Category Archives: South Asia Bulletin

Ambedkar for all seasons

South Asia Bulletin

Deconstructing The Unreal Ambedkar

By Anand Teltumbde

05 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org

If the number of statues, memorabilia, pictures and posters; songs and ballads, books and pamphlets, or the size of congregations in memory were the parameters to measure greatness, there may not be any other great in history who can rival Babasaheb Ambedkar. Newer and newer places and events are getting added to the list of his memorials where ever growing congregations take place every passing year. He has been such a phenomenon that after a while it would be difficult for people to believe that such a person who had to struggle to drink water from a public water source, open for cats and dogs, ever walked on this planet. Even the gods in heaven, if they exist, would be jealous of him. What might be behind this miracle? There is no doubt that he has been a messiah for Dalits, initially only a section of them and now the most of them. It is natural for them to be beholden for what he has done to them single handedly and single mindedly. True though, it would be pure naïveté to believe it to be the lone and the entire cause. The catalytic role played by the ruling classes in constructing and promoting Ambedkar icon has been major one and mutually reinforcing.

The recent overtures of the Sangh Pariwar to claim Ambedkar are blatant enough to make Dalits understand the underlying dynamics.

Making of the Icon

The Congress representing political Hindu, was the main adversary of Ambedkar. Recall, Gandhi opposing tooth and nail Ambedkar’s attempt to win Dalits separate electorates during the round table conferences in 1932 and eventually blackmailing him into signing the Poona Pact that annulled the prospective independent political existence of Dalits. After the transfer of power, the Congress tendentiously saw to it that Ambedkar does not enter the constituent assembly. But it soon made a volte face. The folklorish explanations notwithstanding, it was Gandhi’s strategic genius to get Ambedkar elected to the constituent assembly when he had no way left to enter it and then make him the chairman of its drafting committee. Although Ambedkar played a statesman in exchange of safeguarding Dalit rights in the Constitution, this new found affinity did not last long. Ambedkar had to resign from the Nehru cabinet on the issue of retrogression over the Hindu Code Bill. Later, Ambedkar had even disowned the Constitution saying he was used as a hack that it was of no use to anyone and that he would be the first person to burn it down. He called the Congress a ‘burning house’ which could be entered by Dalits only at their peril. But that did not deter scores of ‘Ambedkarites’ from joining the Congress to serve ‘Ambedkarism’.

The Congress skilfully carved out a class of rich farmers out of the most populous band of shudra castes in rural areas with such euphemistic policies as land reforms and Green Revolution. While this class remained its ally for the larger part, it developed its own political ambition, floating regional parties and gradually capturing local to state power bases. The electoral politics became competitive bringing importance to the vote blocks in the form of castes and communities, both skilfully preserved in the Constitution in the name of social justice and the religious reforms, respectively. It was from here on that the conscious cooptation drive of the ruling parties began, of course first with the Congress. Ambedkar’s core concerns were overshadowed and he was systematically iconized into a nationalist, a quasi Congress man, as a statesman and the maker of the Constitution. This propaganda killed many birds with single stone: it won over Ambedkarite masses, accelerated exodus of opportunistic Dalit leaders to the Congress, disoriented Dalit movement along identity lines and gradually de-radicalized Ambedkar. Slowly, other parties also had to enter the competition in projecting their own Ambedkar icon.

Saffronizing Ambedkar

The Sangh Pariwar created by the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) by launching outfits for major areas of the public sphere (Jan sangh for political, VHP for religious, etc.) and targeting major sociological categories (Rashtriya sevika sangh for women, ABVP for students, BMS for workers, VKA for tribals) to widen its appeal and to diffuse its ideology also floated second generation outfits to deal with strategic and emergent issues. Samajik Samrasata Manch (social assimilation platform) was to woo dalits into its fold. The RSS born in 1925, around the same time as the dalit and communist movements, banked initially on its imagined Hindu majority but failed to make a mark either socially or politically, until it got its 94 MPs elected in 1977 election riding the anti-Congress wave. Initially scandalized by Ambedkar’s anti-Hinduism utterances, it tacitly despised him and banked upon the non-Ambedkarite Dalits as later professed by Bal Thackeray. However, having tested meat of political power, it realized, it could not ignore Ambedkar who had grown into a pan Indian Dalit icon. It strategized to saffronize him picking up his stray statements sans context and mixing them with its Goebbelesqe lies. First of the strokes of saffron on Ambedkar was in comparing the incomparable: Hedgewar with Ambedkar, calling them ‘two doctors’, as though Hedgewar, just a licentiate medical practitioner, with diploma that comes after matriculation and Ambedkar with two doctoral degrees from the world renowned institutions were comparable. What could really be similar between them?

While Ambedkar’s pragmatism left behind numerous inconsistencies, nobody can miss out the central theme of his life which was to usher in what he himself verbalized as his ideal society based on ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, insisting on their simultaneity. He saw annihilation of castes and socialism (annihilation of classes) to be its prerequisite; democracy as constituting and Buddhism as the moralizing force. RSS’s world view is diametrically opposed to this on every count. The saffron Ambedkar is a nationalist; the real Ambedkar dismissed India to be a nation, and specifically warned that the ‘Hindu nation’ would be calamitous. RSS’s Ambedkar is a great Hindu despite his vow that he would never die a Hindu. RSS projects Buddhism, which Ambedkar embraced after discarding Hinduism, as just a sect of Hinduism brushing away the entire history that it symbolized the shraman revolt against Hinduism and bloody counter revolution of the latter that completely erased Buddhism from the land of its birth. The statements like Ambedkar wanted Sanskrit to be the national language, a saffron flag as the national flag, that he commended the RSS for its good work and that he was for ‘ghar wapasi’, which tries to dwarf Ambedkar to the levels of VHP monkeys, do not deserve to be even commented on. They have been saying that Ambedkar was against Muslims, throwing stray sentences from his Thoughts on Pakistan. This book was written in a polemical style, Ambedkar donning the robes of both an advocate for Hindus as well as for Muslims. Unless one diligently reads it, one could miss many of the arguments as his own opinions. I have exploded this lie in 2003 in my book, Ambedkar on Muslims: Myths and Facts. But again going by his liberal persona and a plethora of other references where he praised Muslim community to the extent Islam would appear to be his preference for conversion (Mukti Kon Pathe, 1936), he can just not be portrayed as petty minded anti-Muslim person. The RSS better understood, it could cheaply project some Dalit stooges on their stage, but would never be able to show Ambedkar as a pigmy little communalist.

Neoliberal Compulsion

The competitive Ambedkar icons offered by the political manufacturers in the India’s electoral market have completely overshadowed the real Ambedkar and decimated potential weaponry of Dalit emancipation. While these icons differed in shades, they all painted Ambedkar in neoliberal colour. The Ambedkar-icon nearly dislodged Gandhi as the mascot of the state, which had worked right from 1947 through 1980s. Gandhi suited the regime in managing polity, camouflaging its anti-people strategic intent, its welfarist rhetoric and its Hindu rate of growth. It began to lose its sheen as the capitalist crisis mounted impelling the rulers to adopt neoliberal reforms. The rhetoric of aggressive development, modernity, open competition, free market, etc. necessitated new icon which would assure people, particularly those of lower strata whom it would hit most, ‘rags-to-riches’ hope in free-market paradigm. None other than Ambedkar fitted the bill. It was the same strategic requirement as seen by Gandhi at the time of creating the Constitution for the newly born anaemic India. The social Darwinist ethos of Neoliberalism had particular resonance with the supremacist RSS ideology which is what catapulted BJP to the stratosphere of political power.

While all parties have use of Ambedkar-icon for wooing Dalits, RSS has it most. It is therefore that from nineties the BJP commands more reserved seats than the Congress. The neoliberal regime badly required its balladeers from among the Dalits and they got it. A significant Dalit middle class, led by some of their heroes belaboured during initial years to convince Dalits how Neoliberalism would be beneficial to them; how Ambedkar was a neoliberal and how Dalits have made fantastic progress with these policies unleashing a ‘revolution’ of Dalit bourgeoisie. They find particular affinity with BJP and are found on their platforms off and on. It is therefore that most Dalit leaders today are in BJP-fold. [See my Three Dalit Rams…EPW, 12 April 2014] This year with extraordinary efficiency BJP bought the innocuous building in London for Rs 44 crores just because Ambedkar stayed in one of its apartments as a student; it cleared the Indu Mill land issue for grand Ambedkar memorial in Mumbai and planned an equally grand Ambedkar International Centre at Delhi.

All these intoxicates Dalits, the 90% of whom are relatively at the same place as they were at the beginning of the last century or worse as they had hopes then and now they have none. They wouldn’t understand Ambedkar’s ‘samata’ is not ‘samrasata’ or Ambedkar’s worldview is not the neoliberal social Darwinism that is out to kill them. They even don’t understand that a few hundred crores on Ambedkar memorials is pittance as compared to over Rs. 5 lakh crore the government stole from their share in budgets just in a single decade!

Dr Anand Teltumbde is a writer, political analyst and a civil rights activist with CPDR, Maharashtra.

Ambedkar’s radical message is annihilation of caste

South Asia Bulletin
The Hindu, Wednesday, April 13, 2016

 How to be free of caste

As India marks the 125th birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar this week, it must acknowledge the pervasiveness of discrimination and confront it head-on

This year, India has sponsored the observation of the birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar at the United Nations for the first time. The Permanent Mission of India to the UN shall commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of the Dalit icon on April 13 at the UN headquarters, a day before his date of birth, with an international seminar on ‘Combating inequalities to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’. A note circulated by the Indian mission says that the “national icon” remains an inspiration for millions of Indians and proponents of equality and social justice across the globe. “Fittingly, although it’s a matter of coincidence, one can see the trace of Babasaheb’s radiant vision in the SDGs adopted by the UN General Assembly to eliminate poverty, hunger and socio-economic inequality by 2030.”

Juxtapose this with a recent report on caste-based discrimination by the United Nations Human Right Council’s Special Rapporteur for minority issues that has stung the Indian government, provoking it to raise questions about the lack of “seriousness of work” in the UN body and the special rapporteur’s mandate. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, would definitely not be pleased. Nor are the Dalit rights activists in India and abroad.

Precept and practice

This is the most recent example of India’s hypersensitivity on discussing the caste issue at any UN forum — the objections raised by the Permanent Mission of India to the UN in Geneva to the March 2016 report of Special Rapporteur Rita Izsák-Ndiaye of Hungary. Her report characterised caste-based discrimination as that based on “descent”, labour stratification, untouchability practices and forced endogamy and said that this was a “global phenomena” that impacted more than 250 million people worldwide — largely in India, but also in countries as diverse as Yemen, Japan and Mauritania. Her report cited India’s National Crime Records Bureau data to highlight that there were increasing atrocities against Scheduled Castes — an increase in reported crimes of 19 per cent in 2014 compared to the previous year. The report mentions that despite legislative prohibition of manual scavenging, the state has institutionalised the practice with “local governments and municipalities employing manual scavengers”.

Earlier, during the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, when there was a major effort by Indian NGOs to include casteism on the agenda, the Indian government had vehemently opposed it. Ashok Bharti, chair of the National Confederation of Dalit and Adivasi Organisations, recently told a Web publication: “The whole government suffers from a mindset of the upper castes, that are victims of their own guilt and will therefore try to hide their faults.” He said that if the Indian government had done so well in supporting Dalits, “why have there been thousands of cases of atrocities in the past 25 years? How many perpetrators have been punished? If domestic pressures and remedies do not work, internationalisation was a viable option to seek improvement in the status of Dalits.”

The lesson from all this which India must learn is what the then UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diène of Senegal, said a decade ago to the international conference on ‘Human Rights and Dignity of Dalit Women’ in November 2006 at The Hague: “You have to go beyond the law. You have to get to the identity constructions. How, over centuries, the Indian identity has been constructed. All forms of discrimination can be traced historically and intellectually. One of the key strategies of the racist, discriminating communities is to make us believe that discrimination is natural, that it is part of nature, and that you have to accept it. This is part of their ideological weapon and it is not true. Discrimination does not come from the cosmos. Caste-based discrimination can be retraced and deconstructed to combat it. Please engage in this ethical and intellectual strategy to uproot what is building and creating the culture and mentality of discrimination.”

Even 68 years after Independence, Dalits and Adivasis continue to face mind-boggling social discrimination and spine-chilling atrocities across the country. One in four Indians admits to practising caste untouchability in some form in their homes — this shocking fact has been revealed by a mega pan-India survey conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and University of Maryland, U.S. Indians belonging to virtually every religious and caste group, including Muslims, Christians, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, admit to practising untouchability, shows the India Human Development Survey (IHDS-II) of 2011-12. Mere tokenism and lip service will not do. India needs to jettison the centuries-old dehumanising baggage of caste stigma once and for all. It should have nothing to hide but see the reality as it is and confront the issues involved head-on.

Towards a transformation

If India has to move ahead to a caste-free nation, the need is for an all-embracing, inclusive pan-India social movement of social and cultural transformation. Ambedkar showed the way: “Turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster.” In fact, the Dalit political vision today not only encompasses the most oppressed, exploited and marginalised sections of the caste system but also other sections which took on the Brahminical hegemony in 1970s and 1980s — the backward castes and Adivasis. The Dalit political vision has now moved beyond the rhetoric of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the factions of the Republican Party and the decorative Dalit politicos in the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (United) et al or even the low-caste-based Maoist organisations. New social movements like SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association) in Gujarat, NBA (Narmada Bachao Andolan) in Madhya Pradesh and MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan) in Rajasthan among others have fundamentally broadened the Dalit political vision.

The suicide of Rohith Vemula has exposed why attempts to co-opt Ambedkar as a ‘Hindu reformer’ cannot succeed due to inherent ideological contradictions. The challenge posed by the Ambedkar Students’ Association at the Hyderabad Central University to the Brahminical hegemony of Hindutva represented by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is in the very logic of the Dalit political vision.

Now, integrating social and cultural transformation with an economic alternative is critical. Our tryst with destiny can go on and on. But let us grab this moment of truth. So that we can “redeem our pledge”, which has remained unredeemed for more than 68 years, to make conditions for the last men and women representing the Adivasis and Dalits, the marginalised and poor people of India to give unto themselves what is truly theirs. That is the challenge before the people of India.

Suhas Borker is Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTV), and Convener, Working Group on Alternative Strategies, New Delhi.

War on students and faculty in India–continued

South Asia Bulletin

 

http://kafila.org/2016/03/25/a-fig-leaf-called-vandalism-by-uoh-students-sc-and-st-faculty-forum-and-concerned-teachers-of-university-of-hyderabad/

A Fig-leaf Called ‘Vandalism by UoH Students: SC and ST Faculty Forum and Concerned Teachers of University of Hyderabad

For the past three days the news media has been circulating widely, stories about ‘vandalism’ by students of the University of Hyderabad that led to the police crackdown. Surprisingly little information is actually there on the actual context, timing, duration and nature of the vandalism. It appears that the claim that a group of students indulged in acts of vandalism is enough to justify a full scale war on the entire campus community of over 5000 students.  Yet this charge of vandalism is no more than a fig leaf .

  •         Mera Name plate dekhega? Chal main tere ku sabak sikhata hoon! (You dare look at my         name badge? Let me teach you a lesson)
  • Naam kya hai tera? Acchaa tu Pakistani hai. Chal main tere ku sabak sikhata hoon! (What is your name? Oh, you are a Pakistani? Let me teach you a lesson)
  • Tu kahaan ki rehne wali hai? Itti kaali hai! Aa tere ku sabak sikhata hoon! (Where are you from? You are so dark. Let me teach you a lesson)
  • Kiskaa Fotu khenchraa re tu? Abhi bataata hoon tere ku! (Whose photo are you shooting? Let me show you …)

This was how the police read out the rights to the students and faculty member of University of Hyderabad as they were ‘arrested’ on March 22. Arrested from different places all over the campus much later in the day when most of them were nowhere near the lodge that morning.

Two teachers Prof. K Y Ratnam (Centre for Ambedkar Studies) and Dr. Tathagatha Sengupta (School of Mathematics and Statistics) known for their commitment to social justice were targeted, roughed-up, and arrested. Prof. Ratnam, who was in a selection committee meeting till 2pm and then came to the VC Lodge saw the police beating up the students sitting on the lawns and went to dissuade them was himself roughed up and thrown into the van. When a female faculty member rushed there to urge the policemen to stop beating up Prof. Ratnam, she was told that she was welcome to jump into the van. When a female student tried to intervene when a male student was being dragged into the van, she was told she would be raped. Thus began a three-track ordeal for the University of Hyderabad community.

Track I- Denial of food, water and basic amenities

Electricity, water, food and internet were all shut off for two days by the non-teaching staff who, according to the Vice-Chancellor, were on strike. 14 hostel messes were completely shut down affecting the 5000 odd students on campus. For 48 hours, volunteers from across the city were desperately trying to supply food and water to the students through the barricaded gates. Many students protected themselves from dehydration by drinking water from the bathrooms. On March 23 some students tried to cook food on the campus. They were stopped from doing so.  D. Udaya Bhanu, a research scholar, who was cooking for the starving students at the shopping complex was beaten up brutally despite him pleading that her was just recovering from a surgery. In fact, he was then hit at the spot of the surgery and on his head, and had to be rushed to a hospital in a critical condition. The police taunted him about his political views and activities on campus, and indicated that he was receiving his just desserts. A security officer of the university who was watching the events told the police personnel to beat the excess fat out of Uday. All this while the ‘nationalist’ students affiliated to ABVP were circling them on motor cycles shouting slogans cheering India’s win in a cricket match and taunting the others.

The University of Hyderabad campus could easily have been any of the police camps that dotted Telangana region in the 80s.  The younger generation of students who are not familiar with such images have been describing it as Jallianwala bagh, surrounded as they were, by armed, hostile men.

For full article: http://kafila.org/2016/03/25/a-fig-leaf-called-vandalism-by-uoh-students-sc-and-st-faculty-forum-and-concerned-teachers-of-university-of-hyderabad/

Hinduva nation

South Asia Bulletin
 The Hindu, thehindu.com
Editorial
Updated: February 20, 2016 01:42 IST

The emperor’s new nationalism

From Hyderabad to Jawaharlal Nehru University, from the death of Rohith Vemula to the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, a clear political agenda by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party can be discerned. At first flush, this is a party whose top leaders — and they include members of the Union Cabinet — are all too willing to pick fights with student leaders and give establishment cover to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Sangh’s student wing. But to see events that have unfolded over the past week only as the government’s battle for ideological control for India’s universities, as real and as condemnable as the effort is, would be to miss the gravity of the moment. In the national capital this week, the Home Minister gave currency to parody accounts of Pakistani terrorists to build a case against JNU students and yet remained visibly unmoved by the obstinate refusal of the city’s police force, which comes under his charge, to arrest “nationalist” lawyers and a party MLA who beat up students on and around court premises. BJP spokespersons affected condemnation of the violence, but breathed outrage about the allegedly seditious sentiments voiced at a meeting on the JNU campus to mark the death anniversary of Afzal Guru, convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack case and hanged in 2013. Such false equivalence has never been seen since Independence, between a Central government virtually refusing to honour the state’s essential compact with its citizenry to enforce the law and the right of Indians to freely express their sentiments, that too in the especially free zone that university campuses are meant to be. And its utterance should frame an anxiety the Prime Minister must respond to, that “nationalism” is being adopted as a political and executive touchstone by which Indians are sought to be divided between those with the ruling dispensation and those not.

Besides taking the fight to the country’s campus that is most identified with Left politics, the JNU development was obviously a chance for the BJP to recover from the excesses of Hyderabad. With it, the party has reframed the ABVP’s adoption of “nationalist” outrage from a Sangh versus Dalit binary to one in which the identities of “anti-nationalists” are insinuated, and not overtly specified. It is, thus, a curious overlay to agitations over the JNU incidents that all Central universities are now required to fly the national flag. It is a dangerous phase in this country’s history when the government at the Centre is seen to be actively assisting in a right-wing effort to shape the discourse on nationalism. This is why the use of Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code on sedition acquires greater menace than in instances in the past, when it has mostly been used by thin-skinned politicians to fend off critiques. Its application against JNU students and the unchecked violence against students and activists at Delhi’s Patiala House courts have sent out a message that the rule of law could be enforced selectively. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi differs from this dark reading of events, he needs to speak up.

South Asia Bulletin

 

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jnu-sedition-case-kanhaiya-kumar-arrest-afzal-guru-event/

An act of tyranny: ‘Modi govt threatened democracy; that is the most anti-national of all acts’

jawaharlal nehru university, Kanhaiya Kumat, jnu protest, jnu, afzal guru event, jnu sedition case, jnu case delhi police, jnu case NIA, jnu student arrest, india news, latest newsA student shouts slogans as JNU teachers and students form a human chain inside the campus in protest against arrest of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar on Sunday. (Source: Express Photo by Oinam Anand)

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

February 16, 2016

The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar and the crackdown on political dissent at JNU suggest that we are living under a government that is both rabidly malign and politically incompetent. It is using nationalism to crush constitutional patriotism, legal tyranny to crush dissent, political power to settle petty scores, and administrative power to destroy institutions. The instigation of this crackdown was the alleged chanting of some anti-national slogans at JNU, and a meeting to mark the death anniversary of Afzal Guru. But the government’s disproportionate response smacks of tyranny of the highest order. It ordered the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, whose speech had nothing anti-national about it.

The fury with which the home minister and HRD minister intoned on defending “Mother India” and wiping out anti-national events, suggests several things. This was a political decision taken at the highest levels of government. It represents an open declaration by government that it will not tolerate any dissent. It clearly put on display this government’s imperiously presumptuous claim that it has the monopoly on nationalism. It was meant to be a display of brute force against a speech that was not in any way an immediate instigation to violence. The crackdown was an act designed to revel in ignorance of the law of sedition. Indeed, it was insidious in its remarkable ability to make ignorance the flaming torchbearer of nationalism. The government does not want to just crush dissent; it wants to crush thinking, as its repeated assaults on universities demonstrate.

Watch video: JNU Students, Left Activists Protest At Jantar Mantar

They want to peddle a patriotism whose condition of possibility is the wiping out of all thought. It is important not to confuse several issues. Some of the students may have been deeply misguided in the beliefs they hold. But a university is the space to debate them: yes, even the hanging of Afzal Guru. But nothing they said amounts to a definition of illegality that should befit a liberal democracy. As a society, we are also losing sight of a basic distinction: the threshold of justification required for using the coercive power of the state is not satisfied merely because someone disagrees. In fact, the critique of what the students were doing has been vitiated because it has resorted to force. It is also important to remember that what is at issue here is not the definition of patriotism, or who is or is not anti-national. Large sections of the media and intelligentsia are gullibly letting the question of nationalism frame the terms of debate. So, even at the risk of hyperbole, it is a moment to assert that being anti-national is not a crime. Indeed, if the definition of nationalism is narrow and pinched-up, if it does not brook serious criticism, if it is aligned with tyranny, if it trades on an anti-intellectual ignorance, and its purpose is to unleash a frenzy of destructive passion, then being anti-national might even be an obligation. Make no mistake: the purpose of such a use of state power is to put all defenders of liberty, all radical critics of the state, on the defensive. Its purpose is to make traitors of all of us.

Express Editorial | Do not disagree: JNU arrests are ill-judged, threaten basic rights

But besides being malign, the government’s actions are politically stupid. In a narrow sense, the crackdown fulfils the government’s agenda: polarise and confuse the population by constantly debating nationalism; give full rein to the politics of resentment that the government harbours against institutions it has declared “Left.” But it does long-run damage to the government’s credibility in several ways. It gives the opposition exactly the pretext to unite that they need. It is hard to see the government being able to carry much of the country with it, if it constantly uses such vendetta. It will not be a surprise if another parliament session is the casualty of such overreaction. And the opposition would be well within its rights. Dissent is not something to be trifled with. As atrocious as the Congress and Left’s record on freedom of expression is, this is an opportunity for them to signal a new beginning. But they have to learn this lesson. The Congress and the Left have been hiding behind their own self-declared virtue for far too long, to the point where they created and used all the legal instruments of suppression the BJP is deploying with such effect. The politics of dissent will have to be rescued from the politics of opportunism.

The crackdown signals an utter lack of judgment in the government, where ministers manage to manufacture a national crisis out of what were always, at best, minor affectations in student politics. The ABVP’s constantly seeking government interference in university affairs on ideological grounds does not portend well for the future. It has even given all those not on the Left a reason to rally with the “Left.” JNU’s importance to national intellectual life had been waning; the BJP has just resurrected it. Even from the point of view of their own critique of the Left, this is an own goal. It suggests that the BJP is a party that cannot repress its own base instincts, whose petty politics of resentment will always subvert whatever long-term goals it might have. The BJP has still not learnt any lesson from its fate over the last two years. The toleration debate will overshadow everything else it does, not because of some congenital anti-BJP conspiracy: it is because the protection of freedom is the life blood of a democracy. And in this case, it is the BJP that upped the ante. The BJP does not also understand one subtle point: that unless there is real and immediate violence involved, a democracy that cuts “anti-nationals” some slack is a robust democracy. For the fact that even people who push the boundaries of expression are safe makes us all feel safe.

Nothing that the students did poses nearly as much threat to India, as the subversion of freedom and judgement this government represents. The honourable ministers should realise that if this is a debate about nationalism, it is they, rather than JNU, who should be in the dock. They have threatened democracy; that is the most anti-national of all acts.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, and contributing editor, The Indian Express

Attack on students in India

South Asia Bulletin
FEBRUARY 13, 2016
by 
Statement by JNUTA
JNU has always been a University where there has been a vibrant democratic culture, where diverse political ideological and academic views have engaged with each other in a spirit of peaceful dialogue and debate. The JNU teaching community is extremely concerned at the threat to the democratic ethos, which has played a critical role in ensuring that the University serves its social functions and secures its position as one of the premier institutions of higher education.
The University, having already instituted an enquiry to ascertain the facts and to take necessary action and there being no disruption of academic or any other regular functioning of the University, JNUTA strongly believes that the current excessive police action is totally uncalled for and it has only aggravated the situation. In view of this, JNUTA expresses its deep anguish over the University Administration’s decision to give a carte blanche to the police to enter the campus to search different premises and even make random arrests.
The teachers of JNU have always stood for upholding the Constitution of India and values enshrined therein and are opposed to any unconstitutional activity in the campus or outside. This very sentiment makes us express our strong opposition to attempts to use the law and the police to suppress democratic dissent and conduct a witch-hunt on our campus. The fact that the JNU Students Union (JNUSU) President is the first to be arrested establishes it. The JNUTA, following its Emergency Meeting, expresses its deep concern on the recent developments on our campus. The teachers of the University condemn the massive police presence and the attempt to escalate tensions.
JNUTA stands with the entire JNU community to maintain normalcy on our campus by immediately withdrawing the police and releasing all those detained.

Death of Dalit Scholar, Rohith Vemula

South Asia Bulletin

thehindu.com, January 26, 2016

 Discrimination on the campus

Supporters of Opposition parties join a march in Mumbai on Sunday, seeking action against those responsible for the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. —PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Supporters of Opposition parties join a march in Mumbai on Sunday, seeking action against those responsible for the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. —PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

 Even as the student population has become increasingly diverse, the high incidence of suicide among Dalit students points to continuing discrimination, exclusion and humiliation.

There is a need to apply our minds in a calm manner to address the problems that Dalit students face in institutions of higher education and find a more durable solution, now that the University of Hyderabad has revoked the suspension of students in the context of Rohith Vemula’s death. However, given past experience, there is no guarantee that the Rohith Vemula story will not be repeated. While his suicide has caused great shock and resulted in outrage, similar sentiments were expressed when Senthil Kumar from Salem, another student from the University of Hyderabad, killed himself in 2008. There have been up to 11 cases of suicide by students, mostly Dalits, in various institutions in Hyderabad between 2007 and 2013. In north India, besides two cases of suicide by Dalit/Adivasi students at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, an additional 14 cases of suicide by Dalit students were reported between January 2007 and April 2011.

It is almost as if we have become immune to these frequent instances of suicide mainly by Dalit students. The student population on campuses of higher education has become increasingly diverse: according to 2008 data, of the total number of students in higher education in the country, 4 per cent were Scheduled Tribes, 13.5 per cent Scheduled Castes (SC), and 35 per cent Other Backward Classes (OBC). Hindus accounted for about 85 per cent of students, followed by Muslims (8 per cent) and Christians (3 per cent). And yet, 23 out of 25 were of Dalits.

Reasons for discrimination

What explains such a high incidence of suicide among Dalits? Research indicates that experiences of discrimination, exclusion and humiliation are the predominant reasons. After analysing some cases of suicide, academic Anoop Singh concluded that “there seems to be more than enough evidence to believe that caste discrimination played a significant role in driving these extraordinary individuals into committing suicide”, and that “elite professional institutions are the places where caste prejudice is so firmly entrenched that it has become normal”. A study in 2010 by Professor Mary Thornton and others of five higher educational institutions in India and the United Kingdom observed that “separation of groups on the higher education campus is pervasive and ubiquitous. While some such separation may be for supportive reasons, at other times it is due to overt discrimination on the grounds of race, region, nationality, caste, class, religion, or gender”. In 2013, Samson Ovichegan, in a study on the experience of Dalits in an elite university in India, observed that “this university is yet another arena in which the practice of caste division continues to exist. The university environment reinforces and maintains a divide between Dalit and non-Dalit. Dalit students do, indeed, experience overt and covert discrimination based on caste at this premier university”.

In the wake of a spate of cases of suicide by students in Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh High Court, in April 2013, had taken suo motu cognisance of a newspaper report and directed the universities to take measures to address the possible causes. At that time, a group of 29 academicians, in a petition to the court, identified failure, fear of failure, administrative indifference, hostile regulations, insults, social and academic stigmatisation and rejection as some of the reasons for suicide by students from marginalised groups. Political scientist N. Sukumar’s research gives us an insight into the general milieu of stigmatisation and discrimination faced in particular by Dalit students in the context of Senthil Kumar’s suicide, and on how caste comes into play in interactions of Dalit students with upper caste students, teachers and administrators. It is this exclusionary social milieu that pushes Dalit students to the wall, and those who lack the capacity to deal with the psychological pressure of humiliation resort to suicide.

Also read: A series on Dalit unrest on campuses

There are solutions provided we accept the persistence of caste discrimination and stigmatisation as a problem bedevilling higher education campuses. There is constant denial and attempts are made to attribute the suicides to incident-specific situations with disregard for the links with the larger social milieu of exclusion. True, there are incident-specific reasons, but it cannot be a coincidence that out of 25 cases of suicide, 23 were of Dalits. Thus, the first thing for policymakers is to come out of denial mode.

Need for legal safeguards

It is not that the situation has not improved — indeed it has. But the legacy of caste continues in modified forms in many spheres, if not all, of relations Dalit students have with other students and teachers and administrators. In my view, steps are needed on four fronts to address the problems of Dalit/OBC and other marginalised students. These include legal safeguards against discrimination, civic education, academic assistance to students who need support, and participation of Dalits in all decision-making bodies of universities/colleges.

If we acknowledge the persistence of exclusionary practices associated with caste on higher education campuses, we need legal safeguards to act as a deterrent. Currently some legal provisions exist such as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015, and the University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations. However, the provisions related to education in the Act are limited. Similarly, UGC regulations fall short in terms of effectiveness. Therefore, we need a separate law against discrimination in colleges/universities, to treat an act of discrimination as a punishable crime, in specific spheres, with detailed administrative guidelines as in the case of gender discrimination and ragging. The legal route should help. For instance, when ragging was made a punishable offence, instances of ragging dropped dramatically. In fact, the near elimination of ragging is one of the most successful stories of the Ministry of Human Resource Development/UGC.

Importance of civic education

While legal safeguards are essential, they need to be supplemented by civic learning. Laws help to prevent, but not cure. Civic education in schools, colleges and universities can help students unlearn discriminatory and undemocratic values and behaviour that they pick up through socialisation and sensitise them to how the practice of discrimination associated with caste, ethnicity, gender, race, religion and other identities undermines the citizenship values of equity, freedom and brotherhood. Unfortunately our education system, with its curricula and pedagogy, has less to offer by way of civic learning that builds good citizens out of youth. “A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future”, a 2013 report by the Association of American Colleges & Universities, observed that “unlike liberty, civic knowledge, and capability are not bestowed at birth. They are hard won, though education at all levels. Democratic insights and competence are always in the making, always incomplete”. It went on to warn that “we dare not be passive about revitalizing civic capacity any more”.

Therefore, civic learning needs to be an integral component at every level of education. Many countries have proper civic education at school and in higher education. Some, like the United States, have special courses, while others have a civic learning component included in all courses with themes of diversity, inequality, racism, sexism, religious oppression, classism, anti-Semitism and heterosexism. To develop individual capabilities and skill, the U.S. developed new pedagogical methods, such as inter-group dialogue and mixed peer groups, where students from diverse groups come together and interact, thereby unlearning many prejudices and developing capacities to deal with diversity and difference. Given the widening diversity in schools and higher education campuses in India, we badly need a similar structure for education for citizenship.

Another initiative relates to academic assistance. In 2008, about 65 per cent of SCs entering higher education had a Hindi/regional language background, compared to 43 per cent of higher caste students; 52 per cent of SCs came from a rural background when compared to 34 per cent of higher castes. Obviously, SC students need more support in language improvement and core subjects. Remedial coaching schemes are in place, but a majority of institutions lack the will to implement them in full. They need to be modelled on the pattern of the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s “personalised Academic Support System”, which has yielded good results.

The last suggestion is the provision to give representation to Dalit students and teachers on all bodies of the university and enable them to participate in governance. Effective participation by Dalits in governance is a much better safeguard against the policies and rules detrimental to their interest.

The government can make a beginning by sending out a strong message by removing two symbols of inequality and exclusion. One is a fresco on the wall of the waiting room of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), by a painter from Maharashtra in 1924, depicting the caste system. On the 125th birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar, the PMO should do something to replace it. The government must also shift the statue of Manu in front of the Rajasthan High Court to a museum. The fresco and the statue can hardly be presented as symbols of equality, fraternity, justice and democracy.

(Sukhadeo Thorat is Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Chairman, Indian Council of Social Science Research.)

Tea garden workers in Bangladesh resist displacement by SEZ

South Asia Bulletin
 The Daily Star
12:00 AM, January 17, 2016 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:49 AM, January 17, 2016

Tea garden workers chase pro-SEZ men

Block road for 3 hours

Armed with bows, arrows and sticks, tea garden workers block a road at Chunarughat of Habiganj for three hours yesterday, protesting the government move to set up a special economic zone in the area. Photo: Star

Our Correspondent, Moulvibazar

Agitating tea garden workers yesterday chased away Chunarughat upazila chairman’s men who had gathered on the proposed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) site in Chandpur of Habiganj to showcase their strength in favour of the government plan.

Later, the labourers blocked the Chunarughat-Madhabpur road for three hours protesting the move to set up the economic zone.

The government has decided to develop five SEZs on 512 acres of land across the country under its Economic Zones Development Project to attract foreign and domestic investments. One of the SEZs will be in Chandpur area.

Chunarughat Upazila Chairman Abu Taher, who have been supporting the zone, and his men showed up at the proposed site around 1:30pm, said witnesses.

On their way, they had beaten up two college students — Santal youth Sanjay Kumar and Lokkhi Prasad Rudro Paul — in Amtala area “for no reason”, said Swapon Santal, joint convenor of Chandpur Bhumi Rokhha Committee (a committee to save the land of the tea garden workers).

He alleged that they had also roughed a 50-year-old patient, Satto Bakti, up after dragging him out of an ambulance.
All the victims were involved in the ongoing demonstration against the establishment of the SEZ, Swapon claimed.
As the news spread, hundreds of tea garden workers wielding sticks, bows and arrows rushed to Chandpur area and chased the chairman’s men away.

Later on, the protesters blocked the Chunarughat-Madhabpur road for three hours from 2:00pm, said Nripen Paul, member secretary of the committee.

The upazila chairman could not be reached for comments despite repeated attempts over the phone.
The workers believe the SEZ will devour their land and they fear the government will not provide any compensation. They have also not received any commitment from the government yet.

Legally, they do not have a claim on the land because it belongs to the tea estate, which leased the land from the government. They, whereas, are highly dependent on the land they have been using for over a hundred years.

Protesting the move to set up the SEZ and in order to negotiate a compensation, local tea garden workers have been agitating since last year. Many individuals and organisation have joined their cause recently.

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Labour in neoliberal India

South Asia Bulletin

January 1, 2016

Labour’s love lost

G. SAMPATH

The Hindu

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“Not surprisingly, there has been a persistent corporate chorus demanding a labour regime that allows companies to freely hire temporary workers even for core operations. And the Modi government is eager to deliver.” File picture of workers at Maruti’s Manesar plant on strike. PHOTO: KAMAL NARANG

At a public event during his recent visit to India, French economist Thomas Piketty drew attention to the “hypocrisy” of the Indian elite in the way it wanted to pursue capitalist development — obsessed with growth, but indifferent to welfare. Nowhere is this hypocrisy more evident than in the debate over labour reforms.

The prevailing wisdom is as follows: India has too many antiquated labour laws which hamper growth and investment. The need of the hour is a brisk pruning of this unruly thicket of pieces of legislation into a handful of elegant laws that make it easy for companies to hire and fire as they wish, and pay whatever salaries they can get away with. Once such laws are in place, foreign investment will flood into India, manufacturing will shoot up, and millions of Indians will find employment and “make in India” happily ever after.

From an industrial relations perspective, turning this corporate dream into reality requires two things: one, trade unions must be neutralised; two, contractualisation (temping/casual labour) must become the legal norm rather than illegal supplement for regular work.

Both these are effectively a reality in today’s India. But our legislative framework militates against it, leaving the capitalist class vulnerable to being challenged by the working classes on legal grounds. It is in this context that the incident of July 18, 2012 at Maruti’s Manesar plant assumes historic significance, for India’s working class as well as for the investor class.

The context

Since Independence, trade unions in India have mostly fought modest and pragmatic battles for outcomes such as higher wages and better working conditions. But this changed in the 1990s. Gurgaon-based labour activist Shyambir points out that after liberalisation, most strikes by workers have been not for wage hikes but for the right to form a union.

The right to collective bargaining is enshrined in our Constitution. Article 19(1)(c) grants all citizens the right to form a union. On top of it, we also have a Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 that prohibits employment of contract workers for core industrial work. And yet, the Indian state has either stood by or actively colluded while employers tried every tactic, including illegal termination, to prevent union formation, and kept hiring temporary workers for regular jobs.

In the National Capital Region’s Okhla-Faridabad-Noida-Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt, it is common to find workers toiling on 12- to 16-hour shifts for as little as Rs.9,000 a month, for years together. It raises a fundamental question: whose interests have the labour laws served all these years? Evidence suggests that it is not the labouring classes.

And yet, oddly enough, the clarion call for labour reforms is coming not from the working classes but from the corporate class. One reason for this could be that with global capitalism yet to recover from the shock delivered in 2008, the only way out of the crisis is to tighten the screws on labour to extract more value.

In such a scenario, who wants a labour class feeling empowered to fight for its entitlements? From this perspective, the Manesar conflagration was a decisive event that has, at least for now, beaten back labour and put capital firmly in control in an age-old conflict.

The background

To quickly summarise the incident of July 18, 2012: an outbreak of rioting at the Manesar plant left one HR executive dead and 40 others injured. The police arrested 147 Maruti workers and slapped murder charges on all of them. The dominant narrative about this event is one of labour militancy gone wild, holding it responsible for the loss of life and property.

What has not attracted critical scrutiny is the final outcome of the larger conflict between labour and management of which this incident was the culmination: the termination, in one go, of 546 permanent workers and 1,800 temporary workers. Such a mass retrenchment would be unthinkable in the normal run of things. Were we to ask who gained the most from this sorry episode, the answer is definitely not the worker.

The provenance of this incident goes back more than a year, to June 2011. That’s when Maruti workers began agitating for their right to an independent union. After several months of struggle, the Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Union (MSWU) was formed in early 2012. Now, the MSWU in early 2012 was a different animal from the kind of unions Indian managements were used to dealing with. It derived its power from something unprecedented in the short history of labour struggles in post-liberalisation India: a strategic unity between permanent and temporary workers. It was too dangerous a threat, one that no management would brook.

According to Shyambir, “After its formation in March 2012, right up to the incident of July 18, the main agenda of MSWU was regularisation of temporary workers. They wanted pay parity for permanent and temporary workers. Their slogan of ‘Same Work, Same Pay’ made them hugely popular.”

Given that around 80 per cent of industrial workers in the Gurgaon-Manesar belt are hyper-exploited contract labour, this union may have made a big impact on labour mobilisations had it been allowed to flourish. With the purge of 2,300 workers that followed July 18, 2012, the threat was snuffed out.

The present scenario

By October 2012, within three months of the July clash, Maruti had set up a new system of “company temps” in place of the earlier system of hiring temporary workers through contractors. Under this regime, the temporary worker will work for six months. Then he is laid off for five months, after which he may be recalled for another six months.

Both corporate commentators and labour activists have termed this a master stroke. While the former see in this a replicable model to pre-empt labour unrest, the latter consider it a move designed to prevent unity between permanent and temporary workers by regularly churning the latter.

In September 2015, Maruti announced a salary hike of Rs.16,800, spread over three years, for permanent workers. When temporary workers agitated for a similar revision, unlike in early 2012, the permanent workers did not back them. If breaking the unity between permanent and temporary workers was the mission, it had been accomplished.

Maruti, for its part, has presented its system of “company temps” as a superior alternative. When contacted by The Hindu, a management source said that “the new system is superior to the contract system since it is a direct recruitment by the company. No contractor is involved, and company temps enjoy all benefits like canteen food, uniform, PF, ESI bonus, etc.”

Not surprisingly, there has been a persistent corporate chorus demanding a labour regime that allows companies to freely hire temporary workers even for core operations. And the Modi government is eager to deliver.

The labour reforms on the anvil essentially boil down to two things: make it impossible to form a truly independent trade union; make it legal to keep temporary workers permanently temporary, while paying them a subsistence wage.

With the central trade unions seemingly uninterested in putting up a fight on core labour issues, independent trade unions nipped in the bud, and contract labour effectively legal, the only potential challenge that labour now poses to capital is mobilisation based on unity between permanent and contract workers. This was the weapon Maruti workers had assembled at the Manesar factory in 2012. It’s the reason why they needed to be made an example of, so that India’s working classes won’t dare to attempt such experiments in the future.

sampath.g@thehindu.co.in

The abuse of migrant workers

South Asia Bulletin

 

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-on-abuse-on-indian-workers-in-west-asia-do-right-by-indias-real-nris/article8029383.ece

Do right by India’s real NRIs

Every detail of the latest story of abuse of Indian workers in West Asia is both horrifying and painfully emblematic of the condition of Indian migrants to these countries. Three men from Kerala paid an agent to get them employment in Yemen, but they were taken to Saudi Arabia instead. They were trained electricians but were made to work in a brick factory. They were beaten by their employer with a wooden plank for refusing to do the work, the torture captured on camera and sent home to their families. Theirs is far from the first such story of entrapment, deceit and abuse. In October, a woman worker from Tamil Nadu said that her Saudi employer had tried to chop off her hand when she tried to escape. In September, a video emerged online which seemed to show the abuse of an Indian construction worker by his Saudi supervisor. Journalists investigating the construction of the 2022 FIFA World Cup infrastructure in Qatar found Indian workers were among those living in cramped accommodation for low wages and long hours under often exploitative contracts. Earlier this month External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told Parliament that there were over 7,400 complaints of exploitation made by Indian workers in Gulf countries in 2015 alone.

There are over 6 million Indian workers in West Asia, forming a quarter of the region’s total expatriate workforce, including 2.8 million in the UAE, 1.8 million in Saudi Arabia, and over half a million each in Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. (Money repatriated to India from the Gulf countries was $32.7 billion in 2014, compared to $10 billion from the U.S.) The International Labour Organisation estimates that many of the 600,000 workers in the region who are victims of forced labour are Indian citizens. In fact, the chain of exploitation begins at the recruitment and migration stage in India, as was the case with the men from Kerala in Saudi Arabia — a police officer in fact put them in touch with the agent. The Ministry of External Affairs is aware of the problem; and Ms. Swaraj has been quick to respond to outrage over such incidents, offering help and support. However, there has not yet been a lasting fix to the problem; recruitment remains largely unregulated, India’s push for higher wages remains unfulfilled, and protections for Indian workers once they discover the nature of their employment are often difficult to come by. Many of these workers are leaving behind impoverished lives, and might not always be in a position to assert their rights in the hope of a better life for their families. These are India’s real NRIs — in numbers and in terms of remittances and investment in their home countries. India must do better by them.