Opinion – Page 6

Why Baltimore Rebelled

April 29, 2015 by Nasheman

The most salient thing in Baltimore isn’t the damage caused by protestors, but the grinding poverty and neglect wrought by capital.

A protester on a bicycle in front of a burning CVS drug store, during clashes in Baltimore yesterday. Jim Bourg / Reuters

by Shawn Gude, Jacobin

Days before social unrest in Baltimore reached levels unseen in decades, Dan Rodricks, the Baltimore Sun‘s resident liberal columnist, painted a picture of Saturday afternoon’s march against police violence. Peaceful. Family friendly. An expression of justifiable anger.

But he concluded somberly: “And as I write those words, the Freddie Gray march turned violent . . .”

“The dream of the Next Baltimore is cracked.”

What was the cause of Rodricks’s lamentations? The destruction of a handful of police cars, it seems, and the smashed windows of some businesses in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

And the “Next Baltimore” occupying his imagination? A vision built not on pouring investment into long-neglected communities, but attracting young professionals and tourists. It’s a vision that left intact racial and class inequality — even as it trumpeted inclusiveness and opportunities to come.

Baltimore, then, is like so many other cities with their own Freddie Grays: a place in which private capital has left enormous sections of the city to rot, where a chasm separates the life chances of black and white residents — and where cops brutally patrol a “disposable” population.

Yesterday’s uprising occurred the same day Gray, the twenty-five-year-old whose spine was almost completely severed while in police custody, was laid to rest. Protests haven’t ceased since his April 19 death.

The rebellion began when police amassed at a West Baltimore mall, citing calls by students on social media for a “purge” and after issuing histrionic reports of a “gang partnership” to injure police. In the acute (if imbalanced) melee that ensued, police sprayed tear gas and shot rubber bullets; the young crowd threw bricks and water bottles. (Some police responded by chucking the objects back.)

Spilling into adjoining neighborhoods, the demonstration escalated through the late afternoon and early evening. When I arrived around 5:30 at Pennsylvania and North, about a mile south of the mall, a pall of smoke obscured the road. I passed a couple burned-out police vehicles.

The source of the smoke was a looted CVS at the intersection. Some protesters screamed at the line of police arrayed across the road, but the crowd had thinned substantially. The occasional demonstrator bolted back after getting pepper sprayed. An assortment of packaged snacks, presumably from the pharmacy, were strewn across the ground.

Intent on dispersing the remaining demonstrators and spectators, riot police fired flaming smoke bombs. They advanced in unison, wooden batons clacking against their plastic shields, chanting an unnerving cry: “Move back, move back, move back.”

Further down, at the next intersection, it was a picture of catharsis and unadulterated joy: two young men dancing to Michael Jackson — one in the middle of the street, the other on top of a yellow truck — the music mixing with the sounds of fire engines.

But of the entire scene, the most salient thing wasn’t the destruction wrought by protestors — the cop car demolished, the payday loan store smashed up — but by capital: the decrepit, boarded-up row houses, hovels, and vacants in a city full of them.

These are the streets in which Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has now declareda state of emergency, the same streets that would suffer from his austerity. They are the streets that have endured astronomic unemployment rates for decades, even as Democrats have run the city unrivaled. And they are the streets where police folded up Freddie Gray’s body “like origami,” then restrained him with leg irons in the back of a police van and delayed calling for an ambulance.

After Saturday’s protests, Baltimore officials blamed property destruction on “outside agitators” (a charge that reeked of both red-baiting and hackneyed desperation). On Monday night, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake embraced a new term of abuse — “thugs” — and imposed a weeklong curfew. And still the results of the Gray investigation have yet to be released.

Through it all, the local governing elite has danced the liberal two-step: denounce the extremists, then placate with reassurances that reform is on the way — that grievances are justified, but only orderly marches are legitimate acts of protest. Anything else would be a “disservice” to the memory of Freddie Gray.

Yet the unrest in Baltimore is a response to the unmitigated failure of this approach. The snails-pace of police reform at the Maryland Legislature didn’t spark an uprising. When Tyrone West died at the hands of police, and when Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts insisted that they were “changing and adapting the organization” after the cops got off scot-free, Baltimoreans didn’t revolt. And when police faced no charges in the death of Anthony Anderson, Charm City residents showed remarkable restraint.

But police immunity and dehumanizing poverty can only coexist for so long. If the future is uncertain, one thing is clear: it is only through resistance and struggle that a new, more just Baltimore will be born.

The science behind the Nepal earthquake

April 28, 2015 by Nasheman

Motorcyclists use both sides of a wide crack in the Koteshwor-Suryabinayak Highway caused by the earthquake in the Bhaktapur area near Kathmandu, Nepal on 26 April, 2015 — twenty four hours after a devastating quake which so far has taken the lives of at least 2,400. EPA/Hemanta Shrestha

by Mike Sandiford, CP Rajendran & Kristin Morell, The Conversation

Saturday’s Nepal earthquake has destroyed housing in Kathmandu, damaged World Heritage sites, and triggered deadly avalanches around Mount Everest. The death toll is already reported as being in the many thousands. Given past experience, it would not surprise if it were to reach the many tens of thousands when everyone is accounted for.

Nepal is particularly prone to earthquakes. It sits on the boundary of two massive tectonic plates – the Indo-Australian and Asian plates. It is the collision of these plates that has produced the Himalaya mountains, and with them, earthquakes.

Our research in the Himalaya is beginning to shed light on these massive processes, and understand the threat they pose to local people.

The science of earthquakes

The April 25 quake measured 7.8 on the moment magnitude scale, the largest since the 1934 Bihar quake, which measured 8.2 and killed around 10,000 people. Another quake in Kashmir in 2005, measuring 7.6, killed around 80,000 people.

These quakes are a dramatic manifestation of the ongoing convergence between the Indo-Australian and Asian tectonic plates that has progressively built the Himalayas over the last 50 million years.

Belts of earthquakes (yellow) surround the Indo-Australian plate. Mike Sandiford

They are but one reminder of the hazards faced by the communities that live in these mountains. Other ongoing hazards include floods and monsoonal landslides, as exemplified by the Kedarnath disaster of 2013 which killed more than 5,000 people.

Earthquakes occur when strain builds up in Earth’s crust until it gives way, usually along old fault lines. In this case the strain is built by the collision or convergence of two plates.

A number of factors made this quake a recipe for catastrophe. It was shallow: an estimated 15km below the surface at the quake’s epicentre. It saw a large movement of the earth (a maximum of 3m). And the ruptured part of the fault plane extended under a densely populated area in Kathmandu.

From the preliminary analysis of the seismic records we already know that the rupture initiated in an area about 70km north west of Kathmandu, with slip on a shallow dipping fault that gets deeper as you move further north.

Over about a minute, the rupture propagated east by some 130km and south by around 60km, breaking a fault segment some 15,000 square kilometres in area, with as much as 3m slip in places.

The plates across this segment of the Himalaya are converging at a rate of about 2cm this year. This slip released the equivalent of about a century of built up strain.

Predicting quakes

While the occurrence of large earthquakes in this region is not unexpected, the seismological community still has little useful understanding of how to predict the specific details of such ruptures. While the statistical character of earthquake sequences is well understood, we are still unable to predict individual events.

Questions as to why such a large earthquake, in this specific location at this time, and not elsewhere along the Himalaya, continue to baffle the research community, and make for problematic challenge of better targeted hazard preparedness and mitigation strategies.

But with each new quake researchers are gaining valuable new insights. As exemplified by the ready availability of quality data and analysis in near real time provided by organisations such as the United States Geological Survey and Geoscience Australia, the global network of geophysical monitoring is providing an ever more detailed picture of how the earth beneath our feet is behaving.

Seismic gaps

New techniques are also helping us read the record of past earthquakes with ever greater accuracy. Our research collaboration – involving the University of Melbourne, the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and the Indian Institute of Science in India, the University of Victoria in Canada, and the Bhutan Government – is studying the earthquake geology of adjacent areas of the Himalaya in the state of Uttarakhand in India and in Bhutan.

Together we are mapping indicators of tectonic activity that link the earthquake time-scale (from seconds to decades) to the geological time-scale (hundred of thousands to millions of years).

Using new digital topography datasets, new ways of dating landscape features and by harnessing the rapidly growing power of computer simulation, we have been able to show how large historical ruptures and earthquakes correlate with segmentation of the Himalayan front reflected in its geological makeup.

This is shedding new light on so-called seismic gaps, where the absence of large historical ruptures makes for very significant concern. You can read our latest research here.

The most prominent segment of the Himalayan front not to have ruptured in a major earthquake during the last 200–500 years, the 700-km-long “central seismic gap” in Uttarakhand, is home to more than 10 million people. It is crucial to understand if it is overdue for a great earthquake.

Our work in Uttarakhand and elsewhere is revealing how the rupture lengths and magnitude of Himalayan quakes is controlled by long-lived geological structures. While little comfort to those dealing with the aftermath of Saturday’s tragedy, it is part of a growing effort from the international research community to better understand earthquakes and so help mitigate the impact of future events.

Funded as part of the Australian Indian Strategic Research Fund and DFAT aid programs, our collaborative work is a reflection of the commitment of our governments to international earthquake research.

Mike Sandiford is a Professor of Geology and Director of Melbourne Energy Institute at University of Melbourne. CP Rajendran is a Professor, Geodynamics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. Kristin Morell is an Assistant Professor, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at University of Victoria.

Cow slaughter ban for scientific animal husbandry or for cultural nationalist state?

April 23, 2015 by Nasheman

REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade

by Irfan Engineer

In the previous articles we saw that the campaign by the Hindu nationalist organizations for cow protection is merely instrumental to achieve their political objective, establish cultural hegemony of the upper caste and declare the hierarchical and feudal culture privileging the upper caste as the national culture. The amendments passed by the Maharashtra Assembly in 1995 to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act, 1976, and which received Presidential assent in 2015 (hereafter referred to as “the 2015 Act”), too are not to protect the cow and its progeny despite the stated objectives couched language of scientific organization of agriculture and animal husbandry. The political objective of the 2015 Act is instrumental – to impose the hegemony of upper caste culture and empower extremist, anarchic and fringe Hindu nationalist groups to intimidate the marginalized sections, in particular, the Muslims on one hand, and to construct a hegemonic and authoritarian culture monitoring state.

While the 1976 Animal preservation Act, as amended in 1988 prohibited only cow (including male and female calves) slaughter, with Section 4 providing, “Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force or any usage or custom to the contrary, no person shall slaughter cause to be slaughtered or offer for slaughter any cow, in any place in the State of Maharashtra” and provided for punishment which may extend to six months with or without fine upto Rs.1,000/-. The other provisions of the 1976 Act provided for regulation of slaughter of scheduled animal by appointing competent authority.

The 2015 Act transforms a democratic constitutional state into an authoritarian cultural state with immense powers and a machinery to peep into the kitchens, refrigerator and dining tables of the citizens of the country. To include bulls and bullocks along with the cow in the animals that cannot be slaughtered is only a side objective. What has been missed is that the 2015 Act is as draconian as say the UAPA or TADA or POTA and the recent GujCOCA. The 2015 Act will encourage the vigilante actions of the fringe and mainstream Hindu nationalist organizations in stopping vehicles transporting cattle (not necessarily for slaughter), wherein either the owner/deliverer/seller of the cattle or receiver/buyer of the consignment of the cattle or the driver or the owner of the vehicle is a Muslim. The vigilante group, mostly consisting of 4-6 men, then pull out the driver if he is a Muslim, demand the documents, tear them into pieces, loot the cattle (even if not cow or progeny), beat up the Muslim driver, call the police, get a false case registered and the vehicle confiscated and finally get the media to cover that Muslims were taking cow to slaughter house. This writer was told about such cases in Gujarat, Rajasthan, MP and Maharashtra by the victims of the vigilante action. The vigilante action increases around Eid-uz-Zuha (bakri Eid). That is how media regularly “reports” which feeds into the stereo-typical relation between Muslims and cow slaughter. The 2015 Act will encourage this vigilantism.

The state and the holy cow:

The state relies on Article 48 of the Constitution of India in support of the 2015 Act. Article 48 is in Part IV of Constitution which is on Directive Principles of State Policy and non-justiciable. Art. 48 states – “The State shall endeavour to organize agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.” The state submitted to the Bombay High Court that it brought in the 2015 Act to protect the cow and its progeny due to their many benefits like milk, dung and urine in making pest repellents and medicinal products. (Thomas, 2015) However, despite the claim of the state, there are no credible studies and research to back its claim. As far as use of bullock as draught animal is concerned, and milk and dung are cited as useful product, then, on that ground slaughter of most mammals should be banned, including buffaloes, goats, horses, camels, etc. Reliance is placed on ancient Vedic texts. Even the Report of the National Commission on Cattle heavily quotes from Vedic texts and Smrities to “prove” that cow is a useful animal (Justice Lodha, 2015)! It is very difficult, if not impossible, to justify ban cow slaughter without bringing in religious traditions followed by the upper-caste elite.

If the only objective of the 2015 Act is to preserve the cattle wealth of Maharashtra for its milk, dung and urine products, and utility of bullocks as a draught animal, why penalize even possession of meat of cow and progeny imported from outside the state (Sec. 5D)? Surely importing meat from outside Maharashtra does not deplete the cattle wealth or the milk, dung and urine within Maharashtra! On the other hand, why the export of cow and its progeny outside Maharashtra should be permitted for all other purposes except for slaughter (sec. 5A)? Whether the cow and its progeny are exported for slaughter or for any other purpose, Maharashtra would lose its cattle wealth along with its milk, dung and urine.

The objective of the 2015 Act goes beyond preservation of cow, its progeny and the milk, dung and urine. The real objective of the 2015 Act is to become an instrument of oppression in the hands of police and the executive objective. Consider some of provisions of the Act, e.g., sections 5A, 5B, and 5C of the 2015 Act which outlaws transportation of cow and progeny for purpose of slaughter, trading cow and progeny for the purpose of slaughter and being in possession of flesh of cow, bull or bullock. After outlawing the aforesaid activities, the 2015 Act authorizes any police officer not below the rank of sub-inspector, or any person authorized in this behalf by the State Government to enter, stop and search or authorize any person to enter, stop and search any vehicle used or even intended to be used for the export of cow and progeny; seize or authorize seizure of cow and progeny in respect of which it is suspected that they are in contravention of Sec. 5A, 5B or 5C; and in order to effect search and seizure operations, can even break open any premises as per Sec. 100 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The vigilante groups functioning illegally but with impunity could now be legally authorized by a compliant police officer. As the police officer can effect seizure or authorize seizure of even those cows and progeny which were intended to be sold or purchased or transported for slaughter. The allegation of “intention” can be freely made but is difficult to defend.

The quantum of punishment for contravention of the provisions has also been increased 10 times – from six months to five years, with a minimum punishment of six months and fine has been increased by ten times too – from one thousand to ten thousand with minimum fine to be rupees one thousand. The maximum punishment in the law before amendment would now be the minimum punishment. If you are in possession of small quantity of narcotic or psychotropic drugs, the chances are that you may be send to a rehabilitation centre and let off. However, if you are in possession of flesh of cow or progeny, chances are that you may be sentenced to a jail term upto one year! To be in possession of flesh of cow and progeny is no less serious offence than being in possession of contraband drugs, and perhaps more serious! The Hindu Nationalist vigilante groups are less concerned about Hindus getting addicted to drugs and concerned more with citizens of Maharashtra being in possession of flesh of cow and progeny. Their flesh would now be considered contraband substance! The offence is non-bailable.

The most draconian provision of the Act is that the burden of proving that the slaughter, transport, export outside the State, sale, purchase or possession of flesh of cow, bull or bullock was not in contravention of the provisions of the 2015Act, would be on the accused! In Indian criminal jurisprudence, the accused is always presumed to be innocent till proved guilty. The exception to this rule is only in very serious offences and under special laws or exceptional circumstances, e.g. in UAPA or in counter-terrorism legislations. Even in cases of murder or defending oneself against the charge of sedition, there would be presumption of innocence and it would be for the prosecution to prove the guilt. How would an accused from very poor background and who is accused of slaughtering, transporting, exporting out of state or selling or purchasing or possessing flesh of cow and progeny prove his/her innocence? The state or vigilantes so authorized can break open your house, enter your kitchen, dining table (or floor in most cases) peep inside your refrigerator and seize “contraband” substance – flesh/meat and put you behind bars and for the prime of the accused life s/he would be fighting from within the prison walls to prove her/his innocence! The draconian legislation is a powerful tool in the hands of vigilante groups and state to target any individual, group or community.

As soon as the 2015 Act came into force, Hindu nationalist vigilante groups became even more active. The vigilante groups having little respect for rule of law and the Constitution of India, immediately tested the law by launching complaints targeting Muslims in Malegaon, a Muslim majority town in North Maharashtra. Police acted upon the complaint and arrested the accused. Malegaon police told Tabassum Barnagarwala (2015) (Cows Say Cheese) “After the ban came into force, Hindu groups were after us to investigate Muslim households… Also, people may try to settle their personal battles by registering false complaints. A Hindu can come and say that a Muslim is keeping cows for slaughter. What do we do in such a case?” Malegaon police directed the Muslims of the town who kept cows as their pets to register their animals with a photograph of the owner and all the cows. The police started maintaining an additional register titled – Gaay, Bail, Bachhara (cow, bull and calf) Register. The police in Malegaon are busy carrying out a census of Muslims possessing cows and monitoring trade and movement. Hindus owning cows are not required to register as the presumption is the only Muslim sell cows and progeny for slaughter – Hindus do not!

Police in Maharashtra despite their extremely limited numbers and challenging task of fighting anti-dalit violence, terrorism, drug proliferation, land mafia, increasing sexual assaults on women, domestic violence, communal violence, and other organized crimes, will be busy securing the ministers, Hindu nationalist instigators and the cows. The victims of the 2015 Act, we are given to understand, would be primarily Muslims. The victims of the 2015 Act is foremost our criminal jurisprudence, democracy, and our Constitutional values. The 2015 Act in the hands of police and vigilante groups can become instrument of oppression of not only Muslims, but also dalits and other marginalized sections of society. Dalits will not only be affected as they will lose their cheap source of proteins or suffer economically as they are involved in manufacturing of leather goods. Police or vigilante groups may enter any house having meat of lamb or any other animal or in a shop of meat vendor, seize the flesh and produce the person before court. Then it would be on the accused to prove her/his innocence. Let us watch whether the police use the 2015 Act to renegotiate their hafta!

Secular movement has also opposed the 2015 Act on the terrain of defending the rights of minorities, particularly Muslims. The 2015 Act is more than that. The state ruled by followers of Hindutva ideology are today prescribing and monitoring the food we eat. What next? Prescribing and monitoring clothes we wear? Films we see? Performing and fine arts we are allowed to watch? Occupation we are allowed to be in? Areas we can inhabit and reside in? Muslims are being targeted initially so that opposition comes primarily from Muslims and not from larger society. Every citizen of India who has a stake in democracy should see herself as a potential victim and stand up to resist.

Barnagarwala, T. (2015, April 19). Cows Say Cheese. Indian Express , pp. 12-13.

The many wrong messages that hanging Yakub Memon would send

April 21, 2015 by Nasheman

Photo: IE

by Jyoti Punwani, Scroll

What must Yakub Memon have felt on hearing that the Supreme Court had rejected his review petition against his conviction and death sentence in the 1993 serial Mumbai bomb blasts case. The mocking words of his brother, Ibrahim ‘Tiger’ Memon, advising him not to give himself up to the Indian authorities might have echoed in his ears. “You are returning as a Gandhiwadi, but the Indian government will see you only as a terrorist,” Tiger had told him, according to what Yakub told the special court in Mumbai set up under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act.

On April 16, the Supreme Court rejected Yakub’s review petition against his conviction and sentence. The same court had earlier rejected his appeal against his conviction by a special court in Mumbai in 2006, and the president had rejected his mercy petition in May 2014. On the charges for which Yakub has been convicted, none of his co-accused has been given the death penalty.

Tiger Memon’s words proved prophetic. Yakub gave up life in a gilded cage in Karachi under the ISI’s watch, to come back in July 1994 and clear his name in the case of the 1993 blasts, which had been masterminded by his brother and Dawood Ibrahim. He was followed by seven members of his family. Only Tiger, another brother Ayub, and their families stayed back.

With him, Yakub brought proof of Pakistan’s involvement in the blasts, which India could not have otherwise obtained. He thought this act would earn him a reprieve. Instead, unable to get Dawood Ibrahim or Tiger Memon, the Indian authorities wrecked vengeance on the rest of the Memon family, who had chosen to surrender because of “faith in our government and judiciary”, as Yakub wrote in a letter to the chief justice of India from Arthur Road jail five years after he had set foot on Indian soil. (A copy of the letter appears at the end).

The government did not even have the grace to acknowledge that the Memons had chosen to surrender. Instead, the then home minister, SB Chavan, said in Parliament amidst much thumping of desks that the authorities had arrested Yakub from New Delhi railway station. “I’ve never seen it in my life,” wrote Yakub in his letter.

His family’s incarceration and their deteriorating physical and mental health drove Yakub to depression. In his letter, he wrote that he could not remember the events of one full year in jail when he was confined to bed. In the letter, Yakub also described his life before the March 12, 1993, blasts. It was an ordinary life: SSC with 70%, then college in the morning and work during the day, graduation, post-graduation, four years of studying to be a chartered accountant, and then establishing his own CA firm with a Hindu partner. “We were doing very well…I was very busy. The purpose of giving this brief about myself is to bring home just one single point: “WHERE WAS THE TIME TO HATE…” (upper case in the original).

In his letter, Yakub pointed out that nine of his 15-member family were NRIs settled in Dubai, and the rest would often visit them. On the day of the blasts, they were in Dubai, and got to know only later that one among them had masterminded them. After the blasts, the entire family left for Pakistan. “But we did not lost (sic) hopes of coming back to India and wipe out the stigma attached to our name,” wrote Yakub.

But the stigma would not be wiped out. “The prosecution is harping upon `Memon Family’ during their arguments as if there is a section in CrPC (as in Income Tax laws, while dealing with the HUF- the Hindu Undivided Family), wherein a family can be treated as a single unit. … The main reason for implicating us in the case is that we were in relation (to) and association of the prime accused. Now to be in relation to anyone is not a crime… We do not deny our relation and association with Ibrahim Memon …as a relative and nothing more.”

In 2007, having spent almost 13 years in jail, Yakub was sentenced to death by the TADA court. His brothers Essa and Yusuf, both seriously ill, and sister-in-law Rubeena were sentenced to life imprisonment. When his sentence was read out by the TADA court judge, Yakub cried out: “Forgive him lord, for he knows not what he does.” Seven years later, the Supreme Court upheld the judgement.

But, as both Yakub’s appeal and his review petition, argued by lawyer Jaspal Singh, asserted, Yakub was convicted on the basis of the statement of one approver and the retracted confessions of co-accused. The prosecution did not produce any independent evidence to refute Yakub’s assertion that he knew nothing about the blasts.

With the mercy and review petitions rejected, Yakub is left with little hope: only perhaps a curative petition and another mercy petition. If Yakub is hanged, the message will be clear: if you have committed a crime and have been lucky enough to escape, good for you. If you are suspected of having committed a crime but want to return to India to try and clear your name, be prepared for the worst. Far better to spend your life in luxury, even if it is in a country that is hostile to yours. Not for you the choice of bringing up your children as Indians.

The second message that Yakub’s hanging will send is that there is no place for reformation in our justice system. Among the arguments made by advocate Jaspal Singh in his review petition were his client’s record of good conduct in jail and no evidence by the prosecution that there existed no possibility of reformation. During his 21 years in jail, eight of them on death row, Yakub has obtained an MA in English from the Indira Gandhi National Open University. The authorities of the course denied him permission to attend the convocation, although it was held in Nagpur itself, where he has been lodged since 2007. The day the Supreme Court dismissed his review petition in April, Yakub got an MA from IGNOU in political science.

The third message will perhaps be the most ominous – that our criminal justice system recognises guilt by association. Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon are beyond our reach. Should we rejoice that we have at least one Memon we can hang and lock the others up for life? Was Yakub right in writing: “According to the prosecution if one member does any wrong, entire family …can be punished and society can be shown that the justice is being done?”

Finally, Yakub Memon’s hanging will inevitably draw our attention to the original sin in the chain of events that led to the March 12, 1993 blasts: the Mumbai riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Neither those who demolished the Masjid nor those found guilty of the ensuing riots, in which 900 persons were killed, among them 575 Muslims and 275 Hindus, were punished, even though criminal offences were registered against the perpetrators. Two judicial commissions also indicted specific individuals for both crimes.

Among these individuals were 31 policemen, charged with extreme communal conduct against Muslims, including murder. None of them was punished. Nearly all the offenders in both events not only went free, some of them ruled the country as central ministers.

But those who took revenge for the riots, killing 257 people, were not let off. Their punishment ranged from two years to death. All death sentences, except Yakub’s, were six years later commuted to life.

When the TADA court held him guilty, Yakub cried out: “Woh sahi bolta tha, koi insaaf nahin milega, tum log hume terrorist banake chodoge.” What he said was right; you won’t get justice; you will make us into terrorists. He was referring to Tiger Memon’s words. In his letter, Yakub wrote: ‘’Section 20(8) and other draconian provision of this Act does not allow the Designated TADA court judge to look upon us with living and merciful eyes. On the contrary we are presumed to be guilty of TERRORISM.”

The letter that Yakub Memon wrote to the chief justice of India from Arthur Road Jail, five years after he surrendered to Indian authorities in July 1994.

5-Star activism, too, is democracy. If we deny it, we may be in for a new totalitarianism

April 20, 2015 by Nasheman

by T J S George

Forget the beef ban and the Good Friday controversy in the Supreme Court. More important is the fact that we seem to have reached a stage where we cannot debate issues like water and air pollution, forests and wildlife, the death of rivers and the enormity of pesticide abuse that is killing citizens in tens of thousands. We cannot discuss them because discussion means criticism as well—and we have a new India where criticism is considered “anti-development”.

Which Indian in his senses would want to be anti-development? The question, therefore, is about the nature of development and what we mean by that term. Is it development to cut down mountain ranges in the Western Ghats for putting up industrial plants? Is it development to take tribal lands away without giving the tribals either a say in the matter or meaningful rehabilitation plans? Is it development to have in India 13 of the world’s most polluted 20 cities, with New Delhi ranking as the most polluted city in the world (WHO report, 2014)? Is it anti-development to raise such issues, engage in debate, even criticise official policies?

There are frauds in this field. There are also many dedicated organisations doing good work, especially on issues related to development without destruction. The Development Alternatives Group, the India Development Alternatives Foundation, Environment Support Group and the Centre for Development Alternatives are examples of organisations engaged in the vital task of discussing and researching different types of development paradigms. There are other organisations such as Greenpeace that campaign aggressively for environment protection. Their activism does not mean that they are a danger to India; they are a warning to those whose blinkered view of development is a danger to India.

Actually, the kind of development-for-the-sake-of-development philosophy adopted by the Narendra Modi government has attracted criticism from within the Sangh Parivar itself. No one will question either the integrity or the nationalistic credentials of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. What makes it different from other Parivar followers is its intellectual honesty. It has openly questioned the Modi government’s position on foreign investment, especially in e-commerce, insurance and defence. It criticised the Modi-Jaitley budget as “pro-corporate” and the government’s “hazardous flirtation with US” on subjects such as intellectual property rights. Certainly the Prime Minister would not dare include the Jagran Manch in his list of “five-star activists?” There are large segments of independent citizens who agree with the Jagran Manch’s views even when they have no truck with the Parivar line of thinking. They are not “five-star liberals” or “pseudo-seculars”; they are just Indians who care for India.

In our system, unfortunately, the value of opposition is diminished because opposition parties oppose for the sake of opposing; the BJP did the same when not in power. But there are legitimate organisations, groups and individuals who criticise one government policy or another out of conviction and concern for the country. Maligning them would be a sign of intolerance at worst, of confusion at best. Our government seems to have developed some sort of difficulty in separating what is good for all from what is good for a few. Perhaps this is related to its apparent inability to distinguish between rhetoric and governance, between election campaign mode and performance mode. So it ends up doing things it should not be doing, like robbing the Peter of agricultural India to pay the Paul of industrial India. Farmers greet this policy the only way they know—by committing suicide. Even then, the foreign investor, earnestly wooed to make in India, is in no hurry. Something is amiss.

We have only two alternatives. Either listen to the advice of our ancient rishis or succumb to the warning of modern rishis. The first course was spelt out in Arthashastra which specified punishments for those who destroyed nature: “For cutting the tender sprouts of fruit trees and shade trees, a fine of six panas. For cutting the minor branches of the same trees, 12 panas, and for cutting the big branches, 24 panas.”

If we fail to heed that advice, what awaits us is what a modern rishi, Aldous Huxley, predicted in his Brave New World as far back as 1958. “By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms —elections, parliaments, supreme courts and all the rest will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism.”

Let no one say we had no choice.

This article first appeared in the The New Indian Express.

Do Something, Anything: Naming and Shaming in Yarmouk

April 16, 2015 by Nasheman

Residents wait to receive food aid distributed by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) at the besieged al-Yarmouk camp, south of Damascus on January 31, 2014. (Photo: unrwa.org)

by Ramzy Baroud

The population of Syria’s Palestinian Refugee Camp, Yarmouk – whose population once exceeded 250,000, dwindling throughout the Syrian civil war to 18,000 – are a microcosm of the story of a whole nation, whose perpetual pain shames us all, none excluded.

Refugees who escaped the Syrian war or are displaced in Syria itself, are experiencing the cruel reality under the harsh and inhospitable terrains of war and Arab regimes. Many of those who remained in Yarmouk were torn to shreds by the barrel bombs of the Syrian army, or victimized by the malicious, violent groupings that control the camp, including the al-Nusra Front, and as of late, IS.

Those who have somehow managed to escape bodily injury are starving. The starvation in Yarmouk is also the responsibility of all parties involved, and the “inhumane conditions” under which they subsist – especially since December 2012 – is a badge of shame on the forehead of the international community in general, and the Arab League in particular.

These are some of the culprits in the suffering of Yarmouk.

Israel

Israel bears direct responsibility in the plight of the refugees in Yarmouk. The refugees of Yarmouk are mostly the descendants of Palestinian refugees from historic Palestine, especially the northern towns, including Safad, which is now inside Israel. The camp was established in 1957, nearly a decade after the Nakba – the “Catastrophe” of 1948, which saw the expulsion of nearly a million refugees from Palestine. It was meant to be a temporary shelter, but it became a permanent home. Its residents never abandoned their right of return to Palestine, a right enshrined in UN resolution 194.

Israel knows that the memory of the refugees is its greatest enemy, so when the Palestinian leadership requested that Israel allow the Yarmouk refugees to move to the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a condition: that they renounce their right of return. Palestinians refused. History has shown that Palestinians would endure untold suffering and not abandon their rights in Palestine. The fact that Netanyahu would place such a condition is not just a testimony to Israel’s fear of Palestinian memory, but the political opportunism and sheer ruthlessness of the Israeli government.

The Palestinian Authority (PA)

The PA was established in 1994 based on a clear charter where a small group of Palestinians “returned” to the occupied territories, set up a few institutions and siphoned billions of dollars in international aid, in exchange for abandoning the right or return for Palestinian refugees, and ceding any claim on real Palestinian sovereignty and nationhood.

When the civil war in Syria began to quickly engulf the refugees, and although such a reality was to be expected, President Mahmoud Abbas’s authority did so little as if the matter had no bearing on the Palestinian people as a whole. True, Abbas made a few statements calling on Syrians to spare the refugees what was essentially a Syrian struggle, but not much more. When IS took over the camp, Abbas dispatched his labor minister, Ahmad Majdalani to Syria. The latter made a statement that the factions and the Syrian regime would unite against IS – which, if true, is likely to ensure the demise of hundreds more.

If Abbas had invested 10 percent of the energy he spent in his “government’s” media battle against Hamas or a tiny share of his investment in the frivolous “peace process”, he could have at least garnered the needed international attention and backing to treat the plight of Palestinian refugees in Syria’s Yarmouk with a degree of urgency. Instead, they were left to die alone.

The Syrian Regime

When rebels seized Yarmouk in December 2012, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces shelled the camp without mercy while Syrian media never ceased to speak about liberating Jerusalem. The contradictions between words and deeds when it comes to Palestine is an Arab syndrome that has afflicted every single Arab government and ruler since Palestine became the “Palestine question” and the Palestinians became the “refugee problem”.

Syria is no exception, but Assad, like his father Hafez before him, is particularly savvy in utilizing Palestine as a rallying cry aimed solely at legitimizing his regime while posing as if a revolutionary force fighting colonialism and imperialism. Palestinians will never forget the siege and massacre of Tel al-Zaatar (where Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were besieged, butchered but also starved as a result of a siege and massacre carried out by right-wing Lebanese militias and the Syrian army in 1976), as they will not forget or forgive what is taking place in Yarmouk today.

Many of Yarmouk’s homes were turned to rubble because of Assad’s barrel bombs, shells and airstrikes.

The Rebels

The so-called Free Syria Army (FSA) should have never entered Yarmouk, no matter how desperate they were for an advantage in their war against Assad. It was criminally irresponsible considering the fact that, unlike Syrian refugees, Palestinians had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. The FSA invited the wrath of the regime, and couldn’t even control the camp, which fell into the hands of various militias that are plotting and bargaining amongst each other to defeat their enemies, who could possibly become their allies in their next pathetic street battles for control over the camp.

The access that IS gained in Yarmouk was reportedly facilitated by the al-Nusra Front which is an enemy of IS in all places but Yarmouk. Nusra is hoping to use IS to defeat the mostly local resistance in the camp, arranged by Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis, before handing the reins of the besieged camp back to the al-Qaeda affiliated group. And while criminal gangs are politicking and bartering, Palestinian refugees are dying in droves.

The UN and Arab League

Cries for help have been echoing from Yarmouk for years, and yet none have been heeded. Recently, the UN Security Council decided to hold a meeting and discuss the situation there as if the matter was not a top priority years ago. Grandstanding and concerned press statements aside, the UN has largely abandoned the refugees. The budget for UNRWA, which looks after the nearly 60 Palestinian refugee camps across Palestine and the Middle East, has shrunk so significantly, the agency often finds itself on the verge of bankruptcy.

The UN refugee agency, better funded and equipped to deal with crises, does little for the Palestinian refugees in Syria. Promises of funds for UNRWA, which frankly could have done much better to raise awareness and confront the international community over their disregard for the refugees, are rarely met.

The Arab League are even more responsible. The League was largely established to unite Arab efforts to respond to the crisis in Palestine, and was supposed to be a stalwart defender of Palestinians and their rights. But the Arabs too have disowned Palestinians as they are intently focused on conflicts of more strategic interests – setting up an Arab army with clear sectarian intentions and aimed largely at settling scores.

Many of Us

The Syrian conflict has introduced great polarization within a community that once seemed united for Palestinian rights. Those who took the side of the Syrian regime wouldn’t concede for a moment that the Syrian government could have done more to lessen the suffering in the camp. Those who are anti-Assad insist that the entire evil deed is the doing of him and his allies.

Both of these groups are responsible for wasting time, confusing the discussion and wasting energies that could have been used to create a well-organized international campaign to raise awareness, funds and practical mechanisms of support to help Yarmouk in particular, and Palestinians refugees in Syria in general.

But we ought to remember that there are still 18,000 trapped in Yarmouk and organize on their behalf so that, even if it is untimely, we need do something. Anything.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His is the author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London). His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

Remembering Babasaheb: Dr. Ambedkar and The Annihilation of Caste

April 14, 2015 by Nasheman

by Sukumaran C. V.

There is no code of laws more infamous regarding social rights than the Laws of Manu. Any instance from anywhere of social injustice must pale before it. Why have the mass of people tolerated the social evils to which they have been subjected? There have been social revolutions in other countries of the world. Why have there not been social revolutions in India is a question which has incessantly troubled me. There is only one answer and it is that the lower classes of Hindus have been completely disabled for direct action on account of this wretched system of Chaturvarnya.—B. R. Ambedkar.

April 14th 2015 is the 125th birthday of Ambedkar, the man who was the greatest crusader against the inhuman caste system of India, the man who sincerely wished to annihilate the monster called caste. I have often and again felt that, in the history of the whole humankind, the two most draconian human ‘inventions’ are the slavery that was prevalent in the U.S. and the caste system of India. As slavery was abolished and it doesn’t exist now, caste system of India is the only draconian human invention that exists today.

It was while I was in the 9th standard I happened to know about Ambedkar. The Malayalam Supplementary Reader for class 9th was a short biography of Ambedkar and the portion which described that the people who belong to Ambedkar’s caste have had to wear a small pot around their neck to spit in order not to defile the path they walk on by spiting on the path really disturbed me. And when I hear that even today there are people in our country who are not allowed to drink tea in glasses and tea shops reserve coconut shells for them, I am not only disturbed but also ashamed!

In his ‘Annihilation of Caste’ which was published in 1936, Ambedkar said: “…turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster.” (‘Annihilation of Caste’, Chapter III)

Still, nearly 80 years after, we have not been able to kill the monster and the monster continues to kill and maim and insult the people. Even in Kerala, the most ‘educated’ and the most ‘progressed’ state, people subscribe to caste prejudices and bias. The ‘forward’ class colleagues of a government department head, the day after his retirement, applied cow-dung water inside his cabin and on the chair he used to sit to ‘purify’ them as he belonged to a scheduled caste! It happened in Kerala four years ago. Mentally it happens every day. The ‘forward’ caste people who are down in the official hierarchy of the government civil service machinery, are irritated when their superior belongs to SC/ST category. Even OBCs join hands with the ‘forward’ class in sharing this prejudice.

One of my Dalit friends recently told me that he didn’t vote for the Dalit candidate who was fielded by the Left in the 2014 Loksabha election. The Dalit candidate, who won, is a highly qualified one and the Constituency in which he was fielded was one that was reserved for SCs. My friend’s question is: Why does even the Left field well qualified SC candidates in the reservation seats? Why can’t even the so called progressive parties field educated and qualified SC/STs in the general seats and make them win?

The irony is that even those who are supposed to fight the monster called caste don’t want to kill it. The question Ambedkar asked 80 years ago—‘Can you have economic reform without first bringing about a reform of the social order?’—is still relevant, but conveniently forgotten by every political party.

In the following words of Ambedkar, we can see the reason why secular democracy failed in this country and the religious fundamentalism of RSS and BJP thrives: “Why do millionaires in India obey penniless Sadhus and Fakirs? Why do millions of paupers in India sell their trifling trinkets which constitute their only wealth and go to Benares and Mecca? That, religion is the source of power is illustrated by the history of India where the priest holds a sway over the common man often greater than the magistrate and where everything, even such things as strikes and elections, so easily take a religious turn and can so easily be given a religious twist.” (‘Annihilation of Caste’, Chapter III)

The struggle against caste has not come forward even a step further from where Ambedkar has led it. After Ambedkar nobody is as serious and dedicated as he has been in annihilating the caste system, the most draconian social set up in the world. Therefore caste and caste bias still thrive in our country and the humans and humanity fail.

And the most pathetic development in our country today is the competition between Congress which has never tried to annihilate the caste system and the BJP which doesn’t even dare to question caste system, to ‘own’ Ambedkar in relation with his 125th birth anniversary! Both the BJP and Congress should do justice to Ambedkar’s legacy if they can assimilate his spirit against caste system which still drags India back as far as social progress and equality are concerned. How can the Congress ‘own’ Ambedkar who said that ‘every Congressman who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is not fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class’? (‘Annihilation of Caste’, Chapter II)

And how can the BJP ‘own’ Ambedkar who said that ‘the Hindus criticize the Mohammadans for having spread their religion by the use of their sword. …But really speaking who is better and more worthy of our respect—the Mohammadans and Christians who attempted to thrust down the throats of unwilling persons what they regarded as necessary for their salvation or the Hindu who would not spread the light, who would endeavour to keep others in darkness? I have no hesitation in saying that if the Mohammedan has been cruel, the Hindu has been mean and meanness is worse than cruelty’? (‘Annihilation of Caste’, Chapter IX)

Both the BJP and Congress don’t want the Ambedkar who fought the most draconian system in the world—the caste system. Both want Ambedkar as bait to garner Dalit votes. They want to ‘own’ the form of Ambedkar sans the spirit. They know full well that the spirit of Ambedkar will annihilate the very base and foundation of such parties— religion and caste.

As Ambedkar says, ‘…Hindu Society is a myth. The name Hindu is itself a foreign name. It was given by the Mohammedans to the natives for the purpose of distinguishing themselves. It doesn’t occur in any Sanskrit work prior to the Mohammedan invasion. …Hindu society as such does not exist. It is only a collection of castes. … Castes don’t even form a federation. A caste has no feeling that it is affiliated to other castes except when there is a Hindu-Muslim riot.’ (‘Annihilation of Caste’, Chapter VI). The BJP used this ‘feeling of affiliation’ in the Gujarat riots, in the Muzafarnagar riots and in almost all communal riots. People who are in the bottom of caste hierarchy are turned against the Muslims and both the caste oppression and religious fundamentalism which don’t allow the people to annihilate castes and religions thrive oppressing the very people who help religious fundamentalism to grow and rule the country. (Minority fundamentalism, the other side of the same coin, and the so called ‘secular’ politics of the Congress and other parties for whom secularism has always been a meaningless word only to catch the votes of the minorities, provided sufficient fuels for the majority fundamentalism to spread over the country and swallow the entire nation.)

Caste oppression in India is as worst as the European slave trade and the slavery prevalent in the United States. We can only read with horror the details about the slave trade of the people who were ‘burdened’ with the duty of ‘civilising’ the world. Howard Zinn writes in ‘A People’s History of the United States’:

“The conditions of capture and sale were crushing affirmations to the black African of his helplessness in the face of superior force. The marches to the cost, sometimes for 1,000 miles, with people shackled around the neck, under whip and gun, were death marches, in which two of every five blacks died. On the cost they were kept in cages until they were picked and sold. …Then they were packed aboard the slave ships, in spaces not much bigger than coffins, chained together in the dark, wet slime of the ship’s bottom, choking in the stench of their own excrement….The height, sometimes, between decks was only eighteen inches; so that the unfortunate human beings could not turn around, or even on their sides, the elevation being less than the breadth of their shoulders; and here they are usually chained to the decks by the neck and legs.”

This cruelty and meanness towards the humans by the humans was abolished, but in India the oppression and discrimination in the name of caste still continue and when will we the Indians be free from the oppressive and denigrating caste system which applies cow-dung water to ‘purify’ the official seat of an educated human being on account of his ‘lower’ caste origin? Will Ambedkar’s 200th birth anniversary see an India in which caste is annihilated totally?

Sukumaran C. V is a former JNU student now working as clerk in the Kerala State Government service. Emai: lscvsuku@gmail.com

Two encounters and a democracy

April 9, 2015 by Nasheman

by Samar

The world’s largest democracy witnessed its police force killing 25 of its citizens in two encounters in Andhra Pradesh. “Encounters”, for the uninitiated, are a euphemism for killing unarmed civilians in staged gun battles. The police version of both the alleged encounters is such that it could be laughed-off had they not been about the deaths of civilians.

The police version of the first encounter is that newly formed Red-sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force spotted footprints of the “smugglers” and came across around 100 of them felling trees in the Seshachalam Forest at the foot of the Tirumala Hills. Members of the Task Force challenged them to surrender, but the woodcutters responded by pelting stones. The Task Force in turn responded to the raining stones by firing randomly at the woodcutters, which led to death of 20 of them; the rest ran away. “We fired random shots in self-defence”, a taskforce member told the national daily The Hindu on condition of anonymity.

Logs and slippers neatly arranged!

Yes, you have read it right. A “random firing” in response to stone pelting has resulted in the death of 20 woodcutters. One wonders what could have been the toll had the Force targeted the woodcutters in self-defense. Let us forget how disproportionate it is to use bullets for stones, even if the stones were “raining” down. The alleged encounter took place in a jungle after all and trees could have given ample protection till the Task Force was able to gather itself. But then, Indian law enforcers are used to responding to stones with bullets, for instance in Kashmir in 2010, where 112 people were killed. This included many teenagers and an 11-year-old boy. An uncanny question about this encounter is why the Task Force did not arrest a single person from amongst the remaining 80 or so smugglers. So, not even “dead or alive”, the motto seems to have been “dead or nothing” or “take no prisoners”.

If one finds this one strange, wait till you catch up on the details of the second encounter. This one took place in a jail van, where 17 security force members were taking 5 undertrials from Warangal Jail to a Hyderabad court 150 km away. Yes, you read this right too. This encounter happened inside a jail van with all of the undertrials killed, while unarmed and handcuffed to their seats. The police claims, as per a news channel NDTV that Vikaruddin Ahmed, one of the undertrials, asked to be released in order for him to answer nature’s call. Upon his return he tried to snatch a weapon. The police opened fire when other undertrials allegedly tried to snatch weapons too and this led to all of them getting killed!

How could Vikaruddin Ahmed attempt to snatch a weapon from the security personnel, as undertrials are never let-off alone, not even to use the toilet? As standard operating procedure, security personnel always escort undertrials. Furthermore, even if he did attempt to snatch weaponry, how come a 17-member security force failed to overpower him without firing? Were not remaining four, as per their own claims, still handcuffed and unarmed? Finally, while it is impossible to believe this uncanny and highly improbable story, why exactly did the police need to kill the other four undertrials?

The answers to all these questions are rather simple. The victims in the first case were poor tribal youth caught not only in between lucrative offers of easy money but also interstate (and interlingua) rivalries between the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. That they were not real smugglers but merely coolies for the smuggling mafia that enjoys state patronage on both sides of the border is something immaterial for the police, which could shoot them with impunity but will never dare to touch real smugglers. What should be really bothersome, however, is the way almost all of the Indian media carried the story, parroting the police version, including calling those dead smugglers. Most media houses did not bat an eyelid to ask the obvious: why fire on people pelting stones and how come the Force could not arrest a single person.

Victims of the second encounter came from another persecuted minority of India. They were accused of being members of a local terror outfit Tehreek-Ghalba-e-Islam and were suspected of various attacks on the police in Hyderabad, as well as plotting the murder of Narendra Modi, now Prime Minister of India. They were in jail since 2010. In this case too, the media did the same. A few of reports went to the extent of claiming that the gunning down had foiled a terror plot against Mr. Modi. Only later did the skeletons come tumbling out of the closet. The pictures showing the “terrorists” slain while still being handcuffed to their seats make it nearly impossible for the media to keep parroting the police version.

Security forces eliminating people in custody or with impunity in “encounters” is one of the worst kept secrets of India. The Supreme Court, in its order in Criminal Appeal No.1255 OF 1999, has called such killings nothing less than “state sponsored terrorism”. The Court had done so despite recognising the fact that policemen are indeed required to “take to take drastic action against criminals to protect life and property of the people and to protect themselves against attack.” And yet, it set stringent guidelines to be followed as standard operating procedure in cases of encounters. The guidelines begin from the point of a tip off that can lead to such encounters to video-graphing the post-mortem of individuals that happen to die in the process of police work.

What, however, is a Supreme Court order worth that carries no weight for the police. Let us forget the second encounter, as it is simply too frivolous to be true, and check the facts of the first one. Did the Task Force record the tip-off in any diary? Did it file the mandatory FIR following the encounter and forward it to the court under Section 157 of the Code without any delay? Were any of the guidelines fulfilled so that an independent inquiry could reveal facts about the deaths? One of the guidelines requires an investigation by the Crime Investigation Department or a different police station by an officer at least one rank above the involved officer does not make much sense as officers from whatever stations but same police force investigating an encounter is like asking the accused to investigate himself.

The efficacy of a magisterial inquiry, another guideline set by the Court order, is exposed by the one that was conducted in the custodial killing of Thangjam Manorama, a Manipuri village girl, in 2004. The report of the judicial inquiry commission, led by C. Upendra Singh, retired District and Sessions Judge, Manipur, was submitted in December the same year and was never made public until November 2014. The report indicted personnel of 17 Assam Rifles for “brutal and merciless torture” of Ms. Manorama. Yet this has not resulted in the prosecution of any of the accused and the compensation to the family of the victim. Going by the evidence available, the fate of magisterial enquiries, even those that have fulfilled their mandate, cannot be drastically different in other such cases.

This begets another question: are Indian citizens cursed to live with the danger of getting killed by someone obligated to protect their person and property? They may fear more if they come from vulnerable sections of the society. But should they fear less even if they do not?

Till someone takes the responsibility of reforming the criminal justice system of the country all Indians are in danger. A cruel, violent, and unjust system harbouring criminals in uniform will hurt one and all. The Executive is not interested in any such reform as this system serves its interests well. Will the Judiciary take onus to enforce its orders? And, will the civil society of India understand that having good laws and court orders is not real protection for the marginalized or even the mainstream population in such a criminal justice system?

The author is a Programme Coordinator, Right to Food, AHRC, Hong Kong.

Tobacco or Health? Why tobacco corporates are smiling

April 1, 2015 by Nasheman

..Government is set to defer indefinitely the implementation of notification for increasing the size of pictorial warning on tobacco products beyond April one, when it was to come into force. ..The notification regarding amendment to the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Rules, 2008 sought increase in the size of specified health warning from the current 40 per cent to 85 per cent of the principal display area of the package of tobacco products. Source

by Subhash Gatade

The week gone by has brought back smiles on the faces of Tobacco Corporates.

Thanks to the latest U-turn by the Modi government, Acche Din would continue unabated for them. The non-transparent manner in which the decision was taken and the media was kept in the dark has raised further eyebrows. It was only on the evening of 24th March that while talking to the media, the health minister J P Nadda had assured them that there is no rethink in the government on introducing pictorial warnings covering 85 percent of packaging for tobacco products from April 1 and within few hours of this interaction he left for Beijing.

Definitely Nadda must have found time within that limited period to sign the order deferring the notification or as some journalists believe he had already signed it and was just pretending to avoid some inconvenient moments. It need be added that the said notification was brought in last October, when Nadda’s predecessor Harsh Vardhan — another RSS Swayamsevak — was handling the department. It was declared at that time that it would be effective by 1 st April. Not very many people could have the premonition that the government is not keen about it and would reverse the decision at an opportune moment.

It is worth emphasizing that India was not the only country from South Asia, which had taken a decision about it. Pakistan as well as Nepal both had similarly taken some concrete steps in that direction. Welcoming their decision the ‘World Conference on Tobacco or Health’ had even urged all the three to ‘stand firm against the tobacco industry pressure’. It had also suggested to them that to effectively reduce tobacco consumption and improve public health it can raise tobacco excise taxes which would make tobacco less affordable and can also generate additional revenue for government which can be utilised for healthcare.

If India had gone ahead with its decision, then it would have been the first country in the world which had so much space allocated for the pictorial warnings. Now that is passe because of some ‘unexplained reasons’. Coming to pictorial health warnings on tobacco products there are enough studies available which vindicate that it makes the product less attractive and target smokers or users of tobacco products by providing them with information on tobacco-related health risks. Discussing reasons to introduce pictorial warnings on tobacco products ECL which is an Association of European Cancer Leagues makes few things clear. They are

1) Eye-catching: this is in line with the saying that “a picture paints a thousand words” and the general belief that an image can often be more powerful than words on a page.

2) Informative: research in four countries showed that in Canada, where pictorial warnings include information about the risks of impotence, smokers were almost three times more likely to agree that smoking causes impotence compared to smokers from the US, UK and Australia.

3) Additional motivation for smokers who want to stop smoking: 44% of smokers in Canada said the pictorial warnings increased their motivation to quit smoking.

4) Less attractive for youngsters: 48% of Belgian smokers aged 15 to 17 think the new warnings make the packaging look less attractive

(http://www.europeancancerleagues.org/tobacco-control/pictorial-warnings-on-tobacco-products/111-ten-reasons-to-introduce-pictorial-warnings-on-tobacco-products.html)

As things stand Nepal would be the only country from this part of South Asia which would go ahead with this decision. Like in many other such steps – which have been hailed by majority of countries, around which there is even a global consensus — India has decided to opt out this time again.

Few months back (September 2014) India was one of the few countries which had abstained from a historic vote on violence and discrimination against sexual minorities. Not some time ago it had taken similar embarrassing stance when it had supported Russian resolution which had opposed extending benefits available to spouses of UN employees to same sex couples under the specious plea of sovereignty. It had voted alongside Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China

Interestingly, in the hullaballoo around internal bickering of AAP and the media saturation accompanying it, this this reversal of its own decision by the Modi government has largely gone unnoticed.

Now to save face it is being said that the health ministry was receiving many representations asking for the decision to be reconsidered and it wanted time to brood over these observations. Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to the implementation of the notification was the Chairman of the Committee of Subordinate Legislations, which is effectively a panel of M P s only. The BJP MP from Ahmednagar Dilip Gandhi, who happens to be the Chairman had raised the validity of studies done in ‘foreign’ countries to study the ill effects of tobacco and who is of the firm opinion that ‘Indian exceptionalism extends to our biology’.

Perhaps it would be opportune here to share his ‘pearls of wisdom’ which he had shared with the media ( Indian Express, 24 th March, Examine tobacco effects on Indians, says House Panel’):

““There are no studies in our own country that have examined the health effects of tobacco. Whether at all it actually causes cancer or other diseases is subject to a study in the country. That has never happened and the basis of our stance towards tobacco products is basically studies that have happened in a foreign setting. We have recommended that a medical board or at least an expert committee comprising doctors, scientists et al should first do a study in India before we go ahead with such decisions.”

The irony of the situation is that neither he knew or nor perhaps wanted to enquire that there are enough national — international level studies which had firmly established the relationship between tobacco and cancer. It was mid-fifties or early sixties when the tobacco corporates had raised this debate that tobacco is not harmful to health and a path breaking report’ by US Surgeon General Luther Terry had finally established a correlation between them.

Coming to studies done in India an editorial in Indian Express tells us the ‘[2]008 study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medical Research used a nationally representative sample to find that smoking causes a large and growing number of premature deaths in India.’ This study was supported by a government body called ‘Office of the Registrar General’.

It also provided details of another study whose results were published earlier this year done by Indian researchers based in India wherein it discovered ‘statistically significant excess risks among tobacco chewers for respiratory tuberculosis, stroke and cancer, compared to never-tobacco chewers.’(http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/anti-science-absurd/)

India happens to be a country where 27.5 crore people consume tobacco in one or the other form and according to one set of studies we witness 8 lakh deaths every year. Coming to the world by the year 2030, there would be 10 million deaths annually which would be tobacco related.

With its decision in October 2014, India had finally decided to join the growing consensus between many countries to have pictorial warnings which are not only an effective way of communicating the consequences of tobacco use but also act as catalyst to bring about behavioural change so that one quits usage of tobacco products or at least reduces its consumption.

Sooner or later it was going to have an impact on sale of tobacco products and would have definitely impacted on the profits of the corporates and big moneybags who are earning billions of Rs at the cost of health of people.

It was a step which was definitely not liked by the Corporates who had provided overwhelming support to the BJP and its PM candidate during election campaign last year.

With this U Turn they must be smiling.

Acche Din are here again.

Subhash Gatade is the author of Pahad Se Uncha Aadmi (2010), Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India,(2011) and The Saffron Condition: The Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neoliberal India (2011). He is also the Convener of New Socialist Initiative.

Are Media debates really useful?

March 31, 2015 by Nasheman

Representational Image.

by Virag R Dhulia

I was sitting at the guest room of DD news with three feminists – a prominent feminist, a male feminist and one more woman. They lost the debate to me on camera so they were insulting me off camera. On camera too they tried same. I was wondering about this male feminist who was so much in support of women but was actually making fun of me, a Woman!I returned with moist eyes,this did not happen for the first time; I had similar experiences at different media channels.

Those who go to the media and represent men’s rights must have noticed that there is only one pro men person and others are feminists. Generally media chooses a weak pro men debater so that they can make fun of him/her. If there is some strong pro men debater they either do not allow him/her to speak or just mute the mike. Basically they do not want to talk pro men or about men’s rights,they invite us to add fun element to the show.

I had a tough time when a retired judge and a famous feminist started laughing on men’s issues. So we got the message that they do not want to propagate men’s rights, for them abuse of men is a laughable matter. If we analyze about media debates then it is like a bunch of people sitting and shouting at each other, it does not solve the problem. It increases frustration and unnecessarily wastes our energy which can be used in other important tasks.

We do not need the paid media to speak for us; we will speak for ourselves.At one news channel when the guest coordinator came to know that I am about to speak for men, she gave me a weird look and stopped interacting with me. On one such occasion they called me and they wanted me to say something on the famous so called rape case of the country. I politely refused to participate andwhen they asked me the reason, I said,”talk about men and I will surely come”, the phone was cut after this .

After a series of false rape cases, the feminist media became desperate to bring the feminist agenda on air. Also, after Arnesh Kumar judgement, 498a got diluted a lot so they thought of a new trick and the trick was, “Marital Rape“. I got the news that I will be getting call from a prominent channel for the topic.

The call was from a woman guest coordinator, she wanted some victims where husband was charged with marital rape and came out clean. Basically they wanted to showone man as a victim and then make fun of him with the popular tactics of media.

I asked the woman on phone, “lady what to do you mean by marital rape and there is no such law.”

She kind of explained to me, “madam marital rape means those husbands who force their wives for sex,”

I said, “But that never happens”.

She was getting desperate,”Madam, I need numbers of such men who have gone through the false allegations”.

I said, ”Alright I have many men in touch with me who are blamed of violence, dowry and sexual assault too”.

She said,”No, not dowry law victims I want victims of fake marital rape charges”.

I said,“What is the program about?”

She cut my question and asked, “Do you have numbers of victims?”

I said, “Yes I have but I will not give you as I know you will make fun of them and my boys have dignity.“

She was aghast and played the last card,”Actually madam we want to talk about male victims “,

I said, “Really, then make a program exclusively on men and I promise to bring men from different arenas.”

She lost it and said ”alright madam thanks.”

Then she called an activist at Hyderabad said same things to convince him to be a part of the discussion. Our activist asked similar questions what the program is all about?How many people are participating?Who all will be the part of panel?

She offered flight ticket to him but could not convince him. He said, “See, if you want to make a program on men, let it be men only, we will not jump inside the feminist agenda, so think before making such program. Men’s pleas cannot come in between the feminist propaganda. “

The reality came out as they wanted to talk about the Supreme Court ruling which refused to accept marital rape. Our activist blasted at them asking, “You are saying you want to talk about male victims, thenwhy don’t you discuss the skyrocketing suicide of husbands, or the woman who cut her husband’s genitals or the Dimapur, Agra,Rajasthan lynching of innocent men based on mere suspicion or the amity fake gang rape case which ruined the lives of 2 young men?You want us to talk about a subject which does not exist but you will not talk about the atrocities on men happening everyday“. The phone was disconnected after this.

Till the media learns to talk about men, it is important to give them a clear message that we are not jokers who will come entertain you and discuss every crap with you. If you think that abuse of men is a myth, then so be it. We have the power to tell the truth to the worldourselves.

Media is paid by some very powerful feminist agenda otherwise how someone can just offer flight ticket from Hyderabad to Delhi. If feminists are paying them, then what is the point in talking to them?

There are other ways of creating awareness and presenting ourselves. Time has come when media needs to talk on our terms and conditions not theirs. Our message has already reached and now those who are not taking us seriously are the people who do not want to accept reality. You wake up those who are sleeping not those who are just pretending to sleep.

Media showed its true colors when it started making fun of Indian cricket team when they lost the semifinals. This is how everyone judges a man – onefailure and he is no more significant!

How does one trust such media? Many people call me and say madam I want to highlight my case in media. It is an illusion that they are for common man and they fight for truth, they actually fight for their agenda and business. Every tear is money for them, they earn by tarnishing image of men, so why to be part of them? Let them have their circus alone with feminist, manginas and white knights; we will utilize our time to train people who want to give misandry a good fight.

Also, it is important to mention here that those media persons who genuinely spread the word of men’s rights have had their careers grow like anything. So, choice is with media.

Virag R Dhulia is the Head of Gender Studies at Confidare Research.

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