Similar was the reporting of the survey in other Indian papers. They omitted some details, though. They did not mention that the survey was conducted not just in Kashmir but also the Jammu and Ladakh regions. They did not mention that even after factoring in Jammu and Ladakh, the total support for India was 21 percent and for Pakistan 15 percent. So if there was a three-way poll, the whole region’s average figure of those supporting independence (43 percent) would win hands down. Most of the rest (14 percent) favoured making the LoC a permanent border, which means sealing the status quo, something India and Pakistan came very close to doing in 2007. This 14 percent comes only from Poonch (94 percent), Rajouri (100 percent) and Jammu (39 percent).

Further, they did not mention that in the district-wise results the greatest support for independence was in the Indian side of the Valley – an astounding 95 percent in Baramulla, 75 percent in Srinagar, 82 percent in Badgam, and 74 percent in Anantnag. Pulwama and Kupwara were not surveyed. The highest support for India was 80 percent in Kargil and 67 percent in Leh, 73 percent in Udhampur and 63 percent in Kathua. In Jammu district, it was 47 percent – ‘no majority’. In Azad Kashmir, 50 percent wanted to be with Pakistan.

Now read the ET headline again. ‘Kashmir survey finds no majority for independence’. The story does not tell us what they found a majority supporting. If we have to be polite, we can say that such manipulative reporting of a detailed survey amounts to the Indian media being in denial of the fact that Kashmiris don’t want to be with India. If we have to call a spade a spade, we can say that this amounts to telling us a lie. Read More

In the first week of June, I sat at a shopfront with a group of shopkeepers of Kalarus, a small town in Kupwara district in north Kashmir. In 1999, they collected money and bought land for a martyrs’ graveyard, one of many such in Kashmir. Whenever the Indian army killed militants trying to infiltrate from Pakistan to the Indian side of the Line of Control, they would hand over the bodies to the Kupwara police, who would give it to these people to bury after the autopsy.

“Look up at the mountain peak,” said one of them, “It is snow clad all twelve months. It is the LoC, 70 kms from here. Do you think anyone would cross that wearing the traditional Kashmiri Khan dress?” And yet, most of the hundred odd bodies in the graveyard had come wearing clothes unfit for snow. And, most of them had so many bullet marks on the face that they were unidentifiable.

This May, however, three bodies came whose faces were not mutilated, only one of them had a bullet mark on the face. They got mug-shots taken and gave them to Kashmiri Uzma, an Urdu daily. Some distance away in Handwara their families saw the photos and went to the police station. These were their missing sons; they had been taken to the LoC to work as porters for the army. This case is by no means an aberration, just that it came to light so conclusively it could not be denied by the authorities.

The ‘encounter’ had taken place at Machhil on the LoC on April 29, bodies exhumed after protests on May 30. This is only one of many encounters at Machhil in 2010, and many more have taken place elsewhere. India had maintained over the past few years that infiltration and militancy were down to record levels as Pakistan had turned off its support to the militant groups. What has changed in 2010? India and Pakistan are talking peace despite 26/11 being just a year old, and there is no change in the prevailing internal situation in Pakistan. This can’t surely be the time when Pakistan will re-open its support for the Kashmir insurgents?

What has changed is that the decline of militancy gave people the space to breath and reflect, and they refused to accept the Indian version that after the defeat of militancy all was over, and that we were now in a post-conflict situation. For the third consecutive summer now, therefore, the people of Indian-administered Kashmir have been taking to the streets, demanding azadi and pelting stones on soldiers and policemen they see as “occupying forces”. This is taking place despite that fact that Pakistan’s hold on even the separatists is at its lowest ebb and India has managed to win over and/or discredit various factions of the Hurriyat Conference. In such a scenario, there has been increasing pressure on Delhi to, at the very least, demilitarise in response to the decline in militancy.

The Indian Army is not only not in favour of repealing or amending the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that gives it impunity in all its actions in Kashmir and the north-eastern states, but has also on record stated its objections to be called back to the barracks. This supports widespread allegations in Kashmir that Indian forces have vested interests in Kashmir; earning monetary rewards and medals for killing innocent people and passing them off as militants is only one of them.

As Kashmir was protesting the Machhil fake encounter, a young boy, Tufail Ahmed Matoo, 17, was killed in Srinagar by the local police. They fired at him from such a close range that he died with a half-inch hole in his skull. He was returning from tuition, and even though the local police were chasing stone-pelters, the precision with which he was killed cannot be a mistake.

Why was Tufail Ahmed Mattoo killed? It may just be police frustration, but conspiracy theorists in Kashmir say it could be a way of diverting attention from Machhil.

Far from offering regret and ordering enquiries into Mattoo’s killing, the state government pretended as though all was fine. Stone-pelters had to be dealt with and such mistakes would take place. That’s when a vicious cycle of protest-death-protest started. In 18 days 11 civilians died, mostly minor boys, one of them 9 years old.

Kashmir’s summer of discontent has to be seen in the context of the post-militancy situation. As India was claiming victory in Kashmir, the people rose in revolt in 2008. 62 innocent protestors were killed.  There were protests all summer in 2009 against a double rape and murder case in Shopian, committed allegedly by either the local police or Indian forces. 32 (check) protestors were killed. In Shopian I met one of the members of the local committee asking for justice. They said they did not want to link this to azadi, they wanted justice under Indian laws. But when justice was denied, everybody said the only solution was azadi.

By this summer India has come down very hard on stone-pelters, arresting and killing countless. Protests have been responded to with bullets, curfew, banning media, even arresting those active on the internet. Delhi has made it clear it is not serious about engaging the separatist leadership, even though it has been pretending to be pen to dialogue since 2003. As a result, angry youth are not even in the control of the Hurriyat leaders.

It is clear that Delhi is not going to make any concessions to the people of Kashmir. The troops that Kashmiris see as a problem are for Delhi the solution. The Kashmiri common man feels frustrated to hear about Indo-Pak talks as though the Kashmiri people don’t matter. Not all of the infiltration encounters this summer have been fake, and there are rumours of more Kashmiris trying to cross the LoC into Pakistan. Delhi is pushing people to pick up the gun again, and perhaps it prefers that to non-violent protests for azadi that attract international attention.

Delhi, it seems, prefers to deal with an insurgency. Crushing non-violent protests makes India seem bad even before its own people, and that’s why the disinformation campaign through the Delhi media.

Another round of militancy in Kashmir, however, would mean that India will be able to portray itself as a victim of terrorism, especially if Pakistan re-opens the militant tap to Kashmir after Obama exits the Afghan theatre. It will be easier for India to crush another armed struggle as it is much better prepared to do so now that it was in 1989. Sadly, all signals are that Kashmir is headed for another bloody decade.

On 14 April this year party general secretary Rahul Gandhi launched the Congress’ biggest campaign to revive itself since 1989. The date was carefully chosen, Ambedkar Jayanti, because he is trying to win over dalit votes in Uttar Pradesh (UP). In 1989 the Congress’ support base in UP was made up of a rainbow coalition of brahmins, Muslims and dalits. The Congress has to woo these communities again to regain power in UP.

The brahmin community took to the now ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in small numbers in the 2007 Vidhan Sabha election primarily because there was no strong brahmin leader after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Atal Behari Vajpayee became politically inactive. Brahmins see in Rahul Gandhi a potential “brahmin” leader. The UP Congress president, legislative leader and Youth Congress president in the state are all from the brahmin community.

Muslim support is no longer enchained to the Samajwadi Party (SP) because their bete noire, the BJP, is powerless these days in both the centre and the state. As a result the Muslim vote is being fought for, as a three-way contest between BSP, SP and Congress. BSP head and Chief Minister Mayawati’s stratagem is to therefore change her party’s core support base constructed out of the “brahmin-dalit” alliance into a Muslim-dalit alliance.

The dalits, wooed away en masse by the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati duo of the BSP for years, would be the hardest to win back for the Congress. In fact, a year ago the very idea would have sounded ludicrous. But today, Mayawati’s angry reaction to the Congress’ bid to woo dalits is indication that the Congress may be winning over dalits. How is this happening?

There are 66 dalit castes in UP. Together they make up 21% of UP’s population. According to the 2001 Census, among these communities, Jatavs – formerly known as the Chamar community – alone constitute 56% of the scheduled caste (SC) population. The Pasis constitute 16% while the third rung, comprising Dhobis, Koris and Balmikis, another 15%. The fourth rung, comprising Gonds, Dhanuks, and Khatiks constitute about 5%.

It was easy for the BSP to win over the Jatavs – Mayawati belongs to this community – but other dalits would have to be wooed by them as well. For that the BSP, in its formative and later stages in UP, organised social movements to bring different dalit castes together, regardless of the hierarchies and prejudices within them. The biggest achievement on this front was to unite Pasis with Jatavs within the party structure.

The Pasis are concentrated mainly in the Awadh region of central UP. Traditionally, Pasis have been perceived as being lathi-wielding guards of zamindars. The Jatavs would often be at the receiving end of that lathi. The Pasis have willy-nilly aligned themselves with the BSP but they always feel like second-class citizens of a Jatav movement. Some Pasis vote for the SP and BJP too, but most find themselves even more neglected there.

Wooing Other Dalits

If at all the Congress can win dalit votes, it cannot be those of Jatavs who are wedded to the BSP like horse and carriage. But the Congress has some hope of winning over non-Jatav dalit votes, especially those of Pasis. There were indications of this in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. According to Lokniti-CSDS data, the Congress won 4% of Jatav votes (as opposed to 2% in 2007), whereas it improved its non-Jatav tally from 5% to 16%.

Addressing the Congress’ student wing National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) workers at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on 30 September 2009, Rahul Gandhi said he goes to meet poor people and it is the media that labels them dalits or adivasis. A week later he repeated this in Thiruvananthapuram: “I ask my office to arrange for my visit to a poor man’s home in the poorest village. You see him as a dalit. I see him as a poor person.”

So by his own admission these visits – which have included dining and staying overnight at dalits’ houses – are pre-arranged.

On 15 March 2008, Rahul Gandhi visited a dalit family in an Etawah village whose five members had been killed by dacoits. They were Jatavs. Next month, Rahul Gandhi visited Ghisauli village in Jhansi, and when told by dalits that fleeting visits did not help, he returned a week later and took a delegation of 300 dalits to the district commissioner to demand fair wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The dalits were Jatavs, known there as “ahirwal”. After the event, the dalits he met, including Shanti Devi whom he had a meal with, told reporters they would still vote for Mayawati, and were shown worshipping a photo of the chief minister on TV. There is no separating Jatavs from Mayawati and her party.

Soon thereafter, on 17 May 2008, Rahul Gandhi took the residents of Banpurwa village by surprise and went straight to a meeting of a women’s self-help group that provides microfinance under a scheme named after Rajiv Gandhi. Rahul chatted there for two hours and then asked one of them for dinner. Her name? Rekha Pasi.

On 25 October 2008, Rahul Gandhi was denied permission to address students at a university in Kanpur. He went to rural schools where, he himself later said, he singled out the backbenchers, who were dalits, for interaction. Then in a speech he gave before the visit ended, he said, “People from different sections of the society are being exploited as votebanks. If the trend continues, it will become a major challenge for the country.”

In January 2009, Rahul Gandhi accompanied the British foreign secretary to a dalit village in Amethi to show him the “strength” of India. In Simra village, he stayed the night (on mattresses provided by the Rajiv Gandhi Trust) in the house of Shivkumari Kori. She works as a manual labourer earning Rs 30-40 a day and belongs to the Kori dalit caste traditionally engaged in cloth-weaving.

Later that month, Sonia Gandhi visited her constituency, Rae Bareily, where she went to the Mahe Fort and assured the locals that she will talk to the tourism minister to help develop it as a tourist spot. The fort was built by a Pasi ruler.

At some point Rahul Gandhi’s “core team” decided to get a dalit member. He was an Indian Institute of Management graduate who left his job abroad to return to UP politics. His job was to “analyse” Rae Bareily and Amethi. His name was Ranjan Chaudhary, a Pasi from Mohanlalganj near Lucknow, and from where his sister Reena Chaudhary had been Lok Sabha member of Parliament in 1999 as a SP legislator but had lost the election on a Congress ticket in 2004. Denied a ticket in 2009, Ranjan left and joined the BJP. The Congress decided to support an independent candidate for the Mohanlalganj – R K Chaudhary, arguably the best known Pasi leader. The SP won the seat thanks to a division of Pasi votes. R K Chaudhary refuses to join the Congress because of his Ambedkarite outlook.

The Congress’ dalit face in UP is Mayawati’s former principal secretary and co-accused in the Taj corridor scam, P L Punia. When he won the Lok Sabha seat from Barabanki (a Pasi stronghold), Mayawati spent 30 minutes speaking against him in a post-election meeting addressing her party workers, and asked them if they knew that he was not from her caste. He was a Dhanuk from Haryana.

In September 2009, Rahul Gandhi kept his own party workers in the dark and reached a predominantly dalit village in Shravasti district and stayed overnight. His host? Chedi Pasi.

On 2 October 2009, the top leadership of the UP Congress decided to mark Gandhi Jayanti by emulating Rahul Gandhi and went on to spend a night in a dalit house in various parts of the state. Party workers arranged for cooks and plates, mosquito nets and mattresses. Congress legislative party leader Pramod Tiwari slept at a dalit gram pradhan’s house in Pratapgarh. His name? Devaki Pasi. These night visits by the state leaders were meant to take place every month but nothing was heard again.

On 6 March 2010, Rahul Gandhi visited the victims of a temple stampede in Pratapgarh. He skipped the hospital and went to the villages whose residents had died. He even gave his mobile number to a survivor. His name? Radhey Shyam Pasi.

On 14 April 2010, Rahul Gandhi started a massive “rath yatra” programme as part of a push to rebuild the party cadre at all levels. Very few dalits thronged the Congress functions as they were busy with their own Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations. Rahul Gandhi said in his speech, “This glorious state has suffered over the past two decades essentially on account of the politics of caste and religion”.

Not an Easy Task

Winning over Pasis and other non-Jatav dalits may not be easy unless the Congress manages to get a major leader from those communities, but the task has been made somewhat easier by Mayawati’s repeated announcement that her successor would be from her own Jatav caste. Taking away even a few of Mayawati’s voters can make a huge difference in a multiparty electoral contest where, unlike 1989 or before, just 50,000 votes or so can win you an assembly seat.

In a sense, Rahul Gandhi is trying to do in 2012 exactly what Mayawati did in 2007. Just as winning over brahmins seemed impossible for her, winning over dalits seems impossible for him. Just as only a small section of brahmins came forward with the BSP (Kanyakubja brahmins, Satish Chandra Mishra’s caste) only a small section of dalits may lean towards the Congress. Rahul Gandhi’s dalit visits are just as highly publicised (the media is often informed in advance) as Mayawati’s “brahmin sammelans”.

Perceptions are not only as important as reality but can shape reality. Voters, particularly fence-sitters, often make their choices depending on the perception of who is winning. It is the hawa – the direction of the wind, they are keen on gauging. Mayawati worked for two years, from 2005 to 2007, to create the perception that brahmins were moving to BSP in large nuumbers, and that helped her win over anti-incumbency votes from all sections. Similarly, Rahul Gandhi has begun preparations for 2012 two years in advance by creating the impression that dalits are turning towards the Congress.

However, the difference is that unlike Mayawati, Rahul Gandhi is not openly holding caste gatherings. Unlike Nitish Kumar, he is not promising a “mahadalit” strategy. Doing so would mean alienating the urban youth gatherings in JNU and Thiruvananthapuram – audiences to whom Mayawati would not appeal at all. In the end, Rahul Gandhi’s biggest advantage is the Congress Party’s ability to be many things to many people, never mind the paradoxes.

Teacher’s Day is certainly a cruel joke in government schools where teacher’s never turn up, or turn up and make students do their private work. The abolition of Teacher’s Day should be the starting point of changing student-teacher relationships in rural India where, studies have shown, a vast number of girl students drop out because of sexual abuse by teachers. One wonders how the Jaipur’s Maharaja Secondary School will celebrate Teacher’s Day considering the owner of the school is in jail for allegedly raping a 14 years old girl student. One the same day, a class 3 student in Faridabad was stripped for not paying fees. If Teacher’s Day is to be retained, it should be a day when educationists should sit together and ask themselves what sort of student-teacher relationship encourages people like 27 years old Manju, a teacher in a government-run school in Delhi to punish an 11 year old student Shanno so badly that she died two days later. Shanno had been asked to sit like a hen in scorching heat with two bricks on her back. She is not the only one: countless dozens of students die every year in this country because of corporal punishment. Teacher’s Day should be used to remember these students who never got a chance to see what a good teacher could be.

Ghalib and BJP (quite like Iqbal’s Shikwa and Jawab e Shikwa) in Bazm-e-Bhajpa where the ‘shama’ is lit right in fornt of LK.

Advani to Jaswant:

Yeh kahan ki dosti hai, ke bane hai dost naseh,
Na tu mera yaar hota, na yeh Kaandahar hota.

Jaswant to Advani:

Kahoon tujh se main ke kya hai, Yeh Jinnah buri Bala hai,
Na tu qabr pe jata na mujhe yeh bukhaar hota.

Brijesh (from somewhere in the audience)

Tere waade pe jiye ham, to yeh jaan jhooth jana,
Na yeh interview hota, na tu beqaraar hota.

The current crisis of leadership in the Bhartiya Janta Party reminded me of this evocative 2006 photograph published in all papers the morning after a remembrance meeting for Pramod Mahajan.

Readers of this blog familiar with Indian politics will recognize the faces of the BJP leadership. Others unfamiliar with those faces will nevertheless find in the clothes that the people are wearing, and also in their sombre expressions, the presence of defeat. There is no corpse visible. One can guess that the people are waiting for Pramod Mahajan’s body–and that would not be inaccurate–but is that all that fills this space with questions? [Amitava Kumar]

As Siddharth Varadarajan says, it is perhaps our turn now to say, ‘Ek Dhakka Aur Do’.

At an estimated expense of Rs 3,000 crore, a criminal waste of resources one could say, but then, how different from the Keynesian nregs which is appositely accused of “digging trenches and filling them up”. Certainly not very different from the baroque and purposeless Bada Imambara here in Lucknow itself. Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah, in response to the 1784 drought, paid people money to build it by day and then break it by night! [Read the full article.]

Here’s my article written some months ago.

I am addicted to Sach Ka Saamna. Initially I was skeptical, but with sms-es from friends after  11 pm (“watch sach ka saamna”), I’ve become a regular. Initially I felt there’s no voyeuristic fun to be had with the secrets of an unknown Indian – I mean if you got Amar Singh on the show to admit whether he’s been in a relationship with XYZ, it’s be far more interesting. Or so I thought.

But Sach Ka Saamna gets these ordinary people and politely tries its best to destroy that person’s relationship with his/her family and the world at large. The contestants play on till they lie, knowing they’ll lose the money they came for but the truth became too much to justify the money. Or they just run away with a few lakhs rather than doing the full monty of 21 questions for a crore. If someone goes that far some day and then commits suicide, I won’t be surprised.

The set, sounds and anchoring of SKS seems very similar to that of Kaun Banega Crorepati. Like KBC, the purpose of SKS is to make money. If KBC was middle class India’s way of saying we’re no longer apologetic about wealth, SKS does away with KBC’s reluctant excuse of knowledge as a harbinger of wealth. Sach Ka Saamna is about making money for your best kept secrets, for simply providing millions of viewers the voyeuristic pleasure of knowing whether you’re cheating on your husband. SKS tries to say we’re out to make money by hook or crook.

That is not to take away from the power of that show to show the mirror to an Indian family. There’s something to be said about a show which gets an about-to-be-married woman in an executive job and asks her, in front of her separated parents, “Were you secretly happy when your father beat up his second wife?” I can imagine family members aross India looking at each other, or looking away, and saying nothing, as though an outsider was revealing their secrets.

And so I’m hooked. My only complain is that the show is too slow. I’d just be happy knowing the person, and let’s go past the questions like a rapid fire round. It wouldn’t matter much if I missed the show because I can read the questions on Sach Ka Saamna’s Facebook page. Samples:

Questions that one Zara has successfully answered, with her mother, estranged father, sister and fiancee Imran in the audience:

1. Have you ever used your looks to get work done easily?
2. While out with your boyfriend have you ever worn a burqa just to avoid getting caught?
3. Have you ever secretly been through any of your boss’ personal documents?
4. Do you feel inferior to your sister Sara for being less educated than her?
5. Have you ever tried to convince someone other than Imran to leave his fiancée and marry you?
6. Have you spent a week away with Imran without your parents’ knowledge?
7. Have you ever quit a job in fear of being confronted about your credentials?
8. Do you love your father inspite of him physically abusing your mother?
9. Were you secretly happy when your father beat up his second wife?
10. Would you accept another man in your mother’s life?
11. Have you ever been in a relationship with two men at the same time?
12. Have you lied to Imran about the extent of your physical intimacy with your ex-boyfriends?
13. Have you cheated on Imran since your engagement?
14. Do you regret getting engaged to Imran?
15. Would you leave Imran if you feel that he is trying to control your life?
16. Do you truly love Imran? (Yes, she said, and the polygraph test said yes.)

(An edited, shorter version of this article by me has appeared in Open magazine.)

Within the space of a week in March this year, just before Lok Sabha elections, mosques in some of Delhi’s most important monuments suddenly started having namaz again – after hundreds of years. Around 200 namazis broke into the Muhammadwali Masjid at Siri Fort on 17 March for Friday prayers; they did the same at the Sultanate-era Nili Masjid in Hauz Khas and at a small mosque at the entrance of the Qutub Minar complex – inside the ticketed area. On 23 March they started namaz at the Jamali Kamali mosque.

Who could have a problem with the devout following the call of the muezzin? A 1958 law does. The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act says that there can be no religious installation or worship where it had ceased. The law seeks to protect such “non-living” monuments for history’s sake. “Once worship or prayers starts, people start affecting the shape of the place,” says writer-filmmaker and die-hard Dilliwallah Sohail Hashmi. Despite FIRs filed by the Archeological Survey of India, the police is allowing namaz to carry on.

The common thread between the imams and maulvis of all the mosques being taken over is that they belong to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, an organization of nationalist Muslims formed in 1919 in support of Gandhi’s Khilafat movement. All of them are also on the payrolls of the Delhi Wakf Board. The Delhi Wakf Board chairperson, Matin Ahmed, is the tallest Muslim leader of the Delhi state Congress. “Due to migration the Muslim population of Delhi has increased and there aren’t enough mosques,” says Ahmed, “How can I tell people not to pray at a mosque? And the properties the ASI is claiming as protected, we have Gazette notifications showing they are also under the Wakf. Tourists go there wearing shoes, what is the problem with namazis who pray barefoot? ”

The problem is pointed out by Hashmi. “Take the case of four mosques built by Juna Shah Telangani, a noble in the court of Firoze Shah Tughlaq (1309-1388),” Hashmi says. “Two of them are protected and two are not. You can see the difference.”

Kali Masjid in old Delhi’s Turkman Gate and a Jama masjid in Nizamuddin are not protected as they were living monuments in 1958 with daily namaz. Both mosques have been painted green, pink and blue, the Kali masjid has had marble chips added to the front gate, steel brackets with ceiling fans have been added, and so has cement-concrete construction. The domes of the Kali masjid has been painted green and several families live in the basement. “Who will recognize it today as the finest example of Tughlaq architecture?” asks Hashmi. In the Nizamuddin mosque, the ceiling of broken domes has been flattened, women are not allowed inside even to see the mosque and photography is also debarred.

On the contrary are other two of Telangani’s mosques which are under the ASI’s protection – one in Begumpur and the other in Khirki. The restoration work took place only very recently, its malba is still lying outside, people drink on the terrace, smack addicts huddle around a fire on winter evenings. “Such dereliction becomes ammunition for those wanting to revive prayers,” he says.

*

In the late thirteenth century, when South Asia’s greatest Sufi saint Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti was leaving Delhi for Ajmer, he asked his disciple Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki to follow him. The people of Mehrauli, which was all of Delhi then, said they would follow Kaki. Seeing this, Chishti asked Kaki to remain in Delhi. The Mehrauli area came to be known as ‘Qutub sahib’.

Niazmuddin Auliya was Kaki’s disciple’s disciple. It is in Mehrauli that Kaki died and was buried, and everyone from then to the time of Bahudur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal ruler, wanted to be buried near Kaki. Even today there are people who want Zafar’s remains to be brought from Rangoon and placed at the place in Mehrauli, Zafar palace, where Zafar wanted to be buried.

Mehrauli has seen a thousand years of building, and the remains that are being excavated and conserved even now are studied by historians to research such details as the mosque architecture, houses, domes and living practices and how they changed over a period of thousand years.

A number of Mehrauli’s monuments, still be excavated, conserved and studied, are in what is called the ‘Mehrauli Archaeological Park’. The most important is the mosque of Jamali Kamali, where a Sufi saint, Sheikh Jamaluddin is buried. The mosque marks an important link between the Sultanate and Mughal periods. Prayers are being held by around ten people every day, three times a day. On Fridays, there could be as many as 200 people. On Friday 24 July, we found a crowd of around hundred people eating biryani in paper plates. The jumma namaz just got over. Some men rush to us, preventing us from taking photographs. You can’t shoot us while we’re eating, they say, you haven’t taken permission from our imam. Namaz is being offered three times a day and nails have already started being hammered into the walls of the Jamali Kamali mosque. “If this is not stopped you will soon find a maulvi living here with his family,” says Hashmi.

ASI field officers who tried to file FIRs with the police were surprised to see the police inaction. It was only on 30 March after a letter was written to the Delhi police commissioner. On 24 July, when we visited Jamali Kamali and the Qutub Minar, we saw the police allowing namaz to take place. “We have taken legal action against whoever has broken the law,” says a Delhi Police spokesperson. Does this mean they will prevent further worship in these monuments? “We have taken legal action,” he repeats. His reluctance to speak beyond the five authorized words may be due to the involvement of ruling Congress politicians such as Matin Ahmed.

The Union culture secretary has written in this regard to the Lt. Governor of Delhi, Tejinder Khanna. “The LG has asked the Delhi police commissioner to strictly implement the prevailing law and maintain communal harmony,” says Ranjan Mukherjee, OSD in the LG’s secretariat.

With the ASI calling up the police every now and then, the imam at Jamali Kamali, Abdul Raziq, proceeded to meet the superintending officer of the Delhi circle of the ASI, Muhammed KK, explaining that they had been allowed by the Delhi Wakf Board. “He is a Muslim, yet he calls up the police to complain against us,” says Raziq. Muhammed, on his part, gave Raziq examples from his earlier postings, where he has refused to allow people to worship in churches, temples and most crucially, a maqbara in Sasaram, Bihar, where the Vishwa Hindu Parishad wanted to offer puja, claiming it to be a temple. But imam Raziq does not buy any of this. “A masjid is forever a masjid,” he insists, proudly showing a letter by Union Minorities Affairs minister Salman Khursheed asking Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit to look into the problems faced by them in offering namaz.

Around the Mehrauli Archaeological Park, other monuments have also been taken up too. At the Mandi mosque, we even found them cooking. At Rajon ki Baoli, the prayer mats are left even after the namazis leave – markers of a claim. An old, unidentified mosque that INTACH would have restored there is now a madarsa and a grave. Another large, unidentified building was taken over just before INTACH was going to start restoration, and yet another one which was taken over after restoration – whitewashed and painted, all signs of history removed.

At the Qutub Minar, the small mosque which historians say was probably once part of a Mughal-era sarai, has been whitewashed and painted for many years. A maulvi who sits there every day distributed talismans, says an ASI field officer. But the maulvi, Maulana Shair Mohammed, claims he’s been performing namaz for 33 years now, something the ASI denies. “They’re asking the namazis to buy tickets!” complains the maulvi.

There is an added problem at the Qutub Minar. The grand Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque there, on one side, has a small idol of what looks like Hanuman – no surprise because the mosque was built from the ruins of temples. The Bajrang Dal in 2001 wanted to worship the idol, and tp prevent that the ASI covered it with grills so thick the idol is hardly visible. Now again, around 50 Hindus from Mehrauli reached Quwratul Islam and demanded the right to worship the idol because namaz was allowed at the small mosque. An altercation between them and the namazis followed. More recently, the Jama Masjid’s Imam Abdullah Bukhar has also joined the cause.

“This has the potential to open a pandora’s box all over the country,” says the ASI’s KK Muhammed. “There will be demands from Buddhists at Ajanta, Hindus at Konark and Elephanta and in Ellora Hindus, Jains and Buddhists could all lay claim,” he says.

These events have raised the hackles of conservationists and historians. A release from SAHMAT, signed by the likes of Irfan Habib and DN Jha, has appealed to the Prime Minister, who is also in-charge of the culture ministry, to take action. The convenor of the Delhi chapter of INTACH, AGK Menon, points out the case of the Taj Mahal, which is closed on Fridays for prayer at its mosque. “If at all prayer is to be continued then it should be ensured that people don’t make any changes in the monument at all,” he says, adding that often there are encroachments in and around such places once regular prayers start.

*

The namazis even point out that the ASI couldn’t be too bothered about conservation if its own Delhi circle office is inside Madarsa Safdarjung! Incidentally, Friday prayers are also held in Madarsa Safdarjung – they had once been allowed by an order from the prime minister’s office, remembers an old ASI hand. Haji Aminuddin knows very well how that happened. We meet him at his house , deep inside old Delhi’s Pahadi Imli Gali. In 1978 he was 15 or 16, he says, “when 10-12 of us kids got together and offered namaz at the Bhoori Bitiyari masjid”. The mosque was inside the campus of the Maulana Azad Medical College and the doctors would call the police. Prevented from offering namaz there they raised such a movement in old Delhi that the government had to not only allow them to offer namaz, but despite being arrested five times the members of what became the Masjid Basao Committee managed to get the land area around the mosque increased. Members of the committee became big Congress politicians, one became a Wakf board chairman and the Jama Masjid’s Abdullah Bukhari became its patron.

“I have more photographs than my weight,” says Aminuddin. These are photographs, mostly, with Congress politicians – you name them, he has them. He remembers well the day in 1983 when he met Indira Gandhi who asked him to support the Congress. Amongst the people who fought cases pro-bono for him was HL Bharadwaj, who later became union law minister. The Masjid Basao Committee of 1978 managed, over the next few years, to revive prayers in not only old the defunct old mosques of old Delhi but also Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque at the Qutub Minar in Mehrauli. He remembers how his group started prayers at ASI-protected Kotla Firoz Shah. “We took a welding machine and cut iron bars and entered. The ASI keeps getting them welded and the community keeps breaking in every now and then, even today,” he says. He is not aware that the mosque’s architecture was liked so much by the invading Timur the Lame that he took a map of it along with Delhi artisans to replicate it in central Asia.

The movement, he says, was later ‘hijacked’ by ‘elders’, but Aminuddin remains a prominent Muslim community ‘face’ in Delhi, invited regularly by politicians. The present Wakf board chairman, Matin Ahmed, is clearly not arguing for something history has not seen.

(A shorter, edited version of this story by me has appeared in Open magazine this morning.)

“Ey pekir Uyghur, oyghan!” (Hey poor Uyghur, wake up!)
- Abduhalik Uyghur (1901-1933), killed by a Chinese warlord for inciting Uyghur nationalism through his poetry

“Kashmir ke peechay hamara mulk hain,” says Abdullah Dawood, 49, sitting in a guest house in Nizamuddin, in a room hired by a fellow-Uyghur visitor from Istanbul. “Just beyond the Karakoram pass,” smiles the vistor, Osman Uzturuk. Uzturuk adds in Turkic, and Abdullah translates: “In the olden days, much before India’s independence, we had great links with India.”

As Uzturuk fills us with information about the riots in Xinjiang since 5 July, Abdullah’s mind returns to that night twelve years ago in the old city of Ghulja, officially known as Yining. 5 February 1997: Abdullah, who ran a grocery store, let go of his reticence about politics and decided to join a rally demanding freedom. The protests were sparked by the execution of 30 Uyghur independence activists accompanied by the crackdown on attempts to revive traditional Uyghur culture such as traditional gatherings called meshrep. The demonstrations were crushed by the People’s Liberation Army, who killed nine.

The trigger for Abdullah to join those protests was the enforcement of the two-child norm. Abdullah had four daughters and had just adopted a son, and though he could get away with bribes, those who couldn’t, had to see their children killed, he says. Plainclothesmen made videos and took pictures, and Abdullah got wind that the army would come knocking in the night looking for all those who took part. Fearing that he may become part of the long list of the ‘disappeared’, Abdullah ran away – first to ürümqi (pronounced Oroomchi), the capital of the province 800 kms away, then to Tibet, and from there to Nepal. In 2003, when Nepal was threatening to deport him to China despite his refugee certificate from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, he came to India.

“Xinjiang” is Mandarin for “new territory”; the local Muslim population still calls it “Turki” and separatists want to establish a new country, “East Turkestan”. This is part of a vast swathe in Central Asia once called Turkestan. The region today is divided between the West Turkestan countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan – countries once part of the Soviet Union. Culturally, the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs of Xinjiang are closer to these people. “All the nations Russia had captured are free today,” says Abdullah, “Only we are still chained.” Abdullah looks at a map of China and shows how much smaller China would be without Xinjiang, whose land area is double of Pakistan.

Under the Qing dynasty, even before the formation of the People’s Republic of China under Mao, the Uyghurs tried several times, in armed uprisings, to be free from the control of Chinese warlords. The Chinese Republic’s main strategy of dealing with the separatism of the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs has been, like Tibet, to give incentives to the majority Han to settle in Xinjiang. Today, there are 7 million Han Chinese in the area, and 8 million Uyghurs. The capital ürümqi has 75% Han Chinese and only 16% Uyghurs. “These Chinese census figures are lies,” insists Abdullah, “There are only 2.5 million of us left there.”

Such were the disputes Abdullah had with the news this past week on TV and radio. “The Chinese government says only 184 died. But my friends in Istanbul say it was 3,000.” These were riots sparked on 5 July in ürümqi when the confrontation between the police and Uyghur protestors led to the Uyghurs targeting the local Han population. The Han backlash lasted several days. The riots were caused in the first place by the killings of two Uyghur workers in Guangdong, in another end of China. The Uyghurs claimed that the Chinese did not protect Uyghur workers and let off the Han killers without punishment. The murdered workers were accused of raping a Han woman, charges later found untrue by Chinese authorities.

Abdullah is worried about his family’s safety, though they live 800 kms away from ürümqi. Over the years there has been little contact, and Abdullah doesn’t know English and is not familiar with using the internet. Between the violence that led to Abdullah’s exile and the riots past week, there have been many such instances. “Kashmiris also ask for freedom, but India does not brutally repress them the way China does,” says Abdullah. “There have been instances when they deliberately organise rallies by their informers amongst us to see who comes out, and then those persons disappear. Bodies are found months later,” he says with anguish. “All this never comes out.” He speaks constantly of Chinese brutality, of zulm, claiming that Uyghurs are not even given the right of assembly, their culture is being destroyed and human rights violated on a daily basis.

When on 17 April 2008 the Olympic torch arrived in Delhi, says Abdullah, Tibetans were allowed to protest, but he, a lone Uyghur in Delhi, was detained at a police station in Seelampur in north-east Delhi. “The Chinese had told them that Uyghurs are terrorists. But the police were very nice with me. I called a friend and got addresses of websites that document Chinese torture on us. The officer couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw those images,” he says.

The Chinese have restricted religious freedom. Abdullah says he couldn’t keep a beard, the syllabus in Islamic schools were regulated and only the government-approved version of the Qu’ran that could be published. China, on its part, has found it easier to quell separatism since 9/11, branding them as terrorists. China claimed that some terrorist incidents before the Olympics had Uyghur groups behind them, and suspects that they may be getting help from the Taliban in the Af-Pak region.

The Han migration to Xinjiang has made the Uyghurs feel alien in their own land. The alienation is visible when Abdullah says: “There’s a reason why the Chinese oppression is so brutal. They don’t believe in god and fear no one. They eat rats, frogs, dogs and monkeys!” The disgust changes to ridicule when he adds: “They even eat donkeys!”

Abdullah’s friend from Istanbul is similarly exiled, and both say they’d rather be exiled than live under Chinese rule. Abdullah did not agree to be photographed as he may be recognized and his family back home harassed. A photograph in a Kathmandu paper in 2003 did him great harm. After the newspaper article about Uyghur refugees appeared, Nepal deported four of them under Chinese pressure, he claims; Abdullah and seven others escaped to Delhi. They have since then been re-settled by UNHCR in Sweden; it’s been years and Abdullah is waiting for his turn, too. It’s the heat he wants to escape the most. “My home was colder than Kashmir! ” he says, cutting coriander leaves that he will mix with his soup. “It’ll help against the itch and allergies I get from this heat.”

“In Nepal we got enough money from UNHCR to live by, but here we get only 2,245 rupees a month,” says Abdullah. India does not allow employment for international refugees. He survives thanks to the visiting Uyghur and Turkish businessmen from Istanbul. They come here to buy scarves, shawls and cushion covers, selling them in Istanbul at thrice the price. Abdullah, who has picked up enough Hindustani in all these years, helps the Istanbul businessmen with translation and bargaining, and then takes a commission from them as well as the Indian wholesalers. That’s how he’s able to afford a room in Delhi.

When friends come from Istanbul, they bring traditional naan and cook mutton without Indian spices, and he asks them to take him away. It is from one of them that he got the number of Washington based Rebiya Kadeer, head of the World Uyghur Congress, whom China has accused of fomenting the present riots. “I keep calling her and she has promised help in re-settling me,” he says, “India is good but there’s no Turki here. I get very lonely.” Freedom, he concedes, will never come. “I am prepared to die here.”

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?

The book’s first chapter is a narration of the events of 29 September 2006, when Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange’s family was lynched to death. The atrocity is reduced in this narrative to a dry report, as if it were from the file of a district magistrate. Sample this:

Farming is the predominant occupation of the village with 373 hectares of agricultural land, of which 262 hectares—over 70 percent—are under irrigation from the Pench canal. In Khairlanji, 178 families own agricultural land. Though they are mostly marginal landholders, owing to assured irrigation the villagers harvest multiple crops such as rice, wheat and pulses… [pp. 29-30]

Instead of a crisply written reconstruction of the bone-chilling lynchings, one is burdened with too many irrelevant details, stitched together so wryly that they are unlikely to hold the interest of the general reader. Books on caste that have withstood the test of memory, such as Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke or Om Prakash Valmiki’s Joothan, have invested in the craft of storytelling. To move the indifferent about the everyday caste violence, that is what we need the most: good storytelling.

The dry telling is made worse by self-righteous rhetoric. Teltumbde writes, for instance: “Khairlanjis are not confined to villages… They are manifest even in our towns and cities, sections of which have clad themselves in metal and glass in recent years… Every day millions are crushed and killed in spirit…” (pp. 13-14). Our cities do have caste, but do we see public lynchings? Such liberal (and repeated) use of “Khairlanjis” takes something away from the tragedy of Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange.

In the absence of original research and fieldwork, the telling of the Khairlanji incident gives us nothing new. Teltumbde mentions that when Bhaiyyalal’s daughter Priyanka had stood first in class ten, the Khairlanji villagers had felicitated her. But then how did the same villagers rape and murder her because of her caste? There’s something here that is amiss. Teltumbde seems to have not even interviewed Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange— 200 pages later that seems to have dawned upon him and an appendix titled “Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange Speaks” has been added. This is a transcript of Bhotmange’s press conference on 6 November 2006. He is asked whether he saw the incident with his own eyes. “He takes a deep breath and sits quietly. He does not speak.” How much of the lynching did Bhaiyyalal see, if at all? There’s a version of Bhaiyyalal’s eyewitness account in the book. Bhaiyyalal had initially claimed to have seen everything, and then, in court, retracted, thus becoming a ‘hostile witness’ in his own case. These are the ambiguities that a book published two years later should address and resolve.

That is not all: it is not just the CBI that gave a clean chit to many of the accused. It is also Bhaiyyalal himself, who first named and then stopped naming a local Nationalist Congress Party leader; in fact, he now lives with another NCP leader. So much so that he is estranged from his wife’s cousin Siddharth Gajbhiye, the prime witness in the case. What happened in the intervening months? Did Bhaiyyalal become the victim of a larger politics? Sadly, the book sheds no light on any of this. Teltumbde seems not to have attended any court hearing or interviewed any witnesses.

The protests over Khairlanji were led by the people; Dalit leaders were shamed into following. A book that claims to be analytical could have benefited from contextualising Khairlanji within Maharashtra’s Dalit movement and Dalit electoral politics. Instead, Teltumbde is content with telling you the obvious: that Khairlanji broke the myth of a progressive Maharashtra of Phule and Ambedkar.

The book’s only value is in the chapter “Post-Khairlanji”, which tells you of the repression of the anti-Khairlanji protestors, of the humiliating harassment by the police of people such as Dr Milind Mane and Ashu Saxena that the mainstream press had mostly ignored.

The media’s prejudice is explained at length in another chapter. Teltumbde does point out that it is not only the caste-composition of newsrooms but also commercial considerations that come in the way of the media while covering Dalit issues. But that does not explain why the media ‘ignored’ the Khairlanji incident for nearly a month. He dismisses the idea that the remoteness of the village had something to do with this. But really, how many national dailies have reporters in villages? For such coverage the media depends on the language press, which took the side of the perpetrators in this case and thus prevented news from coming out. The single most instrumental role in the media finally covering Khairlanji was played by Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti who emailed its fact-finding report to journalists. The VJAS’ role is underplayed. Teltumbde does not mention even once that the incident got wide attention after Sabrina Buckwalter’s story appeared in The Times of India. Where local Dalit activists have come together as a network and duly informed the press, several reports of Dalit atrocities from far and wide have appeared.

Chapters Five to Eight, which make up half the book, are not about Khairlanji at all. You are left wondering what thoughts like these are doing in a book on the lynching of a Dalit family:

It is an interesting paradox that while globalisation is euphorically spoken about as rendering nation-states increasingly irrelevant, compressing the world into a global village, security considerations about the same nation-states have created the paranoia of war against terror…

Teltumbde writes about whatever crosses his mind: neoliberalism, Naxalism, socio-economic zones and land-grab, Hindutva and Gujarat, Nandigram and police high-handedness, Salwa Judum. The book begins to read like an anthology of activist pamphlets. That is not to devalue activism, for activist literature in our times makes for a more authentic first draft of history than our newspapers. But one expects much more from a book.

The next chapter is an analysis of anti-caste laws and their implement-ation. This is not the first time such an exercise has been undertaken, and it seems like a space-filler in the absence of greater material on Khairlanji. The chapter, “The Political Economy of Atrocities,” tells you less about atrocities and more about the rise and consolidation of OBC politics, without co-relating those developments with the increase in Dalit atrocities. Teltumbde mentions how the post-1991 rural crisis hit Dalits, but not why most of the farmers committing suicide are OBCs. Another chapterclaims to be about “Exploding Myths”, but the sketchy arguments again leave you with more questions than answers. For instance, Teltumbde says that atrocities as public spectacles have increased, yet the tables he produces say that the incidence of arson, which is presumably both a kind of atrocity and a public spectacle, has declined. He does not even seek to explain the anomaly. Then, he disagrees with those who see caste atrocities as nothing but land disputes, thus ignoring the role of caste consciousness. He attributes this school of thought to those in the business of “marxist economic determinism” and yet, a few pages later, argues that future “Khairlanjis” can be prevented by “building of true class consciousness”! The argument is not elaborated. Teltumbde complains of increasing caste violence in Maharashtra by quoting a statistic that says that Maharashtra’s position amongst other states in cases of caste violence actually came down from number three in 1998-1999 to number ten in 2005. He complains about Mayawati diluting the Pevention of Atrocities Act in Uttar Pradesh (in 2007, she gave orders to her officers not to register too many cases under the Act), without acknowledging that if Dalit assertion under Mayawati had meant increasing numbers of FIRs, then scholars like Teltumbde would be quoting those to show how Dalit violence had actually increased under her rule. Heads you win, tails you lose.

The books leaves several other issues unresolved. Such as the question of who put up that banner across Vidarbha, with photographs of the almost naked dead bodies of the female victims, and a call to Dalit men to rise in protest?And what happened to Khairlanji after? What is Bhaiyyalal doing now? What about the court judgement in the case? The OBCs have been demonised through-out the book to the extent of giving the impression that the twice-born upper castes don’t commit atrocities. But Teltumbde fails to tell us anything about the Kunbi and Kalar castes of Khairlanji village, who lynched Bhaiyyalal’s family, beyond the fact of their being peasant castes? What, for example, is the history of their relations with Dalits? What are their political affiliations as a community? These are details that would significantly impact our understanding of the Khairlanji incident. Finally, the postscript mentions many atrocities that took place in Maharashtra after Khairlanji. Perhaps they could have been done justice by being written about in some detail. One wonders if the great post-Khairlanji Dalit uprising against caste violence had an impact on caste violence in the region thereafter? Did the possibility of another Dalit outburst affect the state’s response to later incidents?

All Teltumbde wants to talk about is Shudra oppressors, neoliberalism, Naxalism and the State—Khairlanji being a mere symbolic peg on which to hang all these ‘larger’ issues. Which is why you are surprised to read, on the second-last page:

Khairlanji soon got transformed into a symbol — a symbol of atrocity —shorn of reality. Dalits ceased to see any other caste crime beyond Khairlanji. This tendency to create symbols out of reality, and to discard reality thereafter, can be easily seen among dalits.

There’s another problematic symbol used here. The book is part of a series on atrocities called ‘HoloCaste’. This is not just a bad pun; it devalues both the Holocaust and violence against Dalits. It is time to use our own idioms, to tell our own stories, because the Dalit movement is still waiting for its own Abel Meeropol and Billie Holiday.

“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.)

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.

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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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

[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.

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…

This could possibly hurt the BSP’s stated ambitions to win around 50 of 80 seats, going by arithmetic figures from the 2007 UP Vidhan Sabha elections. Should the government fall early polls are called, the impact of such an alliance could be contained.

The BSP’s voteshare in 2007 elections was 31%, up from the previous 24% thanks to its policy of appealing to all caste blocs. But the SP had also maintained its tally of 25%, but lost 48 seats.

“The Congress with its 8% vote-share could help the SP in a pre-poll alliance as lesser votes will be divided,” says political scientist Sudha Pai, author of a book on the BSP. “It would definitely limit the number of seats the BSP could get,” she says.

However, past experience shows that vote blocks don’t shift easily. In 1996 the Congress and the BSP had an alliance in which some of the Congress traditional voters voted for the BSP but not vice-versa. “The same is likely to happen if the Congress allies with the SP,” said Pai, “This could be a calculated move on the part of the SP.”

“Mayawati is standing on a fragile vote-share combination,” says Kanpur-based political scientist AK Verma, adding, “Using the Muslim card on the nuclear deal issue could drive Muslim voters to the Congress-SP as Muslims may not appreciate being pitted against something in national interest,” he said.

But not all feel that Mayawati is worrying about a SP-Congress tie up. “Vote shares are not cast in stone,” says Ajoy Bose, author of a political biography of Mayawati. “Mulayam has shot himself in the fott by joining the UPA at this time and facing defection from his party and potential loss of votes. Mayawati stands to gain the most,” he says.

AK Verma cautions that even if the Congress and SP achieve a collective vote-share of 30% plus, it is not necessarily a magic wand. “In 1996, the BJP had 34% vote-share but only 175 of 403 seats,” he says. Varma says that winning an election in UP requires building what he calls a “vertical social coalition” rather than one that is horizontal. “A vertical social coalition of several castes has the winning weight in the assembly,” he says.

To that extent the BSP may not be under threat as no other party is trying to cut through its Sarvajan Samaj politics. “The SP and the Congress are both acting in desperation to save their 19 and 39 MPs from UP respectively,” says Ramesh Dikshit, Uttar Pradesh chief of the Nationalist Congress Party. Maywati with her prime ministerial ambitions is clearly not taking any chances, numbers firmly in mind.

The European Union sub-committee on human rights will hold tomorrow a hearing in its Brussels tomorrow on the discovery of mass graves and alleged intimidation and attacks on human rights activists in Kashmir. The hearing will be attended by Indian embassy officials as well as human rights activists.

This comes in the wake of the European Union Parliament’s resolution calling upon India to investigate not only the recently discovered mass graves but also the alleged attack by security forces on human rights activist Parvez Imroz. Imroz, an award-winning activist who is with the Association of Parents of Displaced Persons (APDP), has survived two assassination attempts in the past. The APDP has been coordinating the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir.

The resolution “Expresses its concern for the safety of Parvez Imroz and other human rights activists investigating unmarked graves and human rights abuses… and calls on India to ensure their protection and allow them to operate without fear of harassment and violence; urges the authorities to conduct a prompt and impartial investigation into the attack on Parvez Imroz.”

The eleven-point resolution has also asked India to remove restrictions it has placed disallowing the UN Special Rapporteurs on Torture and on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, and the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, from visiting the Indian side of Kashmir.

At 10:10 pm on 30 June, says Imroz, a group of CRPF and J&K police personnel arrived at his house in Kralpura village, 8 kms from Srinagar city. “The broke the bulbs outside the house and started banging.” Fearing for his life, Imroz didn’t answer, rather calling his nephew who raised an alarm from the mosque and a crowd started collecting there. “So they shot at my nephew and he escaped,” he said, “and they also fired a grenade-like thing in the compound and five shots in the air as they left.”

The police, he alleges, refused to file an FIR the next day and which has still not been filed. “The charges are preposterous but we are investigating them,” SM Sahai, Inspector General of Police (Kashmir zone) told Sakaal Times. Asked if there were any charges against Imroz, Sahai said, “None at the moment but if he does something suspicious we will definitely investigate that.”

CRPF spokesperson P Tripathi, however, blamed it on the police: “The local police station received a call from Imroz that around 45 militants had laid siege to his house. The CRPF only assisted the police and was not involved in any attack on his house.”

Imroz has since then been living elsewhere, fearing for his life. Another member of the people’s tribunal, Angana Chatterji, has alleged that when she was at the airport, leaving India on 4 July, she got a call from an unknown caller who said, “Madam, we know you’re leaving. Think wisely before coming back.” Chatterji will be representing the APDP in Brussels tomorrow.

[An edited, shorter version of this interview appeared in Sakaal Times on 7 July.]

Even as the PDP tries to occupy the moral high-ground in the aftermath of a successful azadi-inclined agitation against the transfer of land to the Shrine Board, its President Mehbooba Mufti admits in an interview with Shivam Vij that the party has suffered a jolt.

Do you accept that the PDP has suffered a political jolt in the current controversy?
In politics you have to be prepared for ups and downs. This has definitely been a jolt. People had high expectations from us and we did achieve in restoring the credibility of mainstream parties. People had started looking at mainstream parties as not being untouchable anymore. Ghulam Nabi Azad’s parting gift to the outgoing Governor has affected that.

You blame Azad but the PDP forest minister and Deputy CM were responsible for the passage of the order.
But the Chief Minister is the head of the government. Certain policies were dear to Governor Sinha and he had the habit of getting his way through. He is now accusing my father [former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed] of being separatist and communal. He forgets that it was my father who had made land available to the Vaishnu Devi shrine board.

But the Congress says that the file was thrice approved by Baig which is Deputy CM as well as law minister.
That was only about whether the Supreme Court order on transfer of forest land applies to the state. But yes our ministers did make mistakes by being persuaded. Ghulam Nabi Azad was very close to the Governor and it seemed that he had to do him a favour. He has today even admitted that he would send reports about the PDP to New Delhi.

But ultimately a cabinet has collective responsibility…
Yes, and that’s why we have punished ourselves. Haven’t we, by sacrificing from the cabinet. It was only after we withdrew, and because of the resulting political pressure, that the order was revoked. Yes, people are angry with us, but you can be angry only with someone who is your own and there can always be a meeting ground.

You have called the Governor communal.
Just go to the Raj Bhavan and see how he has turned it into a temple with gods and goddesses all over the place. And tell me, in Tirupati or other such places, which state government has transferred hundreds of acres of forest land to temple boards?

Whose brainchild was the shrine board?
The law to establish the shrine board was enacted when the National Conference in Srinagar was a partner of the BJP in Delhi. The two parties were obviously in partnership and this was part of their give and take. Governor Sinha was sent here when my father was the chief minister so that he could take this kind of agenda forward and my father resisted a lot.

So your father and Governor Sinha didn’t have good relations.
Oh the relations were very bad. As soon as Governor Sinha arrived he started holding district level meetings and was very aggressive about the shrine board. He started asking officials to brief him directly and bring him files. He’s not supposed to do that.

Do you think the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board should be dissolved?
I think its purpose should be confined to rituals. And there should be a CBI enquiry into its finances as also those of the vaishnu Devi Shrine Board. I have heard many allegations that the Governor had turned the two boards into money making machine and they don’t even publish accounts. There were protests in Katra two years ago. They are charging huge fees from punywalas and labourers. We want to know if somebody got commissions from langars and chopper companies. People here want to know if Governor Sinha went back a rich man.

The NC is being said to be the one which is going to benefit, but more than the BJP in Jammu and even nationally.
The BJP thrives on communalism and that is what they are doing. But as far as the NC is concerned I am sure people will look at our performance between 2002 and 2005.

It is being said that the popularity of the agitation will affect voters’ participation in the assembly polls in November.
We are apprehensive that the boycott call may work to some degree in towns and cities. These events have been the biggest setback to the democratic process the PDP had started. The turnout in municipal elections was as high as 90% in some places and even in by-elections we saw 70% voting. When my father took over in 2002 he purused the ‘healing touch’ policy that was gaining success but Ghulam Nabi Azad undid all that. What we saw on the streets for nine days against the transfer of land to the shrine board, was giving vent to pent-up anger about many other things.

What were the achievements of three years of PDP rule?
When we took over there was a sense of great insecurity on the streets. The issue wasn’t jobs or development but whether one would be back home at the end of the day. We also tried to move Delhi towards reconciliation between India and Pakistan so that the Kashmir issue could be solved. Our healing touch policy was showing success and the space for violence started shrinking. We also made sure we were fair to Ladakh and Jammu regions, you can ask the people there.

But demilitarization didn’t happen, and isn’t security in the hands of Delhi anyway?
Well we did persuade Delhi to withdraw troops from schools and administrative buildings. Can you imagine a BJP prime minister (Atal Bihari Vajpayee), despite having an alliance partnership with the National Conference, praised us? Can you imagine he was able to address a crowd of thousands in Srinagar without worrying about security? People came to listen to Sonia Gandhi despite an encounter going on in the city. That is what we changed. In November 2004 the prime Minister announced that Delhi found a sea change  and was considering withdrawal of troops. But when Azad took over he started opposing withdrawal. Our tenure saw the opening of the Muzaffarabad road [for a bus service]. He did not pursue anything in the direction we had given. We had given Kashmiris the feeling that they were moving forward politically. We managed to bridge the gap between Kashmiris and New Delhi.

So what according to you were Azad’s achievements?
Well he harps on development and reducing corruption but if you talk to common people they will tell you we did more on that front.

The Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society has documented that during the PDP years there were 127 custodial killings and 173 disappearances, whereas during the Congress tenure there were 56 custodial killings and 104 disappearances. This could no doubt be because of decline in militancy but it still shows the PDP in a bad light.
I personally went to the house of each and every family whose members had disappeared or killed in custody or a fake encounter, so I know that these figures are not right. We were able to impress upon Delhi that fake encounters were happening for money and promotions.

The azadi sentiment remains strong and has only received a fillip with the anti-land transfer agitation. As a Kashmiri, as an observer, and not as a PDP leader, what do you think is the way forward?
We can find a way out, we had started bridinging gap between Kashmiris and Delhi…

But a substantial number of people want azadi, they don’t want to bridge the gap with Delhi.
The Prime Minister and General Musharaff had declared that boundaries can’t be changed. So we suggested the setting up of a regional council. Representatives from both Kashmirs could be me members. This could also function as the joint mechanism between India and Pakistan. So we have given a roadmap.

But Delhi seems to be happy with the decline of militancy and seems to be suggesting the problem is over.
Unfortunately my father is now being projected as a separatist, but he had warned Delhi: don’t take this normalcy for granted. But Ghulam Nabi Azad changed the tune to say that these azadi slogans were hollow, self-rule was meaningless. He thought his hollow slogan of development could answer everything.

So what should be done now?
The alienation of people can be addressed be pro-people policies to some extrent. But you also need a roadmap to solve the Kashmir problem. This has to take into account three things. Firstly, regional balance between Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Secondly, the gap between Delhi and Kashmir. And thirdly, the Pakistan factor. All three of these things are equally important.

What is the status of the government at this moment?
The Left position is clear, it is the Congress and the UPA which has to decide. We have been consistent and reasonable. This has been our stand when the government had signed the new framework with the US. When Manmohan Singh and George Bush signed a joint statement, we had opposed it. We protested outside Parliament when the nuclear deal was signed. The UPA said let us just go to the IAEA and negotiate. The UPA-Left committee was set-up to take a final view on the nuclear deal, its impact on our foreign policy, etc.

Is there still any hope?
That is for the Congress party to decide. They think the nuclear is the number one priority before the nation when it was not even there in the common minimum programme.

Is there a time-frame to your negotiations with the UPA?
Once the safeguard negotiations are over, they had to come back before the committee. The negotiations are frozen, neither India nor IAEA can change them. They want to go ahead with the deal without the UPA_Left committee’s approval. That cannot be accepted by the Left.

Is this the single issue or are there other issues?
That is why I raised the issue of priority. There’s inflation and price rise. We have been doing demonstrations, bandhs and strikes from April onwards. There are farmers committing suicides in the country, there are struggles over land acquisitions. And what is the government’s priority? The nuclear deal!

How much of what was promised in the CMP has been delivered?
The rural employment guarantee act was an important legislation, though we wanted it in urban areas as well. But a beginning was made, first in 100 districts and now all over the country. Then there was the RTI Act, a detrimental amendment to which we blocked. But then the women’s reservation bill is still stuck. The Forest Rights Act was important but it is not being implemented properly, there are violations even now. We opposed the organized workers’ bill but they have been trying to push through financial sector liberalisatiion.

So what will you tell the people about your achievements in the past four years?
I am not discussing elections at the moment, I don’t want to send out the wrong signals.

Whereas you are blocking the deal and threatening to withdraw support, you want to give the impression that the Congress is responsible.
This impression being created in a section of the press is incorrect. There were debates in Parliament on the nuclear deal, and it is not the Left alone but a number of other parties which are opposed to it. A majority of MPs are against it. The Left has a position, a point of view, and we have the right to do so in a democracy. Give us counter-arguments. The joint Manmohan-Bush statement said that India and the US have a shared economic and political perspective. Endorsing that means we endorse the Amerccan occupation of Iraq, its position on Palestine, its threats to Iran.

What is to be made of joint Indo-US naval and military exercises? The nuclear deal is more about deepening Indo-US cooperation. The US is looking towards India as a huge market for its nuclear business. The US has a grand design in Asia, a global strategy that it wants India to be part of. We have to ask ourselves what are political the costs of the nuclear deal?

They keep painting us as being against nuclear energy. The Left is not opposed to nuclear energy as such. India already has 17 nuclear reactors which provide 2.6% of our energy and the deal could increase it by just another 3-4%. And at what cost?

Why don’t you push the government to sign the CTBT and the NPT and then the nuclear fuel embargo would go away, without India having to sign the deal.

The NPT is discriminatory, it perpetuates nuclear haves and have-nots. The Left has always been for nuclear disarmaments, ask the Congress if they are, ask them what Rajiv Gandhi had declared.

What if the Samajwadi Party saves the government after you withdraw support?
Let things happen, they have a meeting on 3 July to decide their stand. Why should I comment on something that hasn’t yet happened?

Isn’t it strange for you to support Iran which has an authoritarian regime that imprisons leftists?
Iran is a part of the NPT, it is part of an international nuclear regme, and therefore they are facing this situation. I should attack the US first. They have the biggest nuclear arsenal, have been weaponising space and sea-surface.

Isn’t your stand helping the BJP?
I object to that language. We have been supporting the UPA for four years now only to keep communal forces out. We have been fighting communal forces uncompromisingly and they regard us as their enemy number one. Ask the Congress if they aren’t helping the BJP by wanting to precipitate elections over the nuke deal when inflation is sky-high.

New Delhi, 7 July: On Thursday, 4 July, the Congress’ social welfare minister Abdul Gani Wakil showed this reporter the list of MLAs in the J&K assembly, claiming that even the lone BJP MLA would abstain in order to save the Ghulam nabi Azad government. Since 28 June, when the PDP withdrew support, the Congress always insisted that it had the numbers. On allegations of horse-trading by the PDP, Wakil had said, “We have asked all MLAs to vote from their conscience.”

So what went wrong? The Congress was banking mainly on a rebel group of PDP MLAs who were unhappy with PDP President Mehbooba Mufti’s decision to withdraw support. This rebel group, sources say, was led by Deputy CM and law minister Muzaffar Husain Baig, who wanted to stay on with the government and clear the air about his own role in allowing the land tranfer to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board.

Of the PDP’s 18 MLAs, one, Ghulam Hasan Mir, had been suspended from the party in connection with the sex scandal. Mir, who has formed his own party and was supporting Azad’s government, told Sakaal Times, “Azad could have proved majority this morning as several MLAs from the PDP and even the NC were planning to vote for the government against their party whips.” The anti-defection law, passed in J&K by Azad, was also taken care of: Mir said that 5 PDP MLAs were ready to go against their party whip. “But Azad chose to resign honourably as it would not have looked good in a democracy,” said Mir.

However, other rumours had it that this rebel group backed out at the last moment.

In Valley it is V for Victiory
Srinagar, 2 July:  The writing is on the wall: the Kashmiri demand for independence from India is not over yet. Separatist leaders and commoners alike have hailed the withdrawal of the land transfer order as the victory of the Kashmiri people and called for revitalizing the azadi movement. This is clearly a turning point in the 20 years old militant struggle. There is also talk of boycotting the forthcoming assembly elections and reunification of the two factions of the Hurriyat Conference.

The mood was reflected in every local daily’s frontpage headlines. “PEOPLE WIN,” said Greater Kashmir.” “Kashmir Savours Victory,” said the “Kashmir Observer”. “Kashmir win,” said “Amroze Kashmir”.  “VICTORY!” shouted the “Etalaat”. “People win, Order revoked,” said the “Kashmir Monitor”. The Urdu “Srinagar Times” had a cartoon showing a common Kashmiri with a ‘V’ sign, the caption reading “Man of the Match”.

The emphasis that it was a people’s agitation rather than one of leaders is shared by everyone. The sentiment is shared by every taxi driver, shopkeeper, houseboat-owner, journalist – too widespread to be brushed away as anybody’s political gimmick The agitation was lead by the ACALT committee which had, apart from Hurriyat leaders, apolitical religious leaders, representatives from trade and transporters’ organization’s, the Kashmir Chambers of Commerce and the Bar Council. Vehement support was given by the Valley’s Sikhs and most Kashmiri Pandit organizations as well.

The biggest winner is Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who was the first to begin mobilizing the public with a signature campaign. He held a press conference this morning in which he emphasized the non-violent nature of the agitation, the widespread support of youth who took to the streets.

“This punctures New Delhi’s theory that our movement is standing on Pakistani support,” he said, adding, “Did you see a single agitator using violence?” He announced a special gathering on Friday at the Hazratbal shrine which would be addressed by him as well as Mirwaiz Omar farooq, leading to speculation that Hurriyat reunification is on the cards. “The movement lives on in the hearts and minds of the people,” he told Sakaal Times.

The relatively smooth rule of the PDP-Congress coalition and the decline in militancy had led observers to believe that people’s participation in elections could increase. “Nobody will vote now,” said Etalaat editor Zahiruddin. In fact NC’s Omar Abdullah is believed to have said as much to the NSA in his meeting with him in Delhi.  “Mainstream politicians in the Valley who believed the movement was on its deathbed have got a rude jolt,” he said. “This is very unpleasant for the Indian government and intelligence agencies who were already talking of a post-conflict scenario,” says human rights activist Parvez Imroz.

New Delhi: The agitating Gujjars may have got a special place in the reservations pie in Rajasthan, but is this is a case of an elite class cornering benefits in the name of the poor of their community? Some academics and actvists certainly think so.

In Alwar, Aman Singh heads Krapavis, an NGO that works chiefly with Gujjars on pastoral issues. Singh says that in his interactions poor Gujjars in villages have said that they are not concerned about reservations as they are uneducated, and are more bothered by state policies that are making it difficult for them to earn a living by rearing goats, sheep or buffaloes.

Singh told Sakaal Times, “Most Gujjars were herded into the agitation by whipping up a frenzy in the name of caste honour. The Gujjar mahapanchayat had issued diktats that anyone who does not send one family member for the agitation would be ostracized from the community, which nobody would marry in that family. They were also threatened with a fine of Rs. 11,000 per family.” Most leaders of the agitation are ex-servicemen, doctors and lawyers.

Singh’s NGO has been working on several issues faced by Gujjars in their traditional occupation. Similarly, ecologist Purnendu S. Kavoori of the Institue of Development Studies in Jaipur has been reseraching on pastoralism for twenty years now. “Behind the Gujjar uprising is the destruction of the way of life of pastoralist communities, including Gujjars,” he says, adding, “the state has been focusing on agriculture at the expense of pastoralism.” Pastoral communities need public fields to graze their cattle, but such fields, traditionally called ‘gochars’, have been taken over by agriculture.

Gujjars in eastern Rajasthan have also been facing the problem of being denied the use of forest areas that are under the forest department or have been turned into sanctuaries, as in Sariska in Alwar. “The orons or the forests that surround the villages are crucial for pastoralism but the Rajasthan government is taking them over for jatropha cultivation,” said Singh.

“The animal husbandry policies of the government has been promoting hybridization of cattle with foreign breed which results in breeds that need high inputs and yield low output. The state policies have been resulting in sedenterisation of animals,” said Kavoori. Kavoori is part of an experiment, along with Krapavis, to find such varieties of grass that may be more suitable as cattle feed.

Kavoori had in fact made a representation before the Justice Chopra Committee last year on these issues but the committee’s recommendations did not take them into account. Instead, it recommended a package for building roads, handpumps, schools and clinics. “The state cannot think beyond its own idea of development,” said Aman Singh.

“Internationally, governments have made special provisions for pastoralists and it is time we realized the gravity of the issue,” said political scientist Shail Mayaram, who has worked on marginalized communities in Rajasthan.

“Reservations will not solve the problem of livelihood for Gujjars,” said Kavoori, “we need to do much more.”

The Rajasthan government will send a letter to the Centre on the Gujjar demand of ST status, the draft of which it will release on Thursday. However, the government refused to reveal its contents. It is however clear that ST status won’t be recommended.

This will be in addition to the ordinance it will soon issue to create a new reservations category, “most backward castes” with 5% quota; this will include Gujjars, Banjaras, Garadia Lohars and Rebaris. “However, the government could include some other OBC castes when the ordinance is turned into a Bill,” BJP state president Omprakash Mathur told Sakaal Times. This is in line with the BJP’s proposed formula for resolving the Gujjar agitation as first reported by Sakaal Times on 6 June.

The Rajasthan cabinet will meet on Thursday to decide when the next session of the House would be called. This will have to be done soon because the model code of conduct for the November elections could soon come into force. Along with the MBC ordinance the government would also introduce 14% reservations for the economically backward amongst the upper castes. “Rajput, Vaishya, Brahmin, yeh bhi to sab lagey huay thay,” Mathur told Sakaal Times. With this move the BJP seeks to placate upper castes who were miffed with the Gujjar agitation and could have been alienated from the party had they been ignored even as the Gujjars were being appeased to end their rail-block agitation.

Rajasthan has 21% quota for SCs, and 28% for OBCs. Adding 5% for MBCs and 14% for EBCs would take the total to 68%. However, the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Indira Sahani case in 1991 said that total reservations under Article 16 (4) of the Constitution cannot exceed 50%. “This can be struck down but only if somebody goes to the Supreme Court against it,” PS Krishnan, advisor on reservations to the HRD ministry, told Sakaal Times. Maharshtra has 52% quotas and that has survived, he said, only because nobody has challenged it. Tamil Nadu has 69% reservations under the 9th schedule of the Constitution, which means it cannot be struck down by the courts. However, the Supreme Court is currently examining the case.

The Indira Sahni judgement says that the total quota may exceed 50% under “extraordinary circumstances.” Krishnan said, “It would be very difficult for the Rajasthan government to justify it in court”

Mathur claimed that the EBC quota was a first in the country. However, Krishnan said that the Narasimha Rao government had tried to bring about 10% quota for the economically backward amongst upper castes but this had been struck down by the Supreme Court.

The letter to the centre whose contents will be revealed tomorrow will be in continuance of the correspondence that began in December 1999. At the time the Centre had written a letter to the state asking for population data and ethnographic material to take forward the process of including several communities in the ST list. The Rajsthan government had replied the letter in January this year along with the Justice Chopra Committee report, to which the Centre had said that it should formally recommend ST status.

“The 1999 letter does not amount to a letter of intent,” said Krishnan. Even if the Rajasthan government does recommend ST status, the supporting evidence will have to be verified by the Registrar General of India and then the Parliament would have to pass a bill.

Jaipur: The Rajasthan government could be bringing fresh proposals to the table to give Gurjars reservation benefits without alienating any other major caste group. Rajasthan BJP state President Om Prakash Mathur told Sakaal Times that he expects the deadlock to be over in a few days. Other sources said that the government has also been talking to Jat community leaders to see if a compromise formula can be evolved.

“We have never said no to the Gujjar demand and some route will have to be explored,” he said. One route, he said, was that of giving Gurjars reservations by considering them a ‘denotified tribe’; the Raje government had already indicated this as early as in January. DTs are communities classified as ‘criminal tribes’ by the British. Some states have a separate quota for them, some include them in the Scheduled Tribes list, some in the OBC list. Rajasthan’s Gurrjars are OBC, and it is unclear how the state proposes to give them community-specific reservations without reducing the pie for others. Rajasthan already has 49% reservations and can’t exceed 50% by law.

However, Mathur pointed out that a letter by the central government had notified Gurjars as STs back in December 1999, along with 22 other castes. However, this was never implemented. “So we are looking into all these things, doing our homework,” he said.

There have always been ample solutions to the Gurjar impasse, but the Gurjars have refused to look beyond the ST demand as they want parity with the Meenas. The state  government, too, had so far only been postponing the crisis. But with elections in mind the state government is believed to be sincerely looking for a way to satisfy the Gurjars.

The Justice Chopra committee setup by the state government as a way out for the Gurjar impasse last summer did not in its report suggest tinkering with the reservation system as a solution. However, a deposition before the committee by Kavita Srivastava, general secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, had shown alternatives that other states are successfully using.

The alternative involves dividing either the OBC or the ST quota to ensure that communities get reservation benefits in consonance with the proportion of their population. In 2006, the Rajinder Sachar report on the state of Muslims had pointed out how other states have done this. Karnatakahas three OBC lists – Most Backward, More Backward and Backward. Bihar and Kerala similarly have two lists. Tamil Nadu has had an advanced formula which, for instance, allows Vanniyars 20% of the total OBC pie in the name of Extremely Backward quota.

Another alternative is to divide the Schedule Tribes list into two parts, Lists I and II, in the manner that Punjab has done with the state SC list there to ensure equal opportuinities for Balmiki and Mazhabi Dalit communities.

A year is a very long time in politics. After Mayawati was sworn in on 13 may, heading the first stable, non-coalition government in UP in 17 years, the BSP-Congress bonhomie had made the latter look like the BSP’s B-team. “The turning point was the Gujarat election,” says JNU political scientist Sudha Pai, author of a book on the BSP. The BSP didn’t win a single seat but cost the Congress more than a dozen seats by eating into its vote bank. Around the same time it won only a single seat in Himachal Pradesh but increased its voteshare from 0.7 to 7 percent. In the Delhi municipal elections last year it won 10 percent votes and 15 seats. And then in the last week of December Mayawati went on a whirlwind tour of the country- Chandigarh, Punjab, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Bihar – often promising thir or that to particular caste groups, poaching local politicians from other parties and urging voters to accept its ‘Sarvajan Samaj’ formula.

A senior Congress leader in Lucknow says that the Congress strategy since then has been to force Mayawati to battle it out on home turf. Hence the Rahul Gandhi offensive on Mayawati not doing enough for Dalits. “Even if it does not impress voters in UP for the moment it does send out the right signal to Congress’ dalit base in other states like Haryana and MP,” the leader explains.

Mayawati’s critics were delighted when the BSP lost the Ballia (in eastern UP) assembly bypoll in January. “Around 20% dalit voters didn’t vote at all,” says Saharanpur-based Dalit activist Ram Kumar, “the Brahmin candidate who represented the BSP there was a particularly unpopular one.” It seemed that the BSP’s ‘Sarvajan Samaj’ alliance was hurting its heels.

“But she has Jat leader Mahendra Singh Tikait to thank,” adds Kumar. In March the Bhartiya Kisan Union leader hurled unmentionable caste slurs at Mayawati at a rally in Bijnore. Mayawati had him arrested but as a compromise had him released on bail. “By not taking Tikait’s insult lying down she sent a message to Dalit masses who their leader was,” says Pai. And at the same time she made sure she didn’t take so drastic an action against him that it would hurt her efforts to woo the Thakurs.

Three state assembly and and two Lok Sabha bypolls in April were won with handsome margins in April. The Congress and BJP candidates lost their security deposits in four of these seats. Political analysts say because of the consolidation of dalit votes because of the Tikait incident. “But it could also be because the crucial Brahmin votes that make it a tipping point for victory are more easily had in western UP,” says Vishwanath pandey, registrar with the Benares Hindu University. Pandey, a keen political observer, explains that the newfound Brahmin love of the party has been restricted to the Kanyakubja Brahmins, which is the sub-caste of the party’s Brahmin mascot Satish Chandra Mishra. “Eastern UP is dominated by Saryupari Brahmins who are still close to the BJP,” he explains, adding, “most of the posts in the government have been cornered by the Kanyakubjas.”

The BSP’s social engineering with Brahmins may be copied by Mulayam Singh yadav and Lalu Yadav, but as far as the BSP is considered it is a big ploy, says psephologist Yogendra Yadav of CSDS. Indeed, CSDS survey show that only 17% of Brahmins in UP voted for the BSP in the assembly polls last year and that Brahmins are still largely with the BJP. However, the impression of a Dalit-Brahmin alliance helps the BSP give an impression of an all-inclusive Dalit party that attracts all castes, particularly the lower OBCs who are the party’s second biggest voteblock after Dalits.

Ram Kumar, who runs an NGO that works on cases of atrocities against dalits across UP, says that while Brahmins have gained a lot from this government, violence against Dalits has increased. “Mayawati’s orders to the police brass to not register cases under the SC/ST Atrocities Act has sent out a signal in the rural areas that you can do anything to a dalit and get away with it,” he says. The relaxation of the Atrocities Act, which Mayawati officially denies but is there to see on the ground, has always happened in Mayawati’s regimes because an increase in the number of FIRs later shows up badly in the crime records. Her opponents wave the reports in the state assembly, point out how Dalits are suffering under the Dalit CM’s nose. “Also that the harshness of the Atrocities Act creates animosity against the BSP amongst the rest,” explains a BSP worker in Lucknow. He says that it deflects the party from marching forward. “The most important task at hand is to make Behenji the PM,” he says, “and the Dalits understand this.”

This time the BSP has been careful enough not to openly indulge in making money out of mass administrative transfers, but its agenda to build statues of Dalit icons and publish literature about them remains unabated. “This is a state where farmers are dying! And she wastes public money in putting up her own statues!” says former Lucknow University vice-chancellor Roop Rekha Verma. “The statue politics is part of the BSP’s mobilization strategies over the last two decades. You may see it as wasteful expenditure but for Mayawati it is investment,” says Badri Narayan, author of a book on the BSP’s use of mythology and history to win Dalit votes.

Mayawati rarely visits the secretariat in Lucknow, signing files at home. While Shashank Shekhar Singh and his team of bureaucrats run the administration, Mayawati likes to devote the better part of her time to building the party. When in October last year there was uncertainty over mid-term general elections, she had party workers from Jammu to Tamil Nadu visit Lucknow for a massive rally. The BSP is widely expected to do well in Haryana and Madhya Pradesh assembly elections.

The BSP typically contests all seats in every election even if it knows it is going to forfeit its deposit in most places. It is said about the BSP that it contests the first election to lose, the seond one to defeat and the third one to win. Considering 2009 is the first time the BSP will be seriously pitching itself as a national party for the Lok Sabha, why is there so much talk about Mayawati as the next Prime Minister? “There definitely is a sense of panic,” says Pai, “it is too early to make such predictions. And who can predict Indian politics either way?”

As inflation hit a 42-month high on Friday, consumers’ anxiety also hit a new high, even as big retail stores are exploiting the opportunity by offering special discounts that purportedly negate the price rise.

At Future Group’s Big Bazaar in the Great India Place in Noida, one of the biggest retail stores in Delhi-NCR, floor manager Mukesh Negi explained how they were offering 20% discount on all food items provided customers also bought non-food items worth the same or greater amount. “This is a part of our campaign to help consumers fight unprecedented inflation,” he said.

He said that the greatest rise has been in prices of edible oils and rice, two most essential commodities. From Rs. 60 a litre three months ago, edible oils at Big bazaar are now retailing for upto Rs. 78 a litre.

Amongst pulses rice has been the worst hit. In some types of rice, said Negi, the price rise in the last three months has been 20% – and since Diwali last year, 90%. Sales have however not been affected, he said, as “people are not going to stop eating.”

“It is definitely beginning to pinch,” said Madhu Arvind Srivastava, a housewife carefully buying groceries at the retail chain. “When I bought rice stocks three months ago, regular Basmati was at 32 rs a kg. Now it is 38,” she said.

However, kkirana store owners say loosely sold groceries are begiing to stabilize – despite the Wholesale Price Index’s unrelenting upward trend. Two kilometers away from Big Bazaar, a small provision store owner, Pawan Jaiswal, said that mustard oil prices had come down from Rs. 78 a litre two months ago to Rs 68. Sugar prices had dropped from Rs. 18 to 17 a kgand rice from Rs 18 to 14. “I’ll go to the wholesale market again on Sunday and see if prices are increasing again,” he said.

“Prices dropping at kirana stores could be because of various reasons such as adulteration or PDS supplies being diverted into the market,” said consumer activist Bijon Mishra. He added that the overall inflation scenario is only the beginning and due to supply side reduction prices could go up further. “But the rise is not hurting the middle class that badly thanks to growing incomes, but savings are getting affected,” he said.

Another consumer activist, Shriram Khanna, said that the poor must be protected through PDS subsidies which should be made more effective. “Price rise is inevitable if the economy has to grow,” he said.

Some recent media reports had claimed that the first such report by the J&K police said that 209 Kashmiri Pandits had been killed by militants since 1989. In only 24 of these cases had chargesheets been filed whereas in 115 cases the killers remain unknown. The 24 chargesheets resulted in 31 local militants being booked but the only conviction that has taken place is of three militants for gunning down rights activist HN Wanchoo on 5 December 1995.

“We have not prepared any such report and don’t know what these media reports are alluding to,” Kashmir IGP SM Sahay told Sakaal Times. The six pages long report is said to list more names of more than 1500 minorities, but most of them Sikhs and non-Pandit Hindus from Jammu.

“This is a grossly under-reported figure,” said Agnishekhar of Panun Kashmir. “I have myself made a presentation before Amnesty International in 1993 about 450 killings and AsiaWatch NGO has recorded 1,200,” he told Sakaal Times from Jammu. He demaded that this list of 209 be published so that families of those who have not been named can make there representations before the police.

“That it took them 18 years to even make such a report speaks of their callousness,” said Agnishekhar of Panun Kashmir. “It shows they never wanted to do it in the first place as they want to hide the truth about the ethnic cleansing and Islamic communalism.” He alleged that this comes at a time when the government is trying to force the Pandits to return to the Valley without a guarantee of peace. “It is part of an effort to hoodwink the nation and the world,” he told Sakaal Times.

Ajay Churjoo of another faction of Panun Kashmir said that the Relief Commissioner recognizes 750 killings and even in the 90′s the J&K government recognized 450 and granted ex-gratia compensation to more than 350. “Many killings were not even recorded. Instead of investigating them they are busy reducing the figure,” he said.

“Even if one goes by a layman’s account of Pandits killed in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989 the number would be higher than 1000 but it isn’t about mere numbers,” said Aditya Raj Kaul of ‘Roots in Kashmir’, a Kashmiri Pandit organization.

“The Panun Kashmir website itself lists around 300 names. I don’t know how they claim 1,200″ said Zahiruddin, editor of the Kashmiri paper Etalaat. “Even if one Pandit was killed it is bad enough. It is not about numbers,” he said, adding, “but some groups want to exaggerate the numbers and then compare it with the Holocaust. That does not make sense.” The website http://www.kashmiri-pandit.org/projectr3/ lists names and details of 363 Pandits killed between 1990 and 20003.

Khurram Parvez of the Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society said that while the killing of even one Pandit was condemnable, his organization is investigation how many of the known Pandit killings were due to the religious identity of the victims and how many due to their political identities. “If a Kashmiri Pandit politician or intelligence agent was killed he is not killed because he was a Pandit,” said Parvez, adding, “And many are listed as unknown. If you don’t know their identity how do you know they were Pandits?” He alleged that the police was denying making such a report as the elections are approaching and the ruling Congress party does not want to alienate the small but powerful voting block of Pandits in the Valley who have traditionally been Congress voters.

The alleged report has rekindled communal fissures in the valley. Khurram’s colleague Parvez Imroz said, “A lot of people in the majority community (Muslims) who have sympathy for the plight of the Pandits are discomfited when Pandits get national media attention but not the killing of innocent Muslims. The recent discovery of a mass anonymous grave of over 900 Muslims has been largely ignored by the Delhi media,” he said.

Amongst the accused for Pandit killings are Yasin Malik and his organization, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. JKLF member Farooq Ahmad Dar alias Bitta Karatay, called “Butcher of Pandits” by Pandit groups, was released in 2006 for want of evidence. He had already spent 16 years in jail. JKLF president Yasin Malik refused to comment. “There are no charges against me and I have nothing to say,” he said.

Leader of the Opposition in the J&K Assembly, Abdul Rahim Rather of the National Conference said the the reason for almost no conviction was a practical problem: “When militancy was at its peak in the valley nobody would dare to come out and be a wwitness. Militants would often be masked and kill in the night. You couldn’t identify them,” he said.

Agreeing with him, People’s Democratic Party spokesperson Mehbooba Mufti told Sakaal Times: “Conviction rates are low even for killings of Muslims as well. We can’t see violence against Pandits in isolation. And why forget the Sikhs of Chattisinghpora or the Hindus of Jammu who have been killed?”

She refused to comment on the Pandit groups’ demand for an enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation or by a committee heahed by a Supreme Court judge. However, Mukul Sharma of Amnesty International supported such a demand, adding that one good option for an inquiry are the UN agencies who have been banned from doing so in Kashmir by the Indian government.

New Delhi: A new political biography of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kumar Mayawati sheds fresh light on her relationship with her mentor Kanshi Ram, amongst other little know things about the life of the BSP supremo.

Written by senior journalist Ajoy Bose, the book, “Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati” described in detail the Mayawati-Kanshi Ram encounter and how it became one of the most significant political partnerships of contemporary Indian politics.

“The only intense personal relationship she seems to have had is with her mentor, Kanshi Ram… The exact contours of this often tempestuous and clearly obsessive relationship remain a mystery, although there are enough people who had the opportunity to observe them at close quarters who suggest that the close personal bond between the two was multi-dimensional,” he writes in the book.

There have been rumours about Mayawati and the late Kanshi Ram having been in a physical relationship and this peaked when a Hindi newspaper in Lucknow had claimed in the late nineties that Mayawati had a daughter from him. This had led to violent attacks on the paper’s office by BSP workers. “This is irrelevant except for salacious tittle-tattle considering what they shared was much more sweeping and had far wider implications than a mere affair… it was the political association between the two that acquired such huge significance.” Bose said that Kanshi Ram used Mayawati like a weapon, leaving her to work in UP and himself trying to expand the BSP base in the rest of the country. “And yet it is in UP where the BSP has been successful. In Kanshi Ram’s home state, Punjab, the BSP’s support has actually eroded,” he said.

Kanshi Ram first met Mayawati in 1977, the book says, after he heard of the how the 21 year old Dalit schoolteacher publicly protested against Janta party leader Raj Narain using the Gandhian term ‘Harijan’ to describe dalits. Kanshi Ram’s drawing of mayawati into his BAMCEF movement did not go down well with her father who forced her to move out of the house – in the slum of Inderpuri in Delhi. Mayawati moved into a rented house with Kanshi Ram. Maywati has always defended these slanderous allegations by saying he was like her elder brother or father.

Yet the book is largely supportive of the BSP project, showing the how the BSP employs different strategies than the BJP, Congress or Left parties. “It is amazing that in 30 years of politics Mayawati has never been to jail. The BSP is a mass mobiliser but does not believe in` agitational politics. It has no middle or second rung of leaders,” he said.

The book comes at a time when the politicial circles are abuzz with the thought of Mayawati as a possible future PM. “I have noted with some bemusement that those who are now lauding Mayawati to the skies after the BSP’s stupendous victory in 2007 UP assembly polls earlier dismissed her as a crude, corrupt and unscrupulous politician,” he said, adding that the past derision and current hype around her both hide the media’s lack of understanding of the Bahujan Samaj Party.

About whether she could be PM, Bose argues in the last chapter that the BSP could well get as many as 50-70 seats in the 2009 assembly elections and be the third largest party in the Lok Sabha. “The next general elections need to usher in a period of considerable instability if Mayawati is to have a crack at the top job,” he writes.

Mayawati, the book says, grew so important in the BSP scheme of things that kanshi Ram sacrificed many of his friends and old associates just to keep her in the saddle. “We all underestimated Mayawati, always, but by taking the BSP from strength to strength even after kanshi Ram’s stroke in 2003 and death in 2006, Mayawati has proved us all wrong. The way she has pulled off UP with a complete majority is evidence that she is a smarter politican than even her mentor, ” Bose told Sakaal Times.

But there is a more difficult relationship that Bose has credited with being responsible for Mayawati’s zeal to excel in life: that with her father Prabhu Das. Das had three daughters and then six sons, and the book mentions how she was discriminated against at home, and allowed to study and prepare for the IAS only for her father’s benefit. So much so that when the BSP-SP alliance government came to power in Lucknow in 1993, Das approached his daughter to announce special development schemes for their native village, Badalpur, in Ghaziabad. Mayawati sarcastically replied that she thought it were his sons who were going to bring him laurels.

While Bose has covered the BSP for years and has known its leaders, he did not seek direct access to them lest his independence be compromised. “Her two-volume autobiography was a big goldmine of information, and plodding through the voluminous Hindi tomes was worth the exercise,” he said.

A Hindi translation of the book will be released in Lucknow next month.

Shivam Vij, Sakaal Times, 5 May 2008

On Monday morning, many including TRAI chairman Nripendra Mishra got an sms from offering premium mobile numbers. The message promised premium mobile numbers wherein the first seven digits would be the number 9, and the rest three of your choosing. The price: Rs. 15,000.

“I have asked somebody to find out whether it was a promotional offer from AirTel or an unsolicited message,” Mishra told Sakaal Times.

AirTel denies having sent any such message. “When we get requests from customers for premium numbers they are processed accordingly in different circles. But we do not offer this as a service,” said AirTel CEO Manoj Kohli.

AirTel officials refused to reveal how much is charged for premium numbers. “There is a procedure, you have to apply for the number and only then we can comment,” said an AirTel spokesperson.

TRAI’s Mishra says he heard of premium numbers being sold in Punjab for as much as a lakh some time ago. “There is nothing in the license agreement of the telcos that prohibits this.” He said that he will be taking up with officials in TRAI as well as the Department of Telecommunications whether a tax should be levied on the sale of premium numbers. “One could explore such an idea,” he said.

TV Ramachandran, Director-General of the Cellular Operators Association of India, refused to comment. “I am not aware of this,” he said.

However, last month Tata Indicom had announced online auction and bidding of premium mobile numbers. The numbers offered ranged from those ending with 12345 to those ending with numbers with religious indications, such as 786.

Many shops selling mobile connections entertain requests for special mobile numbers that are sold at a high price. According to some reports the prices can be in lakhs. Sources said that some special numbers are never released in the market and are exclusively offered by telecom marketers to VIPs.

‘I was at the AICC headquarters the other day,’ he said, ‘AICC mane Congress ka kaaba, jahan se aaj kal samajh lijiye desh par raj chal rahan hain. There I saw an old man thought I should test my political acumen on him. I asked him if he was in the Congress. Now what would an old man do hanging around at the AICC office if he wasn’t a Congressi? He was obviously angry at my question. So I asked him what he was doing in the Congress for so many years. Arre yadi aap kisi aur party main hotay toh ab tak Chandra Shekhar ki tarah vazir-e-azam ban gaye hotay! Yeh sun kar to usnay mujhay aisay dekha jaisay nigal jaye ga! He looked at me as though he was going to devour me! But I was playing a trick on him. I thought even if my trick failed, I’d learn something after all. But my trick worked! For all his anger, he spent half an hour with me, mourning about the state of the Congress.’

Achcha, I said, aur aap kya kartay hain? And what do you do?

‘Hum waisay Bihar se hain,’ he said, indicating that the rest three were visiting him from his native place, ‘aur hamara yahan Dilli main karobar hain. Aur hum Dilli Congress Pradesh Committee main sachiv hain.’

Achcha, I said. My bill paid, greasy hands washed, curry stains removed from the upper lip, I started to go. Hamey zara der ho rahin hain, I said.

‘Aur apnay apna parichay to diya hi nahin?’ asked Short Beard.

‘Hum patrakaar hain,’ I said, handing him my visiting card, ‘kabhi koi zaroorat pade to phone kariye ga.’

‘Arre, arrey, arrey…’ said Short Beard as I left. As though I had cheated him by not revealing that I was a journalist before he could tell me the Congress party’s worst kept secrets.

Actually, I would have stayed longer, had Long Beard not interrupted the storytelling to offre me to partake in the chicken qorma. I would have loved to, just that he addressed me a chuchaa, or uncle. A maulana who must be at least seven years older than me is calling me chuchaa, how dare he!

Haathi nahi Ganesh hain,
Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hain…
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• There are 1.5 million private cars on the road.
• 3 million two-wheelers, a lot of these will convert to cheapest small cars
• And only 6,800 city buses.
• The city adds 41 vehicles every hour, 31% of them being private cars.
• Last 5 years have seen a 43% increase in vehicles, and 9% in road space.
• Road area is already 20% of land area. Green area is only 10%.
• There is a limit in extending roads and flyovers.
• Our collective automobile experience ends with traffic jam.
• And slower vehicles spew more.
• We should be ashamed that all we gained out of converting public transport to CNG has been offset by rising number of cars!
• A car pays Rs 400 a year as tax, while a bus is charged Rs 13,000.
• Government subsidises private vehicles with low tax, cheapest parking lots.
• Public investment in roads and flyovers are cornered by private cars only.
• Private cars take up 75% of the road space, while buses get only 8%.
• Hence, there is no money left for public transport investment.
• All these, while private transport only 20% of passengers, and buses still carry 61%.

The reader is a paradox. He frequently complains about negative news being constantly reported. But for all his clamouring for positive news, surveys show that people are more interested in negative news, sensational news, news about crime, violence and corruption. The reader, ladies and gentlemen, is not king; actually he is a nice hypocrite. [Link]

The swaamsewak who wanted to be a bachelor.

Today blogging has become an important tool of communication. Diverse things from ideas, analysis, critiques and memoirs to travelogues are all being written and shared through blogs. Blogs in Hindi are gradually becoming popular as writing in Hindi on the internet is no more a problem (there is a huge variety of tools to start with). But we still have to go a long way before Hindi blogs become much favoured, the main drawback being lack of knowledge among the public. The Hindi Blog Writing Workshop at Sarai-CSDS is an attempt to involve people who are interested in blogging in the world of Hindi and would like to learn more.

Working Questions: the 2007 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship Workshop3-7 December 2007

Each year Sarai-CSDS’s unique fellowship programme gives grants for all kinds of practitioners—artists, performers, writers, filmmakers, working professionals and academics too—to pursue their own (sometimes serious, sometimes quirky) research projects. The results of this research can be applied in any direction and, in recent years, has eventually led to all kinds of things, from comic to public actions to films to books. This year, Sarai’s yearly Independent Fellowship workshop will be a special gala event, in the centre of town, looking back over the five years of the fellowship. It will feature presentations from this year’s
Independent Fellows, who will be coming in from various corners of the country, as well as some previous recipients of the Fellowship. Expect an unconventional convention. Expect talks (both academic and non-academic), musical and theatrical performances, books, videos, listening booths, slide shows, arguments, dialogues, merriment and controversy. A special curated multimedia exhibition accompanies the
events.

Monday 3 December
Venue: Sarai-CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, CSDS

6.00 – 8.00 pm
Launch of Working Questions (the Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship Book)

Opening Remarks
by Professor Rajeev Bhargava
Director, CSDS

Reflecting on Five Years of the Sarai-CSDS Fellowship Programme
Shuddabrata Sengupta
Vivek Narayanan
Debjani Sengupta
Mahmood Farooqui

Tuesday 4 December
Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House

10.30 – 12.00
History Versus Reminiscence
Chair: Debjani Sengupta

Anuja Ghosalkar
Papa Ajoba: My Grandfather, the Film Make Up Artist

Renee C. Lulam and Julius L. Basaiawmoit
Changing Faces of Democratic Spaces in Urban Cosmopolitan Shillong

Sugata Nandi
Eventful Adolescence, Memorable Youth: The Politics of Personal
Reminiscence in Calcutta, 1947-1967

12.15 – 1.15
Proving Residence
Chair: Shveta Sarda

Ajit K. Dwivedi
Sealing ke Nazar Mein: Sealing Banam Pusta ka Visthapan (Media Study:
Comparative Reporting on Land Ceilings and Displacement from Jamuna Pushta)

Bipul K. Pandey
The Residence Proof

1.30 pm – 2.30 pm
Sub-metropolitan Dreams
Chair: Iram Ghufran

Nalin Narain Mathur
B-Grade Engineering College Culture

Syed Zaigham Imam
Sapno ke Rail (The Train of Dreams: Narratives from the
Allahabad-Jaunpur Passenger Train): a short documentary film

2.45 – 4.15
Hearing Spaces, Seeing Spaces
Chair: Aarti Sethi

Shahnawaz Khan
Entertainment Ghosts in Srinagar: A Tale of Cinema Halls in the City

Zubin Pastakia
A Photographic Study of Bombay’s Cinema Halls

Sayandeb Mukherjee
Corridors: An Exploration of Sound and Space

4.30—6.30 pm
Special Panel: The Past of Research and the Present of Practice

Featuring: TP Sabitha, Yousuf Saeed, Mahmood Farooqui and Rahaab Allana
Discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta

7.00—7.30
(In Upstairs Gallery Space)
Performance Art: “This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar”
by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only—first come, first serve.

Wed 5 December
Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House

10.00 am – 11.30
Distant Communities
Chair: Ravikant

Surya Prakash Upadhyay
Guru on the Air: Televised Hinduism in Contemporary India

Neelima Chauhan
Blogit Hindi Jati ka Linkit Man: Blogon mein Hindi Hypertext ka
Adhayayan (The World of Hindi Blogs)

Raman Jit Singh Chima
The Regulation of the Internet by the Indian State

11.45 – 1.15
In the Midst of Conflict I: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
Chair: Ravi Sundaram

Arvind Kumar
Caste Violence in Urban Maharashtra: A study of the 1974 Worli Riots in
Mumbai and the Dalit Panthers Movement

P. Jenny and C. Christy
Chitralekha’s Burning Autorickshaw: Caste, Class and Gender in the Urban
Space of Keralam

Meena Menon
Recovering Lost Histories: Riot Victims, the Communal Polarisation of
Mumbai and Its Impact on People and Perceptions about Communities

11.00 – 11.30
(In Upstairs Gallery Space)
Short film on ragging—Listen, Little Man– by Madhavi Tangella;
[See also discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday’s programme below.]

1.30 – 3.00
In the Midst of Conflict II: Reading Between the Column Inches
Chair: Sanjay Sharma

Shiju Sam Varughese
The Public Sphere as a Site of Knowledge Production: Science in the
Malayalam Press

Alok Puranik
Bazaar Reporting in Hindi Newspapers

Shubhra Nagalia
The Representation of Communal Conflicts in Hindi Media: A Case study of
the 2005 Mau Riots

3.15—4.45
Other Traditions
Chair: Priya Sen

Priya Babu
Traditions of the Aravani (Transgender) Community in Tamilnadu

Mithun Narayan Bose
Tracing Life from the Stroke: Documenting the Rickshaw-Painting of
Kolkata Streets

Deepak Kadyan
Popular Musical Traditions and Configuration of Jat identity in Haryana,
1900-2000

5.30 – 6.00 pm
(In Upstairs Gallery Space)
Performance Art: “This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar”
by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only—first come, first serve.

7.00 – 8.15
(Back in main auditorium)
“Creeper”, a play written and directed by Ram Ganesh Kamatham, recasting
the Vikram and Vetal myth in a contemporary urban setting. Featuring
Mallika Prasad and Abhishek Majumdar.

Thurs 6 December
Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House

10.00 am – 11.30
Medicine and Modernity
Chair: Awadhendra Sharan

Gyaltsen Lama
Shamans in Gangtok: A Graphic Novel

M.S. Harilal
Adopting Modernisation and Negotiating Modernisation: Placing Modern and
Traditional Ayurvedic Sectors in the Context of Transformation

Burton Cleetus
Urbanisation, Western Medicine and Modernity: The Rockefeller Foundation
in Travancore

11.00 – 11.30
(In Upstairs Gallery Space)
Short film on ragging—Listen, Little Man– by Madhavi Tangella; see also
discussion with Shivam Vij on Friday’s programme below.

11.45 – 12.45
Two Views of the Changing Industrial Landscape
(short documentary films & discussion)
Chair: Jeebesh Bagchi

Ranu Ghosh
The Story of a Laid-off Worker’s Resistance to Eviction in Kolkata

T. Venkat and Meghna Sukumar
Building the Indian Dream: Living and Working Conditions of Migrant
Workers on Chennai’s IT Corridor

1pm – 2pm
Tracking Literatures
Chair: Ravikant

Rajiv Ranjan Giri
Saraswati ki Sarvajanik Duniya, 1900-1920 (The Popular World of the
Journal Saraswati, 1900-1920)

Gopal Ji Pradhan
Hindi mein Uttar Purv (The North-east in Hindi Literature)

2.15 –4.15
Special Panel: Where Does Research Go?
Featuring: Zainab Bawa, Parismita Singh, Madhavi Tangella and Prasad
Shetty.
Discussant: Vivek Narayanan.

4.30 – 5.45 Work In “Progress”: Feature-length video by 2007 Sarai-CSDS
Associate Fellow Debkamal Ganguly

6.15 – 6.45
(In Upstairs Gallery Space)
Performance Art: “This Evening Too: From Lal Ded to Abdul Ahad Zargar”
by Inder Salim: Space limited to 25 persons only—first come, first serve.

7.15pm – 8pm
Solo Performance: Pritham K Chakravarty
The Life of an Actor in Chennai’s Sabha Drama

Fri Dec 7
Venue: LTG Auditorium, Mandi House

10.00 – 11.00
Proofreading: Identity and Publishing
Chair: Mahmood Farooqui

Vijay Kumar Pandey
Meerut ka Prakasan Udyog (The Publishing Industry in Meerut)

Yoginder Sikand & Naseemur Rahman
Islamic Publishing Houses in Delhi

11.00 – 12.15
(In Upstairs Gallery Space)
Side Effects: Collaborations and Conversations Between Independent Fellows.
Short film on ragging—Listen, Little Man– by Madhavi Tangella;
discussion and commentary by Shivam Vij, who studied ragging for his
Sarai-CSDS Fellowship. Introduced and moderated by Iram Ghufran

11.15 – 12.15
Maps for Lost Cities
Chair: Shuddhabrata Sengupta

Surojit Sen
The Displacement of Prostitutes: A Tale of Two Cities in Two Centuries

Mohit K. Ray & Soma Ghosh
Heritage Ponds of Kolkata: A Contemporary History
Dates available: 5,6,7

12.30 – 1.30
Rethinking the Social
Chair: Vivek Narayanan

Santana Issar and Aditi Saraf
Rethinking Animal Activism in an Urban Context

Arnab Chatterjee
Beyond Private and Public: New Perspectives on the Personal and
Personalist in Social Work

1.45 pm – 3.45 pm
Special Presentation: The SARAI-CSDS Associate Fellowships

Nancy Adajania: A New Journal for the Arts: Prototype Issue, 2007

Debkamal Ganguly: An Imaginative Text Based on Contemporary Travel
Through the “Forests” Described in Bibhuthibhushan’s Memoirs (see
complete video by Debkamal Ganguly on previous day.)

Chair: Monica Narula

4.00 – 5.30 pm
Towards a Future for Independent Research: Interactive Open Discussion

7.00 – 8.30 Punches Ponytails Ringtones: Women Boxers in India
A film by Pankaj Rishi Kumar (82 mins)
Introduced by Shuddhabrata Sengupta

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Significantly, Modi’s ratings (6.87/10) are higher on macro-economic issues — industrial growth, infrastructure development, agricultural growth, economic growth — and lower( 6.0/10) on micro-economic issues — creating jobs, eradicating poverty and controlling inflation — that affect the common man.

What the figures indicate is that though at the ground-level, Modi’s claims about ensuring Gujarat’s development seem to be taken seriously, on daily bread and butter issues—often the deciding factor at the polling booth—his sheen seems to lose a coat. [DNA]

India’s ability to commission 70,000 MW of power by 2012 is questionable. Even Ultra-mega Power Projects (UMPPs) have got embroiled in controversy, and their plans have been postponed. While there is no dearth of funds, most of the companies in the power sector have full order books, and their ability to deliver still remains questionable. Meanwhile, non-renewable energy is catching up across the world, with India leading the innovation curve. We have about 7% of power coming from coal, a big achievement for a country the size of India. However, a large part of smallhydro plants and wind power plants thrive on government subsidies. One important question we will have to answer in our quest for energy security is: Can we afford to care for the environment in our path to development?While energy is required to power our growth rates, it is also required to enlighten a large number of villages in India that do not have access to electricity. This could have ramifications on all social indicators for the country.

And on those line, Shravan Sampath is looking for bloggers to help him on a new team blog on India’s energy sector. You could be that person.

I have to do no such thing. These days more people land up on this blog looking for Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, or other combinations of those three words, than for anything else. Heck, they don’t even land up here these days looking for necrophilia.
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Here goes a sample list:   

meenakshi reddy madhavan
princess kimberly
ashok chatterjee indian restaurant
intresting urdu website
ling
hindu terrorism
mahakaal
liver wanted
prerna raje
poverty and crime against dalit in tamilnado
which caste do gautams of india belong to
hindi chini bhai bhai [what will sisters do?]
solutions for dalits in india
to what cast does the surname chandra belongs to
post of safai karamchari [looking for the application form?]
baniya history [great idea for a book!]
backward class movement in karnataka chandrabhan prasad
em blog reddy
childline india hyderabad
do teachers have the right to punish students by using canes
nostalgia in kamala das poetry [college assignment type!]
viduthalai chiruthaigal website
undo blocked sites [yeah right, just click Cltrl+Z]
parveen sultana chetan anand
film about refugees selling a liver [guys I'm not selling my liver, please!]
email contact of jat sikh @ yahoo.com [looking to hook up?]
em meenakshi madhavan
dubey caste up [they're Brahmins every where yaar]
ruhaniyat [go kill yourself but I won't give you the Baba's fax number!]
national highways vacancy [no thanks]
bab ramdev
phacebook facebook
harmukh college of education results
diwali and national integration [no, i was talking about Muslims and Holi]
alwar rajasthan police result
hindu superstition
video showing life in india [cowdung, bullshit]
times of india -victory over dna newspaper mumbai
em meenakshi blog
umrao jaan lyrics vertaling
enquiry no. of ndls rly. station [All lines to this route are busy. Please Google after some time. ]
songs by balli singh cheema
between the spider and the la
bus delhi lucknow
em
kalar samaj
blogs – em – meenakshi madhavan
list of manual scavengers in delhi [want their mobile numbers too?]
indian village secret nude pictures [rural kinks]
the compulsive confessor orkut page
balli singh cheema [who is he????]
recent laws passed in india [am I the law ministry website???]
national high way [and low way?]
bus delhi to gorakhpur
yadav meen conflict in rajasthan [story idea!]
indians,kiss [the all important comma without a space]
stupid indian people [must be a Paki!]
rajasthan state government school vacancies 2007
history punjabi brahmin [go do some field work]
mahatma ghandi and india’s flaws [next wil be gandhi and india's claws]
famous skin doctor in gurgaon
princess kimberley
what is your caste? [you're not supposed to ask such questions]
happy diwali comment
pravin mahajan sexual [what?]
coke –cola aims and objectives how does it help [is Coke the name of some government policy? I won't be surprised.]
sri ramakrishna played with little penis [chee, chee]
em meenakshi
mahatma gandhi – a curse for bharat, written in hindu and english by anand prakash madana, [idea: Gogle sentence search!]
nose job india
pressures of being an editor
uttar pradesh obc list gupta [Guptas are not OBCs baba]
photographs of indians making ugly faces [don't you have a mirror?]
nagpur nude [what is about Nagpur? enduring obsession]
somebody telling about his/ her problem and write an answer
em ,meenakshi
divali mubarak what does it mean [that you're dumb]
indian kiss [Mmmmmmuah!]

[Photo credit: Janak Patel]

Looking for farm house in the green fields? Or a bungalow with a garden? An evening with a play and [sic] dinner thereafter? An art class? A plunge in a cool pool? A sun-drenched afternoon watching cricket? We have a suggestion: Live in Gujarat.

- “Vibrant Gujarat” website

[In Tehelka this week, story by me.]

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s sustained campaign to project himself as an efficient administrator whose priorities lie in development rather than communal politics has garnered approval from the national media since 2002. That Gujarat‘s development indicators seem better than the “Bimaru” states helps. The December 2007 elections, then, could also be a referendum on these claims of development.

However, a lot of these claims are related to industry and private sector investments and even if they make a difference in people’s lives, they are often exaggerated in Modi’s speeches. The claims are often belied by the Gujarat government’s own admissions in the Assembly or in response to RTI applications.

An unpublished report by development worker Avinash Kumar, based until recently in Ahmedabad, pins these lies. For instance, the chief minister likes to say that the state’s growth rate is 12 percent, three percent higher than the national average of nine percent. But a report by the Gujarat government, Review of Socio-Economic Status in Gujarat: 2006-07, puts the growth rate at 8.11 percent. Besides, Gujarat is one of the highest indebted states of the country as its liability swelled from Rs 70,228 crore in 2005 to Rs 95,000 crore this year, an average of Rs 19,000 debt per citizen (Gujarat has a population of five crore).

“Gujarat has only regained a high growth rate in the last few years, just like the national growth rate,” says Prof Darshini Mahadevia, who teaches at CEPT Ahmedabad, “The Gujarati middle class is happy with the path Modi is taking Gujarat on,” she adds, “but the picture might be different for farmers and the poor.”

According to the third round of National Family Health Survey, anaemia and malnutrition in Gujarat have in fact increased from the second round by a sharp 60 percent. For instance, in the 6-35 month age group for children, the percentage of anaemia has gone up to 80.1 percent in 2005-06 from 74.5 percent in 1998-99. Incidentally, Gujarat is taking the lead in privatising public health infrastructure.

The state has found a simple way of showing a decline in poverty figures. It has redefined poverty lines for both rural and urban areas. So you would be counted as poor in a Gujarat town if you earn Rs 541.16 a month ($0.45 a day) or less. In a Gujarat village, the figure is even lower — Rs 353.93 a month or 30 cents a day. Most of the other states, including the poor ones like Jharkhand, keep the poverty net wider. The internationally accepted figure is a dollar a day. This removes large numbers from the BPL list and prevents them from receiving the benefits of poverty alleviation and development programmes.

Planning Commission figures show that the gulf between the rural and the urban population in Gujarat is only widening. The state has 63.49 lakh (19.1 percent of the rural population) BPL people in rural areas as compared to 27.19 lakh (13 percent of the urban population) in cities. Thus, despite the jugglery of BPL figures, Gujarat’s rural BPL population is greater than that of urban areas, both in percentage and absolute terms, just like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh or Jharkhand.

According to the census of 2001, roughly 46 percent population of the state is dependent upon agriculture (27.67 percent cultivators and 17.91 percent agricultural labourers). Together they contribute only 15 percent to the state’s GDP, while industry and services contributes 39 and 46 percent, respectively. Consequently, there has been a gradual decline in food grain production (from 65.71 lakh tonnes in 2003-04 to 51.53 lakh tonnes in 2004-05), raising doubts about the food security of small and marginal farmers. An NSSO survey in 2005 found 40 percent of the farmers saying that given an option, they would give up agriculture.

The NSSO 2005 figures say that Gujarat’s farmers are reeling under an average debt of Rs 15,526. The official government policy about the agrarian crisis has been of denial, but Modi finally admitted in the Assembly that between January 2006 and January 2007, 148 farmers had committed suicide. His reasons were, however, attributed to anything but agrarian debt. Last month, in response to an RTI application the government admitted to as many as 403 suicides in five years. The real numbers are much higher, as NGO surveys reveal.

A study by the Vadodara-based Centre for Culture and Development says that between 1997- 2004, two million people in Gujarat have been displaced in the name of developmental projects. Displacement from land for industries only intensified with Modi’s policy of wooing industries at any cost.

The Gujarat government repeatedly advertises that it is the country’s only electricity ‘surplus’ state, even selling power to neighbouring states. But the Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited said in April 2007 that the state was facing a shortfall of 900 mega – watts. While cities continue to get uninterrupted power, rural areas often face shortfalls. Many rural areas get only 4-5 hours of power supply a day, badly affecting irrigation during the sowing season.

Farmers also face irrigation problems as the canals of much-hyped Sardar Sarovar Pariyojana carrying the Narmada waters hasn’t reached them and is unlikely to be operational in the drought prone areas of Kutch, Saurashtra, northern Gujarat and Panchmahal before 2021. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report has objected to an unauthorised sub-plan being added to the Sardar Sarovar dam scheme. Under this sub-plan, 255 MLD (million litres per day) water is to be diverted to Gandhinagar and to the water intensive industries of Kutch. While the need for Gandhinagar was estimated to be around 49 MLD, it was allocated 90 MLD water.

Although Gujarat has been marketed as an ‘already prosperous’ state that’s becoming even more prosperous with investment worth lakhs of crore, it has three of the 100 most backward districts of the country, as listed by the Planning Commission. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme allocated Rs 22 crore for Gujarat but the state government has barely used half of it, stating shortage of officials to implement the scheme. The chief minister did announce early this year a combined package of Rs 39,000 crore for the upliftment of specific segments of the poor. But no money was actually being allocated in this year’s budget of Rs 43,000 crore. The plans, nevertheless, look good in Vibrant Gujarat. “Vibrant Gujarat is nothing but event management,” says Ahmedabad- based activist Gagan Sethi.

THE JUGGLERY of figures extends even to the most hyped aspect of “Vibrant Gujarat” — investment from corporates. Modi claims that MoUs worth Rs 4,60,000 crore have been signed with private industry and investment worth two lakh crore has been received. But these declarations take a long time to materialise. For instance, in a written reply to the consultative committee of the General Administration Department, the chief minister admitted that out of a total of Rs 66,068 crore worth of MoUs signed during 2003 and Rs 1,06,16 crore during 2005, only Rs 25,450 crore worth of investments till January 2007 and only Rs 13,170 crore, respectively, have fructified so far.

Despite these investments, employment has remained stagnant. That is because Gujarat has as many as three lakh small-scale industry units. Many of them are languishing as only a paltry Rs 115.20 crore has been invested in them in the past five years.

The figures about Gujarat prove how it is just another socio-economically vulnerable state. In that sense the “Vibrant Gujarat” campaign is reminiscent of the NDA government’s “India Shining” campaign of 2004, which the Congress countered with the “aam aadmi” rhetoric. This is why the Congress in Gujarat wants ‘development’ to be the key issue in the elections. Modi is likely to use the Ram Setu issue. Even after TEHELKA’s exposé, the VHP is once again distributing communal CDs to foment polarisation in the state and use it as its trump card. Gujarat’s voters have time till December 9 to decide.

It was a copy of Saamna, the Hindi version, on a newsstand. It had, predictably, a big Bal Thackeray picture on the front page, saying something or the other about something or the other. The attitude was, ‘This is Mumbai, you better listen to me.’

Below the picture was a small news item wondering whether a three hours long meeting in a Mumbai hotel between Yuvraj Singh and Deepika Padukone meant they were going out.

That’s right – on the front page of Saamna, with a photo of Deepika Padukone.

Gujarat 2002: The Truth

The entire story will also be available in a 108-page special issue of the Tehelka weekly magazine which hits the stands tomorrow morning.

It can also be read on Tehelka‘s website, www.tehelka.com and www.tehelkahindi.com from 8 pm (IST) tonight.

The investigation establishes the chilling truth of one of the worst societal ruptures in modern Indian history.

Bhanwari Devi is most angry with those who made the film Bawandar, based on her life. She recalls how the director, Jagmohan Mundhra, promised her money and land, called her his sister, and couldn’t stop praising her bajra rotis. “I told him I don’t want money but at least try to get me justice,” she says. Mundhra asked her not to allow others to make a film on her and she complied, even refusing to be interviewed. Now, she feels cheated.

She was uncomfortable with the project in the first place. “Villagers would say let’s go see Bhanwari getting raped,” says Srivastava. When she tried to watch it she couldn’t get past the rape scenes.

She says that the actress Nandita Das, who played her in the film, told her that they were sisters. But after the shooting, she never came back. “It was not a biopic and one moves on to other projects,” says Das in her defence. “Bhanwari is a very brave woman but it is also the story of so many others. Beyond a point you’re only playing a role.” It is hard to appreciate Das’s defence, but you can see where she is coming from. When you say goodbye to Bhanwari Devi and she wants to know when you are coming back.

“Perhaps next year,” you say. “Next year?”.

Here.

Photograph by Salman Usmani.

Assembling and programming any form of communication content like signs, signals, writing, pictures, images and sounds, and placing it in electronic form on electro-magnetic waves on specified frequencies and transmitting it through space or cables to make it continuously available on the carrier waves, so as to be accessible to single or multiple users through receiving devices either directly or indirectly.

- Definition of broadcasting in the draft Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2007

Free speech activists fear this definition can be used to extend the Bill to cover the Internet. “Of course, they will censor the Net using this Bill,” says technology commentator Arun Mehta. “In any case, the Internet can also be used for broadcasting.” That means not only video or TV broadcasting over the Net, or Internet Protocol TV, would be covered, but just about any online activity. The fourth draft in 10 years and the Union information and broadcasting ministry has still not been able to so much as introduce the Broadcast Bill in Parliament, due to massive media opposition. It’s expected to be tabled in Parliament in the winter session. But so far only television news has been the subject of debate on the “draconian” law.

The definition of “broadcasting” in the 2006 draft included a crucial string of words that has now been removed — “continuously streaming it in digital data form on the computer networks”. But experts say the definition as it now stands could still be extended to the Internet. “It also covers point-to-point wireless, even CB/walkie-talkie!” says Mumbai-based Vickram Crishna of Radiphony, a technology resource group. “It can even be used to cover microwave communication through which large parts of the country are still connected.”

At a seminar in New Delhi, the law firm Amarchand Mangaldas had pointed this out in the presence of I&B Secretary Asha Swarup. “That’s not our intention,” Swarup had replied. The firm pointed out that intentions would be immaterial in a court as the law defines broadcasting as being more than just TV channels.

Casting aside this ambiguity in the Broadcast Bill, the I&B ministry is now working on a new set of rules that would bring under its jurisdictionnews and current affairs content on the Internet — all of it. This is being done, sources said, as part of a draft amendment in the Press & Registration of Books Act, 1867. So bloggers writing about news will have to be extra careful, for instance, but the ministry mandarins even expect websites of international media to register in India with an authoritylike the Registrar of Newspapers (RNI).

That the ministry’s intentions do not stop at television channels is also clear from the definition of “programme” in the proposed “Content Code”. The Code is a separate document that would be enforceable through the Broadcast Bill when it becomes an Act. The purpose of the code is to regulate the “quality” of programmes, to “protect the consumers’ interests”, the national interest and the right to privacy. These could give the proposed Broadcasting Regulatory Authority, to be run by bureaucrats answerable to the I&B ministry, as much discretionary powers over the Internet as over television.

In India, the Internet is already regulated by the IT Act, 2000, which is governed by the ministry of communications and information technology. Through this Act, the government created the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), which among other things is tasked with ensuring a “balanced flow of information”. Aided with a Gazette Notification, CERT-IN arbitrates on requests from various government functionaries for blocking websites. CERT-IN, the department of information technology, as well as the ministry do not reveal the reasons for blocking a website even on requests made through the Right to Information Act.

Experts thus see the I&B ministry’s move to regulate online content as part of its long-running tussle with the communications and IT ministry over who will regulate the Internet. The Convergence Bill, 2000, was supposed to solve it, but it died a premature death.

[First published in Tehelka newsweekly.]

You live and work in south Delhi, you don’t have a car or a bike, you travel by auto or bus, and can’t decide which is worse, the autos or the buses… like me, you must be looking forward to 2009, when the metro will be all around you. Lech here.

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Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan writes her Sex and the City-style blog under the pseudonym “EM”, aware that although her material would not seem outrageous to a British audience, in India sex remains a taboo and anti-obscenity laws are strict.

[...]

Her book, due out early next year, promises to be racier than previous Indian chick-lit novels, yet some Indians believe that will not help sales. A fellow blogger, who did not wish to be identified, said: “She has a dedicated following but I’m sure a lot are voyeuristic men seeking titillation. I find it a bit superficial myself.”

Meanwhile, Madhavan is apprehensive that news of her real identity will spread even further when the book is published, making it harder to be frank in her internet journal. “It will be harder to write when you’re no longer anonymous,” she said.

Will she carry on? “My blog is an integral part of my life but it’s not my life,” she said. “I’d be upset if it vanished tomorrow, but I wouldn’t be heartbroken.” The Compulsive Confessor, it seems, is defiant to the last.

Here.

 A “climate of terrorism” has been created. Many players — political parties, intelligence agencies, militant outfits — benefit from the attacks. Nothing is ever investigated; if an enquiry is ever set up, it’s usually a smokescreen, a way to defuse a crisis.

…says Arundhati Roy.

And she recounts what happened has been happening in Gujarat:

After the carnage in which thousands of ordinary Muslims were butchered and about 1,50,000 driven from their homes, the man who presided over it all, Narendra Modi, is still the chief minister. No one from the UPA government has so much as squeaked about it. Of the 287 cases filed under POTA, 286 are against Muslim and one is against a Sikh. Offences under POTA, as we know, are non-bailable, so they’re all still in jail. The property of those accused in the Godhra massacre was attached. The property of those who were released on bail in the post- Godhra carnage was not. Different laws for Hindus and Muslims. In the case of several massacres, the lawyers that the Gujarat government appointed as public prosecutors had actually already appeared for the accused. Several of them belonged to the RSS or the VHP, organisations that proudly owned up to the killings. Survivors found that when they went to the police to file FIRs, the police would record their statements inaccurately, and refuse to record the names of the perpetrators. In several cases, when survivors had seen members of their families being burned alive, so their bodies could not be found, the police would refuse to register cases of murder. In massacres, in order to reduce the magnitude of the charges and elide the detailing of individual crimes, thepolice clubbed FIRs together to make it all very vague and subvert the process of the criminal justice system.

The massacre at Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad, in which Ehsan Jaffri — who made the mistake of campaigning against Modi in the Rajkot elections — and 70 other people were killed and 10 women wereperiod of ten-and-a-half hours. A mob of thousands of armed people began to assemble inside the Gulberg Society colony. That day, Jaffri made 200 phone calls, including many to senior police officers, to Modi and LK Advani. At about 10.30am, the then Commissioner of Police, PC Pandey, visited Gulberg, which is not far from the police headquarters. At about 2.30pm, Ehsan Jaffri surrendered himself to the mob, hoping the others would be spared. The mob stripped him, hacked off his body parts, paraded him half-alive around the colony to terrify people and then burned him alive. Subsequently, 70 people were killed and 10 to 12 women were gangraped before being burned alive. KG Erda, the inspector of the Meghaninagar police station, stood by and watched. PC Pandey was promoted to Director General of Police, Gujarat. As public prosecutor, the Gujarat government appointed a man called Chetan Shah who had already appeared for the accused in the same case!

Today, more than five years later, the killers remain free. And PC Pandey has continued to be an efficient servant of the State. As DGP, he has been instrumental in covering the tracks of the policemen involved in the macabre murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi. Newspapers have reported how he transferred police officers who were investigating the case when he realised they would not play by his rules. How he detailed two policemen to be part of the investigation when they were themselves accused in the same case. All this involves the overt and covert support of the full range of government machinery, the police, the courts, the administration — this is how it all works. Sheer terrorism disguised as democracy. And I haven’t even begun to talk about what’s happening in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa.

The point is that when people feel they have nowhere to turn for justice, and that they can be jailed, raped and butchered even when they have done nothing at all, then why should they not fight back? When the whole elaborate machinery of this democracy fails you at every stage, why not fight back? Is it surprising that in a quarter of India’s districts, the State has no control?

All here.

To speak what few dare to, to continuously be the madman in the accidents deaths of anarchists – that’s why I so religiously follow Arundhati Roy’s polemics.

Poet/Writer/Translator (though i am just an enthusiastic woman most of the time who abhors labelling herself, labelling others). . .I believe in the Gloria Steinham quote: “Writers don’t like writing, they like having written.” If you want to know about stuff I have written, go to google, you shall find some food for thought. If you like to know what it feels to be a young woman writer writing-in-English in India (and admittedly, a very depressed young woman writer) you will find something in this blog…(or try this)

tamil. brown woman. born in 1984. 22 years going on 44. pursuing a phd at the moment. wrote a book of 84 poems. called it touch. kamala das wrote a foreword (the only one in her life). translated lots of books from tamil to english and enjoyed doing it (you could google for more info). i love revolutionary dr.ambedkar. i hate caste (and if you know me for ten minutes i would be asking you to do that too). that is all i can say for the moment. these are enough reasons why i am happy…

(or try this)

Meena Kandasamy is a twenty-three year old writer, poet and translator based in Chennai, India. Two of her poems Mascara and My Lover Speaks of Rape have won first prizes in pan-Indian poetry contests. Her poems have been published widely in India and abroad through journals like The Little Magazine, Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati, Cerebration, Indian Horizons, Sweet Magazine, Muse India, Great Works, Slow Trains and the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.

She was the Editor of The Dalit, a bimonthly alternative English magazine of the Dalit Media Network in its first year of publication from 2001-2002. As a woman writer who dreams of a casteless India, she has contributed quite a few book chapters and research articles in various journals like Communalism Combat and Biblio.

She has translated more than a dozen books that run into over thousand five hundred pages. Significant among her translations are the writings and speeches of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal (Dalit Panthers of India) leader Thol. Thirumavalavan (Talisman: Extreme Emotions of Dalit Liberation (2003) and Uproot Hindutva: The Fiery Voice of the Liberation Panthers (2004), Samya, Kolkota). She has also translated the poetry and fables of Tamil Eelam poet Kasi Anandan.

She is a contributing editor to the literary e-zine www.museindia.com and considers herself lucky to be one of twenty-one woman writers from South Asia selected for 21 under 40: New Fiction for a New Generation, the Zubaan Anthology of Young Women Writing published in February 2007.

Having majored in Linguistics and English Literature, she is pursuing her Ph.D. specializing in language teaching, technical translation and other deeply boring, easily forgotten topics. She can be reached at meena84@gmail.com.

Her first collection of poems, Touch, with a foreword by Kamala Das, has been published by Peacock Books (Frog Books, Mumbai) in August 2006.

(the last one is a direct lift-off from Kala Kahani)

[From here.]

To begin with, Sanjay Jha, who makes films, and sees himself thus:

Son of a soldier, Sanjay Jha was born in Sultanganj in Bhagalpur district, Bihar. Childhood days were spent in an earthy rural life. Right from the beginning, he was deeply inspired by the rich folk culture of Buddha’s own land, Bihar. Grew up with real images of Melas, Ramleelas, Bahuripiyas, incredible rituals, strong religious milieu and the vibrant Mithila Art. Natural calamities like flood and drought gifted unforgettable images. Changing seasons of rural life on the bank of river Ganga matured into a sense of poetry and language. Wonder years passed chasing steam trains that passed through the fields of his native village. Listening to radio programs made for defense personals was the only window to the outside world. With such a treasure of inspirational experiences a story teller evolved. [From here.]

On September 29, there will be at least two main memorial meetings in Bhandara. One will be led by Naravane, Gajbhiye and various RPI sympathisers. The other will be held by the NCP camp; Bhaiyyalal will be present. There will be promises and remembrances and much media coverage. After a long day, Bhaiyyalal will go home and settle down with his transistor and listen to old Hindi film songs. Amongst his favourites is this one from Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai:

Ajeeb daastaan hai yeh,
Kahaan shuru kahaan khatam.
Yeh manzilein hain kaun si,
Na woh samajh sake na hum.

Here.

Photo credit: Cherian Thomas.

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I discovered, for one, that most Dalits still identify themselves as Harijans or even SCs. And also that they identify themselves by their caste names – Jatav or Pasi, Mala or Madiga.

And I once told Annie that I didn’t like the use of the word ‘oppression’ in a post by her. I said oppression is a very Big word and as such means nothing to me. She replied that she keeps subtlety for poetry. Since I don’t write poetry…

But I found that oppression is a very normal descriptor in rural India. The word in UP is “dabang”. Yahan Thakur dabang hain, yahan Brahmin dabang hain, yahan Yadav dabang hain – can change from village to village.

So I smile when I see this:

Jeevan Shri’s neighbours, who belong to the Dabang caste, set fire to her after her son eloped with a girl from their caste. [CNN-IBN]