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[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:06:11 | null | 2016-07-01T00:00:00 | An American woman who reportedly lives in Norway has been arrested for death threatens against Stephen Hawking, writes the newspaper La Opinion. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5328-us-citizen-living-in-norway-arrested-for-death-threats-against-stephen-hawking.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/hawking.jpg | en | null | US Citizen Living in Norway Arrested for Death Threats against Stephen Hawking | null | null | www.tnp.no | The 41 years old woman allegedly sent a number of messages to the world famous physicist Stephen Hawking via email and on Twitter which said: ‘I’m going to kill you’ and ‘I’m next to you and can kill you’ during the first day of STARMUS Science and Culture Festival on Monday.
She has reportedly harassed and threatened Hawking for years and traveled to Starmus Festival in Tenerife to be near the famous scientist.
Police arrested the woman in the southern resort of Arona where the festival is held.
The Mirror wrote that Stephen Hawking’s sons discovered over 100 threats sent by the woman. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5328-us-citizen-living-in-norway-arrested-for-death-threats-against-stephen-hawking | en | 2016-07-01T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/4f8b358fdf84e3d9bdecba849bd658932a7a152b54b09b05b5cd71e909483340.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-27T12:48:52 | null | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | 20 years old Cato Berntsen Larsen tried to pick up a cell phone which his friend dropped in a public toilet, but got stuck inside the toilet tank. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5361-norway-man-stuck-in-toilet-tank-for-saving-his-friends-phone.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/toilet_stuck.jpg | en | null | Norway Man Stuck in Toilet Tank for Saving His Friend’s Phone | null | null | www.tnp.no | According to VG’s report, Larsen’s friend dropped his cell phone into a public toilet. The friend called Larsen for help and asked him to dive to pick up the phone because he was slim enough to to climb into the toilet tank.
- I was obviously slim enough to get into it, but not slim enough to get out, Larsen says to the local newspaper Drammens Tidende.
The public toilet is reportedly not connected to the sewer. It is an old-fashioned outdoor toilet cabin with a large tank underneath the toilet seat. The tank is normally emptied only once a year.
- I was down there for one hour, and it was disgusting as hell. The worst thing I have ever experienced. There were also some animals. I will never enter a toilet again. Now my body hurts, and I will go home and get some rest”, he tells to VG.
The firefighters saved the young man after a ten minute operation by demolishing the toilet. It is reported to be out of service now.
The firefighting unit of Drammen region wrote this message on Facebook: We had a special case on Friday morning. A man was stuck in an outhouse on the hillside of Drammen. We sawed up the toilet and he was rescued. Fortunately, he was in good shape when he came up. P.S. He got ahold of the phone... | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5361-norway-man-stuck-in-toilet-tank-for-saving-his-friends-phone | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/53535291d9c59069af7e2ef757e40f34975f56c2cdaba83307497aff9815e128.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:10:09 | null | 2016-06-13T00:00:00 | Norway will host the sixth World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Oslo 21-23 June 2016. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5316-norway-will-host-world-congress-against-the-death-penalty.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/prison_illustration.jpg | en | null | Norway will host World Congress Against the Death Penalty | null | null | www.tnp.no | The Congress will attract 1300 participants from over 80 countries, including ministers, parliamentarians, academics, lawyers, and members of civil society.
- I am looking forward to host The World Congress Against the Death Penalty. This is an important platform where both retentionist and abolitionist states can meet in an open dialogue, share experiences and work together towards global abolition, said Minister of Foreign Affairs Børge Brende.
This year’s Congress will focus on National institutions for human rights, and Progress and setbacks in Asia.Other important topics will be death penalty and terrorism, minorities and mental health.
1300 people will take part at the sixth World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Oslo. Photo: ECPM Zoom in on image
1300 people will take part at the sixth World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Oslo. Credit: ECPM (Ensemble contre la peine de mort)
- Norway gives high priority to the global fight against the death penalty. This is an integral part of our human rights policy, said Mr Brende.
The World Congress is organized by the French organization Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM) in partnership with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. In addition to the main programme, there will be a broad range of side events, including at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Parliament. Among the participants, are the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland.
The global trend is towards abolition of the death penalty. Norway urges the authorities in countries where the death penalty is still practised to introduce an immediate moratorium, and to abolish the death penalty both in legislation and in practice. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5316-norway-will-host-world-congress-against-the-death-penalty | en | 2016-06-13T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/06eaee3416993f4d209fb23e283cb72c8a7dc2c89f544451086d164c22c2cd11.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T12:54:41 | null | 2016-07-25T00:00:00 | Norwegian Government has decided that Norway will be carbon neutral by 2030, but is actually spending less on environmental protection now than in 1999, according to Axo Finance comparison. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5346-norway-spends-less-on-environmental-protection.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/climate_wind_power.jpg | en | null | Norway Spends Less on Environmental Protection | null | null | www.tnp.no | Axo Finance publishes an interactive tool showing comparatively how different countries use money based on UN’s classification of the functions of government. The tool reveals that Norway’s environment protection expenditures decreased by 0.12%. Norway spends just 1.8% of its total budget on environmental protection (26.07 billion NOK, 2014), which is half of Malta’s environmental spendings.
- The decrease is small, but in a time where all want better climate and fight against global warming, this is a trend we did not quite expect to see, says Mari Vestbø, spokesperson for Axo.
It is also reported that the Norwegian government must work hard and rely on large costs for achieving CO2 target. In a new report from British Gas, Carbon Footprint, Norway’s carbon emissions have increased by as much as 18.91% since 1992. Norway is still ahead of both Sweden and Denmark, but the two countries have reduced their emissions significantly (resp. 25.97% and 30.68%) within the same period. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5346-norway-spends-less-on-environmental-protection | en | 2016-07-25T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/0515d1a247d96799bf0cd0ec5191a571d67a5420cd96f1df128db2b45ac6567c.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:09:02 | null | 2016-06-21T00:00:00 | Norway has now ratified the new international climate agreement from Paris, becoming the first western country which formally endorsed the agreement. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5318-norway-has-ratified-the-paris-agreement.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/paris_agreement.jpg | en | null | Norway has ratified the Paris Agreement | null | null | www.tnp.no | In addition to Norway, Somalia, Palestine and 15 smaller island states have so far ratified the Paris Agreement. All of these countries are responsible for only 0.18 percent of global emissions.
- We aim at joint implementation with the EU to achieve climate targets for 2030. It gives us a solid, binding and predictable European regulations to base ourselves on when we will carry out for our goal of 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, says the climate and Environment Minister Vidar Helgesen.
Paris agreement strengthens global cooperation on climate change and countries’ efforts to prevent dangerous impacts of climate change. It enters into force when at least 55 countries ratifies the agreement.
- Norway is a driving force for other countries to take step as quickly as possible, says Vidar Helgesen.
USA, China and Brazil are among the major emitting countries that are expected to ratify Paris agreement this year. Other major countries have also indicated that this year they will be part of the deal.
Paris agreement
The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020. An agreement on the language of the treaty was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015. It was opened for signature on 22 April 2016 (Earth Day), and 177 UNFCCC members signed the treaty, 16 of which ratified it. It has not entered into force.
The aim of the convention is described in Article 2, "enhancing the implementation" of the UNFCCC through:
"(a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;
(b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production;
(c) Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development."
Countries furthermore aim to reach "global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible". | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5318-norway-has-ratified-the-paris-agreement | en | 2016-06-21T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/52db3df8b98eac387b587ed394e57b12541fc0bedb8482d413a2734a77999770.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:06:28 | null | 2016-07-01T00:00:00 | While unemployment crisis rages in southwestern Norway, businesses in Northern Norway struggle to recruit people. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Feconomy%2F5327-northern-norway-lacks-manpower-need-for-engineers-and-skilled-workers.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/construction_worker.jpg | en | null | Northern Norway Lacks Manpower: Need for Engineers and Skilled Workers | null | null | www.tnp.no | Talking to VG, CEO of Bjorn Bygg AS, Arild Østgår says many believe that if one moves to north, they do not have any cultural activity. But it is not true, says he.
His firm is currently building the new medical and health sciences building at the University of Tromso. Østgår estimates that they are able employ 50 people.
- People from Southern Norway are not mobile. They sit at home and expect job, says he.
Both the tourism industry and the construction industry in Troms and Nordland lack qualified workers, shows the NAV business survey from May 2016. 14 per cent of the companies in Troms report serious recruitment problems.
Østgår thinks businesses in the north must take responsibility and be better at promoting themselves on social media.
A worker at the company complains about the attitudes of the people towards the jobs in north.
- It amazes me that people are not willing to move. I do not understand how sitting at home can be more satisfying than being in a good job, says she. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/economy/5327-northern-norway-lacks-manpower-need-for-engineers-and-skilled-workers | en | 2016-07-01T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/00495f8b3b305b93a325aae220ee08503f7cbc792d986c78cac711e52aa1615d.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:03:47 | null | 2016-08-07T00:00:00 | The premiere of the new Norwegian film is 26 August. It has allready been sold to 40 countries before the premiere. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fentertainment%2F5354-the-lion-woman-lovekvinnen-the-biggest-norwegian-film-production-after-max-manus-and-kon-tiki.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/lion_woman_norway.jpg | en | null | The Lion Woman (Løvekvinnen): The Biggest Norwegian Film Production After Max Manus and Kon-Tiki | null | null | www.tnp.no | Løkvinnen is an epic story based on Erik Fosnes Hansen’s international bestselling novel, The Lion Woman.
The film is about Eva Arctander, who was born with hypertrichosis lanuginosa congenita, a disease that causes unnatural hair growth on large parts of body. The film describes Eva’s life from her birth to her teen years. She is examined by doctors in humiliating ways, and bullied at school. She falls in love, experiences respect and disrespect. Then she joins in a traveling theater group consisting of people with rare diseases or abnormalities. The story continues with her experiences in relation to her disease and the people she meets.
Lion Woman is a European co-production, with producers from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Czech Republic.
Parts of the movie has been recorded in Lillehammer, Norway. The rest was recorded at various locations during this spring and summer.
With a budget of 80 million NOK, Lion woman is the biggest Norwegian film production since Kon-Tiki, which had a budget of 93 million NOK.
In addition to budget size, the film has been already sold to 40 countries before the premiere. The film’s premiere is scheduled for August 26, 2016 in Norwegian cinemas. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/entertainment/5354-the-lion-woman-lovekvinnen-the-biggest-norwegian-film-production-after-max-manus-and-kon-tiki | en | 2016-08-07T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/ba9d4c4ef8467aef45d97a2bbb0bf499a90440e3d8f59a473deb29eba3a2ca7b.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T12:53:45 | null | 2016-08-13T00:00:00 | It is forbidden to die in Norway’s Arctic town, Longyearbyen. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fmultimedia%2F5356-it-is-forbidden-to-die-in-this-town-in-norway.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/polar_bear.jpg | en | null | It is forbidden to die in this town in Norway | null | null | www.tnp.no | Longyearbyen’s is an arctic town at 78 degrees north on the archipelago of Svalbard. If you have the misfortune to fall very ill here, you will be transported to another part of Norway to spend your last days.
And if you unfortunately die suddenly, nobody will bury you here.
The town’s small graveyard stopped accepting newcomers 70 years ago, after it was discovered that the bodies do not decompose.
2,144 people live in small wooden houses of the town with "no death" policy.
The town also hosts many polar bears, which cause real fear among its residents.
There is no old people’s home, but there is a kindergarten.
The kindergarden teacher carries a gun against the attacks of polar bears.
Every student at the university spends their first day learning how to shoot bears.
But still it is a nice Norwegian town to enjoy. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/multimedia/5356-it-is-forbidden-to-die-in-this-town-in-norway | en | 2016-08-13T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/8a77ab3b3fc8e1fd9704b7fc9cb8936b321959ade93ddfdf49595e6d987796db.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:05:53 | null | 2016-07-11T00:00:00 | Norway will continue to train and support Afghan special police in Kabul in 2017. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5336-norway-to-continue-support-for-afghanistan.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/afghanistan_norway.jpg | en | null | Norway to continue support for Afghanistan | null | null | www.tnp.no | Some 50 Norwegian personnel are involved in this project. Norway’s financial support for the Afghan security forces will be maintained at the current level of NOK 150 million a year in the period 2018-2020.
NATO’s Resolute Support Mission will be continued in 2017. This was decided at the foreign ministers’ meeting of NATO Allies in May 2016.
‘The security situation in Afghanistan is still precarious. The capability of the Afghan security forces has increased, but they are still lacking key support capacities that will take time to get in place. Now that NATO has decided to extend its mission, we feel it is right to continue Norway’s support,’ said Minister of Defence Ine Eriksen Søreide.
At the Warsaw Summit, NATO will confirm that it will continue to provide funding for the Afghan security forces for the next financing period (2018-2020). Norway will continue its support at the current level of about NOK 150 million a year. This amount is divided between the UN Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan and the Afghan National Army Trust Fund. The long-term goal is for Afghanistan to cover these costs. ‘An extended military contribution must be accompanied by continued efforts to find a political solution. The political track is being closely pursued by Norway in talks with the Afghan Government, our allies and other key actors. We are also working to ensure that NATO’s partnership with Afghanistan supports stability and sustainability in the country,’ Minister of Foreign Affairs Børge Brende said.
Norway’s contribution Norway currently has about 50 soldiers in Kabul and the surrounding region. Through the Special Operations Advisory Team (SOAT), we will continue our long-term follow-up of Crisis Response Unit 222 in Kabul. We are also participating in the UK-led Special Operations Advisory Group (SOAG) supporting the Afghan Ministry of Interior, which has the strategic leadership of the police special units. In addition, Norway has a small number of staff officers in the Resolute Support Mission headquarters in Kabul. This contribution will be continued for another year.
‘The Afghan police special units are visible, relevant and highly in demand. In view of the challenging security situation and the continuing need for counter-terrorist capacity, Norway will continue its tactical and strategic support to the Afghan special police. Our support to Crisis Response Unit 222 is provided within the framework of the Mission’s concept for capacity building: Train, Advise and Assist. That means that our personnel have a less prominent role when the unit is on assignment. The focus is on mentoring, with the option of providing direct support in extreme situations,’ said Ms Søreide | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5336-norway-to-continue-support-for-afghanistan | en | 2016-07-11T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/4ed6ad386c0d2265cc37491da37e39d2a29e56b98010c46eaffe3292568d6e7a.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:07:46 | null | 2016-06-16T00:00:00 | Norway and the United States are joining forces to cleare landmines in three countries. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5314-norway-and-usa-to-clear-mine-fileds-in-iraq-syria-and-ukraine.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/mine_soldiers.jpg | en | null | Norway and USA to Clear Mine Fields in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine | null | null | www.tnp.no | The new initiative was announced in conjunction with US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Oslo on Wednesday.
- In the secured areas of Iraq, we are entering in cooperation with the USA to remove mines. There are a lot of Norwegian knowledge and experience in mine clearance. It is incredibly important for the inhabitants to return, do agriculture and to provide children safe play areas and safe school routes, says Prime Minister Erna Solberg to VG.
The collaboration is part of the work being coordinated by the US-led coalition against IS, where Norway recently signed up to train local Syrian forces.
’Clearing mines and other explosives from land areas is a vital part of the global struggle for peace,’ said Mr Brende, following the launch of the initiative.
’The farmers in Ukraine need to know that it is safe to go out into the fields and start food production again. People in rural areas of Colombia need to know that it is safe to move back home. The inhabitants of Syria’s cities need to know that they will not be putting their lives at risk when they start to rebuild buildings that have been destroyed by bombs,’ Mr Brende said.
Norway is increasing its allocation for mine clearance efforts by NOK 81 million this year and will allocate a further NOK 125 million next year. The US is increasing its contribution by NOK 89 million this year, and will allocate an additional NOK 66 million next year.
Norway and the US are among the world’s five largest contributors to the fight against landmines. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5314-norway-and-usa-to-clear-mine-fileds-in-iraq-syria-and-ukraine | en | 2016-06-16T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/6a2890a5b2a912ee37676c6011fa82d09c3b97efa8c19889a66ff7044a8d3bbb.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-27T10:48:49 | null | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | The leader of Progress Party (FrP) in Oslo, Aina Stenersen demands that it should be forbidden to swim with burqini on Norwegian beaches. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5360-frp-politician-wants-to-import-ban-on-burqini-to-norway.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/burqini.jpg | en | null | FRP Politician Wants to Import Ban on Burqini to Norway | null | null | www.tnp.no | While many politicians and activists in Norway condemn France’s ban on the swimming garment, burqini and police enforcement of the ban, FrP politician Aina Stenersen requires a similar ban in Norway.
- Burqini certainly should not be allowed on beaches in Norway. The prohibition of burqini in France was introduced as a reaction to the terrorist attack in Nice. I think it’s great that the police follow up the ban, she says to Aftenposten.
Stenersen will work to bring a similar ban to Norway.
- FrP is preparing a new party program. We in Oslo Progress Party would demand ban on the use of burqini, she says.
She suggests that the issue is related to integration and banning the swimming garment in question is permissible.
- FRP is very concerned about integration. Therefore, we believe that in some cases we must adopt a ban if something inhibits integration. We are, for example, supporting private schools, but we are still against the establishment of Muslim schools, adds she.
Conspiracy and distortion
Stenersen also believes that the photos showing armed police force a women on a beach to undress do not show the real situation. She claims that the woman took off her clothes to show that she had a swimsuit underneath.
The Frp politician further suggests that burqini is not an ordinary garment as it is justified by religion, and it hides sexuality.
On the other hand Stenersen is against a ban for all who are fully dressed with plain clothes on the beach. She insists the prohibition shall apply only to BURQINI.
Austrian based Burkini designer Aheda Zanetti previously said to Reuters that the burkini was designed for freedom, flexibility and confidence.
- I think they’ve misunderstood, when we produced the swimsuit it was part of integration and combining cultures. It was designed to integrate into society with more healthy activities, she said to Reuters.
The designer also noted that 40 percent of her sales go to non-Muslim women, with cancer survivors, body conscious mothers or women who want to protect their skin from the sun.
Since the ban and debate in France, the sales of the burqini have increased significantly Aheda Zanetti told Reuters. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5360-frp-politician-wants-to-import-ban-on-burqini-to-norway | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/2f9585aab97863fd9a1e7e7c16d3bd000e187358ea69be3a179eb90612c94120.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:00:18 | null | 2016-07-11T00:00:00 | The 22-year-old woman who threw a cake to the face of Equality Minister, Solveig Horne during Oslo Pride is sentenced to 45 days in jail. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5337-british-woman-sentenced-to-imprisonment-for-throwing-cake-to-norway-equality-minister.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/pride_oslo_2016.jpg | en | null | British Woman Sentenced to Imprisonment for Throwing Cake to Norway Equality Minister | null | null | www.tnp.no | During Oslo Pride Parade this year, a 22-year-old British woman threw a shaving cream pie to the face of Equality Minister Solveig Horne, while Horne went along with several other politicians. The case was taken to the court. The 22-year-old denied guilt, but could not prove it in the Oslo District Court, writes NRK. Now the 22 year old British woman has been sentenced to 45 days in prison.
The Court emphasizes that the convict was aware that she attacked Horne, because she is the minister.
The verdict also stated that the woman ran out from the pavement and past a number of others in the parade to reach to Horne. A witness testified that it was clear that the woman was pleased with what she did.
The court believed the woman was aware that the attack would have a consequence.
On the other hand, the woman’s defender thinks the punishment is too strict.
- I’m not surprised that she was convicted, but I can not see any justification in the judgment that the punishment should be so severe. Now I will discuss with my client about whether to appeal the ruling or not, said she to NRK. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5337-british-woman-sentenced-to-imprisonment-for-throwing-cake-to-norway-equality-minister | en | 2016-07-11T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/3cd99d8eb6aa3525aece98ce66fe509b78e9fd16292a5ed95e7d278bfd39a176.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:05:33 | null | 2016-07-05T00:00:00 | Only 1678 people applied for asylum in Norway so far this year. It is fewer than the number of asylum seekers who came in one week during the influx last year. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5331-lowest-number-of-asylum-seekers-to-norway-since-1997.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/refugees_boat_rescue.jpg | en | null | Lowest Number of Asylum Seekers to Norway since 1997 | null | null | www.tnp.no | - It’s a pretty sharp decline, not only in comparison with the extraordinary situation in the last fall, but also compared with the last spring, says Immigration Directorate (UDI) director Frode Forfang during a press conference on Tuesday morning.
In the first half of 2016, only 1678 people applied for asylum in Norway. It is the lowest number since 1997.
Forfang notes that there is still considerable uncertainty about the arrivals for the rest of the year but Norway has had a greater decline than most other European countries.
- We also do not know yet how arrivals to Europe will be through the high season in summer and early fall, said Forfang.
70 Percent Decline to Afghans
During the first five months of this year, UDI has declined over 70 percent of all asylum applications from Afghan nationals. This is a sharp increase from 2015, when about 20 percent of applicants were rejected.
The increase in the number of asylum rejection is partly because of that UDI has changed its assessment of the overall security situation in Afghanistan. UDI believes there are no provinces in Afghanistan that has a serious security situation today and there is no problem to send the asylum seekers back. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5331-lowest-number-of-asylum-seekers-to-norway-since-1997 | en | 2016-07-05T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/868c427fb1a132e8f40270a51919d0dd6c72214d9f24782dcd208d1154ca2f71.json |
[
"The Nordic Page"
] | 2016-08-26T13:02:58 | null | 2016-07-03T00:00:00 | Norwegian government tightens the right to welfare benefits for refugees. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5330-norway-to-limit-social-security-benefits-for-refugees.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/hauglie_anniken_norway_labour_minister.jpg | en | null | Norway to Limit Social Security Benefits for Refugees | null | null | www.tnp.no | Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Anniken Hauglie warns that some benefits will be removed for the new comers.
The goal is to get more people into jobs so that they can live with their own income and make up their own social security rights.
- By removing special social security rights for refugees, they are treated equally with Norwegians who have been living on abroad. It is fair and reasonable, says labor minister to VG.
Next week she introduces the proposal for a dramatic restructuring of the welfare system for refugees. The proposal will be circulated for feedback, and then sent to the Parliament. The rules are intended to apply not later than the summer of 2017.
The change will mainly apply to the 30,000 refugees who has come to Norway last year.
According to Norwegian rules, the refugees are registered in the National Insurance Scheme from the very beginning, which entitles them to a full retirement pension and other social security and welfare benefits, even if they do not work full time.
The Government proposes to reduce the amount of retirement rate down to 179,748 NOK per year for single refugees, and 166,274 NOK for each person in a relationship.
- The Government believes that the level is adequate for living. But the whole opinion is that it should encourage the refugees to get a job and support themselves, says the Minister.
She also notes that Norway should not have more generous schemes than other countries.
- We do not want more people to come Norway just because of more favorable arrangements in the welfare system, says Hauglie. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5330-norway-to-limit-social-security-benefits-for-refugees | en | 2016-07-03T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/650d6d5e1892f981326cb46423544041cee27d07b6204c907ea5cadc7a66da6f.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:57:23 | null | 2016-08-06T00:00:00 | Norwegian Labor Party (Ap) leader and former Foreign Minister of Norway Jonas Gahr Støre hopes Hillary Clinton becomes president. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5352-norway-labor-party-leader-trump-as-president-is-deeply-disturbing-usa-clinton.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/store_norway.jpg | en | null | Norway Labor Party Leader: Trump As President Is Deeply Disturbing | null | null | www.tnp.no | Talknig to VG, Støre believes that Donald Trump’s message is "deeply disturbing" and he sincerely hopes that the American people choose Hillary Clinton as president.
- It is right and natural to speak out against someone who might be the new US president. I would be reluctant to comment on other countries’ choices, but I think this is a choice with an impact far beyond the United States. Both attitudes and stances of Trump is alerting and we should not sitt idly and watch it, he says.
He notes that this person can become president of the United States and Commander in Chief of the US military, and part of NATO.
Støre points out that what Trump says raises the question whether he has elementary knowledge of Europe, Middle East, central areas of conflict - and if he knows the significant impact of the statements of the US leader.
Støre also fears a possible Trump victory on November 8 may have serious consequences on climate policy by reminding that Trump has announced that he will terminate the Paris Agreement, if he wins.
He is on the other hand cautious about drawing parallels from 1930’s authoritarian leaders and schools of thought to Trump.
- I will be very cautious, because I have pretty strong faith in American democracy. But let me put it this way: The recipes he offers to solve today’s problems, in my opinion, poorly rooted in our time of need. They convey the message that a strong man can fix with tough message. But it is not good leadership, says Støre. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5352-norway-labor-party-leader-trump-as-president-is-deeply-disturbing-usa-clinton | en | 2016-08-06T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/7a9fa9d5987246b58ed6de701250b3084afb9165395385dac2bd2600fa953519.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:10:47 | null | 2016-05-31T00:00:00 | Experts from Innovation Norway (Innovasjon Norge) urge Norway to focus on these six industries in the future. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Feconomy%2F5308-hope-for-norway-after-oil-lies-in-these-six-industries.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/Cows and windmills.jpg | en | null | Hope for Norway after oil lies in these six industries | null | null | www.tnp.no | Norwegian Government’s institute for modernization and development Innovation Norway argues that Norwegian businesses need to pay specific attention to these six areas if they want to succeed in the future:
• biobased economy
• clean energy
• ocean resources
• health care
• creative industries
• smart cities
With this message Anita Krohn Traaseth, the managing director for Innovation Norway, addressed the audience in her Innovation speech 2016 on Tuesday.
- These six areas are so important because it’s here that Norway has clear competitive advantages, and they are also the answers to the challenges that the world has already defined with UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, says CEO of Innovation Norway, Anita Krohn Traaseth, according to NRK.
In search of “the new oil”
After the oil prices went down and discussions about the cost-effectiveness of oil extraction began, Norway felt the urgent need for innovation and started searching for the new beneficial industries to sustain its economy. NRK wrote in January that the new hope for Norway may represent renewable energy resources, especially hydro power. Moreover, cheap electricity in Norway attracts attention of IT-companies that are forced to search for better opportunities for data storage.
All in all, Norway awaits general “green” shift with deeper exploration of ocean resources, hydro power and other “clean” energy sources, but also development of tech-industry and the concept of “smart cities” with integrated ICT solutions in all spheres.
Also creative jobs and industries will be on demand in the nearest future, since the jobs we know today are most likely will vanish in 20 years from now.
Norway should pull out all the stops
Today three major Norwegian leaders in the sphere of innovations - Innovation Norway, the Research Council (Norges forskningsråd) and Siva - made suggestions regarding actions that Norway needs to take in order to reset its business and industry. Innovation Norway underlines the importance of focusing on all six industries simultaneously and not choosing only some of them. All these areas should be turned on maximum, because these industries represent Norway’s special competitive advantages.
The six industries containing advantages for Norway were defined after the massive mobilization round, called "Dream Promotion", conducted by Innovation Norway in 2015. Today the company presents the results of all the contributions. In addition, Innovation Norway has had international meetings with ambassadors and vice consuls from 35 countries on the subject of the spheres where Norwegian business has best opportunities.
- We have received input from many spheres from the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra to the Sami Parliament, - everything that crawls, walks and calls itself Norwegian industry. We welcomed to contribute both established companies and new entrepreneurs in the startup phase, comments Krohn Traaseth to NRK. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/economy/5308-hope-for-norway-after-oil-lies-in-these-six-industries | en | 2016-05-31T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/ff62e27cf4cce3878c404385a185b14e075987ae944a8970b07cb3f3767e1bf7.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:10:57 | null | 2016-06-25T00:00:00 | Christian Democrats Party (KrF) leader Knut Arild Hareide and Church Council leader Kristin Gunleiksrud Raaum attend to the Pride in Oslo. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5323-first-time-in-norway-christian-democrats-leader-and-church-council-leader-at-pride-parade.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/knut_arild_hareide.jpg | en | null | First Time in Norway: Christian Democrats Leader and Church Council Leader at Pride Parade | null | null | www.tnp.no | Both Hareida and Gunleiksrud attend to Pride parade on Saturday, writes Dagen.
They have been motivated after Orlando-attack and they think it is important to highlight opposition to hate violence.
Hareide said he wants to show his support against violence by participating in the Oslo Pride parade this Saturday.
- Although we may disagree in some forms of expressions or political issues, it is important for me to attend to show that we Christian Democrats stand together with them in the fight against violence, against harassment and discrimination, said Hareide.
Deputy Mayor of Bergen, Marita Moltu says to Dagen that people feel a strong pressure to participate in the parade:
- There is strong pressure on that if you do not go to Pride, you are perceived as someone against LGTB, and that you do not fight for inclusion, diversity and LGTB rights, she says and adds:
- I am against such pressure to go on parade, and that you are labeled as homophobic for not doing it.
She says it is a challenging issue for many:
- Whatever you say, it is misinterpreted, says Moltu. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5323-first-time-in-norway-christian-democrats-leader-and-church-council-leader-at-pride-parade | en | 2016-06-25T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/14b9b58158e35a3cc88c983347e7fac8fb44a1292b8b262cdaf563d6aadf2bdf.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:10:28 | null | 2016-06-08T00:00:00 | A forested area in Romsås, Oslo is on fire. A school in the region was evacuated. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5313-forest-fire-in-oslo-goes-out-of-control.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/romsos.jpg | en | null | Forest Fire in Oslo Goes Out of Control | null | null | www.tnp.no | - The fire is still out of control. There are 6 fire fighter teams and we wait for a fire helicopter , says fire inspector Sigurd Folgerø Dalen to VG.
Operation leader at Oslo Police Department wrote that they have evacuated a school in the region because of the threat by the smoke.
The police is not planning new evacuations but warns people to keep their doors and windows closed. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5313-forest-fire-in-oslo-goes-out-of-control | en | 2016-06-08T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/eed7083276aabc61d024670a9694c2d9fe05627b470b2441ef6ef17c1cc04a02.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:51:05 | null | 2016-07-26T00:00:00 | House prices increased by 1.8 per cent from the 1st to the 2nd quarter of 2016, when adjusted for seasonal variations. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Feconomy%2F5347-house-prices-in-norway-continues-to-increase.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/houses_oslo.jpg | en | null | House prices in Norway Continue to Increase | null | null | www.tnp.no | According to SSB (Statistical Bureau of Norway), Prices of flats in blocks had the highest growth by 3.4 per cent.
Compared to the first quarter of 2016, the prices of small houses and detached houses have increased by 2.5 and 1.0 per cent respectively.
House prices in the regions Oslo and Bærum and Northern Norway had the highest growth in the last quarter, by 4.4 and 4.0 per cent respectively. Western Norway excluding Bergen had the largest decrease of house prices by 3.4 per cent.
Strongest price development in Oslo last year
House prices in Oslo and Bærum increased on average by 12.7 per cent from the 2nd quarter of 2015 to the 2nd quarter of 2016. In this region the prices of flats in blocks increased by 13.5 per cent. Detached houses and small houses increased by 11.8 and 11.2 per cent respectively.
Stavanger is the region with the largest price decrease since the 2nd quarter of 2015, with an average fall of 7.8 per cent. The decrease was around 8 per cent for all dwelling types.
House prices in Norway increased on average by 5.5 per cent in this period.
A total of 27 083 house sales were used in the index calculations for the 2nd quarter of 2016. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/economy/5347-house-prices-in-norway-continues-to-increase | en | 2016-07-26T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/b7d0a3656154f4a07891bd54502cbba5021b55c4a12f1f1fc94f091932138f26.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:51:37 | null | 2016-08-14T00:00:00 | Three men from Stavanger and Sandnes will sell fresh Norwegian mountain air to China, writes Aftenposten. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5357-selling-fresh-premium-mountain-air-from-norway-to-china-on-ebay.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/preikestolen_stavanger_norway.jpg | en | null | Selling Fresh Premium Mountain Air from Norway to China on eBay | null | null | www.tnp.no | Three engineers who collect air in large containers along the 42 kilometers long Lysefjord compresses the air in smaller bottles and put it up for sale on the internet.
Talking to to Stavanger Aftenblad, the chairman of the company, Pulpit Air AS Benjamin Knupper explains their ambitious plan.
- No one else has tried to sell Norwegian mountain air. Therefore, we make an effort, says Knupper, who is originally from Hannover, Germany.
He adds that many people think at first that this is a joke, but it is not. Norway has clean water, great scenery, salmon and the cleanest air, continues he.
7.7 liters of fresh and pure Norwegian mountain air has up to 160 user doses, according to the website pulpitair.com where the product is advertised as "Premium Norwegian Mountain Air".
At online auction webbsite eBay, a bottle of "Norwegian Pulpit Air" can be purchased for 20 USD. The advertisement of the air is made with the following description:
"Now you can enjoy the purity of dramatic waterfalls, spectacular snow-capped peaks, crystal clear fjords, glaciers and outstanding fresh non-polluted air anywhere at any time."
The idea to sell fresh air is not new. Canadian Vitality Air has sold air from the Rocky Mountains to China since last year. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5357-selling-fresh-premium-mountain-air-from-norway-to-china-on-ebay | en | 2016-08-14T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/7353c33320cc6169fcc1bdb5306564c509a986000063d0b093316f0ccece25f8.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:04:31 | null | 2016-07-22T00:00:00 | A collection of touching pictures from Norway after 22 July 2011 Massacre. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fmultimedia%2F4538-15-touching-pictures-from-22-july-in-norway.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/22july_9.jpg | en | null | 5th Year of 22 July in Norway with Pictures | null | null | www.tnp.no | Photo: Oskar Seljeskog | A sea of flowers and teddybears outside Oslo cathedral commemorating the victims of the massacre in Oslo and on Utøya.
Photo: Jon Kallas | Memorial for the murdered children, Oslo. Memorial at the Oslo Cathedral for the murders at the AUF camp on 22 July, 2011.
Shattered windows of the government building in Oslo after the first attack in the government quarter. Photo: Henrik Lied, NRK
Photo: Henrik Lied, NRK | Bed of flowers to honor those injured & killed in the terror 22. July 2011
Photo: Henrik Lied, NRK | Bed of flowers near Utøya Island, where 66 teenagers wore shot to deathby Anders Behring Breivik
People of all background, religions and nationalities lay down flowers and candles out of Oslo Cathedtral in the memory of the 22 July victims. | Photo: Henrik Lied, NRK
Rose became the symbol of solidarity among the Norwegians after the tragedy. | Photo: Henrik Lied, NRK
A heart made of flowers in front of norwegian Parliement (Stortinget) | Photo: Henrik Lied, NRK
A sculpture in Oslo is holding a bunch of flowers during the commemoration ceremony. Photo: Kjersti Magnussen
Photo: Roy Nilsen | Bed of flowers to honor those injured & killed in the terror 22. July 2011
Flowers, candles and toys laid by people of all ages in the memory of the victims | Photo: Ausfi
The benches of Stortinget is covered by flowers as in many other public areas in Norwegian cities | Photo: Stortinget Stortinget
Photo: Roy Nilsen | Tiger outside Oslo sentralstation. To honor those injured & killed in the terror 22. July 2011 | http://www.tnp.no/norway/multimedia/4538-15-touching-pictures-from-22-july-in-norway | en | 2016-07-22T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/75fa392f3e1b666c061c5b1ded5c87acd9c6dfe9a3b0f935b7fba07c2d7e8fa8.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:05:11 | null | 2016-07-20T00:00:00 | Norwegian cross-country star Martin Johnsrud Sundby loses his 2015 World Cup and Tour de Ski titles over a doping infringement. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fsport%2F5344-norway-cross-country-star-sundby-loses-his-title-after-doping-infringement.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/sundby.jpg | en | null | Norway cross-country Star Sundby Loses His Title after Doping Infringement | null | null | www.tnp.no | The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) Sundby failed two tests for salbutamol, a medication he used to treat asthma. The tests took place during the World Cup events in Switzerland and Italy in December 2014.
The 31-Year-old burst into tears after the decision.
- This is an unreasonable judgment. It is completely impossible to accept this verdict,” said Sundby at a press briefing at the Ulleval stadium in Oslo.
Sundby has been suffering asthma since his childhood. The Norwegian ski Federation President Erik Røste stressed, Sundby have never had the intention to break the rules. The CAS however stressed that the athlete should have required a special exception approval. Team doctor Gabrielsen said he had understood the rules wrong.
Now Sundby have to pay back premiums to International Ski Federation (FIS) reported VG. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/sport/5344-norway-cross-country-star-sundby-loses-his-title-after-doping-infringement | en | 2016-07-20T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/efe12740208173a67b8f66e2ca0e6f5b8f48474f3578bffaa25328d130a756c9.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:57:48 | null | 2016-07-20T00:00:00 | Government Pension Fund Global, commonly known as Oil Fund, has earned 1.35 billion NOK from its Nintendo shares since the mobile game Pokemon Go was launched. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Feconomy%2F5343-norway-oil-fund-earns-135-billion-from-pokemon-go.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/pokemon_go.jpg | en | null | Norway Oil Fund Earns 1.35 Billion from Pokemon Go | null | null | www.tnp.no | Oil Fund has begun to invest in Nintendo shares in 1998. According to Dagens Næringsliv, the fund owns 0.73 percent of Nintendo. Altogether shareholding now worths 2.66 billion.
Nintendo’s stock has doubled in value since the game was released a few weeks back, but Wednesday morning shares fell down by 11 percent.
It is uncertain what caused the decline, but there may be a correction after the sharp upturn.
Nintendo owns 32 percent of The Pokémon Comany, which is behind the popular mobile game Pokemon Go.
Oil Fund is not the only Norwegian entity who earns on Pokémon Go. Finansavisen wrote that State owned bank, DNB’s technology fund bought share of Nintendo in late June and three weeks later the fund earned NOK 120 million from the investment. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/economy/5343-norway-oil-fund-earns-135-billion-from-pokemon-go | en | 2016-07-20T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/603d1e98d6e1ff6d365e48f6afa09fddfafa0fea1a12aec498c517f752b1ac78.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:07:33 | null | 2016-07-05T00:00:00 | It is likely that Norwegian troops will be stationed in Lithuania early in 2017 to join in NATO’s fortified line of defense against Russia. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5332-norway-will-send-soldiers-to-lithuania-against-russia.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/stoltenberg_medvedev_barrent.jpg | en | null | Norway Will Send Soldiers to Lithuania against Russia | null | null | www.tnp.no | According to VG, Prime Minister Erna Solberg is expected to announce the Norwegian contribution during the NATO Summit in Warsaw on Friday and Saturday.
- We will increase our military presence with four robust multinational battalions in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at a press conference in Brussels on Monday afternoon.
The Norwegian soldiers will be probably sent to Lithuania, where Germany has taken the responsibility for a battalion of about 1,000 soldiers. Also Dutch soldiers will be part of the German-led force.
The other leading nations are the US, UK and Canada, announced Stoltenberg during the press conference. Moreover, Poland has offered NATO to coordinate the four battalions.
Defence Minister of Norway Ine Eriksen Søreide had announced in June that the government is considering a "substantial" contribution to NATO’S new battalions in Eastern Europe.
The battalions of 1,000 soldiers in each country symbolize that NATO is willing and able to defend the four countries bordering Russia against a possible attack.
These forces are also intended as a calming measures for people and governments in Poland and the Baltic countries.
- This is a clear message that our member countries will defend each other on both sides of the Atlantic, says Stoltenberg. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5332-norway-will-send-soldiers-to-lithuania-against-russia | en | 2016-07-05T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/0f19a8fffb755632ed209231c1724ff9558b352e96f177b816f553bda1e9d296.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:11:16 | null | 2016-06-27T00:00:00 | According to the new poll carried out by Infact for VG after Brexit, approximately seven out of ten Norwegians are still skeptical of Norwegian EU membership. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5324-1-of-3-norwegians-believe-brexit-is-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-eu.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/brexit_eu_britain.jpg | en | null | 1 of 3 Norwegians Believe Brexit is the Beginning of the End for the EU | null | null | www.tnp.no | More than a third of the respondents also believes that Brexit is the beginning of the end for the EU. About a third denies this, while the rest say they do not know.
The poll also shows that Norwegians are divided on the question whether they support the UK’s decision. Approximately four in ten support Brexit, while four out of ten say they do not support the decision.
In other words, more Norwegians are skeptical of Norwegian membership than they are of British membership.
Detailed results of the poll
Do you support Britain’s decision to withdraw from the EU?
Yes: 41.5%
No: 43.1%
Do not know: 15.4%
What is your attitude to Norwegian membership in the EU?
Positive to Norwegian membership: 21.2%
Negative to Norwegian membership: 68.5%
No particular opinion: 10.3%
Is this the beginning of the end for the EU?
Yes: 36.1%
No: 30.4%
Do not know: 33.5%
What do you think about the consequences of the withdrawal may have for Norway?
It will have positive consequences: 25.1%
It will have negative consequences: 35.2%
Do not think any change: 25.4%
Do not know: 14.3% | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5324-1-of-3-norwegians-believe-brexit-is-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-eu | en | 2016-06-27T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/fc4c4ea884682feb3615d73d669f0a4cdc671a2395be564c56064bcb35062c10.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:54:13 | null | 2016-08-01T00:00:00 | Labor Party (Ap) politicians hunt Pokemon in the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget). Conservatives (Høyre) responds that The National Assembly is not a playground. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5350-conservatives-and-labor-party-in-pokemon-fight-in-norway-parliament.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/pokemon_stortinget.jpg | en | null | Conservatives and Labor Party in Pokémon Fight in Norway Parliament | null | null | www.tnp.no | Pokemon Go has become very popular among Labor Party politicians, writes VG. However, Høyre is not very happy with the politicians playing Pokemon Go in Stortinget.
The official Conservatives instagram account published a picture of the Pokemon "Pidgey" with spread wings inside the parliamentary hall. Two days ago, Conservative MP Heidi Nordby Lunde had critized the Ap politicians for Pokemon Go habit.
- We (Conservatives) are very positive about the Pokémon Go and the effects the game has on society, but we think it’s okay to put away the game in the Parliament, says Lunde.
Parliament is not a playground. Out of respect, it’s nice if we can do the activity in free time, adds she.
After Høyre official instagram account published the Pokemon picture from the parliement, Ap politician Torstein Tvedt Solberg says to VG that the picture shows Conservatives play the game hidiously.
- I think Conservatives are addicted to the game more than they want to admit, says Solberg.
He jokingly says that it might be a strategy to secure the most sought Pokemons for themselves.
Christian Democratic Party (KrF) leader Knut Arild Hareide also joins the discussion from twitter. Hareide reminds an occasion when the Conservative Member of Parliament Trond Helleland was caught red-handed while playing a mobile war game in the Parliament.
Ikke Pokemon på Stortinget sier Høyre. Tror ikke min gode kollega Trond Helleland står bak😊 https://t.co/WexfGJky6k. https://t.co/HXxV1be7GE — Knut Arild Hareide (@KAHareide) 29. juli 2016
Prime Minister Erna Solberg (Conservative) is also known as a big fan of Candy Crush. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5350-conservatives-and-labor-party-in-pokemon-fight-in-norway-parliament | en | 2016-08-01T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/28342dcb51a01a59d55ee77a0ed553e820b6f3291b53a289c7f85b1bb84c6a99.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:55:46 | null | 2016-07-15T00:00:00 | While people light candles and lay down flowers outside the French Embassy in Oslo, Oslo police sharpens alert level, writes Aftenposten. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5341-police-in-norway-sharpens-alertness-after-the-terrorist-attack-in-nice.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/politi_line.jpg | en | null | Police in Norway Sharpens Alertness after the Terrorist Attack in Nice | null | null | www.tnp.no | In Oslo several people came with flowers, and lit candles in memory of the victims of Nice in fron of the French Embassy in Oslo.
Meanwhile, Norwegian Police patrol near the parliament, bus terminal and Oslo central station.
According to NRK, France’s ambassador in Norway Jean-François Dobell contacted authorities to reinforce security around the embassy, the ambassador’s residence, French school and other places.
Police department reported on their websites that they are following the situation in France. Currently they did not take a decision on a new, general arming of the Norwegian police. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5341-police-in-norway-sharpens-alertness-after-the-terrorist-attack-in-nice | en | 2016-07-15T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/bfabb01eff708f450ef1cf22980f382137c2293860bf3fb2941e679dfa460493.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:08:37 | null | 2016-06-22T00:00:00 | Europe Minister Elisabeth Aspaker asks people to get prepared for the turmoil, the stock market decline and lower economic growth in Norway if Britons choose to leave the EU in Thursday’s referendum. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Feconomy%2F5319-norway-europe-minister-crosses-fingers-for-britain-to-remain-in-the-eu.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/britain_eu.jpg | en | null | Norway’s Europe Minister Crosses Fingers For Britain to Remain in the EU | null | null | www.tnp.no | Talking to VG, Aspaker says that she crosses her fingers for Brits to stay within the EU, and the referendum to end well. She notes that exit from EU may lead to serious consequences for all.
- We have not made predictions, but there will obviously be a lot of turmoil in the markets. Then it will have impacts on growth in the EU, and it will affect us. 80 percent of Norwegian exports go to the EU. How the market behaves has great significance for Europe’s purchasing power and thus also the demand for Norwegian goods, says Aspaker.
The Danish government has estimated that growth in the Danish economy will drop by a quarter percent this year, and a half percent next year, if the British leave the EU.
Britain imported goods and services from Norway for NOK 168 billion NOK in 2015, making it Norway’s largest trading partner. Most of the exports are oil and gas. Norway is number 24 on the list of Britain’s biggest trading partners. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/economy/5319-norway-europe-minister-crosses-fingers-for-britain-to-remain-in-the-eu | en | 2016-06-22T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/700fe0e7cbc6eac5d9919c18e5bb44e4f677979700e08a9d223b72122e9f03c1.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:01:39 | null | 2016-08-03T00:00:00 | Export price of fresh salmon drops to NOK 59.41 per kilo. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Feconomy%2F5351-a-major-drop-in-salmon-export-price-norway-economy.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/salmon_hell.jpg | en | null | A major drop in salmon export price | null | null | www.tnp.no | In the period from 25 July – 31 July the export price of fresh salmon came to NOK 59.41 per kilo. This is a considerable fall of 8.8 per cent compared to the previous seven-day period.
The export quantity of fresh salmon was 14 947 tonnes in the period 25 July – 31 July. This is 9.7 per cent more than in the previous week, 18 July – 24 July.
Norway exported 317 tonnes of frozen salmon at NOK 70.08 per kilo in the period 25 July – 31 July. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/economy/5351-a-major-drop-in-salmon-export-price-norway-economy | en | 2016-08-03T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/7427b0ecf06199a91d0ee21012b7b5b6af7b82a477fec8df175bca9244305167.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:04:50 | null | 2016-08-07T00:00:00 | EEA/EU Ministry has prepared a roadmap for the relations with Britain after Brexit. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5353-norway-seeks-ways-to-keep-cooperation-with-britain-after-brexit.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/brexit_eu_britain.jpg | en | null | Norway Seeks Ways to Keep Cooperation with Britain after Brexit | null | null | www.tnp.no | - We have initiated a broad analysis to look at Norway’s relations with Britain and the consequences of the British withdrawal of the EU will have on our cooperation. Although it is a long way for British withdrawal, we will be as well prepared as possible to safeguard Norwegian interests and our good relationship with the UK, says EEA / EU Minister Elisabeth Vik Aspaker.
Before the summer, an interministerial working group was appointed at senior official level under the leadership of the Foreign Ministry. The working group follows the negotiations between the EU and the UK and will identify how they affect Norwegian interests. The group will also look at the consequences of Brexit for Norway, and provide input to the government on how Norwegian interests can best be served. The working group has members from all ministries and will meet again in August.
Brexit and consequences of the referendum will be the topic of a series of meetings in the future, both at European level, and in the Nordic arena and bilateral relations with Britain.
EU / EEA Minister has already been in contact with his colleague David Davis, who is responsible for the newly established Ministry which is responsible for EU withdrawal in the UK, and they agreed to find a meeting date as soon as possible.
- I am glad that the UK sees Norway as an important partner in the new stage we are now entering and I look forward to meeting my colleague David Davis as soon as possible. Norway and Britain are important cooperative partners in a number of areas and we want to continue the good and close cooperation also when Britain leaves the European Union, says Aspaker. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5353-norway-seeks-ways-to-keep-cooperation-with-britain-after-brexit | en | 2016-08-07T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/ff787f9a9c63b1d68072879827a25b5053852375ad8a06fd6099deeb0aebf357.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:06:46 | null | 2016-07-27T00:00:00 | A Norwegian policeman writes himself a 500 NOK (60 USD) ticket for not wearing compulsory life jacket on patrol. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5348-only-in-norway-policeman-fines-himself.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/police_fine_norway.jpg | en | null | Only in Norway: Policeman Fines Himself | null | null | www.tnp.no | Police officer Arne Stavnes was pictured by Norwegian daily VG at the helm of his police boat without a life jacket during a patrol of Utoya island.
The readers of the newspaper commented jokingly that he broke the law by not wearing his life jacket, which is compulsory in Norway on vessels less than eight meters long.
As a response, the honest policeman accepted the criticism and published a photo of his self-issued 500 Norwegian kroner penalty on Facebook. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5348-only-in-norway-policeman-fines-himself | en | 2016-07-27T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/89248e459552598bfa4641ddb13f9d8e50413ed2fd7049a607db02758a4ce02e.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:03:24 | null | 2016-07-18T00:00:00 | Oslo Municipality has already put its plans to make Oslo a car-free city before 2009 | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5342-oslo-already-started-to-remove-car-parks-for-a-car-free-city.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/oslo_center.jpg | en | null | Oslo Already Started to Remove Car Parks for a Car-Free City | null | null | www.tnp.no | Oslo City Council wants to throw private cars out of the city center within Ring 1 until 2019. As a part of the plan, the parking lots in the center will be gradually removed and they will be replaced by food courts and street theatres.
Now, the city council asked Environment Directorate (Bymiljøetaten) to consider the possibility to imlement the plan from spring 2017, writes NRK.
- For this to be a positive measure, it is a prerequisite that the freed spaces are immediately filled with activities for visitors of different characters. Shopkeepers, restaurants, volunteers, cultural organizations must then be invited to use the free areas, notes the city council in a letter to Bymiljøetaten.
Kart: Josefsen.org | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5342-oslo-already-started-to-remove-car-parks-for-a-car-free-city | en | 2016-07-18T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/4888e54063387fceb015b37cea7428f473b72a024438a9521628f7f13034131a.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:59:52 | null | 2016-07-12T00:00:00 | The new | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5338-stalking-becomes-a-serious-crime-in-norway.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/stalker.jpg | en | null | Stalking Becomes a Serious Crime in Norway | null | null | www.tnp.no | Stalking has its own additional clause in the Criminal Code. It has come into force on 1 July this year.
You do not need to kill someone before you get a response. With the new law, stalking partners will have earlier responses, writes NRK
A Norwegian study from 2013 shows that every eight women experience some form of stalking in their lifetime.
There are different ways to stalk someone. Everything from following someone, hiding in the neighborhood, or ringing the doorbell at midnight, is classified as stalking in the new law and suuh behaviors can be punished with imprisoment up to four years. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5338-stalking-becomes-a-serious-crime-in-norway | en | 2016-07-12T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/1138ccda1fc98ae6b9c62c2ed44d2b65d0f74fbd5753c0399d371be5d2f03d48.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:59:29 | null | 2016-07-07T00:00:00 | Prime Minister Erna Solberg goes to the NATO Summit in Warsaw to demand guarantees of help to Norway in case of a serious conflict with Russia. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5333-norway-asks-nato-for-more-help-in-north.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/army_norway.jpg | en | null | Norway Asks NATO for More Help in North | null | null | www.tnp.no | Solberg told VG that NATO must respond to the Russian armaments in the northern areas.
- We do not want militarization of the north. But we must have naval control, says the Prime Minister to VG.
On Friday and Saturday, she will participate in the summit of NATO along with US President Barack Obama and the other Heads of State and Government of NATO’s 28 member countries.
NATO summit will approve the deployment of so-called rotational forces, a battalion in four Baltic countries. Altogether about 4,000 NATO troops will form a new "tripwire" to avert a possible Russian attack against NATO from the east.
Norway will also send soldiers to the NATO forces in these countries. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5333-norway-asks-nato-for-more-help-in-north | en | 2016-07-07T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/b48921e36bd564a7f171f660b809e6042391675e7531a42923691d360d51fecd.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:07:01 | null | 2016-07-22T00:00:00 | The US military is considering to use Evenes air base in Nordland for maritime patrols with its P8 Poseidon patrol aircraft, writes NTB. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpolitics%2F5345-usa-will-use-norway-air-base-for-monitoring.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/kerry_brende_usa.jpg | en | null | USA Will Use Norway Air Base for Monitoring | null | null | www.tnp.no | According to the Defense Ministry, the US Navy wants to prepare the infrastructure in Norway for receiving this type of aircraft for shorter and longer stays in northern areas.
- Of course it is positive, if they can help to build up a future base for new maritime patrol aircraft in Norway, said Communications director at Ministry of Defence, Lars Gjemble.
Gjemble points out that if the US Navy establishes in northern Norway, it must be aligned with the Norwegian plans for the development of the base structure.
The Norwegian government proposed recently to close down several military bases in its long-term plan for defense. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/5345-usa-will-use-norway-air-base-for-monitoring | en | 2016-07-22T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/657e476be36cbe31ff2a1f0295c87d89e0adc764c21778b11df90016ca59cd60.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T12:52:08 | null | 2016-07-10T00:00:00 | Six helium balloons were freed in Dunmanway, Ireland in December. A note tied to one of them invited the person who found it to contact the sender. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5335-norwegian-family-finds-treasure-balloon-from-ireland.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/balloon_ireland.jpg | en | null | Norwegian Family Finds Treasure Balloon from Ireland | null | null | www.tnp.no | Catherine Crowley in Dunmanway Chamber of Commerce said to Irisih Examiner that they they had released the balloon back in December and aimed that the finder would win a stay for two in Gallys, chocolates from Deirdre Kelly, a hamper from For Goodness Sake Health Shop, a bottle of wine from Connollys shoe shop, lunch for two in Marnies Restaurant, and wash, cut and shave, and bottle of champagne.
But after six months, they started to give up hope of them being found. Then two weeks ago, Crowley got a phone call from a woman in Norway having said she’d found their balloon.
Linda Taule, from the Naustdal region, said she had been on hiking tour with her son, and they spotted three balloons on a tree.
They first thought it was rubbish and took them to throw away. They then discovered the attached note by Dunmanway Chamber of Commerce.
The Norwegian family of four contacted the number on the balloon and were invited to Dunmanway to collect their prizes. Linda Taula told the Irish Examiner the trip to Dunmanway is a bit above their budget.
However, Catherine Crowley in Dunmanway Chamber of Commerce said on Irisih national radio, RTÉ that they have offered sponsorship to get the family to Ireland.
The family will fly from Norway to Dunmanway over in about three weeks to collect their prize. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5335-norwegian-family-finds-treasure-balloon-from-ireland | en | 2016-07-10T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/8f86bbc2f4de4dd9196052fcf97b0e410a372aa9e59b71ac2258ecddc56a76dc.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:00:42 | null | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | 30 year old internationally wanted swindler who is known as | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5359-norway-dating-norwegian-sugar-man-arrested-in-sweden.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/computer_court.jpg | en | null | Norwegian "Sugar Man" Arrested in Sweden | null | null | www.tnp.no | According to NRK’s report, police called the case "sukkersaken (sugar case)" because the accused 30 year old Norwegian has initiated relationships with women on dating website Sukker.no, and deceived them.
The man convinced women to lend him money, and a total of seven people have issued a complaint about the 30 year old so far. One of the cases took place in Oslo, while the other six took place elsewhere in southern Norway.
Altogether the cases led to a five million NOK swindle for the period between June 2014 and the end of 2015.
Police expect more women can come up as the man now is arrested. The man is also convicted of similar fraud earlier.
- The man was international wanted and arrested in Sundsvall in Sweden yesterday, said police attorney Gunstein Bjørgum to NRK.
He said police cooperation and investigation led to his whereabout and they contacted Swedish police immediately.
In the initial questioning by police the 30-year-old admitted partial guilt. The indictment includes threats and intimidating behavior towards at least one of the victims. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5359-norway-dating-norwegian-sugar-man-arrested-in-sweden | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/3431ac7b0cc8caba3e917d68894df2044d27c64a0012733444a44871f22d34b7.json |
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] | 2016-08-26T13:08:25 | null | 2016-06-29T00:00:00 | The owners of diesel cars will have to pay extra to drive into the center of Oslo and Bergen from this winter. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tnp.no%2Fnorway%2Fpanorama%2F5325-norway-approves-extra-fees-for-diesel-cars.json | http://www.tnp.no/newsimg/traffic_jam.jpg | en | null | Norway Approves Extra Fees for Diesel Cars | null | null | www.tnp.no | The government gives green light to the proposal for low emission zones where air quality is worst, writes VG.
- I can confirm that the government soon will approve the proposal that cities that are plagued with air pollution can introduce low emission zones. We have set a deadline for August 22, so that municipalities can consider the possibility of introducing the scheme already from the coming winter, says Climate and Environment Minister Vidar Helgesen to VG.
In practice, the municiplaities will be able to introduce restricted zones for polluting diesel cars. Also the municipalities will be able to impose fees on polluting vehicles for driving in low emission zones.
Some newer diesel vehicles meeting Euro 6 regulations and rechargeable hybrid cars with electric range of at least 40 kilometers will be exempted. | http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5325-norway-approves-extra-fees-for-diesel-cars | en | 2016-06-29T00:00:00 | www.tnp.no/a5f8033ca8ee7a4eac637d1b603e641f89bfee0a5c161a8cd0a7968e261c82d2.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:48:44 | null | 2016-08-22T09:03:31 | War is a word you hear often in Bastar, especially as a journalist. But senior police officers are quick to retract it. "It's a battle," many said. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fno-war-bastar-battles-bhadrimau.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Bastar_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_17-August-2016_01.jpg | en | null | There Is No War in Bastar, Only Battles | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
Rambati Baghel’s cell phone rang early on the morning of 14 September 2015. The call came from the Darbha thana, about five kilometres from her village Kakkalgur, in Bastar district in Chhattisgarh.
“Come to the police station at once,” the person on the line told Rambati, the sarpanch of the Kakkalgur gram panchayat, created barely eight months earlier. “Two people have been arrested from Bhadrimau.” The para—neighbourhood—of Bhadrimau, where the two men had been arrested, came under the jurisdiction of the Kakkalgur panchayat. As sarpanch, the caller told her, she was required to come to the police station.
Rambati knew that five days earlier, on 9 September, paramilitary personnel had beaten up the residents of Bhadrimau with sticks at a weekly market in a neighbouring village. She also knew that on 10 September, people had been picked up from Bhadrimau: unexplained detentions are a part of Adivasi life in Bastar.
Rambati wasted no time after the phone call. She called her son, 17-year old Somaru, an eighth standard dropout, to take her to the station on a motorbike. About half an hour later, after a treacherous journey along the dirt track through the forest, they reached the thana—only to be told that Rambati was required at the police station in Jagdalpur town, 30 kilometres away.
The police offered to help. A policeman would take her to Jagdalpur on his bike, and her son could follow. The two motorcyles left for Jagdalpur at around 11 am but Somaru couldn’t keep pace. “I had learned how to ride a bike only recently, and was too slow to keep up with the policeman,” Somaru told me later.
At the thana, Rambati told me when I met her later that day, the policemen “asked me to sign a paper. There was something written on it. But I have no idea what it was.” Rambati and Somaru belong to the Durva tribe that, like other tribes in the area, has a rich oral tradition. Literacy and formal education are almost solely the preserve of younger generations in the area: only three people from among Kakkalgur’s 130 households have completed high school. Rambati herself cannot read and speaks only Durvi. She can understand a bit of Hindi, and knows how to sign her name in the Devanagri script.
“I told them I’ll sign the paper after my son arrives, since he can read and write, but they were adamant,” she said. “‘We’ve arrested them and we need your signature,’” she recounted the officials telling her. (According to Supreme Court guidelines, in the case of an arrest, the police are required to inform the family members of the person in question. There is no mention of the need for a signature from the sarpanch.)
I asked her if the police had explained what was on the paper. “No. They just told me two people have been arrested and you have to sign.”
By the time Somaru reached the police station, it was too late. Rambati had signed the paper and was waiting outside the station for him. Neither son nor mother had any idea what she had put her name to.
For all she knew, Rambati could have signed a statement confirming the two men from Bhadrimau were guilty of any number of crimes. This, too, is common practice in this area: fearing retribution from the security forces, the non-literate Adivasis often sign away papers written in alien languages.
I visited the Jagdalpur police station shortly after dusk that day to check what exactly Rambati had signed. The officials spoke as if the incidents of the morning had never happened.
“Kahan ka sarpanch?” (The sarpanch of which area?), they asked me. “Kakkalgur?… No sarpanch was here today.” Was I sure this was the thana I was looking for, I was asked. I was, because Rambati herself had shown me the station a while earlier. The structure was there, as were the officials. But there was no trace of the document.
*
War is a word you often hear in Bastar, especially as a journalist. It recurred, for instance, in conversations with senior police officials, who also made it a point to retract it. “Actually, it’s a battle,” many said, far more firmly.
Maoist rebels moved into the forests of what is now known as the Bastar division beginning in the late 1980s. At the time, the Maoist movement was at its peak in present-day Telangana. The division—about 40,000 square kilometres in area—was one single district in Madhya Pradesh. In 1998, the Bastar division was split into three districts: Uttar Bastar Kanker, Bastar, and Dakshin Bastar Dantewada. When, in 2000, the state of Chhattisgarh was created, the division became a part of it. In 2008, the districts of Narayanpur and Bijapur were carved out of Bastar and Dakshin Bastar Dantewada respectively, followed by another change in district boundaries in 2012. On the last occasion, Kondagaon was carved out of Bastar, and Sukma out of Dakshin Bastar Dantewada. Today, all seven thickly forested districts in Bastar division—Narayanpur, Kondagaon, Kanker, Dantewada, Sukma, Bijapur, Bastar—are classified, according to the Indian government, as affected by Left-Wing Extremism, or LWE—the state’s official term for Maoist insurgency.
“Initially, Bastar was more a shelter zone for the Maoists,” said Bela Bhatia, a scholar and activist who lives in a village near Jagdalpur. Bhatia has been living in the area since early 2015, and has played a key role in bringing to light several cases of human rights violation in the area. “During this early phase, they lived primarily among the Dorla tribals close to the border with Telangana, also the hub of the movement,” she told me. Gradually, Bhatia said, as the rebel forces moved deeper into the forests, they learned of the problems the Adivasis were facing. Then, there was hardly any government presence in villages across Bastar. The tribal people were at the mercy of forest officials and traders, and exploitation was rampant. The forest department regularly harangued the villagers. The Maoist rebels “got involved in movements in Bastar to get the Adivasis better prices for tendu leaves”—used to roll bidis—“and other forest produce,” Bhatia said. As a result of these movements, the daily torture and harassment from the forest department officials ceased, and villagers started getting much better prices.
Most Adivasis I spoke to said—some even grudgingly—that whatever is left of Bastar’s “jal, jangal, jameen” (“water, forest and land,” a popular slogan in these parts) is due to the intervention of the dadalog—the villagers’ term for Maoist rebels.
Many senior police and paramilitary officers told me they respected the integrity and passion of the rebels during the 1970s and 1980s. They said that the Maoists of the time were ideologically committed, unlike the current ones who “operate like a mafia.”
“They are just exploiting the tribals,” D Shravan told me in when I met him in October 2015. Shravan was then the superintendent of police (SP) in Sukma. “They’re taking advantage of their innocence,” he added.
The security establishment’s narrative on left-wing extremism in Bastar today is neatly laid out: the Maoists are outsiders who are using the innocent tribal people of Bastar to further their selfish agenda. According to the state, the rebels do nothing for the tribal people. The Maoist leaders, many state officials told me, just enjoy the spoils of ransom monies from the companies that want to set up projects in the area—the rebels send their kids to foreign universities, while the Adivasis and their kids die on the “battlefield.”
The largest urban agglomeration in Bastar division is in Bastar district, around its headquarters—Jagdalpur. Apart from residential, business and government establishments, it houses senior officials involved in countering the insurgency, as well as the District and Sessions Court, and the division’s largest jail. Large parts of the district have never seen any Maoist presence. From Jagdalpur, the closest areas with a presence of Maoist rebels, such as the Darbha and Jeeram valleys, are 30–40 kilometres away. Yet, suspicion runs like a viral fever through the roads and alleys of the town. “They pick up anyone they are a little suspicious of here,” a migrant shopkeeper from West Bengal told me in Jagdalpur, under the security of his mother tongue. “They take them to the jail and …”
In another conversation, a couple of Christian missionaries recalled their recent experiences in jail. They had been arrested in June last year for a having organised a protest against a 2012 incident—in January that year, Hindu right-wing vigilantes had desecrated a Christian graveyard in town. “We met so many people who were not Maoists. They were simple villagers and yet have been in jail for months and years,” one of the missionaries told me. “All of them have been beaten mercilessly at some point.”
Even then, very few individuals or organisations make public statements on matters such as illegal detention and torture. If they do, they draw the attention of the suspicion-gripped security apparatus towards them. The security forces often consider such statements proof of Maoist infiltration—of being a link in the rebels’ “urban network.”
The purported network “poses a huge problem for us. They’re the ones who are supporting the movement from the outside,” Shravan said. As far as the state is concerned, organisations such as the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights, that work to bring attention to human rights violations in the region; lawyers who take up the cases of accused Maoists or Adivasis; and sections of the media, constitute a support circle for the insurgents.
“Yeh human rights wale upari madad de rahe hain” (These human-rights activists are extending covert support to the Maoists), Kamlochan Kashyap, the SP of Dantewada district, said, livid. “Poore Bastar to criminalise kar diya Naxalion ne, phir bhi human rights wale is ko kheench rahe hain” (The Naxalites have criminalised all of Bastar, but these actvists don’t relent.)
Kashyap is an Adivasi himself. “Main Bastar ka beta hun” (I am a son of Bastar), he told me. But like the rest of the security establishment, he said, he “pities the tribal people.” “The villagers don’t know when they are made Naxalis.”
“Naxalis make people part of local committees very tactfully,” Kashyap added, noting that the Maoists ask villagers to dig up roads to prevent the entry of security forces into interior areas, or destroy school buildings that are often used by the forces as shelters. Even children are asked to watch out for police parties, he told me. “These are all criminal activities. Naxalis have turned the public criminal,” Kashyap asserted.
Since every tribe in the area has its own language, and although some languages are similar to each other, the range can be perplexing for the forces on the ground. During a conversation in his office in October last year, Shravan told me that, because he had studied anthropology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, he could comprehend tribal social structures and recognise persons of authority with relative ease.
He said that he was relieved when Sukma was carved out as a separate district, in 2012. “It brought decision-making about our area right here. Files did not need to be sent to the district headquarters in Dantewada, or to Raipur. The collector’s office is here and we have been working with the administration to execute key projects. A lot of work is getting done here,” Shravan said. “The situation has improved.”
Proof of this, he said, was the main road of Sukma, on which the police headquarters is located. “Three years ago, you wouldn’t see a single person on the road after three in the afternoon. Now, look at the number of people roaming freely,” he said. “The security situation is much better.”
*
“Jahan jahan force jaati hai, road saath mein chalti hai,” (Wherever security forces have go, roads follow) a Central Reserve Police Force jawan manning a camp check post at Awapally, in Bijapur district, told me. I chatted with him briefly while entering my name, mobile number and vehicle number into a register. This is how the CRPF keeps a vigil on people moving in and out of the area.
The creation of new districts in 2012 fuelled a construction boom in the region. Roads, administrative buildings, paramilitary camps, helipads, and installation of mobile towers: everything began to be contracted out, at rates 30–40 percent higher than government-approved figures.
“Earlier, the bureaucracy in the capital would just not understand that unless we pay more than approved rates, contractors here would not take up work,” said the collector of one of the newly carved out LWE-affected districts, requesting anonymity. “At the local level here, we understand how grave the threat to contractors and machinery is. Despite full security arrangements from the police, no contractor will take up work at lower rates,” said the collector.
On roads across Bastar, I saw burnt chassis of backhoes, road rollers and police vehicles stand in testimony to the collector’s words. The rebels routinely attack and set on fire to machinery used for road construction because roads are central to the state’s effort to counter the insurgency—they quite literally extend the reach of the government.
Security camps and outposts also function as nodes of governance: departmental entitlements and doles for people, such as agricultural equipment, saplings, clothes and grains, are distributed at the camps as part of public outreach programmes by the security forces.
Since healthcare facilities are almost absent in the interior villages, the CRPF has also opened field hospitals in some of their camps. “Together, we have treated 1500 people over six months,” a CRPF functionary told me, before requesting that I not name him since he is not authorised to speak to the media. Although a lot of ground has been covered in these new districts, a lot remains to be done, said the functionary.
In an interview with the Press Trust of India (PTI) on 27 September 2015, the CRPF DG Prakash Mishra spoke in a similar vein. “South Chhattisgarh continues to pose the biggest challenge for security forces where almost 11,000 sq kms has no presence of security forces. This gives Maoists the liberty to unleash their free reign,” Mishra said.
According to Mishra, the CRPF’s focus had shifted to Bastar because the overall security situation in various LWE-affected states had eased. “It is only a matter of time before the void is filled,” he assured.
The “void”—where the security forces haven’t yet registered presence—is also where two major iron ore mines and steel plants, belonging to the Tata and Essar conglomerates respectively, are in the pipeline. The National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), a central government enterprise, is already building a steel plant in Nagarnar, about 15 kilometres from Jagdalpur. These apart, a large number of units for sponge iron—a form of iron ore used to produce wrought iron—are under production. Units for steel casting, pig iron, among others, are either operational or proposed in parts.
Mishra didn’t mention any of these in his statement though—in fact, no one does in these parts. Certain things are papered over because they’re still only on paper: in many cases, companies have received mining leases but have not yet begun operations; in several others, an accurate survey of the riches under the surface hasn’t been undertaken yet.
According to the Chhattisgarh’s Department of Mines website, making these surveys, mining, and the industrialisation a reality requires “the necessary environment.” To put it simply, it requires that these areas be free of Maoist rebels—and those who sympathise with them.
*
For the last few years, the use of technology to counter insurgency has been steadily increasing. Security forces regularly use GPS, satellite maps, videography, and social media in their counter-insurgency efforts. During a visit to the Anti-Naxal Operations (ANO) office in the state capital Naya Raipur in October 2015, state officials told me that their intelligence network relies on applications such as WhatsApp for instant information sharing as well as circulation of photographs of suspected Maoists. A senior ANO functionary told me that the office also runs several social media accounts to counter “Maoist propaganda.” Government officials in the region routinely use social media to further what they consider to be the truth.
It is, however, drones that occupy pride of place in the use of technology among the forces. With the help of the Indian Air Force, security forces in Bastar have been employing surveillance drones for over five years.
Senior security officials told me that the anti-Maoist forces now have three types of surveillance drones: ones with a range of 300–500 kilometres that are operated from the air base in the industrial town of Bhilai in Durg district; mid-range ones that can cover an area of 25–30 kilometres; and small ones that operate within a 3–5 kilometre radius. The small ones are launched by “throwing them like a javelin,” a CRPF official told me, and are mostly used by patrol parties to examine areas around their position in the jungle.
For the past few months, efforts have been afoot to beam the footage from these various drones into the swanky new police headquarters in Naya Raipur. The home minister Rajnath Singh in inaugurated the facility in May 2015. In October of the same year, officials at the ANO office told me that the office was trying to get a separate high-speed broadband line just for carrying live drone footage.
In due course, they said, all district police headquarters would be connected to the grid. Sharing data in real time will allow senior security officials to direct their teams more effectively, and allow forces to plan coordinated action.
The Chhattisgarh government and the anti-Naxal forces hope to use drones beyond surveillance. Although both the government and the IAF have previously clarified that they would not launch an attack on their “own people,” there have been reports signalling a change in strategy.
For now, drones meant for security are servicing the needs of industry. A project manager with the NMDC iron-ore mine in Bailadila told me as much on the sidelines of an environmental clearance-related public hearing at Tokapal, in Dantewada district, on 4 July 2015.
The NMDC had called the meeting so the residents could register objections, if any, to a slurry pipeline passing through their villages. The proposed pipeline would carry iron ore from the mine in Bailadila to the under-construction steel plant in Nagarnar, and onward, to Vishakhapatnam. The villagers at the hearing were enraged. Most of those present at the hearing had not known about the pipeline until three days earlier.
Representatives from among the residents took to the microphone to ask the officials how they were supposed to give feedback on a project they had known about for such little time. They also raised questions about the pipeline, asking who would provide them compensation for the damage caused due to pollution, or if they would be arrested if the pipe were damaged. A few among the residents said the public hearing was unconstitutional and an overreach in democracy. They called for its cancellation. The villagers then began shouting slogans against the decision, and staged a walkout.
While they filed out of the hearing, I asked the NMDC project director if the villagers had been consulted before the pathway was drawn up. “At present, the pipeline’s trajectory has been decided with the help of drone footage. No one’s met the people yet,” he said.
*
On 14 September last year, the Chhattisgarh Police announced at a press conference in Jagdalpur that two “dangerous Naxalis” had been picked up from Bhadrimau, a village in the Kakkalgur panchayat. On the same day, the police produced Bijja Podiami and Deva Muchaki from Bhadrimau, at the Jagdalpur district court.
According to a person who was present at the hearing, the police told the court that Podiami and Muchaki were caught a day earlier, in the forests near Bhadrimau, with tiffin bombs and explosives. The police’s account was thus: a patrol party comprising CRPF and district police had set out from the Sukma camp on 10 September. On 13 September, on their way back to the camp, they found Podiami and Muchaki hiding in the forest near Bhadrimau.
I later found that this account was suspect. According to the villagers, on 13 September, Podiami and Muchaki had already been missing for three days.
A few days later, in Bhadrimau, a group of men and women I met at the village square recounted what had transpired on 10 September, the day Podiami and Muchaki were picked up from the village.
That morning, they told me, villagers were to gather at the square in front of a government school to discuss preparations for Nuakhani, an Adivasi festival marking the day the season’s fresh harvest is consumed.
Podiami and Muchaki were among the first to arrive. They were seated under a mango tree when the Darbha thanedaar—police station in-charge—Durgesh Sharma announced himself upon the scene. “‘Who are Bijja Podiami and Deva Muchaki?’ he asked,” one woman recounted. The two identified themselves immediately. “They were ordered into the police Scorpio and taken away,” said a man.
It is commonplace for villagers to be taken to the police station at a moment’s notice, and to be questioned and even beaten for hours on end. And so, Bhadrimau waited a day. On 11 September, they called a person from the village who works in Jagdalpur as a security guard at a government office, and told him what had happened. They asked him to check if the villagers had been produced in the court or detained at a police station in Jagdalpur. The next day, their contact confirmed that the men were in police custody.
It is also common for villagers in LWE-affected areas to wait for a few days before raising a “missing” alarm. Every so often, local police stations offer to negotiate a settlement and release the nabbed person without registering a case—for a price. According to the villagers I spoke to, in Bastar, this amount was usually Rs 10,000–15,000. Once the police have named a price, the villagers must choose to either pay or find a lawyer to represent them in court. The latter, I was told, could cost them at least Rs 50,000.
Though the state allocates free lawyers for every accused who can’t afford otherwise, very few of these legal-aid advocates meet their clients: during jail visits, lawyers must get their photos taken, and appearing in front of the jail CCTV camera too often is akin to courting a “pro-Naxal” tag.
Perhaps it is because the advocates at Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group (JagLAG)—a non-profit that provides free legal aid to Adivasis in the region—go about their business despite these risks, that they enjoy the faith of scared, unquestioning Adivasis. In their three years of operation here, JagLAG advocates have defended several accused under trials.
Podiami and Muchaki’s case was no different. On 13 September, Podiami’s brother later told me, a group of young men from Bhadrimau travelled from the village to meet lawyers from JagLAG the at the district headquarters. The group met Isha Khandelwal, one of JagLAG’s founders. The next morning, Khandelwal filed an application at the district court. Within an hour, Podiami and Muchaki were produced in the same court. The court sent them to judicial custody pending the trial.
Between September 2014 and 2015, ten people—including Podiami and Muchaki—were arrested from Bhadrimau. They were charged with participating in “Naxali gatividhiyan”—Naxalite activities—and booked under several sections of the Explosives Act and the 2005 Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act. All the accused were lodged in Jagdalpur jail. Many in Bhadrimau told me that two of those arrested were part of the rebels’ village committee. (The Maoists often form informal administrative bodies to help villages coordinate festivals and community farming activities.)
According to independent research conducted by JagLAG in 2013, most undertrials spend an average of three to five years in prison for a single case, and are routinely denied bail. JagLAG also found that the length of imprisonment of undertrials awaiting a verdict in Jagdalpur Central Jail and Dantewada District Jail is significantly longer compared to national and state figures. As a result, jails in the Bastar region are packed to 250–600 percent beyond capacity.
Bhadrimau has nearly 140 households. Villagers said the rebels no longer hold meetings in the village, unlike during the first half the 2000s. Then, at village meetings, the dadalog would ask the residents of Bhadrimau not to give up their land for factories and mines, and not to entertain the forces.
In the latter, the villagers didn’t really have choice. Since 2005, following the establishment of the Darpha outpost 15 kilometres away, the CRPF started coming to the village in larger numbers, accompanied by the local police. At present, residents said, patrol parties visit every two or three days—always during the day. Located on the fringes of the forest, Bhadrimau is the last village on their regular patrol route.
The Maoists visit the village occasionally, and people readily give them food—as do the Adivasis in most other villages. Though not a crime, this is something the security forces loathe. “It comes out when they beat us, in their frustrated rants,” villagers told me. The rants of the personnel, they said, come out in bursts, like machine gun fire. The villagers told me that security personnel criticised them, telling them that they were ignorant, and that their lives—so much of which are spent in the forest—were pointless.
This modus operandi of the forces is common to all of Bastar. When security personnel visit a village, they often berate the men of the villages. “They beat us in front of the women,” a villager from the Sarkeguda block in Bijapur district told me. The personnel call out the women and harass them: they are touched, squeezed, and made to take off their clothes. Some have had jawans forcefully suckle at their breasts. Adivasi women are regularly traumatised, raped, and gangraped, but few report it to the police for fear of reprisals. On the rare occasions they do report these crimes, they are faced with a state machinery that does not want to acknowledge alleged human rights violations.
Via pamphlets, posters, statements, and announcements over radio, television and social media, the state calls on Adivasis who are part of the armed squads of the Maoists to surrender and enjoy a life of “freedom and security.” Bhadrimau residents told me that, of late, patrol parties included surrendered Maoists. “You can always spot them from their black masks,” a villager said—the surrendered cadre wear these masks to conceal their identity during field operations with security forces, fearing reprisals from Maoists.
In reality, the life this cadre leads is very different from the one advertised in official communication. “The state’s support for rehabilitation of surrendered Maoists will depend on their cooperation in anti-insurgency activities,” states the fifth point in Chhattisgarh’s surrender policy, which was sanctioned in 2004.
Surrendered cadre are sent to take on Maoist guerilla squads, and exposed to the same immediate violence they likely sought to flee. For those who perform well—a few encounters, some arrests—promotion to the position of a fully recognised “arakshak”—a guard—with a salary of Rs 15,000 or thereabouts, is possible. The surrendered Maoists are housed within the district police headquarters, and must necessarily take the permission of the SP in case they want to venture beyond a five or six-kilometre radius.
Bhadrimau doesn’t have any surrendered cadre or jawans serving on the side of the state—one of the reasons, the residents reckon, they are targeted.
*
“They come with money and chocolates,” the villagers in Bhadrimau said of the security forces’ patrols. Anyone can recognise money and chocolate as ready influencers, especially in a region where the villagers get about Rs 150 for filling a tractor-cart with stones for a chip stone quarry—a job that takes four men and five hours of chipping away at a hill to complete. Sometimes, the patrols would bring small presents for the villagers, in an effort to appease them.
But not all patrols use the carrot technique; some use the stick. One of the women at the village square said security personnel “make whatever they can get their hands on their own, whether it is hens, cattle or women.” “They take away all our home-brewed liquor. They break into houses and beat us up for no reason,” said one of the men. Villagers in Bhadrimau told me violence by security personnel on villagers escalated around mid 2015. Several “adhikaris”—authorities—also visited the village in the latter half of 2015, they said, but the villagers were not told who they were or the organisations they represented.
Two of the men lifted their t-shirts to show me several clots on their back and legs. “We’d gone to the forest to get some wood a couple of days ago. They beat us mercilessly, all the while questioning what we were doing in the forest,” one of them said. “‘You’re all Naxalis,’” the men recalled the officials saying.
The villagers told me that if the security personnel found them walking in the forest, they would bombard them with questions. “They beat us up and shove us with their boots when they find us sleeping in our fields inside the forest, even though we tell them we’re only guarding our crops from wild animals,” a young boy who had just returned from the high school located 15 kilometres away, told me. Many people said they had reduced visits to kin in faraway villages to avoid this harassment.
For the paramilitary personnel on patrol, every Adivasi is a suspect. “We don’t know who is a villager and who is a Naxal,” a senior CRPF jawan at one of the checkposts said. “We pass them now and they’re standing idle; we turn our backs and they could pick up a weapon. Naxalis!”
Most of the paramilitary personnel on duty in Bastar are from outside the state and are not familiar with the local culture or terrain. The district police, also a major player in counter insurgency operations, has a clear advantage over the paramilitary force: it has among its ranks many Adivasis. During CRPF patrols—which, as per the CRPF Act of 1949, must have district police representatives—young tribal boys are sent to converse with villagers in their language.
Since most of the tribal jawans in the district police have grown up in the jungles, they’re also far better acquainted with the terrain.
But though the district police and CRPF constabulary do the same job on the ground and have the same range of weapons available to them, there is a substantial difference in their salaries. The central force’s pay is almost double that of district forces: about Rs 32,000 a month for the rank of a jawan, compared to around Rs 18,000 for the district police.
“Yet it is they who die whenever there is an encounter,” a young jawan belonging to the Gond tribe, and enrolled with the Jagdalpur district police said. “Remember the time when 76 security personnel were killed in a Maoist attack in Dantewada?” he asked, referring to a 2010 incident during which security personnel were killed in a Maoist ambush. “Only one of those killed was from the district police. The rest were all CRPF.” He and his colleagues, fellow Adivasis from the Gond and Durva communities, then burst into laughter.
The jawan had no doubts about who was the better of the lot. “It is we who do all the work. They can’t even fire properly. They fire bullets after bullets—khat khat khat,” he said, imitating the sound of gunfire. “We pull the trigger once and the job is done.”
But he was also remorseful of what his job entailed—turning against his own people. “Pet ke liye karna padta hai”(I have to do it for a livelihood) he said in a hushed voice, after looking around to ensure that his supervisors would not see him in conversation with a stranger.
Despite the higher wages, most of the CRPF personnel opt out of Bastar at the first opportunity. “Around 80 percent among us opt to serve in other areas after the mandatory four-year period. Who would want to stay here?” a CRPF jawan named Anil, who only offered his first name, told me. When I met him at a bus stop on the Sarkeguda-Bijapur road one October afternoon, Anil was supervising the loading of luggage onto a bus to Bijapur, the district headquarters. A few jawans had been granted leave, and since the forces didn’t have vehicles to spare, they were going to take a public bus.
Bus rides can be risk a for security personnel in these parts. Only a week earlier, the Maoists had set a bus on fire not far from where we stood. “But today should be okay,” Anil said confidently. “There are many villagers in the bus, and they”—the Maoists—“don’t do anything in such scenarios. If the bus had one or two civilians and the rest, our men, that would have been risky.”
In recent years, the CRPF has lost more men to land mine blasts than to direct encounters with Maoists. In his September 2015 interview to PTI, the CRPF DG Prakash Mishra said that the force is trying to “check these incidents by inducting some advanced field gadgets and developing newer standard operating procedures.”
While Mishra said the Maoist’s emphasis on Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) is “an indicator that the rebels are not willing to take us head on as they fear losses,” it is also possible that the rebels are trying to minimise loss of civilian lives—collateral damage, in the language of conflict.
*
“Come to the police station tomorrow morning.”
On 28 September, over two weeks after Podiami and Muchaki were picked up, the residents of Bhadrimau received another visit from the Darbha police station personnel. They were asked to present themselves at the police station in connection with the release of five undertrials from the village. Like all Adivasis in Bastar, they knew that a call from the police must always be honoured. And so, they reported to the police station en masse on 29 September.
On reaching the Darbha police station, they found the place decked up, with a canopy, a big stage, and neatly arranged ornate chairs on the dais. In attendance was the Bastar Inspector General, SRP Kalluri, and other dignitaries. The officials sat on chairs, and the villagers on bare ground. One by one, the latter were called and handed out new clothes, towels and food, while photographers on duty clicked away.
During the function, Santosh Yadav, a local journalist who had helped Bhadrimau residents get in touch with JagLAG following Podiami and Muchaki’s arrest, had a public altercation with senior police officials present there.
Eyewitnesses from Bhadrimau told me that police officials questioned Yadav about why he was present at the venue, and with what authorisation. Yadav raised questions about the intent of the programme, given that villagers had been asked to report there in connection with the release of undertrials. “When Santosh said he was a journalist, the officials dismissed it,” a villager told me. “Kalluri told him that he was a mere stringer”—a correspondent who sends inputs and reports to other journalists and media organisations, but often doesn’t receive bylines or public recognition. “Stringers are not journalists and you have no business being here,” witnesses recalled Kalluri telling Yadav.
The next morning, on 30 September, local newspapers in Jagdalpur such as Nai Dunia reported that the entire village of Bhadrimau had turned up at the Darbha police station the previous day demanding protection from the Maoists.
The same day, Yadav received a call from a police station in Sukma district, asking him to report to the station to meet Kalluri. Two days later, he was presented in Jagdalpur court, where the judge sent him to a 10-day police remand.
Almost a year on, charged under several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, along with murder, rioting and intimidation, Yadav remains in jail. Since then, other journalists reporting from the region have been attacked with renewed gusto; some are arrested and put behind bars, while others are driven out by threats. Vigilante citizens’ organisations sympathetic to the police have rallied against lawyers, activists, academics and researchers. In effect, anyone talking about the rights of the Adivasis in Bastar has been branded guilty of stalling the development of the region.
In February this year, Podiami and Muchaki were acquitted. After hearing the testimonies by police officials, the judge stated that the case against the two seemed fabricated. The cases against other men who were arrested from Bhadrimau, however, are still ongoing.
Then again, where is Bhadrimau? The residents have biometric Aadhaar cards and voter IDs with the addresses listing Bhadrimau village. But in the official survey map of India, Bhadrimau doesn’t exist—its official location is yet to be approved by the government. If and when it is notified, it could be anywhere within the current pin code. For now, when its residents meet security forces in the forest, the personnel threaten to wipe off the village. It’s easy: if there’s no village on paper, there’s no war.
Correction: Bijja Podiami and Deva Muchaki were acquitted in February 2016. The sentences: “Meanwhile, as opposed to life in the forests and under the open sky, Podiami and Muchaki are counting their time in barracks where prisoners sleep in shifts because there isn’t enough space for all inmates to lie down at the same time,” “But if JagLAG’s data on past arrests is anything to go by, the court is unlikely to give them bail despite a weak case” and “Chances are, those ten, and the thousands of other undertrials in Bastar, will spend many years in jail awaiting a verdict” were removed to reflect this. The Caravan regrets the error. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/no-war-bastar-battles-bhadrimau | en | 2016-08-22T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/adb238a5d45c4bce678bfc5c76e13aeadd448167e5fb3f1138de9add0fed01a9.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T06:46:45 | null | 2016-08-30T10:23:13 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fperspectives%2Fthe-family-way.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Family-Way_The-Caravan-magazine_September-2016_02.jpg | en | null | The Family Way | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | When India attained independence 69 years ago, it broke free from two kinds of dynastic rule. It severed ties with the British crown, and it integrated more than 500 princely states into the Indian union. But over the decades, another form of dynastic rule emerged in the country: that of elected political dynasties. The best known of these dynasties is the Nehru-Gandhi family, which dominated the prime ministership and the leadership of the Congress party after Independence.
But looking only at the Congress can obscure the fact that political dynasties, in different forms and to different degrees, exist in a number of political parties in India. Some of these dynasties are at the helm of their parties, among them the Karunanidhi family of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Yadavs of the Samajwadi Party, and the Badals of the Akali Dal. But many other families are found burrowed within parties, dominating units at the local level, or occupying positions in party organisations. They are less well known, but no less important. So, to fully examine the extent to which Indian politics is dynastic, we have to look beyond the Congress and the highest echelons of other parties.
I began to examine this question in 2009, when I started collecting data on the family backgrounds of Lok Sabha MPs in the twenty-first century (in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 parliaments) in collaboration with fellow political scientists Anjali Bohlken and Simon Chauchard. We defined a dynastic politician as one who had a family member precede them in electoral politics. This included family members holding positions in directly elected political bodies such as the Lok Sabha or the Vidhan Sabha, indirectly elected bodies such as the Rajya Sabha, and in political parties, as office-bearers or electoral candidates. Using this definition, we began tracing the family backgrounds of MPs by reading national and regional newspapers, memoirs and biographies, Lok Sabha Who’s Whos, previously published work on political parties, and the returns published by the Election Commission of India. Some of this research culminated in my recently published edited volume, Democratic Dynasties. The data and arguments cited in this essay appear in that book, and in joint work with Bohlken that appears in a separate statistical paper.
Our data showed that in the 2014 Lok Sabha, 22 percent of MPs have a dynastic background. The data also provide a clearer picture of the dynastic tendencies of different parties. If we look at the larger political parties—those with at least ten seats in the 2014 parliament—the Congress is, as we would expect, the most dynastic: 48 percent of its current MPs have a dynastic background. And if we pool the data on Congress MPs across the twenty-first century parliaments, the Congress remains the most dynastic of the larger political parties.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is often described as a non-dynastic party. But that’s just not true—though it is, indeed, true that the BJP is less dynastic than the Congress. The BJP’s prime minister and president are not from political families, and only 15 percent of its current MPs are dynastic, compared to the Congress’s 48 percent. But the BJP controls the majority of seats in parliament, and it, not the Congress, currently has the largest number of dynastic MPs.
Further, many of those who have held prominent positions in the BJP in the past have had family members follow them into politics. This includes the BJP’s previous prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who has had several family members, including a niece, Karuna Shukla, and a nephew, Anoop Mishra, follow him into electoral politics. Shukla is a former BJP MP who later joined the Congress, and Mishra is a BJP MP from Madhya Pradesh. The current home minister and the party’s former president, Rajnath Singh, was followed into politics by his son Pankaj Singh, who has twice served as the general secretary of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh And a large number of previous or serving BJP chief ministers have also orchestrated the entry of their children or other family members into politics. This includes Kalyan Singh, Vasundhara Raje, Raman Singh, Prem Kumar Dhumal, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Sahib Singh Verma, BS Yeddyurappa, Babulal Gaur and Sunderlal Patwa.
Why are dynasties so common across parties? One argument is that they are a product of India’s unique cultural values. The former BBC journalist Mark Tully, for example, has argued that “It is India’s strong family traditions, so different to the nuclear families in the West, that justify dynasts in the eyes of voters. In India, it’s widely thought to be natural and acceptable for a father or a mother who has any form of power to want to hand it over to a son or a daughter.”
But a look at the facts shows that India is hardly unique. There is now a wealth of data on dynasticism in modern-day democratically elected legislatures that shows how India lies in the middle of the spectrum of democracies for which comparable data are available. This spectrum is bounded at one extreme by the Philippines, in which 50 percent of all congresspersons in 2007 followed a relative into elected office, and at the other by Canada, in which 3 percent of the House of Commons in 2011 was dynastic. Japan, Iceland and Ireland, in which between a third and a fourth of elected legislators in 2009 were dynastic, occupy the middle, along with India. Belgium, Israel, the United States and Norway, in which the proportion of dynastic legislators ranged between 6 and 11 percent over a comparable time period, are at the lower end. If dynastic politics is alive and well in many modern democracies, including several in the West, each distinct in their cultural features, it can hardly be attributed to India’s cultural peculiarities.
A second argument is that dynasties exist in Indian politics because voters prefer them. But the data, at least when it comes to parliament, don’t support this claim either. The principal survey to ask voters about their preferences for dynasties nationwide, conducted by the scholars Milan Vaishnav, Devesh Kapur and Neelanjan Sircar in the 2014 elections, found that 46 percent of voters preferred candidates from political families. That still left 54 percent who did not believe dynastic representation was preferable. And the constituencies from which dynastic MPs are elected, and the nature of political competition in these constituencies, suggests that this is hardly a stable preference: only 5 percent of India’s parliamentary constituencies have been continuously represented by a dynastic MP between 2004 and 2014. Otherwise, the same constituencies often switch from a dynastic to a non-dynastic MP and back again. Another way of putting it is to say that dynastic MPs routinely lose to non-dynastic candidates. So it would be hard to claim that voters in India have some strong and stable preference for dynasties.
The best explanation for the presence of dynasties in Indian politics, we argue, comes from the role played by political parties. India’s political parties habitually give dynastic contenders a leg-up in the ticket allocation process. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, for example, all parties, taken together, renominated 75 percent of their dynastic MPs, compared to only 65 percent of their non-dynastic MPs. This is a consistent preference: they showed a similar favouritism in the 2009 elections.
Parties favour dynastic candidates as a way to ensure loyalty. They have few formal measures they can rely on to ensure cohesiveness in their local units. Existing anti-defection laws in India punish elected MPs for crossing the floor after an election, but do not protect local party units before or after an election. Party constitutions also rarely impose penalties for defection. Some parties, such as the BJP, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), have ideologies that can help foster cohesion in their local units, but there is substantial variation even within these parties in the extent to which their local units are ideologically indoctrinated. Consequently, parties are constantly fearful about the likelihood of rebellion in their local units, especially against their chosen candidates.
When parties use dynasty as the principle of ticket allocation, the likelihood of rebellion is not eliminated, but it is reduced. As one former MP, whose family ties bagged him a Congress nomination for a parliamentary election when he was under 30 years old, told me, “The biggest criterion was that this family will not ditch party under any condition. When I got this ticket, it was a big thing for me. I never imagined I would contest the Lok Sabha. It was a huge election for a first timer.” In nominating him, the party was not responding to any obvious cues about electoral performance. His father had been an MLA, but never an MP, and so even the candidate was unsure about how he would fare in a parliamentary contest. He was a political unknown. But, as he noted, loyalty was the party’s paramount concern in nominating him.
The Congress has been frank about its reliance on factors other than prospects of victory in allotting tickets. In a 2015 declaration, it noted that “Winnability alone should not be the benchmark for deciding nominees of the party during elections. Rather, a balance is required between loyalty and winnability.” The BJP has not made such an explicit statement, but its actions have spoken clearly. In the 2014 election campaign, despite its stated opposition to dynastic politics, it renominated all but one of its locally rooted dynasties—that is, dynastic MPs who had been preceded by family members in the same constituency. These included, for example, GM Siddeshwara, whose father, G Mallikarjunappa, was an MP from the same constituency in Karnataka; or Anurag Singh Thakur, an MP from Himachal Pradesh, whose father, Prem Kumar Dhumal, was also a several-term MP from the same seat. Such local dynasties, even when not well known on the national or international stage, could significantly affect the BJP’s prospects in their home constituencies. Consequently, the BJP could not afford to alienate them, as it could more prominent, but less locally powerful, dynasties.
Once their party backs a dynastic candidate, voters often fall in line and follow the party preference. The majority of Indians, as the national election surveys conducted by the Pune-based Centre for Study of Developing Societies have shown us, take party affiliation into account when deciding how to vote. In fact, candidates who run as independents rarely win in India, and no dynastic MP in the twenty-first century parliament has won as an independent. So when dynastic aspirants, even poorly performing ones, repeatedly get a party ticket, it eventually gives them a leg-up among voters. For example, in the 2014 parliamentary elections, Poonam Mahajan, the daughter of the deceased BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, was nominated by the BJP from the Mumbai North West constituency, even though she lost the 2009 assembly polls on a BJP ticket by a margin of over 26,000 votes. Mahajan went on to win the 2014 election.
The party-assisted entry of dynasties into the Indian political system has had effects that run in opposite directions. Perhaps most predictably, we found that it gives an unfair advantage to a host of MPs who are no better qualified than their non-dynastic counterparts according to some standard indicators, such as performance in parliament, or utilisation of their allotted development funds, or political experience. We also found that those who benefit most from this preference among parties are Hindu males from dominant castes. A dynastic system, thus, results in a double form of exclusion: it creates a birth-based ruling class, and, within that class, also amplifies the representation of dominant groups.
But, paradoxically, dynastic politics also has an inclusive effect. Specifically, we found a high incidence of family connections among MPs of some social categories that struggle to find representation in politics through normal channels: women, Muslims, backward castes and youth—none of whom have reservation in parliament. In this sense, dynastic ties in India appear to perform a similar function to quotas for members of under-represented social groups.
This does not mean that dynastic politics is a normatively desirable channel to bring about political inclusion. But in an unequal polity, in which there are already high barriers to the entry of new groups into politics, dynasticism has become an informal, second-best means of overcoming some of them.
To examine this, we compared the re-election rates of dynastic MPs and non-dynastic MPs from the same social groups. The lower down we went on the socio-economic ladder, the more dynastic ties made a difference in re-election. In the 2009 parliamentary elections, for example, dynastic MPs from forward castes were 1.3 times as likely to get re-elected as non-dynastic MPs from the same category. But dynastic MPs from backward castes were almost twice as likely to get re-elected as non-dynastic backward-caste MPs. Dynastic MPs from scheduled castes, and Muslim ones, also had a greater edge in re-election than dynastic MPs from forward castes. In the 2014 polls, re-election rates for all MPs dropped significantly compared to 2009, and dynastic MPs did not have an edge. But dynastic MPs from most subaltern groups were still slightly more likely to be re-elected than dynastic MPs from forward castes.
This suggests that dynastic ties matter more for subaltern rather than privileged groups, because they have less to work with. For forward-caste candidates, family ties are simply one among the portfolio of resources that can give a candidate an edge in winning elections in India. They also possess a greater share of other resources, including wealth, education, and powerful positions in the factional structures of India’s largest political parties. For subaltern candidates, however—who are, on average, less wealthy or well educated, who occupy subordinate positions in these factional structures, and whose own parties are weaker and smaller—family ties can make a larger difference. But for dynastic ties, there may well have been even fewer subaltern MPs in parliament. In an unequal society, then, not having dynastic ties can itself serve as a form of inequality. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/the-family-way | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/d37c3e4e75eaa431ad85c33c46a36233aa2fb83a15e0b46eb73e6b3bddf508d5.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T12:48:44 | null | 2014-05-30T01:25:01 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fpoetry%2Fdraupadi-asks%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/files/poetry_june_2014_02_0.jpg | en | null | Draupadi Asks | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
ABOUT THE POEMS In addressing the material of our myths and epics, Indian poetry in English has generated especially striking and imaginative recastings of these legends, often reading them against the grain, colloquialising them, or subverting their grave formality. One of the more ambiguous and poignant legends attached to Draupadi, joint wife of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata, is her relationship with her favourite sakha, or male friend, Krishna. In this poem, Nishtha Gautam supplies Draupadi with an anguished dramatic monologue that makes her marriage to her five husbands seem not so much a matter of honour and pride as of sacrifice and deception. When Draupadi asks why there should be different rules for male and female sexuality, we hear a keynote of the present dropped into the past like a stone into a pond, making the story ripple with a new rage and poignancy.
Draupadi Asks
Sakha, why did you come to my swayamvar,
When you had no intention of marrying me?
Our eyes met surrounded by the lusty gaze of princes.
(Was I the prize their manhood waited for deservingly?)
Blue-skinned with honey eyes; you were not to be missed,
Balarama was by your side, but you talked to me
With your nonchalant gestures and movement of lips,
The memory of which is both fresh and distant,
Just like a forbidden dream: cherished but not for recall.
The eye of a fish had a fate captured inside:
To be disgorged, displayed and dictated upon a woman
Who was supposed to make her choice.
Oh, that star-crossed bride!
If I really had a choice at the swayamvar,
I would have chosen you,
But you were immune to my charms.
My eyes should have decided my husband,
not the ones of that fish.
But you were immune to my charms.
Your eyes spoke to mine when Karna lifted the bow.
I jilted him, insulted him, crushed his manhood so,
(He must have sworn there to quash the confidence
That this doe-eyed princess drew from a pair of lotus eyes.)
I then wove more dreams in a blue colour
Only to be jolted out of them by a growing murmur
A Brahmin now came forward to test his prowess,
Better than the rest, I conveyed to you, with a hint of coyness
And you assumed I was smitten by the fair-skinned.
But when he hit the fish’s eye, tell me, were you chagrined?
Arjun was second only to you, Sakha, in form and in speech
But did I deserve a mere consolation? Tell me, I beseech!
You pronounced that I had been won rightfully
To stop the princes who began to resemble a mob.
Arjun was comely, and I was consoled, for you had chosen him.
He was your kin, thought I, and the pain suddenly grew dim.
With you in my heart, Sakha, I allowed Arjun to claim me,
And what did your Arjun do?
He surrendered me to the whims of an aging mother
And unmistakable lust of his elder brother.
Hold my hand, Sakha! Are my five fingers the same?
No, and how can they be?
They are but a reminder of my husbands,
Who turned into a robust fist, united by me.
Five pairs of arms have been known to this body,
But the memory of those blue-skinned ones is still not foggy.
On some days I wondered,
Would it have been better to be one of the thousands?
A princess would then have steered clear of the woodlands.
But tell me, Sakha, how do you distinguish them in dreams?
In mine, even five become faceless, formless, bereft of seams.
Also, what if you cried a wrong name in the throes of passion?
Did the consort forgive, or decide to chasten?
But most importantly, Sakha, tell me why I invite blame and violence,
While you enjoy devotion, love, awe and obeisance?
I’m ridiculed for my five husbands who were thrust upon me
And your thousands of women become a matter of glory?
You are worshipped despite stealing women and inaugurating battles
And I save my husbands’ honour yet am blamed for their troubles.
I stay hungry to feed the clan, and you eat to do the same
What’s more ironical than this: we both share a name. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/poetry/draupadi-asks/comment-page-1 | en | 2014-05-30T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/5e912750ef7dc4ef26878f106906cae45fa47fea0f360e6d1ac2f10ed678b8b8.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:51:19 | null | 2016-08-13T12:04:25 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fcoca-colas-inimical-business-practices-indias-heartlands.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Coca-Cola_Vantage-The-Caravan-magazine_13-August-2016.jpg | en | null | Coca-Cola’s inimical business practices in India’s heartlands | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On 19 October last year, a joint inspection team of officers from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) submitted a report to the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The 13-page report stated that a plant operated by the Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB)—a bottling partner of the Coca-Cola company in India—in Hapur district in Uttar Pradesh was discharging untreated effluents into a nearby man-made pond. It observed that the effluent treatment plant in the fruit-juice section of the facility was in a “defunct state” and that the sewage treatment machines were “non-operational.”
Consequently, the report stated, the quality of the water in the pond had taken a toll. When the joint inspection team tested the effluents to ascertain whether they met the standards set for treated discharge, the results were appalling. In the chemical oxygen demand and biological oxygen demand test—used to assess the concentration of organics in discharge—the pond water showed levels of 404 milligrams per litre and 228 milligrams per litre. The accepted standard is 250 and 30 milligrams per litre respectively. The report went on to note that the company’s failure to treat discharged effluents and the poorly maintained drainage infrastructure meant that nearby agricultural fields were being flooded with water high in industrial waste content, rendering them infertile.
The matter was first brought to the notice of the NGT by Sanjay Kumar, a lawyer, in July 2015. Kumar was concerned by the illegal discharge of untreated effluents in the pond situated behind the HCCB factory at Hapur. After hearing Kumar’s plea, the NGT directed the UPPCB and CPCB to carry out an inspection of the factory premises. On being presented with the report, the tribunal stated that “alarming facts as regards the situation” in the factory had been disclosed in it, and sought the company’s reply.
Although the matter is still being heard by the NGT, the plant has been non-operational since 30 July 2016. On 11 August, the Economic Times reported that the UPPCB halted the facility’s operations because it had failed to meet “certain mandatory environmental requirements.”
On 1 August 2016, I reached out to Coca-Cola India regarding the company’s history of malpractices. Kamlesh Kumar Sharma, the director of public affairs and communication for Coca-Cola India claimed that since the commencement of operations of the Hapur plant, all treated effluents were in conformity with the prescribed standards.
Such tussles, with Coca-Cola India on one side and regulatory authorities in India on the other, are not new. Regulatory bodies have often been forced into action because of the massive popular resistance the company finds itself pitted against within the country. Over the years, Coca-Cola India has been besieged by protests because of many of its running facilities, which include plants in Plachimada in Kerala, Mehdiganj and Hapur in Uttar Pradesh, and Kala Dera in Rajasthan. Those protesting the existence of these bottling plants allege that Coca-Cola’s operations pollute the environment, resulting in the indiscriminate abuse of groundwater resources and loss of farming opportunities for the local community. In most cases, these allegations appear to stem from the organisation’s negligent processes.
Coca-Cola entered the Indian market in the early 1950s and set up its first bottling plant in New Delhi in 1952. In its early years, it ran its operations in India through a branch of its parent company. For over two decades, Coca-Cola conducted business in the country without declaring any profits. This was despite the fact that it had near-total market dominance since Pepsi, one of it major rivals, had exited the country in the late 50s. The company was able to claim that it was not making any profits because its Indian branch was remitting massive sums of money back to its global parent. This state of affairs changed with the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, which came in to force in January 1974 and saw the company leave the country in 1977 only to re-enter the market in 1993.
By February 1997, the four Coca-Cola subsidiaries that were operating in India at that time merged to form Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB). The company’s Plachimada facility, which is located at Pallakad in Kerala, became operational in March 2000.
A few months after the plant at Plachimada was established, the residents of the area reportedly complained about the water being salty and brackish, and therefore, unsuitable for drinking or cleaning. Subsequent news reports revealed that HCCB’s operations were not just deteriorating the quality of the water at Plachimada, they were also drastically reducing its quantity. In June 2003, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s consumer affairs programme, Face the Facts, took a sample of the waste byproduct produced by the plant in Plachimada and sent it for testing to the Exeter University. They found that it contained high levels of carcinogens such as lead and cadmium. This sludge was often given away to farmers as fertilizer by the authorities at the plant, who had the approval of the then vice-president of Coca-Cola India, Sunil Gupta. In September 2003, at a World Trade Organisation meeting in Mexico, ActionAid, an international organisation that works in the areas of poverty and social injustice, filed a report stating that farmers in Plachimada had stopped cultivating coconut and vegetable crops as the ground water in region had depleted because of excessive use.
In December 2003, the Kerala High Court ordered the company to look for alternative sources of water. The court also ruled that the bottling plant at Plachimada could only use the amount of water that would be used by a landowner owning 34 acres, the same area as that of the plant. In March 2010, a 14-member expert panel set up by the state government calculated the total amount payable by the company to the state as “muti-sectoral” compensation for its abuse of groundwater and for affecting the environment and agricultural productivity in the region by its dumping of solid waste. The figure it came up with was Rs 216.26 crore. According to the panel’s report, a test that the Kerala Agricultural University had conducted indicated that chromium, copper, lead and calcium were present at toxic levels in fodder milk, egg and meat at Plachimada.
In 2011, the then-state minister for water resources NK Premachandran acted on the report and introduced the Plachimada Coca-Cola Victims Relief and Compensation Claims Special Tribunal 2011 Bill. The state assembly passed the bill in the same year. It called for the formation of a tribunal that would decide on the compensation to be offered to those affected by excesses of the Coca-Cola plant. In January 2015, the bill had been deemed unconstitutional by the centre and the state government was directed to withdraw it.
Plachimada isn’t the only region in which Coca-Cola has been accused of exploiting natural resources for its benefit. In February 2016, the company shut down its plant in Kala Dera, a village in Jaipur. The plant had been operational since 2000, and had reportedly resulted in the depletion of ground water reserves there as well. According to data compiled by the Rajasthan Groundwater department, the groundwater levels at Kala Dera dropped from 42 to 131 feet from 2000 to 2011—a rate of 8.9 feet a year.
Early this year, HCCB filed a petition before a civil court in Jaipur and stated that it would not be able to resume production in Kala Dera as it was facing business losses because of diminishing access to raw materials and underground water.
In July this year, I spoke to Amit Srivastava over the email. Srivastava is the coordinator of India Resource Center, a non-governmental organisation that has been vocal in its criticism of and demand for action against Coca-Cola on a national and international level. He said that the Kala Dera case should serve as a major warning to our policy makers.
He continued: “We knew early on that one day, the plant in Kala Dera would shut down, and we would have preferred (and the community worked hard to campaign) that the government shut the plant in the over-exploited area because bottling in such conditions is absolutely not sustainable. The government closing the Kala Dera plant would at least have allowed the community a fighting chance to use the depleted groundwater to make a living.”
However, that did not happen. Instead, Srivastava told me, Coca-Cola shut its bottling operations because the water had pretty much run out, and accessing groundwater was too difficult for them. “Coca-Cola came into an over-exploited area in 1999, built a new plant and started operations in 2000, and left when the groundwater was no longer accessible,” he said.
The worst hit in Kala Dera has been the local farming community. Kala Dera’s agriculture practices are largely dependent on underground water reserves and rain plays a very small role in the total output. Within a few years of Coca-Cola’s operations in the region, using a bore-well to extract water became a necessity. These bore-wells were expensive to set up and would put small and marginal land holding farmers back by a hefty sum—nearly a lakh and a half.
When I asked him about the water depletion claim, the company spokersperson Kamlesh cited the findings of a report that was written by The Energy and Resources Institute, a Delhi-based think tank. The report, which was published in 2008, had been commissioned by Coca-Cola India. It stated that the Kala Dera Plant in Rajasthan was a “miniscule user” of water from the local aquifer and that it was due to intensive agriculture and irrigation demands that the supply of water had dwindled.
Mahesh Yogi, the president of Kala Dera Sangharsh Samiti told me that over the years, Coca-Cola’s production coupled with a dwindling supply meant there was not enough water for basic farming activities. This situation reached a critical point when local farmers realised that farming was unviable but were still debt-laden. Without any workable option in sight, they could do little other than sell their holdings and move out. “With the water depletion, farmers who had 100, 50 or 40 bigha land started gradually working on smaller sections of their fields,” Yogi said, “After some time, these farmers sold off their lands and migrated to Jaipur where they now work as day-labourers or factory workers.”
“Farmers essentially depend on animal husbandry and cultivation for livelihood. Both of them depend on availability of water. Even if you want to carry out animal husbandry, you will have to have some fodder to feed them. Without fodder, no one can have animal husbandry,” Yogi told me. Rameshwar Kudi, the convener of the Kala Dera Sangharsh Samiti, said that there had been instances in which animals in the area had died after consuming the residue of the fertilizer left behind.
“After a number of demonstrations in 2000, Coca-Cola made a few water harvesting mechanisms but these were useless and were only for cosmetic value and to fool the villagers. If you don’t have rain coming in, what is the use of water-harvesting systems?” Yogi said, adding that there had been a gradual reduction in farmable land from 2000.
Kudi told me, “Agricultural fields in the radius of five kilometers around the plant have been rendered unirrigable because of the depletion of water. Overall, there has been a 50 percent reduction in land that can be used for cultivation and more than half the farmers in the area have been affected.” He said that the farmers left in Kala Dera now focus on food grains and crops that are not water intensive, which means that a number of them have shifted to growing guar and millet instead of groundnuts. Yogi added that the Kala Dera Sangharsh Samiti is contemplating putting together documentary evidence on the losses suffered by the farmers and seeking compensation from the soft-drink giant.
It seems to be an ominous pattern that is repeated almost everywhere Coca-Cola sets up a bottling plant. Take for instance, the case of the company’s plant in Mehdiganj, a village located near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. Coca-Cola set up the facility in 1999. In June 2014, the UPPCB shut the plant down, stating that the company’s operations had resulted in the depletion of ground water, and that the pollutants being discharged by its plant were beyond permissible limits.
Interestingly, the UPPCB also alleged that Coca-Cola had attempted to mislead the board. From 1999 to 2014, the company had maintained that the total industrial discharge it generated everyday was 600 kiloliters per day. This seemed highly suspect to the UPPCB. In its order regarding the closure of the plant, the board said, “There is a strong possibility of industry bye-passing [sic] the additional generated industrial discharge.” The pollution control body had arrived at this conclusion as Coca-Cola’s plant at Mehdiganj had increased its output from 20,000 cases per day—a case has 24 bottles—in 1996 to 36,000 cases per day in 2014. An 80-percent increase in output without any consequent increase in industrial discharge set alarm bells ringing within the UPPCB, and later, it directed that the company cease production in its plant at Mehdiganj.
Regarding the Mehdiganj plant, Kamlesh told me the company had undertaken extensive water conservation projects and created replenishment potential that was more than the ground water used by their operations, “In other words, the Mehdiganj unit is a positive contributor to water resources.”
In June 2014, Coca-Cola filed an appeal against the UPPCB’s order before the NGT. That same month, the tribunal allowed the company to resume its operations subject to the condition that it would not increase its production beyond 600 bottles per minute.
Meanwhile, the residents of the regions in which Coca-Cola has set up its plants continue to criticise the manner in which it has been conducting its operations. Srivastava told me that locals in Mehdiganj have been protesting the existence of the plant that has been operating in the area since 1999. A common community program named Jal Adhikar Sammelan was held in March 2016 and India Resources Center and Mehdiganj locals are working to strengthen the movement. The event, organised by the National Alliance of People’s Movement and MNREGA workers’ union, concentrated on a number of topics including how water in the area was being exploited by a select few for the sake of profits. A number of speakers gathered for the occasion pressed for the collective use of underground water resources rather than for capital.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola is planning—as the Business Standard reported in June this year—to move India a pedestal higher from its sixth largest market to its fifth. Its business in India has been lucrative so far. The operational revenue of HCCB for the financial year ending in 2015 was Rs 7,859 crore, 14 percent higher than its operational revenue in 2014. Its net profit had registered an increase of 23 percent.
During a conversation, I once asked Kumar, whose petition had led to the NGT’s actions against Coca-Cola’s plant in Hapur, why he had decided to take on a behemoth such as Coca-Cola. He said, “We invite foreign companies to set up business on our soil so that it improves our economy, but we forget that in the name of economic development they poison our environment.” While Kumar’s petition may have gotten the wheels turning, there is little to indicate that the company will put a freeze on its abusive practices. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/coca-colas-inimical-business-practices-indias-heartlands | en | 2016-08-13T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/bec38f139e521f021f9f0407dacfd7d531a0bcf742578c5f865c9c847c931d3e.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T06:45:36 | null | 2016-08-27T10:15:44 | In this excerpt, Naqvi and Deoras discuss the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute, reservation, Muslims in Indian society and the idea of a Hindu nation. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2F1990-conversation-rss-bhaurao-deoras-naqvi.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Excerpt_Being-the-Other_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_28-August-2016.jpg | en | null | A 1990 Conversation with The RSS Ideologue Bhauroa Deoras | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
In 1990, when the dispute over the Babri Masjid was at its peak, the senior journalist Saeed Naqvi interviewed Bhaurao Deoras, one of the most prominent ideologues of the Rashtriya Sawayamsevak Sangh at the time. In September of that year, the BJP leader LK Advani began a “rath yatra”—procession—to garner support for the construction of a temple at the site. The yatra led to widespread communal tension. That same year, protests began against the Mandal Commission report, which recommended reservation for Other Backward Classes, and was adopted by the then-prime minister VP Singh in 1989. The RSS accused Singh of employing caste politics and “dividing Hindu society.”
It was with this political backdrop that Naqvi met the then seventy-five-year-old Deoras. The pracharak, who had joined the RSS not long after it was started in 1925, was then responsible for coordinating the Sangh’s relationships with political parties such as the BJP. His elder brother, Balasaheb, who was then the Sarsanghchalak or Supremo of the organisation, had not been keeping well, leaving Deoras to emerge as the RSS’s most important leader.
Over the conversation, excerpted from Naqvi’s book Being the Other below, Naqvi and Deoras discuss the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute, reservation, Muslims in Indian society, and the idea of a Hindu nation. About two years after this conversation, following a rally organised by the right-wing organisation the Vishwa Hindu Parishad along with parties such as the BJP, a large mob attacked the Babri masjid and demolished it. “Things would never be the same again,” Naqvi writes in the book.
[Saeed] Naqvi: Communal riots on an unprecedented scale have broken out in various parts of the country. What role can the RSS play to control the situation? Is the situation out of control?
[Bhaurao] Deoras: Who are the people behind these communal riots? I am afraid that some political parties are playing a role.
Naqvi: What is your plan—regarding the Babri Masjid?
Deoras: No Muslim goes to say his namaz there. All things around the mosque are connected with Hindu sentiments.
Naqvi: Do you believe that because of communal tension the Hindu mass is getting consolidated on the Ayodhya platform and in favour of the BJP?Deoras: That is an important factor.
Naqvi: In other words, the benefits of the communal tension are going to the BJP? And he who benefits must have a hand in communal tension…
Deoras: I think Advaniji, by his Rath Yatra and the speeches he has given throughout the country [mobilised Hindu sentiments]. But not a word in his lectures…is anti-Muslim.
Naqvi: Are you willing to issue a statement condemning the communal riots and condemn provocative slogans?
Deoras: Both Hindus and Muslims should condemn them together. Muslims had come here. It was I who arranged the meeting of Mr Javed Habib and some other people with the VHP. And the first meeting took place and they decided to meet again so that there should be an understanding.
Naqvi: To change the subject, do you endorse the two-nation theory on the basis of which Pakistan was found?
Deoras: We never accepted it.
Naqvi: So it follows that you will not accept Hindus and Muslims as two separate nations.
Deoras: We do not accept. It is one nation. From Kanyakumari to the Himalayas it is one nation.
Naqvi: You have not given up the agenda of Akhand Bharat?
Deoras: We have not given up. If the time comes we shall do it. We shall ask the Muslims in Pakistan—what have you gained? Muslims who went there from Bihar and UP—are they happy?
Naqvi: If you do not accept the two-nation theory then it follows that you accept the proposition that Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians in India should all live together and prosper together.Since you are allergic to the term secular let us find another term—India’s composite culture.
Deoras: One culture—why do you say composite culture.
Naqvi: If you do not like the word ‘composite’ also then as an adjustment I am willing to delete it. I said composite because various streams have contributed to Indian culture.
Deoras: Say Bharatiya culture.
Naqvi: Okay, Bhartiya culture, Indian culture. There is a contradiction between your Akhand Bharat perspective and the Hindu Rashtra. Is there not a contradiction? Akhand Bharat is all-embracing from Kanyakumari to the Himalayas, but Hindu Rashtra further subdivides. What are we left with?
Deoras: Nation and state are two different concepts. States have equal rights, equal citizenship—that is the concept of state. This nation is not created by the British or anything. It is there from a long time, from Ram, from Krishna—thousands of years ago. The whole country had that concept of Ram, the concept of Krishna, the concept of Mahabharata, etc. Anywhere you go you will find the same thing. That is the binding thing. Culture was the binding factor throughout the country. There may be different kings, different rulers in the last 1,000 years or something like that…then the foreigners came and all that.
Naqvi: You have glided past a very important detail. Did we become independent after 200 years of British rule or have we become free after 1,000 years of foreign rule?
Deoras: I do not think that in many parts in our country Muslims really think that they were the rulers. There have been some Afghans, Turks and all those who came and invaded the country. They came and ruled the country.
Naqvi: They came and settled here.
Deoras: But they came and ruled and changed many of our people. Those who were Hindus—you may say downtrodden or something like that—changed their faith and they became Muslims. If they go back seven generations…probably they may say that they belong to this caste, they were Rajputs, they were this and that. So, they themselves know that they are Hindus and only in the last two or three generations have they become Muslims. But somehow, maybe Britishers fortified this feeling, Muslims living in this country at present feel that they were the rulers of this land. Why should they have any connection with Babur? He came from Central Asia.
Naqvi: Even your forefathers came from Central Asia—Aryans came from Central Asia?
Deoras: There is some controversy in this. That is now being contradicted. There are so many books contradicting this.
Naqvi: You mean Aryans did not come from anywhere?
Deoras: No, we have not.
Naqvi: So they just happened here, they simply sprouted here?
Deoras: Yes. The term Aryans and Adivasis, what is all this? Britishers have created this (looks irritable). Arya means not a caste, Arya means noble. There are enough books with documents that we are the original people who have been living here. Aryan theory, Dravidian theory, are all devised to break the Hindus.
Naqvi: Sir, if all the communities live and prosper together in India, then we constitute a threat to the basis of Pakistan. The success of Indian secularism is a threat to Pakistan which came into being on the assumption that we can’t live together. Do you agree?
Deoras: I think Pakistan will go.
Naqvi: Let us go step by step (question is repeated).
Deoras: Bharat is all right. But as things are going in Pakistan, they have defeated Ms Benazir Bhutto, they are helping Khalistan elements in Punjab, the JKLF or whatever elements in Kashmir and all that. Unless this sort of government at the top goes in Pakistan, I think no change is possible at present. This will have to be changed.
Naqvi: How do we change that?
Deoras: The Hindu leadership should come [take control]. I do not know what will happen in Bangladesh. Leaderships may change but that may not help. I think during this Ershad regime, I have got the latest report that 1,100 temples have been destroyed. I do not know when the elections are going to be held. Some Hindus in Bangladesh may fight elections. Very few of them will win. But suppose change comes in Bangladesh, tension will not be there and I think they can live in harmony. Then there is poverty and other problems, and they may say that there is no use of remaining separate let us join together. And if that happens then I think the atmosphere may change. Sindhi people in Pakistan, and those who have gone from UP and Bihar—what have they gained? They are not liked there. So, if these movements gather strength let us once again work for one Bharat.
Naqvi: Sir, that is only possible if you and I live in harmony. But if we clash in Aligarh, Ahmedabad, Ayodhya, the example we set is not attractive enough for others to emulate us. We are not setting the right example. On the contrary…
Deoras: Foreign powers are trying to create divisions and Muslims in major parts [of the country] are playing into their hands. There has to be reform in Muslim society in India.
Naqvi: What about Hindu society?
Deoras: There are regular movements of social reform going on in Hindu society. But in the Muslim community I do not find any movement. If somebody starts [one] they are not liked by the community. They are being controlled by mullahs.
Naqvi: Indian Muslims have a minority complex. Therefore, reform is even more difficult. The most backward Muslims in the world reside in India and by keeping them under pressure you are contributing to their backwardness.
Deoras: Who is keeping them backward?
Naqvi: We have got them involved in non-issues. You and I have all got them involved in Babri Masjid; they are involved in the Shah Bano case; they are supposed to be objecting to our relations with Israel. They are agitating about Rushdie’s book. None of these are bread-and-butter issues. And you say they have been pampered. What have they got with all this so-called pampering?
Deoras: Due to their minority complex should we allow them to do anything?
Naqvi: What is the advantage Muslims have derived since Independence? Look at their economic conditions, look at the job quotas. Okay, they got the Muslim Women’s Bill, but has one Muslim woman gained in real terms?Deoras: They get minority rights; special rights in the Constitution.
Naqvi: Please answer my question. What have the Muslims gained?
Deoras: To appease Muslims they have got a Minority Commission.
Naqvi: This is precisely what I am saying. These are hollow, insubstantial gifts. An impression has been created by all governments that there is something special going for the Muslims. But in essence they have got nothing, no jobs, no education, no businesses.
Deoras: There is no difference between Hindus and Muslims as regards poverty. As for the question of jobs, if you are capable for that post you will get it. There should be no distinction. Now the government comes out with Mandal Commission and it has created so many divisions in the country itself.
Naqvi: Do you think the whole Ayodhya agitation has been able to cement some of the divisions in the Hindu society that have been created by the Mandal Commission.
Deoras: A little bit definitely. Ram is not the god only for forward castes. He is the god for the entire community.
Naqvi: We have not spoken of Kashmir. How can we hope to keep Kashmir if a perception is created all over the world that we treat our Muslims shabbily?
Deoras: Do you think the Kashmiri Hindus who have become migrants in Jammu can go back to the Kashmir Valley?
Naqvi: Maybe not at this point. Again, the Pakistan factor comes into play, Pakistani support for those elements which are creating the trouble in Kashmir. We have to handle the Pakistani factor by love and respect for each other in this country. The Germanys were united because East Germans saw that life on the other side was better. Similarly, people in Bangladesh and Pakistan should say that life on the other side is better. Many Pakistanis used to say this privately a few years ago. Now I feel embarrassed. I used to show off to my Pakistani relatives and friends—look at our composite culture, our freedom, our democracy. But look at the mess now. And you must take your share of the blame, sir.
Deoras: There is no difference between Hindus and Muslims as regards poverty. Communalism is not the only factor. There are a lot of tensions among the Hindus also. We can work together to see that everybody, whether Muslim or Hindu, gets bread twice a day.
Naqvi: By your logic you are coming around to my view. Bring down the communal temperature, generate love and caring, not hatred. They are making bombs in every mohalla. This is what we are reducing our country to—a cottage industry of illicit arms…
Deoras: They are selling it. This is business.
Naqvi: Unless you give a call, this will only go on.
Deoras: Let us, you and I together, give the call to the country.
Naqvi: It is fine with me. Let’s shake hands on that. But please convince your rank and file that it is in Pakistan’s interest that Hindus and Muslims fight each other in this country. This is my entire thesis. During my visit to Aligarh I saw two bombs were dropped in a mosque and two similar bombs were dropped in a Hindu locality.
Deoras: Some Muslims must have dropped it.
Naqvi: I like the abruptness with which you have come to this conclusion. Okay, but who are these Muslims?
Deoras: When something happens in Pakistan why should there be a reaction here? When Bhutto was hanged it had nothing to do with us. But there were demonstrations in Kashmir and trouble in all other places.
Naqvi: What has that got to do with Babur? You yourself agree that Pakistan was unnatural. Then you expect Indian Muslims and for that matter even Hindus to have an unnatural hatred towards Pakistanis.
Deoras: We need a great national reconciliation on the basis of understanding and good humour. All the Muslims who are getting elected to Parliament and the assemblies belong to the fundamentalist variety. This is the problem.
Naqvi: Not all leaders, but, yes, we need good leadership in the Muslim community. There is no doubt about it.
Deoras: Why don’t you try and create that leadership? Just like you. Why don’t you become a leader?
Naqvi: Zahid e tang nazar ne mujhe kafir jaana/Aur kafir yeh samajhta hai Mussalman hoon main (The kafir thinks I am a Muslim and the mullah thinks I am a kafir).
Deoras: (Laughs heartily) I have close contacts with the BJP. I do not know the exact figure but for kar seva a number of Muslims have joined us. What I am trying to say is we are ready to take Muslims with us. They can join the BJP.
Naqvi: You have also persisted with the same old attitude, the same complaint. Indian Muslims identify with Babur and Indonesian Muslims identify with Ram.
Deoras: It is important that Muslims identify with Ram as an Indian symbol.
Naqvi: I will challenge you about this Ram and Babur comparison. I will recite numerous couplets written by Muslim poets in praise of Ram and in praise of Krishna. You show me one line in praise of Babur written by a Muslim poet. If you show me one couplet I will change my faith. This Babur business is a canard. There are any number of Muslim rulers, poets, philosophers who looked at Hinduism with great admiration, its philosophy, its aesthetic range. Someone like Dara Shikoh. Now Hindus must accept him as a hero. I am asking you: is Dara Shikoh acceptable to you?
Deoras: He is a hero. But the Muslim community did not permit him to live.
Naqvi: I am taking you on record that Dara Shikoh is your model for a good Muslim and a model Indian.
Deoras: I have not read his whole life. But it is true. He was a fine gentleman. He translated the Upanishads. But remember he was not allowed to rule this land. The establishment was against him.
Naqvi: What is your last word for national reconciliation?
Deoras: At present, Ram Mandir should be allowed to be built. We accept Dara Shikoh as an Indian hero; you accept Ram as part of our common cultural heritage.
Naqvi: Who can dispute that Ram is part of our cultural heritage. Our poets have written about him.
Deoras: Let the temple be built first. I will be the first person who will say let us forget the past.
Naqvi: Sir, if I get you right, what you are saying is that if the Ram Mandir is allowed to be built then you will come out openly and say let bygones be bygones. All the structures, monuments will remain intact exactly as they were in 1947 or 1950.
Deoras: I am ready to say once the construction of the Ram Temple takes place, it will take a long time…it will be one of the biggest temples. I know the demand of VHP is three sites—Mathura and Kashi Vishwanath.
Naqvi: You will prevail upon them to give up their claim to the other two?Deoras: I cannot say they will accept. But I will try. Let this Ram Temple be built first and start national reconciliation. Let us not go to the government. Let us sit together and solve the problem.
Naqvi: For that you have to issue a whip to your cadres. Let there be peace.
Deoras: I promise you, we do not like what is going on.
Naqvi: You condemn the violence?
Deoras: Yes, of course. These riots create a bad image throughout the world. I do not like it. I want every Muslim to live here in peace. He has got equal rights. But just because he is a Muslim he should not demand something separate from others. Civil rights and other things, everything is common. They should mentally prepare for this. No special status. No minority preferences. They do not have one language. Urdu is not a Muslim language. It is a common language for so many people.
Naqvi: Do you think Urdu should be taught at school and encouraged in every way?
Deoras: Of course. If people want they should be able to learn it. We are not saying all these cultural things should be thrown out.
Naqvi: Do you share the vision of a confederation covering Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka—without prejudice to their sovereignty?Deoras: This is an excellent political concept. Just like Europe. Have something in common, build common bridges, common bridges with Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Naqvi: This can happen only when there is peace in our country.
Deoras: Unless there is peace nothing can happen. Peace is the fundamental condition for solving all the problems of the country.
This is an excerpt from Being the Other: the Muslim in India, by Saeed Naqvi, published by Aleph Books. The interview has been condensed. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/1990-conversation-rss-bhaurao-deoras-naqvi | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/45645ea4d839ced553cabafba05d0509c275946c3440202566afcaff4c0f18a4.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:55:20 | null | 2016-08-19T12:33:51 | The Amnesty India event, which could have paved the way for Kashmiris to reach out to each other, has instead catalysed a debate on sedition. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fkashmiri-pandits-dont-flag-bearers-indian-state%2Fcomment-page-2.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Amnesty_Kashmir_Bangalore_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_19-August-2016.jpg | en | null | Kashmiri Pandits don’t have to be flag-bearers of the Indian state | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On 15 August 2016, the police in Bengaluru registered a first information report against the human-rights organisation Amnesty International India under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including sedition. The FIR was registered after representatives from Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad—a student body affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—sought action against the organisation. The ABVP activists claimed that “anti-national” activities had taken place at “Broken Families,” an event that Amnesty India had hosted two days earlier at the United Theological College in Bengaluru, as part of its campaign against human-rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. Protests against the human-rights organisation, primarily within Karnataka, have intensified since, and Amnesty India’s employees have reportedly been asked to work from home as a “precautionary measure.”
I have waited to get some clarity on what actually transpired at the event. Now that I have it, I feel compelled to say a few things. I hope they are read and pondered over in the right spirit by all parties, especially Kashmiri Pandits.
There is no doubt that the Amnesty International, like most rights groups, has turned a blind eye towards the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. That the organisation is sympathetic to Islamic groups became clear after the head of its gender unit, Gita Sahgal, left it six years ago, accusing it of “ideological bankruptcy.”
On the question of morality, the Pandits have had an edge so far. The azadi movement in Kashmir lost its moral high ground in 1990, when the minority Pandits were hounded out of their homes and over seven hundred of them were brutally killed by Islamist extremists. Even after they were driven out of a land that their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years, and forced to reside in tattered tents, in exile and extreme humiliation, the Pandits never took up arms.
There was no dearth of attempts to radicalise us. But, instead of picking up Remington pistols, we chose Resnick-Halliday textbooks. Amnesty may think that the Pandits do not deserve to be included in events on “Broken Families” [of Kashmir]; Tara Rao, its programmes director in India, may not have had accurate statistics on the number of Pandits thrown out of the valley when she spoke at the event; but the fact remains that nobody can take our truth away from us. In the last 26 years of exile, hundreds of Pandits, from Jammu to Johannesburg, acting individually, have braved adverse and belligerent crowds to put forth our narrative.
But let us look at what happened in Bengaluru. Amnesty India had invited a few individuals from the valley who have lost their near and dear ones in rights violations committed by Indian security forces. There were disconsolate mothers and grieving fathers, hoping to be heard outside Kashmir, perhaps hoping for some catharsis.
Then, a handful of Pandits came in, wearing T-shirts, which reportedly read: “Kashmiri Pandits.” RK Mattoo, the president of the Bangalore Kashmiri Pandit Association, was on the dais (he was invited by Amnesty India at the last moment after he threatened to protest outside the venue with his group). The attempt should have been to listen to each other; the attempt should have been to narrate what happened to Pandits in Kashmir in the name of azadi; it should have been to remind them of what happened in Kashmir on the night of 19 January 1990, when hundreds of thousands of people were out on the streets, asking that Kashmir be turned into Pakistan, without Pandit men, but with Pandit women.
Mattoo began on a discordant note. He accused Amnesty of ignoring the story of Kashmiri Pandits. Then, he made a comment on the Indian army being one of the most disciplined forces in the world. The seven or eight Pandits who were wearing the “Kashmiri Pandits” T-shirts reportedly applauded this statement.
While this may be true of the Indian army, you do not say it in a hall filled with people who have directly suffered at the hands of the armed forces. The assertion was obviously not well received by those from the valley. Even then, things would have settled in a few moments had it not been for one chest-thumping Pandit in the audience, who stood up and called the other group “terrorists.”
What have the Pandits achieved from this event? A few sufferers have returned to Kashmir, with a very bitter experience. In their hearts, perhaps, some may now even justify what happened to the Pandits in 1990. The Pandits have not been able to put across even a single, coherent fact about their truth at the event. While the Indian army should be lauded for the valiant efforts it has made to fight terrorism in Kashmir, why do the Pandits feel compelled to be alambardars (flag-bearers) of the army, or for that matter, the Indian state? Isn’t the failure of the Indian state responsible for their exodus and their long exile, which is, despite the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s bravado, almost becoming permanent?
Suddenly, an event that could have paved the way for Kashmiris to reach out to each other, has instead catalysed a debate on sedition. At the heart of it, the Kashmiri Pandit has come across as a rabid, extremist villain who has no tolerance.
Let us stop this madness. Let us fiercely defend our story, and let it not be at the cost of others’ stories. Let us not lose our morality. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/kashmiri-pandits-dont-flag-bearers-indian-state/comment-page-2 | en | 2016-08-19T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/4035d97cc73613f4116937578dacbd698a4980970912f102ec4ef100053b10a2.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T06:46:01 | null | 2016-08-28T11:44:31 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fplay-irom-sharmila-bollywood-blockbuster.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Irom-Sharmila_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_28-August-2016.jpg | en | null | Who should play Irom Sharmila in a Bollywood blockbuster? | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
The end of the epic 16-year fast by the activist Irom Sharmila Chanu on 9 August should make the Indian government heave a sigh of relief. Her repeated arrests over the years should have embarrassed any government with an iota of shame. But clearly not the Indian government. Sharmila’s fast used to continuously put focus on the brutal practices of the Indian state, particularly the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA). Now, though the practices will continue, the focus will end.
If people have missed a certain irony, let me state it. Mainstream media attention was showered on this event about Sharmila like never before—not when she began, not when she was fasting, not even when she was forcibly fed by tubes, not when she was arrested innumerable times—This signaled that she could potentially be someone with whom one could conduct business as usual. In short, she could be accommodated within the “mainstream” and hence this new gushing focus, a focus that will be short lived.
For proof of the media’s apathy, look no further than the coverage of her fast. Sharmila’s fast pointed at a deeper disease. If focusing on that did not get as much press attention as the end of the fast, the media’s priorities and what constitutes an acceptable narrative is clear. It is not that the disease has gone away but now, with the end of the fast, India thinks that the stench is manageable and uncomfortable discussion about the symptoms that Sharmila’s fast symbolised can be obliterated. Now she can be refurbished and reinvented in Delhi’s eyes on a comeback path to the mainstream, an outsider wanting to be an insider, a “Northeastern” Kejriwal of sorts. This failure of imagination is deliberate. This media circus designed to obfuscate rather than to delve deeper. India has failed Sharmila because it never wanted her to succeed.
Those who see Sharmila’s struggle as only against the inhuman and degrading AFSPA and not the reasons for its imposition in Manipur simply want to brand her as a anti-AFSPA “human rights” activist as opposed to a campaigner for Manipur rights and Manipuri people. This not-so-subtle distinction places Sharmila in a pantheon that stretches from the Lokpal fast to the Save the Tiger or One Rank One Pay-type campaigns held at Jantar Mantar. This is a necessary first step towards defanging and domesticating the politically unruly.
Human rights implicate no one. But standing for Manipur implicates Delhi as a quasi-imperial formation. Manipur implicates the idea of India. So, for those who “stand with Irom Sharmila” but not with Manipur, their stance and their vacuous, self-congratulating idea of Indianisms, actually stand in the way of Irom Sharmila and Manipur. Manipur sees through such “solidarity.” Thangjam Manorama Debi saw through that. Everyone except those with tri-colour blinders see through that. This is why Sharmila’s fast is one of resistance, and not a MK Gandhi-style blackmail of Bhimrao Ambedkar before the Poona Pact.
There is a reason why it’s important to focus on the cause, irrespective of one’s opinion, and not the high-decibel aura that a powerful media and government network can instantly create. What did Sharmila demand through her fast? She demanded that AFPSA be withdrawn from Manipur. She is aware, as is any other person living in area where the AFSPA is imposed, that the act can allow security forces a clean chit for any atrocities they commit, and that few perpetrators have been held accountable. So while AFSPA is an issue, it is shorthand for the daily indignity of Manipur. What triggered this fast? The alleged atrocities committed by the Indian Armed forces in general in Manipur. One can assume that the gang rape and killing of Debi by forces in 2004 only strengthened her resolve to continue the fast. Debi was picked up from her home in Bamon Kampu Mayai Leikai by Indian security forces, the 17 Assam Rifles, from her home on 10 July 2004. Her bullet-ridden body was found the next day in Laipharok Maring of Imphal East district of Manipur. An autopsy revealed semen on her skirt suggesting rape. 30 Manipuri women stripped themselves in protest outside an armed forces outpost with the banner “Indian Army, Rape Us.” No one has been prosecuted for this to this day.
As news of Sharmila’s fast spread around the world, Manipur got relegated to the background and India came to the foreground. Both the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian correspondents described Sharmila primarily as an Indian human rights activist, an act of gate-keeping that has consequences. That is true for her citizenship. Whether that is her primary identity to her and her Manipur based support is an altogether different matter. But this game of fore-grounding and back-grounding, underlining and deletion, represents the politics of power in media, representations and narratives. Such narratives are powerful, especially when they serve power.
The government of India wants such narratives. It wants Sharmila to not be just Manipuri for that puts the focus on Manipur. “India” dilutes it and that is helpful; “India” undercuts it and that is even more helpful. This is why the government, its media and various wings of its official and unofficial establishment saw the boxer Mary Kom as a public-relations godsend. Then came the Bollywood packaging of Kom.
In the 2014 movie Mary Kom, the heavily pregnant heroine is heading towards the hospital with her husband. She is nearing labour. There is curfew on the streets. The husband tells her to wait and advances a bit. He is in the middle of a group of khaki-clad Indian security force men out to weed out trouble-makers. He tells them about his wife. A jawan finds her. Their story matches. They arrive safely at the hospital. Many such images of an agitated Manipur break into Mary Kom. I use the word “images” very deliberately here, for some realities are somewhat different. In July 2009, Kom was selected for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, the Indian Union’s highest sporting award. It was in the same July that government forces surrounded an unarmed Chongkham Sanjit in a busy bazaar at Imphal, the capital of Manipur. Sanjit did not resist. He was whisked away to a dark area beside a roadside medicine shop. A few minutes later, the soldiers came out with Sanjit’s bullet-ridden dead body and threw it onto a truck. There was another corpse in the back—Rabina Devi, a pregnant bystander killed by the police a short while earlier. This sequence was captured on camera, but there is no market for these pictures of Manipur.
While her hunger strike was on, the story of Irom Sharmila Chanu was not conducive to Bollywood success. The picture of Sharmila with feeding tubes forcibly stuck to her nose is sure to take the pop out of popcorn. And if nothing else, the censor board will happily oblige in its mission of catering fairy-tales to citizens and protecting impressionable minds from such naked images. Sports are a better bet. The “army kid,” the now-Hollywood heroine Priyanka Chopra who played Kom in the movie, described her as “Junglee Baccha,” the most charitable translation of which can be wild child. The “jungle” pejorative and “baccha” paternalism are both useful terms as they have in them the idea of what is to be aspired to. The aspiration is to tame the child. India hopes and thinks that Sharmila and Manipur have been “tamed.” The taming will be complete when Irom Sharmila is Mary Kom-ised. As a friend, Sameirang Laikhuram from Manipur perceptively posted on social media, “And now to the next important question: Who should play Irom Sharmila in a Bollywood blockbuster?” | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/play-irom-sharmila-bollywood-blockbuster | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/c50cff7a804ce5d7eaa3d74a28eefe137160695ddf7b8df2a2741e564c381534.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:55:50 | null | 2016-02-25T13:33:40 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fsection-124a-sedition-jnu-protests%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Sedition_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_25-February-2016.jpg | en | null | A History of the Infamous Section 124A | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On 12 February 2016, two policemen in plain clothes arrested the president of the student union of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Kanhaiya Kumar. On 9 February, students from JNU had allegedly shouted slogans at an event marking the death anniversary of Mohammad Afzal, who was convicted in the 2001 terror attack on the parliament. On Tuesday, 23 February, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, two of the alleged organisers of the event, surrendered themselves to police custody following an eleven-day-long manhunt. Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya have been charged under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) Section 120B, which deals with criminal conspiracy against the state, and 124A, which contentiously attends to sedition.
Though few have ever been convicted by the Supreme Court for sedition, many have been booked under Section 124A. Most recently, before Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya, section 124A was invoked against Hardik Patel from Gujarat, who has been asking for reservations for the Patidar community. Sedition in India is a cognizable (not requiring a warrant for an arrest), non-compoundable (not allowing a compromise between the accused and the victim), and non-bailable offence. The penalty can range from a fine to three years or life imprisonment. But these penalties would be awarded after the judgement, which can take a long while to come. Meanwhile, a person charged with sedition must live without their passport, barred from government jobs, and must produce themselves in the court on a loop. All this, while bearing the legal fee. The charges have rarely stuck in most of the cases, but the process itself becomes the punishment.
Section 124A did not make it into the IPC until 1870 (although a section corresponding to it was present in Thomas Macaulay’s Draft Penal Code in 1835). It was brought in 10 years after the IPC was introduced, possibly, to counter the surging Wahabi activities in the subcontinent. At that point, it was a law against “exciting disaffection.” The first case was registered, in 1891, when the editor of a newspaper called Bangobasi was booked for publishing an article criticising an “Age of Consent Bill.” The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict and the judge, in that case, refused to accept any verdict that was not unanimous. The editor was released on bail, and, after he issued an apology, charges against him were dropped.
The trial that changed the effect of section 124A was that of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1897. The British government claimed, according to an article in the Economic and Political Weekly, that Tilak’s speeches on the killing of Afzal Khan by Shivaji, had prompted the murder of two British officers in Pune. Newly promoted Justice James Strachey presided over this trial, and broadened the scope of section 124A in the proceedings by equating “disaffection” to “disloyalty.”He interpreted that the term “feelings of disaffection” meant hatred, enmity, dislike, hostility, contempt, and every form of ill will towards the government. Tilak was charged with sedition. He was released a year later, following German economist and jurist, Max Weber’s intervention. But on the basis of Strachey’s interpretation, the section was used repeatedly against nationalist leaders by the colonial government. Tilak himself went on to face the same charge again, twice, and ended up spending six years in prison for an editorial published in his newspaper, Keasari.
In 1922, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was brought to court for his articles in Young India magazine. Gandhi famously denounced the law against sedition in the court: “Section 124A under which I am happily charged, is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the IPC designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen.”
The issue of sedition was anxiously discussed during constituent assembly debates. On 29 April 1947, when laying out the Rights of Freedom, Vallabhbhai Patel—who went on to become the home minister of India—made an exception for “seditious, obscene, blasphemous, slanderous, libellous or defamatory” language. The Communist Party of India leader, Somnath Lahiri opposed the use of the word seditious. “As far as I know, even in England, a speech, however seditious it may be, is never considered a crime unless an overt act is done,” Lahiri said. The members continued debating, coming back to the question of sedition intermittently. Finally, an amendment was moved to drop the word and not allow it to infringe upon the freedom of speech and expression. On 2 December 1948, senior Congress leader, Seth Govind Das spoke jubilantly in the house:
The restriction imposed later on in respect of the extent of this right, contains the word ‘sedition.’ An amendment has been moved here in regard to that. It is a matter of great pleasure that it seeks the deletion of the word ‘sedition.’ I believe they remember that this section was specially framed for securing the conviction of Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Since then, many of us have been convicted under this section. In this connection many things that happened to me come to my mind… I mean to say that there must be many Members of this House who must have been sentenced under this article to undergo long periods of imprisonment. It is a matter of pleasure that we will now have freedom of speech and expression under this sub-clause and the word ‘sedition’ is also going to disappear.
The word did indeed disappear from the constitution when it was adopted on 26 November 1949, but section 124A stayed in the Indian Penal Code. Then, in 1950, two Supreme Court judgements led the government to introduce the much-maligned first amendment. The first case involved objectionable material in Organiser, a magazine run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; the second was against a magazine called Cross Roads, for criticising the government. In both the cases, the Supreme Court sided with the government. It asked the editor of Organiser to clear provocative content with a regulating authority, and banned Cross Roads. In light of these judgements, Jawaharlal Nehru brought in the first amendment.
Later, speaking in the parliament, Nehru specified that the amendment does not validate laws such as sedition. “Take again Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code. Now so far as I am concerned that particular section is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place both for practical and historical reasons, if you like, in any body of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it the better,” he said. Even as the section stayed in the IPC, these words of Nehru guided the courts. Three judgements regarding section 124A were passed in the 1950s in high courts, and all of them acquitted the accused.
In post-independence India, however, the judgement with the most impact came in January 1962. In the case of Kedarnath versus the State of Bihar, the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court defined the scope of sedition for the first time and this definition has been taken as precedent for all matters pertaining to Section 124A since. Until Independence, there were broadly two views on Section 124A: that of the judgements given by the Federal Court, and that of the judgements passed by the Privy Council (the highest court of appeal for commonwealth countries, they were abolished in India following the passing of abolition of privy council jurisdiction act, in 1949). The former asserted that public disorder or the reasonable anticipation or likelihood of public disorder is the gist of the offence; the latter said that the speech itself, irrespective of whether or not it leads to an incident, could be an offence. Taking in account Article 19A (the freedom of speech and expression) of the constitution, the bench observed in the judgement’s headnote, “If the view taken by the Federal Court was accepted, Section 124A would be constitutional but if the view of the Privy Council was accepted it would be unconstitutional.” Later, it states that it stands with the Federal Court, and the constitution.
Kedarnath Singh was convicted by the high court for his speech that lampooned the Crime Investigation Department and the Congress party. “To-day the dogs of CID are loitering around Barauni. Many official dogs are sitting even in this meeting. The people of India drove out the Britishers from this country and elected these Congress goondas to the gaddi.” He accused the Congress of corruption, black-marketing and tyranny and talked about a revolution that would overthrow capitalists, zamindars and Congress leaders. The constitutional bench upheld the punishment given to Kedarnath by the high court but at the same time limited the section’s scope. Towards the end, the judgement states that the section penalises words that reveal an intent or tendency to disturb law and order or that seem to incite violence. And then, it draws a line: “It has been contended that a person who makes a very strong speech or uses very vigorous words in a writing directed to a very strong criticism of measures of Government or acts of public officials, might also come within the ambit of the penal section. But, in our opinion, such words written or spoken would be outside the scope of the section.”
With this case, the court upheld the constitutionality of the sedition law, but also curtailed its scope in its application. The “anti-nationalism” that the three JNU students are accused of may be perceived as such, but as Fali Nariman, the constitutional jurist and senior advocate to the Supreme Court, points out, “mere expressions of hate, and even contempt for one’s government, are not sedition.” | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/section-124a-sedition-jnu-protests/comment-page-1 | en | 2016-02-25T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/6b8e61d2b30006e473d0113bfc5ac44882ebcc3b288e2b7ae5834dd0afc9f97a.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:46:44 | null | 2016-08-25T14:47:02 | The allegations against a Jadavpur University student expose a structure of impunity, and a lack of clear laws governing sexual harassment in colleges. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fjadavpur-university-sexual-harassment.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Jadavpur-University_Vantage-The-Caravan-magazine_24-August-2016.jpg | en | null | On Cases of Sexual Harassment Against a Jadavpur University Student | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On 7 February 2016, Eklavya Chaudhuri, a third-year undergraduate student of English at Jadavpur University (JU) in Kolkata, stepped up to the stage at a poetry slam event to perform one of his poems. A rising star in the city’s burgeoning poetry scene, Chaudhuri, the son of a senior professor at the university, was a face familiar to much of the audience. The event was at a local café, and in attendance where about 20 or so people—regulars in the poetry circuit. His performance that night, his friends later said, was in his characteristic style: dressed in an oversize shirt with his hair unkempt, the lanky Chaudhuri recited his poems in a high-pitched voice, moving energetically across the stage. His act was met with loud applause from the people in the room.
By the end of July, all of this had changed. On 27 July, a student of JU posted a photo to Facebook. Taken through the window of a classroom, the image showed a lone Chaudhuri sitting on a bench. “Eklavya Chaudhuri attending class as his classmates stand outside in protest,” the student wrote. Chaudhuri’s classmates had refused to sit with him. Many of the students, including his friends, had boycotted the class. Chaudhuri attended the class with only one other student in the room. When he left the classroom at the end of the lecture hour, the students gathered outside applauded, as if cheering his exit.
The applause was a form of protest—an expression of boycott for Chaudhuri. Four days earlier, on 23 July 2016, a student of JU had uploaded a post to Facebook alleging that nearly a year ago, she had repeatedly been sexually assaulted and harassed by Chaudhuri. “I was molested by a classmate of mine, Ekalavya Chaudhuri, on four different occassions within the space of my department,” she wrote. “The person who did this to me was a respected student, a budding academician and an influential member of the exclusive urban intellectual circuit,” she added.
She wrote in the post that she had lodged a complaint against Chaudhuri with the English department, on 24 August 2015. “It was the best thing I ever did,” the complainant said. But even though the department handled her complaint “carefully and with attention,” she said, the harassment continued. “The molestation and the forcible pressing of penis against my crotch stopped,” but “the glares and the stares did not stop.” The complainant alleged that, for several months following her complaint, a friend of Chaudhuri’s had continued to harass her on his behalf. Chaudhuri’s friend, a student from another university, the complainant said, “bullied me online several times,” and subjected her to “endless stalking, making cheap comments on Facebook.” The complainant also attached screenshots of her conversations with Chaudhuri and his friend to the post. “MY HARASSMENT WAS NOT JUST SEXUAL, NOT JUST ONLINE, NOT JUST OFFLINE. HARASSMENT, FOR ME, WAS EVERYWHERE,” she wrote. “Those who have followed this molestation incident would also know that I am not the only one Ekalavya Chaudhuri has sexually harassed,” she added.
The post went viral. It was shared widely by hundreds of students, within and beyond Jadavpur University. Over the next few days, several young women in Kolkata—some even underage—shared their own stories of harassment by Chaudhuri, all of which were eerily similar. Many shared screenshots of conversations they said they had with Chaudhuri over Whatsapp and Facebook as proof of the alleged harassment, which were then shared by other students, who added comments and posts declaring their support for the women. Though Facebook took down the complainant’s original post saying it did not abide by their community guidelines, countless students took screenshots of the post and shared them. On 25 July, two days after the original post, two students registered an official complaint against Chaudhuri with the college. The next day, 13 women issued a joint statement alleging that they had been sexually harassed and assaulted by Chaudhuri. “We have been touched without our consent. We have been objectified filthily. We have been made to feel like pieces of meat by a man who is utterly despicable,” their statement said. He is, they alleged, “A molester. A sex offender. A sexual predator.”
The complainant’s post spurred a wider conversation on the JU campus about sexual harassment, one that is still ongoing. “After the initial 13 girls came out with their statement, a few others have also spoken out against him and shared their accounts of molestation on different platforms, taking the cumulative count to around 25,” Shounak Mukopadhyay, a student in the English Department, told me. “The post has essentially lead to an outpouring of shared experiences and mobilised people to speak out.” As of 29 July, three official complaints had been registered with the college. Soon after the first complaint, the university suspended Chaudhuri and launched an official investigation into the matter. In an exclusive published on the Indian Express website on 29 July, Chaudhuri denied the allegations against him, saying he would not be “responding to any trial on social media.” Over the past month, I spoke to many students at the university, including friends of the complainant, to try and understand what led her to put up the post, and the response it received within the student community. The complainant and the women who issued the joint statement declined to speak to me because they were wary of jeopardising the ongoing enquiry. Despite repeated attempts to contact them, both Chaudhuri and his mother, who was poised to become the head of the English department at the beginning of August, declined to comment as well.
But there was consensus among most students I did speak to: the allegations against Chaudhuri, they said, exposed a structure that allowed him impunity, which included but was not limited to power, influence, and the lack of clear laws governing sexual harassment at educational institutes.
Many students I spoke to believe that the position Chaudhuri held within the English Department by virtue of being the son of senior professor, and a fairly popular member of the city’s academic and poetry circuit, had a huge role to play in what he assumed he could get away with. In her post, the complainant, too, noted that her hesitation to speak up was partly due to this nexus of influence and power: “The person who molested me was the son of my professor, a respected teacher in my department. And who was I? Nobody,” she wrote. “My parents were not a part of the ‘intelligentsia’ of this city, they were as I like to call myself now ‘plebeian.’” At the time, she added, “I worried myself sick about complaining against Ekalavya Chaudhuri.”
But in August last year, she mustered the courage to complain. “There comes a time when you just cannot take the pain anymore, cannot take being followed around anymore,” she wrote in her post, referring to her decision to make the complaint. Students told me that the department held a general body meeting to hear the allegations against Chaudhuri, which was attended by the faculty and his classmates. Syamantakshobhan Basu, a Masters of Philosophy research scholar at the department said that, during the four-hour meeting, the class cornered Chaudhuri and got him to “admit his mistake.” But, since a complaint with the department does not qualify as a complaint with the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC)—the body that, by law, is empowered to hear complaints of sexual harassment—no formal action was taken against Chaudhuri. “The departments in the university are not empowered to take stricter measures than issuing directives and verbal warnings to offending parties,” Sujaan Mukherjee, a PhD scholar at the department, told me. He said that when the complainant approached the department, she was informed of the procedure but opted to go with a general body meeting instead. “His friends believed that counseling or psychiatric help is more likely to help than punitive action,” Mukherjee said. Chaudhuri was let off with a warning, Mukherjee told me, on the condition that he would seek help. “This, apparently, did not happen,” he added.
The harassment, the complainant wrote in her post, continued in the form of bullying and intimidation by Chaudhuri’s friend. Sometimes, the complainant wrote, this friend would appear on “key days, like the day of our results” and sit in class with Chaudhuri to “commit what I am guessing is a scare tactic.” “I think the complainant finally decided to publicly come out and put things in the open for a number of reasons, most important of which is that she felt that her grievance seemed to not have been fully addressed when she complained in the department last August,” Shalmi Barman, a recent graduate of JU and a friend of the complainant, told me. “She continued to be harassed, bullied, persecuted and intimidated.”
I reached out to Chaudhuri’s friend, whom the complainant names in her Facebook post. The friend denied all allegations. “I am not guilty of either harassment or bullying. I may have made aggressive comments on social media, but they were brought on by similarly aggressive comments by the complainant,” Chaudhuri’s friend said. “I am actually very glad that an enquiry has been initiated and I also need to know what the truth of the matter is.”
I asked Barman why the complainant had chosen to express her concerns on Facebook instead of approaching the university again. She explained that the complainant thought the social media website was a safer space. “The same way rape survivors are reluctant to approach the police, sexual harassment survivors within universities are hesitant to complain to the university—the formalities, the need to testify in the presence of your oppressor or his aides creates an atmosphere of distrust,” Barman said. “Facebook on the other hand is a much safer space — you’re speaking up among friends who will support you. Also, word of mouth and sharing creates a network of support that is absent in institutions,” she added. This assertion was made evident by the response the post received: though the first complaint was made against Chaudhuri a year ago, the outpouring of support and stepping forward of other young women came only after the complainant posted about her ordeal on social media last month.
Her friends added that the complainant, at the time of writing her post, had not foreseen the extent of the support that she would receive. Many took her example and shared their experiences on Facebook, sharing screenshots of messages they said Chaudhuri had sent them. The messages, most of which contain graphic details, are also telling: in many of them, despite repeated requests to stop, Chaudhuri insisted on texting the women and describing what he would like to do to them. In one of the screenshots shared by a student who was a minor at the time of the interaction, Chaudhuri told her, “Deepdown I know you want some lovemaking.” “That’s not true,” she insisted. Through the conversation, she repeatedly made it clear that she was not interested, but Chaudhuri refused to relent. “I want to make love to every inch of you. I want to cream all the pores of your hot quivering body in hot wet sticky mess,” he writes. Many of the messages the women said Chaudhuri sent them contain similar details. “You know you like that,” he told one of the women after describing what he would like to do to her. “Nope,” she replied, but he continued, “Your swells and thrusts will.” When she repeated that this won’t happen, he said, “Oh they will, in time.” The student told Chaudhuri that she was in a relationship and would prefer to stay only friends with him. He responded: “Okay. How bout you let me sext you too. I am very gifted in writing I promise.”
Chaudhuri’s disregard for consent or age seemed common in the conversations the women shared. In an exchange with a school-going student, he wrote, “I’m intrigued. You’re 15 and you aren’t horny?” “No, not really,” she replied. In another conversation, he said, “I love this dp [display picture]. Makes me want to rub my musty cock all over your face.”
Many young women also wrote about their experience of having faced physical assault and harassment by him. One student, a recent high school graduate, wrote that she had gotten in touch with Chaudhuri to seek advice on how to crack the Jadavpur University entrance examination. Chaudhuri soon introduced sexual undertones to their conversation, she said. However, she wrote, she didn’t rebuke him for fear of appearing “prudish.” In her post, she said that she met Chaudhuri for a movie and that they “did get intimate in the theatre itself.” “But I wanted to put a stop to it and maintain a purely platonic friendship with him,” she continued. “So I called him over to my house one day. He started again. I objected, he paid no heed. I asked him to leave, no results. My grandmother was present but he regardless shut the door to my room. Next thing I know, he had pinned me down to the bed and had already started with what he was about to do, even as I protested violently and vehemently.” The student also wrote that, when she asked them for help after the incident, all her acquaintances declined because of the influence Chaudhuri wielded. Others accused her of misunderstanding the situation since she had given consent on another occasion. “However, my consenting to a specific instance does not justify his pinning me down on the bed and forcefully taking off my clothes even as I kicked and screamed, on another occasion,” she wrote. “I should also add that I’m yet to come of age.”
Though the disgust for Chaudhuri and support for the complainant and the other women on social media was widespread, many students’ posts seemed to indicate that the allegations against Chaudhuri came as a surprise them. This was puzzling, since the first complaint was made against him about a year ago, and seemed to have been dealt with publicly. “Yes, his behaviour was known,” Mukherjee, the PhD scholar at the English department, told me. “There was no measure taken to hide the fact.”
“The truth is that Chaudhuri was a very gifted student, one who was valued by the department,” Barman, the complainant’s friend, told me. “I’m sure he made a lot of women very uncomfortable, he wasn’t a raging, sexist maniac in his everyday dealings with everyone,” she said, before adding, “We thought he was like any other awkward but talented student.”
On 25 July this year, the day that the first two complaints against Chaudhuri were officially lodged at the university, the Arts Faculty Student Union, a prominent student body in JU, submitted a deputation to the vice chancellor. The AFSU demanded a swift and transparent probe into the allegations by an independent committee, and not the university’s ICC. “Since the Internal Complaints Cell has no student representation, therefore we insisted that an independent committee be constituted including student representation,” Basu, the M.Phil scholar, told me. Two days later, on 27 July, the AFSU held a general body meeting that was attended by nearly 350 people. The high attendance reflected “the support the complainants have from the student body,” said Mukopadhyay, the student in the English department. “The reactions that have come up so far, present hope that we have progressed a few steps in the matter of gender justice,” Basu added. The student body then presented a set of three demands to the vice chancellor: student representation in the committee probing the incident, Chaudhuri’s suspension for the duration of the inquiry, and a stay on his mother’s impending accession to the Head of Department post at the English department.
The question of the ICC and its purview for handling sexual harassment in college campuses is fraught. Under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013, educational institutions are classified as a place of work, and are therefore subject to its provisions. Under the law, each workplace with more than ten people is required to set up an internal complaints cell to hear complaints of sexual harassment and to recommend action to the management. This means that, on university campuses, the university’s ICC shall hear any complaints of sexual harassment. This provision is reiterated in the Saksham guide (Measures for Ensuring Safety of Women and Programs for Gender Sensitization on Campuses), the guidebook issued by the University Grants Commission, a central government body that oversees higher education in the country.
But under the law, the ICC at workplaces is required to be staffed by either employees or by external persons—which would exclude students from being its members. The act also does not clearly state that complaints of harassment faced by students fall under its purview. “It’s a grey area in the law,” Charu Wali Khanna, an advocate and a former member of the National Commission for Women, said. “It says that academic institutions are covered under ‘workplace,’ however students aren’t mentioned in the ‘aggrieved women’”—those who can make complaints under the law—“definition. In any case, universities are supposed to have their complaints committees in place and since the law is slightly unclear, universities have to be proactive in dealing with cases of sexual harassment,” Khanna said.
After the meeting on 27 July, the vice chancellor agreed to the AFSU’s demands and set up a independent fact-finding committee to investigate the allegations against Chaudhuri. The committee comprised of “one student representative, the director of the Women’s Studies department, a professor from the Physics department, an NGO representative and one University officer,” Shraman Guha, the general secretary of the AFSU, told me.
The committee began its investigation on 28 July. About ten days later, a student told me, the report was filed with Suranjan Das, the vice chancellor. According to the student, the report found merit in the complaints made against Chaudhuri. “Prima facie evidence points to the fact that there was sexual harassment. The VC will now need to discuss this in a meeting with the executive council and decide on a course of action,” the student told me. In a telephonic interview on 11 August, Das said, “I have received the report and we are now proceeding according to the law,”—which, under the 2013 act, allows the administration 90 days to respond to the report.
The lack of clarity on the ICC has also led the students to demand a better and more pro-active system for dealing with issues of gender and sexual violence. “What we need is a body like a Gender Sensitisation Cell Against Sexual Harassment which is in accordance with the Saksham guidelines,” Barman said, referring to a separate body that could address the problems faced by students. This past week, the students of JU organised two protests demanding a GSCASH-like body for the university. Puranjani Ghosh, a first-year Economics student and an organiser of one of the protests, said, “The ICC is a handicapped structure and one that is neither autonomous nor representative of the student body. The ICC is also not equipped to hand out punishments to the accused. It is for these very reasons that we need a body like GSCASH that is not under the control of the administration and is representative.” “Given the recent events, we have realised it is now or never,” Ghosh added.
In July, before the allegations against Chaudhuri had surfaced, JU had prepared a draft policy that proposed the setting up of a student-elected panel to probe cases where complaints were made by and against students. But last week, the UGC issued a notification enabling the ICC to investigate charges filed by both students and employees of the institution. Following the UGC notification, JU dropped its plans for the student-elected panel.
Meanwhile, though most of the reactions faced by the women who spoke about the harassment have been encouraging, many questioned the complainants. Students posting on social media wondered why the women did not just block Chaudhuri, why they didn’t respond to his advances more firmly, or lodge a complaint. But these statements, which put the onus of reporting a crime on the victims, have made way for a larger discussion about the nature of sexual harassment, and how to tackle it in a university campus. “It’s really not for those standing on the sidelines to question the actions of survivors,” Barman said. “It is a very difficult process for survivors to overcome their fears and emotions and finally come forward and complain. So it’s no one’s business to decide when and how one should speak up.”
But breaking this silence surround sexual harassment isn’t just the prerogative of those who face it. “In this movement at least, we have been able to communicate the need to question those who abuse their positions of power. The students need to have more agency and a voice. We have been very vocal about the need to combat intimidation tactics and authoritarian practices,” Mukopadhayay said. “It is very important that this culture of silence around sexual harassment and the practice of intimidation by authority be put to an end.” | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/jadavpur-university-sexual-harassment | en | 2016-08-25T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/9adb932bb29268344bc03657c79bb0bf49d9b2e62a7e8c2efdc61ccea876591c.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:50:13 | null | 2016-08-20T15:06:45 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Freporting-and-essays%2F26937.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-cvn-icon-32x32.jpg | en | null | - The Caravan | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
Though he arrived home quite late, Dabholkar rose early the next morning to catch a 6 am bus to Pune. He generally spent the first two days of each week in the city, where he oversaw the work of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (Maharashtra Blind Faith Eradication Committee), also known by the acronym MANS, an organisation he founded in 1989. While in Pune, Dabholkar would also wrap up work on the latest issue of Sadhana, a 68-year-old weekly that he had edited for 15 years.
Dabholkar reached Pune at around half past nine, but before he could attend to his work, he was called away to Mumbai “at short notice to participate in a television debate on caste panchayats,” Vinod Shirsath, a Pune-based journalist who was then Sadhana’s executive editor, told me. By the time Dabholkar returned, it was past midnight, and he retired to a flat that belonged to the trust that ran Sadhana. He had called a press conference the following day, at which he was to speak about the need to use eco-friendly idols, instead of plaster ones, for immersion in ponds, lakes and rivers during the upcoming Ganpati festival. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reporting-and-essays/26937 | en | 2016-08-20T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/8f7834969d5c8b3434287e773afc6d185b95c03413110e17338e73af48a1d273.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T12:48:45 | null | 2016-08-02T17:59:15 | It is only by setting URA's publicly aired views alongside those in his fiction and essays that we discover how complex and contrarian his project was. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Freportage%2Fambivalent-indian-ur-ananthamurthy%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Ambivalent-Indian_Courtesy-Esther-Ananthamurthy_The-Caravan-magazine_August-2016_01.jpg | en | null | The Ambivalent Indian | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | IN NOVEMBER 2006, Bangalore was officially renamed Bengaluru following a movement spearheaded by the writer UR Ananthamurthy. He had argued for this as part of a wider project of “Kannadization,” by which, he wrote shortly afterwards,“I mean the ability to belong to the world at large even as one is rooted in one’s Kannadaness.” URA, as Ananthamurthy is locally and affectionately known, was shaking his fist at the new-millennium, tech-driven, glass-and-chrome Bangalore, whose shocking prosperity seemed to have inured it to local culture. How much the new name dented this indifference remains an open question. URA admitted it was “a symbolic step,” even while hoping it would lead to a collective change of heart. He was also involved in a long-running and potentially more far-reaching campaign to enhance the presence of Kannada in Karnataka’s school system—a change that has proved much harder to effect than replacing a city’s name. In every instance of public life in the state that hung on the question of where the local should stand in relation to the English-spewing juggernaut of globalisation, URA’s opinion was sought and widely broadcast.
URA’s stature as one of the grandest writers of our era derives from Samskara and Bharathipura, the radically outspoken novels he wrote at the beginning of his career, in the 1960s and 1970s. If those novels about inward-looking critics of inherited tradition had forever altered the landscape of Kannada literature, they also seemed to invest their author with the responsibility of asking what we should do when faced with the vulnerability of those very traditions. URA the writer was long familiar to readers in Karnataka, but he was more prominent in the national media as a loquacious public figure, who held positions such as the presidency of the Sahitya Akademi and chairmanship of the Film and Television Institute of India.
Living in Bangalore since the late 1990s, I first came to know URA as just this—a commentator on most leading issues of the day, a newspaper voice. He never became part of the political establishment, yet his tone could seem, to the new migrant, very similar, in its rhetoric and generalisations, with that of the state. It is only by setting his publicly aired views alongside those in his fiction and essays, as I started to do much later, that I discovered how complex and contrarian his project was. He wanted “Bangalore” to be pronounced the Kannada way even as his writings remind us that this is not an exclusively Kannada city. It is, and has been throughout its modern history, linguistically hybrid: the elite speak one language, maybe two, but a working-class person might know all the four major southern languages, along with some Urdu, Hindi and English. Theatres here screen films in Kannada, English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and more, though the showing of non-Kannada films has been contested in recent times.
While URA hoped to get Bangalore’s citizens to reimagine the city, it was, I would discover, somewhat irrelevant in his fiction—unlike the richly evoked villages and small towns of his childhood, or even England, where he spent some years as a student. The characters that do live in Bangalore tend to pine for different homes. Other characters shrink from the idea of moving there, the modern city showing up the terrible superficiality of the urbane Indian. Jagannatha, the hero of Bharathipura, imagines himself a radical, throwing parties, living somewhere in the Cantonment with similar rootless people, with an Indianness linked to Ravi Shankar’s sitar, the sculptures of Konark, and folk songs, wearing Lucknow kurtas at parties…and women in silk saris with sleeveless blouses and shaved armpits, sisters-in-law of IAS officers or those waiting to get married to military officers, and the usual small talk, “Won’t you have something? Why? Are you dieting?”
URA’s criticism of English-language writers for their monolingualism seemed to emerge from genuine dismay, but could also border on caricature. The poet and critic Vijay Nambisan describes, in his book Language as an Ethic, listening to URA declare, as president of the Sahitya Akademi, that English-language writers adopt the tongue “in order to make money; that the culture to which they owe allegiance is that of Europe; and that their writing in English—the same language World Bank memos are written in—is proof that they favour a consumerist market economy.” But URA could also be a compelling speaker in the language of the World Bank; he had a strikingly gentle, smiling manner, and was in person a thinker clearly more agile and sophisticated than the one quoted weekly in the papers. Time and again, he returned in his public talks to the question of how our individual experiences might square up with the possibly dangerous allure of concepts such as the nation and the state, and to how India remained a deeply divided society. I am not a cosmopolitan, he would also say, reminding his audience, and seemingly himself, of his roots in a traditional, rural Brahmin community from the west coast of Karnataka. Yet this repeated return to the question of roots did, inevitably, make him something of a cosmopolitan.
While a nativist edge crept into URA’s public positions over time, he categorically distanced himself from the right-wing brand of nationalism, stating to the media on the eve of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in the last general election that he was reluctant to live in Narendra Modi’s India, and that the prime minister-to-be was a “bully” who would likely create an atmosphere of fear. That URA was not just adding to the clamour of opinion either for or against Modi, but expressing a deep anxiety over the BJP’s ascendency, is clear from the last book he wrote before his death in August 2014—the long essay Hindutva Athava Hind Swaraj, which recently appeared in English as Hindutva Or Hind Swaraj. The sociologist Shiv Viswanathan, in his foreword to the English edition, calls the text a manifesto. But it is less a statement of beliefs or a call to action than an introspective, and philosophical, account of the nature and possible sources of Modi’s hubris—and, further, of elements of it that could, unwittingly, be present in all of us. To try and understand the Indian right’s evil—he uses the word unhesitatingly—URA draws on literature ranging from the Old Testament to the poetry of WH Auden, with references along the way to the Indian epics and the medieval and modern Kannada poetry that shaped him.
In exploring the proximity of evil to good, and making an appeal to inner voice and ordinary experience, the essay becomes more about ethics than politics. It is only in literature, URA suggests—in the tormented conscience of Dostoevskyís Raskolnikov, for instance—that we might discover how the hunger for power can be tempered with humaneness. And a highly persuasive literary text—in that it is intimate, appearing to speak to just one listener—isMohandas Gandhi’s 1909 anti-imperialist treatise Hind Swaraj. It offers us a chance to confront and take personal responsibility for the downsides of modern civilisation, and not just imperialism.
Against this, URA sets up Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s 1923 book Essentials of Hindutva, a rousing polemic in defence of a Hindu India. Savarkar’s Hindutva is founded on a reverence for the Sanskrit language and a belief in India as a holy land (perhaps because the foundational epics of Hinduism, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, are set here). But Hindutva is more a cultural and racial concept than a religious one—Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains are welcome in Savarkar’s India, but Muslims are not. This was the text that inspired Nathuram Godse to kill Gandhi—“the sacrificial offering made at the yajna of nation building.” And the depravity of that act was given, via Savarkar, the respectable garb of nationalism. “Evil is not evil,” URA points out ironically, “in the context of love for one’s nation.”
He does not himself intend to be polemical, acknowledging that the Gandhian era is over, and that, for the moment at least, Savarkar has won. This is more than just a political victory. It is a triumph over the Gandhian ethics of non-violence, a success of the sterile “Age of Development,” in which the natural world has been destroyed, local traditions and trades wiped out, lands snatched from communities that subsisted on them, and everything undertaken with an eye to profit by the “heartless hunters” of the corporate world. The perniciousness of the nationalism that Savarkar celebrated lies in its abstractions. Imagining a glorious past and a present cleansed of the messiness of Indian heterogeneity, we start to also yield the responsibility for our own lives to a state that can bolster this fiction and nurture our greed. The Gandhian critique of the big state is thus also URA’s, who says,“there is never a time when it is not necessary to oppose the state.” But can we do without the state altogether? How much power is optimal to stem the human instinct to anarchy? He offers us a choice of answers—from Buddhist parables to the views of Joseph Conrad.
“URA’s essay is a shaman’s warning to an India moving to self-destruct,” Viswanathan writes in the foreword. That description is equally well suited to Hind Swaraj. URA’s tract is, alongside, a necessary lament—even if a somewhat distraught and disjointed one. When several writers returned their national awards last year in protest, among other things, against the killings of the intellectuals Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and MM Kalburgi, some, in dismissing that gesture of solidarity, implied that the writers’ voice counts for little. Hindutva Or Hind Swaraj shows us that we, in fact, urgently need such a voice through which to mourn what has passed and examine what has replaced it, one that is personal and furious, concerned and thoughtful. The literary sensibility entails not just being well read, but also making space for the tangled individual conscience instead of giving way to the hymn of the nation.
THE APPLICATION OF A LITERARY SENSIBILITY to politics and a political sensibility to literature was the hallmark of URA’s style. Take his attitude to state power. The writer who argued in his last work for the necessity of opposing the state also set great store by political action as a means to effect far more powerful changes than any possible just through writing.
URA was closely associated with socialist movements in Karnataka, and later in his career also made an unsuccessful bid for a Rajya Sabha seat. “The reality for a novelist in India … is so complex as to disallow the comforts of either statusquoist acceptance or of revolutionary ruthlessness,” he wrote in an essay. URA did not so much occupy a middle ground as challenge the orthodoxies of each of these positions, and see in the resultant flux the only possible source of creativity for a thinking Indian. Even as he attempted to enter politics, he was writing fiction that asked to what extent politics is a suitable arena for ideology and action, and whether it can offer an ethical basis for being in the world rather than just a career option. Revolutionary ruthlessness may not work in practice, but its way of clarifying and sharpening the individual personality is one of the great themes of URA’s fiction.
The figure of the revolutionary—often a charismatic communist who is all for violent means to bring about a classless society—appears in several of URA’s short stories and novels, to engage, irritate and impress the protagonists and ultimately vanish in pursuit of his cause. In the short story ‘The Sky and the Cat,’ the anarchist Govindan Nayar visits the deathbed of an old friend, a village lawyer. Nayar spends his days organising the poor and his nights sleeping on the verandahs of strangers’ homes; he has gone to prison for beating a minister with a shoe and threatening him with an acid bomb. His street-corner talk repels Krishnamurthy, the dying man’s son, who is an economics professor in Delhi.
But Krishnamurthy also sees in the vagrant communist a clarity of vision and a faith in action that he himself lacks. Is Nayar a “ludicrous eccentric,” or does his elevated vision show up the pettiness of Krishnamurthyís persistent scramble for money? In ‘The Story of a Decade,’ a young Naxalite from Kerala, on the run from the police, challenges the bourgeois values of his college professor while taking shelter in the latterís home, subjecting his hostís domestic situation to a Marxist analysis. “Sir, I feel youíre under the impression that you can keep your wife happy by accumulating wealth. But your wife is not happy. Only when you are part of revolutionary activities can you be happy in the true sense.”
The revolutionary gets to have his say at greater length in the novel Avasthe. Annaji, a peasant organiser from Telangana, wanted by the police in two states and hiding out under an assumed name in a third, instructs Krishnappa, a young politician-in-the-making, on the difference between middle-class aspirations for prosperity, and the “dynamic greed” of the labouring classes, who need encouragement to rise up and change relationships in the realm of production. Avasthe is the story of Krishnappa’s sentimental education—the relationships with a series of unconventional men and women which shape him, a Shudra cowherd of the Gowda community, into a leading politician. While the novel presents something of the everyday calculations and compromises involved in politics, at its core is Krishnappa’s intensely personal search for the truth about his character and his motives.
Politics offers one route to both a better self and a better world, but the path of mysticism is equally attractive to Krishanappa—and, apparently, to URA.
As confident as the revolutionaries in URA’s fiction are the mystics. Both types of renegades are free from the hurly-burly: family, sexual attachments, worries over money, professional obligations. They have that unconstrained, direct access to experience which his educated, successful, clever but tortured protagonists can spend their lives missing. Often these visionaries are imagined as village idiots with the singular gift of self-acceptance. One of URA’s best-known stories, ‘Stallion for the Sun,’ presents a down-and-out simpleton, Venkata, who has such an acquiescent nature and capacity for joy that it makes his visiting friend, the narrator, wonder whether such a person ought to be celebrated or reviled. “I began to feel that without destroying the likes of this Venkata there would be no progress, no electricity, no river dams, no penicillin, no pride, no honour, no joy of sex, no winning a woman, no climax, no flying, no joy of life, no memory, no ecstasy, no bliss,” he thinks. But the story ends with Venkata appearing, at least for a moment, to have won the narrator over with his enchanting naiveté.
In the story ‘Akkayya,’ Srinivasa, a professor of English in the United States, realises that the title character—the elder sister who brought him up, a woman too scared to board a bus and who spent her time conversing with cows—would be considered an imbecile from the perspective of “Western capitalist efficiency.” Sitting in his plush Philadelphia home, Srinivasa ponders how this sister played no active part in his adult, cosmopolitan life, and yet influenced it deeply. He tells his visiting friend,
all the theories I conceptualized in the course of my successful career are either in order to move away from this world of Akkayya, or because I thought I had already moved away from it. That is how I first became a progressive Marxist, then a liberal, then a modernist, and now a post-modernist.
The narrator considers Srinivasa’s “theoretical sadness”—a wonderful phrase for the angst suffered by many of URA’s constantly cogitating characters. Dinakar, in the novel Bhava, suffers from a theoretical sadness too. He is a well-known television personality, exhausted by the shallowness of his life, taking a break to go on a pilgrimage. In contrast to him is the elderly widow Sitamma, whom he had known as a child, and who was, for a time, a foster mother to him. She is an Akkayya-like character, who lives completely in the moment, absorbed in household chores and rituals, and able to be utterly compassionate while preserving caste taboos. It is this feat—being immersed while staying detached—that, according to Hindu philosophy, gets you off the merry-go-round of birth and death from which the novel takes its name.
“Self-realization should come to you, suddenly,” says Keshav, yet another alienated, URA-like character, to his English friend Stewart in the story ‘Clip Joint.’ “It’ s then that life takes a new turn and renews itself. If not, we keep circling forever in a predetermined groove in pursuit of an elusive self-realization.” Dinakar, in Bhava, feels the same way, describing himself as someone“desiring desirelessness, and realizing it canít be got by desiring it.”
Yet in the novel Bharathipura, the motivation runs in the opposite direction. This is the most psychologically weighty of URA’s works on the question of action versus acceptance. Jagan, a young radical and village landowner recently returned from England,is certain that Bharathipura will be shaken out of its festering stupor only if he rouses the townís lower-caste people, the excrement-cleaning Holeyaru, into self-respect. Yet, at every turn, he parses, with feverish insistence, his own motives and compulsions. He is tormented with the idea that he is a “subtle fraud,” but seems to be the only person in the town who notices its oppressive hierarchies and blind faith. As Jagan’s personal project to lead the Holeyaru into the town’s temple gets going, it inevitably becomes a public one, and the repercussions are out of his hands.
URA’s fiction holds at its heart not so much politics or mysticism as a delicate existential anguish—which is, however, never solipsistic, always tangled up with a particular position in the world. The social universe evoked is often that of farming communities in the Malnad region, where he grew up. He seems to know it all—absurdly intricate caste habits, the minutiae of financial transactions required for survival, the hollowed-out lives of widows, the men in flight from tradition. The single-minded mystics and revolutionaries, charming as they are, donít form the mainstay of his stories. The ambivalent ones do—those suffering from “the sickness of being over-introspective.”
For URA, who was born in pre-Independence India and went on to pursue a PhD at the University of Birmingham in the company of influential left-leaning writers such as Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall and EP Thompson, the ambivalences have always been personal. He is the Indian intellectual who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, one for whom the national movement was a youthful dream that, in those early decades of independence, no longer exercised its former hold. Bharathipura is full of similarly disenchanted figures—once passionate supporters of a free India, now, in middle age, if not apathetic, at least quietly middle-class.
Beyond recording this loss of political belief, Bharathipura asks a deeper question: how does an ordinary person affirm his individuality when gripped by the facelessness of politics? A minor character called Desai, who appears only over a few pages, says that on hearing the news of India’s independence he felt,
an awareness that this would have happened even if I had not fought in the freedom struggle of 1942 … The awareness that Independence would have come to us anyway made me feel as if a deep trench had opened up in my life; as if I had been living in an illusion. History rolls on even if we’re not there.
The impulse of the novel is Gandhian—namely, the dire need to give personal meaning to political action. Only with such an investment, it is suggested, might disillusionment of the kind Desai experiences be avoided. At the same time, the dreamt-of action that animates the novel is not Gandhian, for Jagan opposes religion rather than seeking to reform it.
So while URA’s public utterances sometimes made him come across as a dour, anti-English figure, that stance (all polemic is by nature exaggeration, he once said) is not without its symbolic aspects. He could adopt the sweeping idiom of politics in support of his native language and traditions, while subjecting these traditions to scrutiny in his writing. This may seem like a contradiction, but it is, beyond that, performative. He was enacting the difficulties inherent in being an Indian writer.
EXPLICATING THE IDEA OF KARNATAKA was a major part of URA’s project—the state was, for him, not just a political formation but also a cultural anchor. One way in which he upheld its value was by rejecting the idea of the sub-national. “If Karnataka is not also a centre of a nation, then there is no nation,” he said in an interview.“The nation is multi-centred. Therefore, Tamil Nadu is a reality, Maharashtra is a reality. India is a federal country. When I say that Karnataka exists, I mean that a federal state exists.” URA also reached further back than the era of the modern nation for metaphors used by older Kannada writers to make sense of their place in the world. One of these, which he often returned to, is the twinning of marga and desi. The most enduring elements of Kannada culture, from the work of the tenth-century poet Pampa to the modern verse of Gopalakrishna Adiga, blend these two complementary strands. URA wrote,
Marga is the high-way. It is the pan-Indian ìgreatî tradition, formal, established and honoured everywhere. It is Shastra. Desi is indigenous, local, ìlittleî tradition. It varies from place to place, even from village to village, and from one caste to another. These two are in opposition as well as in a mutually creative relationship.
The tradition thereby becomes catholic; what it absorbs from elsewhere it combines with local experience. By contrast, too firm a belief in nationalism, too secure a cultural pride—and this is present in Kannada culture as well—leads to celebratory, uncritical writing. While this may seem glaringly obvious to us today, it is not necessarily something that a writer of URA’s generation could take for granted, coming of age as he did in an era when iconic figures such as DR Bendre and Kuvempu were, through their writing, bringing a sense of historical inevitability to the demand for an independent Karnataka. Patriotism is not the most fertile ground for a critical literature. The uncomfortable truths of experience, which may well fly in the face of love of country or culture, are a more potent source. Yet,
For our culture as a whole the contradictions in life are unimportant; only the transcendent is of value … We say “yes” to existence much too easily, and, therefore, on our writers who do not have a strong sense of the personal nature of experience, our culture can have a dangerous influence.
This is superbly nuanced. URA was perhaps one of the most self-aware writers this country has ever produced, ever alert to, possibly even overly conscious of, the heterogeneous sources of his creativity. Why, then, did he sometimes go the other way, speaking in the voice not of a critic but a campaigner? Why was he infatuated with political power?
A clue might be found in the writings of that arch theoretician of Indian political culture, and friend of URA’s, Ashis Nandy. In his book Time Warps, Nandy identifies three ways in which we tend to imagine the state: as protector, as liberator or moderniser, and as arbiter. If, going by the second image, we accept the state’s role in refitting or upgrading culture,
it becomes justifiable then to retain, somehow or the other, some access to state power, even if that means ideological or moral compromises Ö many radicals who are willing to adorn the smallest offices of power under regimes they themselves attack as reactionary, justify themselves through this widely shared image of state and culture Ö they believe they follow what was once a grand and romantic strategy for altering the civilisational face of India.
It is worth remembering, though, that being actively political was not always seen as a compromise. URA was channelling a pre-Independence tradition of intellectual participation in politics, and some from the generation of Kannada writers preceding him—such as Shivaram Karanth and Gopalakrishna Adiga—had made forays into politics too.
URA’s fascination with power was not purely theoretical—he certainly wanted to influence the real world—but he was also taken with power’s psychological effects. Avasthe, for instance, is a sympathetic study of a politician’s mind. Among the characters who fascinate Krishnappa is Nagaraj, yet another revolutionary who only believes in total solutions and who thinks of parliamentary politics as an imperfect means to a glorious, Maoist end. Nagaraj has no interest in his own emotions: he “lived as a loner … sticking fast to his ideals, limiting his personality by intensely focussing it towards a single goal.” Individual dilemmas do not matter to him, whereas Krishnappa, equally idealistic in some ways, is obsessed with questions of his own honesty. What, he wonders, has he done for the good of the people, and what has he undertaken out of self-interest?
Similarly, in the novella Bara, published during the Emergency, Satisha, a principled IAS officer working in a drought-affected district, finds his authority, and his intention to use it to save a starving population, trumped by the manipulations of others in power. Like Krishnappa, Satisha hopes to bring about change while heeding his conscience. Yet both characters also obsess over whether this concern for inner consistency is not mere self-indulgence. As the scholar Chandan Gowda asks in the afterword to his English translation of Bara, “what is ‘inward’? Conscience? Inner voice? Moral intuition? … Pre-existing moral diagnoses and prescriptions do not offer a promise: a search for a new ethics has become necessary.”
A new ethics is also called for to answer the question that the conflicted radicals Nandy describes have long been split over: to what extent should the country and its people modernise, and what is to be the stateís role in this project? “We are all modernisers with an uneasy conscience,” URA wrote. What prevents his views from dissolving into an empty relativism is a leaning towards the dialectic rather than the eclectic. He moves, in his fiction, towards moments of realisation, even if not resolution. In his essays, which often extend and question the slants of his novels and stories, there is a constant search for a sustainable moral position. Writing, for him, is the expression of a world view, rather than only an uncovering of sensibility. “My dream of combining Marxism with mysticism in actual praxis will never come true,” he said, about halfway through his career.“In a literary work, perhaps, but not real life.”
That thought captures URA’ s concern about literature as an effective way of engaging with the world—or, more specifically, with the idea of India. While at some moments he was exhausted with his self-questioning, wanting to retreat back into his work, almost immediately he worried about writing degenerating into“trivial aestheticism” and its pursuit leading one to lose the common touch. Yet he knew that artists can become smooth-talking public figures, and that it is only by hiding in art, as the Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did, that they retain their integrity. He spoke of his choice to write in Kannada as a political one, but was also aware that, in India, the outsider-ness necessary to produce a modern literature, in whichever language, itself implied some loss. And even though some might imagine that in reading him, a Kannada writer, they are reading a representative insider—and URA’s politics contributed to this insider image—doing so obscures the vastly complex sense of both belonging and not belonging, the modernist tentativeness, that he actually felt in relation to the Kannada tradition.
In one of his short stories, ‘Peacock,’ a middle-aged man is haunted by the feeling that he once used to experience things with a now-vanished immediacy, but he is not sure whether this earlier innocence is real or imagined. This, of course, was URA’ s own conundrum: he returned repeatedly to childhood, not just for private memories but also to probe a state of being which is now eroded, not least because the world in which it was set, the Western Ghats-bound Malnad of his early years, had with time lost its magical feeling of seclusion. The turn to childhood suggests a yearning for continuity, but URA tended to be metaphorical, rather than literal, in his approach to this theme. He did not hold up an unbroken chain of influence, but rather asked how a Kannada writer today might reach out, say, to Basava, the twelfth-century poet-reformer, and find in his spoken verse a contemporary resonance.
But again, this is not a selective dipping into tradition. What ties URA to Basava is his wonder at the fact that the poet’s words are perfectly lucid to him 800 years down the line, in a way that, for instance, those of the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, from the fourteenth century, would not be to a contemporary speaker of English. And thus it is that language becomes tradition. In the case of Kannada, oral elements sustain it—many Kannada speakers, through the ages and till the present day, have been, in the conventional sense, illiterate. And here URA leaves us with yet another paradox: the compulsively intellectual writer upholding the value of speaking rather than writing—and even, following the example of another twelfth-century poet, Allama Prabhu, sometimes choosing to remain altogether silent because “ultimately language can pollute thought.”
IF THE GANDHIAN MOMENT HAS PASSED, and if the Gandhian method of internal criticism animated URA’s writings, how are we to read him today? His fiction completes an arc—from the most explicit account of Brahminical hair-splitting in a tiny village in Samskara, to short stories such as ‘Hunt Bangle Chameleon’ and ‘Green Resort,’ in which those very rural locations are laid waste by unsparing capitalists for their natural wealth and tourist potential. By his own admission, URA was a critic of religion in his earlier works and of modernisation in his later ones. In either case, this did not entail a wholesale rejection of the past or the present. Rather, his question was: what of one’s inheritance is usable when judged by the demands of the present?
The great challenge before his characters is not to shrug off religious tradition, but to make it speak to their individual experiences. In Samskara, the upright Brahmin priest Praneshacharya, while preoccupied with a moral dilemma over the proper death rites for a wayward villager, happens to sleep with the dead man’s mistress. He recognises the nature of experience for the first time, seeing it as “risk, assault. A thing not done before, a joining in the dark of the jungle.” He tries to recast this newly-awakened understanding of sensual experience in the language he knows—which is that of dharma. Jagan, in Bharathipura, wants for himself and others to break free of the town’s dead past, even as he cannot be cynical about his childhood memories of participating in its religious rituals. Dismiss tradition completely and you are in the no manís land of the industrialised, corporate world; swallow it whole and you become obsolete.
Gandhian as this attitude is, URA deviated from Gandhi in asking questions about tradition and modernity as a writer rather than as a reformer. The renewed Praneshacharya feels, for the first time, a frenzied wonder at the beauty of the familiar landscape. “The smell of grass-roots smeared with wet earth held him in its power like an addiction. Like a hen pecking at and raking the ground, he pulled at everything that came to his hand and smelled it. Just sitting coolly under a tree had become a fulfilment, a value. To be, just to be.” Gandhi, for all his partiality to village life, was no poet of the natural world. URA was, while his fiction set in the city is less joyous, more scathing.
So the instinctive goes along with the critical faculty. The village can be beautiful, but the rural is not therefore an organic repository of beauty. And it is through literature that this distinction is honed. Samskara may have earned URA the status of a pioneering critic of Brahminism, but there was already writing accessible to him in the village of his childhood that was seeding his modern awareness—Gandhi’s Harijan and the works of Bertrand Russell and Edmund Burke, but also Chomana Dudi, a 1930s novel by the agnostic and rationalist Kannada writer Shivaram Karanth, about a lower-caste man trying and failing to hold on to a plot of land.
URA’s relationship to Hinduism is probing, open-ended, unmotivated, and therefore, again, literary. It is in this spirit, he recalls in his autobiographical essays, that as a child he secretly urinated on stones considered holy—much like Jagan, in Bharathipura, puts away his sacred thread on one occasion to see how the world feels without it. Unlike the Indian progressive writers led by Premchand, who in their founding manifesto from the mid 1930s deplored the “total lack of rationality” in Indian literature and its “devotional obsession,” URA was not antagonistic to religion. Neither was he programmatically aligned with the strong progressive tradition in Karnataka, led by Dalit writers such as Siddalingaiah and Devanur Mahadeva and rationalists such as H Narasimhaiah, much as he supported its work. URA quoted with respect Marx’s belief that the beginning of thinking is the beginning of the criticism of religion. Yet he was drawn to the mystical, even as he could be sardonic in his fiction about those who mine religion exclusively for its aesthetic value, those kurta-clad visionaries so compelling to the West who create art based on India’s purportedly deep spiritual traditions.
The essay ‘Why Not Worship in the Nude? Reflections of the Novelist in his Times,’ captures some of these ambivalences. This was written in the mid 1980s, in response to civil-society unease at news that a community in Karnataka’s Shimoga district had an annual ritual of worshipping a local goddess without their clothes on. URA is neither fully convinced by the anthropologist’s objective curiosity about the tradition, nor by the activist’s outrage that such a practice can be allowed to go on. He is taken with the inner experience of the devotees, and what it might feel like to see the naked body as neither an aesthetic nor an erotic object. But he knows, too, that this state of wonder is hard to sustain—given that these bodies are subject to the stares of the media, the state, and the modern world in general.
Being grounded in Hinduism without being an out-and-out votary of it is, of course, something enabled by the tradition itself. The wily astrologer Nagaraja Jois, in Bharathipura, casts the Hindu almanac based on Western rather than Indian astronomy, upholds transcendent Advaita philosophy instead of idol worship, and “even knew how to contend that God did not exist.” But this is all part of the daily grind of Hinduism, for none of it stands in the way of Jois wanting his son to take over the duties of the chief priest at the town’s Manjunatha temple.
URA’s heroes often turn away from religiosity in favour of a search for what religion might yield in terms of metaphorical value, as an aid to life. Samskara, his first novel, raised the question of how far ritual could really go. By the time he published Bhava, in the 1990s, URA was plotting something of a return for his world-weary characters who had moved very far from the tradition-bound world of Samskara and into the apparently hollow lifestyles of metropolitan India. His unembarrassed approach to religion, his engagement with it in his inward way, his interest in the moral framework of Hinduism, all put URA at an angle to the largely secular tradition of modern Indian literature.
Fictional narrative also provided space for probing another strand of life, not unrelated to spiritual seeking—that is, sensual experience. There is married life and monogamy, and, at one remove from this, lust. The emotion, and the word, recurs in his fiction. Lustful characters, usually men, abound. They are often horrified or exhausted by their desires, but still do not want to be constrained by family life. Women often stand in the background, either frustrating the men with their limited imaginations, or offering to salve their wounds—a number of golden-hearted mistresses, prostitutes and old flames appear in these narratives. The more sympathetic female characters are usually those encountered outside marriage.
Holding all of this together is talk. URA’s style tends to be dialogic, and there are often seamless shifts between his protagonistsí conversations with themselves and with other people. The paradox of this extensive back-and-forth is that, despite it, characters are often left feeling that they can never completely grasp another person’s consciousness. This is a high-modernist sort of conclusion, and no doubt the basis of an influential aesthetic mode, but not everyone has accepted it as the ideal one in which to write fiction in Kannada. Talking about his new novel Shivana Dangura, the writer Chandrashekhar Kambar recently made a remark that seemed to be aimed at URA’s project. “I reject the model of self-search that we derived from European modernism,” Kambar said.“Such individualism only destroys. We must build, and defeat the loneliness of the self.”
“I FIND MYSELF CONCEPTUALIZING a lot more than what is good for me as a creative writer,” URA once wrote. But in doing so he became his own most committed interpreter—and hedged, partially, against the limitations of an assessment such as this one. If I, as a reader of English, am in danger of missing the Kannada context of his work, he supplies much of that context himself. Reading his fiction, one is introduced to the concerns of a modern Indian writer rather than those of a contemporary oneóthe distinction is the English poet and essayist Stephen Spender’s, and also URA’s. His attention is not focussed exclusively, with journalistic urgency, on the present, but also on the question of how to express poetically the relationship between this increasingly urbanised present, the still-living past, and the writer’s apprehension of both. From URA’s non-fiction, one might discover how his contemporaries and predecessors in Kannada—and also in English, Sanskrit and other Indian languages—relate to each other in his consciousness, rather than merely as upholders of tradition.
Even so, the fogginess that accompanies the reading of much Indian literature in English translation—the awkward renderings, the lack of editorial care, one’s awareness of seeing only the tip of the iceberg—is present in this case too. Barring some essays that originally appeared in English, all of URA’s fiction and non-fiction was written in Kannada. The best of the translations of his work remains the extraordinarily fluid 1976 rendition of Samskara by the poet and scholar AK Ramanujan. Some of his other novels have attracted very competent translators too, such as Susheela Punitha and Judith Kroll. The latter’s lively version of Bhava, done in collaboration with the author, is a wonderful example of how URA’s work might be made accessible. It retains a distinctively colloquial ring, and avoids the explanatory zeal that can infantilise translations of Indian fiction. His non-fiction, however, has not fared as well. While Hindutva or Hind Swaraj comes in an excellent translation by Keerti Ramachandra and Vivek Shanbag, the bulk of URA’s essays still await committed translators and publishers. Only a handful of them, from more than a dozen collections in Kannada, are currently available in English.
URA’s mixed feelings about translation affected the journey of his work into English. In the introduction to Hunt Bangle Chameleon, a translated volume of his short stories, he writes, “I feel I can be authentic only if I donít intend to be translated.” Such a sentiment contributes to one of the abiding myths about Indian literature: that it is untranslatable, and its glories essentially inaccessible to all but native speakers. This is not to discount the specific linguistic challenges involved in every translation, but to question the mystical aura often attributed to the original. It is this aura that leads to claims such as the one made by the translator Narayan Hegde in his introduction to Stallion of the Sun and Other Stories, another of URA’s translated collections: “Truly organic writers of a language refuse to yield at least some part of themselves in translation; that part is hidden away in the interiors of a language to which only sensitive native readers have access.” This could be an acknowledgement of the subtle complexities of URA’s fiction, but it could also be the translator letting himself off the hook for his shortcomings.
As a winner of the Jnanpith and Padma Bhushan awards, URA was an “important” writer—that is, one publicly enshrined rather than nationally read. Given the range of his preoccupations and the richness of his fiction, URA was more than just important—he was necessary. Even though a complete appreciation of his work requires an understanding of how he related to and broke with the Kannada tradition, his readership ought not to be circumscribed by language, not least because he was also a substantial writer and speaker in English, and, by talking about his work, constantly translated himself. URA reminds us that there once were writers, such as Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra, who became part of the common culture. We no longer relate to our writers in the same trans-regional way, even if URA himself had the makings of such a figure.
Perhaps it is the creative revival of a language, rather than a politically enforced one, that we ought to aim for. Instead, the view from Bangalore is that the metropolitan middle class is moving away from Kannada (and, inevitably, its literature), towards the more functional English. The legacy of the language wars is a mixed one. The most defensible of URA’s proposed public policies to do with Kannada—that it become a mandatory medium of primary education—was rejected by a Supreme Court order in 2014, which upheld a similar rejection some years earlier by the Karnataka High Court. The Karnataka government responded last year with a bill that makes learning the language compulsory for all school children—something URA would have wholeheartedly welcomed. Meanwhile, the gentler, more cerebral Kannada-language activism of the past is now in danger of being usurped by the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, a right-wing group with a thuggish approach to inculcating respect for native culture. As the journalist Sugata Srinivasraju writes in his thoughtful book about being bilingual, Pickles from Home, “In Karnataka, no activist group has attained the ‘stature’ of the Shiv Sena or the MNS in Maharashtra, but they aspire to get there soon. … we may be in need of a separate movement to rescue all that is local and regional from these people. We may have to rescue Kannada and Kannadigas from ‘its own’ activists.”
It is not only URA’s concern for the Kannada language that has started to take new and alienating forms. The very combination of things that he represented—and which made him, to quote WH Auden, not just a person but “a whole climate of opinion”—is gone. A strictly traditional Brahmin upbringing, inflected with the anti-colonial movement, the first modern writing in Kannada, and an exposure to new ideas through English; the study and teaching of English literature as a way to access the great ideas of the past; an intense but qualified kinship with local traditions; a high regard for European modernism; an interest in questions that applied to the Indian psyche rather than a narrow regionalism—very little of all this will be replayed in the life of a Kannada writer of the generation coming up today. Political passion is now more likely to fuel the creativity of those from marginalised groups rather than the Brahmin middle class. Someone as steeped in English literature as URA was—and as Adiga, Ramanujan and P Lankesh were—is, today, unlikely to possess their highly developed bilingualism. And English literature itself no longer has the same relevance to Indian writers. The United States, rather than England, is more likely to attract the young intellectual.
That the main source for URA’s writing was his own biography shows that he was aware of its generational uniqueness. Reading him is revelatory of a twentieth-century Indian zeitgeist that is now—and not least because of the horrors he captured in his final book—fading out. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/ambivalent-indian-ur-ananthamurthy/comment-page-1 | en | 2016-08-02T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/028862fc3749fd79860e2e7d6c6a9457fae08cdadb22c776188d2fe67fcae838.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:49:10 | null | 2016-08-24T14:01:44 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fcaste-shaped-experience-rohith-vemula-students-university-hyderabad.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/From-Shadows-to-the-Stars_The-Caravan-magazine_May-2016_06.jpg | en | null | How Caste Shaped the Experience of Rohith Vemula and Other Students at the University of Hyderabad | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
Today, the Indian Express reported that a one-man panel set up by the Ministry for Human Resource Development (MHRD) to probe the caste identity of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar from the University of Hyderabad (UoH), ruled in its report that Vemula did not belong to the Scheduled Caste community. AK Roopanwal, a former Allahabad High Court judge appointed to the panel in January this year, submitted his report to the MHRD in the first week of August, the Indian Express reported. In January, Vemula’s suicide sparked a series of protests on the UoH campus, which then spread throughout the nation. After his death, several politicians attempted to avoid getting charged under the Prevention of Atrocities (SC/ST) Act by claiming that, because his father belongs to the Vaddera caste—classified as OBC, or Other Backward Class—Vemula was not a Dalit.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) also took up the issue of Vemula’s caste identity. On 22 June, it issued a report confirming that Vemula was a Dalit. The commission noted that as someone brought up in the SC community, he was to be treated as part of it. In June, PL Punia, the chairman of the commission, said that the police will “have to act on atrocity charges against the accused.” On 4 August, the NCSC asked the Cyberabad police to expedite the investigation into the suicide of Vemula’s suicide, and to file a chargesheet “at the earliest.”
For his May cover story, ‘From Shadows to the Stars,’ Praveen Donthi investigated the rise of the Ambedkar Students’ Association, the student political organisation of which Vemula was a member, and how UoH students suffered under an oppressive administration. In the following extract from the story, Donthi details the accounts of various Dalit students, all of whose experiences on campus were shaped by their caste identity.
The recent success of the ASA in the student politics of the University of Hyderabad belies the incredible hardships that most of its members have endured to enter the world of academia. In Vemula’s case, much of his story remained hidden while he was alive, emerging only when reporters descended on the university after his suicide. “Even his closest friends did not know the entire family history. Everybody knew bits and pieces,” wrote the journalist Sudipto Mondal in a biographical report in the Hindustan Times.
Radhika Vemula, Rohith’s mother, was informally adopted from a Dalit Mala labourer family by a woman named Anjani Devi, who belonged to the OBC Vaddera caste. But rather than treat her as a daughter, she treated the girl as a maid. Devi kept Radhika’s caste a secret and married her off to Mani Kumar, a Vaddera. On discovering the truth, Mani Kumar, who used to beat Radhika already, grew even more violent. When she moved back to Devi’s house with her two sons and a daughter, they continued to be treated as servants.
“Yes, this is our truth,” Raja, Rohith’s brother, told Mondal. “This is the truth that my brother and I would want to hide the most. We felt ashamed to reveal that the woman we call ‘grandma’ is actually our master.” Vemula’s childhood friend Sheikh Riyaz told the paper that his “family story haunted Rohith all his life,” and that he “faced caste discrimination in the house where he grew up.” But, he added, Vemula did not give up hope for his future. “Instead of succumbing, Rohith fought it out,” Riyaz said. “He broke many barriers before he got to the final stretch, his PhD. He gave up when he realised he could go no further.”
Vemula hinted at his origins in a July 2015 Facebook post about a renowned Telugu poet. “Mahakavi Gurram Jashuva (1895-1971) was the first compelling organic Dalit voice in Telugu literature, who exposed the hypocrisy of caste ideology,” he wrote. “Jashuva was born to a Dalit (Madiga) woman and Golla (BC) father. He, in his whole life strongly asserted his mother’s identity and voiced for the abolishing of untouchability and for women rights.” Vemula, too, embraced the identity of a Dalit. After his death, politicians attempted to avoid being charged under the stringent SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act by claiming that Vemula was not a Dalit. “They are trying to erase his whole existence,” Leonard told me. “The life he lived as a Dalit.”
Other ASA students had broken through similarly complex webs of experience. Uma Maheshwara Rao told me that his grandfather was a beggar, and that he himself had had to work as a daily labourer to fund his education. Many other ASA leaders support their families financially while running the movement.
Seshaiah, one of the rusticated students, recounted how reading Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste had shaken up his life. “Then I realised how the Hindu society oppressed us and why Ambedkar hated Hinduism,” he said. This led him to aggressively reject even the traces of Hinduism in his life, which were associated with close personal memories. “I used to keep an idol of Subramanya Swamy in memory of my mother who passed away in my childhood,” he said. “I also had a Hanuman idol because some teacher told me he is a tribal. I threw those two things away from the window of my hostel.”
Another student told me about the particular problems that he faces as a Dalit Christian. “If I don’t have a Christian name, the church in the village won’t allow me to get married,” he said. “If I have a Christian name, I can’t avail reservation, which is my right as a Dalit.” A Dalit’s “status doesn’t become any better” through conversion, he said. “I have to suffer the same humiliation and discrimination. We are forced to have two religions and two names.”
Students who escaped oppressive environments were often dismayed to reach the university and find that similar kinds of hostility awaited them there. “Back home they are big people, their families are proud of them,” but in the university, they are seen as people “who don’t belong,” Leonard, who is a Dalit Christian, told me. People look at Dalit students and ask, “Why are you even here?” Leonard said. “We are not imagined as people sitting in the library, attending seminars, talking to a professor, engaged in research.”
Many students I spoke to described how faculty members discriminated against Dalit students, usually under the guise of maintaining “merit” as a standard in the university. “There is a wide gap between the social background of the teachers and some of the students,” G Haragopal, a retired professor of the university, told me. “Some of the faculty members carry a lot of prejudices with them. They are not just indifferent but their attitude borders on hostility. I don’t think it ever strikes them that transforming the society is also the responsibility of an institute of higher learning.” As evidence of the system’s casteist bias, many students pointed out that even those who had been admitted to the university in the open category, and not on reserved seats, would find that on result notification lists, their names would have one star, two stars or a hash against them, corresponding to whether they were from a scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, or other backward class.
Gummadi Prabhakar explained that the bias against Dalits was only aggravated by the support that the government extended to them, in the form of fellowships. “The discrimination by the faculty increased manifold after that because we started wearing good clothes and shoes,” Prabhakar told me. “They felt like we were getting money for no good reason. And that we were wasting the country’s money.” He added: “The fellowships led to an identity crisis among Dalits. The economic problems got solved but the social problems remained unaddressed.” Satyanarayana echoed this idea. “Some of the enabling measures are turning out to be disabling,” he said.
Students told me that faculty often introduced academic obstacles to block students’ progress. One such hurdle was the introduction in the mid 2000s of coursework for PhD students. “The faculty introduced coursework in PhD, and said the guide will be allotted if you pass that,” Prabhakar said. “They would then fail them. There would be no fellowship. The coursework became a way to stop the benefits coming from the state to the Dalits.”
He cited Senthil Kumar, a PhD student of the school of physics, who killed himself in 2008, as an example of a student who collapsed under this kind of oppression. Kumar was the first member of his community in Tamil Nadu—known as the Panniyandi, and traditionally engaged in pig-rearing—to reach a university. He was awarded a fellowship for his PhD, but was failed by his supervisor in his coursework, and was then denied a guide for more than a year. In February 2008, he killed himself by consuming poison in his room.
Students told me that the administration also targeted their funds. “The new punishment of the universities is to cut the fellowships and economically hit you,” Satyanarayana said.
As the ASA helped Dalit students negotiate these challenges, it inspired fierce loyalty among its members. “My parents gave me birth,” Uma Maheshwara Rao told me. “But the rest, the words I speak, the chai I drink, the scholarship I draw, the dignity I have is all thanks to Ambedkar and the ASA named after him.” | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/caste-shaped-experience-rohith-vemula-students-university-hyderabad | en | 2016-08-24T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/3fa47ff59575815d241f7cd56027bc1e150ada1326b5161d17690bea8b42124e.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T12:47:13 | null | 2016-08-31T17:35:21 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fsanitation-workers-wadapally-denied-work.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Sanitation-Workers_Rahul-M_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_26-August-2016.jpg | en | null | Sanitation Workers in Wadapally Are Being Denied Work | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On the afternoon of 22 August, in Telangana, at the bank of the river Krishna at Wadapally ghat, around 20 people—dalits and tribal people waited for their names to be called. The twelve-day long Krishna Pushkaralu festival, which occurs every 12 years, had began on 12 August. Over 13 lakh of people had taken a dip in the river (there had been 8 lakh in Wadapally alone), and the area had to be sanitized. The people gathered there—elderly men, teenagers, women and college students from the nearby Wadapalli village—were to collect the religious and human waste.
They gathered around a well-built middle-aged man while he read out names from his register. The man was a supervisor for the sanitation work at Krishna Pushkaralu. He and an executive officer (EO) were there to hire workers for the state, to clean the area. But these workers’ names were never called. They had already worked for five days, but their names had now disappeared from the supervisor’s register.
For the first few days, the payment for the workers was going through the contractors who hired them, and who were in turn paid by the government. On 13 August, the district collector announced that the money would be handed directly to the sanitation workers instead. Those who cleaned the grounds would be paid Rs 415 per day, plus a meal worth Rs 75; and those cleaning the toilets would get Rs 500, as well as the meal. The collector said that district officials would directly oversee the payment distribution. The collector appeared to be reacting to a story published in the Telugu newspaper Eenadu that very day, which reported that the workers received less than half the money that the government had sanctioned them.
The EO asked the workers to leave. “Please go and ask the person who has brought you here,” the EO told them. “The 30 members whom the contractor has brought here are there in my list. My job is to see to it that these thirty people work properly.” Most of the people who were kicked out from the site wore their uniforms–flashy plastic coats and cloth caps—as if wearing the uniform would bring them work. Those whose names were missing complained that the contractors must have removed their names from the register because they were demanding the entire amount due to them.
“The contractors said they will pay us Rs 200 for this work, then the sirs”—district officials—“came and told us they will pay us Rs 400, since then the contractors have stopped talking to us,” Sundaramma, who was waiting for work, told me. “We have been telling the contractors that we will not pay them any cut from the money we earn. How can we pay them that money?” An older, more experienced worker said that the people whose names were on the lists were from far-off villages,and who had very little bargaining power. So,the contractors would get their money.
A few metres away from where I stood were workers who had finished their shift and had started seating themselves on the back of a tractor to return to their villages. Although they had finished their work, not many were sure about the amount of money they would be paid. Some told me they would be paid Rs 200 to Rs 250 for the day. In front of their vehicle stood a tall man. “He is the contractor who got us from the village,” a person who was sitting at the back informed me. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/sanitation-workers-wadapally-denied-work | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/f5000692d26e805221e07f36c533de9e302fc2d07cf1d5ee21d2841581f8aabb.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:50:47 | null | 2016-08-18T16:41:49 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Ftransgender-bill-discriminates-people-claims-protect.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Transgender-bill_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_18-August-2016.jpg | en | null | How the Transgender Bill discriminates against the very people it claims to protect | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
Waves of disappointment swept across the LGBTQI community when the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016 was recently approved by the cabinet and made public on 20 July this year. The bill disregards the landmark National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (NALSA) judgment delivered by the Supreme Court on 15 April 2014. This judgment had affirmed that transgender individuals have the right to decide on their self-identified gender.
Ostensibly aimed at empowering the transgender community, the new bill in fact dilutes several key provisions from previous versions, while injecting new language that could undermine protections extended for transgender persons in the country.
Transgender people have been at the receiving end of stigma, violence and discrimination by society on the grounds of their non-conforming gender identity. The NALSA judgment had taken cognizance of this fact and referred to gender identity as a person’s “deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth.” This affirmed the right of a transgender person to have the option of choosing to identify themselves either as a “man,” “woman” or “transgender.” The judgement further went on to explain and destigmatise transgenderism as a “benign normal variant of the human experience akin to left-handedness.”
The bill is a far cry from NALSA, which was applauded for its progressive stance on gender affirmation through an individual’s self-identification. It limits an individual’s right to self-identify by defining a transgender person as someone who is “neither wholly female nor wholly male”, “a combination of female or male” or “neither female nor male.”
On 11 August, I spoke to L Ramakrishnan, the vice president of Saathii, a non-governmental organisation working to curb the spread of HIV. As we discussed the bill shortly after it was released, Ramakrishnan told me that “by defining transgender individuals in terms of combinations of ‘male’ and ‘female’, the bill conveys the impression that transgender individuals are somehow incomplete.” He further explained how such language denies the individual agency by not recognising the right of transgender individuals to identify within the gender binary, only outside of it through the “Transgender” identity available for them. So if a man wishes to transition to a woman and not a transgender, that option seems to not exist under this bill.
By forcing a statutory definition for what constitutes gender, the bill creates a binary resulting in a person being either “wholly male or wholly female.” This lacks all nuance for transitioning identities or those people who do not prescribe to such a binary. Tripti Tandon, the deputy director of Lawyers’ Collective—a non-governmental organisation providing legal assistance to women, children and other members of marginalised groups—said that “Non-compliance with NALSA runs throughout the text of the bill, specifically in terms of defining who qualifies as a transgender person.” For self-identity to be out of the hands of the person themselves goes against the trans-rights movement.
The NALSA had clarified that a person could have their self-identified gender identity without mandating sex re-assignment surgery (SRS). It stated that “any insistence for SRS for declaring one’s gender is immoral and illegal.” This decision was progressive and aimed at putting a halt to the egregious practices of subjecting transgender persons to intrusive medical examinations to ascertain their gender. The new bill asks that transgender identity be verified by a District Screening Committee, which would comprise a medical officer, and psychiatrist or psychologist. According to Ramakrishnan, this “opens the floodgates to widespread pathologization of transgender identity and human rights violations.”
This draft of the bill does not take the complexity of transgender identities into account. Since the law in India is based on the paradigm of the gender binary of male and female, addressing how trans persons would use certain laws should have been the major concern in the bill.
For instance, there is no clear answer to the following scenarios: if a female-born person, who holds a government job, chooses to identify as a man, will the person lose their job? Can a pre-operative transman legally marry a cisgender (whose identity conforms to their biological sex) woman or risk running afoul of Section 377? Can a transwoman legally adopt a child? Can transwomen apply for jobs for women if they identify as women and not transgender? Can the Domestic Violence Act be used by transwomen?
The bill also does not extend equal fundamental rights to transgender persons as are enjoyed by cisgender persons. A closer look at the bill exposes the inherent discrimination that would be perpetuated once it becomes an act.
Section 19(d) of the bill states that whoever “harms or injures or endangers the life, safety, health, or well-being, whether mental or physical, of a transgender person or tends to do acts including causing physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse and economic abuse; shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months but which may extend to two years and with fine.” The bill does not specify the punishment for aggravated sexual crimes against transgender persons. Jayna Kothari, a lawyer and the founder of Centre for Law and Policy Research—a Bengaluru based non-profit organisation on public policy research—told me, “When it comes to sexual offences, the bill does not define the acts that constitute sexual offences, sexual assault or rape.” She added that it was important to provide a clear definition of rape is in the case of transgender persons. The bill’s failure to define the terms “abuse” and “endanger,” makes both the crime and its sentencing unclear. Kaushik Gupta, a lawyer at the Calcutta High Court who works on LGBTQI rights, said, “Aggravated crimes would not account for anything if the term ‘endanger’ is used so frivolously.” While the bill claims to protect the rights of transgender persons, it conflates sexual abuse with other forms of abuse, with punishments extending to just two years and an undefined fine.
The bill does little in addressing the need for the care and protection of transgender children. The only mention of children in the bill is in Section (5). This stipulates that for a certificate of gender identity, a transgender person has to approach the District Magistrate. In the case of a minor, such applications are to be made by a parent or guardian of the child. However, the bill does not take into consideration the fact that it would be highly unlikely for a parent to request for a legal transgender identity for their child given the prevalent transphobic atmosphere.
The bill should instead have had a provision that allowed a social welfare organisation, a human-rights NGO or a child-rights lawyer to make these applications on behalf of the children. There is also no mention of the role of a Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in the bill so as to address transgenderism in children. Tandon told me that the right to identify as transgender was an inherent right and not one that could only be realised after a certain legal age. She went on to say that the lack of conversation around transgender children was in violation of the fundamental rights of children with gender non-conformity and went against NALSA. When I conducted interviews with gender-rights activists, they often mentioned cases in which a transgender child had run away from home to escape abuse and violence, only to be picked up by the police, who would take the child to the CWC. The CWC, failing to recognise trans identities would dutifully direct the (in some instances, born male) child to dress and behave “like a boy” and put the child in a rehabilitation home for boys. The activists recounted terrifying stories of the abuse that gender nonconforming individuals were subjected to in such institutions. The bill’s failure to involve the CWC to address such issues is irresponsible and reeks of the inherent stigma around transgenderism. “If the bill is seeking to address discrimination then it should amend various other laws such as the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012) in the case of children to mention aggravated crimes sexual crimes against gender non-conforming individuals,” said Gupta.
The bill speaks of “inclusive education,” and recommends providing students with scholarships, free-waivers and textbooks. It also calls for all educational institutions to have an anti-discrimination cell to monitor discrimination against transgender students. However, it does not address the need for gender-neutral bathrooms and uniforms in schools. The inclusion of these within the school confines would reduce discrimination among students, including bullying as well as the sublimation of their gender identity.
The right of residence under Section (13) of the bill is also extremely discriminatory and conflicting with its own subsections. While the section ensures the right of transgender persons to reside in the homes of their parents or family, it contradicts itself in 13(c) by stating “Where any parent or a member of his immediate family is unable to take care of a transgender, the competent court shall by an order direct such person to be placed in rehabilitation centre.” This section takes away the right of residence of the transgender person and mandates that the court would have the authority to take a decision in “the best interest” of the person. Nowhere in the section is the consent of the said person—regardless of their age, mentioned. This could potentially give the family the leeway to harass and discriminate against the person and exclude them from their property. It also makes the courts the moral guardians for deciding the fate of the transgender persons by sending them to a rehabilitation centre.
Gupta believed that the bill should be redrafted keeping in mind The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. This act provides the aggrieved woman the right to reside in the house and removes the alleged abuser from the household. A similar clause, he said, should be included in this bill for the protection of transgender persons from abusive families.
The bill does not grapple with relevant issues like inheritance and property rights which concern transgender persons who are often banished from their families owing to their non-normative gender identity and sexual orientation and consequently, their property. The bill does not provide for the right to marry and to adopt, thus depriving transgender persons of fundamental rights under Article 14 of the Constitution available to cisgender persons. The bill remains woefully silent on the issues of reservations for trans persons, something that the NALSA had addressed and does not introduce anti-discrimination provisions. The NALSA had recommendations that asked to develop policies and legal frameworks to avoid ambiguities and grant basic civil rights such as access to health and public services, right to vote, right to contest elections, right to education, inheritance rights, and marriage and child adoption.
Section 19(1) of the bill seeks to penalise anyone who “entices” a transgender person to beg. Spence Jones, a researcher at the Human Rights Law Network, Mumbai, believed that the bill remained deliberately unclear on legally ascertaining how “enticing” is carried out, putting Hijra gurus in danger. These gurus run gharanas (schools) which are akin to family units for Hijras and some of them beg as a traditional profession. Such a law “disregards the stigmatic nature of begging, and the sociocultural systems that keep it in place, as a last resort for transgender persons who are denied access to employment in nearly all spheres of public and private life,” Jones said. In fact, provisions such as these could give immunity to the police to exert force on transgender persons.
The application of such laws are reminiscent of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871—which had declared around 150 tribes as criminal, giving the police wide powers to arrest and monitor their movements. As recently as 2011, the Karnataka Police Act was amended to include section 36A, “Power to regulate eunuchs.” This criminalised the Hijra community and gave the police similar sweeping powers similar to the Criminal Tribes Act, including greater surveillance and harassment. In November 2014, close to 200 Hijras in Bengaluru were arbitrarily picked up by the police and detained at the Beggar’s colony in the outskirts in Hoysalas. “The Beggar’s Colony, is an infamous ‘rehabilitation’ centre with deplorable living conditions and where unnatural deaths have been reported,” said Gee, a human rights activist based in Bengaluru. Sexual minorities remain the target of a number of laws, with charges ranging from public nuisance and theft to sex work, trafficking and begging.
The constant harassment and discrimination of trans persons has become a common narrative in their lives. This scenario needs to be combated through progressive laws and policies, which provide equal citizenship rights to persons with non-conforming gender and sexual identities by breaking the hegemonic codes of binary in law and society. This bill could have incorporated recommendations from NALSA in order to ensure equal citizenship rights to the trans community. Instead, it has ignored and trampled upon the Supreme Court’s judgement in NALSA, where it observed that the “moral failure lies in society’s unwillingness to contain or embrace different gender identities and expressions.” | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/transgender-bill-discriminates-people-claims-protect | en | 2016-08-18T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/65d0e859a519a9bbab34095270f2950db50e7ebebce81a99d62e5ae04ddd05f0.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T12:48:42 | null | 2013-06-30T11:25:57 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Freviews-and-essays%2Flong-march%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/files/_mg_8063_srrgb_0.jpg | en | null | A Long March | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | IN THE MIDDLE OF A DAY’S MARCH, a band of guerrillas rests in a clearing in the forests of Chattisgarh. They sit in a circle, without speaking. A young woman with short hair and bright eyes, cradling her weapon, breaks their silence. “I saw what the police did in my village, to the women … and that is why I joined the PLGA”—the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army, the military wing of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). “At first, whenever we went on an ambush, I used to be scared, but then I would remember…” It takes little to fill in her ellipsis.
Later, we see her among a knot of dancers, in the middle of a Bhumkal celebration, which is held to commemorate an early-20th-century tribal uprising, seen by the Maoists as a precursor to their insurgency. Soldiers, militia recruits, members of PLGA’s Cultural Squad, and hundreds of ordinary, unarmed forest-dwellers participate in the carnivalesque vigil, which brings the gun, the drum, the flute and the dream of rebellion together to remember common humiliations and a few uncommon victories. This is what the red ants dream.
Red Ant Dream (2013), the latest documentary from 55-year-old director Sanjay Kak, takes us into the world of India’s Maoists, especially the members of the PLGA, who are considered by the Indian state to be its “most significant security challenge”. Here, in the Dandakaranya forests in the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, Kak shows the rebels as human beings, not just as faceless insurgents. In doing so, he compels us to confront the conditions that produce the guerrilla who dances, as much as he asks us to think about the dancer who chooses to bear an automatic rifle.
Like much of Kak’s work, the film (which is about more than just the Maoists) takes us to places where aggrieved citizens confront the security apparatuses of the Indian state. In the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa, people resisting the devastation of the forests and the displacement of tribal inhabitants for the sake of Vedanta’s bauxite mine are labelled terrorists. In Chhattisgarh, a recording of an intercepted police wireless message coldly instructs subordinates to make sure that no journalists return alive from a foray into a combat zone, where torched villages, destroyed homesteads, and the remains of “neutralised” teenagers can be found. A lot of this material, which makes its way into the film through found footage, seems to point to the reality of India’s massive counter-insurgency offensive aimed at destroying the Maoist presence in Central and Eastern India. This, Kak seems to say, is how the Indian state secures itself against its own population.
There is little doubt, then, that Red Ant Dream shows us something true, though nightmarish, about a time through which many of us may have been sleepwalking. In this respect, it is of a piece with Kak’s earlier films, which have documented resistance movements in Kashmir, the Narmada river valley of Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab, among other places. Kak, who began experimenting with film in the years after Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency, is a chronicler of what he calls “the current, ongoing undeclared state of emergency, which began around 2000”. During this emergency, opposition to what many see as the neo-liberal economic agenda of the Indian governing classes began to gather momentum in a series of popular movements across the country. Long-standing battles against military occupation in Jammu and Kashmir and in north-eastern states, especially Manipur, intensified. In many other parts of the country, there were renewed protests against assaults on industrial workers, against forcible land acquisition, deforestation, displacement, urban dislocation, nuclear power plants and big dams.
The Indian state’s response to these movements has been a series of repressive legal and extra-legal measures, such as the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act—or TADA and POTA, to use their ungainly acronyms. All of this constructed a frame within which judicial harassment, disappearances, preventive detention, torture and extra-judicial assassinations, known as encounters, could be exercised as instruments of governance.
Kak’s work has always been an attempt to engage with and understand the state’s responses to peaceful as well as violent challenges to its power. To do this, Kak and a frugal crew have walked with many thousands of people—to demonstrations, on patrols, to work, to count the living and the dead, to farms, to dam sites, to meetings and rallies, to gatherings, departures and fights. Over the years, these walks have taken Kak a long distance—from celluloid to analog and then to digital video, from being a consummately reasonable young man to becoming an agile and gracefully aging rebel. From being a filmmaker who would stand and watch people walk, he became a filmmaker who began walking with them.
To see how Kak got here, it is necessary to look backwards to Jashn-e-Azadi (2007), in which he recorded the struggle for freedom in the Kashmir valley, and to Words on Water (2002), in which he captured the state’s and judiciary’s responses to a non-violent mass movement, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement). It is necessary, perhaps, to go even further back in time, to films such as One Weapon (1997), which looked at those who took up the vote, not the gun, as their weapon.
Kak was born into a middle-class Kashmiri Pandit family, and had an itinerant but otherwise unremarkable boyhood following the twists and turns of his father’s army postings and making routine visits to their ancestral home in Srinagar. In 1975, at the beginning of the Emergency, he entered the elite bastion of Delhi’s St Stephen’s College. It was a time marked by a climate of suspicion and a strange hybrid of kitsch patriotism and the cult of personality. For Kak, like many young people of his generation, the Emergency was the first event to erode the trust in an ordered democratic society. “The Emergency was a watershed, wasn’t it?” he recently said to me. “It changed the way you looked at everything—at even the smallest of things.”
Kak’s perspective on the world became increasingly focused on the particular. After graduating St Stephens, he did a Master’s degree in sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, which helped shape this new way of seeing. “Sociology, or at least the way it was taught in D-School at that time, made it difficult to generalise about any society in broad terms,” he said. “One had to learn to be precise, and to base one’s observations and opinions on actually being with people, on asking them about their lives.”
This concern with other individuals’ lives slowly began to find expression, as Kak moved “in fits and starts” towards what he “later came to understand as documentary film,” he said. “It meant getting away from any notion of privileging the way you think things ought to be. You have to stick to the way things are, instead.”
Kak began making films in earnest in the late 1980s. At the time, the thin tissue of a post-Emergency social and political consensus, a patchwork of half-hearted gestures towards a more inclusive polity, was beginning to rend. In the coming years, Kashmir would erupt; Tiananmen Square would shake many certainties; the Berlin wall would come down; the anti-Mandal agitation would bring the issue of caste out into the open and onto the streets of Delhi; satellite television would bring the Gulf War to the capital; and the mosque at Ayodhya would be demolished.
At the same time, documentary filmmaking in India, which had already been given a definitive political turn just after the Emergency by the activist work of Anand Patwardhan, began to acquire an even sharper edge. The very idea of the “independent filmmaker”—someone untied to an institutional or commercial imperative—was fresh. The first video cameras were beginning to appear in their hands and the first computers on their desks. It was a time of dangerous, sometimes delightful, uncertainty.
In cities and towns across the country, documentary filmmakers, cinematographers and editors began to meet to show and discuss each others’ work and to find new audiences and solidarities that would mature in time to fashion lively and active film-viewing and discussion cultures—on college campuses, in informal gatherings, during impromptu festivals with names like ‘Films for Freedom’ and through new channels of distribution made possible by digital technology.
Kak was in the thick of this change, together with several other filmmakers, including Pankaj Butalia and Ruchir Joshi; Reena Mohan; Vasudha Joshi and Ranjan Palit; Nilita Vachani and her brother, Lalit Vachani; RV Ramani; Soudhamini; the Media Storm Collective, Rahul Roy and Saba Dewan; and Amar Kanwar. As a young graduate from a film school, and a member of a collective—Raqs Media Collective—that had just been formed, I recall sitting on more than one occasion in the South Delhi basement office of Octave Communications, Kak’s production agency. Listening to the talk of our senior colleagues, it was hard not to be infected by the excitement that we were part of something larger than worrying about the funding for our next project. We were all not just making films or dreaming of making films, but we were also thinking about the ways in which we saw the world.
Although this was a period of intense activity, Kak’s films were yet to acquire the political edge that they are known for today. He had already made a television film on everyday life in Punjab during the Khalistan movement (Punjab: Doosra Adhyay, 1986), a television series on the Ganga (Pradakshina, 1987); and documentaries on the post-Khmer-Rouge restoration of Angkor Wat in Cambodia (Angkor Remembered, 1990), and the Indian diasporas in Britain and South Africa, respectively (This Land, My Land, Eng-land and A House and A Home, both 1993).
THE DOCUMENTARY THAT MARKED Sanjay Kak as an explicitly political filmmaker—albeit one at a different point on the political spectrum from where he appears to be today—was One Weapon. Part of a series called India’s Quest that was produced by the Foundation for Universal Responsibility to commemorate 50 years of Indian independence, the film was Kak’s first extended engagement with mass expressions of dissent. It is in this film that he began walking with the people he was filming.
Each film in India’s Quest was meant to handle a different topic, and to provide material for discussions for high school and undergraduate university students throughout India. Kak chose the electoral process, and the way in which polls make a claim to represent the popular will. The film was shot in two widely disparate locations—Tamil Nadu, simmering with the renewal of an assertive Dalit politics, and Punjab, still recovering from the violence of the Sikh extremism and state repression of the 1980s and the early 1990s.
In Tamil Nadu, Kak followed the reformulation of the demand for a separate electorate by Dalit activists, who were trying to renew Ambedkar’s legacy in a political culture riven by the rhetoric of anti-caste movements and the ground reality of continuing caste-based oppression.
In Punjab, Kak followed a range of candidates, from the CPI(M), the CPI(ML), the Akali Dal and the Congress. But his focus was on those who pitched in from the margins: a Dalit Christian who campaigned for the Jat Sikh Congress satrap and then bitterly complained about how every promise was forgotten once elections were over; a CPI(M) candidate who stood up to Khalistanis and lived; a former Naxal-turned-Congress-worker who talked hesitantly, but clearly, about the meaning of state terror; and farmers and landless Dalit peasants who asked Kak whether he knew of any alternative to the vote as a weapon, and whether such an option would work. Through these voices, Kak told the story of a society beginning to use the elections as a means to talk to itself, after years of grim silence.
Watching One Weapon today, 16 years after it was made, the film seems laden with portents of the exhaustion of the vote as a weapon of change, and of the tensions between rhetoric and reality in public discourse about caste. At the time, however, Kak still seemed to assume that representative democracy in India remained a flawed, but perfectible idea. His questioning sincerity was transparent, as was his faith in what he saw as the ultimately democratic ethos of the state. This ethos might suffer distortions, Kak seemed to believe, but it remained open to correction and restoration—if not through electoral results, then at least through the very process by which elections offer various marginal sections of the population a part to play in the unfolding drama of democracy.
Kak’s next film took the walk that he began with One Weapon, as well as its logic, and travelled a much greater distance. Words on Water—a trek across all sorts of terrain—is a rich archive of the work of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), one of the biggest and most organised resistance movements in the recent history of South Asia.
The NBA, led by Medha Patkar (whom we see several times in the film, walking, organising, negotiating, getting arrested and staying her ground), began around 1985 as a small voluntary organisation committed to saving the ecosystems and communities that thrived along the Narmada in Central India from being wrecked by a series of big dams. As more and more people (totalling up to 250,000) began to be displaced by the development projects, opposition to the dams escalated, and the NBA emerged as the most significant and popular activist group within environmentalist politics in India. It attracted not just hardened grassroots organisers, but also dissident engineers, lawyers, and a wide spectrum of non-party Left activists who had reason to be wary of the local as well as global corporate interests that backed the big dams. The movement was confrontational but resolutely non-violent, and was almost obsessively wedded to a legalist confidence in the judicial process.
Words on Water is a kind of mirror to the NBA; through the film, we see the organisation thinking, changing tactics, retreating, advancing. Kak began filming the movement in 1999 and followed it until 2002. Every occupation of a dam site or a corridor of power is followed faithfully, every argument recorded. At every stage, the state’s undemocratic willingness to impose its developmental aims on an unwilling population is scrutinised, sometimes with rage, sometimes with laughter and song. The film showed the little disputes with lower-level administrators; the big tussles with global policy wonks; the protestors agitating in incessant rain; the counting of dead livestock; the vigil as water levels rose in a village; the debate over displacement figures; and the polemics over engineering, electricity and irrigation. In short, it countered a process that made people effectively invisible by reducing them to acronyms and numbers.
Words on Water exposed the daily confrontations between the state and citizens over the question of dams and development. In an especially telling sequence, a bureaucrat surrounded by protestors at a construction site of the Maheshwar Dam on the Narmada hysterically insists that he is a servant not of the Siemens company, which had stakes in the dam at that time, but of the Indian constitution and the parliament—even as the policemen accompanying him bundle protestors into vans to take them to a nearby jail in Mandaleshwar. (Here, we see Arundhati Roy, Kak’s interlocutor and steadfast companion on several of his adventures, being pushed into an SUV that, according to Kak’s voiceover, belonged to the textile company S. Kumars, which was promoting the building of the dam. The vehicle was ostensibly headed for the same detention facility.) Soon, the prison gets so overcrowded that its staff deserts, turning the compound into a vast protest camp.
Throughout Words on Water we see the NBA triumph: it mobilises thousands of people, shapes public opinion, isolates and shames a complicit bureaucracy, and even persuades international agencies such as the World Bank and companies such as Siemens to drop their stakes in the project. The film shows us the movement acting like a model of what democratic civic action ought to be.
Yet, all this was reduced to nothing by one stroke. In October 2000, the Supreme Court, in a majority judgement authored by Justices BN Kirpal and AS Anand, gave the go-ahead to the Narmada dam projects. In their decision, the justices wrote, “the re-settlement and rehabilitation of people whose habitat and environment makes living difficult does not pose any problems.” But the film, which was released in 2002, would show what resettlement and rehabilitation mean. In a striking scene, a government contractor carpets the barren soil of a “rehabilitation site” with a thin layer of fertile black soil.
The Supreme Court judgement on the Narmada issue served as a perverse anti-climax to Words on Water. The cosmetic treatment of the earth and the cavalier treatment of people, approved by a Supreme Court judgement, seemed to break Kak’s confidence in constitutional measures as modes of redress. The possibility of a politics that appealed to the fairness and better judgement of the state began to evaporate.
THE BLOWS OF THIS DISAPPOINTMENT would be compounded just over a year later, on 13 December 2001, with the attack on the Indian Parliament by a group of men whose identity remains shrouded in mystery even today. The spectacular violence, which was captured on television cameras and broadcast to the nation, led, among other things, to the framing of SAR Geelani, a lecturer of Arabic at the University of Delhi, on false charges of terrorism. The 13 December case, as it came to be known, exposed another dark layer in the way the state operated in India. An intercepted telephone conversation in Kashmiri between Geelani and his brother was deliberately mistranslated to English to make it sound like a discussion about the attack on the Indian parliament.
Kak, who had never taken his Kashmiri identity seriously until then, found himself entangled in the case as it unravelled. He was approached by Nandita Haksar and Vrinda Grover, both of whom were associated with the legal defence of Geelani, to act as a witness and translate the phone intercept for the court record. His translation of the intercept, a simple act of matching what was said in Kashmiri to what it actually meant in English, turned the public perception of Geelani’s trial on its head and brought Kak face to face with the duplicity and the terror that the Indian state had been unleashing in Kashmir for decades.
The Narmada ruling and the Geelani trial unfolded against a backdrop of intensifying state control. If the 1980s and the 1990s had been a time of searching, of negotiating an increasingly fractious space, the early 2000s were, in the eyes of Kak and many others, a second 1975. Legislation such as TADA and POTA was used to target a range of vulnerable Indian citizens. Trade unionists in Gujarat and scores of young people from Muslim ghettoes in Mumbai, Hyderabad and elsewhere were booked on terrorism-related charges, most of which went unproven. Although TADA and POTA were eventually allowed to lapse, their mandate was simply transferred to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Meanwhile, the National Security Act, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and various public security acts were already operational, as were standing legislations on sedition and “waging war against the state”. Following 9/11, the Bush administration’s “global war on terror” found ready takers in the Indian security establishment, who used US policy to support and justify a robust agenda of authoritarianism by stealth.
Ultimately, SAR Geelani was acquitted. (It turned out that the infamous phone conversation was about a trivial domestic matter.) But for Kak, the nature of politics and social life in India had been fundamentally altered. “I think I lost any remaining trace of trust I had in the state around the time of the Narmada judgement,” he told me. “I had been making that film for years, and the case itself was being heard for something like six years in the court and then it all changed. I had to examine all my assumptions all over again. And then by this odd set of coincidences, with the whole business of the translation of the Geelani telephone tap transcript, the parliament attack case pivoted me into trying to understand what was happening in Kashmir.” He started work on a film that would widely influence the way Kashmir was perceived south of the Banihal tunnel.
From 2003 onwards, Kak made several trips to Kashmir, but it seemed to him that a film on the region was almost impossible to make. He was a Pandit, an outsider, a person from Delhi. (Kak’s parents had left Kashmir long before the troubles in 1989 started, and didn’t feel they had been compelled to leave. To this day, Kak, who thinks of Delhi as home, has relatives in Srinagar, and says that he never felt like a refugee.) “Nobody knew what I was up to,” he said. “I never hid the fact that I came from a family that had a history in the armed forces, that I had come with an open mind, with no prior conclusions.”
Finally, patience, the greatest virtue for a documentary filmmaker, began to yield fruit. Perhaps his persistence made people trust his intentions. Conversations led to conversations, leads opened up, and footage—an informal archive of amateur videos capturing testimony, funerals, army operations, and resistance actions—began to arrive. Sometimes it came in the form of fungus-laden VHS tapes, which had to be unspooled, cleaned and dried in the sun. Soon, Kak began to make trips with a cameraman, his frequent collaborator Ranjan Palit, and sometimes he shot on his own—interviews, landscapes, interiors, and the sudden staccato burst of gunfire as a shootout began on camera. A mountain of material began to accumulate on his editing table.
Without a story, but with almost epic elements—including competing choruses of mourners, folk performers, people who counted and buried the dead, psychiatrists and poets, soldiers and militants, children and ruins—putting a film together was a challenge. Kak began working with a new editor, Tarun Bhartiya, who examined the footage with an eye not for continuities, but for ruptures. The film, which would be called Jashn-e-Azadi, acquired a jagged, contrapuntal elegance—a style that would also characterise Bhartiya’s collaboration with Kak on Red Ant Dream.
Jashn-e-Azadi had almost no individual characters who carried it on their shoulders. It had no heroes, no bad guys—just the violence of a brutal military occupation, its routines of checkpoints, cordons, and searches. It also showed the everyday life of resistance: slogans, singing, stone pelting, and the hypnotic rhythmic incantation of the words that the film brought south of Kashmir into the rest of India: “Hum kya chahtey? Azadi!” (What do we want? Freedom!)
Despite Kak’s obvious sympathy for calls for national liberation in Kashmir, he was not blind to the damage that the movement wreaked on a fugitive minority, the Kashmiri Pandits, who were displaced in its wake.
Kak handled the Pandit story with grace and dignity—not through the chest-beating exhibitionism of competitive victimhood, not through a demonisation of the majority community, but through a poetic precision enabled by a telephone exchange with a Kashmiri Pandit poet Pyaare “Hatash” (a nom de plume that translates to “the despairing one”). From a refugee camp in Jammu, over a phone line that kept cutting out, Hatash recited poems of loss, of looking at the mirror and finding a stranger, of abandonment and exile. Kak juxtaposed this with images of a derelict Pandit neighbourhood: shuttered windows, the spire of an abandoned temple.
In another remarkable sequence in Jashn-e-Azaadi, Kak comes upon an old man walking through a labyrinth of headstones in the Martyrs’ Graveyard in Srinagar in mid-winter, looking for his son’s grave. When Kak asks him some questions, he responds, in Kashmiri, as if he were not even registering the fact that someone was asking him what he was doing in a snow-covered graveyard. Finally, the father finds his son’s grave. He clears the snow on the gravestone to read the date of his son’s killing, stands silently for a while, and then says, “That’s it, that is enough. It was a feast day, and I thought I would come and spend some time here, that’s all.” Then he walks away. With every passing year, the number of graves in that graveyard only grows. But the act of looking for the headstone, of cleaning the grave—a small, private act—stands out as a mark of the things that need to be done so that the living may remain alive.
Jashn-e-Azadi changed the way Kashmir was looked at and understood in India, and it was no surprise that many groups tried to prevent its screening. Extreme right-wing organisations wedded to the cause of the Kashmiri Pandits (such as Panun Kashmir and Roots in Kashmir) tried to disrupt screenings more than once. They also filed police complaints, which sometimes resulted in the cancellation of screenings, especially at educational institutions. Kak, a veteran of campaigns against the censorship of documentary films, was suddenly faced with the prospect of prohibitions on his own work.
But such attempts at censorship could not succeed in limiting the proliferation of samizdat screenings all over the country—in homes, workplaces and colleges. Copies of the film were downloaded and transferred on hard drives and discs; cheap projectors turned any flat wall into a screen; and Kak spoke with audiences via Skype. Kak realised that digital filmmaking had not only made it possible for him to shoot with an agility and an economy that was impossible to think of before, and to experiment with an entirely new editing structure—it had also enabled a new form of distribution and a new viewing culture for documentaries.
The more efforts were made to prevent people from seeing Jashn-e-Azadi, the more it was seen. Would-be censors tried to take the fight online, maligning Kak and those who endorsed his right to screen his film as “terrorist supporters” and traitors. The paradoxical result was an explosion of writing, discussion and arguments not just about Jashn-e-Azadi, but also about Kashmir—so much so that it could be said that the arguments around the film prepared a generation of young Kashmiris and their friends for the many online battles that were to follow, especially around 2010, when what became known as the stone-pelters’ intifada broke out in Kashmir.
SOMETIMES, despite the most sincere efforts, the momentum that a work finds itself caught up in may impress upon it a very special set of flaws. In a way, Kak’s latest film is flawed because of his over-identification with the subjects. In Red Ant Dream, he has apparently felt compelled to abdicate his natural questioning stance about his protagonists’ political intentions, and the consequences of their politics.
The primary example of this is a recorded interview with Azad, the late Maoist ideologue, which punctuates the film’s soundtrack on two occasions. Instead of a considered exploration of how the Maoists seek to overcome capitalism and transform social relations, the voice offers platitudes about restoring the forests to the adivasis. Kak does not scrutinise Azad and the Maoists’ identification of protracted war with social revolution. The film’s reticence in the face of Azad’s clinical elucidation of the Maoist line could be read either as a sign of hesitation (and perhaps a veiled criticism) or at least a puzzlement in the face of such calmly expressed certainty about the unfolding of complex political processes. Is this a failure of nerve, or a sign that the method of the long observational documentary is itself inadequate to the task? What might this inadequacy be? Can a film that invokes revolution afford to not interrogate its claims?
What the film does is explore what “security” means for the person at the receiving end of the system of state power. At one point, Satnam, a radical Punjabi writer, reads a fragment of the assassinated Naxalite Punjabi poet Avtaar Singh Sandhu (Pash)’s poem ‘Asurakhya’ (Insecurity): “…if the security of the land calls for a life without conscience … and for the mind to prostrate before lecherous times, then the security of the land is a threat to us.” The film also reveals to us the absurd rituals of the state. A commando-training sequence filmed at the Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College in Bastar, with its drills, big talk, performing dogs and nervous commandoes, is a superb example of the meaningless theatricality of state power. The meaninglessness becomes transparent when we see soldiers look on in utter incomprehension as their commanding officer expounds theories of counter-insurgency.
Like Jean Genet in the Palestinian refugee camps, Kak in Bastar almost ends up as a “prisoner of love”, mesmerised by the unquestionable dignity of a guerrilla with her comrades or by the simple arithmetic of who suffers when central paramilitaries and Salwa Judum militias go about their work. There is something rare and moving in the film’s presentation of the camaraderie between young men and women combatants, in the ease with which they work and walk together, regardless of the flawed nature of their fight.
But this could have been the beginning of a question: what will the logic of war, its need for command structures and hierarchies, do to the dynamics that are known to follow a desire for revolution? Those dynamics could privilege openness and equality over secrecy and hierarchy, or seek to dissolve power into the hands of popular councils and assemblies, instead of “seizing power” in the formation of a new state. Although Kak invokes the Maoist resistance, he fails to interrogate its claims.
To understand the Maoists, we need more than a detailing, however lyrical, of the lives that cadres lead in the forest. We require a confrontation with the ideas that drive the Maoists. In Words on Water, the circumstances produced such a questioning. The film, although it consistently presented the NBA’s resistance as heroic, could not but reflect the outcomes that the movement’s arid faith in judicial and constitutional processes ultimately produced. The film did not look away from this fact; it opened up the possibility of a discussion of what went wrong. Why couldn’t the same intelligent skepticism have been applied to the politics of the Maoists in Red Ant Dream? We need to think carefully about what the red ants are actually dreaming.
A strange species of fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, found in tropical forests throughout the world, infects ants and alters their behaviour by finding its way into their brains. Once infected, the ants begin to behave erratically, leave their normal habitat and begin clutching the stalks and leaves of plants with their jaws, virtually locking themselves in a fierce death grip. The fungus then pierces through the ant’s head and explodes, scattering its spores so that they can infect more ants.
The Maoists’ fascination with the doctrine of “protracted people’s war” seems to me to be a similar species of contagion—one that will lead to consequences very different from what they imagine. In the short run, they may be inducing an element of fear in the consciousness of a ruling power. In the long run, however, they cannot but be leading themselves, and their dreams of revolution, into a kind of zombie state—compelled to keep fighting not in order to win, but in order not to lose. This does not mean one has to be dismissive of those who opt for the life of the soldier in the “people’s war”; it just means thinking seriously about what the war inevitably does to the people in whose name it is fought.
It is not surprising if vulnerable indigenous people in the path of the state’s development aims find their safety best guaranteed by the armed Maoists in their midst. But war, no matter how just its goals, can only freeze society in eternal combat. The film, however, goes no further than to assert that the war has been imposed by the state. (The Bhagat Singh quotation—“Let us declare that a state of war does exist and shall exist”—with which the film begins, and to which it returns, is one sign of this position.)
Even if the war has been imposed by the state—and let us assume that this is the case—the necessary thing to do is attempt to subvert the state’s war with a kind of revolutionary politics that makes war ineffective. This does not mean an anodyne pacifism; an open, perhaps non-violent, but no less ardent confrontation can worry the state far more than a clandestine war. The ways in which ordinary, apparently leader-less, people all over the world, from Tahrir to Taksim square, are standing up to sovereign power points to the long-term potential of networked revolutionary situations that may yet constitute the most significant challenge that the young 21st century offers to institutions of authority.
The political culture necessary for such processes precludes a secretive underground leadership wedded to the dream of “liberating” a nation-state with a peoples’ army. Perhaps it also precludes the idea of leaders and vanguards altogether. Maoism, however, cannot countenance these possibilities for itself. Instead, Maoists seek to thwart the aims of the state’s war with their own war—but fighting a defensive guerrilla war against a mighty state does not mean the same thing as creating a genuine social revolution.
A FLAWLESS FILM, or work, is a terrifying thing; it can only freeze all conversation in its wake by pointing to its own perfection. It is the flawed film, the film that leaves us moved but dissatisfied and itching, wanting to have a thousand arguments with its maker, that can actually contribute to an alleviation of our present misery. Although Red Ant Dream itself may be something of a missed opportunity, the discussion around it need not be so.
How to be lucid in the fog of war? How to maintain a regard for the clarity of questions in the crossfire of rhetorical claims? How to combine respect for those who are fighting to save their lives and their world with the need to ask those who lead them into the thick of battle a few clear questions? Red Ant Dream does not accomplish this, but it does provoke us to ask these questions for ourselves.
The films Kak has made live and grow because through them he listens to the ongoing conversations of our times. Sometimes they are fractious, sometimes coded in barely understandable signs. But the important thing is that the listening is restless, and the listener eager to go the next mile. Regardless of whether or not we want to make the trip with Kak, there will always be reason to be grateful for the footage that returns with him. The footage never ends because the walking never does. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reviews-and-essays/long-march/comment-page-1 | en | 2013-06-30T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/083c1cae10846fa94060fe43ab14accb2a36d9252646d73aff264c5791ac435f.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T04:46:22 | null | 2016-08-29T09:50:28 | Continuing protests in Gujarat since the Una incident have laid bare the failure of the BJP and its Sangh affiliates to assuage the anxieties of Dalits. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fperspectives%2Fraging-fires-gujarat-bjp-ideology.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Raging-Fires_The-Caravan-magazine_September-2016_01.jpg | en | null | In Gujarat, the BJP’s ideology clashes with its electoral politics | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On 6 August, at a town-hall-style meeting in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke out against self-styled gau rakshaks, or cow protectors, declaring that 80 percent of them were fake. “I feel angry when people, in the name of cow protection, do business,” the Indian Express reported him as saying. It had been nearly a month since seven Dalits were flogged in the city of Una in Gujarat, for skinning a dead cow. Since then, the state had witnessed a storm of protests by Dalits, who took to the streets in rage against the assault. The agitations refused to die down in the weeks that followed, building pressure on Modi to address the issue.
The prime minister’s comments on the matter, however, both in Delhi and in Telangana the next day, were not an outright condemnation of those who unleash violence in the name of protecting cows. Rather, he directed his ire specifically at what he claimed were fake gau rakshaks—suggesting, perhaps, that there were also genuine vigilantes whose aggressive tactics of cow protection he found acceptable.
The prime minister’s remarks were followed by a quick succession of reactions from the Hindutva camp—specifically the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishva Hindu Parishad—that were indicative of the push-and-pull negotiations that take place within these organisations on key issues. The senior RSS leader Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi issued a statement the day after the Delhi meeting that broadly supported Modi’s views. Joshi called on people to separate the “condemnable efforts of a few opportunists” with those carrying out “the good work” of gau raksha.
The harmony was short-lived. The VHP soon took a far more hostile stand on the matter, with the senior leader Sunil Parashar issuing a statement on the same day as the RSS, declaring, according to the Indian Express, that “The Prime Minster has hurt the sentiments of gau rakshaks and he will have to pay for it in next Lok Sabha polls.” The RSS modulated its own response the very next day, with its spokesperson Manmohan Vaidya declaring, according to the Indian Express, that Modi’s “80 percent remark should have been avoided,” and asserting that the organisation remained committed to the gau raksha movement.
But the VHP continued to rattle its sabre. A few days later, the Times of India reported that the senior VHP leader Pravin Togadia had attacked Modi at a press conference in Delhi, accusing him of betraying those who had helped him become prime minister, and demanding that he withdraw his comments. The organisation also issued a call for a rally in Delhi to mark the fiftieth anniversary of a 1966 attack on the Indian parliament by gau rakshaks. On 20 August, the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, spoke out, declaring that gau raksha remained firmly on the organisation’s agenda—a marked change in tone and emphasis from the RSS’s initial response.
The Una flogging, the ensuing protests and the sequence of statements from Hindu organisations were a stark reminder of these groups’ struggles to balance their ideological commitments with the need to secure the support of Dalits to win elections, both at the centre and in states. Dalits make up a sizeable portion of the electorate in states such as Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, which, like Gujarat, go to elections in 2017. As protests by Dalits continued for weeks, the failure of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its Sangh affiliates to assuage the anxieties of Dalits was laid bare.
Historically, Dalits have not been a significant constituency for the BJP, which emerged in the 1980s as a primarily forward-caste party. Dominated by leaders and members from the Brahmin and Bania castes, the party was essentially unwelcoming to Dalits. This was starkly visible in the early 1980s, when the new party led agitations against reservation policies that were introduced in Gujarat for government jobs and admission to educational institutions. Anti-reservation violence broke out in 1981 and 1985, in which Dalits were targeted, and many killed. Covering the agitations as a Gujarati journalist of a privileged caste background, I saw at close quarters the toxic bias among forward castes against Dalits.
This bias was also apparent in a memorandum that was prepared by the anti-reservationists to submit to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on his proposed visit to Ahmedabad in March 1985. The opening line of the memorandum stated: “This is the last-ditch effort by the students and people in Gujarat to save meritocracy.” It viewed the beneficiaries of reservations with utter contempt, asking the prime minister: “Would you yourself have 49 percent of the doctors on your medical panel from these reserved classes?” If not, it continued, “why should you treat the citizens of India as guinea pigs for social experiments?” The memorandum claimed that reservation not only produces “one bad professional, it generates a nexus of nincompoops at a higher decision-making and administrative level which will ultimately paralyse the whole nation.”
“It is a preposterous proposition,” the memorandum went on, “that reservation will uplift the standards of the backward classes and help them to integrate with the mainstream of the Indian middle class.” On the contrary, it claimed, reservation gave beneficiaries “a false sense of security and contentment, which are the enemy of a progressive and competitive society.” It added: “Just as a single polluting chemical factory upsets the ecology of the whole surrounding natural environment, such unnatural reservations pollute, corrode and ultimately destroy the very social fabric of the Indian society.”
The anti-reservation protests were led by forward-caste students and their parents, most of whom were from the Gujarati middle class and had formed groups such as the Akhil Gujarat Navrachana Samiti and the Akhil Gujarat Vali Mandal to bring attention to the issue. But they also had political support from the Sangh, particularly from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Sangh’s student wing. Local leaders of the BJP, including Ashok Bhatt, Harin Pathak and Ghanshyam Mehta, also participated in the protests. In mid 1985, Pathak and Mehta were arrested under the National Security Act for their role in the unrest—they were BJP municipal corporators at the time. A month earlier, three other local BJP leaders had been arrested, including another municipal corporator named Praful Barot. These leaders were later rewarded by the party with important posts, including city mayorships, state and central ministerships, and opportunities such as parliamentary tickets.
The anti-reservation agitation of 1985 began in February and continued into July that year, forcing the Congress chief minister, Madhavsinh Solanki, to resign. The accompanying bloodshed, which was of a greater scale than in 1981, originated from the protests, but was also backed by logistical support that suggested a high level of planning. “Shattering of Gujarat,” a compilation by independent social researchers of information about the violence, noted: “There seems to have been an organised, planned, prepared, intimidatory, almost terrorist quality to the violence.” According to the report, “Arsenals were stocked, weapons—crude (nail-studded cement balls, molotov cocktails) and relatively sophisticated (bombs and country-guns)—were prepared obviously in advance, masses were used (particularly women) as shields for armed detachments, justifiable grievances as facade for subversive and punitive violence, judicial procedure as protection against administrative action.”
The Congress had the electoral advantage during these years. In the state election of March 1985, the Congress relied on a tested strategy of wooing a vote-bank comprising the state’s Kshatriyas (many of whom are deemed other backward class, or OBC, in Gujarat), Dalits (also known as Harijans then), Adivasis and Muslims—termed the KHAM formula. The strategy was boosted by Solanki, who, before the elections, announced an 18-percent hike in the existing 10 percent reservation for OBCs, in government jobs and educational institutions in the state—a move aimed at pleasing Kshatriya voters. With this, Gujarat had a 28 percent quota for OBCs, 14 percent for scheduled castes, and 7 percent for scheduled tribes. Even as the BJP was beginning to launch its opposition to reservations, the Congress won 149 seats in the 182-seat assembly. The BJP and the Sangh Parivar quickly realised that an anti-reservation stance would never fetch it political power in Gujarat.
In the years that followed, the party and its affiliates sought to drive a wedge into the Congress’s KHAM grouping. The Sangh Parivar, particularly the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, launched a massive drive to recruit Dalits into Hindu organisations. Many Dalits were given positions in the organisations, as mohalla presidents or street chiefs of the VHP or the Bajrang Dal. Many were also absorbed into Hindu sects such as the Swaminarayan and Brahma Kumaris sects. Some Dalits found jobs in these offices, and were gradually co-opted under the larger umbrella of Hindutva.
This process allowed the Hindu groups to break the bonds that had once existed between Dalits and Muslims. Since large sections of both communities were poor, and lived in neighbouring slum areas, a kinship existed between them, with Muslims often supporting Dalits when they came under attack from forward castes. This unity was reflected in a popular slogan of the time: “Dalit-Muslim bhai–bhai.” But over the years, as Dalits were wooed into the Hindutva fold, the communities were driven apart. The extent of this split was apparent in the Gujarat pogrom of 2002: as first information reports were filed in the aftermath of the violence, one of the major revelations that emerged was that Dalits—along with other marginalised communities—were some of the most active foot-soldiers in carrying out the massacres.
But the 2002 violence also left many Dalits feeling betrayed, as they found little support from those in power in avoiding the clutches of the law. Their original patron, the Congress party, which had once used them as a valuable vote bank, had begun to recede in prominence as the BJP, led by Modi, rose to power. The community’s resentment was compounded by the fact that their economic and social conditions had seen little improvement despite their supposed acceptance into Hindutva groups.
The story of Ashok Parmar, a Dalit, also known as Ashok Mochi, is indicative of the community’s experience. Parmar became one of the most famous faces of the 2002 violence after he was photographed wearing a saffron headband and triumphantly brandishing a metal rod as a fire raged behind him. In an interview to the website Indiatimes in August (in which he also denied participating in any violence), he asserted that “nothing has changed for the poor” in the state under Narendra Modi. “My financial condition is so bad I can’t even get married. People more educated than me are driving rickshaws because they cannot get jobs. All I have seen in the name of development in this area is the riverfront being made like Chowpatty (Mumbai) and two over-bridges. It has nothing to do with poor people like me.”
The Una flogging, which followed numerous widely publicised incidents of brutal violence by gau rakshaks across the country, heaped further humiliation on a community that had long been simmering with such resentment. As thousands took to the streets in protests, which occasionally spilled over into violence, the BJP was once again faced with a familiar paradox: how can it win the vital Dalit support it needs to hold on to power in states and at the centre, even as it clings to programmes such as cow protection, which form part of the core agenda of Hindutva groups? The conflicting signals on the issue that emanated from the prime minister, the RSS and the VHP, showed that the party is nowhere close to resolving this question. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/raging-fires-gujarat-bjp-ideology | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/38609936de76aa60ae48d2799c61a25fd2d038700842f20b89a5f0781873a942.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T08:49:03 | null | 2016-07-06T10:05:50 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fperspectives%2Fstates-of-disarray-gandhis-congress%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/States-of-Disarray_The-Caravan-magazine_July-2016-01.jpg | en | null | States of Disarray | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
It took three days, beginning on 12 June, for the Congress’s central leadership to appoint Kamal Nath as the party’s in-charge for both Punjab and Haryana, defend his appointment in light of vociferous criticism, and then agree to his giving up the posts. The move was so tone deaf—Sanjay Suri, a reporter for the Indian Express, had testified as a witness before both major inquiries into the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984 to put Nath at the head of a mob that burnt two Sikhs to death near the national parliament—that it spawned various conspiracy theories. Some suggested Nath had been set up by his opponents within the party. Some speculated that the whole thing was part of an elaborate plot to put the Congress’s involvement in the 1984 pogroms behind it. None of the explanations floated made much sense. All the episode did was lend greater credence to the notion that between Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi—effectively the Congress’s entire high command—two heads are worse than one.
Incredibly, one reason Nath was given these appointments was to handle the fallout from another bad call by the Gandhis. When Om Prakash Chautala, the head of the Indian National Lok Dal, asked the family to back his preferred candidate for a vacant seat from Haryana in the recent Rajya Sabha election, Sonia agreed without consulting the Congress’s unit in the state. That candidate was RK Anand, a former lawyer and member of the Rajya Sabha, who cross-examined witnesses of the 1984 violence before the Nanavati Commission on behalf of several senior Congress leaders, including Nath. For the Rajya Sabha post, he was meant to defeat Subhash Chandra, an independent candidate with backing from the Bharatiya Janata Party and the owner of the Zee media empire—whose channels have been particularly critical of the Gandhi family.
The command to back Anand was especially trying for Bhupinder Singh Hooda—a long-time Gandhi loyalist who served two terms as Haryana’s chief minister, and has taken flak over a land-allotment to Robert Vadra, Sonia’s son-in-law, and over the Gandhis’ alleged involvement in the National Herald case. Hooda and Chautala are both Jats, competing for Haryana’s crucial Jat voter base, and the Congress leader had to react against his rival if he wished to retain his stature in the community. In such a situation, instructions from Delhi count for little. After the state legislative assembly voted, 14 of the Congress’s 17 ballots were disqualified for being marked with a pen different from the one prescribed. There is very little chance that this resulted from a genuine mistake. In the eyes of many, it amounted to a tacit revolt by the state Congress unit against the central leadership.
These back-to-back incidents are in keeping with indications that the already haemorrhaging Congress is no longer able to even manage its own house, and that state units are defying the Gandhi family’s authority in unprecedented ways—including in states preparing for upcoming elections, where Congress defeats would severely undermine the chances of the party’s long-term national revival.
The most serious recent evidence emerged from the Congress’s defeat by the BJP in Assam. Contributing to that failure was the defection to the BJP of Himanta Biswa Sarma, who had spent over two decades with the Congress and done enough to expect that he would eventually take over the party’s state operations from the man who currently controls them, Tarun Gogoi. But as Gogoi’s son Gaurav gained prominence in the party, Sarma saw his chances fading away. He tried to reach out to Rahul Gandhi, but was rebuffed. “Rahul Gandhi humiliated me, Tarun Gogoi humiliated me, people witnessed this,” he told India Today after the BJP’s election victory in the state. “The problem with Rahul Gandhi is that he is not serious. I am very happy that Rahul Gandhi has got his lesson.”
Apart from the Gandhis’ arrogance in refusing to hold internal consultations, Sarma’s case illustrates a systemic problem that now bedevils the family’s control over the party. A Congress in national power could have accommodated Gogoi’s son in Delhi, and left Sarma, a seasoned leader, free to do his work in the state. But in a party without an overriding ideological commitment to keep members within the fold, the reduced ability to dispense power and wealth makes managing conflicting ambitions nearly impossible. Party members are particularly impatient since, with the Congress’s present trajectory, a future return to its earlier ways looks unlikely.
The Sarma phenomenon has repeated itself in Punjab, where the Congress veterans Jagmeet Singh Brar and Sukhpal Singh Khaira have left the party in the last six months. Neither was as crucial to the party there as Sarma was in Assam, but both were among the handful of people who could have taken on leadership roles once age forces the Congress’s leader in Punjab, Amarinder Singh, to give way. At the moment—with no replacement appointed for Nath, the many established leaders leaving, and the Punjab election looming early next year—the Congress may well be replaced by the Aam Aadmi Party as one of the two political poles in the traditionally two-party state (the Akali Dal, now allied with the BJP, is the other).
Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, which is likely to go to the polls early next year too, the Congress is trying to put up a brave front by finding a figure with some mass appeal to helm its campaign. The election strategist Prashant Kishor, who has a record of success with Narendra Modi in the last general election and Nitish Kumar in the last Bihar election, is now helping the Congress, and has made no secret of his desire to see that figure be Priyanka Vadra, Sonia’s daughter. But the family is unlikely to oblige him. In the event that it does, the loss that probably awaits the Congress given its present condition would destroy whatever residual cache the Gandhi name commands. Choosing someone else to lead the campaign—the former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit was seen as a candidate until she recently refused the party’s advances—would still be a matter of putting a face to a lost cause. The party’s only realistic hope in Uttar Pradesh is to replicate its Bihar strategy by playing second fiddle to a major state party—in this case, either the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Samajwadi Party. So far, the BSP’s leader, Mayawati, has rebuffed every approach, and so the less palatable choice of aligning with the SP may be all that remains. A Congress–SP alliance risks repeating the failure of the Congress–Left alliance in West Bengal, which found no way to counter a charismatic opposing leader.
After the elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, the party will head into an election in Gujarat, sometime around the end of 2017, and ones in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, sometime around the end of 2018. In each of these states, the Congress will go up against rivals that will have been in power for three consecutive terms—and it is very rare for a government to exceed that limit, with only the Left Front government in West Bengal so far having managed it. Under ordinary circumstances, with three terms of anti-incumbency acting in its favour, these are all elections where a Congress victory would have been taken for granted. It says something of the health of the party that it can’t now be sure of a win in any of these states.
In Gujarat, the acute centralisation imposed by Sonia and the failure of Rahul’s attempts to establish new leadership are weighing the party down. Ahmed Patel, Sonia Gandhi’s man Friday and currently a Rajya Sabha MP for the state, has no political standing of his own—he has never had any—but wields great power. Patel, however, has never managed to earn the trust of Rahul Gandhi, who has picked another political lightweight from Gujarat, Madhusudan Mistry, as his confidante. Patel and Mistry’s roles in ticket distribution and party organisation in the state are immense, and are based firmly on their connections to the Gandhi family. This, in effect, undercuts local leaders and the state unit’s power structure.
In Chhattisgarh, the long-term Congress member Ajit Jogi recently resigned to form a party of his own. He had been accommodated in Delhi for much of the past decade, but evidently no longer saw any future in that arrangement. He hasn’t yet expressed a desire to oppose the Congress, but this is only a question of his waiting to see which way the pre-election wind is blowing.
In Madhya Pradesh, the party is burdened both by Rahul spin-offs such as Jyotiraditya Scindia, a middling scion of storied political lineage, and old-timers such as Kamal Nath—who represents the state in the Rajya Sabha, and may yet be appointed to lead the party in the state despite the controversy in Punjab. This may not gain the Congress much in Madhya Pradesh, but it would leave the party even less capable of credibly raising issues against the BJP surrounding the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat. In any case, none of the Congress’s potential leaders in Madhya Pradesh has popularity beyond a single parliamentary constituency.
All of this demonstrates that, since Sonia took over the party in 1998, the Congress has failed to produce a single leader with mass electoral appeal. Instead, it has become increasingly dependent on Delhi-based lawyers and technocrats, who may be able to handle television debates, but do not contribute to the party’s political success. Rahul, who has been active in the party since 2007, has made desultory attempts to reinvigorate it by holding organisational elections, but these have also amounted to nothing.
In each of the state elections coming up over the next two years, the party faces two choices: to go it alone, as it did in Maharashtra, Haryana and Assam, where it was trounced by the BJP in a straight contest; or to choose allies, as it did in Bihar, and remain one, by no means dominant, partner in a larger formation. On the evidence so far, the former choice is no longer defensible, as the Congress seems incapable of taking on the BJP directly. Yet if the party fails to win against the BJP in at least two states out of Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, it can definitively forego any claim to being a national alternative to the ruling party. What it might be able to bring to a national anti-BJP alliance will hinge heavily on how it performs in Uttar Pradesh. With Sonia and Rahul in charge, the best the Congress can hope for is to be the first among equals in such a national alliance, but now even the chances of that are far from certain. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/states-of-disarray-gandhis-congress/comment-page-1 | en | 2016-07-06T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/06452af089ead7b4435eb98f4778273c45e34dd9cb8aa559a6031e8c767b95e4.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:56:17 | null | 2016-05-04T08:40:26 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fdespite-claiming-not-5-crore-pay-ngt-art-living-200-crore-worth-assets-80-crore-revenue%2Fcomment-page-2.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Sri-Sri-Ravishankar_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_4-May-2016.jpg | en | null | Despite claiming not to have 5 Crore to pay the NGT, the Art of Living has over 200 crore worth of assets and 80 crore in revenue | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
Between 11 to 13 March 2016, the volunteer-based non-government organisation, the Art of Living (AOL) group organised a World Cultural Festival. The event, held on the floodplains of the Yamuna, in Delhi, had over 3.5 million participants plodding on the fragile ecosystem. The festival, which “demonstrated the power of unity and peace,” came at a heavy cost. The entire area of the floodplain between the river and the Delhi Noida Direct highway had been levelled flat. The small water bodies in the area had been filled up; natural vegetation had been uprooted; and most of the trees had been “lopped or removed.” An enormous stage—1200 feet long, 200 feet wide and 40 feet high—had been erected, and the floodplains were littered with construction debris.
On 20 February 2016, a team led by Shashi Shekhar, Chairman of a committee appointed by the NGT visited the site near the DND flyover to observe the damage done to the site observed. They observed “In this entire area, the flood plain has been completely destroyed, and the large number of birds and other natural life that was supported by the floodplain has vanished due to this destruction.” The resulting backlash and the NGT’s acknowledgement that AOL had caused severe damage to the floodplains saw an interim fine of Rs 5 crore levied on the organisation.
Yet, despite the damning report, the NGT asked AOL to pay the fine before the event began. But the tribunal gave the event the go-ahead, noting that it would adjust the interim fine against the final compensation that AOL would subsequently have to pay for the damage to the floodplains an amount the NGT would decide later.” The fine was to be paid before the event was underway. On 11 March, Tripti Dhawan, a 69-year-old member of the board of Vyakti Vikas Kendra India (VVKI), a trust under AOL, gave an undertaking to the NGT that they would pay upto Rs 25 lakh on that very day and the remaining amount of Rs 4.75 crore would be paid over the coming three weeks. These weeks were ended on 1 April, and on 3 April, the trust requested the NGT to accept a bank guarantee of Rs 4.75 crore instead of submitting cash as it had originally undertaken.
Before agreeing to cough up the Rs 25 lakh, AOL had stated that it was unable to pay a sum as large as five crores before the event, that as a charitable organisation, it needed time to raise the amount. The AOL counsel, as reported by the Indian Express on 23 April, told the tribunal that the guarantee was as good as cash. The bench shot back, “Then why don’t you pay the cash?”
Considering AOL’s statement to the tribunal, one could be misled into assuming that the organisation is truly lacking for cash and dependent on charity from its followers. Consequently, one can’t be blamed if they think AOL’s finances are on shaky ground. However, this is far from the truth.
On conducting an an exhaustive global probe into the finances of the AOL trusts operating overseas, The Caravan found that the foundation and many of its other affiliate organisations are rolling in cash. We looked up the finances of AOL bodies filed with US, UK, Netherlands, Germany trade registers. While we were able to secure basic journal entries of three AOL firms operating from Switzerland, we were refused access to the detailed financial statements.
It is important to note that these figures are exclusive of the assets and revenues of three Swiss AOL entities, namely the International Art of Living Foundation, International Association for Human Values (IAHV) and Shankara Universal Gmbh, a limited liability company. The Caravan’s request for accounts of both the foundation and the company on 18 April were not entertained by the Swiss commercial register.
Via a global network of not-for-profits under the AOL banner, Ravi Shankar, the spiritual founder of AOL, heads over Rs 234 crore worth of assets, with over Rs 81 crore in latest revenues from the United States, United Kingdom and the Netherlands alone. The AOL website lists that the foundation has branches in over 155 countries. These figures are merely the tip of the iceberg and without proper knowledge of the assets and revenues of two Swiss entities, of which he is the president, the true picture of his real wealth will never emerge. The amount of 234 crores is derived at without access to the detailed financial statements from entities, trusts or bodies in Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Access was denied due to technical, logistical and banking issues.
As is evident from the tables, a majority of the earnings of these trusts comes from contributions received and course fees for holding events such as The Happiness Program (listed at $395 in the United States) or the Cursus Art of Breathing (listed at €300 in The Netherlands). In the case of Art of Living Health and Education trust, the entire revenue is almost entirely dependent on contributions made to it.
For another major non-profit, the Ved Vignan Maha Vidya Peeth, its assets in 2013 came to over 17 million. The Ved Vigyan Maha Vidya Peeth operates from New Hampshire, and whose Managing Director is Nirmala Murthy, a teacher in one of the AOL centres in the USA. The Art of Living foundation, in Fairfield, Iowa is headed by Ashwani Dhall, a software professional and the chairman of the board of AOLF for the last four years. The Art of Living Health and Education trust is based in Washington DC and its secretary is Ajay Tejasvi, a nephew of Shankar’s. Lastly, the IAHV, operating from Washington DC has Madhu Kadari, a hardware engineer, as its Treasurer. The assets of the IAHV, USA notched up slightly above 1 million. Other trusts like the Art of Living Foundation, UK; Sankara Europe BV and Shankara Europe Holding BV and the Art of Living Health and Education Trust take the total assets to over $35 million, which translates to Rs 234 crore, as per the current conversion rate.
According to the IAHV US website, the trust was formed by Shankar in 1997 as a “a global platform for humanitarian initiatives that solve problems by uplifting human values.” The IAHV is registered in a number of countries, which includes France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and many others. It is also registered in St Lucia, a notorious tax haven.
Another interesting aspect is the manner in which these not-for-profits and other entities around the world have been structured. More often than not, Shankar’s name does not figure in the list of the board members of trusts. However, he does figure prominently at the top of table as the president of the International Art of Living Foundation and as the president of the Swiss IAHV. In the journal entry of IAOLF of the Swiss trade register, Shankar’s name is been listed as Venkatratnam, Ravishankar Ramanayakanpet and his sister Bhanumathi Narsimhan has been given the position of vice president. The IAOLF is also a partner in another Swiss LLP called Shankara Universal Gmbh headed by Ajay Mathradas Khimji. The Khimji family in Oman operates in a number of sectors including consumer goods, infrastructure and industrial products and, according to the website arabianbusiness.com, is one among the 50 wealthiest entities in Oman.
A number of AOL organisations across the globe work under the Shankara label. In Germany, Sri Sri Ayurveda GmbH’s share capital is held by Shankara Europe Holding BV, a Netherlands company. Shankara Europe Holding BV also owns 100 percent of Shankara Europe BV. Whether all these companies are in turn held by Shankara Universal GmbH, the Swiss LLP is a question that remained unanswered as the Swiss trade journal entry that we accessed did not state the corporate interests held by it.
In reply to a comprehensive questionnaire sent on 29 March and again on 23 April, the AOL media team refused to submit the accounts of its Swiss firms. We were told that “all the relevant details of the Art of Living are available in the public domain and on our websites.” Our attempts to find the accounts of the Swiss firms was not successful. Additionally, in reply to our request for Shankara Universal GmbH, the AOL media team told us, “Shankara Universal Limited (SUL) is a recently established company associated with the International Art of Living Foundation which is not yet fully functional. We hope to have it running by the end of the year. PricewaterhouseCoopers [the multi-national accounting firm] are our auditors for the International Art of Living Foundation.”
Our investigation suggested that Rs 234 crore was in fact a minuscule amount of the foundation’s assets. Furthermore, a large amount of what these overseas trusts of the AOL receive in charity and as event and course fees are remitted back to India as foreign contributions. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/despite-claiming-not-5-crore-pay-ngt-art-living-200-crore-worth-assets-80-crore-revenue/comment-page-2 | en | 2016-05-04T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/046d8bf973346600cd531131c4c0e3bc488201a32f19def7e66d5b0fa5fc9777.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:52:54 | null | 2016-08-15T11:01:16 | A reappraisal of the current situation must begin with the simple assumption that in our democracy, the freedom of the news media is an end in itself. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fneed-press-freedom-bill-government-may-not-want-one.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Freedom-of-Press_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_15-August-2016.jpg | en | null | We Need a Press Freedom Bill, Even if the Government Doesn't Want One | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On 29 July 2016, Outlook magazine digitally released an investigative report called “Operation #BabyLift,” the cover story for its 8 August issue. The story, written by Neha Dixit, an independent journalist, detailed the manner in which outfits that belong to the Sangh Parivar had abducted young girls from Assam to indoctrinate them. Less than a week after it was released, on 4 August, Subhash Chandra Kayal, the assistant solicitor general of India at the Guwahati High Court, Bijon Mahajan, a lawyer and spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) and Mominul Awwal from the BJP’s minority cell, filed a complaint at the Latasil police station in Guwahati, alleging that Dixit’s story incited communal hatred. The police registered a first information report against Indranil Roy, the publisher and executive director of the magazine, Krishna Prasad, then its editor-in-chief, and Dixit. Last week, on 13 August, Roy sent an email to the staff at Outlook. In this email, he announced the appointment of Rajesh Ramachandran, a former political editor of The Economic Times, as the magazine’s new editor-in-chief.
The sad inevitability of Prasad’s removal as the editor of Outlook, weeks after he ran the cover story and days after the magazine was taken to court over the piece, says much about the current state of the Indian news media. The incumbent editor, Ramachandran has claimed that the process for Prasad’s removal was set in motion long before the story in question was published. But surely the management of the publication had some leeway over when to exercise such a change. The timing they chose speaks for itself.
As is evident from this case, the government rarely needs to arm-twist editors directly. Employees from Outlook have claimed that the magazine’s promoters, the Raheja group—originally a construction and real estate development company—have been under sustained pressure for some time and that Dixit’s story regarding the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliate organisations was the last straw. The structures of news media ownership in this country, and the involvement of corporates who have huge stakes in businesses that require the government’s goodwill, ensure that editorial decisions are often tailored to the government’s preferences. While it may be unfair to focus on any one set of promoters, especially the Rahejas, who have, for over two decades backed the magazine despite pressure from successive governments—both the BJP and Congress—the message Prasad’s exit sends out is clear. Editors who take on the establishment run a constant risk, and the advantages of toeing the government line are rather evident in the profession.
Prasad’s removal comes at a time when the news media’s ability to tell uncomfortable truths is under siege by the current dispensation and those who speak on its behalf. In Kashmir, as protests mounted in the valley, newspaper offices were raided, staff detained, and censorship imposed on the local news media, all without any official government sanction. In the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, vigilantes who enjoy close linkages with the local police have successfully hounded journalists, exercising virtual control over news the police does not want to be reported.
Put together, these incidents indicate the absence of norms regarding the structure of news media in this country. The three relationships that define how the media actually functions—between the government and news media organisations; between news media organisations and journalists; and between the government and journalists—are largely unregulated. The lack of regulation allows the government to bring into play laws such as the maintenance of public order, which do not directly deal with the news media to control or regulate news coverage, but impact it nevertheless.
Over the last few years, we have seen varied attempts to bring sense to this news environment. These include the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s recommendations on media ownership, which were published in August 2014 and a standing committee report on paid news in May 2013. The report on paid news does go into many issues regarding media ownership and the rights of journalists, but paid news is hardly the lens needed to look at such issues. In terms of actual legislation, we only have the Working Journalist Act of 1955, which does not include electronic news media in its domain. This actually means that the law does not recognise television or digital media journalists when it speaks of working journalists.
A reappraisal of the current situation must begin with the simple assumption that in our democracy, the freedom of the news media is an end in itself. Given this, it is possible to lay down some core principles (and this is by no means a comprehensive list) that define the three-way relationship between government, news media organisations and journalists. Many of these are simply set out in the European Charter on the Freedom of the Press, 2009.
a) The Government and News Media Organisations: At the moment we have a host of laws that regulate the procedure for setting up news media organisations and almost none for who can set up one. This has to be reversed. The procedure and norms for establishing such organisations have to be eased, and the norms governing who can set them up—including laws regarding big corporates as well as cross-media ownership—must be clearly laid out. The question of regulation, ranging from self-regulation to giving the press council more teeth and extending its jurisdiction to the electronic media needs to clearly discussed and answered. This also requires clear boundaries to be drawn that define when, if at all, the government can censor the media.
b) News Media Organisations and Journalists: Today, the Working Journalist Act, at least in theory, governs the relationship between organisations and employees, despite the contract system that exists in most news media companies. Its implementation, currently overseen by labour courts, has to be simplified and speeded up. Its jurisdiction has to extend to television and online journalists. The division between editorial and business—the kind of commercial interests a news media organisation can pursue—need to be defined and demarcated in an era of paid news and private treaties.
c) Journalists and the Government: From the Right to Information Act (RTI) to the Whistle Blowers Protection Bill, we have a host of legislations that define a citizen’s access to information. There is a need to discuss the sharpening and refinement of such laws where access to information by a journalist is concerned. Moreover, a journalist’s right to protect sources must be enshrined in law.
This is not an exercise the government will undertake on its own. Much like the RTI, we need to construct the climate for such a law. Bodies representing journalists must take the initiative in forming a committee consisting of journalists, media owners, lawyers and representatives of political parties to prepare a draft Freedom of Press Bill in a time-bound and transparent manner. Objections from any quarter must be made public to prevent any backdoor attempt to stymie such a proposal. The final draft should then be the basis for an attempt at legislation.
In an environment in which the government is clearly not interested in the freedom of the news media, such an attempt may seem utopian. But, the very process of setting out such norms will form the basis for any future changes that could be carried out under more conducive circumstances. At the very least, it will alert journalists and lawyers who remain unaware of the extent of the systemic dangers we, the news media face. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/need-press-freedom-bill-government-may-not-want-one | en | 2016-08-15T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/2bd02c26bc4315672345921440ad3ca61426675eb640f7da57ffe8673d775024.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:52:25 | null | 2016-08-11T12:20:34 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fwriting-cinema-completely-different-interview-gurvinder-singh%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chauthi-Koot_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine-_11-August-2016-01.jpg | en | null | “Writing and cinema are completely different”: An interview with Gurvinder Singh | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
Gurvinder Singh, who trained at the Film and Television Institute of India, is best known for his two feature films. Anhe Ghore Da Daan (Alms for the Blind Horse, 2011) and Chauthi Koot (The Fourth Direction, 2015). Anhe Ghore Da Daan premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and won the special jury award at Abu Dhabi. It also received the National Awards for best direction, cinematography, and best Punjabi film. Singh’s second film has won awards at festivals in Belgrade, Singapore and Mumbai, as well as the National Award for best Punjabi film. A powerfully atmospheric portrait of Punjab in 1984, Chauthi Koot is an adaptation of the short stories ‘Chauthi Koot’ and ‘Main Hun Thik Thak Haan’ by Punjabi writer Waryam Singh Sandhu from his short story collection Chauthi Koot. The film released in cinemas across India last Friday, with English subtitles.
On 5 August 2016, the writer and critic Trisha Gupta met Singh at his parents’ home in Noida. During the conversation, they discussed his interest in Punjab, adapting literature into film, and learning from the late avant garde filmmaker Mani Kaul, the face of parallel cinema in India.
Trisha Gupta: Did you always want to make films set in Punjab? Is that where you grew up?
Gurvinder Singh: When I went to FTII, Punjab was nowhere in the picture for me, though I knew the [spoken] language well. The Punjab I had heard about was the Punjab of Partition. My [paternal] grandfather used to be the manager of a rice mill near Rawalpindi, but he had moved his family to Amritsar. They happened to live in a largely Muslim neighbourhood, and when the riots broke out in 1947, my grandmother escaped with my father—he was two, and took shelter in the Golden Temple. My grandfather returned from Rawalpindi and found the house burnt. Finally he went to the Golden Temple and found his family. There was nothing left, so they kept moving. His brother was in Shimla, so they went there. Then Gwalior, Ganganagar, Assam—wherever, for a job. For five years or so after Partition, they were very unsettled. Finally they came to Delhi and managed to set up a business here.
My maternal grandmother was from Kasur, she used to go to Bulla Shah’s mazaar every day. And my maternal grandfather was from Patti. Kasur and Patti are like Lahore and Amritsar, across the border. Luckily he got a job in Delhi before the Partition, and moved here.
I was born in Rajouri Garden, a gadh of migrant Punjabis. Everybody’s stories were of pre-Partition Punjab. They never lived in East Punjab. We never visited Punjab. I could not even read Punjabi. My reading until FTII had been in English, and literature translated into English from other languages. But then I thought ki “film banana hai toh Hindi mein banana hai—If I have to make a film, it has to be in Hindi,” and I should read in Hindi. I started with [the writer] Mohan Rakesh, then a lot of [Saadat Hasan] Manto, Krishna Baldev Vaid, Vinod Kumar Shukla, Agyeya, [Gajanan Madhav] Muktibodh.
Then in the library I came across the name Gurdial Singh, and [his book] Anhey Ghore Da Daan. Punjabi toh mujhe aati nahi thhi [laughs]—I didn’t know Punjabi. I read five-six books of his in Hindi. Gurdial Singh is the most translated Punjabi writer. Suddenly, I thought, this nobody has touched. I have not seen this side of Punjab at all. This kind of character, this kind of issue, this kind of rural Punjab. His descriptions were very Chekhovian: the atmosphere, the mood, the landscape—with great feeling. Anhe Ghore stayed at the back of my mind. I thought if there is one book I want to make a film of, it is this… and I’d never been to Punjab!
TG: Do you think the book’s “punjabiness” was what struck a chord?
GS: Of course, there was that desire to connect with Punjab—where your roots are, but you’ve never lived. When I met Gurdial Singh, he told me he was teaching in a college in Bhatinda in the [19]70s.
And he basically wrote about what he was observing at that time: the thermal power plant was being built, the railway lines, the canals—they had just come up. It was the end of the Nehruvian era of infrastructure.
My other connection to Punjab was music.
TG: Are you a musician as well?
GS: No, no. But music took me to Punjab. As a child I had heard artistes like Asha Singh Mastana, Surinder Kaur (she even sang in Bollywood) who sang jugni, jindwa, and heer. The texts are folk, but they were popular radio artistes. They used newer instruments like the harmonium. Somebody had brought some cassettes from Pakistan, of qissa. And I found a book by Alka Pande on Punjabi folk instruments. So I applied to the India Foundation for the Arts, for a two-year grant to travel with qissa singers, and document their work.
I followed these dhadis [singers]. When my money ran out, I asked the IFA, and they gave me some more money, so I actually travelled for over four or five years. I was living in Delhi. I was shooting myself. I would just pick up a sound recordist and take my car and go. Sometimes we would go to a mela, or a dargah, or a wedding—they would start at sunset and then go on till sunrise. They take breaks in between, they have tea, they drink also.
Sufi dhadis are Muslim, and they either tell tales of the Sufi saints, or things like Heer, which are part of the Sufi tradition. Sikh dhadis were also [originally] Muslim, but they converted and now sing about the Sikh warriors.
All the people I was connecting with were from the lower castes. All the qissa walas were Balmikis, Mazhabis. Listeners were mostly peasantry, mostly Sikhs. You know, after the Partition, all the dargahs of Punjab have been managed and kept alive by Hindus and Sikhs.
TG: Were you able to make the documentary?
GS: The material was so much that I really didn’t know how to compile it. (Laughs) So I decided to focus on one person I was really fond of, with whom I’d spent the most time. His name was Pala, so that’s what I called the film.
This is how I discovered Punjab. Suddenly the characters from Anhe Ghore Da Daan started coming alive for me: their anxiety, their relation to caste status.
TG: Caste is the thing that jumps out at you while watching the film. We’re supposed to think of Punjab as casteless.
GS: Yes, I was also brought face-to-face with caste: the distinction was so strong. The fact that the lower castes have their houses on the periphery of the village and live in dirty conditions, whereas the upper castes live in big mansions… And then the gurdwaras, which one thought were these casteless places— but most villages, had two. The lower castes were technically not prevented from coming into the upper-caste gurdwara, but they were second-hand worshippers there. They had no power there. So, they would make a gurdwara of their own.
I read the novel [Anhey Ghore Da Daan] in 1999. And in 2009, I wrote the script. I explored other options in between, but in the end I knew it was this. Although I knew it would be very difficult to find a commercial financier for it: this subject, and that too in Punjabi.
TG: What was the reaction to the film in Punjab?
GS: I got very diverse reactions: one person saying “I had heard so much about it, but I didn’t understand anything; what are you trying to say.” And another person saying, “It is so beautiful, I have seen it five times.” I think the young have been more open to it. Especially for those who want to make films, it has become a learning text. I have received a hundred requests from young aspiring filmmakers in Punjab to assist me. And they are making things inspired by the film.
TG: Are you in conversation with other filmmakers in Punjab?
GS: No.
TG: Where does the commercial Punjabi film industry operate out of?
GS: Chandigarh and Toronto. And Vancouver. They have approached me now, to fund my films. I might consider, so long as there is no interference.
TG: Your entry into Punjab was music. And that’s also part of the Bollywood version of Punjab. Do you think Punjab still has that vibrant culture of music and performance?
GS: The kind of people I was documenting have passed away. It was an oral tradition, and their children did not carry it on. Who wants to learn a qissa by heart to perform for 12 hours? Now the only songs are about daaru and guns.
Earlier the upper castes were not the performers—they were the listeners. But after independence, the industry has been dominated by Jatts: Gurdas Mann, Harbhaja Mann, Babbu Mann, Amarinder Gill, now Diljeet Dosanjh, who is actually very talented. Now, the only way to enter the Punjabi film industry is to establish yourself as a singer.
TG: That is unique, true. Talking of Diljit Dosanjh, did you watch Udta Punjab?
GS: No, not yet. I will take my time and watch it. (grins)
TG: Anhe Ghore dealt with caste, and Chauthi Koot also has a fairly political subject, the Sikh militancy. How did you come to make it?
GS: I knew I wanted to make a film about the insurgency. I had earlier thought of another story of Waryam Singh Sandhu’s. It was called ‘Bhajjian Baahein’ (Broken Arms). It was also very beautiful, about a Hindu grain trader family, and how one member is gunned down by a terrorist. I had taken his permission to make that, in fact. But then he said, I have written more about that period. So, I went and purchased this book [of his stories] from Sahitya Akademi, and immediately I was bowled over by these two stories.
TG: How did you bring the two ‘Chauthi Koot’ and ‘Main Hun Thik Thak Haan’ together? That is the most striking thing, structurally.
GS: First I thought ki ek hi ka banana hai—just make one. And there was something very modern about the train story [‘Main Hun Thik Thak Haan’]: it was almost like a thriller. You don’t know where they are going, who they are.
TG: That is the dominant feel of that section of the film. Was that true of the text as well?
GS: In the text, they are schoolteachers who have been assigned some duty in a school near Amritsar. I felt there was no need to say that. Writing and cinema are completely different—giving information that way in cinema will work against the film.
Anyway, this would have been a half-an-hour film. Then, I thought I would make the story of Joginder and the dog [a character from ‘Chauthi Koot’ who is told by militants to forcibly silence his dog lest it draw attention to them]. But then it struck me, why not both? Once it came to me, to enclose the Joginder story in the train story, I was thrilled. Because the device also breaks linearity. Anhe Ghore is also non-linear, moving between the city and village. Here, I constructed the connection between the two stories: the man in the train, remembering himself and the woman walking in the dark, and arriving at Joginder’s house.
TG: Why did you move away from making documentaries? What is at stake for you in making fiction?
GS: I was not making films about big political issues, which is what documentary is in popular perception. It can be done in documentary, but somehow I felt that in fiction I could foreground the form better. The way the story is being told is an equal knowledge-giver, an equal source of entertainment as what is being told. In documentary, I felt I was painting over a given surface. Fiction allowed me the feeling of an empty canvas.
TG: The fact that you were adapting from literature doesn’t limit you?
GS: No. I had complete freedom to remove and add things. For example, in the story, there was no storm. Joginder is taken away by the police, the villagers gather to protest: I had that in the script. But while shooting, the storm happened, and I immediately knew I wanted to use it. The producer asked me, “You really don’t want to shoot that section?” I said, “No, I have an alternative, which is more poetic, more cinematic.”
TG: What are your thoughts on the independent cinema movement in India?GS: It is still in a very nascent stage. I like parts of Court, I like Ship of Theseus. But we have to create a community. Anand Gandhi [who made of Ship of Theseus and has founded his own production company] is trying, through his own company, inviting people to make films. He says he wants to change the ecosystem of this industry. It’s great that somebody is thinking big. Because others are just struggling. It’s not easy to do the second film, even after the first. And I don’t even live in Bombay.
TG: I believe you live in Bir, in Himachal.
GS: Yes, a year-and-a-half now. I lived in Bombay for three years, when Mani Kaul was there.
TG: What would you say is the most important thing you learnt from him? GS: Image ka bhoot unhone mere dimaag se nikaal diya—He got me to stop being possessed by the image. Cinema is not a visual medium, he insisted, it is a temporal medium. It is like music, it is time. It may unfold in space, but it is time. The normal way of editing is that as soon as the information is grasped, you cut. But if you make people look at things longer, make them reflect on things after they have grasped the information, they suddenly become aware of the passing time. It works in reverse, too—if you cut before the information has been fully absorbed, then also people become conscious of time: ki dekhne nahi diya poora, samajh mein nahi aaya kya hua—as we weren’t able to watch it completely, we didn’t understand what happened. He altered my way of looking through the camera.
And then, sound. The source of the sound image need not be on the screen. You have to create the world beyond the edges of the frame. Anhe Ghore was a complete exercise in that. Now, when I write the script, I think more about the sounds that will layer each shot: from a distance, close by, or something disturbing. Because you can have only one image on screen at a time, but you can have a hundred tracks of sound. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/writing-cinema-completely-different-interview-gurvinder-singh/comment-page-1 | en | 2016-08-11T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/196df37029c3642758bb32aeb46299a1719d9afa3c26cb2b520811cf7f68152c.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:56:45 | null | 2013-11-09T05:54:45 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fperiscope%2Fsanthi-soundarajan-and-flawed-science-sex%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/files/b1_0.jpg | en | null | Santhi Soundarajan and the Flawed Science of Sex | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Santhi Soundarajan, the 26-year-old ace Indian middle-distance runner, was very excited, not to say a little nervous, too, that she had made it to the grand finale of the 800m at the 2006 Asiad in Doha. She may have won accolades back home—the previous year at a national meet in Bangalore, she had won gold in the 800m and 3000m steeplechase, and silver in the 1500m—but this was a much bigger, grander, and tougher arena. She also knew this was her golden chance to prove that she was one of the best in Asia.
Her lissome, ebony figure shimmered on the television screen—her dark hair slickly bundled up with prim precision, and her gangly, but muscled, arms waving to the cheering spectators as her name resounded in the atmosphere. As was her style and strategy, she ran the first lap unhurriedly, though close on the heels of the frontrunners, reserving her adrenalin for a final cheetah-like burst. But as the last 100m neared, she was still trailing behind. Perhaps she had mistimed her rhythm. And then came her characteristic explosive surge, albeit a tad desperate this time, as her angular yet graceful frame powered towards the finish line. She had probably fired her last cylinder a little too late for the gold, but it was just about good enough for her to edge out her second nearest rival in an electric photo-finish.
The final burst took the wind out of her sails as she collapsed immediately after breasting the tape. She lay prostrate for quite a while not knowing if she had won bronze or silver. She was too exhausted to think about anything, although she was glad that she was in the reckoning for a medal. When it was announced that she had won silver—even if by the skin of her teeth—her exhaustion sublimated into joy.
It was celebration time. Journalists and photographers mobbed her. Images of her looking up from her prone position were splashed across the media, as were pictures of her victory ceremony. The then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M Karunanidhi announced a cash prize of Rs15 lakh. A few public sector organisations chimed in with job offers.
Two days later, when the euphoria over her triumph had dimmed a little, she was summoned from the athletes’ hostel by the Indian sports officials. The games authorities wanted to perform some medical tests on her. They examined her body and took samples of her blood. She wasn’t told why.
Tests over, she flew back home the same evening. On landing at the Chennai airport, she was surprised that there was no one to welcome her. A few days went by without the plaudits Santhi had been expecting. Then, while watching television one afternoon, she saw her face on the news. The report was about the tests she had undergone in Doha. They were sex-verification tests, the news revealed. And she had failed. According to the communiqué released by the games authorities, she did not possess the sexual characteristics of a woman. She had therefore been disqualified, and would be stripped of her medal. Hearing this, Santhi fell into a state of utter disbelief.
Women have had to certify their womanhood in the international sports arena ever since they made their debut in the 1900 Olympics. At that time, concerns about fraud and fairness had to do with the possibility that men might be masquerading as women. (There has only ever been one recorded instance of this.)
Routine sex testing was introduced to the sporting world in 1966 at the European Track and Field Championships in Budapest. There had been frequent rumours that some of the elite women athletes from the communist bloc were men in disguise. Suspicion, according to a paper in the Journal of Royal Society of Medicine, fell particularly heavily on the Press sisters, Tamara and Irina, who set a combined 26 world records between 1959 and 1965. When both suddenly exited the international arena in 1966, just as routine sex tests were being introduced, people interpreted it as proof that they were female impersonators.
The first formal sex-testing regimen required women to parade naked in front of a group of gynaecologists. Long hair, breasts, and a vagina were all one needed as testimony. As Katrina Karkazis, a researcher at the Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University, points out, “outwardly observable feminine characteristics (gender) served as a proxy for biology (sex).”
However, the “nude parades”, as these sex tests were pejoratively labelled, were widely condemned as base and humiliating. As protests mounted, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was forced to adopt a more scientific, and more dignified, chromosome-based test, called the Barr body test. This test, which was introduced at the 1968 Mexico Olympics and made compulsory for all ostensibly female athletes, was premised on the simple belief that a person’s sex is written into his or her chromosomes. An XX reading proved you were a woman while an XY indicated you were not.
The procedure consisted in scraping off a few skin cells from inside the cheek and examining the smear under a microscope. If a black spot, called the Barr body, appeared, it indicated the presence of two X chromosomes, and this was taken as proof of femaleness. Absence of the dark spot indicated the opposite.
This seemed relatively straightforward, but the test soon proved controversial. Predicated as it was on the notion that there are only two chromosomal combinations, the test inevitably failed to take into account the many greys between XX and XY. As a result, it was likely to produce false negatives and false positives. For instance, women with Turner syndrome are XO (where O indicates absence of a chromosome) rather than XX; hence, they lack the Barr body. In other words, although they pass the test of anatomy—they have ovaries, breasts, and a vulva—they fail the chromosome test.
Mandatory chromosome testing became particularly controversial in 1985, when Spanish hurdler Maria José Martinez-Patiño was prevented from competing in the World University Games in Kobe, Japan.
Martinez-Patiño was raised as a girl. She had already passed a chromosomal sex test when she took part in the 1983 World Track and Field Championships, and had received an official Certificate of Femininity, which all certifiably female athletes were given so that they did not have to prove their femininity at every competition.
At the Kobe event, however, Martinez-Patiño forgot to carry her certificate, and so had to submit to a fresh Barr body test. She wasn’t worried, though, for she knew, as everyone else did, that she was a woman.
Unfortunately, the results of her new test were not made available until after the competition, so she was not allowed to run. Instead, on the advice of her team doctors, she faked an injury and withdrew from the event.
Her test results, when they finally came, were a shocker: although she had the outward anatomy of a woman, her cells had the male sex chromosome XY. The first sex test that she had passed, on the basis of which she was given her certificate, must have been a false positive.
This was confirmed by independent doctors whom she consulted after she returned home from Japan. Martinez-Patiño may have looked like a woman, but her feminine façade hid a more complex subterranean reality: her cells carried the male Y chromosome, her labia masked testes, and she had neither ovaries nor a uterus. According to the IOC’s chromosomal definition, therefore, Martinez-Patiño was not a woman. She was barred from future competitions and her medals and records were withdrawn. In addition, she lost all her professional privileges, such as the sports scholarship and housing she received as an elite athlete. Many of her friendships collapsed, and her fiancé deserted her.
Martinez-Patiño was at her wit’s end, but she didn’t give up. She submitted her body to examinations by doctor after doctor. Eventually, they concluded that she had been born with a condition called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. This meant that, although she had a Y chromosome and her hidden testes made plenty of testosterone, her body lacked keys, called receptors, to read the male hormone.
As a result, her body had never developed male characteristics. At puberty, her testes produced both testosterone and oestrogen, as do the testes of all men; because of her body’s inability to respond to the testosterone, the oestrogen caused her breasts to develop, her waist to narrow, and her hips to widen. Thus, despite a Y chromosome and testes, she had grown up as a female and developed a female form.
Martinez-Patiño felt she should still be considered a female. Refusing to hide from public ridicule, she used the media to doggedly fight for justice. Her perseverance eventually paid off: in 1988 she was reinstated and competed in the Olympic trials, going down in history as the first woman ever to successfully challenge sex testing for female athletes.
The Martinez-Patiño affair did much to highlight the problems with sex testing and provided ammunition to those opposed to the tests. Heeding the rising tide, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decided to discontinue compulsory sex testing in 1991.
The IOC, however, took its time to come around fully. It continued to screen female participants, and in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics introduced a new and allegedly more accurate technique for vetting females. The new litmus test could detect the Sex-Determining Region Y (SRY) gene, which resides on the male chromosome. Since it is implicated in the making of testes in males, SRY was assumed—despite insufficient evidence, critics claim—to confer athletic advantage on males.
In any case, the new method, too, was discredited after it identified as men eight women who fell in the same grey zone as Martinez-Patiño. In addition, subsequent research revealed that the SRY gene was not the only one required for developing testes. As a result, some individuals might have testes despite lacking the SRY gene. Moreover, in some instances, the gene could cross over to the X chromosome as a result of genes shuffling during division of sex cells.
Eventually, the IOC buckled under the weight of evidence and resistance, and abolished compulsory sex testing in 1999. Since then, individual athletes are screened only on a case-by-case basis, as suspicion arises, using an array of clinical and laboratory tests.
Santhi became the first woman athlete to be screened for sex since the abolishing of compulsory testing. The obvious question is, why was she singled out? By most accounts, there was nothing terribly anomalous about Santhi—nothing to suggest that she was not a woman. The eldest of four siblings, she was born into a poor Dalit family in a village called Kathakurichi a few kilometres from the nearest town, Pudukkottai, in Tamil Nadu. Her father eked out a living for the family by working in a brick kiln.
Santhi was nudged into sports and athletics by her grandfather, himself a one-time athlete. She showed promise early on and was soon winning medals in school competitions.
“She may have been a little tomboyish, but we brought her up as a girl,” said her mother, Manimekalai, whom I visited in Kathakurichi. She showed me Santhi’s birth certificate, which declared Santhi to be female. “Everybody in the village and school treated her as a girl,” Manimekalai added. “We don’t understand why she is being persecuted like this.”
Santhi herself claimed that she had a normal childhood and adolescence. A physical instructor who trained her during her teenage years echoed her opinion. “She was aggressive and assertive. Besides, I also came to know through a female colleague that she had not started her periods,” said A Xavier, who coached Santhi at St Joseph’s Higher Secondary School in Venkatakulam, a couple of kilometres from her village. “But it never became a big issue. We accepted her as any other girl.”
After high school, Santhi joined the JJ School of Arts and Sciences in Pudukkottai where she continued to compete and win. She also began to notice subtle dissimilarities between herself and fellow female athletes. “It was only in college that I became aware that I was a little different from other girls, in the sense that I had never had periods,” she told me. But nothing about her seemed so odd as to call her sex into question. Soon, she was racing at larger meets. By the time she crossed the line in her stunning second-place finish in Doha, she had already graced, and garnered several medals in national and international events—without anyone questioning her sex. Except, perhaps, when she was refused a job by the Indian Railways because she couldn’t clear the medical test. She wasn’t informed as to why she had been rejected but she did entertain the innuendo that someone jealous of her success may have squealed on her about her ‘different’ body.
It was in 2006, however, that her femaleness had been formally called into question for the first time. Why individual suspicion fell on her is not clear. Some media reports carried an anonymous allegation that a chaperone from the anti-doping team saw Santhi urinating and became suspicious; another report claimed that it was most likely a rival athlete from the Indian camp who turned her in. As Santhi told me, the truth is still anybody’s guess.
But suspicion fell on Santhi nonetheless, and her body became a sort of crime scene, in which a team of at least five scientific detectives searched for the smoking gun of her sex. Santhi doesn’t know exactly who the investigators were, but they likely included a gynaecologist, an endocrinologist, a psychologist, an internal medicine specialist, and possibly an expert on gender or transgender issues.
The precise details of all athletic sex tests are kept confidential. Rumour has it, however, that the doctors who examined Santhi found the Y chromosome cohabiting with the X on the sly. Unlike Martinez-Patiño, however, it is thought by many that Santhi’s body could process a certain amount of testosterone—a condition called partial androgen insensitivity syndrome. As a result of this syndrome, a person who appears relatively feminine from the outside—the degree of femininity varies depending on the level of the person’s insensitivity to the male hormone—may have the genetic make-up and some of the sexual anatomy of a man.
It was only after Santhi had been publicly humiliated by the television reports that she got a call from Lalit Bhanot, joint secretary with the Indian Olympic Association—he was later tried for corruption charges in connection with the 2010 Commonwealth Games—telling her that her athletic career was over, that she had been barred from participating in sports, and that her name had been struck from the record books.
Following this unceremonious ex-communication, Santhi’s life began to fall apart under the harsh glare of an unforgiving public. She was now an outcast in the sports fraternity, branded a cheat by an insensitive media, and looked upon as a freak. Her coaches, friends, and fellow hurdlers, who had hailed her as a champion and basked in her glory, turned their backs on her.
Santhi’s little world, which revolved only around athletics, came crashing down. “I didn’t know what had hit me,” she later told me, anguished. “I had no idea what to do with my life now as I had given my entire life to sports. I felt alone, lost, and betrayed.”
Santhi left Chennai and went back to her village to hide from all that had befallen her. In desperation, she got hold of a bottle of euthanising poison used by veterinarians and decided to take her own life, but was saved in the nick of time.
Although bizarre and miserable, Santhi’s predicament was not unique. Many women athletes before and after her have been asked to prove their womanhood; a number have failed, and their laurels have been stripped away from them. Earlier this year, Pinki Pramanik—who won a gold at the same Asiad in which Santhi won, and lost, silver—was subjected to a sex test after her female live-in partner accused her of rape. Pramanik was jailed and forced to endure humiliating media and legal trials. To fob off charges of rape, she had to prove that she was a woman. But she also had to establish that she was not a fraudster. A board of medical experts set up to ascertain the truth about her sex took five months to conclude that she is neither fully female nor fully male. She was, they said, a male pseudohermaphrodite—a now politically incorrect medical label for someone who has XY chromosomes, testes, and no ovaries, but who also has the appearance of a female. The police read the report as declaring her male and promptly brought rape charges against her. (At present, Pramanik is out on bail.)
The most controversial recent instance of sex testing involved Caster Semenya, the South African 800m runner who, at 19, won gold in the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin, outpacing the reigning world champion by over two seconds. After her incredible win in Berlin, her deep voice and finely hewn musculature—especially her six-pack abs—sparked off a frenzy of media speculation about whether she was really a woman. She became the butt of popular ridicule. Even the usually restrained New Yorker described her as “breathtakingly butch”. The world champion she beat to the finish line told reporters that Semenya would not pass the sex test.
Before the World Championship, Semenya had been told to report for a doping test in South Africa. But “this test was unlike any other drug test,” said researcher Karkazis. “Without her permission or consent [she was 18 years old at the time], Semenya was examined physically—her legs were put in stirrups and her genitalia examined; this was not a doping test, this was a sex test.”
The test in South Africa had been inconclusive, so the IAAF ordered a second one. This took place in a Berlin hospital the day before the 800m final. Information about Semenya’s test was leaked to the media (apparently through a misdirected fax) a few hours before the race.
Unlike Santhi’s case in India, the news of Semenya’s screening provoked a furore in South Africa. Prominent politicians and human rights activists called the incident scandalous and racist. The IAAF, in its defence, denied charges of racism and said the test was prompted by Semenya’s incredible performance at such a young age, as well as her “ambiguous” looks. They wanted to find out if she had a “rare medical condition” that conferred on her an unfair advantage.
A month later, Semenya’s coach resigned, alleging that South Africa’s national athletics association “did not advise Ms. Semenya properly”. He also tendered a personal apology for not protecting her as her coach. The government arranged for top lawyers to fight her case pro bono.
Eleven months later, in July 2010, the IAAF cleared Semenya of all suspicions so that she could return to international competition. For privacy reasons, however, the results of her sex tests were not released. This prompted rumours that she had been taking hormonal treatments. Nevertheless, as a final celebration of her triumphant return, Semenya was chosen to carry her country’s flag during the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, where she later won a silver medal in the women’s 800 metres.
In the wake of the international embarrassment over the treatment of Caster Semenya, the IOC and IAAF were once again forced to reconsider their sex verification policies. In 2010, they announced a new policy whose purpose, they claimed, was not to determine whether someone was ‘really’ a woman, as earlier screenings were meant to do, but to make natural levels of testosterone the litmus test for deciding whether someone was eligible to contest in women’s events. The new guidelines came into effect at the 2012 London Olympics.
Although males and females alike produce testosterone, women typically produce about one-tenth the level of males. Only female athletes who have testosterone levels below the “normal male range”, or who, like Martinez-Patiño, are insensitive to testosterone, would pass muster.
The new guidelines have provoked ire and criticism from many quarters. The most vocal detractors have been feminist scientists. In a paper titled ‘Out of Bounds: A Critique of the New Policies on Hyperandrogenism in Elite Female Athletes’, Karkazis and colleagues argued that “despite the many assumptions about the relationship between testosterone and athletic advantage, there is no evidence showing that successful athletes have higher testosterone levels than less successful athletes”. Most studies backing IOC’s latest approach have been done on men, but very few studies have focused on the testosterone levels of elite athletes. This, according to Karkazis, implies that the grounds for making testosterone the yardstick for determining a female athlete’s eligibility are not only flimsy but also simplistic.
Even if a definite link between testosterone and performance had been established, Karkazis asks, is it fair to treat abnormally high testosterone differently from other biological traits that may confer a similar advantage in elite athletes? Excess male hormones may provide some advantage, she says, but, as a report in one US newspaper put it, “no more than other traits like the cavernous lung capacity of British rower Pete Reed, who can take in nearly twice as much oxygen as Lance Armstrong, and the hyper-flexible joints of American swimmer Michael Phelps”.
Some scientists have been even bolder in their criticisms. In an interview to the Los Angeles Times, Andrew Sinclair, a professor of genetics at the University of Melbourne who identified one of the genes used in an Olympic sex test, averred that it is often difficult scientifically to categorise people as male or female. “It’s very hard to come up with a single measure that will put you in one group or the other,” he said. Part of the reason for this, according to Sinclair, is that sex is not entirely binary; it’s more like a continuum. “That understanding has to come first, and then people will realize that sex testing in general is misguided,” he added.
Despite its inadequacies, it is plausible that Santhi might have passed the new litmus test for sex. Could she have challenged her disqualification? If Semenya could do it, there is no reason why Santhi couldn’t have—except that, unlike Semenya, who had the weight of her nation behind her, Santhi was left to fend for herself.
Martinez-Patiño’s story suggests that Santhi was done in by an unfortunate conspiracy of various factors. Why else would she have been singled out despite having, presumably, a similar genetic blueprint to Martinez-Patiño’s? As Santhi’s sex report remains confidential, one can only speculate that, unlike Martinez-Patiño, Santhi’s body was probably absorbing a lot more testosterone and thereby possibly endowing her with an unfair advantage; she might even have escaped the sex-test had she looked as feminine as Martinez-Patiño. While nature had shrouded Martinez-Patiño’s secret in a perfect cipher, it may have given Santhi’s away with a few clues.
One of the more enduring dogmas of modern biology is that sex is solely determined by the rigorous logic of genes. Indeed, most biologists believe that sex is perhaps the only trait that is beyond the influence of environment. For example, although it is possible for someone born with dark skin to lighten it over the course of his or her lifetime, the same is not supposed to hold true for sex: if you are born with two X chromosomes, you are a girl, and if you have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, you are a boy.
But the story of sex is not, in fact, so simple; it is beset by unforeseen digressions and transgressions.
It all begins with the chance encounter between a lucky sperm and an egg. Once the sperm is inside the egg, a biological door of sorts is slammed shut behind it. This usually ensures that only a single sperm will fertilise a single egg. In a typical conception, chromosomes carried by the sperm and egg gather together to form a single cell with a set of 46 chromosomes, 23 apiece from both the parents. It is from this cell that all others will emerge—the bones and tendons of the foot, the strong muscles of the thigh and buttocks, the lens of the eye, the dark areolae of the nipples, and so on.
But a real sexual drama begins when the embryo is seven weeks old. At this crucial crossroads, a pair of gonads emerges near what is called the urogenital ridge that will one day become eggs or sperms. But at this point, the germ cells are somewhere between male and female. If nothing happens, the inchoate gonads metamorphose into ovaries, and the embryo acquires the full female panoply of ovaries, uterus, Fallopian tubes, vagina, clitoris, and labia. This implies that we are all females by default unless orders to the contrary are issued or, in other words, unless genes that reside in the Y chromosome kick into action. When that happens, the undifferentiated sex soup precipitates into testes, and the embryo acquires the male paraphernalia—penis, scrotum, seminal vesicles, vas deferens, etc.
Even if the genes on the Y chromosome activate, however, they can’t make baby boys on their own: they need the sex hormones as accomplices. All foetuses make almost the same quantity of oestrogen, the female hormone; if testosterone does not show up, even an embryo with XY chromosomes develops into a baby girl by default.
This sexual interplay between genes and hormones doesn’t stop at birth. Waves of hypothalamus, pituitary, and sex hormones that began in an 80-day-old foetus continue to ripple throughout early infancy. Then, at about six months of age, the hormone storm blows over. In this phase, called the “juvenile pause”, bones grow, muscles gain strength, and brains wire and rewire themselves.
But the sexual maelstrom has not entirely passed. Around age 12, it revs up again to a fresh intensity and floods the body with a cocktail of new and old hormones. Ovaries wake up and release oestrogen, the female-defining hormone. Testes explode, unleashing testosterone, the male-defining hormone.
The result is a fascinating sculpting of the human body. In girls, breasts begin to bud, pubic hairs sprout, the hips widen, the waist narrows, and the larynx assumes a soft timbre. Internally, another scene is unfolding. The vagina, uterus, and ovaries all mature in response to the hormonal stimulus. Finally, women begin to menstruate.
Likewise, in boys, the penis and scrotum enlarge, pubic hair begins to appear, the voice deepens, and facial and body hair begins to grow. Ejaculation becomes possible.
Most of the time.
The normal script sometimes goes awry. Hormones coursing in the growing foetus, for example, can spike up or stunt the formation of certain sexual characteristics. Too little testosterone, and male genitals, even in an XY foetus, may form incompletely, and may not even be visible at all. Conversely, an excess of testosterone in a genetically female foetus may cause the clitoris to protrude like a penis.
The erratic behaviour of hormones is just one of many monkey wrenches that can derail the life-works. Although the majority of humanity is straitjacketed into men and women, there are many like Santhi who defy this neat symmetry. They fall in a nebulous penumbra called intersex, which is now the accepted and politically correct label for various greys of sex. The Intersex Society of North America lists not less than 16 separate conditions that qualify an individual as intersex. These include clitoromegaly, in which the clitoris is enlarged, resembling a penis; and Klinefelter syndrome, in which boy babies are born with an extra X chromosome—they’re XXY—which results in a less muscular body, less facial and body hair, and broader hips. But even these 16 categories don’t do justice to the kaleidoscopic variations in sex.
The most curious example of intersex may be of girls who at puberty turn into boys. This happens because of a genetic mutation that starves a developing male foetus of testosterone. As a result, though genetically boys, most of these children are born with female genitalia and identified and raised as girls. At puberty, however, many of these children begin to produce nearly normal male amounts of testosterone and magically metamorphose into boys—they develop phalluses much like penises, grow beards, acquire large muscles, and speak with the voices of men.
Or consider the equally fascinating sexual categories called mosaics and chimeras. Mosaics are people who, owing to mutation in a single embryo, end up with different numbers of chromosomes in different cells. Chimeras are like mosaics, except that they are born of at least four parent cells (two fertilised eggs or two embryos fused together). Both mosaics and chimeras, which are very rare, give rise to a broad spectrum of sexes ranging from male to female.
Medical parlance, however, uses intersex as a blanket term to describe only three variations on sex: the so-called true hermaphrodites, who have one testis and one ovary; the male pseudohermaphrodites, who have testes and some aspects of the female genitalia but no ovaries; and the female pseudohermaphrodites, who have ovaries and some aspects of the male genitalia but lack testes.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, professor of biology and gender studies at Brown University, is a vocal advocate against the polarisation of sex. She believes we know precious little about intersexuals because scientists have ignored their inner lives—“their special needs and their problems, attractions and repulsions”; but, from the little we know of them, she suggests that the three intersexes deserve to be considered additional sexes in their own right. “Indeed, I would argue further that sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum that defies the constraints of even five categories,” she says.
Part of the trouble with studying intersex individuals is that no one knows about the number of intersexuals or how frequently they are born. Even in the US, where there is relatively more awareness about them, the estimates range from 1 to 4 per cent of total births. In reality, though, few intersexuals reach adulthood: a majority of them are turned into boys or girls through surgery and hormonal manipulation—a process called gender assignment—so that they can slip unnoticed into society as normal males or females.
The idea that those born with ambiguous sex need to be corrected and normalised was inspired by a 1955 study of intersex patients conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. This now classic study concluded that “gender assignment in infancy will be the one the patient stays with into adulthood, regardless of the standard biological indicators of sex”. In other words, people born with ambiguous sex organs became what other people told them they were; sex chromosomes had little influence in the matter. Curiously, the task of assigning a gender to such babies was left to a set of experts; parents were excluded from the making of these decisions. Indeed, they were often kept in the dark.
Although many of those ideas have been consigned to the dustbin, reassignment of sex through surgery remains as strong and popular an idea as ever. In 2006, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society and the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology gathered together fifty international experts to answer some of the questions that surround the birth of an intersex child.
In their report, they recommended, among other things, changing the term ‘intersex’ to ‘Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD)’, making parents active partners while deciding the gender of the baby, broadening the range of experts deemed relevant to the exercise of deciding the baby’s gender, and maintaining strict confidentiality.
But, most crucially perhaps, it strongly recommended “gender assignment for all”, which implies that the medical fraternity still holds firmly to hackneyed notions of sex—that all of us are born to be either boys or girls, and that any ambiguity at birth must be corrected. It is no surprise, therefore, that most intersex babies in the West (and now increasingly in India) are surgically transformed. The operations, which are often very complicated, usually involve reconstructing the vagina or the penis, together with all their respective accessories. Needless to say, these are technical feats of astonishing virtuosity.
Critics have faulted the scalpel-led approach as being overly determined by physicians’ bias. In a 2001 paper in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism, physicians Jorge Daaboul and Joel Frader argued that traditional doctors often favoured the ability to have kids over ease of sexual pleasure in “overvirilised” females; in “undervirilised” males, however, they favoured the ease of sex over reproductive competence. Daaboul and Frader concluded that the “traditional medical and surgical approach to newborns with intersex maintains a morally and legally unacceptable paternalism.”
To combat such paternalism, the Intersex Society of America has created a kind of straight rule called the Phall-O-Meter, which satirises the current medical standards for children born with ambiguous genitalia. Typically, if the baby is born with a penis about one inch long or longer, it is declared a boy. (If it’s longer than 2.5 inches, the Phall-O-Meter’s printed text gushes, “Wow! SURGEON!”) A phallus less than three-eighths of an inch merits the consolatory “just a girl”. Anything in between is consigned—“FIX IT QUICK!” cries the Phall-O-Meter—to the operating table.
Critics like Fausto-Sterling would like to see an end to sex assignment surgeries at birth. In her much acclaimed book, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, she writes: “I emphasize that the motive [of most gender assignment surgeries] is in no way conspiratorial. The aims of the policy are genuinely humanitarian, reflecting the wish that people be able to ‘fit in’ both physically and psychologically. In the medical community, however, the assumptions behind that wish, that there be only two sexes, that heterosexuality alone is normal, that there is one true model of psychological health, have gone virtually unexamined.”
It now seems abundantly clear that our bodies, contrary to received wisdom, are too complex to provide unequivocal answers to questions about sexual difference.“The more we look for a simple physical basis for ‘sex,’ the more it becomes clear that ‘sex’ is not a pure physical category,” says Fausto-Sterling. “What bodily signals and functions we define as male or female come already entangled in our ideas about gender.”
Fausto-Sterling offers nesting Russian dolls as a metaphor for the complex determinants of biological sex and social gender: from history to cellular biology, there are a number of intimately interrelated levels at which one can study the formation and meanings of sexuality and gender. “The cell, the individual, groups of individuals organised in families, peer groups, cultures, and nations and their histories all provide sources of knowledge about human sexuality,” she says. “We cannot understand it well unless we consider all of these components.”
At each level—cell, individual, organisation, culture—there is great variance, and this has important consequences for the fate of intersexuals. Take, for instance, a child born with two X chromosomes, and the attendant female reproductive paraphernalia such as oviducts, ovaries, and a uterus, but also a penis and scrotum on the outside. Is this child a boy or a girl?
Because of her potential to give birth, despite the penis, most doctors in the West would declare the child a girl, and intervene using surgery and hormones to carry out the decision. Physicians in India, however, are forced to do the reverse because of the strong cultural bias against girls.
At the same time, societies in South Asia appear more tolerant of and benign towards intersex individuals than do Western cultures, in which the male–female binary is staunchly preserved. In 2009, Indian election authorities granted independent identity to intersex and transsexuals in the country’s voter rolls. Earlier, members of these groups—loosely called ‘eunuchs’ in Indian English—were referred to in the lists as either male or female. Now, they have the choice to tick “O” (for others) when indicating their gender on voter forms. They can also contest elections.
Nepal went a step further when, in 2007, its Supreme Court asked the government to abolish all laws that discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The court also demanded that the government establish a third sexual category that includes people who present or perform a gender that is different from the one that was assigned to them at birth, as well as those who do not feel that the male or female gender roles dictated by their culture match their true social, sexual, or gender identity. The 2011 Nepal census was the world’s first to allow people to register as a gender other than male or female.
Despite these progressive legislations, however, popular prejudices about sex and gender remain more or less unaltered. In fact, greater access to hormonal and surgical technologies has only helped reinforce them. Again, there is a woeful lack of research in this area; but, going by anecdotal evidence, there seems to be an upswing in the number of parents asking doctors to change the sex of their intersex child to male. Adult intersexuals also appear to be opting more frequently for sex reassignment to become fully female or male—mostly the former.
Fausto-Sterling believes that “choosing which criteria to use in determining sex, and choosing to make the determination at all, are social decisions for which scientists can offer no absolute guidelines.” Bodies like Santhi’s or Pinki’s or Martinez-Patiño’s defy cultural orthodoxy and scientific dogmas. As Fausto-Sterling puts it, “only a surgical shoehorn” can put them “into a neat binary”. But, she asks, why should we care if a woman—defined as having breasts, a vagina, uterus, ovaries, and a menstrual cycle—has, for example, a clitoris large enough to penetrate the vagina of another woman? Why should we care if there are individuals naturally endowed to have sex with both men and women?
Fausto-Sterling has a plausible answer: “To maintain gender divisions, we must control those bodies that are so unruly as to blur the borders. Since intersexuals quite literally embody both sexes, they weaken claims about sexual difference.”
Santhi’s failed attempt to erase herself was, in a sense, her way of blinding forever the gaze that held her body in contempt and ridicule. It had very little to with her own self-image, which, if anything, was robustly female despite her ambiguous sex. When I met her recently at a bustling Chennai mall, I almost mistook her for a boy as I had only her celluloid image in my head. The flesh-and-blood Santhi, who patiently answered my curiosity, appeared like a doppelganger of her virtual image. Her appearance—baritone voice, flat chest, boyish haircut, and manly attire—suggested a soft androgyny.
Santhi appeared distinctly untroubled by the greyness of her sex. “What if I don’t have breasts or a womb, or that I don’t menstruate? I was born a girl and raised as a girl, and I certainly feel like a girl,” she exclaimed, with as much pique as pride. “I dress up consciously like a man now so that people don’t bother me with their annoying curiosity.”
If Santhi is bitter, she has good reason. Six years after her world had plunged into darkness following the Doha games, she feels she still hasn’t received justice. The only silver lining in the dark clouds that had suddenly descended over her life was the aforementioned gift of Rs15 lakh from the state government of Tamil Nadu that had been promised her after she had won the silver medal. She says she used up the money on building a new home for her family, on her sister’s wedding, and on her brother’s education.
She also put a part of that largesse into setting up a coaching academy for poor kids in Pudukkottai. The Tamil Nadu state government gave her a monthly salary of Rs5000, but it wasn’t enough to sustain herself and her family, so she gave it up after two years. At a crossroads again and with her back against the wall, she started making and selling bricks at her village home.
A Times of India article on her working in a brick kiln brought her back into the limelight again. Streams of compassion flowed in. A French NGO, Aide et Action, offered her a job in Chennai to train children from poor families in physical fitness. Karnataka Olympic Association president K Govindraj announced he would pay Santhi Rs15000 per month for the next three years.
But these tokens of sympathy, while helpful, are no consolation for the egregious treatment meted out to her by the Indian sports bureaucracy. The Canadian cyclist Kristen Worley, who too had to suffer the same humiliating tests to prove that she was a woman, is one of many activists lobbying for Santhi to be reinstated. “It should never have been handled in such a gross manner, amounting to public humiliation because of their ignorance of her condition,” Worley has said.
If ever there was a lesson in Santhi’s tragic story, it was either wilfully ignored or conveniently forgotten. The scandalous treatment meted out to Semenya and Pramanik underscore this discomfiting fact. It seems it may take us many generations before we can shed our deeply entrenched prejudices about sex and gender, and concede that sex is not merely a matter of genes, or chromosomes, or hormones, or family or society or chance, solo or in concert—that there is no sound logic to why people even need to be a boy or a girl. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/periscope/santhi-soundarajan-and-flawed-science-sex/comment-page-1 | en | 2013-11-09T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/5c67c8d57604bf978b3fb182336d57bfb2b928d6b636b6984f7f3a6ede4d4974.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:48:16 | null | 2016-08-23T09:52:59 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fease-buying-gun-texas.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_23-August-2016.jpg | en | null | The Ease in Buying a Gun in Texas | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
One of the first things I was repeatedly warned about on moving to Texas almost two years ago was to be careful not to accidentally step onto someone’s yard or property. Laws such as the Castle Doctrine authorise people in many states in America—such as Texas—to use any level of force to defend themselves against perceived threats.
I had also heard about the omnipresence of firearms in the United States and how easy it was to get them. A recent spate of gun-related deaths—with Dylann Roof opening fire at a Charleston church on 17 June 2015 killing nine black people; and in July 2015, John Houser shooting up a movie theatre in Louisiana, killing two and injuring nine others before killing himself—had infused in me a very real fear. Both Roof and Houser had been able to purchase guns despite failing background checks. Each of these incidents was followed by discussions on the need for stricter gun control; US President Barack Obama was reduced to tears earlier this year when he spoke about “college students in Santa Barbara, and high-schoolers at Columbine, and first graders in Newtown”—all victims of mass shooting incidents—whose “inalienable right to life” was snatched away by bullets.
And yet, so pervasive is the gun lobby in the United States that for the first time ever, the National Rifle Association (known for its unofficial slogan “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”) sent its chief lobbyist Chris Cox to speak at the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, last month. Civilians were even allowed to carry military-grade weapons in downtown Cleveland, but were prohibited to have items such as tennis balls, cans or umbrellas.
On 12 June this year, Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people in Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The incident, one of the worst mass shootings in American history, renewed conversations around both gun control and immigration (Mateen was the son of Afghan immigrants). As someone dependent on a non-immigrant visa holder (my husband is on a research scholar visa), could I be a part of the gun culture in the conservative state of Texas? I decided to find out. Google Maps threw up several options for “gun shops near me” in Houston, where I live. I shortlisted four.
My first stop, on 9 July was Academy, a huge Texas-based chain for sports gear. The firearms section was not hard to miss with its giant sign. As my husband Didier and I made our way there, we wondered if we would have to declare a reason for wanting to purchase a gun.
As we reached the counter—where a variety of weapons were casually displayed—I ventured an explanation to the salesman: “We recently moved to Houston. We were advised to keep a gun for safety.”
He nodded. “What kind of guns are you looking for?” he asked.
I replied haltingly, “Something small, I guess?” “First-time buyer?” he asked, sensing my uncertainty. Yes, I answered.
He recommended we go to a shooting range to try some guns first. “It’s only because we have a no-returns policy,” he said. “Having said that, I will show you what we have.” His reticence gave way to an enthused display of excitement as he proceeded to explain the various uses and characteristics of the weapons in stock.
In the 45 minutes that followed, I learned that state law enforcement recommended shotguns for home safety (because of a characteristic dissuasive sound while loading), that the Remington 870 was a popular shotgun thanks to its low recoil, and that handguns were more difficult to master. Shotguns were as cheap as $200, while big rifles, euphemistically called hunting rifles, could cost up to $2000.
“Try handling some,” he said handing us one gun after another. To me, he showed the “girlie” version of hunting rifles: pink, floral and light. “These guns are often gifted to young girls,” he said.
My husband inquired about assault rifles— the type of firearm Mateen used in the mass shooting in Orlando. “Do non-military people have access to assault rifles?” he asked the salesman. “Of course. We have civilian versions of those,” the salesman replied. He moved towards a store room and went inside. Soon, he emerged with a case carrying a hefty black rifle similar to an AR-15. The civilian version is semi-automatic—it fires one round with each pull of the trigger as opposed to ceaselessly—and has a 30-round magazine. In Texas, there is no cap on magazine capacity, and while you need to be 21 years of age to buy a handgun, you can get a rifle at 18.
In 1994, US President Bill Clinton passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, which banned large-capacity magazines and put restrictions on military features on a gun. The ban expired in 2004 and hasn’t been revisited since.
I asked the salesman if, as a non-citizen, I was eligible to buy a gun. “Just bring your Texas ID and immigration papers. Normally, citizens can get a background check done in a minute. But for you, it might take up to three days,” he told me.
The following week, I visited Houston Outfitters, a small, independent gun store in a residential neighbourhood in the city. I repeated the story about a firearm for home safety.
Contrary to Academy’s salesman who had recommended shotguns, one of the men behind the counter suggested a Glock 19 ($595), a handgun popular with law enforcement, and easy to learn. He said that his wife carried it all the time. The Hechler & Koch VP9 ($699), with its low recoil, was in demand too.
They reasoned that for a small apartment like mine, handguns were a safe bet. He explained that if one missed the target, the energy dissipated and it only created a hole in the wall. “But if you manage to hit the person, he will never get up,” he said.
I asked if I needed a permit for a handgun.
“Not if it’s in the glove compartment of your car, or at home. You need a permit only if you want to keep it on you,” he said, sliding a gun in his pocket.
Carry permits are usually of two kinds. “Concealed carry” is the practice of carrying a gun in a concealed manner in public. All 50 states have made provisions for this. “Open carrying,” on the other hand, allows for people to carry a gun in public if it’s visible. Thirty-one states, including Texas, allow this practice— although in some cases the gun must be unloaded.
Meanwhile, a shotgun standing on the floor, away from all the firearms on display, caught my eye. The second man who had been silent thus far noticed and said it was loaded because there had been a thwarted burglary attempt at the store only a couple days before.
Then, he delivered an almost passionate speech. “Guns are toys, after all. You’ve got to have fun playing with them. The more you use them, the more confident and comfortable you’ll get. Go to shooting ranges and practise,” he said excitedly.
Eventually, I asked about the actual feasibility of buying a gun for a non-citizen. “It doesn’t matter. We recently sold a gun to a Chinese person who had just arrived and didn’t have all his documents. It will take two minutes for a background check,” the salesman told me.
“If it’s so easy, firearms could go to the wrong people.” I said. The duo shrugged. “Sometimes it can be problematic,” one said.
The following morning, I went to meet Shep Gee, a gun hobbyist who owned several of them. A common friend had told me about Gee and put us in touch. Gee met me at around 11 am at the Action Pawn store, where he was going to retrieve a gun he had pawned the week before. The procedure to retrieve one’s own gun is the same as buying one. A frequent visitor to the shop, he was greeted with familiar hellos. He introduced me to a salesman, Lalo Islas, as a journalist.
Until now, I had only inquired about buying a gun. At this store, which boasted a happy coexistence of watches, bicycles, sunglasses, jewellery and firearms, I intended to follow through with the process. Here, I got a glimpse into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Gee quickly filled form 4473, a prerequisite for buying a gun. He certified in the form that he had never been convicted of a violent crime, institutionalised for mental illness, or addicted to drugs. Less than five minutes after entering the store, he was handed his gun.
Gee and Islas took it upon themselves to educate me about the differences in gun laws in the US. “In California, they make it harder to buy firearms. There is a longer waiting period, it doesn’t allow open carry and high capacity magazines are banned,” said Gee. “I am glad I live in Texas,” chimed in Islas.
The discussion moved to gun control and they said that people who wanted to kill could do so using any other weapon, like a knife. Why restrict gun enthusiasts, they asked.
Islas, too, recommended I buy a handgun because it was easier to use. He said he even slept with one under his pillow every night and that it was useless to own a gun if it wasn’t close enough. A shotgun would be good only as a deterrent, he said, but if the occasion arose, a handgun worked better. I asked Islas what occasion would call for the use of a gun and if he would hesitate at all before shooting.
He spoke of a time when at night he hid behind the door of his house with a gun, suspicious of a group of men outside, who eventually drove away. Next day, when he found out they were his neighbours’ friends, he told his neighbour to make sure they didn’t do it again. “What can I do? I am paranoid,” he said.
I was told I couldn’t buy a gun in this pawn store because I couldn’t prove permanent residency—but that didn’t mean I could never own one. “There are many other ways,” said Gee. In Texas, a private individual can sell a gun to another one without further licensing or background checks, as long as each of them is a Texas resident and each is legally allowed to own a gun.
“But avoid murder. The law is too strict if you kill someone,” Islas warned me. “That is why it’s important to keep practising at a shooting range.”
My final stop, on 26 July was a massive store called Top Gun. At the entrance were safes for firearms as big as almirahs. Wherever I looked there were weapons and their paraphernalia complete with ammunition, gun cases and tins of food for survivalists. Stuffed animal heads hung on one wall. It was a busy afternoon and more than ten salesmen with handguns attached to their waists scuttled around. The store also had a shooting range where about five people were firing at targets of their choice. Here, one could rent 150 types of guns, including machine guns.
Seeing me dithering near the corner, Phil, the store manager, introduced himself and asked what I was looking for. I gave my standard reply. “Buying a gun is like buying a car. You need to love it and feel comfortable,” he said, adding that the only way to know what I liked was to use their shooting range. Wednesday was ladies’ day so I wouldn’t have to pay the $15 fee. “However, there’s no ranger or guard, so you need to know how to use a gun. We will give you a 5-second test and only if you pass, you will be allowed,” Phil said. On prodding further, I found that the test entailed being able to unload a gun.
Would I eventually be able to buy it, though? “Surely. Come with a hunting licence and immigration form I-94. You can buy a hunting licence from Walmart for about $25,” he said. A hunting licence is required, regardless of age, of any person who hunts an animal, bird, frog or turtle. It is bought by providing three proofs of Texan residence.
He added: “But it might take upto 15 days for the background check to complete and you to get a gun, since you’re not a citizen.”
Buying a firearm in the US if you’re not a convicted criminal, or drug addict, is like buying candy at best, and at worst like opening a bank account. If I were a green card holder or an American citizen, I could have walked out of each of those stores, armed, within five minutes. And if I really did want a gun desperately enough, it would have been easiest to buy it online by going as far as adding it to my cart and proceeding to checkout. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/ease-buying-gun-texas | en | 2016-08-23T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/320ff488e0c9dc1eaa808b1368fc49fc36e6fd3aabb145a396bdb03077fa8da5.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:53:26 | null | 2016-08-19T12:33:51 | The Amnesty India event, which could have paved the way for Kashmiris to reach out to each other, has instead catalysed a debate on sedition. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fkashmiri-pandits-dont-flag-bearers-indian-state.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Amnesty_Kashmir_Bangalore_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_19-August-2016.jpg | en | null | Kashmiri Pandits don’t have to be flag-bearers of the Indian state | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On 15 August 2016, the police in Bengaluru registered a first information report against the human-rights organisation Amnesty International India under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including sedition. The FIR was registered after representatives from Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad—a student body affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—sought action against the organisation. The ABVP activists claimed that “anti-national” activities had taken place at “Broken Families,” an event that Amnesty India had hosted two days earlier at the United Theological College in Bengaluru, as part of its campaign against human-rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. Protests against the human-rights organisation, primarily within Karnataka, have intensified since, and Amnesty India’s employees have reportedly been asked to work from home as a “precautionary measure.”
I have waited to get some clarity on what actually transpired at the event. Now that I have it, I feel compelled to say a few things. I hope they are read and pondered over in the right spirit by all parties, especially Kashmiri Pandits.
There is no doubt that the Amnesty International, like most rights groups, has turned a blind eye towards the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. That the organisation is sympathetic to Islamic groups became clear after the head of its gender unit, Gita Sahgal, left it six years ago, accusing it of “ideological bankruptcy.”
On the question of morality, the Pandits have had an edge so far. The azadi movement in Kashmir lost its moral high ground in 1990, when the minority Pandits were hounded out of their homes and over seven hundred of them were brutally killed by Islamist extremists. Even after they were driven out of a land that their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years, and forced to reside in tattered tents, in exile and extreme humiliation, the Pandits never took up arms.
There was no dearth of attempts to radicalise us. But, instead of picking up Remington pistols, we chose Resnick-Halliday textbooks. Amnesty may think that the Pandits do not deserve to be included in events on “Broken Families” [of Kashmir]; Tara Rao, its programmes director in India, may not have had accurate statistics on the number of Pandits thrown out of the valley when she spoke at the event; but the fact remains that nobody can take our truth away from us. In the last 26 years of exile, hundreds of Pandits, from Jammu to Johannesburg, acting individually, have braved adverse and belligerent crowds to put forth our narrative.
But let us look at what happened in Bengaluru. Amnesty India had invited a few individuals from the valley who have lost their near and dear ones in rights violations committed by Indian security forces. There were disconsolate mothers and grieving fathers, hoping to be heard outside Kashmir, perhaps hoping for some catharsis.
Then, a handful of Pandits came in, wearing T-shirts, which reportedly read: “Kashmiri Pandits.” RK Mattoo, the president of the Bangalore Kashmiri Pandit Association, was on the dais (he was invited by Amnesty India at the last moment after he threatened to protest outside the venue with his group). The attempt should have been to listen to each other; the attempt should have been to narrate what happened to Pandits in Kashmir in the name of azadi; it should have been to remind them of what happened in Kashmir on the night of 19 January 1990, when hundreds of thousands of people were out on the streets, asking that Kashmir be turned into Pakistan, without Pandit men, but with Pandit women.
Mattoo began on a discordant note. He accused Amnesty of ignoring the story of Kashmiri Pandits. Then, he made a comment on the Indian army being one of the most disciplined forces in the world. The seven or eight Pandits who were wearing the “Kashmiri Pandits” T-shirts reportedly applauded this statement.
While this may be true of the Indian army, you do not say it in a hall filled with people who have directly suffered at the hands of the armed forces. The assertion was obviously not well received by those from the valley. Even then, things would have settled in a few moments had it not been for one chest-thumping Pandit in the audience, who stood up and called the other group “terrorists.”
What have the Pandits achieved from this event? A few sufferers have returned to Kashmir, with a very bitter experience. In their hearts, perhaps, some may now even justify what happened to the Pandits in 1990. The Pandits have not been able to put across even a single, coherent fact about their truth at the event. While the Indian army should be lauded for the valiant efforts it has made to fight terrorism in Kashmir, why do the Pandits feel compelled to be alambardars (flag-bearers) of the army, or for that matter, the Indian state? Isn’t the failure of the Indian state responsible for their exodus and their long exile, which is, despite the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s bravado, almost becoming permanent?
Suddenly, an event that could have paved the way for Kashmiris to reach out to each other, has instead catalysed a debate on sedition. At the heart of it, the Kashmiri Pandit has come across as a rabid, extremist villain who has no tolerance.
Let us stop this madness. Let us fiercely defend our story, and let it not be at the cost of others’ stories. Let us not lose our morality. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/kashmiri-pandits-dont-flag-bearers-indian-state | en | 2016-08-19T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/8b199766da6d14d3782cb35c02248afea3248b8b5b5f1874c6c0c08d39f93009.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:54:21 | null | 2016-01-31T12:54:22 | Tinkle’s depiction of its new superhero from Mizoram, Mapui Kawlim aka Wingstar, does not contain any recognisable traces of her ethnicity. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Flooking-east-tinkle-superhero-wingstar-long-way-to-go%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/01_Looking-East_The-Caravan_31-January-2016.jpg | en | null | Tinkle's Flawed Depiction of its New Superhero | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
The opening panel of the comic magazine Tinkle’s newest comic series, ‘Wingstar,’ is a television screen. The scene: a media van is parked in the background, next to which are three silhouettes pointing their cameras and microphones towards the sky. Two police officers shuffle hurriedly out of a building. A moustachioed man in a pale-yellow sweater vest stands in the foreground, holding a microphone as he says, “In other news, Wingstar, the city’s youngest vigilante, just brought down a corrupt minister and his henchmen. The identity of this vigilante is still unknown…” The minister and the henchmen are dejectedly hanging mid-air in the firm grasp of a figure in white—presumably Wingstar. The vigilante is dressed in a white and green suit, a flaming jetpack on her back. The next panel cuts to the inside of a home. Tashi Kawlim—a slightly balding, bespectacled man—is comfortably plumped on a pink couch with a remote in hand and the news running on a television. “Good evening, Wingstar,” he says to his daughter as she enters, “Long day on the job?”
That is how readers meet Mapui Kawlim or Wingstar, a 13-year-old superhero, who spends her after-school time fighting crime, albeit with some reluctance. Mapui’s day doesn’t end with her escapades as a superhero. In the first chapter, titled ‘Even Superheroes Have Homework,’ she is shown struggling to finish her maths homework so that she can go for a sleepover with her friends, even as her new wristwatch that serves as a police scanner buzzes with notifications of a bank robbery happening in the city. This wristwatch is one of the many gadgets Mapui’s father has made. She tests these before they hit the market, and they give Mapui her powers. The gadgets include a robotic arm that can lift up to 1000 kilograms, and “iron fists” that can break anything with a punch.
Mapui’s “powers” are a function of these devices. While she wallows in the luxury of being able to carry out mundane tasks more efficiently, she is also forced to choose between spending time with her friends and battling the latest danger to the city. ‘Wingstar’ is set in the fictional town of Aizwa in Mizoram, based on the Northeastern state’s capital city, Aizawl. It “could be Mumbai, Delhi or any place for that matter,” said Sean D’mello, the comic’s creator, who developed its story and script. “It’s just a city.”
Tinkle, which was first published in 1980, is a popular monthly magazine targeted primarily at school-going children. The magazine was created by Anant Pai, a pioneer in Indian comics, known to his young readers as Uncle Pai. Since its launch 35 years ago, Tinkle has been translated into several Indian languages and boasts of a readership of over 3 lakh. It has produced some of the most widely recognised comic characters across India. Many of these, such as the beloved simpleton Suppandi, the cowardly and lazy hunter Shikari Shambu and the scheming Tantri the Mantri continue to be produced in newer issues today.
Mapui’s character was launched in Tinkle’s thirty-fifth anniversary edition in November 2015.
Although she is neither Tinkle’s first character from the Northeast nor its first female superhero, Mapui does profile a minority in both regards. The announcement of the character was met with an enthusiastic response. Many celebrated the fact that a comic as popular as Tinkle was “breaking stereotypes” about people from the Northeast and diversifying the representation of Indians in popular culture. The British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC, pronounced Wingstar “the Indian superheroine fighting discrimination.”
Once the comic came out, many who read it expectantly were disappointed. Even though the comic’s characters and its story are based in Mizoram, it did not appear to weave Mizo culture into the narrative or the visual language. Opportunities to include such elements were many, but Mapui’s world did not contain any recognisable traces of her ethnicity. In my conversations with the editor and author of the comic, they emphasised that Tinkle’s primary purpose was entertainment, and disavowed any intent to engage with the politics of the Northeast. According to them, addressing the issues that children face, such as homework and bullying was key. The creators stressed that they had deliberately fictionalised aspects of the character and the comic to avoid “offending people.” These caveats have meant that the depiction of diversity in the comic essentially amounts to tokenism. While D’mello’s goal to “create awareness about the Northeast” is noble, in terms of achieving it, Wingstar, and Tinkle, have a long a way to go.
Lalnunsanga Ralte is a Shillong-based professor and PhD student at the North Eastern Hill University, who studies science-fiction literature. Ralte is from Aizawl in Mizoram, and was initially thrilled to hear about the introduction of a Mizo character in Tinkle. He is also a part of a group called the Mizo Bloggers on the chat application Whatsapp. This group discusses various issues related to Mizo identity and its representation. The members of the group, Ralte told me, were disappointed by the lack of attention to detail. D’mello said while drawing Mapui’s features, the artists studied the features of young girls of the same age from the region—but to Ralte and the group, the features were not specific enough to Mizoram. The characters “didn’t look anything like us,” he told me. Other comments online suggested that the names were inauthentic too. Mapui’s name, commenters noted, would be spelt “Mapuii.” They added that “Tashi, ” her father’s name is not even a Mizo name, and neither is “Kawlim,” her last name. In fact, the comments stated, Mizo culture does not employ last names at all, but second names, which are indicative of a clan. The choice to obscure these associations, D’mello told me, was deliberate. “We did not want to directly represent or misrepresent a particular clan,” he said, adding that they looked for a name that “belonged to that area” instead. Rajini Thindiath, the editor of the magazine, echoed D’mello’s sentiments. Since neither Thindiath nor D’mello belong to the Northeast, I asked her about the research that had gone into crafting the character. She admitted that the lack of primary sources of information was a challenge for the comic’s creators. They attempted to overcome this problem by reaching out to people online. Thindiath said, “We did ask people around, particularly on Facebook, because you have friends and they connect you and so on.” “You do not want to alienate one or the other. We tried to stay as authentic as possible without getting into too many nitty-gritties,” she told me.
Thindiath’s comments point to the principal problem with Mapui’s depiction. D’mello told me that one of the objectives behind creating Mapui’s character was “to showcase Northeastern culture, backgrounds, people—how they talk, how they look, they behave.” But decisions such as these—choosing a name that is not specific to a clan, setting the story in a generic city and a lack of focus on field research—serve instead to further generalise the people belonging to the Northeast. Tara Douglas, the secretary of the Adivasi Arts Trust—a charity registered in the United Kingom—whose doctoral research dealt with the representation of indigenous communities in animation agreed. Douglas believed that the politics of representation tended to skew the depiction of people from the Northeast. In his introduction to the No Stereotypes Plz: A Comics Campaign On Northeast, a compilation of comics made by students of Northeastern origin in an effort to dispel the stereotypes that surround them, Sharad Sharma, the founder of World Comics India, writes that one of the issues is that “not much information about the NE region is available in public domain [sic].” Through four-panel comics, the narratives collected in the book shed light on the stereotypes and discrimination the authors have faced. This allows them to present their problems, writes Sharma, “through his or her own brush.” These stories of discrimination are individual—no one experience is the same as the next. “The region is very ethnically diverse,” said Douglas, as she explained why a homogenised representation “will not work.”
Both D’mello and Thindiath said that the decisions that were taken regarding Mapui’s character were governed by the fact that Tinkle is not a political publication. D’mello told me, “It’s not a magazine that starts pushing a political agenda.” This reluctance to taking a political stance does not have to be at odds with an honest representation of a character’s ethnicity. For instance, the US comics giant Marvel’s Kamala Khan or Ms Marvel, is a 16-year-old Pakistani American polymorphing superhero. She is clad in a red, white and blue costume that is inspired by the kurti. Sooraya Qadir, or Dust, a Marvel mutant of Afghanstani origin who has the power to transform into a sand-like substance, is a young Sunni Muslim girl who wears a black burqa. Contrastingly, Mapui’s costume contains no influences from Mizoram . It is an apple-green fitted suit with a facemask.
Comics, as a combination of the visual and textual medium, allow for a layered depiction of character. The text and dialogue take the story forward, and the images continually set the background with visual clues that can root it in a time, a place and a culture. In her book How Texts Teach What Readers Learn, the British scholar Margaret Meek writes that the combination of pictures and text, the “balloon dialogue, inset sketches, drawing ‘asides,’ together with the reader’s impulse to keep the story going while taking all this in,” transform the reader to “both the teller and the told.” In an essay titled ‘Comics as a Vehicle of Education and Culture,’ Tinkle’s Anant Pai, too, espouses the use of comics as a unique educational tool which has a “spell-binding effect on children.” This thinking reflects in the comic’s motto, “Where Learning Meets Fun.” The nature of comics, then, make them especially suited to depicting a character that is can reflect the culture of the region she belongs to while being a 13-year-old who hates maths homework and loves fighting crime. The emphasis on a contemporary, generalised depiction, over any idea of tradition, Douglas said, is “a loss, because the traditions are what is unique to these communities.”
Corrections: A previous version of this article misidentified Lalnunsanga Ralte as Sanga Muanga, and the group Mizo Bloggers as the Mizo Global Society. The Caravan regrets the errors. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/looking-east-tinkle-superhero-wingstar-long-way-to-go/comment-page-1 | en | 2016-01-31T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/7e32bdab0914f6c57febbd8f036d177234f33d549518aeafbb800f21be0f99d9.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:47:48 | null | 2016-08-25T21:46:52 | If India is to recover the Kohinoor, what the country needs is a diplomatic strategy that links demands for restitution to the immorality of colonialism. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fperspectives%2Fmyopic-approach-artefacts-kohinoor.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/A-Rock-and-a-Hard-Place_Donald-Heald-Rare-Books_The-Caravan-magazine_September2016_01.jpg | en | null | A Rock and a Hard Place | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
On 18 April, the Supreme Court heard a Public Interest Litigation seeking the restitution to India of, among other cultural artefacts, the Kohinoor diamond, which is currently part of the British crown jewels. Arguing on behalf of the Indian government against any official action, Ranjit Kumar, the solicitor general, told the court, “Kohinoor cannot be said to be forcibly taken or stolen as it was given by the successors of Maharaja Ranjit Singh to East India Company in 1849 as compensation for helping them in the Sikh wars.” This caught many by surprise. Though the government had not actively pursued the return of the diamond in recent years, it had consistently asserted India’s claim to the gem since very shortly after Independence. Kumar’s position was lambasted by the media, which took it as an Indian surrender.
The next day, the government declared “its resolve to make all possible efforts to bring back the Kohinoor diamond in an amicable manner.” On 23 July, it convened a meeting to discuss potential strategies, which involved the ministers of both foreign affairs and culture. Among the options reportedly considered was a treaty with the United Kingdom to give up Indian claims to all other artefacts misappropriated by the British in exchange for the return of the Kohinoor.
This was a startling proposition. Unlike the Kohinoor, which is just a rock, several of these other artefacts are pieces of exceptional workmanship. Take the Amaravati Marbles, a collection of 120 Buddhist sculptures and inscriptions displayed in the British Museum. These were part of a ruined stupa dating back to the second century BCE in what is now Andhra Pradesh, and were excavated and shipped to Britain in the nineteenth century. Recently, the government of Andhra Pradesh has sought their restitution. And these marbles are only a small part of the British Museum’s extensive collection of objects taken from India during colonial rule. Elsewhere, there is also Tipu’s Tiger. This mechanical toy, commissioned by the eighteenth-century monarch Tipu Sultan, is currently one of the more popular exhibits at the Victoria and Albert Museum—which also holds a large number of looted Indian artefacts. Unfortunately, most Indians place little value in the return of these objects, if they are aware of them at all.
That the government would even consider giving up other artefacts for the Kohinoor reveals the poverty of India’s approach to seeking the restitution of its cultural artefacts—particularly from the United Kingdom, which has long remained an outlier in the international framework on the trade and protection of cultural artefacts. But even such a craven offer is unlikely to yield any results with the United Kingdom, which has consistently maintained that India has no legal grounds for the restitution of artefacts that came into British possession under colonial rule. In light of this, if India is to recover the Kohinoor or anything else, what the country needs is not a quick compromise of the kind the government considered, but rather a long-term diplomatic strategy that expressly links demands for restitution to the immorality of colonialism.Building such a strategy is no easy task, and in order to understand the complexity of the Indian position, it is necessary to first understand the international law on cultural restitution.
Since time immemorial, conquerors have seized artefacts from subjugated peoples with impunity, whether out of greed or a desire to make apparent their control. But the Second World War changed the rules of the game. Adolf Hitler and his minister Hermann Goering organised the systematic plunder of artwork throughout territories under German occupation, including from famous French museums (which themselves contain art looted by Napoleon) and from Jewish families. Many of these objects made it to German museums, or into the personal collections of Nazi leaders such as Goering. In 1943, even before the war ended, the Allies, including the United Kingdom, issued the Inter-Allied Declaration against Acts of Dispossession committed in Territories under Enemy Occupation and Control, also known as the London Declaration. This stated that the Allies could declare invalid all transfers of property, including of artwork, executed by the Axis powers in occupied territories. The declaration covered even “those transactions apparently legal in form, even when they purport to be voluntarily effected”—that is, even in cases where art was supposedly sold voluntarily by the owner, it would be presumed that the sale occurred under duress. During the war, the Allies constituted a special unit, nicknamed the Monuments Men, to retrieve stolen art; and, after the war ended, Germany was forced to return the cultural property it had looted. The international acceptance that the German plunder was illegal has helped Jewish families reclaim art even many decades after the war ended. In 2006, the ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,’ by the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, was returned to a descendant of the family that owned the painting before the Nazis stole it, following a long legal battle in the United States and Austria.
In the years after the Second World War, the newly created United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, or UNESCO, spearheaded the creation of the Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which was signed by 49 countries at The Hague in 1954. This treaty created a legal framework that recognised the importance of cultural property, and required its signatories to protect cultural property from destruction during armed conflict. The United Kingdom signed the convention, but, crucially, did not sign its First Protocol. Scholars have speculated that the country’s specific concern was a clause stating that cultural property “shall never be retained as war reparations,” and that such property would be returned to competent authorities in its country of origin after a cessation of hostilities. The British were likely worried that agreeing to this would open the door for its former colonies to reclaim cultural artefacts, reasoning that their independence struggles were wars of liberation against colonial rule, and could be equated, for instance, to resistance to German occupation during the Second World War. This obligation under the First Protocol, however, was no different to the one imposed by the London Declaration of 1943—an instrument that the British did sign.
Another international treaty pertaining to cultural property is the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. This focusses on preventing international commerce in cultural artefacts that have been stolen rather than seized during war, and came into force on 24 April 1972, with clear conditions that it applies only to objects stolen after that date. The record of the negotiations for the treaty show that China had demanded that it also deal with earlier cases, but UNESCO rebuffed it by stating that its treaties normally do not apply retrospectively, and that countries could reach bilateral agreements to handle older thefts. The United Kingdom only signed this convention in 2002.
India cannot press any claim to restitution against the United Kingdom under either the 1954 convention or the 1972 one. But though these instruments leave India without a basis for legal action, they offer the foundation for a strong moral claim. Both of them, and also the London Declaration, concede the principle that cultural artefacts removed from a country or taken from their owners under coercive circumstances should be returned by those who now hold them. What they fail to do is to treat colonialism as an illegitimate political project, the same as any act of territorial aggression. India must act specifically to change that skewed standard, on the part of the United Kingdom and of the West more generally.
There are plenty of examples of how the legal basis for cultural restitution, or the lack of it, depends on governments’ moral positions regarding the circumstances under which the artefacts in question were taken. Consider, for instance, that Jewish claims to artwork looted by Nazi Germany have been met with deserved sympathy in the West, while those by former colonies seeking the return of objects taken from them by the West have not. Many governments recognise how claims of cultural restitution must necessarily draw power from an acknowledgement of the wrongs of colonialism. Between 1972 and 1977, the UN general assembly passed multiple resolutions on the issue of restitution. Resolution 3187, passed in 1973, “recalls” an earlier resolution, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, while affirming the need for “prompt restitution to a country of its objets d’art by another country,” and the “special obligation in this connexion of those countries which had access to such valuable objects only as a result of colonial or foreign occupation.” When the assembly passed the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, in 1960, several colonial powers, including the UK, abstained from the vote. On Resolution 3187, the UK once again abstained.
Getting the UK to acknowledge the illegitimacy of colonial rule will be difficult, but it is not impossible. Other countries have already achieved landmarks in that project. In 1997, the British prime minister apologised for the Great Famine in Ireland under British rule in the mid 1800s. In 2004, the UK parliament enacted the Human Tissue Act, allowing the return of human remains displayed in British museum to their native communities. One of the groups behind this was the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, an Australian organisation that had been demanding the return of the remains of 17 Tasmanian Aborigines. In 2013, the British government apologised to Kenyans who suffered torture and abuse during its suppression of a rebellion in the 1950s.
None of these apologies were won overnight. Each was the result of sustained political and diplomatic campaigns. India’s pursuit of redressal for colonial wrongs requires such campaigns too, yet neither the government nor civil society has pushed to make this a significant foreign-policy goal. India hasn’t even bothered to seek official apologies for specific atrocities such as the Bengal famine of 1943, which killed an estimated 3 million people. Private groups have pursued apologies for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, but the UK has refused them.
In the recent fracas surrounding the Kohinoor, too, neither public commentators nor the government proposed any long-term approach to eroding the UK’s resistance to addressing the injustices of the colonial era. Yet that is an essential step in laying the ground for the restitution of misappropriated artefacts. The government might consider an immediate return of the Kohinoor in exchange for giving up all other Indian artefacts in the UK a victory, but in fact that would be a ringing defeat. It should not entertain any such deals. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/myopic-approach-artefacts-kohinoor | en | 2016-08-25T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/31f4624f1f76142fd4f3e7538116f8c382d64a3cb19439b1e15dee8dd8d0adec.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:53:54 | null | 2016-08-10T09:57:08 | It was not a scene one is used to: the journalist Rajdeep Sardesai loudly gushing “fantastico!” each time a school student correctly answered a question. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caravanmagazine.in%2Fvantage%2Fdin-news-rajdeep-sardesai-reinvent%2Fcomment-page-1.json | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/02_Rajdeep-Sardesai_Vantage_The-Caravan-magazine_10-August-2016.jpg | en | null | Unable to Keep Up With the Din of TV News, Rajdeep Sardesai Tries Reinvention | null | null | www.caravanmagazine.in | Print | E-mail | Single Page
It was not a scene one is used to seeing: the journalist Rajdeep Sardesai loudly gushing “fantastico!” each time a school student correctly answered a question. The exclamation “fantastico,” one realised during the course of the one-hour quiz show, was the advertising tag line of a car being launched by its sponsor, the Tata group. Sardesai is the quizmaster of News Wiz, which started on 24 July 2016, and is aired on India Today TV.
At the peak of his career, this avatar of the renowned anchor would have been unthinkable.
Is brand Sardesai on the cusp of change, I asked him. Sardesai did not deny it, but did not seem unduly worried either. “I am only re-inventing myself,” he said. “My core competence remains news. Even this quiz show that I am doing is based on news. It will create a culture of news sorely lacking today.” But his answer did not quite explain the timing for his decision—why now?
I have known Sardesai for more than 15 years now—half of it as my editorial supervisor at NDTV. It is fair to say that he looks a pale shadow of his earlier self. Sardesai’s is the face that launched two TV channels—NDTV and CNN-IBN—and now provides prime-time heft to a third—India Today Television. It may even be the best-known face of satellite television news of the last 20 years, never mind the TRP numbers. In the days that he powered NDTV to the top, he was the quintessential reporter’s editor: a hands-on boss, with a politically sharp, quicksilver mind, and the energy levels of a marathon runner. He occasionally even shared his scoops with reporters—a quality almost unthinkable today.
Back then, Sardesai was a complete news-room leader. That is no longer the case. His role has been truncated—he is merely an “Editorial Consultant” at India Today. Unlike his earlier profiles, he does not head news operations any more.
Sardesai’s reportage from Bihar before assembly elections in the state last year was lacklustre. That he had spent too much time in the studio showed—his interviewees were cut short repeatedly, able to give only short, incomplete bites. Sardesai himself spoke with a characteristic anchor-like breathlessness, as if in a studio discussion. Even his prime-time fare is often, if not always, devoid of energy. And although he does still become animated on issues closest to his heart—cricket, caste and communalism—the cast of characters in his nightly prime-time show are studio regulars, and the debating format is woven around predictable binaries. The anchor has, relatively speaking, democratised his one-hour bulletin with more ground reports, more reporter presence and even a sprinkling of feel-good stories. He has also recently taken to broadcasting editorial meetings via Facebook Live—though it is unclear whether that has improved the news quality of his daily show.
Maybe it is the format. Maybe it is viewer fatigue. Maybe Arnab Goswami’s brand of perpetual outrage has some sort of audience connect that is leaving his competitors defeated. Either which way, ever since Sardesai was prised out of CNN-IBN—the network he painstakingly built from scratch—following a takeover by the Ambanis in mid 2014, things have never quite been the same.
Sardesai’s exit from CNN-IBN came not long after Narendra Modi’s rise to prime ministership. The sour relationship the two share is no secret. In the past, Modi has been disapproving of Sardesai’s reporting—during the 2002 riots in Gujarat, when Modi was chief minister, he banned NDTV because he believed Sardesai and Barkha Dutt’s reporting would spur the violence. The term “news traders”—once used by the prime minister to describe journalists—is now commonly used by his supporters as a way of criticising Sardesai. The message seems to have trickled down, and causing his access to ministers and bureaucrats to be revoked—a body blow to editors and reporters. In a 24-hour news cycle, choking the flow of information is the surest way to cut a journalist’s career short. After all, editors are the newsroom leaders, the faces of the network—and have to be seen as such by their colleagues. In such a demanding cycle, how do journalists break stories—more a marketing exercise for the channel than an editorial one—and stand out among the clutter of news networks if their sources are no longer a phone call away?
“Would you have done a similar quiz show 15 years ago?” I asked Sardesai. “No way,” he replied, quite candidly. “Today I am stuck with a medium that I am no longer enjoying. The entire media ecosystem has changed. There is so much noise. Every day you are expected to shout and compete with other networks.” The “noise” that Sardesai alludes to is likely a combination of the Goswami-style anchoring that is grabbing eyeballs, and the abusive and unforgiving onslaught of social-media trolls. Like most, Sardesai is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
But there could be another aspect to this, one that has perhaps escaped Sardesai. The careers of the first generation of English-language news anchors in India—all of whom were from the NDTV stable and who defined much of post-liberalisation TV news—seem to have run their course. The endgame, if it has not already begun, is around the corner. Barkha Dutt never quite recovered from Radia tape allegations, and it is unclear which way her new digital media project, ThePrint, is headed. Goswami’s editorial preference for the BJP is now practically public knowledge, but what will happen to his career and credibility when a non-BJP government comes to power?
Sardesai was satellite television’s first anchor-reporter-editor. Will he be the first to change course as well? Just sometime ago there were unconfirmed reports that he would be the Aam Aadmi Party’s chief ministerial candidate in Goa, but he flatly denied the rumour. He did tell me though, that he was “open to quiz shows even on networks like Sony and Star, provided it is news based.”
As television news plumbs newer depths, its most credible practitioners are plotting their escape. “Credibility” is, of course, relative, and the larger context of television news as owner-driven has to be factored in. But with Sardesai re-adjusting his professional focus, India’s fatigued news landscape looks set to change. | http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/din-news-rajdeep-sardesai-reinvent/comment-page-1 | en | 2016-08-10T00:00:00 | www.caravanmagazine.in/29604b6a8d134f52afbe9d0afd2689e3efb8f5e697875e86d1c92d6882e0028f.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:55:29 | null | 2016-08-22T09:39:16 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fruff-and-carmichael-earn-silver-award%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Ruff and Carmichael earn silver award | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Members of Girl Scout Troop #8279 of Bethany, Mo., have spent the summer earning their silver award. The silver award is the second highest award given in Girl Scouts, followed by the gold award. The silver award is to be earned while a girl is a cadet (sixth, seventh, eighth grade). The girls must have completed a journey, which is another service project and completed this sustainable service project that requires 50 service hours in order to receive this award. Haylee Ruff and Sara Carmichael have done just that.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/ruff-and-carmichael-earn-silver-award/ | en | 2016-08-22T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/d0b243fdf782cd2d70d6dfc3d665445bbe770e4fecf10a23e2de881028ca070d.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T16:46:43 | null | 2016-08-26T09:46:38 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fabigail-curry-receives-master-of-science-degree%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Abigail Curry receives Master of Science degree | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Abigail Curry recently received her Master of Science in education teaching early childhood degree from Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Mo. She is a 2011 graduate of South Harrison High School and a 2015 graduate of NWMSU with a Bachelor of Science in elementary and a minor in early childhood education. She was employed during the 2015-16 school year as a graduate assistant at the Leet Center for Children and Families. Abby is beginning her teaching career in the St. Joseph School District as a preschool teacher. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/abigail-curry-receives-master-of-science-degree/ | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/74bf56f5ece2b2c8553ad56b7ead1ce37ef6692de4df4d20f811806963274491.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:52:31 | null | 2016-08-23T09:41:32 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fgrundy-electric-cooperative-hosts-annual-membership-meeting%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Grundy Electric Cooperative hosts annual membership meeting | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | A large crowd attended Grundy Electric Cooperative’s Annual Membership Meeting held August 11, 2016 at the Trenton R-IX High School in Trenton, Mo. Prior to the business meeting, over 440 members and guests enjoyed the evening meal served by the Grundy County 4-H members and entertainment by The Marks Family from Jefferson City.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/grundy-electric-cooperative-hosts-annual-membership-meeting/ | en | 2016-08-23T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/c6a63f805525c0745cf69d471ea3db18c2aa09f768dd1b2ddf93b4a4b24eb73e.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T14:49:39 | null | 2016-08-30T09:41:58 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fsemi-pulling-wind-turbine-blade-holds-up-traffic%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Semi pulling wind turbine blade holds up traffic | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Photo by Lisa Henderson-Smith
Traffic was delayed Thursday morning due to a wind turbine blade that was holding up traffic near the off ramp by Dairy Queen. The semi pulling it didn’t have enough room to turn and had to work at getting it back onto the on ramp going south. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/semi-pulling-wind-turbine-blade-holds-up-traffic/ | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/2076395bbf9270db840cf283160dd61410890c30852be9630e2cf4da0f0354f1.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T14:47:32 | null | 2016-08-27T09:35:08 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fsome-glitches-as-new-middle-school-opens%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Some glitches as new middle school opens | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | The first day of classes at South Harrison was a little chaotic Monday because of congestion at the entrance of the middle school and a bus breakdown that blocked the driveway of the elementary school in the afternoon.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/some-glitches-as-new-middle-school-opens/ | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/44ff9a0a26357963e3ac599e4f0fe6632c1d3b3ef17a600426d830c021ecdfbc.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:49:52 | null | 2016-08-24T14:11:12 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fjo-booth-1952-2016%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Jo Booth, 1952-2016 | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | PATTONSBURG, MO: Jo Booth, 64, of Pattonsburg, MO passed away Tuesday, August 23, 2016 at her home in Pattonsburg, MO.
She was born July 1, 1952 in Blair, NE the daughter of Arnold Lee and Kathryn “Kaye” Louise (Dirgo) Woodring. They preceded her in death.
On January 31, 1971 she married Robert Dean Booth in Jameson, MO. He preceded her in death on March 9, 2007.
Jo worked as a clerk and bookkeeper and also as a records manager at Crossroads of Cameron, MO. She was a graduate of Pattonsburg High School and a member of the First Baptist Church of Pattonsburg and the Women’s Jail Ministry.
In addition to her husband and parents, Jo is preceded in death by sisters, Donna Gardner, Barbara Hopfenzitz and Gail Robertson.
Survivors include daughters, Angie (Charles) Scobee, and Sandy Booth, both of Pattonsburg, MO; son, Randy (Laura) Booth, Pattonsburg, MO; sisters, Gloria Drummond, Yuba City, CA, Marcia (David) Devore, Warsaw, MO; brother, Walter (Linda) Woodring, Omaha, NE; 12 grandchildren, Abby, Brooklyn, Jacob, Tyler, Trent, Alyssia, Sophia, Jackson, Michelle, Heather, Kristen and Justin; and 3 great grandchildren, Bryson, Aria and Deagan.
Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m. Saturday, August 27 at the First Baptist Church, Pattonsburg, MO under the direction of Roberson Funeral Home, Pattonsburg, MO. Burial will follow in Muddy Cemetery, Pattonsburg, MO. The family will receive friends from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Friday at Roberson Funeral Home, Pattonsburg, MO where friends may call after 5:00 p.m. Memorial contributions may be made to the First Baptist Church of Pattonsburg in care of Roberson Funeral Home, PO Box 152, Pattonsburg, MO 64670. Online condolences may be left at www.robersonfuneralhome.com | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/jo-booth-1952-2016/ | en | 2016-08-24T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/d121e2e08e4b3097ac386e9133dd348f28653c54dd23d983d1f40a9572175f64.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:47:17 | null | 2016-08-25T00:00:00 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2Fonline-subscription%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Online Edition - Bethany Republican-Clipper | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | This content is restricted to subscribers. If you are an existing user, please log in. If you'd like to subscribe, it's only $28 per year. All you have to do is complete the registration form below and make your payment! | http://bethanyclipper.com/online-subscription/ | en | 2016-08-25T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/a065ffad8fb96807b1fcfc8d5ecc14e4156c92fbff437269c3d4728e3334ca57.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T14:47:32 | null | 2016-08-27T09:43:45 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fbulldogs-fall-to-east-buchanan-in-season-opener%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Bulldogs fall to East Buchanan in season opener | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | South Harrison’s Bulldogs, playing without some of their key starters, fell to the East Buchanan Bulldogs 42-0 in a lightning-shortened game Friday night in Gower.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/bulldogs-fall-to-east-buchanan-in-season-opener/ | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/16b661ce58819b4742c335e002ffa409fd853fb92221c2b94e849da07b10c07a.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T16:48:18 | null | 2016-08-28T09:51:27 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Freserve-champion-shropshire%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Reserve Champion Shropshire | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Submitted photo
Reed Hallock, 20, of Hatfield, received Reserve Champion Shropshire in the FFA Market Lamb Show at the 2016 Missouri State Fair on August 11. Reed is a member of the North Harrison FFA Chapter and is a sophomore at Northwest Missouri State University. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/reserve-champion-shropshire/ | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/cbf699aa37c5ac769b2fbb2fe075614955ac8031d1d256149955f96dbdbc2a5a.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T16:48:58 | null | 2016-08-29T09:52:41 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fsadowsky-earns-showmanship-award%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Sadowsky earns Showmanship Award | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Submitted photo
Mardee Sadowsky, 15, of Eagleville, received champion showmanship in the 4-H Angus Show at the 2016 Missouri State Fair on August 11. Mardee is the daughter of Jim and Teela Sadowsky and is a sophomore. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/sadowsky-earns-showmanship-award/ | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/665e7b8b5c5861fb13dd04d0a1f0d746f7cce18c2dccccc3ba47053ce6c2423d.json |
[
"Phil Conger"
] | 2016-08-29T00:48:33 | null | 2016-08-28T17:54:49 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fbulldog-game-finished-on-saturday%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Bulldog game finished on Saturday | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | South Harrison lost by a 43-6 score to Lathrop in a game that had to be finished on Saturday because of lightning that interrupted the contest the night before. Bulldog sophomore quarterback Cody Weller scored South Harrison’s only touchdown on a keeper play around the right end. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/bulldog-game-finished-on-saturday/ | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/a8075bb40d13c8f336c0009f78bccd4cfad7e979f064cd39891e7c037e036b97.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:53:01 | null | 2016-08-23T14:13:20 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fsherry-romaine-perrin%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Sherry Romaine Perrin | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Sherry Romaine Perrin, 77, Kansas City, Kan., passed away August 15, 2016 at Providence Medical Center.
Born on October 12, 1938, at home near Blue Ridge, Mo. (Harrison County). She was a registered nurse and nursing supervisor. She enjoyed nursing over many years at Bethany Medical Center and Providence Medical Center, retiring in 2005. She loved God, her family, friends and her church (Haven Baptist Church). She was a Sunday school teacher for many years and led many bible study groups at various nursing homes in the Kansas City, Kan., area. She loved her family and hosted many annual Thanksgiving dinners at her home for 20+ family members, who after the meal played football and named the event the “Turkey Bowl”.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Marion and Mildred (Nally) Smith, and sister Norma Jean Smith.
She is survived by her children, RL Perrin, of the home; Linnea Cullumber and her husband Ed, Liberty, Mo.; sisters, Donna Carter (Harold) Gilman City, Mo., Mary Lee Chance (Jim), Gilman City, Mo.; brother, Lawrence Smith (Lois), Forsyth, Mo.; and numerous nieces and nephews.
Condolences may be expressed at: www.porterfuneralhome.com | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/sherry-romaine-perrin/ | en | 2016-08-23T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/3f3a5d49c190faf461b0e2ad972aa81f6a10b3fdad722398b9241ccc28db53d4.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:55:57 | null | 2016-08-21T09:37:09 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fburning-of-grandstand-was-a-setback-for-attendees-of-the-fair-in-the-1930s%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Burning of grandstand was a setback for attendees of the fair in the 1930’s | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Burning of grandstand was a setback for attendees of the fair in the 1930’s
An Army Reserve unit was camped out on the Northwest Missouri State Fairgrounds one day in the summer of 1931.
By the time the soldiers left, the fair’s wooden bleachers and the nearby Webster School were piles of smoldering rubble.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/burning-of-grandstand-was-a-setback-for-attendees-of-the-fair-in-the-1930s/ | en | 2016-08-21T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/cc9e07c6ef4b14541801b614d54f2d3061a955f20f91a3cdc88e174b214332c4.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T22:46:49 | null | 2016-08-26T15:59:26 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fmuriel-lue-zinn%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Muriel Lue Zinn - Bethany Republican-Clipper | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Muriel Lue Zinn, 80, formerly of Bethany died May 28, 2016 in Paducah, KY.
Muriel is survived by her husband Gene, Simpson, IL; sons: Kurt (Amanda), Mountain View, AL., Eric (Nina), Zionsville, IN; daughter: Sandy (John) Steedman, MO; brother: Richard (Mary) McLain, Cheshire, CT; 7 grandchildren; 1 great grandson.
Memorial graveside services and inurnment will be at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, September 4, 2016, at Miriam Cemetery, Bethany. Arrangements under the direction of Bethany Memorial Chapel. Tributes may be left at www.bethanymemorialchapel.com. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/muriel-lue-zinn/ | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/7d4e2915bbc8f39ce57de7ffc9703e8ee93786c9791fb323a8e3fec560db61ea.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:50:26 | null | 2016-08-25T09:15:09 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fbethany-ready-to-roll-out-welcome-for-fair-centennial%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Bethany ready to roll out welcome for fair centennial | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Bethany ready to roll out welcome for fair centennial
The Northwest Missouri State Fair opens with a little more than its usual hoopla next Thursday when it will be celebrating its 100th anniversary.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/bethany-ready-to-roll-out-welcome-for-fair-centennial/ | en | 2016-08-25T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/e01ad6fba402db986a10c1d844eb2b59e874706dd3c1099092f74685a38b7f52.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T16:47:36 | null | 2016-08-27T09:50:04 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fvandiver-goats-win%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Vandiver goats win | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Submitted photo
Kaycee Vandiver competed at the Missouri State Fair with her goats. She was chosen Senior Division 4-H Showmanship Champion. Showmanship is broken into different age divisions and this was Kaycee’s 3rd division title over the years. On the breeding doe side she received Grand Champion Percentage Doe. Her two market wethers received 2nd and 3rd class. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/vandiver-goats-win/ | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/ca791e6b36266df2918dd164565fa93657593434d1fb30f4a1dfa461a981b56a.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T14:48:13 | null | 2016-08-28T09:37:18 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fdisaster-practice-helps-hcch-prepare-for-various-community-hazard-situations%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Disaster practice helps HCCH prepare for various community hazard situations | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | The bright yellow tent in Harrison County Community Hospital’s driveway on last Thursday looked suitable for an overnight camping trip, but it was actually an important tool the hospital would use during a large-scale hazmat incident.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/disaster-practice-helps-hcch-prepare-for-various-community-hazard-situations/ | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/6ecef9dc297e37ea45c06804ff8bdffe1c470de9ba994fdd62cc471214807899.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:56:53 | null | 2016-08-20T09:33:42 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fturley-splattered-with-affection%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Turley splattered with affection | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Becky Turley, who began work at City Hall during the conversion to computer financial records, retired Friday afternoon from her city treasurer position.
Becky was honored at a reception at City Hall attended by customers and city employees. She was showered by the staff with silly string and confetti as she left the back door of City Hall at quitting time on Friday.
Becky worked for two years as the city’s elected collector and was appointed as treasurer in November of 1989. Marilyn Smith was the city clerk at that time.
“There wasn’t anyplace that you could go for training in computers,” she recalled.
City employees read utility meters manually at that time before converting to the smart meter system that can be read in City Hall.
“That was a huge change,” she said.
Turley has worked with several auditors over the years to keep the city’s financial records in order.
“You are not required to have an audit every year but the city has chosen to do so,” she said.
Becky’s husband Terry passed away in August of 2012. He was a longtime cable television installer.
She said retirement will allow her to spend more time with her grandchildren who are involved in sports and music.
She has two daughters, Stephanie Madison of St. Joseph and Teresa Reinert of Bethany.
She said she plans to learn more about football since her grandson is a running back at Central High School in St. Joseph. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/turley-splattered-with-affection/ | en | 2016-08-20T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/7cfee99b7e6d9e9cc22b449ae848bf5bd579cf5519c88bc8e3370e2ad74cded3.json |
[
"Phil Conger"
] | 2016-08-27T02:46:58 | null | 2016-08-26T20:56:15 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Flightning-stops-shhs-lathrop-game%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Lightning stops SHHS-Lathrop game | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | A thunderstorm interrupted the South Harrison-Lathrop football game, with the Bulldogs down by a score of 14-0. After evacuating the stadium for the weather delay, game officials postponed the game with about 10:09 left in the second quarter. The game will resume at 11 a.m. on Saturday morning in Memorial Stadium. South Harrison had possession of the ball in its own territory when the game was called. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/lightning-stops-shhs-lathrop-game/ | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/a063a7ce0d2caf047d4479a493688cd64b95fdac306a3f6ea9b09b27707c4a0c.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T14:46:32 | null | 2016-08-26T09:31:21 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fjohnson-family-opens-restaurant-on-the-square%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Johnson family opens restaurant on the Square | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | A restaurant has opened on the Bethany Square for the first time in many years with the Silver Dollar Café now being operated by the Johnson family, south of the post office.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/johnson-family-opens-restaurant-on-the-square/ | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/522da9d482f65176b33b2918034ada572a5d6548036135c9d492f22bfbbdf6ee.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T14:49:42 | null | 2016-08-30T08:13:13 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fgerald-lee-gerry-parsons%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Gerald Lee “Gerry” Parsons | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Gerald Lee “Gerry” Parsons
06/17/22-08/17/16
Parsons, Gerald Lee “Gerry”
94, Died August 17, 2016, peacefully, surrounded by his beloved family. His final words were “I love you, hon.” Born June 17, 1922 in Hatfield, Missouri. His parents Sylvia & Orville Parsons instilled in him a passion for life, love of nature, respect for all people, a great sense of humor and values of fairness, honesty, integrity and compassion that he carried throughout his life. He loved and treasured his friends and adored his family. Gerald married his childhood sweetheart Roberta Richardson, they had a 65-year long love affair… the kind of love that people write poetry and music about. Together they provided a marriage blueprint for the relationship we all hope for… but may be too human to achieve. Gerald fulfilled his childhood dream of flying by serving his country during WWII as a Navy pilot. He became an aeronautical engineer, a rocket scientist. He was key in development of the anti-ballistic missile that is used all over the world for defense. He was a pioneer in the missile and space industry. His job moved the family all over America and around the world. Gerald and his family had a passion for travel. He was always up for any adventure. Always! In spite of many admirable accomplishments in his life, he remained humble, he saw himself as a Missouri farm boy. Throughout his life he continued to own and operate a farm in Missouri near his childhood home. He will be buried in Missouri with his beloved wife. He was known for his loyal friendship, a ready smile, positive approach to everything, universal kindness, joy for life, a great laugh…he loved ice cream, hummingbirds, good views, boats, old cars, golf, his pecan trees, gardening, woodworking, saltines & soup, and more ice cream. He enjoyed a long and wonderful life, he will be profoundly missed by his two daughters: Barbara Gallagher (Mike Gallagher) and Sandra Thompson, his adoring grandchildren: Sean Gallagher (Roxann), Ryanne Tezanos (Jose), Meghan Thompson (Stephen Bassett), and twins Caroline Thompson & Robert Thompson. He cherished his great grandchildren: Lovey & Elliot Gallagher, Riley & Michael Tezanos and Liam & Annabelle Bassett. Gerald was a gentleman and a gentle man. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/gerald-lee-gerry-parsons/ | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/f0bc13da69b0e768e061084386ec523af6a9333c768d2f9df822a0e17bde1507.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T14:49:36 | null | 2016-08-30T08:10:12 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fclifford-ross-c-r-west%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Clifford Ross (C.R.) West | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Clifford Ross (C.R.) West completed his earthly journey and entered eternal life on August 29, 2016 at Sunnyview Nursing Home, Trenton, Mo.
C.R. was born September 27, 1935 in Santa Rosa, MO to Ross and Maxine (Stapp) West. During his life C.R. lived in the Pattonsburg, Bethany and Trenton areas. Following graduation from Pattonsburg High School, he married his high school sweetheart, Anita Newby. They were blessed with 63 years of marriage. C.R. was a truck driver, safely driving thousands of miles during his long career. Following retirement, he worked as a bus driver for the South Harrison RII School District in Bethany. For many years C.R. was a loyal Kansas City Royals Baseball fan, each and every season keeping the hope alive for a championship win. He saw 2 Royals’ World Series Championships and was present at the “K” for the 1985 winning game. C.R. was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Gary Wade West.
Survivors include his wife, Anita; children, Theresa West; Larry West and wife, Agnes; and Garry Ross West and wife, Vicky; 7 grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren; a sister-in-law, Nancy West; and brother-in-law and sister-in-law, J.T. and Loretta Newby; as well as nieces, nephews and cousins.
Funeral services will be 2:00 PM Thursday, September 1st at the Pattonsburg Baptist Church where a visitation will begin at 12:30 PM. Burial will follow the services in the Civil Bend Christian Cemetery. Please honor C.R.’s passion for the KC Royals by joining his family in wearing your Royal’s apparel to the services. Contributions are suggested to the Pattonsburg Multi-Purpose Center.
(Arr.’s: McGilley Antioch Chapel, 3325 NE Vivion Rd, Kansas City, MO 64119; www.mcgilleyantiochchapel.com) | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/clifford-ross-c-r-west/ | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/7e2b0a0aefe5faa8dc8f1525b6ff00db5cc020aac8f069dd0a4e5d8c208337e8.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:44 | null | 2016-08-26T11:52:17 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fparsons-gerald-lee-gerry%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Parsons, Gerald Lee “Gerry” | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Parsons, Gerald Lee “Gerry”
Died August 17, 2016, peacefully, surrounded by his beloved family. His final words were “I love you, hon.”
Born June 17, 1922 in Hatfield, Missouri. His parents Sylvia & Orville Parsons instilled in him a passion for life, love of nature, respect for all people, a great sense of humor and values of fairness, honesty, integrity and compassion that he carried throughout his life. He loved and treasured his friends and adored his family. Gerald married his childhood sweetheart Roberta Richardson, they had a 65-year long love affair… the kind of love that people write poetry and music about. Together they provided a marriage blueprint for the relationship we all hope for… but may be too human to achieve. Gerald fulfilled his childhood dream of flying by serving his country during WWII as a Navy pilot. He became an aeronautical engineer, a rocket scientist. He was key in development of the anti-ballistic missile that is used all over the world for defense. He was a pioneer in the missile and space industry. His job moved the family all over America and around the world.
Gerald and his family had a passion for travel. He was always up for any adventure. Always! In spite of many admirable accomplishments in his life, he remained humble, he saw himself as a Missouri farm boy. Throughout his life he continued to own and operate a farm in Missouri near his childhood home. He will be buried in Missouri with his beloved wife. He was known for his loyal friendship, a ready smile, positive approach to everything, universal kindness, joy for life, a great laugh…he loved ice cream, hummingbirds, good views, boats, old cars, golf, his pecan trees, gardening, woodworking, saltines & soup, and more ice cream.
He enjoyed a long and wonderful life, he will be profoundly missed by his two daughters: Barbara Gallagher (Mike Gallagher) and Sandra Thompson, his adoring grandchildren: Sean Gallagher (Roxann), Ryanne Tezanos (Jose), Meghan Thompson (Stephen Bassett), and twins Caroline Thompson & Robert Thompson. He cherished his great grandchildren: Lovey & Elliot Gallagher, Riley & Michael Tezanos and Liam & Annabelle Bassett. Arrangements entrusted to Whitney & Murphy Funeral Home. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/parsons-gerald-lee-gerry/ | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/497513e7f6b44b416c07bf12addf265982d32f9359ab623ed4a1187263931ac1.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T18:49:43 | null | 2016-08-30T13:04:30 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fnickarl-dean-wilcoxson-1964-2016%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Nickarl Dean Wilcoxson, 1964-2016 | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | OMAHA, NE: Nickarl “Nick” Dean Wilcoxson, 52, (formerly of Eagleville, MO) departed this life Saturday, August 27, 2016 at Twin Rivers Campsite near Omaha, NE.
He was born May 19, 1964 at Reid Hospital in Bethany, MO the fourth child of Robert D. and Dixie J. (Smith) Wilcoxson.
He graduated from North Harrison High School in Eagleville, MO in 1982 and later received his degree from Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO. He worked at First Data Resources IT Professionals in Omaha, NE.
Nick married Amy (Gose) Wilcoxson who preceded him in death.
On May 17, 2002 he married Nid Jarukasem. She survives of the home.
Nick loved spending time outdoors with family and friends camping, hunting, fishing and riding his motorcycle. He had just completed a lengthy trip out West on his motorcycle in the last month. He was often found helping repair a family member’s or a friend’s automobile. Special camping trips included returns to the family farm to relax and hunt or a campout with the extended Wilcoxson family. Nick was famous for his colorful campfires. He passed away doing what he loved, camping with family at Twin Rivers near Omaha, NE.
In addition to his late wife, Amy, Nick is preceded in death by his father, Robert Wilcoxson.
Survivors, in addition to his wife, Nid Wilcoxson, include children, Alyssa (Ray Whitmore) Niensiri, J.J. Loneman, Christian Wilcoxson, SuNyssa Wilcoxson; grandchildren, Grant, Mason, and Braxton; mother, Dixie Wilcoxson; siblings, Cynde (Jon) David, Dana (Connie) Wilcoxson, Kristy Wilcoxson Owen; and several nieces, nephews, cousins, and other family and friends.
Funeral services will be held at 1:00 p.m., Friday, September 2, at Eagleville Christian Church, Eagleville, MO, under the direction of Roberson Funeral Home, Eagleville, MO. Burial will follow in Masonic Cemetery, Eagleville, MO. The family will receive friends from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Wednesday at John A. Gentlemen Pacific Street Chapel, Omaha, NE, and also from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., Friday, at Eagleville Christian Church. Memorial contributions may be made to the Nick Wilcoxson Memorial Fund to be designated later in care of Roberson Funeral Home, PO Box 46, Eagleville, MO 64442. Online condolences may be left at www.robersonfuneralhome.com | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/nickarl-dean-wilcoxson-1964-2016/ | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/178b884d7cba8da2d8c6389bc0438b5afc58688e611ba3f55846761026031349.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:56:25 | null | 2016-08-25T09:48:36 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fellis-wins-at-missouri-state-fair%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Ellis wins at Missouri State Fair | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Submitted photos
Above, Wyatt Ellis of Bethany along with Tate Welch, Worth County and Soyer Wimer and Eli Henke of Mercer County competed in the Missouri State Fair swine judging contest last week. The boys won the senior division receiving champion team plaques sponsored by the Missouri Pork Association. The boys will go on to compete in Austin, Minn., at the National Barrow Show in September.
Right photo, Wyatt Ellis won the “Best Pair of Percentage Does” class at the goat show in the 4-H division and Reserve Champion Planter and Reserve Champion Centerpiece in the FFA building. Wyatt also showed swine while at the fair. He is the son of Jeremy and Pat Ellis and is a member of the Mitchelville 4-H Club and the South Harrison FFA Chapter. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/ellis-wins-at-missouri-state-fair/ | en | 2016-08-25T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/e7e9a9fd2e92557ebc4c49c1338a3cfa339432ddcef3d165d657573b39007da1.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:49:23 | null | 2016-08-23T14:14:28 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fmargery-m-madison-wooderson%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Margery M. (Madison) Wooderson | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Margery M. (Madison) Wooderson, 92, died August 15, 2016, in Ark City, Kansas.
Margery was born on July 6, 1924 in Bethany, Mo., to Reno and Mabel (Bulthaupt) Madison the 3rd child of 11.
Margery married Cecil Wooderson on January 27, 1943 in Bethany, Mo., and to this union were born six children: Diana, Nancy Jean, Vivian, Joni, Alan and Chris.
Survivors: Her children, Diana, Ark City, Kansas; Nancy Jean (Clarence) Taliaferro, Severy, Kan.; Vivian (Richard) Wade, Climax, Kan.; Joni (David) Brooks, Helena, Mont.; Alan (Kathleen) Wooderson, Benton, Kan., and Chris (Jana) Wooderson, Ark City, Kan,; sisters, Ruthann (Leland) Musick, Bethany, Mo., Patty (C.B.) Tripp, Holt, Mo.; brother, Willis (Jane) Madison, Soldotna, Alaska; 18 grandchildren; 24 great-grandchildren.
Preceding Margery in death were her husband Cecil Wooderson; siblings Donald Madison, Florence Holliday, Ida (Tootie) Spence, Betty Lea Stevens, Geneva Scott, Hazel Dutton, Warren (Bud) Madison, and Juanita Rena McMickle; two grand-daughters, Traci Spangler and Nichole Myers. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/margery-m-madison-wooderson/ | en | 2016-08-23T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/49604b5a806aa91fb20aa77e034c28bb6285710c154e467e04b0411ae91007e8.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:53:32 | null | 2016-08-24T07:41:50 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fschool-library-gets-makeover%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | School library gets makeover | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | By Emma Coulthard
The South Harrison Elementary School was able to give their students a new library makeover for the school year.
Everything in the library has been revamped and updated, including the new Librarian Heather Fitzgerald’s, desk that is now lined with chalkboards to allow quotes and messages to be displayed.
The whole makeover is due to the gracious donations that were made by Gumdrop Books as well as the Fitzgerald Family Foundation.
With this funding the school was able to purchase new seating areas for students, including fun beanbag chairs and new pod-style seating that no doubt will attract the children’s attention.
They also brought in new bookshelves to line the walls and added a fresh coat of paint. The room is topped off with new rugs that add a more modern feel to the room and invite children to sit and read together on the amusing buddy rugs.
One of the more unique pieces in the room would have to be the decoupage table that is covered in all kinds of children’s book covers and character pictures. It’s a fun addition to the already fantastic room.
Children’s desire to read will soar now that they have such a exciting place to let their imaginations wonder. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/school-library-gets-makeover/ | en | 2016-08-24T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/ce93a1d9a1b73eadca9f17ab34f603795047ece82ca298cb569a28d5b28fe1d7.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:46:49 | null | 2016-06-13T09:50:35 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F06%2F2016-harrison-county-relay-life-held-june%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | 2016 Harrison County Relay for Life being held in June | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | The 2016 Harrison County Relay for Life will be held on Saturday June 25th from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the South Harrison High School in Bethany.
READ FULL STORY…http://www.bethanyclipper.com/subscriptions | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/06/2016-harrison-county-relay-life-held-june/ | en | 2016-06-13T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/981b2d93515058d0afdffce04a3899052788065530c0c28a73ac4d31ab23117c.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T12:50:16 | null | 2016-08-31T07:38:43 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fbethany-hy-vee-customer-will-win-a-truck%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | Bethany Hy-Vee customer will win a truck | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | The Highway Patrol reports that two suspects were arrested following a report of shots being ... | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/bethany-hy-vee-customer-will-win-a-truck/ | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/0b52785b3f5223114624097665128b7abe54ac1542247f86c7e8f4c894e8b866.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T14:48:55 | null | 2016-08-29T09:40:03 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fbethanyclipper.com%2F2016%2F08%2Fnew-south-harrison-teachers-for-this-school-year%2F.json | http://bethanyclipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cropped-Site-Identity-logo-32x32.jpg | en | null | New South Harrison teachers for this school year | null | null | bethanyclipper.com | Republican-Clipper photo, Emma Coulthard
The new teachers and faculty gathered for a luncheon on Wednesday, August 17, along with all returning members. They are pictured from left to right: Kris Williams, elementary secretary/building office manager; Shelly Smith, middle school science teacher; Christy Clark, high school computer/receptionist/secretary; Nic Joint, middle school/high school physical education teacher; Bonnie Bradley, high school food service supervisor; Amanda Mather, elementary music teacher; Scott Neth, high school counselor; Christine Chesney, middle school music teacher; Suzanne Slaughter, middle school special education teacher; Fairann Campbell, middle school language arts teacher; Erik Coffey, career center director; Tanya Bartlett, elementary special education teacher; Chris Schoning, middle school substitute social studies teacher; Aaron McQuinn, elementary art teacher; Heather Waddell, high school language arts speech drama; Gary Lanning, bus driver; Amy Culberson, elementary para special education; Louis O’Brien, high school social studies teacher; Emily Edwards, 1st grade teacher; Ciji McQuin, bus driver; Lisa Tharp, sub bus driver; Dale Lasman, middle school language arts teacher; Steve Tharp, bus driver. | http://bethanyclipper.com/2016/08/new-south-harrison-teachers-for-this-school-year/ | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | bethanyclipper.com/be3fed25bf4275841c737a6bd361ad918e17ff2d699c3df991d0b5df12ed823d.json |
[
"Randy Sachs",
"Special To The Star-Telegram"
] | 2016-08-26T12:56:41 | null | 2016-08-24T14:41:00 | The fact that Haslet Eaton football is playing its first varsity season, complete with all kinds of “firsts” at every turn, can be overwhelming enough. For Eaton’s Nick Lanum, though, he’s doing all his firsts for the very first time, without the aid of a JV season. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.star-telegram.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fcommunity%2Fkeller-citizen%2Farticle97609877.html.json | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/hvv6o2/picture97609867/ALTERNATES/LANDSCAPE_1140/0160506_161536-2 | en | null | Eagles DE lining up for first time, again | null | null | www.star-telegram.com | 1:56 Timberview's defense puts stranglehold on Everman in 21-7 win Pause
1:30 Rangers manager Jeff Banister on Carlos Gomez's debut
1:27 South Grand Prairie holds off Arlington to start 2016 season
0:48 Gary Patterson says TCU has to prove Kirk Herbstreit right and others wrong
0:55 TCU's Patterson says new QB Hill stronger, faster than ever before
1:12 TCU's Patterson to new QB Hill: "our job is just to win"
3:19 Gary Patterson Names Kenny Hill TCU Starting QB
1:01 TCU Horned Frog quarterback Kenny Hill appreciates second chance
0:37 Euless Police get new, heavy, body armor kits
1:10 New Rangers outfielder Carlos Gomez gets the start in left Thursday | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/article97609877.html | en | 2016-08-24T00:00:00 | www.star-telegram.com/b3e07139dd20dd8960e8d29e1931657a1122bfe86a36298406b504774f831771.json |
[
"Sandra Engelland",
"Sengelland Star-Telegram.Com"
] | 2016-08-26T13:07:25 | null | 2016-08-25T11:54:00 | Keller district officials urge employees to make a maximum impact on students in the upcoming school year. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.star-telegram.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fcommunity%2Fkeller-citizen%2Farticle97807932.html.json | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/1we4yc/picture97807907/ALTERNATES/LANDSCAPE_1140/convo%20kisd%202 | en | null | Keller educators kick off the school year | null | null | www.star-telegram.com | 1:56 Timberview's defense puts stranglehold on Everman in 21-7 win Pause
1:30 Rangers manager Jeff Banister on Carlos Gomez's debut
1:27 South Grand Prairie holds off Arlington to start 2016 season
0:48 Gary Patterson says TCU has to prove Kirk Herbstreit right and others wrong
0:55 TCU's Patterson says new QB Hill stronger, faster than ever before
1:12 TCU's Patterson to new QB Hill: "our job is just to win"
3:19 Gary Patterson Names Kenny Hill TCU Starting QB
1:01 TCU Horned Frog quarterback Kenny Hill appreciates second chance
0:37 Euless Police get new, heavy, body armor kits
1:10 New Rangers outfielder Carlos Gomez gets the start in left Thursday | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/article97807932.html | en | 2016-08-25T00:00:00 | www.star-telegram.com/a9a9e88ccf69bc4aa6f189eb894bba096bf4c94df9716e0feb543b44aabf9799.json |
[
"The Lonnquist Notes",
"Kevin Lonnquist",
"Klonnquist Star-Telegram.Com"
] | 2016-08-29T18:49:58 | null | 2016-08-29T12:23:00 | With a week under their belts, many Northeast Tarrant high school football teams will face stiffer competition this weekend. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.star-telegram.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fcommunity%2Fkeller-citizen%2Farticle98603697.html.json | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/s31hra/picture98603687/ALTERNATES/LANDSCAPE_1140/martin%20carroll | en | null | Football picks, Week 2: Teams face stout challenges | null | null | www.star-telegram.com | 0:40 Fort Worth Play of the Year entry week 1: Aledo Pause
2:01 YMLA walks away from rough opening loss with renewed dedication
1:00 Fort Worth Play of the Year entry: Cedar Hill
2:13 2016 Big Tex Choice Awards
0:38 Fort Worth Play of the Year entry: Frisco Lone Star
0:51 Clint Probst talks about Big Tex Choice Awards
0:49 Big Tex Choice Awards -- Most Creative
0:49 Fort Worth Play of the Year entry: South Grand Prairie
1:20 Jeff Banister says Sam Dyson ultimately did his job Sunday
1:05 Despite cushion, Rangers to keep focus on each game | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/article98603697.html | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.star-telegram.com/fd1ce3be5a2a64639ad41ea0a7407c74ad61f29091e82443034cd06c74c1fe4f.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T04:49:46 | null | 2016-08-28T21:56:00 | Colleyville | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.star-telegram.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fcommunity%2Fkeller-citizen%2Farticle98526622.html.json | http://www.star-telegram.com/static/images/star-telegram/facebook.jpg | en | null | Colleyville, Grapevine and Southlake police report | null | null | www.star-telegram.com | 0:39 Fort Worth Play of the Year entry: Aledo Pause
2:13 2016 Big Tex Choice Awards
0:38 Fort Worth Play of the Year entry: Frisco Lone Star
0:51 Clint Probst talks about Big Tex Choice Awards
0:49 Big Tex Choice Awards -- Most Creative
0:49 Fort Worth Play of the Year entry: South Grand Prairie
1:20 Jeff Banister says Sam Dyson ultimately did his job Sunday
1:05 Despite cushion, Rangers to keep focus on each game
1:48 Jeff Banister: "When Derek throws strikes, Derek has success"
1:25 Derek Holland, Jonathan Lucroy on Holland's six strong innings Sunday | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/article98526622.html | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.star-telegram.com/28fe6e9b504eb7de176505a84649c3de4aea1cf00cedef08679f27efd44ce3ae.json |
[
"Randy Sachs",
"Special To The Star-Telegram"
] | 2016-08-26T13:06:19 | null | 2016-08-09T13:40:00 | The Keller Central volleyball team will jump into a field of 32 teams to get an early season glimpse of where it stands. Central is in the growing tournament of stout competition at the Mansfield ISD Sunrise Rotary volleyball tournament this weekend. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.star-telegram.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fcommunity%2Fkeller-citizen%2Farticle94602827.html.json | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/iqq1ru/picture94602817/ALTERNATES/LANDSCAPE_1140/kelso%20central%20vbo | en | null | Central to get early read in big tourney | null | null | www.star-telegram.com | 1:56 Timberview's defense puts stranglehold on Everman in 21-7 win Pause
1:30 Rangers manager Jeff Banister on Carlos Gomez's debut
1:27 South Grand Prairie holds off Arlington to start 2016 season
0:48 Gary Patterson says TCU has to prove Kirk Herbstreit right and others wrong
0:55 TCU's Patterson says new QB Hill stronger, faster than ever before
1:12 TCU's Patterson to new QB Hill: "our job is just to win"
3:19 Gary Patterson Names Kenny Hill TCU Starting QB
1:01 TCU Horned Frog quarterback Kenny Hill appreciates second chance
0:37 Euless Police get new, heavy, body armor kits
1:10 New Rangers outfielder Carlos Gomez gets the start in left Thursday | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/article94602827.html | en | 2016-08-09T00:00:00 | www.star-telegram.com/3c26bd5da01cda399d4745562243e673b210148db5aebba0201d049a942ed026.json |
[
"Randy Sachs",
"Special To The Star-Telegram"
] | 2016-08-26T13:08:20 | null | 2016-08-09T13:37:00 | Alec Luikens has played all along the offensive line since his sophomore year, but the senior will shift back to center for the coming season. With over 45 seniors having graduated from last year’s Keller football team, Luikens’ importance as the anchor of the young offensive line is even greater. | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.star-telegram.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fcommunity%2Fkeller-citizen%2Farticle94602112.html.json | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/4wkt5w/picture94602107/ALTERNATES/LANDSCAPE_1140/Luikens | en | null | Keller to be well-centered | null | null | www.star-telegram.com | 1:56 Timberview's defense puts stranglehold on Everman in 21-7 win Pause
1:30 Rangers manager Jeff Banister on Carlos Gomez's debut
1:27 South Grand Prairie holds off Arlington to start 2016 season
0:48 Gary Patterson says TCU has to prove Kirk Herbstreit right and others wrong
0:55 TCU's Patterson says new QB Hill stronger, faster than ever before
1:12 TCU's Patterson to new QB Hill: "our job is just to win"
3:19 Gary Patterson Names Kenny Hill TCU Starting QB
1:01 TCU Horned Frog quarterback Kenny Hill appreciates second chance
0:37 Euless Police get new, heavy, body armor kits
1:10 New Rangers outfielder Carlos Gomez gets the start in left Thursday | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/keller-citizen/article94602112.html | en | 2016-08-09T00:00:00 | www.star-telegram.com/f89138213e8d76778fd494db44af8df942438a880525a8fce746a288114cb658.json |
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