Opinion – Page 12

Selective Condemnation of Selective Violence by Pope Francis – Dr Javed Jamil

December 2, 2014 by Nasheman

Pope Francis would have done well to say that every act of violence and innocent death, whoever the victim, whoever the culprit, whatever the place, whatever the time, whatever the method and whatever the motive should be condemned by the whole world

Pope Francis walks in front of the honour guard at the presidential palace in Ankara. Photo: Reuters

by Dr Javed Jamil

According to the BBC, “Pope Francis has urged Muslim leaders around the world to condemn terrorism carried out in the name of Islam. Speaking on board a flight back to Rome, the Pope said that he understood the harm caused by the stereotype that linked Islam with terrorism.”

He said a “global condemnation” of the violence would help the majority of Muslims dispel this stereotype. Pope Francis was returning from a three-day visit to Turkey. The pontiff denounced people who say that “all Muslims are terrorists”. “As we cannot say that all Christians are fundamentalists,” he said.”

While I have no reasons to doubt the good intentions of the Pope, I have many reasons to question his knowledge and his selective appeal. It appears certain that Pope like most other residents of the current world is exposed to the continuous motivated propaganda carried out by West through international media, and he has never stopped to have a closer look at the propaganda. He seems to have become a victim of the common propaganda which can see only “terrorism” as the only condemnable category of violence and “Muslim Terrorism” as the only condemnable category of “terrorism”. Why can’t the people like him recognize the fact that violence committed in any name is bad, and our response to violence should be proportional to the magnitude of the violence rather than its denominations?

The Western media (and also the Indian media under the influence of both the West and the Hindutva propagandists) focuses only on a certain category of violence, which of course suits its designs and its ideological foundations.

For them, only beheadings are a condemnable form of violence and not the carnage through bombs; the former is the method of “them” (Muslim terrorists) and the latter is currently the method of “Us” (the West). It is another matter that the beheadings kill less than a dozen and bombs kill millions. Of course, bombs also become condemnable when bombs of lesser intensity are used by the al-Qaida and its allies which kill tens or hundreds unlike the thousands and tens of thousands that the American, Israeli and British bombs kill.

The Pope also ignores the fact that at the global level, violence as a whole is a predominantly Western monopoly and terrorism as a whole is also a more non-Muslim than Muslim monopoly. al-Qaida killed not more than 6000 innocent Westerners but America’s “war against terror” of al-Qaida killed more than 2 million innocent Muslims. ISIS is also a creation of West, which entered Iraq after its war against Syrian Government failed despite huge support of Western weaponry, which was later used in Iraq.

Terrorism in India, mainly by non-Muslims (believing or non-believing Hindus) has killed more than 40,000 people in the last 2 decades. Tamil Terrorism in Sri Lanka claimed more than 100,000 lives. America, France, Britain, China and Russia have been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the overwhelming majority of deaths in wars and civil wars in the last century.

And of course they are also the countries with maximum deaths in murders, suicides and induced abortions. More than 180 million people lost lives in wars in the last century and more than 1 billion children have been murdered through abortions in the last 20 years. The number of deaths by way of murders has also been more than 10 million.

But it is not the magnitude of violence but the type of violence that attracts the international attention. Any violence that can be linked to the West and their ideologies make no news. But as soon as there is violence somewhere which can be made to appear linked to the forces or the ideologies opposed to them, it is attacked with all their weapons.

The Pope would have done well to say that every act of violence and innocent death, whoever the victim, whoever the culprit, whatever the place, whatever the time, whatever the method and whatever the motive should be condemned by the whole world. He should have recognized the fact that the genesis of terrorism has several factors, and one major factor is the role of West in Muslim countries, their support to brutal regimes in the region, and the deaths caused by Western forces in the Islamic world. He should state that almost all the acts of violence are devilish, and while terrorist attacks are committed by lesser devils, the wars and aerial bombings are conducted by the bigger devils. It would have certainly sounded better if he had appealed to West to stop intervening in Muslim countries.

The Pope should also explain if the Middle Eastern acts of violence can be linked to Islam or Muslims, why Western violence cannot be linked to Christianity and Christians. My appeal to the Pope is the same as has been to the pontiffs and protagonists of all religions of the world: recognize the fact that the real threat to the world comes not from any religion but the forces of irreligion led by West. And I would like to inform Christian pontiffs that we Muslims differentiate between Westernism and Christianity despite the fact that Christianity is the dominant religion in the West.

Dr Javed Jamil is a New Delhi-based physician, poet and writer with over a dozen books to his credit including his latest, “Muslims Most Civilized, Yet Not Enough” and “Muslim Vision of Secular India: Destination & Roadmap”.

Why Muslims are unhappy with SP in UP

December 1, 2014 by Nasheman

The Modi magic which seems to have cut across caste and even religious lines to some extent is making the Samajwadi Party edgy.

by Piyush Srivastava, Daily O

The Samajwadi Party has become increasingly edgy over the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attempts to woo Muslim voters in the state. On paper of course, it seems very unlikely that the BJP will win a fraction of Muslim voters in Uttar Pradesh. But the Modi magic which seems to have cut across caste and even religious lines to some extent is making the SP edgy, fearing that it will lose its Muslim votebank in the upcoming Assembly elections in 2017.

The SP has also been hurt by allegations made by certain prominent members of the Muslim community, who claim that there is really no difference between the party and other Hindu parties, as the former practises “soft Hindutva” and the other i.e the BJP “hard Hindutava”. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) party that has recently announced that it will contest the next Assembly election — a first time for the party in the state — has left SP leaders edgy, as it will divide the Muslim votebank.

The SP’s fears are grounded in some reality. Though the MIM won only two seats in Maharashtra, the party took away a significant number of votes that would have gone to the SP or the Congress. This is ideal for the BJP, as sources say, the recent communal tensions in the state, along with the Modi factor, will give the party Hindu votes. And if some Muslim votes come on board so much the better.

Prime Minister Modi has already begun wooing Muslims. During his trip to Varanasi earlier in November, Modi laid the foundation stone for the Trade Facilitation Centre (TFC) which was meant for members of Julaha (Muslim weaver caste) community. While doing so, the PM took a swipe at the SP, saying he wanted the Rs 147-crore TFC in the heart of the city so that the weavers could reach there without any hassle. But the state government has not cooperated with the Centre.

The fact that Modi’s words hit home were seen by the sharp rejoinder from the SP. Senior leaders such as Azam Khan tried to stir up passions by saying, “The TFC was planned in Lalpur because not a single member of the community resides there. In fact, the BJP wants the minorities to migrate to Pakistan.”

But a jittery SP was still not confident that Azam’s move was enough to convince the community. So Rajendra Chaudhary, party spokesperson of the UP unit, too jumped into the fray by reminding the Julahas about the work done for them by Mulayam government in the past and the packages presented to them by Akhilesh government.

“Mulayam has given a package of Rs 5,032 crore for weavers’ rehabilitation. Akhilesh has given special package to them. A loan of Rs 8.06 crore was given to 7,520 weavers,” Chaudhary told reporters. He added that Mulayam was in the process of developing Azamgarh, his Parliamentary constituency in a better maner than Modi’s Varanasi. The SP hopes that such promises and sops will keep this crucial votebank with them.

But MIM’s entry is hurting the party. Already, controversial MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi asked the state government: “Where is the Muslim reservation that was promised during the last Assembly elections? (the SP in its election mainfesto had promised reservations for Muslims in the police and other government jobs). What action has been taken to ensure justice to Muslims who suffered as a community in Muzaffarnagar? These are questions that the ruling party will have to answer,” he said. The fact that Owaisi who refuses to categorise himself as a “Muslim candidate” and has also said that Dalits and Muslims must come together on common causes, is another blow for the SP, Bahujan Samaj Party and an already decimated Congress in UP. The Congress and the SP have so far hit back claiming that the MIM has a tacit understanding with the RSS in the state. But such allegations prove weak as the MIM was a part of the previous UPA government. Clearly, then these parties, especially the SP, will have to rehone their strategies if they retain power in the next elections.

Dear PM, Save Our Colleges From Communal Agendas

December 1, 2014 by Nasheman

by Rana Ayyub

My father, a noted writer from the field of Urdu literature, like many of his friends from the Progressive writers movement, found in his alma mater Aligarh Muslim University, the courage to break the barriers of religion enforced stereotypes. He forced his wife, my mother, who was raised in a conservative family of zamindars from Uttar Pradesh to pursue her education post marriage and give up all ominous practices of subjugation.

Among the first few books my mother was gifted besides Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’ were on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of AMU, and Sultan Shahjahan Begum, the first female ruler who vehemently worked for the promotion of education amongst women and Muslims in particular.

Shahjahan Begum, also referred to as the Begum of Bhopal, was the first Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University which gave India some of its best known luminaries from the field of politics, art, literature. AMU alumni include former Presidents of India and current Vice President Hamid Ansari, who also served a term as the Vice Chancellor of the university.

Some of the most prolific writers and thinkers with affiliation to the Marxist philosophy owe their careers to AMU. One such figure was Raja Mahendra Pratap, an admirer of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who started the Mohammad Anglo Oriental College after successfully completing his education from Oxford and Cambridge.

With the dominance of religious education in the lives of Muslims, who were in the lowest rung of socio-economic progress, Sir Syed understood that religious studies from Madrassas did not give the less privileged a window into the world; for them to succeed, there was a dire need for a platform which helped them with a contemporary understanding of religion, philosophy and science.

While the University was started with the intent of providing modern education to Muslims, non-Muslims were welcomed. It was for this reason that many Hindu rulers of the time sent their children to the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College spread over 468 hectares of land which was later renamed the Aligarh Muslim University.

So impressed was Raja Mahendra Pratap with the vision of Sir Syed that he decided to lease 3.04 acres of land to the AMU in 1929. Though it was a small share, this helped forge a strong bond between Hindus and Muslims. His commitment to the social cause and his zeal for the Marxist thought was such that Lenin himself is said to have invited him to Russia post the success of the Bolshevik revolution.

An independent MP from Mathura from the year 1955 to 1962, and a freedom fighter with a desire to weed out communal thinking, Mahendra Pratap despised all form of right-wing indoctrination. Little did he realize that one day his name would be used by right-wing leaders to turn an educational institute he so admired into a ground for religious polarisation.

Satish Gautam, BJP MP from Aligarh, whose party has professed commitment to ushering in a new era of development and inclusive growth, has decided to use AMU to instigate communal politics between Jats and Muslims, both communities being the main constituents of Aligarh.

Satish Gautam, a popular figure amongst Jats, possibly realises that the last time the two communities were provoked in Muzaffarnagar, it earned rich political dividends for his party. But in his overzealous endeavour to use AMU, he has conveniently forgotten to state some very important facts to his followers.

It would be judicious on the part of Satish Gautam, who has threatened to hold a rally at the gates of the AMU on the birth anniversary of Raja Mahendra Pratap on the 1st of December to list for his followers some of the most revolutionary non-Muslim thinkers from AMU. Before and during the freedom movement, both Muslim and Hindu kings and rulers united against the British and helped each other – these included funding educational institutions. AMU and the famous Banaras Hindu university were the two icons of this educational uprising that received patronage from both the communities.

Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, the founder of the Banaras Hindu University, had no qualms about accepting funds from Muslim rulers and elites.

If one were to accept the BJP MP’s logic, then each and every person who leased land for the 468 hectares of AMU will have to be celebrated just like each and every donor of BHU and thousands of other educational institutes in India.

Would the BJP MP not do a great service to the iconic institution by asking it to celebrate the birth anniversary of social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who was one of the main influences on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, or guide the non-Muslim students of Aligarh to the plaque of historian Ishwar Prasad, who belonged to the first batch of graduates from the AMU?

The Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University has written to the Education Minister Smriti Irani stating that the BJP’s decision to hold a rally would provoke communal tension; he has said the university is willing to diffuse the tension by holding a seminar on Raja Mahendra in the future. Smriti Irani displayed her feminist side by speaking out against the VC’s alleged decision to not allow female undergraduate students into the Central library – she called it an “insult to the daughters of the country.”

Now she should take the first step in saving the legacy of the likes of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya by weeding out the rogue elements who threaten to target educational institutions.

In the last few months, there seems to have been a meticulous plan to target educational bodies by fringe elements by planting fictitious stories and dividing them on religious lines. On this particular occasion, it would be wise for the powers that be to not allow local Samajwadi Party and BJP leaders to target the sacrosanct for a communal or political agenda. Both the HRD Minister and the Prime Minister, who has held education as one of the key areas of development in his agenda, should step forward to save the legacy of the great reformists from being converted into a communal experiment.

Rana Ayyub is an award-winning investigative journalist and political writer. She is working on a book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi which will be published in 2015.

Future in Safe Palms

November 27, 2014 by Nasheman

by Anand Mazgaonkar

Ms. Smriti Irani consulting her astrologer is her private matter. In fact most things she does might be private matters. Election victory does turn things into private property. Astrological advice is the wisest thing one can do. It is her sacrifice for the Nation. We all know she has very selflessly dedicated herself to the service of the nation.

It is not only an absolutely self-abnegating act on her part, she’s had the foresight to ensure that there will be no vacuum when Mr Pranab Mukherjee finishes his term. Shri Nathulal Vyas has put to rest a whole Nation’s anxiety and reassured us that there will be continuity after Mr Pranab Mukherjee. Our bull run of happy days, ‘Achhe Din’ continues endlessly. For the first time in our country’s history we have a President-in-waiting.

She is indeed the most eligible person we have for President. For long we’ve experienced a dearth of talent in Rashtrapati Bhavan. It’s been long since someone like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed or Giani Zail Singh adorned that office.

Who better can we have as President than someone who’s ‘educated’ at Yale, has acted in soap operas, and has been flexible in ‘altering’ her opinions and positions. Remember she was distressed by the violence in Gujarat in 2002, and the then Chief Minister’s handling of the situation, until better wisdom dawned on her and she ‘adapted’ her opinion. Since then its been ‘Achche Din’ for her, never mind loss of elections. She generously wants to share her fortune with the country now.

Where the Nation’s Education is concerned, never mind an unclear, distorted, mis-stated, over-stated personal educational record, a future foretold by astrologers is what must guide us.

Becoming Minister immediately after losing elections is easy, especially if you’re not alone. Remember Mr Arun Jaitley also belongs to that chosen breed? Becoming President in case of an election defeat may need a Constitutional amendment. But, that is a small matter if an astrologer has ordained it.

Luckily, astrology must have been the guiding principle in the whole Cabinet formation. Mr Nitin Gadkari (Qualification: Purti fame), Mr Nihal Chand Meghwal (Qualification: Rape charge), Mr D V Sadanand Gowda (Qualification: Successful defence of son from rape charge) are shining examples where business dealings, criminal charges or their children’s actions added a feather in their caps.

In any case our electoral system does need reform. Even Mr Arvind Kejriwal has been calling for it. MPs, and MLAs deciding who will hold the country’s highest office is absolutely irrational. That should be entrusted to a Khap Panchayat consisting of astrologers, religious luminaries and Corporate honchos.

Today, India’s Education is in safe hands, tomorrow every aspect of India’s future, including ceremonial future will be in safe hands. Mrs. Irani’s formidable record as Human Resources Development Minister inspires tremendous confidence. As HRD Minister she’s has not executed blindly, unilaterally, the Sangh Parivar’s Education and Culture agenda, she seems to have consulted astrologers too.

Hopefully, our next Budget may be determined by Mr Nathulal Vyas’ (or someone from his profession) reading of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s palm. Actually, Mr Vyas reading Adani’s or Ambani’s palm might be even better. Fotunately that’s how SBI’s $ 1 billion loan to Adanis Australian coal mining project seems to have been cleared.

(Anand Mazgaonkar is with Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, Gujarat and Adviser to National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM))

One sparrow does not herald a spring: PUDR

November 25, 2014 by Nasheman

Victims: Aasha Begam, mother of Shezad Ahmad with picture of her son. Next her Jabeena, wife of Shezad and his five year old son Shahid. Shezad was killed in the Machil Fake Encounter. Photo: Javed Dar

by D. Manjit and Asish Gupta

A rare instance of army convicting its own personnel for war crimes does not mean end of legal immunity enjoyed by the armed forces in what officialdom calls the “disturbed area”. That the government denies presence of armed conflict is of course in marked contrast to the reality on the ground where armed forces enjoy war-time legal immunity. Peoples Union for Democratic Rights has been arguing that the issue of justice in armed conflict areas in India is whether criminal court will exercise jurisdiction or security forces own court, over armed forces personnel for alleged crimes against civilians. Civilians have, in any case, no locus standi in armed forces court. Since the Supreme Court through its judgment on Pathribal case (2012) overturned every single tenet of the Constitution meant to protect the citizen against the abuse of power: it decided against the right to life; against fairness; against the right to equality before law; against the right to Constitutional remedies. It was therefore only another step in that direction that it overturned the foremost principle of law by empowering the accused agency to investigate, prosecute and judge its own crimes.

So given that the aggrieved find doors of criminal court closed to them and having no locus standi before armed forces court, thousands of cases of massacres, rapes, fake encounters, enforced disappearances, torture etc evade justice, perpetrators roam free and aggrieved nurse their wounds. To then project a single case of conviction by GCM as heralding whittling down of impunity is to rub salt in people’s wounds.

Seen in this light the conviction by the General Court Martial headed by Brigadier Deepak Mehra of five army personnel, including two officers, for April 29-30, 2010 fake encounter by luring and then killing three civilians to secure unit citation and cash reward, is a rarity not the rule. Machil killings acted as a catalyst for the 2010 agitation in Kashmir valley in which 126 persons were killed by the Indian security forces. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has publicly credited former Home Minister P Chidambaram and Lt General KT Parnaik who then headed the Northern Command for ensuring that in the Machil case justice was done.

The announcement of the conviction in Machil case is an exception which was used to mute criticism which arose because of the Budgam incident where trigger happy army personnel fired 126 rounds of bullets on five youths, killing two and injuring three others. There were 45 bullets wounds on the two who died. Demand for repeal of AFSPA and ending legal immunity for forces rose as assembly elections were announced and campaigning began. It was politically embarrassing. Now the GCM had convicted the five army personnel implicated in Machil killing two months back. But the process was not complete. Neither army’s confirming authority, in this case GOC-in-C of Northern Command, had confirmed the sentence, nor closure report filed with the Chief Judicial Magistrate as required.

Our apprehension that this was a PR exercise gain ground because in January army’s GCM had summarily acquitted a retired Major General, two Colonels, a Lt Colonel and a Subedar, belonging to 7 Rashtriya Rifles in the Pathribal case (2000), where CBI had investigated, gathered evidence and filed the charge-sheet. Recently, when Kunan Poshpora (1991) matter came up before the J&K High Court’s Srinagar bench the army, state and the Union government were one in opposing the re-opening of investigation into the notorious gangrape case carried out by personnel from army’s Rajputana Rifles. Thus 23 years after the commission of the mass rape and torture, and 18 months after the Kupwara court order for further investigations, the Indian State continues to deny criminality, and instead defames the victims.

PUDR is convinced that what victims of armed forces violence need are not empty gestures and platitudes but substantive and comprehensive change which brings to an end legal immunity enjoyed by armed forces personnel in “disturbed” areas.

D. Manjit and Asish Gupta are Secretaries of Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR).

The Kiss on the Brink

November 21, 2014 by Nasheman

Photo: Vijay Verma/PTI

by Nandini Chandra

Ye nautanki band karo (stop this burlesque drama)!
—-Comment on fb Kiss of Love page.

The kiss of love is indeed drama. To give it any other reading would be to miss the point. It is a drama with the partial lineaments of the Brechtian stage. This means that even though the immediate kneejerk response is that of fascination, it thwarts all identification with the actors. It promises eros, but manages to either domesticate the promise of sensuality or turn it into something non-erotic and painful. I am obviously speaking as a spectator, not from any privileged access to the individual experiences of the actors, which may have been full of joy and frisson. KOL has the virtue of what Walter Benjamin called “a moral exhibitionism, that we badly need.” He was of course writing about the surrealists, avant-garde poets whose raison d’être like many of their modernist peers was to produce a salutary shock effect:

To live in a glass house is a revolutionary virtue par excellence. It is also an intoxication, a moral exhibitionism, that we badly need. Discretion concerning one’s own existence, once an aristocratic virtue, has become more and more an affair of the petit-bourgeois parvenus.

Life in a glass house has since then come full circle, and acquired a different kind of virtue thanks to global social media, even to the point of banality. The compulsion for self-dramatization and libidinal free play on fb or twitter leaves a gaping hole in what is possible in the real world. KOL is then not some belated eruption of a European modernist moment in the periphery, but an attempt to realize postmodern social media. For one, the absent sexual revolution is always already there in the desultory cityscape or highways, not simply in the enclaves designed to be England or America. These erotogenic public places have existed in popular culture, and they have been inhabited in however unsatisfied and unsatisfactory ways, by working class couples since the beginning of modernity. This waiting for the day when public displays of affection will become acceptable in our part of the world is therefore a new anxiety, and is part of the same complex of desires that wants cities to be cleaned up and look nice.

The moment of liberalization gives some surplus to this always already there sexuality, reconstituting it by pushing the old sexual drives over the brink. This produces an unprecedented dynamic in which we are confronted like never before with the coming together of sexual pleasure and sexual violence. The KOL symbolizes an attempt to split off the two factions into neat oppositions, those for love, and those against love. This way of posing the problem is not their invention for sure. And even the self-appointed moral police, authors of this problem are not convinced of this opposition. We are not against love, but a certain western denomination of it, they clarify meekly.

It turns out that under the bharatiya definition of love, sex is rape. Again and again, in the comments on the fb page of KOL, this link is made unabashedly. This particular equation is not new, but it is able to “come out” and find a legitimate home only in a neoliberal conjuncture, thus making the attempt to separate the two moments of sex and sexual violence seem naïve. In crude terms, when the moral police riots against public displays of love, they are really expressing a form of sexuality as they understand it. Their violence is inseparable from their sexuality and their sexuality is inseparable from their violence. Thus even as the face-off staged by KOL fails to really teach a lesson, it nevertheless succeeds in making visible some of the internal contradictions of our social repression. From the misgivings and fears of the actors, to the fascination and discomfort of the wider social media audience, the drama is marked by alienation as its limiting horizon.

Here are a few cameos gleaned from eavesdropping on various fb posts and looking at the images of the Jhandewalan show in front of the RSS headquarters. A couple of participants had their faces covered. One girl was kissing through a scarf tied over her mouth. Another participant reported that she was afraid that the picture of her kiss with a girlfriend splashed in The Telegraph might catch her middle class parents unawares, and so she called her father to inform him that the kiss was not really full mouth on mouth, that they were just acting. The father of course surprised her by replying: “how does it matter if you did?” The anxiety of germs was apparent in another fb status, which wondered about the day when the spontaneity of such a protest would extend to total strangers, defying the prohibition of caste/class pollution and hygiene standards. More conservative liberal voices expressed their dismay at turning something sacred into a profane act. In short those who did not identify as moral police expressed their sense of unease and internal struggle with the invariable fetishization of something spontaneous.

But beyond the kneejerk sympathizers and squeamish liberals, lies the vast theatre of the moral police. It is here that the real Brechtian alienation effect intensifies, albeit without any seeming promise of truth. Going through the comments on the fb page of KOL is like swimming in a sea of depravity. It is like gaining access to the private diary of a psychopath except that here it speaks in the collective voice of an idealized and repressed national manhood that straddles the precariat-bourgeois man-woman divide. This unity of class and gender forces expresses itself in virulent negativity, as anti-woman, anti-Muslim, anti-communist and anti-gay. But despite the multiple identitarian thrusts of their abuses in truth there is a single logic: the fear and fantasy of incest.

Motherfucker and sisterfucker or their Indian equivalents may be the stuff of a generalized and light-hearted masculine culture almost the world over, yet when these abuses are broken out of their compound formations, and used in simple declarative sentences—“get your mothers and sisters along, fuck your mothers and sisters, we will fuck your mothers for you”— we begin to see that the habitual cuss words take on a life of their own. These ordinary girls and boys who look like their sisters, mothers and brothers provoke an unbearable contradiction. The immediate response is to say that they are calling out to be raped, and close upon the heels of this conclusion, is the distancing device of “we will rape them”. Often the two are blurred.

The incest fantasy and the rape fantasy turn on each other: women with long hair and big hips (bade baal aur bada gand), redolent of the familiar mother figure, are confirmed as sluts. These physical features are said to be proof that they have a lot of sex. Again, the heavier and dark skinned women are told that “inki to main free mein bhi na loon” (I won’t fuck them even for free). The abuses stumble and stagger through minute differentiations. Even as the women are identified as randis (sluts), they are said to be worse than veshyas (prostitutes) who will not kiss their clients even if paid.

The complex of feelings wavers between concern, condescension and threat of rape, a desperate process of trying to coming to terms with incestuous love, that ultimate prohibition: “They (the female kissers) are the ones raising the morale of the rapists and then they will go on protest marches against rapes”; “we will march with candles when these women get raped”; “the candle march party will be ready when these randis (sluts) get AIDS”.

Both are distinctively postmodern, i.e. neoliberal: the opponents’ avowal of conflicted, endlessly differentiated subject positions (as rapists, voyeurs, protectors of mothers and sisters, modern citizens and patriots) as well as the new sexual awakening under the sign of multiple and transgressive sexualities. On one level, these are just two symptoms fighting each other. But even as these two distinct forms share the same soil, to make an exact equivalence between them would be bad faith. Even though KOL is hopelessly symbolic, its impulse to embody the Sangh’s paranoia has had the beneficial effect of opening up a wound and to this degree should be celebrated.

Whether wittingly or unwittingly, the KOL people went out there and risked turning their pleasure into unpleasure. From subjects defying the barbaric logic of the Sangh, they turned into objects of a frenzied media spectacle. Through a mass voyeurizing of the kiss, they forced a very unhappy collective subjectivity out into the open. True, this does not help us move beyond a world of commodities. But political solidarities cannot be forged a priori either. Different kinds of objects floating in the capitalist ether have to work out the limits of their alienating moves, before they can find the glue. That is the overarching condition of both being in and being against capital: one cannot simply opt out of the spectacle. To that extent, one cannot possibly condemn the KOL for not being able to realize the Brechtian goal of alienating alienation. Their failure is our collective failure. Only by facing this failure, living with it, and negating it can we look toward some true reinvention.

Nanavati Commission: Another hoax on people of India!

November 20, 2014 by Nasheman

Photo: AFP

by Fr. Cedric Prakash

Finally, on November 18, 2014, exactly 12 years 8 months and 12 days after it was first constituted by the Gujarat Government on March 6,h 2002 to probe the burning of the Godhra train and the subsequent carnage which broke out in several parts of Gujarat, the Commission headed by GT Nanavati (a former judge of the Supreme Court of India) submitted its report to the current Chief Minister of Gujarat, Anandiben Patel.

It was originally known as the KG Shah Commission but it was later reconstituted to include Justice Nanavati, after several civil rights groups and individuals protested over the closeness that Justice Shah had with Narendra Modi. Justice Shah died in 2008; and Justice Akshay H. Mehta (who granted bail to Babu Bajrangi in the Naroda Patiya case) was appointed on April 5, 2008 to be a member of this Commission.

The content of this more than 2000-page report has not yet been made public but if one goes by the grapevine and what seems to be “leaked out” to sections of the media, then one can very easily conclude the following: that those really responsible for the law and order in the State have been given a ‘clean chit’; that the burning of S-6 Coach of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, just outside the Godhra railway station was a ‘meticulously planned act of conspiracy’ (this was already said in the Commission’s interim report in 2008); and finally the only people who seemed to be ‘responsible’ for not preventing or controlling the violence are some lower rung policemen and some apparently anti-social elements.

The Commission which has claimed to have looked into 4,160 cases of violence in Gujarat between February 27th and May 31st 2002 also states that it has gone through 46,000 affidavits submitted by over 4,000 victims of the violence that paralysed Gujarat and continues to be one of the darkest and bloodiest chapters of independent India. It was given 24 extensions (of almost six months each) before it submitted its report.

Till July 2012, the Commission ran up an expenditure bill of more than Rs 5.00 crore with an additional miscellaneous expense of Rs 1.62 crore. It has been past two-and-a-half years since; so the final cost of this Commission (including the disguised expenditure) will surely run to a mind-boggling amount and all at the cost of the state exchequer (a Gujarati newspaper puts a conservative cost of Rs.9.00 crore).

Several concerned citizens like the late Mukul Sinha of Jan Sangharsh Manch, Sanjiv Bhatt and others have tried their level best to bring the Commission – any thinking citizen will know – on track and ensure that truth prevails and that the victim-survivors are given justice. The Commission has been full of inconsistencies, lapses and loopholes. Sinha, who cross-examined several witnesses, has consistently demanded that Modi, who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat at that time, had to be interrogated, too. Why the Commission took the pains to deny this request from Sinha and several others does not leave much room for doubt!

Even though the Commission has submitted its report, many for the victim-survivors (and several others who have accompanied them) are the Gujarat Carnage of 2002 is not a closed chapter. The relentless pursuit for truth and justice will continue until those who presided over this carnage are brought to book. Only then, will they truly be able to sing our motto emblazoned on our national emblem “satyameva jayate” (truth alone triumphs!)

Fr. Cedric Prakash is the Director of Prashant, the Ahmedabad-based Jesuit Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace.

The Siege of Julian Assange is a Farce

November 18, 2014 by Nasheman

The persecution of Julian Assange must end, writes Pilger.

by John Pilger

The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would “actively welcome” the Swedish prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that”. The tone was impatient.

The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 – even though Swedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for Sweden and the UK. The documentary evidence of a threat to Assange’s life and freedom from the United States – should he leave the embassy – is overwhelming. On May 14 this year, US court files revealed that a “multi subject investigation” against Assange was “active and ongoing”.

Ny has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, the Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US before the European Arrest Warrant was issued.

Perhaps an explanation is that, contrary to its reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and WikiLeaks cables. In the summer of 2010, Assange had been in Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in Afghanistan – in which Sweden had forces under US command.

The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up; and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.

For his part in disclosing how US soldiers murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians, the heroic soldier Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning received a sentence of 35 years, having been held for more than a thousand days in conditions which, according to the UN Special Rapporteur, amounted to torture.

Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. Threats of capture and assassination became the currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous slur that Assange was a “cyber-terrorist”. Anyone doubting the kind of US ruthlessness he can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president’s plane last year – wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden.

According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list”. Washington’s bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is “unprecedented in scale and nature”. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has spent four years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal”. Under President Obama, more whistleblowers have been prosecuted than under all other US presidents combined. Even before the verdict was announced in the trial of Chelsea Manning, Obama had pronounced the whisletblower guilty.

“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”

There are signs that the Swedish public and legal community do not support prosecutor’s Marianne Ny’s intransigence. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”

Why won’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him?

This week, the Swedish Court of Appeal will decide whether to order Ny to hand over the SMS messages; or the matter will go to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice. In high farce, Assange’s Swedish lawyers have been allowed only to “review” the SMS messages, which they had to memorise.

One of the women’s messages makes clear that she did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him”. She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test”. She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.)

Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” That they were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident – whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga worthy of Kafka.

For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On 20 August 2010, the Swedish police opened a “rape investigation” and immediately – and unlawfully – told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for Assange’s arrest for the “rape of two women”. This was the news that went round the world.

In Washington, a smiling US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me”. Twitter accounts associated with the Pentagon described Assange as a “rapist” and a “fugitive”.

Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.” The file was closed.

Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well. She, too, was involved with the Social Democrats.

On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case. Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.” Assange’s Australian barrister, James Catlin, responded, “This is a laughing stock… it’s as if they make it up as they go along.”

On the day Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service (“MUST”) publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers.” Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAP, had been told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.

For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the new investigation to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq “War Logs”, based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee. His lawyer in Stockholm asked Ny if she had any objection to his leaving the country. She said he was free to leave.

Inexplicably, as soon as he left Sweden – at the height of media and public interest in the WikiLeaks disclosures – Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert” normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals. Put out in five languages around the world, it ensured a media frenzy.

Assange attended a police station in London, was arrested and spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on £340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court. He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned by Ny in London, pointing out that she had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard used for that purpose. She refused.

Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: “The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction… The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will. [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”

This question remained unanswered as Ny deployed the European Arrest Warrant, a draconian product of the “war on terror” supposedly designed to catch terrorists and organised criminals. The EAW had abolished the obligation on a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a crime. More than a thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have anything to do with potential “terror” charges. Most are issued for trivial offences, such as overdue bank charges and fines. Many of those extradited face months in prison without charge. There have been a number of shocking miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have been highly critical.

The Assange case finally reached the UK Supreme Court in May 2012. In a judgement that upheld the EAW – whose rigid demands had left the courts almost no room for manoeuvre – the judges found that European prosecutors could issue extradition warrants in the UK without any judicial oversight, even though Parliament intended otherwise. They made clear that Parliament had been “misled” by the Blair government. The court was split, 5-2, and consequently found against Assange.

However, the Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, made one mistake. He applied the Vienna Convention on treaty interpretation, allowing for state practice to override the letter of the law. As Assange’s barrister, Dinah Rose QC, pointed out, this did not apply to the EAW.

The Supreme Court only recognised this crucial error when it dealt with another appeal against the EAW in November last year. The Assange decision had been wrong, but it was too late to go back.

Assange’s choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety. Supported by most of Latin America, the courageous government of Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence and legal advice that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington. The Labor government of prime minister Julia Gillard had even threatened to take away his passport.

Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights lawyer who represents Assange in London, wrote to the then Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd: “Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions… it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”

It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice was drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks were aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, to freedom of speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious.

Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”. It became part of his marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.

With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous”. They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”.

The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament will eventually vote on a reformed EAW. The draconian catch-all used against him could not happen now; charges would have to be brought and “questioning” would be insufficient grounds for extradition. “His case has been won lock, stock and barrel,” Gareth Peirce told me, “these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognises as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit. And the genuineness of Ecuador’s offer of sanctuary is not questioned by the UK or Sweden.”

On 18 March 2008, a war on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was foretold in a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch”. It described a detailed plan to destroy the feeling of “trust” which is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”. Silencing and criminalising this rare source of independent journalism was the aim, smear the method. Hell hath no fury like great power scorned.

John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism’s highest award, that of “Journalist of the Year,” for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.

A look at state of higher education under Smriti Irani

November 14, 2014 by Nasheman

The more things change…the more they remain the same. That seems to be the case of the new govt’s vision for higer education

by Purushottam Agrawal

The minister for human resource development, Smriti Irani, along with her mandarins and the vice-chancellors of all central universities was in a two-day retreat in September in Chandigarh. It is not surprising that the electronic media neither reported nor discussed the event. After all, it has fast ‘evolved’ from infotainment to unabashed comedy and live cockfighting. But, it did come as a surprise that this meeting was not reported adequately even in large sections of the print media.

Well, in defence of our journalistic class, one has to say nothing dramatic or curious happened at this retreat. Given Modi’s ballistic campaigning and general pretence that his government is different from all regimes independent India has seen (after all, ‘nothing’ happened in 60 years), the media was probably looking for some dramatic departures, some important disjunctions from the UPA policy framework on education.

What we got instead was smooth continuity, informed by a mindless technocracy, as far as the higher education policy is concerned.

From the point of view of the future of our higher education, this continuity of perspective is very important. Departures would, of course, have been interesting, but continuity is curious, to say the least. One recalls the great detective who reminded Inspector Gregory, while working on ‘The silver Blaze’ case, that the fact that the dog did nothing in the night-time was in fact the curious incident.

The continuity of UPA and NDA policies in many areas is becoming increasingly clear. In case of education the consensus amongst the ‘forward looking’ ruling elite had become clear decades ago when the nomenclature of the ministry was changed from education to HRD. Now, the state is not looking at educating its citizens, it is not investing in human individuals; rather it is investing in a resource which happens to be human.

The liberal framework gave way to the managerial one even without a whimper in political circles, just as education was sought to be reduced to science, technology and management. In fact, there is little scope in such an approach even for science in its fundamental sense. There is hardly any enthusiastic encouragement from the official side for fundamental and ‘non-pragmatic’ research in science. For the ruling elite, corporate bosses and most of the middle class these days, science is nothing but a euphemism for useful technology.

Another shared trait between the NGO-friendly, ‘inclusive’ UPA government and the ‘no-nonsense’ nationalist one under PM Modi is the obsession with controlling everything and propagating the great ideal of ‘one size fits all’, in the sphere of ‘human resource development’. The present minister, while paying lip service to the idea of autonomy of universities, still got a draft ‘single Act’ for all central universities circulated for ‘suggestions’. This Act is based on the recommendations of the Pathan committee, which was formed in 2013 (when Kapil Sibal was the HRD minister) with the clear mandate of suggesting ways of implementing the ministerial motto of ‘one size fits all’ and had recommended, inter alia, doing away with the office of chancellor, and having in its place a council of vice-chancellors headed by, no prizes for guessing, the minister for HRD! There is not even the veneer of autonomy here: the government must control all aspects of university life.

Another brain wave, ostensibly egalitarian and democratic (and common to UPA and NDA dispensations) is to have common admission and common curriculum for all the central universities in order to facilitate student and faculty mobility. Again, the idea of only technology and management being worthy of any serious consideration is implicit here. In the field of humanities and social sciences, it will be an extremely harmful step. Even in science, technology and management, the inclinations and orientations of various departments do and should influence their research programmes and priorities.

In social sciences and humanities, at any rate, interpretations matter a lot, and institutions of higher learning make their distinct mark by offering different interpretations to the same or similar data. This diversity of views and approaches enlivens the field of knowledge and enriches the collective wisdom of society. In education systems the world over, individual teachers are encouraged to offer new courses and identify new focus areas in the ongoing teaching programmes every semester. In contrast, our political and administrative bosses want 40 central universities to teach the same text, same poets, same set of research questions, same priorities to each and every student. If, by ‘common curriculum’, something else is meant, I would love to be enlightened.

Sibal also has to his credit the great idea of appointing vice-chancellors through advertisements and interviews. There is a world of difference between someone being nominated without having applied, and someone getting through after an interview. The supreme court has categorically stated that notwithstanding the funding from government, the relationship between the government and university professors and vice-chancellors is not that of master and servant. Under the guidance of Sibal, for the newly established central universities, the nomination method was replaced with selection method in order to make the master-servant point in a subtle psychological manner to be followed with legal steps in due course. Once the idea of a single act and a council headed by the minister, governing the matters of all central universities is put to practice, the Sibalian dream of ‘one size fits all’ would be happily realised. The gods of efficiency and good governance would have slain the demons of independent and critical research and teaching.

If she wants to reform education, Irani would do well to break from this Sibalian mould. Participating in a couple of TV debates about her suitability as the minister of HRD, as she does not possess higher degrees, I had made two points. First, in any democracy, ministers are supposed to provide direction and perspective, and this has nothing to do with higher degrees. In fact, the question of formal qualification is more pertinent in the context of high-level bureaucrats, i.e., IAS officers, who having passed one examination in life supposedly acquire expertise on everything from agricultural policy to rocketry to the finer points of pedagogy. Incidentally, in the mid 1950s, the administration in the education ministry was headed by a professor. Maulana Azad, as education minister, had appointed the distinguished academic Prof. Humayun Kabir as education secretary. It would be interesting to know when and how the IAS lobby captured this position. Irani may look at the idea of reviving the practice of having experts run higher education in the country.

The second point was about the standards of education. I believe that no human being can create more drift and confusion in our education system than what has been achieved by US-trained top-class ‘intellectuals’ under the benign guidance of Manmohan Singh. Irani can only take things in a better direction, provided she chooses to act differently and see through the designs of control-freak bureaucrats.

But, given the convergence of thinking on higher education between UPA and NDA as reflected during the Chandigarh retreat, one is probably asking for the moon.

The story appeared in November 1-15, 2014 issue of Governance Now.

Remembering MSS Pandian, the Mentor and Teacher Extraordinaire

November 12, 2014 by Nasheman

Noted scholar and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Professor M.S.S. Pandian, considered an authority on the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, passed away on 10th November 14, following a cardiac arrest. Pandian, 57, died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, where he was rushed following a cardiac arrest. He is survived by his wife S. Anandhi and a daughter.

by Aakshi Magazine

For those of us who were taught by him, MSS Pandian left an indelible mark, and his sudden death is hard to process.

There was nothing intimidating about Pandian, despite his scholarship. He was that rare academic whose academics was never isolated from his politics, it actually stemmed from it. He brought his politics to the classroom, which made his classes unique.

His work on caste in Tamil politics ( Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political), and the lens with which he looked at history and politics, is subversive in a society (and academia) where caste is always masked and never discussed directly for what it is. So was his non-nationalistic worldview. This could not have been easy to do. Apart from being a supporter of the Tamil Eelam struggle, in recent years, he also became a keen follower and supporter of the Kashmir struggle for azadi. Pandian could take these stands and discuss them with students, and not be worried that he was being “simplistic” as academics tend to be. For him, complexity of ideas did not mean cynicism, especially towards movements for justice and equality. Yet his academics was never activist jargon either.

I was taught by him during my Master’s degree in JNU. He had also joined the same year, and his two classes in which he taught us the ideas of Phule, Periyar, Ambedkar as well as Nationalism and Regional movements, were revelatory. He made us question and think, and made History relevant in a way nothing else did. During my Master’s I questioned a lot of things about academics, and it was Pandian’s classes which made me feel understood, even as they taught me so much.

It wasn’t just what he taught, but also how he taught, and I think we should talk about this so that we do not forget it. Pandian never intimidated anyone and made academic ideas accessible. No jargon, so much depth, but also respecting the fact that each student’s intelligence (and interest) is different. We had to write a seminar paper in our final semester and I remember how tense he was because all of us were struggling with writing a long paper for the first time. I remember one particular discussion in which a very unsure and nervous student told Pandian what his seminar paper would be on. Pandian was gentle with him, asking him questions in accordance with his idea, which helped make his paper clearer. By the end of the semester, his seminar paper had grown and developed, but in his own way. I don’t think any other teacher would have had this patience, or this understanding. This was his gift. I know of a friend who he mentored and guided through her M.Phil thesis even though he had never even met her then, nor was she even from the University where he taught. I know there must be more stories like this.

To me too, he has been a mentor. He was always helpful and encouraging, writing recommendations when I needed them, helping me get an internship, or even helping in “breaking” a news story. He edited the draft of my PhD proposal with keen interest, and was always an email away even though we had never actually met again since my Master’s 3 years ago. I also remember a draft of a work on films that he had once talked about and then shared with me, and also mentioned something on Kashmir, work which we would not get to see.

Sometimes, Pandian would send out emails about his daughter to his students, and we could sense he was perhaps alone staying in Delhi. It must have been hard for him. The last email he sent was about a drawing his daughter had made in class about equality and justice. There were parts of his personality which perhaps we will never understand. There was a phase when he would write un-thought out comments on student’s walls on facebook, which he would later apologize for.

Once when I hadn’t got admission to a PhD programme I had applied to, he wrote- “some we win, most we lose”. For us shocked by his sudden death, perhaps he would say- “take it easy”. My thoughts are with his wife and his daughter. Maybe knowing so many mourn with them will give them strength.

The author is a research scholar at University of St Andrews, Scotland and independent film critic.