Opinions and Editorials

Modi Sarkar And The Threat To Constitution Of India – By Mukul Dube (Jun 23, 2014, Countercurrents)

“‘The next government may adopt a muscular and hawkish approach to internal security…,’ said a senior official [of the Ministry of Home Affairs]” ( Hindu , 20 May 2014, page 10). As bureaucrats tend to be overly cautious, the fact that this statement was made should tell us something. The catch-phrase “internal security” is a catch-all. It can include anything and everything. It cannot be defined, neither precisely nor even vaguely. The Intelligence Bureau’s report on NGOs and foreign funds must be seen in this light. …

What of the Constitution of India, under which Modi was chief minister of Gujarat and under which he is now prime minister of India? Let us first recall that this man was associated with the RSS since the age of eight, becoming a full-time pracharak in 1970, and that he has not renounced this association. Here is what the chief of the RSS said in August 2013. “‘Modi is the only person who has remained rooted in the RSS ideology,’ Bhagwat told the group” (http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/rss-30 ).

The “sting” by Tehelka brought out with clarity the support that the gangs of marauders in Gujarat in 2002 had from the very top of that state’s leadership. Babu Bajrangi said that he “felt like Rana Pratap” after killing many Muslims at Naroda Patiya, including women and children. Having done his work, he said, he told the Home Minister of the state over the telephone of the bodies to be collected. He described at length how Narendra Modi first found a safe refuge for him and later kept changing judges until one was found who co-operated.

Much is so clearly understood in these situations that words are unnecessary. Babu Bajrangi, Ramesh Dave and other stars of the Tehelka tapes say that Modi could not be explicit owing to his position – but also that they venerate him because he gave them three days to wreak bloody havoc. In 2002, Modi ruled over Gujarat: and a dozen years later, he rules over India. There is reason to think that many more Bajrangis will be born or will come out into the open in places other than Gujarat. Indeed, some of those very monsters killed young Mohsin Shaikh in Pune. …

Modi said to his party people, in the Central Hall of Parliament after his electoral victory this year, “I salute … [the] makers of the Constitution of our country” ( Hindu , 21 May 2014). He also said, “Various governments in the past tried to do some good work in their own way for which they deserve appreciation”. What prevents Modi from saying, at any time now that he is in office, that as the previous governments were all right for their times, so the Constitution of India was all right for the past but now must be changed? It takes no genius to predict that soon enough this is what will happen. We have no reason to believe that the RSS has changed its view of the Constitution. It has been patient for long, and the time has now come for it to strike. …

http://www.countercurrents.org/dube230614.htm

SEE ALSO:

• ‘Decisionism’ and the Cult of Narendra Modi – By M S S Pandian and Satyaki Roy (Jun 21, 2014, EPW)
  http://www.epw.in/commentary/decisionism-and-cult-narendra-modi.html
• Modi govt’s ‘LOVE’ for Madarsa is not without a purpose! – By Abdul Bari Masoud (Jun 15, 2014, Muslim Mirror)
  http://muslimmirror.com/eng/modi-govts-love-for-madarsa-is-not-without-purpose/
• Modi’s olive branch to Muslims: Community needs to monitor ‘initial promise to substantial praxis’ – Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood (Jun 18, 2014, TwoCircles.net)
  http://twocircles.net/2014jun18/modis_olive_branch_muslims_community_needs_monitor_initial_promise_substantial_praxis.html

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State Intolerance Must Be Stopped – By Devika Mittal (Jun 18, 2014, Countercurrents)

The ruling Government of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power on the mandate of the people. After 30 years, a single party has managed to win with a clear majority. While the reasons for this clear mandate of the people is certainly debatable, the fact is that for whatever reasons, a large section of people of India did give its mandate to BJP and as believers of democracy, even those who disagree with the ideology of BJP respected the decision. However, while they respected the mandate, the government doesn’t seem to respect the spirit of democracy.

This refers to the increasing cases of witch hunting of individuals and organizations who are against the ideology of the ruling Government. On the target are NGOs, students’ organizations and campaigns that have been working to voice the need for a more inclusive and sustainable development. Recently, IB has released a list of NGOs that are accused of receiving foreign funding to oppose development projects in India. A look on the name of the NGOs, their issues and demands will be sufficient to tell what exactly is going on. …

Instead of understanding the cause of their dissent, the Government is trying to silence all dissent. Unlike the Government, they are not even resorting to force. While their protests are often suppressed with force, they continue to adopt peaceful measures. They believe in democracy which allows freedom of expression. In a democracy, people have the right to accountability. They have the right to protest against injustice. How can this right be taken? The Government far from hearing their rightful demand for a more inclusive development is targeting them. They are trying to silence all opposition.

Similarly, there are increasing cases of individuals being arrested for anti-government opinions. Individuals have been booked for anti-Modi views. This is unheard of in any democracy. A democracy is supposed to accommodate difference of opinion. We have the right to freedom of expression. It is on us to decide who is a good leader and who is not. It is the people who decide the able government. This is the essence of democracy. We have every right to criticize a political ideology and the person who represents it.

As about the posts that are capable of “provoking communal disharmony” and “inciting riots”, the cyber crime cell that has become hyper-active must share their definition of what is “offensive”. It seems to find only the posts that are against Modi as “offensive”, “grossly offensive” and amounting to “incite riots”. Instead of working to curb this culture of intolerance which leads to enmity and riots, the government is only encouraging it. The state is becoming intolerant of dissent and in doing so, it is challenging the very spirit of democracy.

http://www.countercurrents.org/mittal180614.htm

SEE ALSO:

• Nationalism, not Hindu nationalism – By Anand K. Sahay (Jun 9, 2014, Asian Age)
  http://www.asianage.com/columnists/nationalism-not-hindu-nationalism-208
• Democratic credentials on test – Editorial (Jun 19, 2014, The Hindu)
  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/democratic-credentials-on-test/article6127248.ece
• HRD: It’s not Hindu Resource Development – By Kancha Ilaiah (Jun 10, 2014, Asian Age)
  http://www.asianage.com/columnists/hrd-it-s-not-hindu-resource-development-668

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The Right Kind – By Pragya Singh and Abhijit Mazumdar (Jun 30, 2014, Outlook)

…The RSS itself, however, is an unregistered body and submits neither income tax returns nor does it have a licence to receive money from abroad. But many of the NGOs affiliated to it are among the 13,000-odd NGOs in India that received some Rs 11,546 crore in 2011-12, as per the information furnished by the ministry of home affairs (the share of Greenpeace India, which has been in the eye of a storm after the ‘destabilising’ IB report against it, was a paltry Rs 60 crore). Several activists associated with different NGOs allege that the lion’s share of foreign funds go to the religious organisations, including the RSS-affiliated ones.

Indeed, the growth of the RSS provoked a group of US intellectuals in 2002 to ask around about its funding. They published a detailed account of how the American charity, India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), donated much of its basket to the RSS, VHP and other Sangh-affiliated NGOs in India. The report wanted the IDRF to stop “funding hate” and challenged its claim of aiding India’s development. They demanded an independent examination of its activities and the affiliation of the NGOs it funded. The IDRF did not respond to an e-mail from Outlook this week. Its website does not have updated information either. However, information in the public domain shows that between 1994 and 2000, most of IDRF’s $5 million fund poured into Sangh-affiliated NGOs. In those years, when a donor asked IDRF to pick an NGO on their behalf, 83 per cent of the donation wound up in a “Sangh-affiliated” one, the study discovered. …

“The RSS doesn’t call its affiliated organisations NGOs, they mostly call them samajik sangathans. In the IB’s point of view, these are just fringe groups. So they get excluded,” says Prof Badri Narayan of G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad. Coming to the double standards over foreign funding, Prof Narayan recalls that former finance minister P. Chidambaram and ex-PM Manmohan Singh were the ones who first questioned the foreign funding of Koodankulam protesters—even as both Congress and the BJP admit receiving donations from foreign companies, most notably Vedanta.

Many NGOs fear the IB report merely prepares the ground for their future persecution. “Indian environmental NGOs have consistently been targeted. The NGOs that don’t get into trouble have political protection because of their affiliation or they’re noise-makers like Greenpeace. The unaffiliated, unspectacular NGOs will bear the brunt of the new rules and controls,” says Parth J. Shah, who heads Centre for Civil Society, Delhi. Of course, distributing food to the needy is a noble deed, but it also doesn’t challenge the state’s inefficiencies. Easier to lay that charge against the foreign hand.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article/The-Right-Kind/291133

SEE ALSO:

• Invisible Strings – The IB Report On NGOs – By Jay Mazoomdaar (Jun 28, 2014, Tehelka)
  http://www.tehelka.com/ngo-invisible-strings/
• Foreign Hand In The IB Report? – By Vandana Shiva, Aruna Rodrigues & Kavitha Kuruganti (Jun 18, 2014, Countercurrents)
  http://www.countercurrents.org/shiva180614.htm
• Generously motivated – By Vandana Shiva (Jun 18, 2014, Asian Age)
  http://www.asianage.com/columnists/generously-motivated-526
• Criminalising Dissent – By Colin Todhunter (Jun 20, 2014, Countercurrents)
  http://www.countercurrents.org/todhunter200614.htm

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Meet Mr. Hindutva And His Patrons – By Jyoti Punwani (Jun 20, 2014, The Sri Lanka Guardian)

The Maharashtra police are at it again. They have linked the Pune murder of Mohsin Shaikh by Hindu Rashtra Sena goons to the actions of NCP Muslims. The ‘Hindu backlash’ theory is at work again. Shaikh’s murder was a pure and simple hate crime, one would have thought. But not so for the Maharashtra police, who believe in the theory of “action-reaction”. Modi wasn’t the only one to use it. All Hindutvavadis describe their violence as “defensive” or a “reaction” to violence by Muslims. The latter are always the initiators – this is an article of faith for Hindutvavadis. And the reaction is always bound to be more than the action, since Hindus are the majority – this was explained to me by the late Adhik Shirodkar, the Shiv Sena’s senior counsel before the Srikrishna Commission of inquiry into the 92-93 riots. …

When you start taking this ‘action-reaction’ theory to its logical end, some questions arise. Even before Shivaji’s statue was stoned, Hindu Rashtra Sena members were distributing offensive leaflets. Were they still reacting, on the night of June 1, to the offensive FB post? Or were they just following the exhortations of their leader, Dhananjay Desai, now an accused in Shaikh’s murder?

Desai’s speeches are on the Internet, uploaded by his followers. From 2010 to 2013, he has told the latter to hunt out modern day Afzal Khans and do to them what his idol Shivaji did to the original. “Call them Kaka, Mama, then wrench out their entrails … Shaista Khan escaped with his fingers chopped off. This time, it won’t be only fingers that will be chopped off. Take these traitors to their final resting place – near Afzal Khan’s grave.” In one speech (on Shiv Jayanti, March 12, 2010), he even declares that every youngster who kills an Afzal Khan should be given a Bharat Ratna.

Shiv Sena and BJP leaders have often shared the dais with Desai when he has made these speeches. Desai lists Bal Thackeray in a long line of inspiring leaders – Guru Gobind Singh, Rana Pratap, Shivaji. But he goes beyond Thackeray in his tirades against Muslims. The Shiv Sena chief, at least in his editorials in Saamna, would exempt “patriotic” Muslims from his rants against “anti-national landyas”. This distinction got him a clean chit from the Bombay High Court for his inflammatory writings during the 92-93 Mumbai riots. …

This is the kind of poison Dhananjay Desai has been allowed to spread to young men in Maharashtra and Goa over the last five years, by a ‘secular’ Congress-NCP government. The 23 cases pending against him have not stopped him. The message these young men have received is clear – you can flout the law and get away with it; indeed, it is your patriotic and religious duty to do so. This is what they must have thought when they lynched a bearded Muslim at night. Neither Desai nor his followers, nor the police, nor their ‘secular’ political masters, must have expected the nationwide furore that followed. Will this furore be kept alive to ensure that both leader and followers are kept behind bars till their trial? Will the trial be completed before the probable change of guard in November? It is up to us to ensure that this is done.

http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2014/06/meet-mr-hindutva-and-his-patrons.html

SEE ALSO:

• Curbing hate crimes – By Omar Rashid (Jun 19, 2014, The Hindu)
  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/curbing-hate-crimes/article6127246.ece
• A City Interrupted – By Prachi Pinglay-Plumber (Jun 30, 2014, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article/A-City-Interrupted/291102

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The tragedy of Muzaffarnagar – Editorial (Jun 24, 2014, The Hindu)

There are no signs, so far, of delivery of justice to the riot-affected people in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. Nine months after they were uprooted from their homes following communal violence, thousands of people from the Muslim community are still languishing in camps. The Akhilesh Yadav government has been completely apathetic towards them. Not only that, it has shown utter disregard for their safety and any prospect for the future. Last week, the local administration issued a diktat to over 250 families living on government land in the adjoining riot-hit Shamli district, asking them to return to their native villages. Mr. Yadav has failed to realise that the situation is very volatile in the entire area, and there have been instances where the riot-affected people have been roughed up when they as much as dared to pass through the villages they once inhabited.

Most of them are scared and, in the absence of any security, determined not to return to their villages. In many cases their homes have been burnt and their property has been looted. The payment of compensation for such losses has been very haphazard. Conditions in the camps border on the pathetic. Able-bodied men have lost the will to work. Many among the camp-dwellers are skilled workers. But they are so worried about the safety of their families, many refuse to even venture out to find work. Women have been forced to work in brick kilns in the area. Children who should be in school suffer from various illnesses. At least 34 of them perished due to cold during the last winter. Many of them have also been forced to work to supplement family incomes.

As the media and civil rights groups shifted their focus to the hanging of two Dalit girls in Badaun, the riot-affected families do not know what lies ahead of them. In his vision for India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stated that his government will have a policy of zero tolerance towards extremism and riots. He also specified that his government was committed to making all minorities equal partners in India’s progress. But, just a week before that, one of his junior Ministers, who is also an accused in the riots, in a show of triumphalism was busy taking out a victory procession through Muzaffarnagar.

This is where Mr. Modi needs to walk the talk and ensure that there is no impediment to the delivery of justice to the victims. The State government may be dragging its feet, but that should not deter Mr. Modi from taking demonstrative steps to normalise the situation in the area. The immediate priority of his government must be to help the victims get back on their feet and then return to their homes. This conviction needs to flow down from Mr. Modi’s office.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/the-tragedy-of-muzaffarnagar/article6142583.ece

SEE ALSO:

• The Ghosts Of 1984 – By Priyanka Dass Saharia (Jun 20, 2014, Countercurrents)
  http://www.countercurrents.org/saharia200614.htm

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Annihilation by Caste: Lessons from Budaun and Beyond – By Kalpana Kannabiran (Jun 21, 2014, EPW)

The murder of two children in Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, forces us to re-examine our understanding of aggravated assault, murder, sexual assault, atrocity, annihilation (ital)by (ital) caste and structural violence that is constitutive of the rogue state – not an exceptional state, but the rogue state as the norm in a caste ridden society. This is not an isolated story. These children were not victims of exceptional violence and brutality. Rather, routine heightened violence and torture of the worst kind are constitutive of caste society, with the condonation (indeed tacit acce-ptance of the necessity) of such violence written into inaction and equivocation at every level. …

Notwithstanding the technical inapplicability of the PoA Act to the Budaun murders, what is telling is the extreme vulnerability of dalit-bahujan communities – in a state with the most powerful political mobilisation that rose to occupy state power. Far from being an indication of the ineffectiveness of dalit-bahujan mobilisation in UP, it is rather a sign of the encrusted power of the dominant castes and an indication of how Sisyphean the struggle is. It is neither inappropriate nor inaccurate to characterise this as an attack on dalit children – in the context of caste atrocity the term dalit encompasses the dalit-bahujan experience of caste discrimination.

And that is really at the heart of the contradictions that Budaun throws up – there is a commonality of experience in disentitlement and vulnerability across dalit-bahujan groups that quotidian separations in administration and law negate. But those are the limits of the law. There are also shifting gradations of status, class and power within this large category, these contestations absorbing the ideology and methods of caste in inter caste relations. Is it methodologically possible to offer protection and legal redress to victims across the ladder of graded inequalities and graded exclusions except through blanket criminal law provisions? And yet, viewing assaults such as these in terms of the Indian Penal Code alone reduces the gravity of the offence by removing the targeted nature of the assault from consideration and defining it outside the purview of caste atrocity.

And finally we come to the rogue state. How many times have we seen this? Karamchedu, Chunduru, Khairlanji, Budaun, Mathura, Rameeza, Bhanwari – different states at different times, different courts of different jurisdictions, and the story is the same. Despite the constitutional ban on untouchability and protections against discrimination based on caste, the patriarchal caste order constitutes the state. Democracy lies trapped in the clutches of the two-headed state – the hibernating constitutional order, and the live and throbbing rogue state that actively participates in the project of annihilating by caste across lines of party and ideology – caste is the unifying ideology and the fundamental logic of governance.

The road that we leave behind is soaked in the blood of victims and built through generations of servitude, and the road that lies ahead is blocked by caste. This takes me to the heart of Ambedkar’s assertion that the only road to freedom, life and indeed humanity is the annihilation of caste – for us all, because violence and the habit of impunity dehumanises the dominant – not only the perpetrators and their cohorts but also the nonchalant bystanders and the distant, studiously indifferent viewers – and annihilates entire classes of vulnerable peoples in full public view with impunity.

http://www.epw.in/web-exclusives/annihilation-caste.html

SEE ALSO:

• Rethinking Rule Of Law In The Times Of Rape Bid On A Judge – By Samar (Jun 17, 2014, Countercurrents)
  http://www.countercurrents.org/samar170614.htm
• Badaun: A double murder and an unclear night of 10 hours – By Pritha Chatterjee (Jun 20, 2014, Indian Express)
  http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/a-double-murder-and-an-unclear-night-of-10-hours/99/
• ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ – Hang The Women?: An Insensitive Uttar Pradesh – By David Lal (Jun 17, 2014, Countercurrents)
  http://www.countercurrents.org/lal170614.htm
• Nowhere To Hide – By Virendra Nath Bhatt (Jun 28, 2014, Tehelka)
  http://www.tehelka.com/nowhere-to-hide/

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