, touch anyone or cook their own food.” Added a young man called Simpanna: “The Kadu Golla community believes that women are impure during their menstrual cycle. We cannot let them stay in the village and make it impure.” On our way out of the village, Yashodhamma and Sushilamma, who were then staying in the “menstruation house”, displayed the separate set of vessels women had to use when they stayed in the house. “I don’t like this practice, but what can I do? This is our tradition and we can stop it only on devaru’s (God’s) instructions. We will be punished by God if we don’t follow this.”

In Surappanahatti, a Kadu Golla settlement of around 200 houses, Jayamma crawled out of her hut, the size of a kennel, cradling a 20-day-old boy. Surappanahatti is around 20 kilometres from Dodda Gollarahatti and is in Dindavara panchayat in Hiriyur taluk. Jayamma’s hovel was in the middle of an agricultural field, while other hutments were some hundred metres away. “I have to stay here for another month, after which I have to bathe and visit the temple where my child will be named. Only then will I be allowed into my house,” said Jayamma. During this time, when she is considered unclean, she cannot be touched, and food is given to her by her family members who either leave it by the side of her hovel or spoon it into her plate to ensure that they do not get “polluted”. She had to stay in her hovel even though it was the monsoon season and ominous rain clouds hovered over the parched ragi fields. A few hours away from the dry and flat plains of Hiriyur is the green and undulating landscape of Arsikere taluk in Hassan district. Around 30 kilometres from Arsikere town are three Kadu Golla settlements, of which the largest is K. Gollarahatti. Shekar R., 26, the Youth Congress president of the area, said that more than 100 women had undergone hysterectomies at the age of 30 in the three settlements. J. D. Ugrappa, a teacher at the local school, added: “Sometimes women have gynaecological problems because of which they bleed for 15 days in a month. Our culture does not allow them to enter houses during this time. Rather than have men cooking the food and doing all household work for so many days every month, isn’t it better if the women get the ‘operation’ done once they have had children so that they can serve their husbands?”

There are many groups of the Golla or herding community in Karnataka, of which the main divisions are “Ooru Gollas” and “Kadu Gollas”. Myths about the community trace their origins to the Yadavas of north India. While Ooru Gollas are Gollas who have settled in towns, Kadu Gollas have, on the other hand, historically lived in self-contained hamlets called hattis on the margins of towns or larger villages or close to forests. A Kadu Golla hatti is distinct because of the thorny fence that surrounds it. Nomadic by nature, all Kadu Gollas were cow and goat herders in the past before some of them acquired small landholdings. While the educated among them have migrated to towns and cities, many members of the community still pride themselves as herders and continue their traditional profession. They are found mainly in Chitradurga and Tumkur districts while a significant number can be found in the neighbouring district of Hassan. Smaller settlements are scattered across the State and in parts of Andhra Pradesh. According to data from the 1990 Report of the Karnataka Third Backward Classes Commission, Gollas form 1.3 per cent of the population of the State. However, the report does not specify the percentage of Kadu Gollas. Informal estimates by the Backward Classes and Minorities Department are that there are 251 Kadu Golla settlements in Chitradurga district with a total population of around one lakh. There could be around three lakh Kadu Gollas across Karnataka if estimates derived from neighbouring districts are added. Kadu Gollas are extremely religious and worship a pantheon of gods including Krishna. Their self-enforced segregation has helped to keep their religious beliefs cocooned from outside influences.

“They believe that their life is controlled and guided by some sort of supernatural, spiritual and magical power,” says M. Gurulingaiah, professor of sociology at Kuvempu University, Karnataka, in Tribal Culture: Change and Mobility. “Religion may very well be said to constitute the whole life of Kadu Gollas. They believe in various deities, ghosts and spirits guiding every walk of their life.” The community practises a strict form of caste discrimination and does not allow outsiders to participate in their worship. In Dodda Gollarahatti, for example, if a member of a Schedule Caste enters the village temple, the entire temple needs to be cleansed. Brahmins are also absent in their rituals and wedding ceremonies. The social, economic and religious influence of other communities is limited on Kadu Gollas, especially in the rural settlements, as they live life in their own enclaves. One distinctive feature of Kadu Gollas is their unusual notions of purity because of which they consider a woman unclean when she has her monthly period or after she delivers a baby. While a woman who has her period has to live outside the village for three to five days every month, a woman who gives birth is not allowed to enter her house for two or three months. In this patriarchal and religious society, the routine biological process of menstruation acquires the dimensions of a “curse” that manifests itself in bleeding. This notion is so ingrained in Kadu Gollas that even educated professionals of the community accept it.

“When we go back to the hatti, we have to follow the rules regarding purity,” said H. Ajjaiah, a Kadu Golla and an assistant professor of sociology at the HPPC Government First Grade College in Challakere town, Chitradurga district. According to Ajjaiah and two of his Kadu Golla colleagues, R. Mahesh, associate professor of Kannada, and Mudalagiriyappa, lecturer in history, the reason why such practices continue is that Kadu Gollas were not educated. “There is a lot of difference in the situation in rural hattis and hattis closer to towns. For instance, such backward practices are not seen in Katappana hatti in Challakere town,” said Mahesh. The three teachers concurred in their view that education and interaction with other communities have made a huge difference in the lives of Kadu Gollas. “Education changes a lot of things but we need reservation if we have to transform. Unfortunately, even though our community has all the traits of a Scheduled Tribe, we are still treated as a Backward Tribe, denying us a bouquet of benefits,” added Mudalagiriyappa. In Karnataka, the Golla community is recognised as a “nomadic and semi-nomadic tribe”. After members of the community organised Statewide rallies in the early 1990s, the Karnataka government issued an order in September 1994 that classified them as Category-I (Most Backward Tribes) entitling them to 4 per cent reservation in education and government jobs. The hitch is that the backward Kadu Gollas have to share this thin slice of the pie with several more prosperous communities, including the Ooru Gollas. Hence, members of the community have been demanding that they be designated as a Scheduled Tribe. Studies like that of Gurulingaiah have also pointed out how Kadu Gollas fulfil all the criteria needed to qualify as a Scheduled Tribe. … This correspondent spoke to several Kadu Gollas, both men and women, across Chitradurga and Hassan, and there is a strong undercurrent of resentment against the practice among women and younger men. It is the elderly and the priests who strongly endorse this practice. When the general sentiment is towards reform, the state should come up with policy measures that encourage such change; it should identify reformers rather than devise ways to perpetuate irrational practices.

http://flonnet.com/fl2916/stories/20120824291604000.htm

SEE ALSO: 

• Settled Alibis and Emerging Contradictions: Sex Selection, Dowry and Domestic Violence – By Kumkum Sangari (Aug 25, 2012, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/2012_47/34/Settled_Alibis_and_Emerging_Contradictions.pdf
• New assertiveness – By Bhaskar Ghose (Aug 25, 2012, Frontline)
  http://flonnet.com/fl2917/stories/20120907291708500.htm
• And again, And again – By Kalpana Sharma (Aug 4, 2012, The Hindu)
  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Kalpana_Sharma/article3716178.ece

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