Chitralekha, a dalit woman from Payyanur, Kannur, has been in the news since 2005, for her open challenge to the CITU in that left bastion. An autorickshaw driver, she had protested at the CITU’s constant interference at work and the intensely male hostility against her presence in an almost exclusively male line of work. Braving ‘character-assault’ from the CITU which called her a ‘loose woman’, a ‘regular drunk’ and so on, she continued working until,in December 2005, her autorickshaw was burned down. She fought, however, and was supported by various Dalit, Feminists and Citizen’s initiatives. In June 2008, she procured a new autorickshaw with their support. This did not mean that she was now acceptable to the CITU . Now recently, she complained that the CITU had seized a chance encounter to beat her and her husband, and the police, who arrived on the scene, took them to the police station and unleashed even worse violence. Her complaints have been ignored or treated with hostility by the mainstream media in Kerala. Activists and concerned persons in and outside Kerala, however, have rallied to her support. Read More…
The Many ‘Vices’ of Chitralekha
Posted in Identities, Images, Left watch, Media politics, Violence-Conflict | Tags: Chitalekha, CITU violence, Dalit women, Kannur, Kerala
A response from a Sri Lankan friend: Priya Thangaraja
Posted in Bad ideas | Tags: democracy, human rights, sri lanka, War
The absurd theatre of Sri Lanka, applauded by India
Posted in Bad ideas, Frontiers, Violence-Conflict | Tags: democracy, dictatorship, human rights, India, peace, Politics, sri lanka
The Suicide of Sense
Mumbai has been in the grip of a wave of student suicides this past month. According to the Mumbai Mirror, as many as 25 suicides have taken place in the city in the new year, most of which have been by students. As expected, the media has tripped over itself reporting every sordid and tragic detail of the students’ personal lives, and public anxiety in Mumbai is climbing to the level of all-round hysteria. The general consensus is that there is too much pressure on young minds from schools and parents; the Maharashtra State government has reacted by issuing directives to all eight regional education boards in the state asking principals to arrange workshops to identify depressed students and urge them to seek psychiatric help. State education minister Balasaheb Thorat has promised a stress-free curriculum in school boards, and followed this up by a new rule that allows failure in one subject for an overall pass result in the SSC. A south Mumbai hospital has recruited a former depressive who has a history of three suicide attempts to counsel others against suicide. The Thane Mental Hospital has in the meanwhile gone one step ahead and created what they call a ‘20-minute anti-suicide psycho drama skit’ to be performed on the streets and in educational institutions. According to hospital superintendent Dr. Sanjay Kumavat, the skit will focus on the trauma that family members go through when a child commits suicide, and the ‘problems created by such a situation’ (Mumbai Mirror Jan 18th 2010) – this will hopefully prevent them from taking the proverbial ‘drastic step’.
Posted in Bad ideas, Capitalism, Everyday Life, Metropolis, Violence-Conflict | Tags: Counselors, Mumbai, Students, Suicides
Miss Rajdhani Contest
You are cordially invited
Posted in Bad ideas, Culture, Everyday Life, Metropolis | Tags: beauty contests, Delhi, Rohini
A Republic of Cities
From the Indian Express this morning.
This ambiguity over the city and the reductive stereotypes it inhabits has had a long innings; and yet has begun to change. The urban has begun to rise not just demographically but politically, electorally, socially, culturally and economically to become the defining problem space of the ‘new India.’ Cities, for better and worse, have caught our imagination.
Posted in Identities, Metropolis | Tags: citizenship, urban
Of SubTerrains and Seismology: Notes on the Contemporaneous in India
Guest post by MOHD. SABIH AHMED
Of SubTerrains and Seismology: Notes on the Contemporaneous in India [1]
If the starting point of an enquiry is to investigate into the larger ambit of cultural production in which a notional unity of ‘contemporary art’ is one formation, the study of alternative systems/networks/formations would not suffice merely as mapping them as ‘alternative art’ in the same field. Instead, the demand would be to trace the contexts that give rise to a necessity for peculiar and disparate kinds of alternatives, and how certain cases instigate the field, maybe even risk rearranging the very conceptual and pragmatic constituents of that field.
This paper is a series of ponderings, questions, and a hesitant proposition regarding the above-mentioned, as much as it is an exposition on the state of affairs of that notional unity that is ‘Contemporary Art in India’. Read More…
Posted in Culture, Debates, Theory | Tags: alternative art, ART, Cybermohalla, Delhi art scene, Khoj
Enemy Property
There have been several news reports recently about attempts by the builder Mafia to capture properties near the Jama Masjid in Shahjehanabad (popularly, known as old Delhi) to build a 100 room hotel. Reports have also suggested the involvement of a local politician, though the politician has refuted the allegations very firmly.
This piece is not about the builder mafia or the local politician, but about another issue that has cropped up during the investigation of the attempted land grab. It has been found that the ownership of one of the properties is under dispute and a case has been going on for close to two decades.
The reports say that the disputed property belongs to the “custodian of enemy properties”. Even a cursory reading of the reports would reveal the identity of the original owners of these properties. The original owners of these properties were Muslims of Delhi.
Muslims, who had lived in Shahjehanabad for generations, some for centuries like the families of my ancestors. Read More…
Posted in Bad ideas, Government, Identities, Law, Scams, Violence-Conflict | Tags: India-Pakistan, old Delhi, Partition, Shahjehanabad
The police detain 3 more in Gompad case
Konta: The mystery surrounding the killing of nine Adivasis in Gompad village in Dantewada district in October last year is deepening, with the Chhattisgarh police detaining three more witnesses to the incident and restricting all access to the area on the pretext of Operation Green Hunt.
Operation Green Hunt is a catch-all phrase, used by the police and media alike, for all major anti-naxal offensives since July 2009.
As previously reported by The Hindu, the Chhattisgarh police have assumed total control over the movements of Sodi Sambho – one of several witnesses in a Supreme Court petition that alleges that the 9 civilians were killed by the security forces.
On Friday, armed policemen and Special Police Officers (SPO) lined the length of the highway from Dantewada town to Konta, the block headquarters closest to Gompad, stopping vehicles and questioning commuters. Travelling with local journalists Anil Mishra of Nayi Duniya and Yashwant Yadav of Navbharat, this correspondent was repeatedly detained along the route and told that Gompad village was out of bounds as a major anti-naxal operation was underway. Non-journalists were, however, let through.
Posted in Countryside, Law, Violence-Conflict | Tags: Chhattisgarh, Gompad, Naxalism, Operation Green Hunt, police, Sodi Sambho
Presidential Elections, Minorities and Political Space
The following is the write up of my talk given at the Centre for Society and Religion on January 11th, 2010. I have articulated some of these concerns in greater depth in my recent article in the January 9th, 2010 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly titled, ‘State Power, State Patronage and Elections in Sri Lanka’.
Presidential Elections, Minorities and Political Space
First, I want to thank the organisers for inviting me to speak here at the Centre for Society and Religion (CSR), an institution that embodies a great tradition of conscious political engagement. It is an honour to be given this privilege and I hope this series of discussions at CSR on the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections is the beginning of many discussions and debates on important political issues facing the peoples of our country. Indeed, the space that has opened up in recent weeks in the context of the elections should be expanded by all social institutions and social forums concerned about peace, justice and democracy. I for one believe that the debates, the social pressures and the mobilisations in the lead up to and after elections are at times even more important than the act of electing a President or other political representatives. Read More…
Posted in Debates, Government, Movements, Politics | Tags: Minorities, Presidential Elections, sri lanka, Tamil
Jyoti Basu and the Passing of an Era
Jyoti Basu, Promode Dasgupta and Saroj Mukherjee
With the passing away of Jyoti Basu, the curtain comes down on an entire chapter of communist history in this country. Basu may have been the last of a generation that learnt its politics in the stormy days of the anticolonial struggle and who lived through the ups and downs of politics – from the underground days of the 1930s and 1940s to the initiation into the ways of parliamentary democracy. The long engagement with parliamentary democracy was to lead to Basu’s – and the communists’ – long stint in power. And Basu was one of those rare communists for whom democracy was not a mere strategic imperative but a value to be internalized.
Basu belonged to a generation of communists who worked their way from the bottom up. Trained in Law in England, Basu returned to India, determined to work in the communist movement. Muzaffar Ahmed, the then secretary of the undivided communist party sent him to work among the railway workers. It was there, working among and organizing the railway workers that Basu entered mass politics. It was probably in this process that Basu developed his distinctive style of politics – a style that we have yet to understand fully.
Posted in Left watch, Movements, Politics | Tags: Bonapartism, Caesarism, communists, Gramsci, Jyoti Basu, West Bengal
Remembering Jyoti Basu: Monobina Gupta
This is a Guest Post by MONOBINA GUPTA
Jyoti Basu
While waiting endlessly at the CPI-M headquarters in Delhi, we, the Left-beat reporters, often used to say how incredibly dull the beat would be in the absence of Jyoti Basu, Indrajit Gupta, and Harkishen Singh Surjeet. With their distinctive personalities and distinct style, each one had livened up the tedious job of keeping track of the Left parties and their leaders. Indrajit Gupta would speak in a baritone voice, trotting out gruff answers; the ever-amiable Harkishen Singh Surjeet, never failed to pick up the phone, was always ready to share a laugh with us. But of these three colourful Communist stalwarts, it was Basu who used to keep us most preoccupied, with his ‘read-between-the-line’ one-liners, exasperatingly short, brusque replies, sometimes even with outright sarcasm or rudeness.
Posted in Left watch, Movements, Politics | Tags: Communist, Jyoti Basu, Left Front, West Bengal
Asim Butt (1978-2010)
Self-portrait as Christ. 1998. Oil on board, paper, and wax palimpsest.
Karachi-basd artist Asim Butt committed suicide yesterday by hanging himself to death. He was only 31, and his work made waves. Part of the Stuckist art movement, he made figurative paintings, most notably a series of seven portraying a dog’s carcass. He was also a graffiti artist, painting red the walls of Karachi. His best known graffiti work was the eject symbol painted all over towards the end of General Musharraf’s rule.
Read this moving tribute by a journalist friend and this one with a lot of links at Stuckism.com. You can pay homage here, but most of all, see his pictures and paintings on his own Facebook profile.
As one of the tributes on Facebook reads, good people die early.
Inaugurated: The Malabar Moral Police!
The dastardly attack on the eminent writer Paul Zachariah by the DYFI in the CPM fortress of Payyanur in north Kerala on 10 January has been roundly condemned across the political spectrum in Kerala. Zacharia was heckled and abused at a literary seminar organized by a publisher for criticizing the moral policing practiced by the official left in Kerala. He condemned the recent DYFI-PDP joint ‘moral action’ against the Congress leader Rajmohan Unnithan and a Sewa Dal leader which, according to the the DYFI leadership, were ‘provocative’. Zacharia was accosted by a gang of men when he was about to leave Payyanur and openly threatened. He was told that such talk was not permitted in the left bastion of Payyanur; when the threat did not produce the desired reaction, they resorted to physical intimidation, and relented only after the intervention of the organizers who are CPM sympathizers, and other writers present there. The day after, prominent leaders in the CPM, including the Chief Minister and the Minister for Education, condemned the action. Read More…
Posted in Bad ideas, Culture, Everyday Life, Left watch, Politics, Sex, Violence-Conflict
Where is Sodi Sambho?
Raipur: Sodi Sambho was last seen in public on January 3 this year, when the Chhattisgarh Police intercepted her as she was en route to Delhi to receive treatment for a bullet wound.
Since then, neither the press nor her lawyer has been able to access her.
Ms. Sambho is a key witness in a petition filed in the Supreme Court which alleges that security forces fired upon and killed nine Adivasis in a ‘sanitisation operation’ at Gompad village, Dantewada district on October 1 2009.
Posted in Countryside, Violence-Conflict | Tags: Chhattisgarh, Dantewara, Gompad, Naxalism, Sodi Sambho
City Walls That Talk II
This image comes to us from Anand Vivek Taneja
Posted in Bad ideas, Everyday Life | Tags: Anand Vivek Taneja, Commonwealth Games, Delhi 2010
The Two Zizeks
Slavoj Zizek spoke on Tragedy and Farce in Delhi on January 5, 2010. He spoke for about an hour and a half, then I responded for about 18 minutes, then he came back spiritedly for about forty-five minutes. This post is in two parts. The first part is the brief intervention I made at Stein Auditorium. In the second part of this post, I expand on my critique in the light of his response. I could not of course, speak after he had spoken the second time, so I’m doing it here.
I
A jinn appeared to a man and granted him three wishes. First, said the man excitedly, I want to be Slavoj Zizek. You idiot, said the jinn. You are Slavoj Zizek.
This is one of the many stories that the internet throws up on the eminent Slovenian Lacanian whom it has been our pleasure to listen to today. His own jokes and anecdotes are of course legendary, the medium through which he makes complex theoretical points. It thus becomes the burden of every unfortunate person writing about him or commenting on his work, to tell a few jokes themselves. Often Profesor Zizek’s own.
So. It struck me that the truth of the joke with which I began is that Slavoj Zizek longs to be Slavoj Zizek. He never quite makes it, though, because Zizek keeps escaping himself. In an interview to The Guardian a couple of years ago, he was asked – What do you most dislike about your appearance? And he replied – That it makes me appear the way I really am.
Having followed Professor Zizek’s work for a while now in growing bewilderment, I understand his predicament There are at least two Zizeks in there, and whichever one manifests himself, Slavoj is taken aback and rather dissatisfied. This is me? He seems to ask.
Posted in Politics, Theory | Tags: Alain Badiou, feminism, Marxism, Partha Chatterjee, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek in India
Police States, Anthropology and Human Rights: Nandini Sundar
Guestpost by Nandini Sundar
3rd January 2010
Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Professor of Political Science, Delhi University and I have just returned (January 1st) from a visit to the police state of Chhattisgarh. Ujjwal had gone for research and I had gone for a combination of research and verification purposes to assess the livelihood situation of villagers for our case before the SC, both entirely legitimate activities. In Dantewada, we had checked into Hotel Madhuban on the 29th of December around 2 pm without any problems, only to be told later that night that the management required the entire hotel to be instantly emptied out because they were doing some puja to mark the death anniversary of the hotel owner. We refused to leave at night, and were told we would have to leave at 6 am instead because the rooms had to be cleaned. As expected, other guests checked in the next morning, puja notwithstanding.
Read More…
Posted in Countryside, Frontiers | Tags: Chattisgarh, Nandini Sundar, salwa judum, SPO
Protest and Terrorism, Is there a Difference?
Sufiya Madani of the PDP has been granted conditional bail by the Ernakulam Sessions Court Judge after a tense wait following her arrest on 17 December. She was remanded to judicial custody by the first class magistrate court at Aluva which had refused her bail. Meanwhile, the mainstream media went on a speculation-spree, even publishing ‘evidence’ that she had abetted terrorism and violence — the burning of a bus owned by the Tamil Nadu Road Transport Corporation at Kalamassery in 2005 during protests against the PDP leader Abdul Nasser Madani’s (Sufiya’s husband) continued detention in the Coimbatore jail . Read More…
Posted in Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Identities, Law, Left watch, Media politics, Politics, Right watch
The Žižekian Counter-Revolution
[Slovenian Lacanian-Marxist-Hegelian philosopher and cultural theorist, Slavoj Žižek is visiting India currently and will be delivering a few lectures here. This post is prompted by his visit. Interested Delhi-ites can catch him speak on
4 Jan 2010. 5 p.m. on
“Ideology in the Post-ideological World: The Case of Hollywood”
at Sarai-CSDS. 29 Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi
and
5 Jan 2010. 7 p.m.
“Tragedy and Farce”
Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi]
imaaN mujhe roke hai jo khiNche hai mujhe kufr
ka’aba mere peeche hai kaleesa mere aage
[Faith holds me back when infidelity beckons/
Behind me, the Kaaba; before me, the Church]
It is difficult to miss the immense subversiveness of the dilemma encapsulated in Ghalib’s couplet above. This dilemma of the believer is produced by the constant threat of corruption – the Kaaba behind the believing Muslim holds him back from indulging in, or falling prey to, the infidelities and temptations that always lie in wait.
Substitute Marxism for Kaaba and ‘postmodernism’ for Church, and you have the perfect Žižekian incarnation of this classic Ghalibian dilemma: Not quite at home in the Faith (Lacan, jouissance, surplus-enjoyment, the Real…) and yet, not able to leave it either, for the fear of what might befall one deserting the Order. Faith is the anchor that holds one back from committing all kinds of blasphemies. Nevertheless, the seductions of infidelity force our philosopher to turn for sustenance precisely to the philosophers and ideas he mistrusts: unlike most members of the Marxist faith, he repeatedly returns to Nietzsche, Heidegger, to Derrida, Foucault, Laclau and Deleuze. He takes over their language and makes himself at home in it. Is there a hidden jouissance in thus frequenting this forbidden territory?
Posted in Capitalism, Debates, Movements, Theory | Tags: Badiou, Marxism, postmodernism, Zizek in India
A Journey Into the Dark: Arati Chokshi
This is a Guest Post by ARATI CHOKSHI.
[Chhattisgarh and Dantewada have been in the news for quite some time now, as matters have reached a climax with the state on its anti-Maoist offensive after the near-failure of its stratgey to prop up Salwa Judum as a counter-insurgency outfit. All intermediate spaces stand wiped out now. Recently, Himanshu Kumar of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram had planned a padayatra in Dantewada and around that time, a team of women's and human rights organization visited the area apprehending trouble. This a report of that team's experiences.]
It was night by the time we set out. Four jeeps sped carrying 39 women of diverse age, class, caste, religion, faith, ideologies, from ten states across the nation, and representing 20 women’s and human rights organisations. We sped from Raipur to Dantewada, on wide, smooth highways on a common journey, as part of our campaign to address the alarming reports of sexual violence and repression of women by the State, that were emerging, particularly from Dantewada, in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. We were headed there both to get a first hand account and to show solidarity with victims of heinous crimes, who defying all threats and intimidation had managed to come forth and lodge complaints against their assailants – in this case, the State. This journey was to be an enquiry – a personal exploration and examination of the truth- of dark, dangerous, secret whispers that managed to trickle out from Dantewada and ooze into wider consciousness – tales of tortures, horror, and barbaric acts that our representatives, our own protectors and security forces meted out on a particular collective us, the weakest, most vulnerable, the voiceless adivasis of Bastar.
Over the next 22 hours, we were to find that our journey had become the goal, revealing to us far more from State’s desperate attempt to hide, than in our wanderings and talkings in Dantewada. In hindering us, we found how the State had repressed civil liberties of its citizens, how democratic spaces had vanished and how the authoritarian subjugation by the State had muted all voices – not just of protest, but of even posing a question.
Read More…
Posted in Countryside, Government, Violence-Conflict | Tags: Arati Chokshi, Chhattisgarh, Dantewada, police, women's organizations
Report on Violence Against Workers in Ludhiana: JTSA
[Here on Kafila we have written before about the new contours of class struggle and unrest in industrial zones. As the demands of capital become ever more rapacious, and worker's bodies more dispensable, the last few years have witnessed increasing incidents of violent conflict in urban industrial areas across the country. In each case workers' demands fall on the deaf ears of an increasingly unresponsive management backed by the weapons of the state. When the simmering violence finally comes to a head, it is workers who are demonized. We carry below a report by the Jamia Teacher's Solidarity Association on the recent outbreaks of violence in Ludhiana's industrial zone.]
A fact-finding team of university teachers from Delhi visited Ludhiana on Sunday (20.12.2009) to ascertain the facts of the incidents of violence that have gripped the industrial part of the city involving migrant workers. The team visited Dhandari kalan and Sherpur and spoke to a large number of migrant workers and visited their homes. The team found that despite a large number of the migrant workforce (around 12 lakhs) living in Ludhiana for over 15 years, sometimes even much longer, a majority of them had no voting rights or ration cards. Even when they applied for voters I cards, their applications were rejected on spurious grounds. It is not surprising that no political party, not even the local Member of Parliament, Mr. Manish Tiwari, has bothered to visit them. This attitude percolates down to the bureaucracy and police force, who treat the migrant workers as virtually second class citizens. Read More…
Posted in Capitalism, Everyday Life, Violence-Conflict | Tags: class struggle, industry, JTSA, Ludhiana, migrant workers, police violence
Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome: Anant Maringanti
Or, when suicide threat becomes political strategy
Guest post by ANANT MARINGANTI
I am witnessing a bizarre phenomenon in Andhra Pradesh which I can at the moment only call ‘Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome‘. That this is pathological, and that this has to do with the media I am certain. But it is difficult to pin down what the pathogen is.
First, in the days and weeks following the then chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy’s (YSR) death on September 2nd, 2009; over 450 people were reported to have died either of heart attacks or suicides. Newspapers kept a daily tally and the numbers kept mounting. Being in Singapore at the time, several thousands of miles away from Hyderabad during those weeks, I had no first hand experience of the mood in Hyderabad. I dismissed the reportage as a silly political gimmick. It was easy to surmise that vested interests had simply been collecting daily death reports from various government hospitals in different towns and attributing them to grief over YSR’s death. The largest number of these deaths – 227 occurred on the day of the funeral and the following day. Read More…
Posted in Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Media politics, Violence-Conflict | Tags: Anant Maringanti, Andhra Pradesh, crises media, Hyderabad, media, suicide, telangana, Television
Reflections on Biometric Attendance: Kriti Budhiraja
This is a guest post by Kriti Budhiraja
The latest in the list of efforts to “meet international standards” is the proposal to introduce biometric attendance for teachers across Delhi University. According to Vice Chancellor Deepak Pental, this new system is in keeping with the “spirit of transparency inculcated by the Right to Information Act.” But this commitment to a “spirit of transparency” becomes immediately questionable when one reflects on the undemocratic ways in which proposals such as these are being pushed through. Much like the semester system which is going to be implemented despite widespread dissent, it is rightfully feared that Deepak Pental may go ahead with this proposal while paying scant regard to teachers’ hostility towards it. Read More…
Posted in Everyday Life, Politics, Technology | Tags: Deepak Pental, Delhi University, Kriti Budhiraja, Surveillance cameras, Vice Chancellor
IWIJ Report on Shopian
After months of uncertainty in which the entire political and state machinery has been galvanized to ensure that the perpetrators of the horrific rape and murder of two young women in Shopian go scot free, the Central Bureau of Investigation has produced a report that gives a clean chit to the indicted policemen and claims that the two women drowned in a stream. Below we carry a report by the Independent Women’s Initiative for Justice. Do circulate as widely as possible.
Posted in Violence-Conflict | Tags: CBI, IWIJ, Kashmir, murder, rape, security forces, Shopian
Categories
- Bad ideas
- Capitalism
- Centre watch
- Countryside
- Culture
- Debates
- Ecologies
- Empire
- Everyday Life
- Excavation
- Frontiers
- Genders
- Good Ideas
- Government
- Identities
- Images
- Language
- Law
- Left watch
- Media politics
- Metropolis
- Mirror Worlds
- Movements
- Politics
- Right watch
- Scams
- Sex
- Sports
- Technology
- Theory
- Violence-Conflict
Shivam Vij
Aditya Nigam
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
subhash gatade
Gautam Bhan
ravikant
Sohail Hashmi
Aman Sethi
Aarti Sethi
mukulsharma
Mahmood Farooqui
Ravi Sundaram
Nivedita Menon
Lawrence Liang
apoorvanand
prashantjha
jdevika
zainab1979
ponni
Sunalini Kumar
Ahilan Kadirgamar
Dan Husain
Shivam Vij