From Kafila

Statement by Scholars in North American Universities on Withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s book

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

by Aditya Nigam

This statement expresses the views of the individuals listed below and does not represent the views of the University of Chicago or any of its departments.

We, the undersigned, as students of South Asia, strongly condemn the withdrawal by Penguin Press India of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History from distribution in India. We believe that this work has been attacked because it presents a threat to orthodox Brahminical interpretations of Hinduism. We believe that this attack is part of ongoing attempts by upper-caste extremist Hindu forces to stifle any alternative understandings of Hinduism. As students in the United States, we are acutely aware that North American organizations of the Hindu right initiated the protests against Wendy Doniger’s scholarship. Hindu right wing organisations in India have worked in tandem with their North American counterparts to suppress alternative voices in India and too often violently. We are deeply concerned about the alarming increase in attacks on any academic study of Hinduism that does not fit these groups’ narrow and exclusionary vision of Hinduism which is part of their desire to create a Hindu India that excludes the religious minorities of Indian Muslims and Indian Christians.

Wendy Doniger, a respected scholar who is devoted to the study of Hinduism, has astutely recognized the great danger to human life and the plural practices and beliefs of Hindus posed by these groups. She has courageously refused to bow to their pressures to curtail her scholarship and has consistently challenged the Hindu right. By tracking the formation of myth through history, her work undermines these groups’ exclusionary claims on the past.

As researchers we know that a singular narrative of Hinduism, as of any living tradition, is completely untenable. This incident is indicative of the genocidal imagination of these groups that seek to extinguish the idea of a plural and secular India. This attack on Wendy Doniger’s scholarship is reminiscent of the earlier attacks on the scholarship of AK Ramanujan carried out by Hindu fundamentalist student organisations. We protest the rise of majoritarian narratives that curtail different ways of knowing the world and urge scholars, researchers, academics and people of all persuasions to call for Wendy Doniger’s book to be brought back into circulation in India. We join others who have articulated their protest against the withdrawal in refusing the singular, elitist and exclusionary imaginings of the past that are used to do violence to our shared present.

Signed:

Shefali Jha

Malarvizhi Jayanth

Ahona Panda

Aakash Solanki

Sayantan Saha Roy

Tejas Parasher

Suchismita Das

Abhishek Bhattacharyya

Joya John

Emma Meyer

Kyle Gardner

Erin Epperson

Victor D’Avella

Joseph Grim Feinberg

Ranu Roychoudhuri

Ishan Chakrabarti

Margherita Trento

Adam O’Brien

Madlyn Wendell

Jeff Wilson

Jetsun Deleplanque

Leah Richmond

Jamal Jones

Saumya Gupta

Davey K. Tomlinson

Madhuri Karak

Harini Kumar

Elsa J.Marty

In solidarity:

Ankit Agrawal

Dhananjay Jagannathan

Shiva Shankar

Ravi Vaitheespara

Daniel Sellon

Change.org

Petitioning Members of both houses of the Indian Parliament, and the Honorable Law Minister, Government of India

Reconsider and revise Sections 153 (A) and 295 (A) of the Indian Penal Code to protect freedom of expression in India!

 Petition by
Ananya Vajpeyi 
New Delhi, India

We the undersigned are appalled by the recent settlement reached between Dina Nath Batra for the Shiksha Bachao Andolan and Penguin Books India, to cease the publication of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin USA 2009; Penguin India 2010), and to withdraw and destroy remaining copies of the book on Indian territory.

This case is only the latest in a long series of outrages against freedom of expression. Academic, intellectual and artistic expression of any kind is becoming increasingly hazardous in India. What has happened to Professor Doniger and many other scholars before her can happen to any one of us at any time. Indian laws and legislation governing the freedom of expression not only fail to protect us from harassment and intimidation, but in fact prevent us from doing our work in a respectful, fair and democratic environment.

More worrying, the laws dealing with insult and injury to the sentiments of groups and communities (organized around religion, caste or any other form of identity) are routinely used to curb the freedom of expression, both within the legal justice system and in public discourse more generally.

In our view, the way to respond to ideas one dislikes is not to censor them but to produce better ones. Such was the practice of India’s great intellectual traditions in the past. Litigation like this, undertaken in the name of defending those traditions, in fact profoundly demeans them.

We make the following demands:

1. That there be a reform of Sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code—governing intellectual and artistic freedoms and the right to self-expression, as well as protecting against insult and injury to communities, and the incitement of communal hatred. We ask that lawmakers, jurists and the legal bureaucracy include necessary provisions in these laws to protect works of serious academic and artistic merit from motivated, malicious and frivolous litigation.

2.  That Penguin Random House at the highest levels of management and decision-making continue to contest the Legal Demand # 254/LN/0310 up to the higher courts, so that a good precedent upholding freedom of expression is established, and in future publishing houses, including Penguin India, are able to publish works and support their authors without the threatening prospect of litigation, fear and censure.

We believe that writers, scholars, artists, and publishers the world over will stand in solidarity with the author Wendy Doniger. To endorse our demands, append your signature to this statement. We intend to send our petition along with all the signatures collected to the appropriate authorities in the Government of India.

Ananya Vajpeyi, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi

Sheldon Pollock, Columbia University, New York

Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University, New York

Laurie Patton, Duke University, North Carolina

Romila Thapar, Jawaharlal Nehru University (Retd.), New Delhi

David Shulman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

To:

Members of both houses of the Indian Parliament, and the Honorable Law Minister, Government of India, Law Minister, Government of India

Reconsider and revise Sections 153 (A) and 295 (A) of the Indian Penal Code to protect freedom of expression in India!

Sincerely, 
[Your name]

The petition is available on change.org website for signing and distribution.

From CommonDreams.org

Published on Tuesday, January 28, 2014 by The Progressive

Rest in Peace Pete Seeger, A True Progressive Hero

by Matthew Rothschild

Pete Seeger died yesterday at 94, but he’ll live on for generations to come.

Like the union organizer Joe Hill, whom Seeger helped to immortalize, Seeger and his songs will keep inspiring people around the world who are fighting injustice and striving to preserve the planet.

Along with Woody Guthrie, Seeger popularized a particular kind of folk music in America: progressive folk music.

It was music about working people and unions. It was music about racial justice. It was music about peace. It was music about taking care of the Earth. And it was music that was simple to learn and easy to sing.

I once heard an interview with Seeger who was saying that when he first heard Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” he marveled at its simplicity.

With the Weavers, Seeger became popular in 1950 and 1951 with “Goodnight Irene” and “On Top of Old Smokey” and “Farewell, It’s Been Good to Know You” and “Tzena, Tzena.”

But then Seeger and the other singers in the Weavers were blacklisted, and he was hauled before the House UnAmerican Activities Committees, where he refused to testify. He was convicted in 1955 for his refusal, but that conviction was later overturned.

Seeger played a big role in the culture of activism in this country. He was primarily responsible for popularizing “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of the civil rights movement. And his anti-war song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” was also very influential in the movement to end the war in Vietnam, as was “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” which he defiantly sang on the Smothers Brothers comedy show after first being censored in 1967.

From the 1970s to last week, he threw himself into the environmental movement, and stressed the importance of working locally as well as globally.

He was a progressive hero for seven decades.

I saw Pete Seeger in concert many times. The first one was at a small event honoring Ralph Nader in the early 1980s, and Seeger was gracious and light-hearted.

After that, I saw him several times in concert in Madison with my wife, Jean, and we were always amazed at his energy and spirit, even into old age, and his insistence in getting the whole crowd singing.

He came by The Progressive’s offices once, about 25 years ago, and regaled us with stories. Not all of them were happy. The pain of the blacklist still registered in his voice when he told about how hard it was for him to make a living in the 1950s and early 1960s.

We ran an interview with Pete Seeger in The Progressive back in April 1986, which was conducted by Mike Ervin.

“This world won’t survive unless people realize that it’s a lot of fun to do things yourself,” Seeger said. “I believe we’ve forgotten what fun it is to lead a well-rounded life. Our age of specialization makes for efficient production, not for happiness.”

And this was his advice for activists: “The key issues are those that are close to you, geographically as well as spiritually. If someone says, ‘I want to change the world. Where do I go?’ I answer: ‘Stay right where you are. Don’t run away. Dig in.’”

Pete Seeger really dug in.

And we all owe him our deepest thanks for that.

_________________________________

© 2014 The Progressive

From Kafila

Letter to Arvind Kejriwal: Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression

JANUARY 21, 2014

by Nivedita Menon

Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression condemns the racial profiling, sexual violence and vigilantism by AAP against Ugandan women.

Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) is a network of women’s rights, Dalit rights, human rights and civil liberties organizations and individuals across India. It is a non-funded grassroots effort by women to stem the violence being perpetrated upon our bodies and on our societies by the State’s forces, by non-state actors and by the inability of our government to resolve conflict in a meaningful, sustainable and effective manner.

Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression strongly condemns the illegal raid conducted by the AAP cabinet law minister, Somnath Bharti and his mob of supporters, on the premises of the Ugandan women on 17th January 2014 residing in Khidki village, New Delhi.

One media report states that four women who were kept in a taxi for 3 hours were accused of conducting ‘drug rackets’ and ‘sex rackets’; and were terrorized by your cabinet minister and his mob. The women, who were eventually helped by the police, have registered their statements. Two of them have stated that they were physically assaulted by the mob and were also subjected to intense racist abuse – “black people break laws.”

Media reports also indicate that for the purpose of collecting their urine samples, one of them was forced to urinate in public. To add to this abuse and trauma, they were also subjected to not only body search but humiliating invasive physical searches of their private parts. This search is a part of the routine custodial violence that women are often subjected to.

As a group in solidarity with women who face violence, we are appalled to learn of this incident which reeks of gross violation of not only the constitutional law but of human rights as well.

In its party manifesto, AAP had professed to follow the rules of the law, vowed to create a safer society for women, and punish the sexual offenders. But, in the light of this incident, we are deeply disappointed to note that your party has demeaned the credibility of its own manifesto by going against it and engaging in such disturbing acts.

Your law minister has not only wilfully and fearlessly broken the law but it is shocking to see that instead of taking a decisive stern action against Somnath Bharti, you and your cabinet colleague, Manish Sisodia, defend his racial profiling and violent vigilantism under the pretext of preventing ‘rape tendencies’. We find it inexplicable that when in another shameful incident, a Danish woman was gang raped, the AAP leadership immediately and rightfully recognized it as violence against women but it failed to take cognizance of the same offence when it was inflicted through the agency of its own cabinet minister.

To add insult to injury, in less than 24 hours, in a further appalling act Somnath Bharti returned to the very spot on Thursday and asked the residents to draw up a list of houses where ‘such people’ lived and assured them that he would personally check on each one of them. This act is leading to a power structure similar to the regressive Khap Panchayat, where residents are being given the dangerously partial authority of deciding on the basis of their personal and cultural prejudices on who might be a suspect or not. In a country where we have witnessed serious assaults on civil rights on the basis of religion, gender, caste and class, such authority is a potential threat to the civil liberties. If we do not collectively condemn it and proactively combat it, sooner or later we would all be prey to the same.

Legal protection from police barging into people’s homes and arresting them without search/ arrest warrants is a safeguard that has been fought for and established in democratic societies by the constitution. Violating the law was a very shameful act on the part of the Minister who ironically has been given the same responsibility of protecting and upholding the very law he willfully disobeyed. And to defend his acts, makes your stand not just shameful, but it is hazardous to the social well being of any citizen of this state. No one should be allowed such violation under any circumstances. Further, to put the foreigners who have chosen this country to work in or study in is shows India in very poor light. By doing this, you forsaken many Indians based abroad for education or work.

We stand in solidarity with the women who were subjected to the violence that night and strongly feel that such racist, sexist and moral zealots and vigilantes have no constructive role to play in a party that claims to be a common people’s party, aims to prevent violence against women and seeks to promote diversity and tolerance.

We would like to iterate that:

* There are guidelines by the Supreme Court restated time and again which insist that women cannot be questioned by the police at night, that notice of any search etc has to be given in advance so that women can be prepared for the same.

* That the law clearly lays down the process to be followed by the police which includes the absolute necessity of a search warrant and at least a complaint, if not an FIR to back the same.

* That an assumption cannot be made simply because a couple of women of colour are living together, that they indulge in solicitation for the purpose of prostitution or otherwise.

In the light of the above, WSS demands that:

1. By violating the same law that he pledged to uphold, Somnath Bharti, has proved unfit to be a law Minister, and should be removed from his position.

2. A judicial probe should be ordered by the lieutenant Governor to identify those who instigated and perpetrated the violence against these Ugandan women and also other African nationals in Khidki village.

3. All found guilty of such violence be punished as per the law, including the law minister.

4. The Ugandan women are compensated

5. The police who came to the help and protect those women from the mob violence, followed the rules of the law and refused to raid without a search warrant must not be suspended. Instead they should be made answerable for not filing the FIR of the affected women.

6.  AAP must render an apology to the women and others Africans in the country. They should stop spreading racist propaganda such as ‘all Africans are drug peddlers’’ who engage in ‘sex rackets’, and should actively discourage others engaging in the same.

7. AAP should promote tolerance and encourage diversity in Delhi and other parts of the country.

Kalpana Mehta, Rinchin and Geeta Charusivam, National Conveners, WSS

(On behalf of Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression)