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India, Pakistan and the Snow Leopard: Javed Naqi

January 28, 2012

Guest post by JAVED NAQI

Photo credit: Aishwarya Maheshwari/WWF-India

Amongst the lesser known casualties of the conflict between India and Pakistan is wild life. In times of war, we hear of the loss of life and property but seldom notice the huge impact on wildlife. Animals found in the vicinity of the disputed India-Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir are on the verge of extinction. One such is the snow leopard in the border district Kargil.

Kargil, a district in the state of Jammu and Kashmir is a remote, arid-cold and high altitude area. The region gained in prominence to the outer world after the Kargil War of 1999. Kargil serves as a suitable habitat for many endangered wildlife species like snow leopard, Tibetan wolf (Canis lupus langier), Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus), Asiatic ibex (Capra ibex), Ladakh urial (Ovis vignei vignei), musk deer (Moschus spp.), pikas, and hares (Maheshwari et al 2010). A joint study by J&K Department of Wildlife Protection and WWF reports 16 direct and indirect evidence of Snow Leopard in Kargil and Drass (Maheshwari et al 2010). Read more…

How India Makes E-books Easier to Ban than Books (And How We Can Change That): Pranesh Prakash

January 27, 2012

Without getting into questions of what should and should not be unlawful speech, this guest post by PRANESH PRAKASH chooses to take a look at how Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services, and how it makes it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed.

Banning E-Books is Trivially Easy
E-Books Are Easier To Ban Than Books, And Safer
Contrary to what Mr. Sibal’s recent hand-wringing at objectionable online material might suggest, under Indian laws currently in force it is far easier to remove material from the Web, by many degrees of magnitude, than it is to ever get them removed from a bookstore or an art gallery. To get something from a bookstore or an art gallery one needs to collect a mob, organize collective outrage and threats of violence, and finally convince either the government or a magistrate that the material is illegal, thereby allowing the police to seize the books or stop the painting from being displayed. The fact of removal of the material will be noted in various records, whether in government records, court records, police records or in newspapers of record.

By contrast, to remove something from the Web, one needs to send an e-mail complaining about it to any of the string of ‘intermediaries’ that handle the content: the site itself, the web host for the site, the telecom companies that deliver the site to your computer/mobile, the web address (domain name) provider, the service used to share the link, etc. Under the ‘Intermediary Guidelines Rules’ that have been in operation since 11th April 2011, all such companies are required to ‘disable access’ to the complained-about content within thirty-six hours of the complaint. It is really that simple.
Read more…

In the name of sovereignty: APDP

January 25, 2012

This release comes from the ASSOCIATION OF PARENTS OF DISAPPEARED PERSONS, the Bund, Amira Kadal, Srinagar – 190001, Jammu and Kashmir

Press Statement, 25th January 2012: On 17th October 2011, Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) submitted an application for information under Right to Information Act 2009 to the office of the Public Information Officer of State Department of Home. The application was regarding unmarked graves and mass graves in all the districts of Jammu and Kashmir. The State Home Department vide its letter no: Home/RTI/2011/1659 dated: 24th October 2011, transferred the application to the office of Director General of Police, Jammu & Kashmir. Later Director General of Police, Mr. Kuldeep Khoda sent communiqué vide no. legal/RTI/III/98/2011-5590-91 dated 10th December 2011 to the SSP CID Headquarters, asking him to furnish a detailed report on this issue.

Today, on 25th January 2012, we have received a response from the SSP CID Headquarters vide letter no: CID/GB/RTI/2011/8756-58, in which the CID Department has informed us that the information regarding the unmarked graves and mass graves in all the districts of Jammu and Kashmir cannot be shared as the disclosure of the information, according to Jammu and Kashmir Police would be “prejudicial to the maintenance of public peace and tranquility, as the anti-national elements may use the same for incitement of commission of offence in the state”. The SSP CID Headquarters further states, “In the present security scenario it is quite imminent that consequences of such a situation would be highly prejudicial to the sovereignty, integrity and security of the state”. Read more…

The process is the bloody punishment

January 25, 2012

Sec. 153A of the Indian Penal Code – that favored child of the religious right- provides for punishment of upto three years imprisonment for the promotion by words (spoken or written) of disharmony, feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will between religious communities. The punishment laid down in this section has to one of the most redundant penal sanctions in the law since in this case the process is the bloody punishment.

There is a similar redundancy in Sec. 295A of the IPC which provides that “Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise] insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

Read more…

Some Questions for the Maharashtra ATS Chief: JTSA

January 25, 2012

This release comes from the JAMIA TEACHERS’ SOLIDARITY ASSOCIATION

The Maharashtra ATS claims to have cracked the 13/7 blasts case. Its chief has revealed in a press conference that Indian Mujahideen was behind the Mumbai blasts. And yet, the Ministry of Home Affairs remains far from impressed—indeed, it appears rather irritated. And the press, also unusually, has been circumspect about his revelations. The ATS Chief says that he did not want to call a press conference. But the rumours about Naquee’s IB links were threatening the credibility of the ATS. Such were his compulsions when he launched into a monologue about the ‘breakthrough’ his team—under his guidance of course—had achieved.

Despite his loud proclamations however, there are few who are willing to buy the ATS’ arguments. Here are some issues for the ATS Chief to mull over: Read more…

SAHMAT invites Salman Rushdie to Delhi

January 24, 2012

This release comes from SAHMAT, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, Delhi

We have watched with dismay the unnecessary controversy which erupted over the presence of Salman Rushdie at the Jaipur Literary Festival. We strongly disapprove of the threats – real or perceived – issued against the participation of Rushdie. The state has once again succumbed to retrogressive forces using works of creative expression for their own narrow, partisan and divisive political agendas. SAHMAT has stood by Rushdie in the past, when we defied an unofficial ban on The Moor’s Last Sigh by readings on the street in Delhi in 1995. Rushdie has been a frequent visitor to India in the last few years with no problems being raised. Indeed, he visited us at SAHMAT and was serenaded by chance by some of the greatest singers of the Rajasthani Manganiyar tradition.

SAHMAT is issuing an open invitation to Salman Rushdie to come to Delhi to deliver a lecture or participate in a discussion on literature at any time of his choosing. We will host him under any circumstances along with an exhibition of the works of the late MF Husain, driven into forced exile by the similar retreat by the state in it’s cowardly unwillingness to stand up against communal politics.

SAHMAT
New Delhi

Confuse and deceive – Email interception in Kerala and the formula for political survival: Yaseen Ashraf

January 24, 2012

Guest post by YASEEN ASHRAFassociate editor of the Malayalam weekly, Madhyamam

An article by Viju V Nair in Madhyamam Weekly (issue 727, 23 January 2011) has raised the hackles of the Kerala Government and its political allies. Strange, because the report was about the excesses of the police intelligence, something which can be – and should be – investigated and corrected. The investigative report claimed that 268 email accounts were ordered by the Kerala state intelligence to be tapped, out of which a huge majority belong to Muslims. None of these persons has any previous criminal history. So it is not clear why they are put under the cyber scanner. Read more…

Following the Protest Movement in Sri Lankan Universities

January 23, 2012

Some of the stronger protests and forceful political debates in Sri Lanka are taking place in relation to student rights, university teachers pay, allocation of government expenditure on education and inequalities relating to the Government’s private university bill. University students have been on the boil over issues from militarisation of the universities, including compulsory military training for entering university students last year, to attempts to ban student unions. University teachers carried out strike action for months last year extracting promises of higher pay and input into educational policy which were not carried forward with the Budget, leading to a token strike on January 17th. I wrote an article on the neoliberalisation of university education in the Sunday Island on Jan 15th discussing the larger project at work with the backing of the World Bank and IMF. Kumar David has written an article in the Jan 22nd issue of the Sunday Island explaining the z-scores scandal – about the Advanced Level exam results which are used for university entrance – and its relationship to the protests against the private university bill. The Young Asia Television in their episode of Connections today has documented the recent protests including some interviews with student leaders and university teachers. The uteachers blog is an excellent resource to find more articles and presentations by academics involved in the recent protests and actions. Historically, the universities have been a hot bed of protest as well as social and political change in Sri Lanka, and those in solidarity with progressive forces struggling for social justice in Sri Lanka may want to follow the protest movement gaining ground in the universities.

The Gandhi Chawl Incident: Meena Menon

January 23, 2012

This guest post by MEENA MENON is an extract from her recently published book, Riots and after in Mumbai- Chronicles of Truth and Reconciliation

It was all in the eyes. Beneath the finely drawn brows, they were haunted and distant. For Naina Bane, the night of 8 January 1993 will remain a night of absolute terror. Her escape was miraculous as was her recovery. It took me several months and wrong leads before I met her finally at a family reunion in the suburbs. Dressed in a long mustard coloured ‘maxi’, her hair was drawn back tightly. I found it hard to recognize the same girl who was almost burnt alive on that fateful night in Gandhi chawl. Now 40, there is a faraway look about her and her eyes widen when I ask to speak to her. She got married in 1996 and lives outside Mumbai. Her 6-year-old son keeps her busy. Her husband worked for a mill which closed down, a typical story in Mumbai. He was a badli (temporary worker) and he lost his job. He now works as a watchman. Read more…

The Book of Mothers: P K Medini

January 22, 2012

P K MEDINI still recollects the day when she first sang for the election campaign of the Communist party. Now, six decades later, the spirit isn’t one bit lost for the veteran singer. Medini, 78, says she sang first for Communist leader T V Thomas. Since then, she had been a regular presence at the election campaigns of the Communist party.”  From expressbuzz April 1, 2011

Delhi-based journalist JACOB SEBASTIAN sent us his translation of a piece by PK Medini in Malayalam (published in the journal Mathrubhumi earlier this month ), along with a background note that he wrote for our readers.

The following piece was written by P.K. Medini, the one-time ‘singing sensation’ of the Communist Party in Kerala. It originally appeared in the Matrubhumi Weekly, as part of a series where people talk about their favourite books. It offers a glimpse of a time and place where literature and books and the whole culture of reading, mattered in an urgent and vital way.

She gives us an intimate snapshot of the new reading culture at the time when it was putting down its first tentative roots. For someone who readily admits that her own reading was ‘impoverished’, she shows a keen awareness of the power of ideas – and of books as objects of an almost talismanic power – andreveals their absolute centrality to the social and political transformations of the time.

If such a thing is unimaginable to us today, even more unexpected are the ways in which it actually played out – the many tortuous routes the word had to take before it could become flesh (she calls it ‘social reading’). She also has a sharp eye for how political propaganda actually works ‘on the ground’. Along with other movements, Medini’s party too can take some credit for the fact that life in Kerala isn’t so desperate today that a society could catch fire from a book.

Read more…

Jaipur Literature Festival – Requiescat in Pacem

January 21, 2012

Did you know that the law had four corners? I didn’t, but whosoever writes press releases for the Jaipur Literature Festival does. Did you know that the ‘ideas can be exchanged and literature loved‘, ‘strictly‘ within these four corners? I didn’t, but whosoever writes press releases for the Jaipur Literature Festival does.

PRESS RELEASE SENT OUT BY THE JAIPUR LITERATURE FESTIVAL, January 20th, 2012

This press release is being issued on behalf of the organizers of the Jaipur Literature Festival. It has come to their attention that certain delegates acted in a manner during their sessions today which were without the prior knowledge or consent of the organizers. Any views expressed or actions taken by these delegates are in no manner endorsed by the Jaipur Literature Festival. Any comments made by the delegates reflect their personal, individual views and are not endorsed by the Festival or attributable to its organizers or anyone acting on their behalf. The Festival organizers are fully committed to ensuring compliance of all prevailing laws and will continue to offer their fullest cooperation to prevent any legal violation of any kind. Any action by any delegate or anyone else involved with the Festival that in any manner falls foul of the law will not be tolerated and all necessary, consequential action will be taken. Our endeavor has always been to provide a platform to foster an exchange of ideas and the love of literature, strictly within the four corners of the law. We remain committed to this objective. [via FirstPost]

Read more…

‘सलमान रूश्दी के कार्यक्रम रद्द होने पर निराशा’; PUCL regrets cancellation of Salman Rushdie’s visit to Jaipur

January 20, 2012

Given below is the text of a press statement issued today by the PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES, Rajasthan. The Hindi original is followed by an English translation.

प्रेस विज्ञप्ति
सलमान रूश्दी के कार्यक्रम रद्द होने पर निराशा
दिनांक: 20.01.2012

सलमान रूष्दी के जयपुर आने के कार्यक्रम के सम्बन्ध में जब कंछ मुस्लिम संगठनों ने हिंसक विरोध की चेतावनी दी थी तभी पी.यू.सी.एल. ने तुरन्त उसके विरोध में अपना वक्तव्य दिया था और कुछ प्रभावषाली मुस्लिम संगठनो तथा उस समाज के प्रबुद्ध नागरिकों से सम्पर्क कर उनसे विस्तृत चर्चायें की थीं। उन्होने भी हमारे दृष्टिकोण को समझा था और किसी प्रकार के हिंसक विरोध के सम्बन्ध में अपनी असहमति भी प्रकट की थी। परन्तु वह सलमान रूष्दी का जयपुर आगमन पर अपने विरोध के स्वरो को मुखरित करने के अधिकार को सुरक्षित रखना चाहते थे। इसमें कोई आपत्ति भी नहीं हो सकती थी परन्तु ऐसे विरोध की सीमायें कहॉं तक हांेगी इस पर चर्चा जारी थी। इसी बीच सरकार की ओर से यह वक्तव्य दिया गया कि सलमान रूष्दी के आने से कानून और व्यवस्था की स्थिति बिगड़ सकती है। इसलिए उनके आने पर पाबंदी लगाने पर विचार किया जा रहा है। पी.यू.सी.एल. ने सरकार के इस रवैये का जमकर विरोध किया था और इस पर एक प्रदर्षन भी आयोजित किया था। मुस्लिम संगठनों से इसके बाद विस्तृत चर्चा हुई और उन्होने भी यह स्वीकार किया कि कानून और व्यवस्था की स्थिति नहीं बिगड़ने देगें। लेकिन लगता है कि सरकारों को यह प्रयास रूचिकर नहीं लगे और आज सलमान रूष्दी ने ई-मेल सन्देष भेेजकर अपना कार्यक्रम रद्द करते हुए यह कहा है कि उन्हें राज्य सरकार से सन्देष प्राप्त हुआ है कि कुछ उग्रवादी तत्व किसी अन्य प्रदेष से आकर उनकी जान लेने की कोषिष कर सकते हैं। हंालाकि उन्होने स्वयं इस प्रकार की खबर को सन्देहात्मक बताया है परन्तु अपना कार्यक्रम रद्द करने का यही कारण बताया है। Read more…

The BSF as Pornographer: Bravehearts with Bluetooth

January 20, 2012

So, this is how the borders of the Republic of India are also defended. With sticks, ropes and bluetooth enabled mobile phones. Eight soldiers of the Border Security Force, hold down a young Bangladeshi man accused of cattle smuggling. He is stripped naked, hogtied and then thrashed. He screams in agony and humiliation. The soldiers act as if they are out on a picnic. They discuss whether or not to give him some tea. Where to hurt him, on which body parts. How big a stick to use on him. Someone says “cut his ear off”. They stroll casually around him as he is humiliated. They laugh. He cries, as people usually do in these circumstances, and seems to call for his mother. Someone, probably one of the soldiers, records it all on video, on the 9th of December, 2010, somewhere along the Indo-Bangladesh border in Murshidabad, West Bengal

Read more…

Le Grande Triptych Humanism: Brinda Bose and Prasanta Chakravarty

January 18, 2012

Guest post by BRINDA BOSE and PRASANTA CHAKRAVARTY

Haruki Murakami’s much-hyped IQ84 that released worldwide in translation a couple of months ago is (Our) Big Fat Japanese Novel, three volumes in one. Closer home, Amitav Ghosh is in the process of completing the definitive South Asian Maritime Novel in trilogy. Young, prize-winning, promising writers from around the world – New Zealand, Malaysia, Bangladesh – are pledged to regale us with long large narratives that will tell us everything we ever wanted to know about their cultures, societies, lives – in trilogies and quartets. Intriguing? Indeed. Coincidental? Perhaps not.

Even as new literary canons are continually in consolidation, interrogation and re-formation, Franco Moretti – acclaimed, revered, preeminent theorist of the Novel and World Literature (which enjoy an odd synecdochic relationship) – has systematically constructed a blueprint for ways to appreciate the worth of such a grand, if loose, canon as World Literature by a particular reading technique he calls ‘distance-reading’.

Read more…

Open Letter to Haryana CM on Forced Land Acquisition for Gorakhpur Nuclear Power Plant, Fatehabad

January 18, 2012

Farmers of Gorakhpur village hold a protest in Fatehabad against acquisition of their agricultural land by the Haryana government for a nuclear power plant in the area, August 2010. (The Tribune on-line)

 

January 16, 2012

Bhupinder Singh Hooda,
Chief Minister, Haryana
Chandigarh

Dear Mr. Chief Minister,

It was with gravest concern and misgivings that we heard of Section 9 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, being issued in Fatehabad, Haryana, to forcibly acquire land for the proposed Gorakhpur Nuclear Power Plant Project. This action by the Harayana State Govt. is completely unacceptable on the following two counts:

Farmers of Gorakhpur and nearby villages have been sitting in continuous opposition to the proposed nuclear power plant from August 2010. They are fighting for their right to life, livelihood and to safeguarding their fertile and irrigated, three-crop land, all of which will be severely threatened if the project were passed. The fact that a community is in such a long drawn and strong opposition to this project, is of crucial concern and cannot be ignored arbitrarily or repressed in democracy. Read more…

Satanic Versus Moronic: How Salman Rushdie Lost the UP Election

January 18, 2012

Oh, It’s silly season again. (Has it ever not been silly season? Silly me for making a silly rhetorical opening to this post). Anyway folks, aam aur khas janta, baba log and bibi log, it’s time, once monotonously again, for quarantines and piety, for bans and shoe-throwing contests, for frothing at the mouth and froth on the telly. Its Rushdie-Nasreen-Husain Time, again! Ta-Raa! And like a ‘sanjog’ made by a pretend-god in a made up marquee heaven, the stars of ‘Rushdie Time’ are crossed with the suddenly brightly shining stars of what would have otherwise been a lackluster, effigy-tarpaulined, mid-winter provincial election. Ta-Rant-Ta-Raa! Not even a Saleem Sinai or a Gibreel Farishta, let alone a jeeta-jagtaa Salman Rushdie in his weirdest magic-realist moment could have imagined himself mixed up in a plot as diabolical as this one. If this was a court case we could call it Satanic versus Moronic.  Whatever it is, there is no denying that it is a P2C2E – a ‘Process Too Complicated To Explain’. But explain we must. Process we can. Pyaar kiya to darna kya?

Read more…

PUCL condemns those opposing Salman Rushdie’s visit to Jaipur

January 17, 2012

This release comes from the PEOPLE’ S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES, RAJASTHAN

16 January 2012, Jaipur: PUCL strongly condemns Muslim organisations, the Congress and the BJP for opposing Salman Rushdie’s proposed visit to Jaipur

Some Muslim organisations have opposed Salman Rusdie’s participation in the Jaipur Literature Festival. Leaders of the Congress and the Bhartiya Janta Party have also come out strongly in opposition to Rushdie’s visit. Some newspaper reports have carried announcements that Rushdie could be forcibly prevented from coming and attending the literary event.

The opposition is not merely ideological but is also by threatening to disturb law and order. The Rajasthan unit of the PUCL expresses deep concern at such announcements. Such regressive threats are not only an attack on the individual’s right to freedom of speech and expression and a violation of rights granted by the Constitution of India. Such threats also promote communal disharmony, if not deliberately seek to widen communal rifts.  Read more…

Paramakudi – Six Poems: Ravikumar

January 16, 2012

In September last year, the Tamil Nadu police killed six Dalits in a firing incident in Paramakudi town of Ramanathapuram district. This guest post by RAVIKUMAR is a set of six poems on the Paramakudi killings. The English translation by RAVISHANKER is followed by the Tamil original. For more on the incident, see articles in Kafila archives by V. Geetha and Bobby Kunhu and over at Atrocity News, a fact finding report (.pdf).

Read more…

Tribute to Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photojournalist

January 16, 2012

Homai Vyarawalla passed away at the age of 98 yesterday. We reproduce here the curator’s note written by cinematographer SABEENA GADIHOKE, biographer and friend of the legend, on the occasion of her staging a retrospective of Vyarawalla’s work at the National Gallery of Modern Art in 2011.

Having worked for thirty three years of her life Homai Vyarawalla gave it all up one day. Why did she give up photography?

Often meant for a fleeting glimpse in the newspaper, press photographs become visual archives of the future. Homai Vyarawalla’s photographs chronicling the defining moments of India’s Independence have acquired an iconic status and are now integral to a Nationalist version of history. According to this version, some people led and others followed. As important people dominated photographs, ordinary citizens or `the masses’ frequently found themselves relegated to the margins. Sometimes, they would be `cropped’ from the frame to accommodate more prominent figures.

Read more…

Engaging Lankans in Black Politics on MLK Day

January 16, 2012

In approaching Martin Luther King Jr., Day, I inevitably think about the politics of figures and the generation of King and Malcolm X. That generation and the Black politics they engendered had a lasting impact on the US and the World more broadly. Coming with decolonisation in Africa and elsewhere, King, Malcolm X, the radical youth they inspired and their contemporaries such as Frantz Fanon and C.L.R. James transformed our conceptions of race and class, advancing anti-imperialist and anti-colonial visions to engage formidable questions of Black politics in the West. In a piece written with Jinee Lokaneeta as part of the monthly column ‘Beyond Boundaries’ of the South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI), in the South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection (SAMAR), we began with Manning Marable and C.L.R. James, and the importance of a turn towards critical solidarity engaging questions of race and class.

Here, I want to think about the contributions of South Asian intellectuals, or more specifically Lankan intellectuals in the context of Black and Third World politics. In fact, there are two major Lankan intellectuals belonging to that generation of King and Malcolm X, who are increasingly not known to the younger generations of Lankans. A. Sivanandan, the editor of Race and Class and Director of the Institute of Race Relations  in London and the late Archie W. Singham, long-time intellectual and professor based in New York are two such figures who have made a major mark in Black politics. Indeed, they can give us a sense of the possibilities of political struggle and the historical and philosophical potential of Black politics. It is my contention that engaging the politics of Sivanandan and Singham is all the more important at the current moment, as South Asians in the Diaspora are increasingly becoming agents of Western power despite the shifting terrain of politics in the West with the global economic crisis. Read more…

Fear, Safety and Livelihood: The Biopolitics of Mullaperiyar: T. T. Sreekumar

January 15, 2012

Guest post by T. T. SREEKUMAR

The Mullaperiyar Dam controversy  embodies a concrete and complex example of the imperial matrix of biopolitical legacy that post-colonial societies continually encounter even after decades of political independence.  More than a century ago, the British colonial Government administering Madras Presidency, which included parts of Tamil Nadu State, directed the erstwhile princely state of Travancore (which forms the southern districts of Kerala) to sign an agreement to divert water from the Periyar river in Travancore to the relatively arid zones adjoining the Western Ghats within the presidency, and to lease out a large tract of its territory for the construction of a Dam for a time span of 999 years.  In the post-independence period, two supplemental agreements to the original Lease Deed of 1886 have been signed between the Madras government and the Government of Kerala regarding fishing rights and generation of hydroelectric power, the former in favour of Kerala and latter favouring Tamil Nadu. The supplementary agreements negotiated and enhanced the annual lease rent and the rate of pay for the electrical energy generated.

Read more…

Partition Revisited: 2 October 2011, Rudrapur

January 15, 2012

This is a film by RAJEEV YADAV and SHAHNAWAZ ALAM of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES

This is to introduce our documentary film ‘PARTITION REVISITED’ on the Rudrapur riot of 2nd October 2011, where four persons were killed. Policemen and mobs led by leaders of the Bhartiya Janta Party, the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party had ransacked shops and settlements of Muslims in their third successful attempt within two years to stoke communal violence. The riot, which took place on Gandhi Jayanti, led to a massive outmigration of the victimised community, reminding one of the days of the 1947 Partition. This film focuses on precisely this yet unnoticed phenomenon that we could trace out in this first-ever state-sponsored communal riot since the formation of the hill state of Uttarakhand, engineered by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which has been working for a long time in this area to arouse anti-Muslim sentiments in the Bengalis, Sikhs & Panjabi Hindus who settled in Rudrapur after the Partition to India. At a time when the state is going to polls this riot assumes an electoral importance.

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