Release Dr. GN Saibaba Immediately and Unconditionally!

Statement of the Alliance for Peoples Health

http://aphvan.wordpress.com/

The Alliance for Peoples Health, a grassroots organization of progressive health workers, condemns the assault and abduction of Dr. Saibaba by Indian state police on May 9th, and call for his immediate and unconditional release.

Dr. Saibaba is a professor at Delhi University and is known for his outstanding work in solidarity with movements of the most oppressed sectors of Indian society: Dalit people, Adivasi people, women, and the poor, all of whom have faced intensified oppression and exploitation under Indian capitalism.

Despite its democratic and public character, Dr. Saibaba’s organization, the Revolutionary Democratic Front has been targeted violently by Indian police, military and paramilitary forces. This tagging of activists as ‘maoist’, justifying violent repression, has become a major tactic of the Indian state in its attempt to silence, marginalize and liquidate those who organize and struggle for social, economic and environmental justice.

As health activists we are very concerned about Dr. Saibaba’s health and well being while in detention. As health workers who choose to side with the excluded, the exploited and the oppressed we add our voice to many others around the world who are calling for Dr. Saibaba’s immediate and unconditional release!

Alliance for Peoples Health

Vancouver – Unceded Coast Salish Territories, Canada

May 13, 2014

No One is Illegal (NOII) statement on Komagata Maru centennial

100 YEARS AGO, Canadian immigration officers in British Columbia refused entry for the 376 passengers of Komagata. Today we remember the sacrifices of South Asians on Coast Salish territories to raise money, arrange legal counsel, and provide food to the passengers. We honour their descendants who have persevered, despite barriers like racism, to establish their lives here.

Today, on its centennial, the story of the Komagata Maru is being celebrated as a “historical” event. But the past repeats itself.

In August of 2010, 492 Tamil refugees made a three-month journey from Sri Lanka to British Columbia. The refugees – including 49 children and their mothers – were forced into detention centres amidst a national hysteria over “illegals”, “queue jumpers”, and “potential terrorists.” Many remain jailed, many have been deported.

The current government has made sweeping changes to the immigration and refugee system:

– Strict laws make it harder to get citizenship and easier to lose it

– A new refugee system that restricts legal avenues for refugees and mandatory jail for “irregularly arriving” refugees, including children as young as 16 years

– A moratorium and quota on sponsorships of parents and grandparents, and reduced quotas for spouses

– Conditional residency for spousal sponsorships.

– Minimum income to sponsor family members increased by 30%

– Increase in the number of temporary migrant workers, who are vulnerable to abuse

– Refugee claimants have had their health benefits, like emergency treatment for life threatening ailments, cut

We urge all during this time of reflection to remember yesterday’s injustices by standing against those happening today.

For immediate release

16 May 2014

 NARENDRA MODI – CEO for INDIA, Inc.

Secular, pluralist and democratic Indians in the country and abroad are mourning the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and their ‘star’ candidate, Narendra Modi, the ‘Butcher of Gujarat’, as Prime Minister of India for the next five years.

As Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi grounded his power on the corpses of over 2000 Muslims who were killed in the genocide of February-March 2002. Before that, he had a tenuous hold on the state. Post-genocide, he skilfully used spurious, disproved and at worst contested evidence of a train fire in which 58 Hindus were killed — the ‘trigger’ for a genocide that had been a long time in the making – to win a landslide electoral victory.

Despite strenuous efforts for justice for the victims of the Gujarat genocide, Modi was able to ensure that nothing stuck to him. Diligent police officers were harassed and transferred out; there was witness intimidation; there were false ‘encounter’ killings of Muslim youth, framed as ‘terrorists’, to build the case that Modi was their intended target.

Members of his government like Maya Kodnani were less fortunate. She got convicted. Many of those involved directly in the genocide have boasted on and off camera of their horrific deeds — torture, dismemberment, burning and hacking to death. Especially targeted were Muslim women, who were sexually tortured, gang-raped in front of their families and then slashed to death. Pregnant women were not spared, their wombs were split open and their foetuses torn out . Victims who called the police to come to their assistance as the killing mobs rampaged through the streets were told “We have no orders to save you.” Instructions had come down from the highest level.

In a federal system, which India has, at moments of crisis such as this, the central government (in Delhi) is constitutionally permitted, nay obliged, to intervene. Unfortunately for Gujarat’s Muslim population, the government at the centre was also a BJP government – committed to Hindutva, making India a ‘Hindu’ nation – one of whose activists assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. And they did nothing!

It is this man, the ‘Butcher of Gujarat’, who is now poised to have the highest and most powerful post in the land, who will now not only have fascist, Hindutva militias and gangs doing his bidding, but will use the entire nation’s resources to do so – including a huge security force.

In 2005, the US government revoked Modi’s visa on the ground of alleged violations of human and religious rights in 2002 and after. President Barack Obama now faces the prospect of having to congratulate Modi for his victory – and even of welcoming him to the US as Head of government.

How does one explain that such a man and his party have come to power so massively? Like most realities, it is complex. And the full story will eventually become clearer. However the obsession of the Indian elites with ‘growth’ above all else and the role of the media that is controlled by the same elites made a mantra of Modi = development = growth so ubiquitous, that it became ‘the truth’.

Modi’s success is the result of the marriage of corporate capital with Hindutva forces. We have learnt from history the terrible consequences of focussing on economic growth and employment while being oblivious to the persecution of minorities and the deepening of inequality.

However, even a cursory examination of the actual record of Gujarat state under Modi, the so-called “Gujarat Shining”, shows how dismal human development indicators have been – malnourishment and under-nourishment, education, access to water, gender gap, etc. The destiny Modi and his party have for India is terrifying – growth for the elites, degradation for the masses, genocide for India’s Muslims, targeting of Christian minorities, and suppression and intimidation of dissent.

This is a victory of the far right – political, economic, social and religious. Never before have the causes of pluralism, human rights, social justice and fight against poverty in India needed our global support and solidarity as they do now.

Info: cerasmontreal@gmail.com

514-885-5976; 514 246 2358; 514-458-4700

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From the Chairperson

17 February 2014

To whom it may concern

The following is a statement being issued by the Centre for Historical Studies protesting against the recent decision by Penguin India to withdraw and pulp all remaining copies of Wendy Doniger’s Hinduism. An Alternative History

We are outraged by the news that Penguin India has agreed to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s much acclaimed book Hinduism: An Alternative History and pulp all existing copies of the book in stock. Professor Doniger is one of the most respected Indologists in the world. She has spent a lifetime exploring the richness of India’s religious pasts, showcasing the creative interplay between multiple traditions – the Puranic and the Vedantic, the folkloric and the Brahmanic. Innovatively drawing on many disciplines, she has investigated the variegated world of Hindu mythology and theology, to explore what they say about order and chaos, morality and ethics, the good and the evil, the erotic and the non-erotic. Her reading of Hinduism has inevitably disturbed those who wish to sanitize and straitjacket Hinduism, and repress the multiplicity of traditions that constitute it. While welcoming all critical engagements with the book, the faculty of the CHS condemns any attempt to curtail the circulation of this book in any form

The decision of Penguin India to sign an out-of-court settlement to withdraw Professor Doniger’s book is therefore an act of abandoning the basic ethics of publishing. What is most disturbing is the fact that Penguin Books – which had in the past a sturdy reputation of defending freedom of expression – has agreed to a settlement even without the Indian state or the Indian judiciary taking a position against the book. This decision will affirm the power of the forces of religious intolerance, encourage further attacks on authors who question the fundamentalist interpretation of the past, and subvert the right to freedom of expression. It will undermine further the rapidly eroding public space wherein critical debates and discussions can take place. This is a space that all who believe in democratic values – publishers included – need to preserve and defend.

Please note that individual names are not being listed in this statement as this is emanating from the entire faculty.

Thank you,

(Professor Rajat Datta)

CHS Office Phone (011) 26704456, 26704457

E-mail chsjnu@yahoo.com<mailto:chsjnu@yahoo.com>,

centreforhistoricalstudies@grnaircorn