June 25, 2009

My review of Anand Teltumbde’s “Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop”


Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop
By Anand Teltumbde
Navayana, New Delhi, 2008, 214 pp., Rs 190
ISBN 978-81-89059-15-6

[An edited version of this review by me has appeared (.pdf here) in the May-June 2009 issue of Biblio.]

Anand Teltumbde is a noted Bombay-based Dalit intellectual who also wears the hat of a business executive. He has written this book about the lynching of a Dalit family in a Maharashtra village in 2006 to ensure that the incident is not easily erased from memory. He quotes Milan Kundera: “The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” In other words, he sees this book as being a seminal work on the Khairlanji atrocity.

The book begins with Abel Meeropol’s song Strange Fruit, written in 1936 (and not 1939, as the book incorrectly states) about the lynching of two black youth. It is from this song that the book derives its sub-title, “A Strange and Bitter Crop,” which once again reinforces the book’s ambition. Billie Holiday’s rendition of Strange Fruit (in 1939) soon became an anthem for the anti-lynching movement in the US, but does Teltumbde’s book achieve its ambitious goal? Keep reading →

May 7, 2009

Buffalo Soldier

By Shivam Vij in Unnao

“Come in,” says Munisa, “it’s such a large house you’ll be surprised.” The room isn’t big enough for a single person, and Munisa, a widow at 30, shares it with six children and her mother-in-law. She’s trying to turn the courtyard into a room even though she knows the impending monsoons will was away the mud thatch. She works as farm labour, earning Rs 35 a day, and can’t make use of NREGA because the chronic pain in her legs won’t let her do hard labour.

Two years ago, an NGO did a survey in the village and found her to be the poorest. They gifted her a cow. “It gave milk because I fed her. And then, six months ago, she died.” But Munisa is not ungrateful: she will still vote for the candidate who runs the NGO that gifted her the cow. So will her neighbours who didn’t get anything: “Here’s someone who has at least proven her concern for the poor,” says one.

Annu Tandon, the Congress candidate who’s been running this NGO is unabashed about such doles and its contribution in her campaign. She only insists it’s not an NGO: “It’s a private charitable trust set up in my father’s name in 2002, funded entirely by my family.” She won’t give you any figures, because it’s the quality of her work that she wants you to appreciate, she says.

“NGO’s typically take up projects and do them in an ad hoc manner. I do things differently. I establish an emotional connect,” she says, sitting in an old haveli in Unnao town, built by her zamindar-lawyer grandfather. For instance, the cataract operations conducted by Shri Hriday Narayan Dhawan Charitable Trust conducts are followed up with visits and care for a month. “When somebody commits suicide I don’t give money to the family. Instead we buy a milching animal for 20,000 or so that earns them some money and makes sure there’s milk for the children,” she says. “We have distributed hundreds of these,” she says, “to widows and large families.”

A local journalist in Unnao estimates 800 animals have been distributed. That is 1.6 crores for just the animals. And this is just one of many schemes. It can safely be said that the trust must have spent more money in less than five years than the ten crores allotted to MPs for local development.

Free buffaloes. Wonder why no party put that in their manifesto. But there’s more to the emotional connect: anyone in Unnao who invites Annu to their son or daughter’s marriage gets a gift kit worth nearly Rs 15,000. A bed, an almirah, some clothes, some cash.

Her opponents, however, disparage her as a ‘Reliance candidate’. Until eight months ago, she was the MD of a software company floated by Reliance. She is a trustee of the Reliance-supported policy think-tank, Observer Research Foundation, a director with Observer Group of Publications, and most of the 41 crores of wealth declared by her is in the Reliance equity shares she and her husband hold. Her husband, Sandeep Tandon, is one of RIL’s directors, a ‘group advisor’, a confidant so close to Mukesh Ambani that he has been at the forefront of the dispute between the two brothers. A former Enforcement Directorate official, he had once raided Tina Ambani, before she married Anil, and is now the key Reliance man regarding taxation and overseas investments.

“My husband does not work for Reliance. He is a lawyer and Reliance is one of his clients,” Annu says, “And I’m proud about that. Why is corporate considered bad?”

Annu says her corporate experience has helped her in Unnao. “Corporates do research before they enter a marker. Before my trust started work in Unnao, I got local unemployed youth to do a survey of every hamlet to know the district’s problems,” she says. One of the problems was the high incidence of disability caused by fluoride in drinking water, thanks to the polluting leather tanning industries. Countless free crutches and wheelchairs followed.

Ask her if this amounts to buying the electorate, she does not go into defence modeas you would expect. “Who asked my opponent to spend 5 crores buying his ticket from Mayawati? I’m proud of the money I have spent. They don’t know how to spend their money.”

But what about being a ‘Reliance candidate’? “These are just Amar Singh’s ideas,” she says, and stops. “I don’t want to speak much on Amar Singh. He is a creation of the media. You guys should simply shun him,” she says, the only time she gets agitated.

Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh had gone on record saying that the Congress-SP alliance in Uttar Pradesh did not materialize because Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh is refused to leave the Unnao seat for the SP. Amar Singh had also said that this was because he was favouring a candidate who worked for the same company as Digvijay’s son. “This is rubbish. Digvijayji’s son does not work for Reliance,” says Annu Tandon.

“All this is because of the dispute between the (Ambani) brothers,” says Tandon. The political clout that younger brother Anil Ambani has through the Samajwadi Party, some say, is being countered by elder brother Mukesh in ways such as this.

“You will see on 16 May that the people of Unnao will reject money and power,” says the SP candidate Devendra Kumar. But her main candidate is from the BSP, Arun Kumar Shukla alias Anna. If Annu is about money, then Anna is about muscle power. The case against Anna for being part of the group that attacked BSP leader Mayawati in the infamous ‘guesthouse incident’ of 1995 is still going on, even as he joined the BSP last November. The Unnao seat is currently held by the BSP, which is banking on Anna fetching Brahmin votes alongwith the BSP’s committed Dalit votebank. “I found to my surprise that there isn’t so much crime in Unnao as some people have made it famous for,” is how Annu takes a jibe at Anna.

The people of Unnao couldn’t be bothered less about where the Annu Tandon-run NGO’s money is coming from, or what these corporate rivalries are all about. They can’t be thankful enough to her for the schools she runs, the Yashoda Vatikas that employ educated village housewives to take care of children after school, or the support the trust gives to anyone whose house is destroyed by fire.

To be fair, Annu’s trust has been working for several years and her candidature was announced only recently. Such is the impact of her social work in the country’s largest constituency that the electorate is willing to vote for her across caste barriers. A day before the election on 30 April, in the village of Nanda Kheda, people in the Dalit, Thakur and Brahmin settlements alike said they were planning to vote for Annu.

She joined the Congress, she says, on the insistence of friends such as Salman Khursheed and Jitin Prasada. Salman Khan came down to Unnao, but not to campaign, she defends. “Salman came for the Holi celebrations. He’s a friend. There was not a single politician on the stage,” she says.

“Except you, that is!”

“Yes, except me!”

The campaigning has drawn to a close, the poor are still thronging to her haveli with request letters the way they throng outside the DM’s office, and her supporters want to burn an effigy of Amar Singh. “Please stop this, I don’t want any of it,” she says, sipping Diet Coke, her manicured nails looking freshly polished. “I can lose now only if the opponents take to dirty tricks.” Incidentally, they same about her.

(An edited, shorter version of this article by me has appeared in the 15 May issue of Open magazine, where I work.)

March 17, 2009

I’m still blogging…

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve disappeared, it’s into Kafila.

And Twitter.

November 10, 2008

Boki, by Nitoo Das

boki_launch1THE ATTIC 36 REGAL BUILDINGS, NEW DELHI TEL: 23746050

wednesday 12th november

5.00 pm Book Release of Boki by Nitoo Das. Publishers: Virtual Artists Collective

Boki, Nitoo Das’ first poetry collection, plays around with given grammars, words and voices. With the skill of a ventriloquist, she gives language to several personae in her dramatic monologues and her soundscapes create a sensory world with words that slip and slide into each other. Das’ painterly eye captures precise and stark visual images that make us look at the ordinary with fresh eyes. Boki–a word that means nothing in English, but in “Doiboki”, the poem it’s in, it stands for a shouted syllable, a taunt, a song, a deconstruction of someone’s name…A ‘nonsense’ word that brings so much from its two syllables is surely what poetry is about–the creation of image from sound. To bok in Assamese, Das’ first language, means to mutter/speak meaninglessly and repetitively. The Sanskrit word, Vak, from which this irreverent Assamese derivative takes its origins, means Speech. And Nitoo Das’ Boki speaks in an explosion of images in which she demonstrates an uncanny ability to create poems that surprise us, hold us and move us.

Boki will be released by teacher, critic, novelist and poet, GJV Prasad and will be followed by readings from the collection by Nitoo Das.

Nitoo Das is a Senior Lecturer of English at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She was born in Guwahati, but came to Delhi for her higher studies and decided to stay on and learn various survival skills in this ancient city. She runs a blog that began as an experiment over three years ago while working on a research project on poetry as hypertext. Her interests include fractals, caricatures, comic books, horror films, and studies of online communities. Boki is her first collection.

Blog | Interview | Virtual Artistes Collective

September 16, 2008

Being Bhaiyyalal

Eight convicted, three let off in the Khairlanji case, the news tells you. The news also tells you of hostile witnesses. But they won’t tell you how and why Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange himself became a hostile witness in a case he wanted justice done tone; the papers and TV channels won’t tell you why Bhaiyyalal is estranged with his own relatives, how some local NCP leaders who were accused in the case were never charge-sheeted, how Bhaiyyalal’s biggest grouse with life is the guilt that he cowardly ran away, as the head of the family, despite knowing what was being done to his family… it’s much more difficult to be Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange than you think.

September 10, 2008

Bihar blames Nepal for floods, CM orders judicial probe

[An edited, shorter version of this report by me appeared this morning in Sakaal Times.]

Supaul (Bihar) / Sunsari (Nepal): Even as Bihar has ordered a judicial probe into all embankment breaches in the Kosi river since the embankment was built in 1953, water resources minister Vijendra Yadav has blamed Nepal for the August 18 incident.

Yadav has said that the Bihar government was aware of the impending crisis but could not do anything because of lack of cooperation from the Nepalese side. He said that the water resources ministry’s secretary had written a letter to the Indian embassy officials in Nepal, a copy of which had been marked to the irrigation department at the center. He said that on August 14, CM Nitish Kumar had approached external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee requesting him to intervene.

“I did not want to reveal all this earlier because external affairs are under the centre’s jurisdiction but I have been forced to do so because I am being painted as the villain who caused the flood,” he told Sakaal Times.

He listed four reasons to explain how the Nepalese side was responsible. Firstly, embankment repair and flood-fighting work was halted because of a strike by labourers. He said that the strike was instigated by local political elements. At the breach point in Kusaha, however, there were conflicting versions from people about why the strike took place. Some said they were demanding higher wages, some said one group was demanding that no other group be allowed to work, and some said they were striking because they hadn’t been paid wages for five days. One contractor, Babloo Kumar of Surya, who has been hired now to help the public sector company HSCL with the repair work, said that the Bihar government often delayed payments to contractors and water resources department officials used discretionary powers to give contracts to small upstart companies.

Everyone, including local Nepalis, were in agreement with minister Yadav’s contention that flood-fighting was badly hit because Indian officials couldn’t cut trees and work in the night as the area had been decalred a reserved forest. The work was often delayed because officials wouldn’t be given passes to go into the reserved forest, which came up along the embankment India built as per an agreement with Nepal in 1953. “Even the previous water resources minister was once not given permission and had to return,” said Virendra Prasad, the official manning the Kosi barrage at the Indo-Nepal border. Locals there also confirmed that Bihar government officials were often afraid to visit the site for inspection because of the bad law and order situation in Nepal, which has improved drastically.

Prasad also confirmed the allegations that the two engineers had been attacked and firs thus filed. Upstream in Barakshetra, which is the catchment area of the Kosi river, the gauge tower that measures the water discharge, had been brought down by Maoists in May.

“Sharad Yadav, who was invited to Prime Minister Prachanda’s swearing-in on 18 August, had taken up the matter with him, but it was too late,” minister Yadav told Sakaal Times, “The new government in Nepal, however, is giving us all co-operation now.”

When asked about Nepal’s role in the breach, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told this reporter, “Some questions are answered by time.”

Yadav’s clarifications come in the wake of sever criticism against him from the opposition and local media which blame him for negligence. Union minister of state for water resources, Jai Prakash Narain Yadav, who is from the RJD, has already said that the state government is blaming Nepal to hide its own negligent role, and that it should not have claimed in its daily embankment bulletins that all embankments are safe if they were in the know.

The opposition RJD has also called the judicial probe an eyewash as it does not seek to probe the state’s role in the August 18 floods and divert the attention to all embankment breaches since 1953.

September 10, 2008

Bihar to learn from Tsunami, Bhuj rehab experience

[An edited, shorter version of this report by me appeared this morning in Sakaal Times.]

SUPAUL: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced here today that his government had set up a committee to study the rehabilitation and reconstruction experiences of post-earthquake Bhuj and the Tsunami before drawing up a massive resconstruction plan for 5 districts of the Koshi region.

Kumar promised that the five distrcists would be re-made anew and turned into better shape than they were even before the unexpected floods on 18 August. “We will rebuild roads, houses, tubewells, everything. We will give financial assistance to people to make their land worthy of agriculture once again and even help them with the first crops. This will also provide employment for people who have lost their livelihoods for the next few months,” he said after inspecting three relief camps here.

He said that the camps would run until people could return and when they do, they would be given money for clothes, utensils and even children’s books. Responding to reports of thefts in abandoned houses, which has led to people staying in their flooded homes or even returning to them, Kumar appealed that FIRs should be filed in every such case and that all thieves would face legal action. “How far can a thief run away in the floods? They must be around in the same village,” he said.

Kumar inspected three camps where he instructed the organizers to take care of the food timings of those who were observing the Ramadan and ordered that everyone be given mats rather than polythene sheets to sleep in their tents. Flood-displaced people were seen approaching him with their complaints, saying that some didn’t even get polythene sheets or some had tents in unhygienic conditions.

While Kumar spent less than two hours in Supaul, coming and going in a helicopter, traveling from camp to camp from 8 am till late night was railways minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. Yadav’s cavalcade was greeted with zindabad slogans from people throughout the district and people were also heard chanting slogans against the Nitish government. Lalu stopped randomly at places to deliver short speeches in which he said, “Nitish government said they will build a new Bihar. They are doing so by flooding your houses.” Lalu also announced free rail service for flood-displaced people who wanted to leave Bihar, and also announced 1 lakh rupees from the railway relief fund for everyone whose house was destroyed in the flood, “irrespective of caste and financial status.” He announced the railways’ help in rehabilitating the victims.

The Rashtriya Janta Dal had lost many seats in the Koshi region in the last Vidhan Sabha elections. Lalu would be traveling to other flood-affected districts tomorrow.

September 9, 2008

Everybody loves a good flood

[An edited, shorter version of this report by me appeared this morning in Sakaal Times.]

The sorrow of Bihar has turned into a PR opportunity for everyone with a cause – everyone is here with big banners proclaiming their work and pressing the media to not forget mentioning them. Even media organizations are doing the same themselves. Even the Bihar government has been forced to put up painted boards on its cars, saying “District administration.”

A substantial presence is that of the RSS and its affiliates like Seva Ashram and ABVP. “Do put ABVP’s name in your story,” says an in-charge as children play with saffron flags. Yoga guru Baba Ramdev came all the way to Patna to flag off 25 truckloads of relief, though his banners have already been outshining those of Asaram Bapu in the flooded districts.

There’s Mayawati and the National Street Vendors’ Association, Christian missionaries and madrasas, ActionAid and local trade bodies – nobody wants to be left out in the bazaar. You don’t have to do much to start a relief camp: take over a government building with relief material and the evacuated will come. The international agencies have a minuscule presence, but their tents have the largest official logos.

One camp is run by “Friends of Anand Mohan,” as the banners proclaim. But you can’t find Anand Mohan there because he’s a former MP on death row – his “friends” hope such PR will help in his appeal before the President of India.

At a camp set up by the opposition Rashtriya Janta Dal, a truck was distributing cattle fodder by a roll call – until the crowd forced them to give all of it away at once and the crowd fought over it like a riot. The Congress has already turned its offices into relief camps and is busy planning a whirlwind tour of general secretary Rahul Gandhi.

People get free food in the camps, but the Red Cross Society has already started thinking of the long-term. They distributed utensil sets in three camps in Sahersa, never mind that it will be some months before the water recedes and village kitchens come to life again.

“We were there in the Bhuj earthquake and the Tsunami as well,” says the son of a Bihar president of the Marwari Yuva Manch, whose camp in Supaul is no doubt filling in the gap left by the Bihar government. His mother Sarita Bajaj insists you write down her name and starts dictating statements like a politician, not letting flood victims speak of their problems. “One call from me and Marwaris from all over India have sent relief material,” she says.

Are you doing this to save lives or to further you caste organizations? “Our organizations was set up to save lives,” pat comes the reply, “You must write that.”

September 8, 2008

21 days later, Bihar flood victims still stranded

[An edited, shorter version of this report my me appeared this morning in Sakaal Times.]

TRIVENIGANJ, SUPAUL: The Bihar government claims there’s nobody now who’s stranded amidst flooded waters and hasn’t been rescued. And that those who are refusing to leave are also being persuaded.

But in Supaul, which shares a border with Nepal and was the first district to be flooded, many are still stranded – 21 days after the Kosi embankment was breach inside Nepal. The worst reports are coming from Manganj pachayat in the Triveniganj block of Supaul, and also from the Chatapur block. Supaul’s flood affected areas have the strongest water current.

In Manganj, 11 have died of diarrhea on a school’s roof, and many are still pouring in to the relief camps. Sanjay Yadav of Maniganj took a private boat today out of Manganj. Now at the Marwari Yuva Sangh’s relief camp, he says, “We were stranded at home for so many days but the army boats would be full of people from neighbouring Koria Patti village and would have no space for us,” he said. “Somebody in a small boat came and gave us food but it was too small for people to be carried back,” he added. There are still more people at home, and Sanjay plans to go back in a boat to rescue them on Monday.

“We were stranded all these days and only three days ago did an army boat rescue us,” said Bachia Devi from Datra village in Manganj. Banshi Yadav of the same village, who arrived here just yesterday, says that quite a few were washed away from the village’s Dalit basti and their bodies were seen at the nehar. “Nobody even goes there,” he said. Vijay Anand Yadav of the same village said that at least a few thousand are still stranded in Manganj and Chatapur. “Koi mai-baap nahin hain Manganj ka,” he said, alleging that those with “approach” were being rescued faster.

His allegation seemed to have some substance at the Triveniganj block co-ordination center, where Mrityunjay Kumar has received only two calls on the helpline number since morning. “One was from an MP’s representative asking for a relief camp to be set up near a relief camp for 1,500 people in Rajshree panchayat,” he said, “and the other was from the Deputy Development Commissioner requesting that the army boats be sent in to rescue one Md Shah Alam from Bighora village.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a jawan of the 109 Engineers’ Regiment told Sakaal Times that six army columns are able to rescue only about 1,500 people a day in this area and many more who keep waving are unable to find a space in the boats between 8 am and 4 pm. Supaul District Magistrate N. Sarvanakumar denied that anybody was stranded, but admitted that Manganj and Chatapur have been accessible only since the army moved in with their motor boats a week ago.

September 7, 2008

Rescue boats: saving lives, looting property

(An edited, shorter version of this report by me appeared this morning in Sakaal Times.)

SAHERSA and MADHEPURA: The generous boats with boatmen provided by the Bihar government, dispatched on generous daily wages from Patna, are a boon as well as a bane. During the day they ferry people to and fro for free – so they can see if their houses are okay, assess water levels on their land, carry food for those still at home. In the unlit nights, the same boats are used for theft. This is the reason why thousands are not leaving their homes for relief camps.

Meet Bibi Hadisa of Majrahat village in Madhepura, perched atop a flooded school building with all her belongings and five children. Three children who had been dispatched away to her mother’s house were washed away. And while she was in a relief camp, cut off from her house for 12 days, someone stole the stored food: 50 kilo of potatoes, half a quintal of wheat and 1.5 quintals rice. “Almost everything we had,” she says. Now whatever she has is here, and a fireplace makes enough food to survive.

She is not the only one. Theft and the fear of it is as common as the flood – people are dealing with it as a fact of life.

“People are not leaving because they have a sentimental attachment with their houses and land,” says RK Singh, Principal Secretary with the Bihar government’s disaster management department. The civil administration as well as 35 army columns in five districts have been appealing to people to not return to their houses just because the water has receded somewhat – the cusecs count keeps climbing up and down a bit like the stock markets.

“The worst is yet to come,” says disaster management additional commissioner Pratyaya Amrit. “There will definitely be more rainfall and the water level could rise. We can’t be sure of anything till 15 October,” he told Sakaal Times.

But on the ground, in the worst-affected Madhepura district, everyone said the reason why people weren’t leaving their homes or returning was theft – whatever was at home was being stolen by unknown people in the night. And the government can hardly be expected to provide security in flooded areas.

Embarrassed by pictures of people still marooned, the government has been pained to clarify that the rescue and evacuation operations are almost over as far as they are concerned – unless these remaining people change their mind. The government estimates their number to be less than 20,000.

The Bihar government has been airdropping yellow-coloured appeal pamphlets in the 5 Kosi river flood-affected areas, asking people to abandon their houses and move to relief camps. But, the government says, several thousand are unwilling to do so, preferring to starve on their rooftops or rickety machans.

For the first time since the army was called in since 26 August, the government requested Brigadier PS Rathi, in-charge of the rescue operations in Sehersa, Madhepura and Supaul, to hold a press conference. Rathi repeatedly assured the media that he was happy with the “excellent efforts” of the civil administration.

“In one case a man waived at our team and when we reached there they only wanted food, but refused to come with us to the relief camp,” Rathi said. They didn’t leave despite being told by army persons that the flood water level might increase fatally.

Rathi said that there may be rare cases of people marooned who want to get to a camp but the army hasn’t been able to reach them. “But figures are not important,” he asserted, “the people have to be psychologically motivated to move to relief camps.”

According to the figures released today, the government is running 315 relief camps, 184 health camps, and 62 cattle camps. The relief camps are housing 2,76,656 people which is a fraction of the 8,82,189 the government t claims have been evacuated by co-ordinated relief efforts of the army, national disaster relief force and the government.

September 6, 2008

Bihar stops counting the dead

(An edited, shorter version of this report by me appeared this morning in Sakaal Times.)

PATNA: The disaster management control room of the Bihar government secretariat has bureaucrats co-ordinating relief efforts in five districts at a war-footing. The bureaucratic efficiency is remarkable not only by Bihar but India standards. The walls are plastered with maps and whiteboards where someone constantly updates the figures of relief camps, health centers, quintals of food airdropped and distributed, number of evacuees, number of houses erased, pucca, kachcha and jhopdis and even the number of fresh handpumps.

All these figures increase rapidly in a day, but there’s one figure that, on 5 September, increased from 22 to 23. That is the number of human beings that have lost their lives.

That’s right: a big-intensity, unexpected flood that has affected 27,26,132 citizens has claimed only 23 of their lives. In two of five districts, Supaul and Araria, nobody has died, claims the government.

But activists, local journalists and relief agencies working in or returning from the five Kosi flood affected districts say the figure is grossly under-estimated. “These claims of the government have been proved wrong since pictures of the dead have appeared from Supaul and everywhere,” says Rajendra Jha of Kosi Seva Sadan. “I have seen 20 dead bodies in a single day. The total number must be in thousands,” he says on the phone from from Sahersa.

“These figures are rubbish. The government does not want to pay huge ex-gratia compensation,” says Santosh Jha of the local NGO Gram Bharti.

His organization is collecting data to challenge the government’s claim. “By the government’s own figures they have managed to evacuate only 8,39,331 people. The rest 20 lakh odd are either stranded or dead,” he said, adding that a few thousand is the minimum that have lost their lives. The disaster management office says at the most 20,000 people are still marooned and were refusing to leave, hoping the waters will recede. For this purpose an appeal pamphlet was airdropped today.

These activists fear that this discrepancy may not be corrected at all: releasing a high body-count would play into the hands of the opposition Rashtriya Janta Dal whose leader Lalu Prasad Yadav has declared he is going to make the government’s handling an election issue in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The affected areas of north-east Bihar are a RJD stronghold but in view of the Nitish Kumar government’s aggressive development agenda, political analysts here feel Lalu’s party was on a losing wicket.

Senior Commissioner in the disaster management department, Pratyaya Amrit, denied that the body count was being suppressed. “Bodies float and there’s no way could have hidden that if we wanted,” he told Sakaal Times.

September 3, 2008

Ratan Tata and the Olive Ridley Turtles

“I have acquired TATA Steel shares as much for the company’s reputation as a socially responsible corporate, as for its financial reliability. I am deeply disappointed to see my company abdicating its environmental responsibilities on this project and not honouring its commitments.”

But TATA Steel is still skirting the issue.

August 29, 2008

Kashmir belongs to Kashmiris

This photo had appeared widely in the papers. Nobody seems to have advised Pratibha Patil how kashmiris will interpret this picture. This was much before the uprising since the last wek of June.

Via the best blog on Kashmir.

I want to say that India’s continued repression in Kashmir is not in my name. I don’t want to meet a Kashmiri and not be able to see him/her in the eye with the guilt of being an India.

Please consider signing this petition.

August 23, 2008

Shiva, the creator?

by Shivam Vij in Baltal

[An edited, pruned version of this aticle by me appeared in Sakaal Times on Monday, 8 July 2008. Pictures by SHOWKAT SHAFI]

Kabhi bulawa nahin aaya (God never called us),” says Subhash Adlakha, explaining why he never visited Amarnath before 1989, even though he had often visited the Vaishnu Devi. A retired government officer from Gurgaon, is head of Jai Baba Shri Amarnath Sewa Samiti – “Registered,” he says proudly – which collects donations from industrialists in Gurgaon, some 20 lakhs this year, and uses them for free ‘langars’ or food and accommodation in Manigam, half way between Srinagar and Baltal. 

As he waits for ‘yatris’ who will return in the evening, have food and perhaps halt here rather then go to Srinagar, he shows around the arrangements. “We have excellent food,” he says as he offers us lunch, “and arrangement for as many as two thousand people to sleep.” 

Next to his langar is one run by an association of traders from Lucknow’s busy Pratap market. “They are much bigger because they have been doing this for 17 years,” says Adlakha. Pilgrims coming from Srinagar have to compulsorily halt here and then the cars and buses leave for Baltal in a convoy escorted by heavy-duty CRPF security.

“The Mohandans in Baltal are very hostile to us,” says one of Adlakha’s assistants, “they extort money in Baltal by charging as much as five thousand ruppes a day for a tent!” When we reach Baltal we find the tents to be just a hundred rupees per person per night.

On our way, just a few kilometers ahead of the Manigam langars, a cleric’s Friday sermons from an old mosque were loudly heard in Kashmiri, exhorting the local population to ‘love’ Hindus and Sikhs just as they lovedfellow Muslims. But perhaps Adlakha’s assistant didn’t know Kashmiri. He also forgot to mention that these ‘hostile Mohandans’ didn’t trouble them at Manigam even as their protest processions passed by the previous week, demanding the revocation the government’s decision to transfer the Baltal site’s ownership to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board.

120 kms from Srinagar, in Ganderbal district, Baltal is a bit of a mela – tents as far as you can see, stalls selling artificial Shivlings and over-priced Pepsi, a large helipad with helicopters disappearing beyond impossibly high mountains, taking six hundred yatris every day to the holy cave. Prefabricated huts and heavy security – CRPF, Army, J&K police, all of them. Langars with religious flags and messages of service, ponywalas and ‘doliwalas’ taking pilgrims on the 14 kilometres long route. “But 90% pilgrims walk; the difficulty of the  trek is part of the pilgrimage,” says BS Negi, a langar manager from Ludhiana adding that the traditional route, “as recommended by the scriptures” is the Pahalgam one, which requires 32 kilometres of walking.

“India can build large dams but not even a road up the mountain?” asks a pilgrim, oblivious to Negi’s idea of treaking up a treachrous mountain as part of the pilgrimigae, the ‘bulawa’. Legend has it that the Amarnath cave, where a lingam-like ice structure is formed, has existed for ages, but was ‘rediscovered’ by a Muslim shepherd from Batakot, Buta Malik, in 1848. Until some decades ago, it was visited by only a few hundred sadhus, led by the head priest of the Dashnami Akhara in Srinagar. Malik’s family would receive a third of the offerings, and also involved was the Purohit Sabha, Mattan. 

When the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board was created, all three parties were devoid of their role in organizing the yatra – Mahant Depender Giri of the Dashnami Akhara only performs the ‘chari mubarak’ ceremonies to begin and end the yatra a the Akhara in Srinagar. He is opposed, however, to the establishment of the shrine board, its decision to extend the yatra from 15 days to two months, its communal decisions such as removing the Malik family, a symbol of Kashmiri syncretism, and also the provision of the Governor as chairman of the shrine board ‘only if the Governor is a Hindu’. Should the Governor be a Muslim, he would appoint a Hindu to head the Shrine Board.

The Shrine Board was established in 2000 by an Act of the Assembly, passed by the then National Conference government. This was done on the lines of the Vaishnu Devi Shrine Board, set up in 1988, in order to make the pilgrimage more comfortable for modern-day middle class yatris, thus increasing the number of pilgrims every year. As many as 75 lakh pilgrims visit Vaishnu Devi every year. It is a curious fact that the number of Hindu pilgrims to Amarnath should increase despite a deacde and a half of militancy in the state.

“Until 1990 a very small number of pilgrims used to go,” says lawyer Miya Abdul Qayoom, president of the Action Committee Against Land Transfer (ACALT), “but in 1991 Murli Manohar Joshi came with a large number of people in a convoy and went to the cave and put up a BJP flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar and proceeded to the Amarnath cave. That’s the point when the number of yatris started increasing.” This, he says, was a “double provocation: One, to tell the people of Kashmir that you can’t take the Valley from India, and two, to tell militants that we are not afraid of you.”

That sentiment was the reason behind a ban on the yatra by a militant outfit in 1993. The number of yatris that year was a few thousand, and the number reduced substantially again when 200 yatris died in 1996 due to a landslide. The Nitish Sengupta committee then recommended that at one time very few yatris should be allowed to go up to the cave for reasons of both safety and ecology. 
However, the Amarnath Shrine Board has been trying to take as many people as possible, also increasing the duration of the yatra from 15 days to two months in defiance of the J&K government’s refusal. Last year, 2,14,000 pilgrims went to Amarnath for ‘darshan’, this year the number is already over 3.5 lakhs and is likely to cross 5 lakhs by the time the yatra ends with ‘raksha bandhan’ on August 16. The increase has been achieved partly by the opening of the Baltal route some years ago.

Politicians and commoners alike in Srinagar feel that the Shrine Board and its aggressive promotion of the Amarnath is part of a strategy to increase India’s stake in the Valley. This has been accentuated, locals in Srinagar say, by yatris waving ‘V’ signs at armed forces and shouting ‘Bharat mata ki jai’. In Baltal, an army vehicle bringing soldiers back from the ‘darshan’ had an army jawan waving at this reporter, shouting, “Bum Bum Bholay” even as Kashmiri tentwalas looked on. Armed forces’ personnel visiting the shrine are not counted as part of the registered number of yatris, and that is the sort of thing that is confirmation for Kashmiris that Amarnath is more politics than religion. 

Stoking the fears in the current agitation against permanent transfer of the Baltal land to the SASB was the idea that this was similar to what Israel did in Palestine: “civil occupation after military occupation”. The ACALT committee said that the transfer of land was against Article 370, which disallows outsiders from buying land in the state. Technically that is not true, given that the SASB was a body established by the J&K legislature. But people felt it was a violation in spirit, as permanent ownership and residential structures could mean that ‘outsiders’ (Indians) could stay there as long as they wanted. 

The establishment and activities of the shrine board have been dubbed as a deliberate, political act of ‘cultural aggression’ which, perhaps, backfired in the current agitation. The SASB started construction of permanent structures at Baltal even before the land could be officially demarcated, paid for and handed over. This could be done easily because the ‘CEO’ of the SASB, IAS officer Arun Kumar, could get the files signed quickly because his wife was secretary in the forest department. The government denied that permanent structures had been built, trying to save the day by giving the impression that the decision was still under consideration. Kumar, who has maintained that the SASB is not answerable to the government, quickly held a press conference saying that permanent structures had indeed been built. He has since been removed for violation of service rules. “In any case his continuation as CEO of the board was against deputation rules,” says Qayoom.

“And what is the need for langars? Langars are not part of the Hindu tradition,” says one leader, pointing out that businesses by Muslims have been hurt over the years. The culture of langars has seeped into Vaishnu Devi and Amarnath pilgrimages because of Hindus from Punjab, who form the largest regional group amongst the pilgrims, followed by Haryana, Delhi and UP, in that order. A large number of these are businessmen who visit every year, and at some point decide to start langars. These are done by establishing religious trusts.

“The main reason for increase in number of yatris is langars – free food and accomodation. Some also offer free bus service from Jammu. And the media has played a very big role in popularizing the Amarnath yatra,” says BS Negi.

But the langar trusts aren’t exactly happy with the Shrine Board. “They charge twenty five thousand rupees and don’t provide half of the services they promise,” says Adlakha in Manigam. The SASB collects compulsory ‘taxes’ from various people, but the receipts issued call them voluntary donations. Rs. 1,500 if you want to put up a tent or a stall to sell, money for advertisements from companies, six thousand rupees from ponywalas and doli-walas, and twenty five thousand rupees from langar walas. It spends money on prefabricated huts (for offices, not pilgrims), toilets and water supply. There are charges of corruption against the SASB: “Why don’t they publish their accounts?” asks Miya Abdul Qayoom.

The decision to transfer land came from the Governor and the cabinet passed it. As is well known, the PDP ministers didn’t object. A lot of red tape was expended on whether the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling that any transfer of forest land would need permission from the apex court applied to J&K, given that the ruling was in the context of a central government act which didn’t apply to J&K, which had passed its own, similar act for forest conservation in 1997. “But then why did the government go to the Supreme Court for permission for building the Mughal road [which connects Kashmir with Jammu’s Muslim-dominated districts], whereas all government departments ruled that they didn’t need to do the same for the Baltal land?”

“We got scared when the shrine board said they were planning to build a dam and generate electricity,” says Dr Mubeen Shah, president of the Kashmir Chambers of Commerce, “so we joined the ACALT committee to protest against the SASB which became a parallel government on the two routes, resulting in losses to the tourism department.” The Baltal land is now with J&K tourism.

What confirmed communal designs for most was the character of Gen SK Sinha’s governorship – he wanted to establish a Hindu university, Sharda Peeth, in Srinagar, and develop other sites of Hindu pilgrimages such as ‘Sita Haran’ in Anantnag, “but he never did anything for Muslims,” says Miya Qayoom.

“Why was a board setup only for Amarnath, why not one to look after the other 200 Hindu temples and shrines in the Valley?” asks Sanjay Saraf, a resident Kashmiri Pandit and J&K president of the Lok Janshakti Party. He also rues how Kashmiri Pandits were marginalized by the shrine board. “We are Shaivites, Shiva is our father, we and the Malik family are the rightful custodians of the shrine,” he says. “When SASB CEO Arun Kumar was asked by the cabinet why Kashmiri Pandits were being kept out, he had the guts to say he doesn’t care for Pandits.” Sikh organizations and many Pandits and in the Valley thus came out in support of the ACALT demand to revoke the order, and have even demanded dissolution of the shrine board, even as Pandits in Jammu and Delhi were, ironically, protesting against the demand.

Separatist leaders and commoners alike have been at pains to explain that this was not a communal agitation. “We have carried Hindu pilgrims on our backs for 150 years,” says a taxi-driver. “The agitation was largely secular and motivated by Kashmiri concerns rather than Muslim ones,” says the CPI-M MLA from Kulwama, Yusuf Tarigami. 

As Jammu simmers with violence, the Valley appeals for calm. Both mainstream politicians and separatists in the Valley have been pointing out how not a single yatri was touched. Indeed, when this reporter arrived on 1 July, it was difficult to get a taxi from the airport because of the general strike: the protestors would pelt stones at vehicles who defied the bandh. But vehicles carrying yatris were not touched. Ordinary Kashmiris and the tourism department both organized langars and free accommodation for stranded pilgrims. “We never touched a single yatri despite six of our people being killed in unprovoked firing by the CRPF,” Yasin Malik of the JKLF clarified to pilgrims at Baltal on 3 July. And the torching of Muslim houses and beating up of Kashmiri taxi drivers carrying pilgrims in Jammu is there for all to see. “So who is being communal?” asks Miya Qayoom.

August 1, 2008

Bihar shows the way

The Bihar police now has a website, like latesht.

And you expect to go there and read of crime. You must be too obsessed with the present, too oblivious of history, you realise, when you find on the homepage:

Bihar Police: A Voyage of Excellence

Policing in Bihar is more than 3000 years old; there are historical references to policing practices adopted by the Magadh Empire. Policing in the Modern era in Bihar began in the year 1862 after the introduction of the Indian Police Act of 1861. With the creation of the province of Bihar in 1912, the basic structure of police as it exists today was laid. There have been several officers of the Bihar province in pre-independence India whose names are etched on the sands of time. To name a few; Mr. Walter Swain of Swain Beat system fame, Shri AK Sinha, the first Indian to become an IGP of any province and Shri BN Mullick, the founder of the Intelligence Bureau leaps readily to the mind. Post-independence, Bihar Police holds the legacy of a rich tradition with the introduction of innovative policing and welfare practices such as creation of a Police Welfare fund, Police Hospitals and Police Information Room (PIR) in 1952. A Police Commission was also set up in 1958, whose mandate was to bring the police closer to the people. The Bihar Policemen’s Association which came into existence in 1967 was the first of its kind to look after the interests of the policemen. Today, Bihar police, with the cooperation of the people that it is mandated to serve and its rich traditions of excellence is firmly committed to confront and surmount the numerous challenges it faces.

Hmmm…