SACH - isd.net.in · SACH SOUTH ASIAN COMPOSITE HERITAGE MAY—JULY 2011 VOLUME—1 ISSUE—23 In the previous issue of SACH we presented poems from Afghanistan. The poems reflected

SACHSOUTH ASIAN COMPOSITE HERITAGE

MAY—JULY 2011 � VOLUME—1 � ISSUE—23

In the previous issue of SACH we presented poems from Afghanistan.The poems reflected the agony and pain of the land and its peopleare faced with. In this issue we have Habib Jalib, who transcendsthe boundaries of nations and talks about the pains and agony of allpeople across the region. Though he belonged to Pakistan and countryof his birth was fighting fierce battle to keep its territorial boundariesintact in the face of uprising in the then East Pakistan in 1971, theoppression and agony of the people in ‘East Pakistan’ was equallypainful to the peoples’ poet that Habib Jalib was. This can be seen inthe first poem. The second poem again shows how Habib Jalibalways related to people instead of those sitting in Corridors ofpower. ‘God is ours’, is a symbol of people’s power and power forpeople.

Jalib is truly a symbol of compositeness in South Asian region.

Editorial BoardP. Lalitha Kumari

Asmita Resource Centre for WomenSecunderabad, India

Pervaiz MohabbatCathe FoundationLahore, Pakistan

Sharifa SidiqquiIndia

Shruti ChaturvediInstitute for Social Democracy

Delhi, India

Dr. Richard DevadossCornerstone

Chennai, India

Zakir HossainNagorik Udyog

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Nobo Kishore UrickhimbamCentre for Social Development

Manipur, India

Coordination byInstitute for Social Democracy

New Delhi, India

[email protected]

WEBSITEwww.sach.org.in

[I] The Garden Is a Bloody MessThis poem is about the oppression in East Pakistan in 1971

Our eyes yearn for greeneryThe garden is a bloody messFor whom should I sing my songs of loveThe cities are all a wildernessThe garden is a bloody mess

The rays of the sun, they stingMoonbeams are a killing field, no lessDeep shadows of death hover at every stepLife wears a skull and bone dressAll around the air is on prowlWith bows and arrows, in full harnessThe garden is a bloody mess

The battered buds are like a sieveThe leaves drenched in blood smearsWho knows, for how longWe’ll have this rain of tearsPeople how long do we have to bearThese days and nights of sorrow and distressThis oppressor’s blood bath is a frolicsome playFor the mighty of the world, a mark of their prowessThe garden is a bloody mess

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[I] Bagiya Lahoo LuhanHaryali ko aankhen tarsen bagiya lahoo luhanPyar ke geet sunaoon kis ko shehar hue weeranBagiya lahoo luhan

Dasti hain suraj ki kirnen chand jalaye jaanPag pag maut ke gehre saye jeewan maut samanCharon ore hawa phirti hai le kar teer KamanBagiya lahoo luhan

Chhalni hain kaliyon ke seeney khoon mein lat paatAur nahjaney kab tak hogi ashkon ki barsaatDunya walon kab beeteinge dukh ke yeh din raatKhoon se holi khel rahe hain dharti ke balwanBagiya lahoo luhan

[II] God is OursAddressed to religious hucksters of anydenomination and the system theydefend – translator’s note

God is not yours, to Him we have accessHe does not look kindly on those who oppress

How long, you men of pelf, will you bleed us whiteGet off our backs, you who in filthy lucre take delightYou satans it is dust that you will soon biteWe believe that He treats mankind with lovingtendernessHe does not look kindly on those who oppress

Light of new wisdom we are going to seeA fire flares up, seeing our agonyIn this new magical dawn will burst forth theblossoming treeHe brings hopes to those who are mired in distressGod is not yours, to Him we have accessHe does not look kindly on those who oppress

We’ll break the shadowy spell of fear and dreadOnwards we will march, chains of despair we willshredWe’ll not betray the hopes of the people, our dearkindredAnd long we will remember this time of duressHe does not look kindly on those who oppress

[II] Khuda Hamara HaiKhuda tumhara nahi hai khuda hamara haiUse zamin pe yeh zulm kab gawara hai

Lahoo piyoge kahan tak hamara dhanwanoBadhao apni dukan seem-o-zar ke deewanoNishan kahin na rahega tumhara shaitanoHamein yaqeen hai ke insaan usko pyara haiKhuda tumhara nahin hai khuda hamara haiUse zameen pe yeh zulm kab gawara hai

Nai shaoor ki hai roshni nigahon meinEk aag si bhi hai ab apni sard aahon meinKhilenge phool nazar ke sahar ki bahon meinDukhe dilon ko isi aas ka sahara haiKhuda tumhara nahin hai khuda hamara haiUse zameen pe yeh zulm kab gawara hai

Tilism-e-sayah-e-khauf-o-hiras todengeQadam bandhayenge zanjeere-e-yaas todengeKabhi kisi ke na ham dil ki aas todengeRahega yaad jo ehd-e-sitam guzara haiUse zamin pe yeh zulm kab gawara hai

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Sir, one is placed somewhat in a difficultposition when one has got to deal with a speakerlike the last one. It was his maiden speech, and itis the tradition of this house, that when a Membermakes his maiden speech, he is in a privilegedposition and is not to be attacked. Whateverreasons or grounds, therefore, he may have givenme for criticizing him. I will not wish to departfrom that tradition which, I think, ought to bemaintained in the House, but I would say this,that in his concluding portion he remarked thatthe Hon’ble Members may have admiration andsympathy for the accused in the Lahore case. Ithink I am speaking on behalf of a very largebody of people when I say that, if there issympathy and admiration for the accused, it isonly to this extent, that they are the victim of thesystem of government. It is not that we approveor applaud their actions if they are guilty, whichstill remains to be proved. If they are guilty of theoffences of which they are charged, then I amsure it is not that we admire them or approve oftheir actions, but, on the contrary. I am sure alarge body of thinking people feel that these youngmen, whatever be the provocations, are misguidedin resorting to actions for which they now standcharged.

Now, sir, the Hon’ble Home Member askedthe House that we must approach this questionwithout prejudice, and impartially. Sir, I am surethe Hon’ble Home Member himself tried his bestto follow the same principle, but has he been ableto apply the same principle when he brings thisbefore the House? Do the facts justify that? Thelast speaker, whom I am not going to attack,almost gave away the case in his concludingremarks when he said that the only way to breakthe hunger-strike is to pass this Bill.

Well, I am not concerned at present so muchwith the account that was given by the Hon’bleMember with regard to the treatment in jails ofvarious classes of prisoners, but one thing is clear,and it is this. From the statement that was issuedby Bhagat Singh and Dutt, what is an admittedfact now, even from the speech of the Hon’bleMember who spoke last, is that they were not

Jinnah’s Speech in the Central Legislative Assemblyon September 12 and 14, 1929

given the treatment-not on racial grounds-butaccording to the standard and the scale which islaid down for Europeans in the matter of dietand bare necessities of life. It is not a mere questionthat they want to be treated as Europeans. As amatter of fact, according to the admission andthe definition given by the Hon’ble Member whospoke last on behalf of the Treasury Benches, sofar as I know, Bhagat Singh and Dutt were topees,and their figures appeared in shorts. Therefore,they ought to have been treated as Europeans.The Hon’ble Member in reply to a question saidthat whether the man is a European or an Indian-and he accepted the definition of my honourablefriend Mr. Neogy-if one wears a topee, then oneis a European for the purpose of jail rules. Thenwhy should you not treat Bhagat Singh and Dutt.Who wear topees and European clothes, as suchfor the purpose of treatment in jails? Why do notthe Punjab Government give them the treatmentthat they are entitled to, at once, and be donewith? They wear topees and they are entitled tothat treatment.

What do they say in their statement whichwas read out? This is what they say:

“We, Bhagat Singh and Dutt, weresentenced to life transportation in theAssembly bomb case, Delhi on 19th

May, 1929. As long as we were under-trial prisoners in Delhi jail we wereaccorded very good treatment and wewere given good diet. But since ourtransfer from the Delhi Jail to MianwaliJail and Lahore Central Jail,-Which is represented by the Hon’ble

Member, who spoke last-the Punjab seems to be aterrible place…

Mian Muhammad Shah Nawaz (WestCentral Punjab): Don’t go there.

M.A. Jinnah: I won’t. To continue whatthey say:

“We are being treated as ordinary criminals”.So, in Delhi they received very good

treatment and in the Punjab they are treated asordinary criminals. Surely, Sir, if the Governmentof the Punjab was not wanting in statesmanship.


If the government of the Punjab had any brains,they would have found a solution to this questionvery easily and long ago. But, Sir, it is a question-the more I examine it and the more I analyse it, Ifind-it is a question of declaration of war. As faras the Punjab Government are concerned, theGovernment do not merely wish to bring thesemen to trial and get them convicted by a judicialtribunal, but Government go to war against thesemen. They seem to me in this frame of mind: “Wewill pursue every possible course, every possiblemethod, but we will see that you are sent eitherto the gallows or transported for life, and in themeantime we will not treat you as decent men.”

Sir, the whole spirit behind this is that andnothing else. I do not for a moment wish to saythat the Government are not bound-in fact, it istheir bounden duty-to prosecute those people thatcommit offences. I do not wish to say that theGovernment should not do every thing in theirpower to see that their convictions are secured.But may I ask, with whom are you at war? Whatare the resources of these few young men who,according to you, have committed certainoffences? You want to prosecute them, and afterdue trial, you want to secure their convictions.But before they are convicted, surely this is not amatter on which there should be this strugglethat you should not at once yield to their demandsfor bare necessities of life. After all, so far as theLahore case prisoners are concerned, surely theyare political prisoners and under trial. You askme, what is a political prisoner? It is very difficultto lay down any particular definition. But if youuse your common sense, if you use yourintelligence, surely you can come to the conclusionwith regard to the particular case and say, hereare these men who are political prisoners, andwe do not wish to give them proper treatment.We want to give them treatment as under-trialprisoners. If you had said that, the question wouldhave been solved long ago. Do you wish toprosecute them or persecute them?

Sir, I do not wish to base my opposition tothis Bill on this issue of bad treatment, becausethis is only one aspect of the issue, or rather oneaspect of the Bill before us. This Bill has got to belooked at, as far as I can see, from three points ofview. The first, from the point of view of criminaljurisprudence; second, political point of view orthe policy of the Bill; and third, treatment to theaccused when they are under trial. I think it willbe admitted. I think even the Hon’ble Home

Member conceded, that by the Bill which he hasbrought before the House, he is introducing aprinciple, in the criminal jurisprudence, of a veryunprecedented character. I do not think, Sir, thereis any system of jurisprudence in any civilizedcountry where you will find such a principle inexistence as is involved in this Bill. Some of theHon’ble Members who are not lawyers might nothave appreciated fully the implications of thisBill. This Bill not only dispenses with the presenceof the accused at the trial, but I will give you apicture as to what will happen under this Bill.Under this Bill the Government will apply to theMagistrate before whom the inquiry is going onand say : “Here is a law which we have securedfrom the Legislature. Now the accused havevoluntarily made themselves incapable ofattending the Courts and, therefore, you have todispense with their presence” the inquiry willthen proceed ex parte before the Magistrate.Evidence will be led, oral and documentary, whichwill go without being tested by cross-examination.The documentary evidence will go without beingeven seen by the accused, against whom it isproduced, and how will you identify the accusedin their absence? Then we know, and particularlythose who are lawyers would know, that whenthe Magistrate has concluded the recording ofthe evidence for the prosecution, under Section209 of the Criminal Procedure Code, he must askthe accused whether he has any explanation tooffer with regard to the evidence which isrecorded by him against the accused. It is afterthat statement is made that the Magistrate hasgot the power either to commit or discharge theaccused. That statement of the accused underSection 209 is absolutely obligatory. It is not thechoice of the Magistrate. The Privy Council haslaid down that an omission in that regard wouldvitiate the whole trial. Under this Bill the accusedwill not be there to give any explanation to theMagistrate with regard to the evidence that hasbeen already recorded ex parte.

Then, Sir, we come to important Sections.Under Section 287 that statement again will haveto be made before the Sessions Court. There also,the accused will not be present. The evidencebefore the Sessions Court will be recorded exparte and if it is a jury, the jury will be asked toreturn their verdict. If it is a case of assessors,they will be asked to express their opinion, andthe Judge will pass his judgement or sentence, asthe case may be. I ask the Hon’ble Home Member,


and I ask the Hon’ble Law Member of theGovernment of India whether that will be a trialor a farce?

Sir Brojendra Mitter (Law Member) : Not afarce. The accused can always go before the Courtif she chooses to.

Gaya Prasad Singh : But what about theevidence that has already been recorded in hisabsence?

M.A. Jinnah: I am very glad that theHon’ble Law Member has given me a reply. Thenyou want by this Bill really to break the hunger-strikes. You want this House to give you a Statuelaying down a principle generally in the criminaljurisprudence for this particular case, so that youmay use it for breaking the hunger-strike in theLahore case. Remember, you have no other casethat you can cite. One swallow does not make asummer. It is the Lahore case. Well, you knowperfectly well that these men are determined todie. It is not a joke. I ask the Hon’ble Law Memberto realize that it is not everybody who can go onstarving himself to death. Try it for a little whileand you will see. Sir, have you heard anywherein the world, except the American case, whichmay honourable friend Mr. Jamnadas Mehtapointed out, of an accused person going onhunger-strike? The man who goes on hunger-strike has a soul. He is moved by the soul and hebelieves in the justice of his cause; he is not anordinary criminal who is guilty of cold-blooded,sordid, wicked crime.

Mind you, Sir, I do not approve of the actionof Bhagat Singh, and I say this on the floor of thisHouse. I regret that, rightly or wrongly, youthtoday in India is stirred up, and you cannot,when you have three hundred and odd millionsof people, you cannot prevent such crimes beingcommitted, however much you may deplore themand however much you may say that they aremiss-guided, it is the system, this damnable systemof Government, which is resented by the people.You may be a cold-blooded logician: I am a patientcool-headed man and can calmly go on makingspeeches here, persuading and influencing theTreasury Bench. But, remember, there arethousands of young men outside. This is not theonly country where these actions are resorted to.

It has happened in other countries, notyouths, but greybearded men have committedserious offences, moved by patriotic impulses.What happened to Mr. Congrave, the PrimeMinister of Ireland? He was under sentence of

death a fortnight before he got an invitation fromHis Majesty’s Government to go and settle terms?Was he a youth? Was he a young man? Whatabout Collins? So what is the good of your puttingforward this argument? You have got a situationwhich you have got to meet, not by introducingand enacting measures which go to the root ofthe fundamental principles of criminaljurisprudence, and lightly, saying, “oh! But it iscommon sense!” Law is common sense; it is notcommon sense of one individual

Mr. President : I hope the Hon’ble Member isnot inconvenienced when I ask him to resume hisspeech at the next meeting.

Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya : Sir, cannotwe go on for another 15 minutes?

Mr. President : What is the idea of going onfor another 15 minutes? I can understand theHouse asking me to sit till 6 o’clock, but there isnot idea in sitting for another 15 minutes only.

The House was then adjourned. Mr. Jinhanconcluded his speech at the next sitting, after theadjournment motion has been admitted fordiscussion.

Sir, when the House last adjourned I wasdealing with this Bill from the point of view ofcriminal jurisprudence-and I brought to the noticeof the house what would be the position if thisBill was passed, so far as the trial and proceedingsof this particular case, or any other case under it,were concerned. It is quite clear, as I said, that thetrial will be a travesty of justice. Let us considerthe point further. The trial would proceed in theabsence of the accused. I ask the Home Member,is there a Judge or jury who would feel that theywere administering law or justice in that case?The moment this Bill is passed, the prosecutioncan go before the Court and say: “Here is avoluntary act of the accused persons; he has orthey have incapacitated himself or themselves,and we ask you now to proceed ex parte”,Remember, Sir, that in a particular case thatprocedure may be adopted from the very start.Even the plea of the accused may not be recorded,guilty or not guilty. Then the Judge will be askedto proceed to empanel a jury and the jury will beempanelled: You will have a Judge on the Benchand the jury by his side. What will they do? Theyhear the ex parte evidence, oral and documentary.I ask the Home Member, I ask this House, whatwould you consider of that Judge, what wouldyou think of that Judge or jury, sitting theresolemnly, seriously, proceeding with a charge of


murder, going through this farce as His Majesty’sCourt-what conclusion do you think any jurycan come to under those circumstances? Thatprisoner stands already condemned. What is thegood of this farce? I say that no Judge who hasgot an iota of a judicial mind or a sense of justicecan ever be a party to a trial of that character andpass sentence of death without a shudder and apang of conscience. This is the farce which youpropose to enact under this procedure! I say this,that if ever there was a conscientious Judge andhe was strong enough, if he had a judicial mind,and if he had any independence, let me tell you,that, in spite of this provision of yours, he wouldsay. “True, the law has to be administered; I amobliged to make the order that the trial shallproceed ex parte. But I realize and I feel that itwill be a travesty of justice and I cannot be aparty to it; and I shall, therefore, adjourn thiscase until further orders”. Have you consideredthat? I suppose you have not. It seems to me, Sir,that the great and fundamental doctrine of Britishjurisprudence, which is incorporated and codifiedin the Penal Code and the Criminal ProcedureCode, has very wisely not made such an absurdprovision in the criminal law of this country andI am not satisfied that there is a lacuna in oursystem of criminal law.

The Home Member said that it is a well-known doctrine and a fundamental doctrine ofcriminal jurisprudence that the man is taken tobe innocent until he is proved to be guilty. May Iremind him of another doctrine which goes tothe very root of the criminal jurisprudence, or forthe matter of that of even civil law, that no man isto be condemned until he is given a hearing? Sir, Ithink there cannot be the slightest doubt that weare now engaged in considering a cardinalprinciple, a principle of very vital and paramountcharacter, to be introduced into the criminaljurisprudence of this country. It must be admittedthat this is a most revolutionary, unheard of,unprecedented change that is proposed in ourcriminal jurisprudence. I know the Home Memberwill tell me, “Yes, the doctrine is that no manshall be condemned unless he is heard and untilhe is given a hearing; but here it is the voluntaryact of the accused, and if he chooses not to gothere and insist upon his being heard, it is hisfault, “Sir, this is not a new question; it has beenconsidered in England and there is a long historyabout it and behind it and you find that in olddays there was the strictest formality observed as

to the recording of the plea of the prisoner. And ifthe prisoner was mute of malice, that is to say, ifhe refused deliberately to open his mouth whenhe was arraigned in a Court of law and when thequestion was put to him as to whether he pleadedguilty or not-he had to make his plea, and thereare cases where he refused to speak, and the oldlaw was-even England has advanced-in that casehe was condemned and executed or must becommitted to imprisonment…

E.I.Price (Bombay: European): Torture.M.A. Jinnah : I am glad that you are up to

date. I know that. I am only dealing with this onepoint, that he used to be executed or committedto prison. Further, when it was thought that itwas rather a serious things that, because a manwas mute of malice, he should be condemned todeath or imprisonment-then comes the point ofmy learned friend over there, who I understandis a member of the Bar-that they resorted totorture. Torture for what? That he should makehis plea, not that an ex parte trial should proceed.That is what you want to do here by this Bill, thatex parte trial should proceed. The old law wasthen altered, because the result of the torture wasthat some of them died and the form of torturewas the most cruel form of torture, and I willread to you a passage from Stephen’s History ofCriminal Law:

“If he was accused of felony, he wascondemned, after much exhortation to the peineforte et dure, that is to be stretched, naked on hisback, and to have “iron laid upon him as muchas he could bear and more”. And so to continue,fed upon bad bread and stagnant water onalternate days, till he either pleaded or died.”

But they did not proceed ex parte. Then theold form of trial was trial by ordeal. That wasdone away with because the plea that a prisonerhad to put forward was in a particular form.When he was asked he had to say that he wantedto be tried “By God and by my country”. Thatwas the trial by ordeal. That was done awaywith and in 1827 by a Statue it was enacted thatin such cases a plea of not guilty should be entered.Now, Sir, before that Statute was passed there isone case which I will bring to the notice of thisHouse and which will illustrate how muchimportance was attached to the form and theprocedure even in olden days. Of course, myhonourable friend Sir Darcy Lindsay will saythat matters of this kind can be decided by thecommon sense of a single individual such as


himself. Sir, I must remind him-for he is a man ofpeace, and especially when we get old we lovepeace, and common sense is sometimes regulatedby that state of mind-I will remind him, and Ithink the House will agree with me, that law isnothing but the essence of common sense, thatlaw is the concentrated essence of experience, ofknowledge, of practice of centuries andgenerations, and even Sir James Stephen will pointout to you that, when these rules, when theseforms have been laid down as the essence ofcommon sense and experience of generations,they are not lightly to be departed from.

What do we find in this House now? Havewe not got forms and are we not slavishlyfollowing them? Some of them would appear tothe strangers in the gallery or any outsider to bemost absurd and against common sense, at firstsight. If any one passes across between you andthe speaker he will be guilty of a gross breach ofthe forms of this House and you would call himto order at once. Why is that? Without meaning?Without reason? Without experience? Whatcommon sense is there? Why should the man notpass across? It is, therefore, no use treating thesematters lightly and saying that we have got todecide everything by the common sense of anindividual. The instance that I was going to referto is this. In one case;

Mr. Pike produces some evidence to showthat in the early part of Edward its reign, peoplewho refused to put themselves on their trial wereexecuted…

Better, people who refuse to put themselvesto trial, execute them, rather than go through thefarce of an ex parte trial; much better.

“…but this practice was opposed to thestatute which provided that “notorious felons”and which openly be of evil name and will notput themselves in inquests of felonies that menshall charge them with before the justices at theKing’s suit, shall have strong and hardimprisonment, as they which refuse to stand tothe common law of the land.”

Then he cites a case which I think willinterest the House. He says this:

“But this is not to be understood of suchprisoners as be taken of light suspicion.”According to Barrington this meant that theprisoner who refused to plead was to be starvedtill he died, but not tortured-(so they improvedlater on)-and he quotes in proof of it a pardongranted in the reign of Edward III to a woman

who pro eo quod se lenuir mutum was put in aretaprisona and there lived without eating or drinkingfor forty days. Which was regarded as a miracle.”

Well sir, I know that there is a passagewhich is likely to be quoted in this House inStephen’s Digest of Criminal Procedure. It is acurious thing that the Government of India, whohave hardly given this House even seven days:notice and call upon this House to endorse avital, cardinal principle of a novel or unheard ofcharacter, do not possess in their library even anedition of the Law of Criminal Procedure by Stephenof a later date than 1883. And they seriously askthis House. “The Government case is that theyfind that a deadlock is created. The law isparalysed, and in fact, even the Government ofIndia might tumble down altogether, and we,therefore, call upon the Legislature to come toour rescue-we admit it is unprecedented, we admitit is unheard of, we admit it is unknown to anysystem of jurisprudence; but you as a responsiblebody-would you not endorse this Bill straightawaywithin these few days’ notice?” You do not possessin your library an edition of a textbook which isthe standard book except of the year 1883! And itis a tail order to ask the House to pass the Billnow and here. I will read the passage now, whichis likely to be quoted, and I want the House not tobe misled by it. But before I do so, I will requestthe Law Member, to consider what I am going tosubmit. That is a branch of the law which comesunder the category of contempt of Court, and weknow that the King’s Bench in England andSuperior Courts in India, who have inherited thejurisdiction under the Charter, have got unfetteredpower to deal with cases of contempt. That is theone branch of the law which is neither codifiednor restricted by any law. It is entirely left to theSupreme Court or the High Courts in India todeal with cases of contempt as they think proper.That is a branch which comes under that doctrineof law of contempt of Court and even there,while the Courts have asserted that they have thepower to refuse to hear the party who is guilty ofcontempt of Court, the footnote says that it hasnever been done in a criminal case. I will read toyou what it says:

“The Prisoner has a right to be present atthe trial so long as he conducts himself properly,but the Court may, in its discretion, permit hisabsence in cases of misdemeanour, and mayproceed with the trial in his absence in cases inwhich he has pleaded to an indictment or


information in the High Court (Queen’s BenchDivision).

“If a Prisoner so misconducts himself as tomake it impossible to try him with decency, theCourt, it seems, may order him to be removedand proceed in his absence.”

The footnote says this :“I have never known or heard of this being

done, but Lord Cranworth (then Rolfe, B.)threatened to have Rush removed from Court, athis trial for murder at Norwich in 1849, if hepersisted in a singularly indecent and outrageouscourse of cross-examination. I have heard fromeye-witness an account of a trial before Shee, J.(then acting as Commissioner) at Dorchester,where the prisoner (a convict at Portland, triedfor the murder of a warder) behaved with suchdesperate violence that it was necessary to fastenhim down with chains and straps. He was not,however, removed from the Court, and it isobvious that in capital cases, or indeed in anytrial involving severe punishment, almost anymeasures, short of removing the prisoner, shouldbe resorted to.”

The raison d’etre of this principle is verydifferent and requires no more words tounderstand it. Now, Sir, I shall not weary theHouse with any further legal quotations. I amdriven to think the object of Government inbringing in this Bill is political, but if their realobject is to supply a lacuna, not for the purposeof this particular case, but in the general interestof the country and the administration of justice,if that is their object, let them remove this casefrom their mind, for Heaven’s sake. Come to usdispassionately and without prejudice. Let themtell us that they find a lacuna, and that it isnecessary to make some provision. If that is theirobject, then their honest and straightforwardcoursers to come before the House and place allthe facts before us. Now, I do not admit for amoment that there is a lacuna, and I do not admitthat such a principle should be introduced in thecriminal jurisprudence of our country, especiallyand admittedly when it does not exist anywhereelse. I am prepared to assume that you honestlyand sincerely believe that it is necessary, in theinterest of the people and the administration ofjustice, that some such measure of the kind shouldbe introduced. Then your honest course is to goslowly. Pause and consider. Let those outside thisHouse who are competent to speak, express theiropinion. What are you going to lose? What is theharm that will be done? Remove from your mind

this Lahore conspiracy case. But if you say thatthis course will cause you inconvenience andthat you want this instrument now and at once,then I say that I am not satisfied with your pleaand I can’t support it, nor am I satisfied with theversion that you have placed before the Houseabout your difficulties. I am not going to give youthis power standing on the floor of this House,today, now and here.

Sir, can you imagine a more horrible formof torture than hunger-strike? If, Rightly orwrongly, these men are inflicting this punishmentupon themselves and thereby you areinconvenienced, is that any reason why youshould ask us to abandon one of the cardinalprinciples of criminal jurisprudence? If theseyoung men pursue this course, and I am sorry tohear that one of them has died, what will happen?Is this a matter which can continue indefinitely?Certainly not. As I say, I am not satisfied with theversion that you have placed before this House. Iunderstand that some of the prisoners are not onstrike. If you are solicitous and anxious that theirtrial should proceed and should not be delayed,then split up the trial. Proceed against them andbring home the guilt to them if you can. I am toldthat it means expense. I am told that 400witnesses are going to be produced and 200 moremay be added. Now, I appeal to the commonsense of the House and not only of Sir DarcyLindsay. Can you imagine that 600 witnesses arenecessary to prove the case against each one ofthe accused? And, Sir, I ask, is it not an amazingfact that, in order to prove this case 600 personsshould have been cited as witnesses? Well, Sir, itmay seem a joke and it may seem that I ammaking fun of the statement made to this effect,but the first impression that one gets is that,when a case cannot be proved without thetestimony of 600 witnesses, that case is a verybad case. Therefore, I say that it is open toGovernment to split up the case. You think ofexpense? But are we here to abandon this cardinalprinciple because it is going to cost some moneyto Government? Is that the reason? Is that a pleawhich can be accepted by any responsibleLegislature?

Well, Sir, I was told that some of them go ona hunger-strike for a short time and then they getbetter for a little while and again they start, andso it goes on. Sir, I cannot understand the anxietyof the Government to proceed with this trial whenthese men are inflicting the greatest possiblepunishment upon themselves by prolonged


fasting? Is it your fault? Does it mean that youare not treating them properly and therefore youare compelling them to resort to these extrememethods? Well, then I appeal to you with all theemphasis I can command, do not be vindictive.Show that you are fair, generous, that you arewilling to treat these men decently. At any rate,before they are released or sentenced, give themproper treatment. What treatment do they want?What is it that bothers them? Do they want springmattresses? Do they want dressing tables? Dothey want a set of toilet requisites? No, Sir, theyask for nothing but bare necessities and a littlebetter treatment. I ask you in all decency, whycannot you concede this small thing? Well, Sir, ifthis Bill is passed, perhaps I might ask the Hon’bleMember when he goes to Court how would hebase his application? Will he base his applicationon the point that the period of a hunger-strikewhich has already taken place for a short periodis not to be counted? Or is it to be counted?Supposing I tried to put myself in the position ofa Judge when the application is made that thepresence of the accused in this case should bedispensed with, because by their own voluntaryact they have rendered themselves incapable. Now,from what period shall I take the disability? Fromthe period after this statue is passed? Shall Idisregard the disability which has already takenplace before the passing of the Act? Supposingsomething else happens to these men on hunger-strike and they do not get well for two or threemonths. Will the trial not be delayed? Do youthink you can avoid considerable delay even ifthe Bill is passed? Further, can you give a guaranteethat all the prisoners will be well enough in thecourse of these two or three months from now tostand their trial. Even if they abandon hunger-strike? When you say that this Bill will not haveretrospective effect, how is it going to work? Thenwill you give them notice that in view of the factthat this measure is passed, if you do not ceaseyour hunger-strike from today and if you are notbetter within two or three months, as you oughtto be, then we shall apply to the Court that yourpresence will be dispensed with and we shallproceed ex parte? Does it not come to this, thatyou want to carry this Bill, you want to have thisBill placed on the Statue-book, and then youwant to give notice to the prisoners that, unlessthey cease their hunger-strike within a certainperiod, you are going to proceed ex parte? Underthat threat you think these prisoners will ceasetheir hunger-strike? Can you give the House that

assurance, and if they do not cease their hunger-strike, what will you do? You will proceed exparte? Just imagine the absurdity of the wholeposition.

Sir, now I have finished from the point ofview of the jurisprudence. I do not wish to gointo details so far as their treatment is concerned.I have, in the course of my speech, alreadyindicated their grievances and how they can bemet. But there is a political aspect of this Bill andthe policy underlying this measure. I think theHon’ble the Home Member must admit that thisis not a measure which is only brought here forthe purpose of putting the law in order. Sir, itreminds me of a story, an Old Persian story. Aman got stomach-ache because he had eaten somevery rotten bread. So he went to the doctor andtold him that he had stomach-ache. The doctorsaid, yes, and he promptly started treating hiseyes. Then he said, “what have my eyes got to dowith my complaint?” then the doctor said. “Well,if you had eyes, you would never have gotstomach-ache because you would not have eatenrotten bread”

Similarly I would say to the Hon’ble theHome Member, “Have you got eyes? Well, if youhad, you would never gave got this stomach-ache”. Now, will you open your eyes? Will youhave a little more imagination? Have you got anystatesmanship left? Have you got any politicalwisdom? This is not the way you are going tosolve the root cause of the trouble. You maytemporarily, provisionally, get over this particulartrial. But now let us see what is the real cause ofthe trouble.

I ask this House to consider this. Is theretoday in any part of the globe a civilizedgovernment that is engaged, day in and day out,week in and week out, month in and month out,in prosecuting their people? You have read thedaily papers for the last six, eight months. Youwill find prosecutions in Bengal, prosecutions inMadras, prosecutions in the Punjab, prosecutionsall over the country. In fact I am afraid you willsoon have to open a new department and to havean additional Member to manage theseprosecutions if you go on at this rate and in thisway. Do you think that any man wants to go tojail? Is it an easy thing? Do you think any manwants to exceed the bounds of law for the purposeof making a speech which your law characterizesas a seditious speech, knowing full well theconsequences, that he may have to go to jail forsix months or a year? Do you not realize yourself,


if you open your eyes, that there is resentment,universal resentment, against your policy, againstyour programme?

Then, Sir, what has happened so far as thisHouse is concerned? What have you done since1924 with regard to the protests that we havemade session after session? Have you acceptedthe proposal or suggestion of any reasonablesection of this House? I do not wish to go into thedetails, Sir, but what has been the attitude of theGovernment towards this House and the countryoutside over the constitutional reforms since 1924,leave alone the past prior history? The reply is“We have appointed the Simon Commission andwe must must await its Report.” Well, the SimonCommission was not accepted by this House-butthat does not matter. What is the answer in regardto the indianisation of the Army? You appointeda Committee to go into that very importantquestion: I attach more importance to it than toany other question. What have you done withthe unanimous Report of the Skeen Committeewhich was endorsed by this House, without adivision, the responsible House as you call it todayand to which you appeal today in the name of“responsibility”? This House endorsed that Reportwithout a division. What have you done with it?The attitude of Government has been an amazingone. The Army Secretary stood there on the floorof this House last session and said: “We cannotget even 20 suitable candidates”. Sir, the apparentuntruth of that statement is enough to condemnthe Government. You cannot get 20 young menout of 300 odd millions of people, who are suitablecandidates for the King’s Commission?

Then, there are many other matters. Whathas been your attitude always? Don’t you thinkthat instead of trying to proceed with an ironhand and pursuing a policy of repression againstyour own subjects, it would be better if yourealized the root causes of the resentment and ofthe struggle that the people are carrying on?Don’t you think that it is high time that you madeyour position more clear? I understand that thereis something in the atmosphere-I hope it is true-that some satisfactory announcement is going tobe made in Parliament very soon, when it meetsnext, which I trust will satisfy this House and thepeople. Do you want to prepare an atmospherefor it, or you do not? Do you want reconciliationbetween the Government and the people or youdo not? Don’t you think that these officials andtroubles of yours are of a temporary character?

They are an obstruction in the trial of thisparticular case which can be managed by othermethods, but that is a very small matter whenyou compare it with the bigger issues which areawaiting the decision of the Government, thisHouse and the country.

Sir, the Hon’ble Member asked, what arethe Government to do? I think I understood theHon’ble Member aright when he said that theGovernment have no other course. What are theGovernment to do? They are, therefore, compelledto bring this Bill. Now, let me tell you that yourcourse is to open your eyes, have moreimagination, do not be guilty of bankruptcy ofstatesmanship, do not merely sit there as if thewheels of the Secretariat must not be clogged atany cost, but try and understand the root causeand deal with the situation as politicians, asstatesmen and not as bureaucrats, who can seeno other way but to come forward before thisHouse and ask for more statutory powers themoment any difficulty arises. You have got severalcourses open to you. The first and the foremostcourse open to you is this. Give these men decenttreatment, and I think you will get over yourdifficulty. At least I hope so. If you do not, youwill, at any rate, be exonerated in the eyes of thepublic and at the Bar of public opinion. Behave asa humane and decent Government, and that isenough for you. I am not going to urge upon theGovernment to withdraw prosecution casesagainst men if they have evidence enough tobring home to them their guilt. So try that bettertreatment first. Secondly, if you do not succeed ,split up the trials. Try those with whose trial youcan proceed, and leave the rest. After you havemade it clear to them that you stand for a decenttreatment being given to them and they still wishto torture themselves and follow that course, thenyou cannot help it; and I venture to say that itwill not last very long or indefinitely, and the lastwords I wish to address the Government are, tryand concentrate your mind on the root causeand the more you concentrate on the root causethe less difficulties and inconveniences there willbe for you to face, and thank Heaven that themoney of the taxpayer will not be wasted inprosecuting men, may citizens, who are fightingand struggling for the freedom of their country.

Legislative Assembly Debates. Vol. IV, Part I,pp. 752-55 and 757-65.


Tariq Zaman

Ustad Mohammad Omar-Afghanistan’s greatest musician

Pashto language and culture has had along tradition for music, dance and traditionalfolk songs, producing anumber of singers, musicians,and poets. The word Tung inPashto means to create asound while striking atsomething with a force andTakore means to give asoothing effect with a warmpiece of cloth to a body partswollen up owing to acutepain, burnt or hurt due toinfection, or inflammation.According to Afghans nomusical instrument creates a sound like rababand no musical instrument casts such a soothingeffect on the listeners. So the onomatopoeicword straightly comes from the playing of rababonly. The rabab is the best known of all Afghanmusical instruments and holds a special placein the minds and hearts of many Afghans. Itoriginated in the Kabul-Ghazni region and isalso popular outside of Afghanistan in Kashmirand in some regions of Pakistan. Today, it isrevered by Afghans all over the world asAfghanistan’s “national instrument.”

Ustad Mohammad Omar (1905-1980) wasone of the most influential instrumentalists inAfghani music in the 20th century. He broughtthe rabab into the realm of Afghani classicalmusic, which had been heavily influenced byHindustani (Indian) music. Born in Kabul,

Mohammad Omar grew up in a family ofmusicians in the musicians’ quarter known askharabat. In the 1860s, Indian classicalmusicians were brought to Afghanistan to play

at the court in Kabul.The kharabat was an oldsection of the city givento the imported Hindustanimusicians. Thesetransplanted musiciansgained distinguished statusamong Afghan musicians,receiving the title of ustad.The descendants andstudents of these musicianscontinued to foster musicaltraditions from India and

Pakistan. As a result, Indian classical becamethe elite art tradition of Afghanistan.

Ustad Mohammad Omar joined RadioAfghanistan in his early 30’s and began his workas Director of the National Orchestra of RadioAfghanistan. He became known throughout thecountry, and is responsible for the rabab gainingthe unofficial status as Afghanistan’s nationalinstrument. Mohammad Omar shows theincredible emotional depth which can beachieved with this instrument in Afghaniclassical music. While Director of the NationalOrchestra of Radio Afghanistan during the mid-20th century, he composed over a hundredmelodies known as naghma and brought acclaimto the short-necked plucked lute, the rabab. Overthe airwaves, Ustad Mohammad Omarpresented a diverse collection of songs from


Afghanistan’s rich musical heritage. His radioorchestra, with its regional folk instruments,introduced the nation to a variety of folktraditions rooted in the country’s many ethnicand linguistic groups.

In 1974, Ustad Mohammad Omar receiveda Fulbright-Hays Foreign Scholar Fellowship toteach at the University of Washington. AlthoughUstad spoke no English but he became the firstAfghan musician to teach at a major Americanuniversity. On November 18, 1974, UstadMohammad Omar gave a public concert at theUniversity of Washington, displaying hisvirtuosity on the rabab to a Western audiencefor the first time. The concert consisted mainlyof Ustad Mohammad Omar’s specialty—Afghanclassical music. For this concert, he wasaccompanied by Zakir Hussain on the tabla.Zakir Hussain (tabla), son of the legendaryUstad Alla Rakha, has built a reputation as oneof the most formidable tabla players in Indianclassical music. Zakir Hussain began performingas a child prodigy at the age of 8. In constantdemand as an accompanist, he has performedwith most of India’s greatest musicians anddancers. While he has few equals as atraditional tabla player, he has also been aninnovator, bridging the Hindustani and Carnatictraditions by performing with both North andSouth Indian masters and presenting percussionconcerts both as a soloist and with otherdrummers. In addition to his dedication to theIndian classical music tradition, Zakir has beena pioneer in introducing the tabla to wideraudiences in the West through his collaborationswith jazz and rock musicians, and withpercussionists from Latin America, Africa andEurope. As a member of the East/West fusiongroup Shakti, he won critical acclaim for hisvirtuosity.

Zakir Hussain and Ustad Mohammad

Omar met only on the morning of the show andthey did not speak the same language. Thisproved to be no barrier to their music making;Ustad Mohammad Omar and Zakir Hussainspoke with their instruments, weaving agraceful tapestry of sound. The concert was sowell received that recordings of it werebootlegged around the world for yearsthereafter.

The 1974 concert was also memorable toUstad Mohammad Omar, as reported by LarryPorter, a rabab student who later studied withMohammad Omar in Kabul: “His eyes wouldlight up whenever he talked about the concerthe played with Zakir Hussain in Seattle.Apparently, he really enjoyed traveling toAmerica and sharing his music with the peoplethere. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the Seattleconcert was the only time he did that... “

The concert offers a glimpse into generallySouth Asia and especially Afghanistan’s past,endowing the present with a reminder of theregion’s rich musical Composite Heritage andinspiring the future with a virtuosity never tobe forgotten.

In 2002, a year after the Taliban forcesretreated from the Afghan capital, SmithsonianFolkways Recordings released Ustad MohammadOmar: Virtuoso from Afghanistan (SFW40439), acommercial recording of Ustad MohammadOmar and Zakir Hussain’s legendary concert.

Source of Information :

Smithsonian Folkways Website (http://www.folkways.si.edu/

explore_folkways/ustad.aspx)

Moment Records Website (http://www.momentrecords.com/

zakir.html)

[The Author is a Ph.D. Researcher on Indigenous Knowledge

Management in University Malaysia Sarwak.]


MF Hussain : The legacy of painting IndiaCelebrated Indian artist, exiled during his final years by attacks from

Hindu right, leaves a rich legacy at home.

He was one of India's most renowned artistand his paintings fetched millions of dollars atinternational auctions. But he did not have astudio and walked barefoot most of the time.

"Wherever you go, the first thing they see isyour footwear, then they will decide your status,"he told al-Jazeera in an interview last year. "I saidok, you recognise me as I am."

Maqbool Fida Hussain died in self-exile inLondon on June 9 at the age of 95, leaving behindclose to 40,000 paintings, an open debate aboutthe state of India's democracy, and tremendousrespect for Indian art on the international stage.

"On different levels, Hussain made the ideaof a contemporary artist real in India - an artist asa wandering free spirit, but he also made themarket," says Ram Rahman, photographer, art-activist - and a friend of Hussain.

"He always believed that Indian art had notbeen given its due recognition," says DadibaPundole, whose Pundole Art Gallery in Mumbaihas exhibited Hussain's work since the 1960s. "Sohe tried to push the boundaries, not only in hisstyle and subject matter, but also in howexhibitions were presented."

Despite having a remarkable body of workdisplayed in museums and galleries around theworld, friends say Hussain saw himself as a folkpainter. A globe-trotter, Hussain constantly movedaround, painting wherever he felt a spur ofinspiration and often leaving behind a mark ofhis work.

"He worked 18 hour days at times, but hedid it his way," Pundole says.

Hussain constantly drew for newspapersand for his favourite restaurants around Indiawhere he dined. "If an inspiration came to himwhile having a cup of coffee, he would call for acanvas and brush - or even chalk and blackboard,"says Rahman. Numerous small cafes around Indiahave precious sketches and paintings of hishanging on their walls.

"He was an exceptionally modest man,"remembers Dr Oliver Watson, the former directorof Qatar's Museum of Islamic Art. In 2008, themuseum exhibited a series of Hussain's paintings,the beginnings of a relationship with the country

that would end with Hussain dying a Qataricitizen. Watson says the artist personally saw tothe hanging of each piece.

"He took a pen and wrote the captions anddetails of each piece by hand on the wall next toit."HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Born in 1915 in Western Maharashtra,Hussain was raised by his grandfather, who fixedlanterns for a living. His father remarried afterhis mother passed away before Hussain was twoyears old.

As a child, painting was one of Hussain’shobbies, soccer being the main other. He neverhad much interest in formal schooling or acquiringa degree.

"This brush in my hand - if nothinghappens, I will whitewash the wall of the people- but I will never leave this," Hussain recalledtelling his father.

When he was seventeen, Hussain moved toBombay. He slept on pavements while he searchedfor work. His love for the movies landed him ajob as a painter of cinema hoardings. The skillsthat he learned working with large brushes andexpansive canvases would become a trademarkof his art that always sided on grandiosity.

In the 1940s, when Hussain made his firstsplashes as an artist, the art scene in Bombay wasquite small. Dominated by well-educated figuressuch as Francis Newton Souza of the ProgressiveArtists Group, they looked towards EuropeanModernism for inspiration. Hussain, who wasdiscovered by Souza, came onto the scene withan entirely different mentality.

"Hussain came from a humble background,a really working class," says Rahman. "Whatdistinguished him right away was that he broughtthe subject of working class and a theme ofordinary life."

By the 1970s, Hussain had grown toprominence, exhibiting alongside artists such asPablo Picasso. His focus on distinctly Indianthemes brought Indian art to eminence at theinternational level as he began appearing inexhibits and auction houses.

"Hussain, more than anyone else, really


delved into the vast corpus of Indian mythology,"says Rahman. "Ever since he was a child, he hadgrown fascinated with the tales of the Ramayana.He even acted in some performances as Hanumanwhen he was a child."

The other fascination of his art was thefemale form. And in his search for the perfectform, he watched a movie featuring MadhuriDixit, the Indian actress and Hussein's friend,sixty seven times. Each time in a theatre.

"The whole search in the female form is formy mother," Hussain said in interview.THE EXILE YEARS

In 1996, at the height of communal violencein India, Hussain became a target of the Hinduright wing. An article in a Hindi magazine thatdug up a series of nude paintings of Indiangoddesses from the 1970s became the basis forcalls of blasphemy. His home and several galleriesthat displayed his work were attacked by violentprotestors. Under the auspices of Shiv Sena, theHindu right wing political party, numerous caseswere filed against him in local courts that werethen sent to Delhi. MF Hussain, all of a sudden,was the villain.

"It was not Hussain who attacked Hindureligious sensibilities," says Bruce Lawrence,professor of religion and humanities at DukeUniversity. "It was politically minded Hindu rightwing activists that made him their special projectfor vilification, harassment and destruction of hisart or threats to those who exhibited it."

Ram Rahman points to the fact that suchcampaigns had started long before they turnedon Hussain. The destruction of the Babri Masjidin 1992 is a prime example. "The Hindu righttried to reframe the notion of modern Indianculture, impose a mono-culture that was Hinduand excluded Muslims, Christians, and evenBuddhists," Rahman says.

"He was a soft target for he was a practicingMuslim at the height of his career and popularity,"Pundole agrees. Despite the controversy, Pundole'sgallery continued to display Hussain's paintingsthroughout the period. "Not to prove a point, butsimply because of the quality of his art."

A narrowly partisan group intensified amassive campaign against him, displaying hisnude paintings of goddesses along with fabricatedtitles and captions. They also coupled thepaintings next to Hussain's fully-clotheddepictions of female Muslim figures, claimingHussain was deliberately defaming Hindugoddesses.

"He was never a radical artist, notattempting to shock anyone," says Rahman. "Hewas not trying to go against traditionaliconography, rather he followed traditionaliconography." Rahman points to the fact thattraditional sculptures of Indian goddess, even intemples, are bare-breasted. There are numerousdepictions of the goddess Kali in the nude. ForMuslim depictions, there is no tradition of nudes.Hussain simply followed the existing iconography,said Rahman.

"In Calcutta … all these goddesses, thereare thousands of them already there," saidHussain himself. "I wanted to communicate. Ithought my metaphor, my images should connectwith the greatest Mahabharata and Ramayana,which is the folklore of the country."

In his defence, Hussain also pointed outthat the attacks on him were not from religiousspecialists. "They (religious gurus) have not spokena word against my paintings, and they shouldhave been the first ones to have raised their voices.These politicians, who have nothing to do withreligion, take out all these rath-yatras "processions",for political reasons only," he said.

As the attacks on Hussain increased andother political parties did not resist the Hinduright - fearing they would lose votes for being soft- Hussain moved to Dubai in self-exile. He spenthis final years shuttling between Dubai andLondon.

At the time of his death, 95 years old, hewas working on three major projects: a history ofIndian civilisation, a series of paintings on Araband Islamic civilisation, and another series on thehistory of Indian cinema.

"His art, especially the large amount of workhe did in his 90s while in exile, stands as anindictment to the shortfall of Indian democracy,"says Bruce Lawrence. "Ironically, Maqbool couldnot be stopped, or stunted, by the demagoguesand thugs who attacked at home."

As one of his final projects before he leftIndia in 2006, Hussain took on the designing ofthe store for a shoe-maker friend at Mumbai's TajMahal Hotel. From the shelves to the ceiling tothe furniture he obsessively planned everything.At the entrance of the store, Hussain's bare feetare cast in bronze.

He died in exile, but the marks of his barefeet and long brush remain across India - andmuseums around the globe.

Courtesy : http://english.aljazeera.net


UNITED NATIONS — Sri Lanka’s decisive2008-09 military offensive against the country’sseparatist Tamil Tigers may have resulted in thedeaths of as many as 40,000 civilians, most ofthem victims of indiscriminate shelling by SriLankan forces, according to a U.N. panelestablished by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The panel recommended that Ban set upan “independent international mechanism” tocarry out a morethorough probe into“credible” allegationsof war crimes andcrimes againsthumanity by the SriLankan governmentand the LiberationTigers of the TamilEelam (LTTE), whichheld more than300,000 civilians“hostage” to enforce a“strategic human buffer between themselves andthe advancing Sri Lankan army.”

Extensive portions of the report werepublished over the past several days by a SriLankan newspaper, the Island, and have beenquickly repudiated by Sri Lankan authorities.U.N. officials confirmed the authenticity of thereport but said the disclosure was incomplete.They said Thursday that the release of the reporthad been delayed amid discussions with SriLanka over the possibility of including a rebuttal

Colum Lynch

U.N. : Sri Lanka’s crushing of Tamil Tigersmay have killed 40,000 civilians

in the report.The panel’s findings constituted a

devastating indictment of the country’s militaryconduct during the final stage of the 28-yearwar, accusing government forces of shellinghospitals, no-fire zones and U.N. facilities, andblocking the delivery of humanitarian aid tovictims of the war. The panel calls on Sri Lankato “issue a public acknowledgment of its rolein and responsibility for extensive civiliancasualties in the final stages of the war.”

But investigators also faulted the UnitedNations for failing “totake actions thatmight have protectedcivilians” and calledon Ban to conducta “comprehensivereview” of the U.N.system’s response tothe crisis.

The Sri Lankangovernment launchedan all-out offensive in2008 in an effort to

crush the Tamil Tigers, one of the world’s mostviolent and ruthless insurgencies. The operation,which centered on a Tamil stronghold in theVanni region of Sri Lanka, succeeded in wipingout the armed movement in May 2009. But theoperation took a devastating toll on ethnic Tamilcivilians, who were largely trapped between therival forces.

“This campaign constituted persecution ofthe population of Vanni,” according to panelmember and University of Michigan legal

The panel’s findings constituted adevastating indictment of the country’smilitary conduct during the final stage ofthe 28-year war, accusing government forcesof shelling hospitals, no-fire zones and U.N.facilities, and blocking the delivery ofhumanitarian aid to victims of the war. Thepanel calls on Sri Lanka to “issue a publicacknowledgment of its role in andresponsibility for extensive civilian casualtiesin the final stages of the war.”


scholar Steven Ratner. “Around 330,000civilians were trapped in an ever-decreasingarea, fleeing the shelling but kept hostage bythe LTTE. From February 2009 onwards, theLTTE started point-blank shooting of civilianswho attempted to escape the conflict zone,significantly adding to the death toll in the finalstages of the war.”

The Sri Lankan government challenged thereport’s finding as “fundamentally flawed.” Ina statement, the country’s Foreign Ministry saidthe “report is based on patently biased material,which is presented without any verification.”

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peirisurged Ban not to publish the report, saying itcould undercut efforts to promote reconciliationbetween the ruling Sinhalese and the Tamils.“The publication of this report will causeirreparable damage to the reconciliation effortsof Sri Lanka,” he told reporters, according tothe Agence France-Presse news agency. “It willdamage the U.N. system too.”

After the war, Sri Lanka established aneight-member commission to address abusesduring the last seven years of the civil war andrecommend ways to avoid a recurrence. TheU.N. panel said that the commission “representsa potentially useful opportunity to begin anational dialogue on the Sri Lanka conflict” butthat “it has not conducted genuine truth seekingabout what happened in the final stages of thearmed conflict.”

The Sri Lankan commission is “deeplyflawed, does not meet international standardsfor an effective accountability mechanism and,therefore, does not and cannot satisfy the jointcommitment of the President of Sri Lanka andthe [U.N.] secretary general to an accountabilityprocess,” according to the report.

The report offers an implicit criticism ofBan’s attempts to use quiet diplomacy topersuade Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda

Rajapaksa, a longtime friend, to bring a halt tothe worst excesses in the conflict. It also faultedthe U.N. reluctance to publish casualty estimatesto rally international pressure against Sri Lanka.

At the time, the United Nations hadinformed diplomatic missions that more than7,000 civilians may have been killed during thefinal stages of the conflict but was reluctant tomake those figures public. Some U.N. officialsin Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, thought thatthe toll was far higher.

“Although senior international officialsadvocated in public and in private with thegovernment that it protect civilians and stop theshelling of hospital and United Nations or[International Committee of the Red Cross]locations, in the panel’s view, the public use ofcasualty figures would have strengthened thecall for the protection of civilians while thoseevents in the Vanni were unfolding.”

Still, human rights groups praised Ban forauthorizing the panel’s examination of excessesin the Sri Lankan war and pressed the UnitedNations, the United States and other keygovernments to establish an internationalinvestigation into the alleged crimes.

“The Sri Lankan government has thus fargotten away with doing the very thing theSecurity Council stopped [Moammar] Gaddafifrom doing in Libya,” said Tom Malinowski,Human Rights Watch’s advocacy director inWashington. “The least the council can do is topursue the truth about these tens of thousandsof civilians who died.”

Malinowski said it would be reckless forthe United States and other key powers to turna blind eye to Sri Lankan excesses, saying itwould encourage others to ignore the rules ofwar in prosecuting wars on their owninsurgencies.

courtesy http://www.washingtonpost.com


Sudhanva DeshpandeDelhi, INDIA

On 4 April 2011, the Israeli-Arab actor,director and film maker Juliano Mer Khamis wasshot dead in Jenin, Palestine.

This was not an unexpected attack. TheFreedom Theatre that he had established hadbeen attacked with Molotov cocktails in the past,its door torched, and Mer Khamis himself hadreceived threats. ‘But what choice do I have? Torun? I am not a fleeing man,’ he said in aninterview. ‘I am an [Israeli] elite force man,formerly of the paratroopers. The only two thingsI gained from Israeli culture are Shlonsky’stranslations of Shakespeare and adequate fieldtraining. Now I need it.’ In the end, even thefield training given to Israeli elite troops provedinadequate to save Mer Khamis.

In his death, the world lost a brave andimaginative artist.

Juliano Mer Khamis was 52 years old. Hewas an actor and a director. He had acted inseveral films, including opposite Diane Keatonin the adaptation of John Le Carre’s thriller, TheLittle Drummer Girl, and in Amos Gitai’s Kippur.He got many offers from Hollywood, where theywanted to make him the next Antonio Banderas.He certainly had the looks. But he preferred tostay in Israel/Palestine, and work at the FreedomTheatre he had set up in 2006.

The Freedom Theatre itself has a fascinatinghistory. The precursor to the theatre was the Careand Learning Project set up by Juliano’s motherArna Mer in 1989 during the first Intifada. Arnawas an Israeli Jew, and had taken part in theArab-Israel war of 1948. Subsequently, she joinedthe Communist Party of Israel and there she met,and later married, Saliba Khamis, a ChristianArab and Secretary of the Party. Juliano wasnamed after Salvatore Guiliano, a handsomeItalian bandit who led a revolt of landlesspeasants against landlords in Italy.

A man with a hyphenated identity, Juliano,then, was an Israeli-Arab-Christian-Jew. Or, as

he famously put it, ‘I am 100 per cent Palestinianand 100 per cent Jewish’.

Arna worked in the Jenin refugee camp,possibly the worst of all camps in Palestine. Shedrew the children into the theatre. These werechildren for whom destruction of homes andlivelihood was a fact of life. For whom deathwas a fact of life.‘WE’RE NOT GOOD CHRISTIANS’

Juliano’s 2003 award-winningdocumentary, Arna’s Children, chronicles thiswork, and much more. This film is a mostremarkable document of our times – it gives aninsight into life under occupation, and even moreremarkably, it showed the world, for the firsttime, the faces and biographies of the young menwho fought and resisted during the secondIntifada. These were pre-adolescent childrenwhen Arna worked with them in the late 80sand early 90s. In 1993, she was awarded the‘Alternate Nobel Prize’, the money from whichwent into the theatre. By the time the secondIntifada began in September 2000, the childrenhad grown up to be young men. Many took toarms. Many fell to arms.

In the film, we see young Ala sittinglistlessly on the rubble of his home. Arna talksabout it to the children. Why did Ala sleep in hisaunt’s home last night, she asks. They tell her.Sitting next to Ala is Ashraf, with an angelicface. His house was next door to Ala’s. It gotdestroyed when they destroyed Ala’s house. Whodid that, asks Arna. The Israeli army, says Ashraf.What will you do to the army, asks Arna? I’ll killthem, says Ashraf. Show me, says Arna, I’m thearmy. Ashraf gets up, and starts hitting Arnaplayfully. She then gives the children paper,which they tear to shreds. All right, says Arna,this is anger. And when we get angry, we haveto express it. She then gives them paint andpaper, and asks them to express their anger in apainting.

Years later, when Ashraf is already deadand Ala has become a fighter, Juliano meets himand asks if he remembers the painting he had

The Killing of Juliano Mer Khamis


done as a child in Arna’s workshop. Yes, saysAla. It was a house with a Palestinian flag on it.At the end of the film, Ala is dead too.

One of the critiques of the film has beenthat Arna’s work did not prevent the childrenfrom taking up arms in later life. Such a critiquemisses the point of the work that Arna – andJuliano – were doing. It would have been sonice had Arna been a simple do-gooder, whohealed tormented children by drawing them intothe world of art. But Arna was not a do-gooder.She was a militant. In an interview with MaryamMonalist Gharavi in 2006, Juliano spoke abouthis mother’s work, as well as his own in theFreedom Theatre:

You don’t have to heal the children inJenin. We didn’t try to heal their violence.We tried to challenge it into moreproductive ways. And more productiveways are not an alternative to resistance.What we were doing in the theatre isnot trying to be a replacement or analternative to the resistance of thePalestinians in the struggle for liberation.Just the opposite. This must be clear. Iknow it’s not good for fundraising,because I’m not a social worker, I’m nota good Jew going to help the Arabs, andI’m not a philanthropic Palestinian whocomes to feed the poor. We are joining,by all means, the struggle for liberationof the Palestinian people, which is ourliberation struggle. . . . We’re nothealers. We’re not good Christians. Weare freedom fighters.

THE FREEDOM THEATREArna Mer died of cancer in 1994. Her

theatre was demolished during the secondIntifada in 2002. Four years later, the FreedomTheatre was born. ‘The Freedom Theatre willprovide the children of the camp a tranquilenvironment to express themselves and create,’wrote Juliano. Some of the key people involvedin the establishment of the theatre, apart fromMer Khamis, were Zakaria Zubeidi, a formermilitary leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades,Jonatan Stanczak, a Swedish-Israeli activist andDror Feiler, a Swedish-Israeli artist. A number ofartists from across the globe have also gone andworked with the Freedom Theatre in the past

five years.Working in Jenin is not easy. Try doing an

image search on the internet for ‘Palestinechildren’. Thousands of images show up – ofchildren injured and dead, of boys throwingstones at Israeli tanks. Yet, strikingly, there isnone of a park or a playground. Palestine is acountry without a playground. Working withchildren in these circumstances poses its ownchallenge. ‘Each and every one of our studentsbears marks of bullet wounds, severe beatings,torture or psychological traumas. This is thelanguage of the occupying power,’ Mer Khamissaid in an interview. Israel has destroyedlibraries, cultural centres, schools in thePalestinian areas, and has prevented people fromone area to communicate with others. It is as if‘the switch of light and life of the Palestinianswas turned off,’ as Mer Khamis put it. Life underoccupation is hard not simply because of thephysical conditions of existence. The occupationoppresses the imagination and distorts thepersonality of children, it takes away their rightto childhood.

Before the Freedom Theatre wasestablished, many residents had not even seen aplay, let alone taken part in theatrical activity.The theatre had to win the trust of thecommunity, an incredibly challenging task, giventhat boys and girls work together, and the theatreoften takes up issues that are considered taboo.‘One of the aims of the Israeli occupation is toconquer and divide, and I am sorry to say thatthey are succeeding,’ Mer Khamis said. Inaddition, being under occupation means that theculture and identity of the Palestinians is alsosought to be erased. Theatre helps restore acolonised people’s dignity and becomes a weaponin the struggle for equity and justice.

Zakaria Zubeidi is living testimony to howtheatre can change lives. The former militant hasgiven up arms, gained a full amnesty from theIsraeli state, and has joined the cultural struggleagainst the occupation. As Mer Khamis put it,‘Zakaria now devotes his life to pave the wayfor The Freedom Theatre in the hearts of thepeople in the Camp and protects it from negativeelements that see the theatre as a threat toreligious and/or traditional values.’ The FreedomTheatre today runs a three-year professional


Theatre School programme, the only one of itskind in Palestine. In addition, it also runs regularphotography and video filmmaking workshops.Visiting artists also offer workshops in differentarts and skills. Over the past five years, thetheatre has done incredible work, and hopefullyJuliano’s comrades will find ways of overcomingthe tragedy of his killing and continue the work.

The question, obviously, is who killedJuliano Mer Khamis. One would think that theIsraelis would consider his work a threat. Maybethey did. But his work was equally a threat tothe Islamic fundamentalist organisations in Jeninitself. The Freedom Theatre’s production ofAnimal Farm earned their ire because one of thecharacters is a pig. Alice in Wonderlandchallenges patriarchal authority. Someone haddistributed pamphlets against the FreedomTheatre in Jenin and Mer Khamis wasdenounced as a Zionist agent. ‘It makes [theIslamic fundamentalists] crazy that a man whois half-Jewish is at the head of one of the mostimportant projects in the Palestinian West Bankand it is just hypocritical racism,’ Mer Khamissaid. ‘I have never been as Jewish as I am rightnow in Jenin. After all this work at the camp itwould be extremely unfortunate to die of aPalestinian bullet,’ he added presciently.Unsurprisingly, the man arrested for the murderis a former Al-Aqsa Brigades militant.

A section of the ultra-left in India equatesthe anti-Americanism of Islamic fundamentalistsin the Middle East with anti-imperialism. Thekilling of Juliano Mer Khamis, among otherthings, underlines the myopia of this approach.DYING IN PALESTINE

Life in Palestine is unlike anywhere on theplanet. But death in Palestine is also unlikeanywhere else. When Arna died, it wasimpossible to bury her. Mer Khamis narrated thestory in an interview:

“My mother could not be buried becauseshe refused to be buried in a religiousceremony or funeral. Israel is not ademocracy; it’s a theocracy. The religionis not separated from the state so allissues concerning the privacy of life—marriage, burial and many otheraspects—are controlled by the religiousauthorities, so you cannot be buried in a

civilian funeral. The only way to do it isbuy a piece of land in some kibbutzim,which refused to sell us a piece of landbecause of the politics of my mother. . . .I had to take the coffin home. And itstayed in my house for three days and Icould not find a place to bury her. So Iannounced in a press conference that shewas going to be buried in the garden ofmy house. There was a big scandal,police came, a lot of TV and media[came], violent warnings were issuedagainst me. There were bigdemonstrations around the house, till Igot a phone call from friends from akibbutz. . . . They offered a piece of landthere. And the funny thing is that whilewe were looking for a place to bury mymother, there were discussions in Jeninto offer me to bring her for burial there,in the shahid’s [martyr’s] graveyard.They told me there was one Fatah leader,who was humorously saying, ‘Well,guys, look, it’s an honour to have Arnawith us here, a great honour, the onlything is maybe in about fifty years’ timesome Jewish archaeologists will comehere and say there are some Jewish boneshere and they’re going to confiscate theland of Jenin.’ [Laughs] They do it. Evenif they find the Jewish bones of a dog,they take the place. . . . Every placethey confiscate they find the bones of aJew and that’s how they justify theownership of the land, by finding bones.”Like his mother, Juliano was bid farewell

to on both sides of the divide. He was buried inthe same kibbutz, next to Arna. Mother and son,artists and freedom fighters, shining lights in adark world.

Palestine, more than any other place onearth, is an emblem of humankind’s conscience.Juliano Mer Khamis is the name of the beliefthat justice will win in the end. In this spring ofthe Arab revolt, Juliano will not be mourned.His courageous and creative life will becelebrated, his passion and integrity saluted.Juliano Mer Khamis is the name of a dream thatwill not be extinguished.courtesy http://bargad.org/2011/04/12/juliano-mer-khamis/


Subhash GatadeDelhi, INDIA

The New Footsoldiers!The Ideological and Institutional Incorporation of Dalits into Hindutva Maelstrom

...Continued from previous issue

HINDUTVA’S LOVE FOR MANUSMRITIIt was late ‘60s when Maharashtra

witnessed a massive mobilisation of people,cutting across party lines, which was precipitatedby a controversial interview given by MadhavSadashiv Golwalkar, the then Supremo(Sarsanghchalak) of RSS, to a Marathi dailyNavakal. Golwalkar in this interview had extolledthe virtues of Chaturvarnya (the division of theHindus in four Varnas) and had also glorifiedManusmriti, the ancient edicts of the Hindus.Ofcourse, it was not for the first time that theSupremo’s love and admiration for Manusmriti,which sanctifies and legitimises, the structuredhierarchy based on caste and gender, had becomepublic. In fact, at the time of framing theconstitution also, he did not forget to show hisdisapproval towards the gigantic effort, claimingthat the said ancient edict could serve the purpose.

K.R. Malkani, a leading ideologue of theRSS admits in his book ‘The RSS Story’, thatGolwalkar, the second supremo of the RSS, ‘sawno reason why Hindu law should break itsancient links with the Manusmriti’. Similarly, inhis ‘Bunch of Thoughts,’ Golwalkar, quoting fromthe Rig Veda and echoing Manu, empathicallydeclares, ‘Brahmin is the head, Kshatriya thehands, Vaisya the stomach, and Shudras the feet.This means that the people who have this four-fold arrangement, the Hindu people, is (sic) ourGod’.

In fact it would be more prudent to saythat the very edifice of RSS, which yearned for aHindu Rashtra based on Brahminical worldview,was built on an inbuilt antagonism towards theassertion of the Shudras-Atishudras and women.And Maharashtra which never had a significantMuslim presence became a home to this project

as it was witness to the massive social-culturalmovement challenging the stranglehold ofBrahminism and Patriarchy under the leadershipof Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule.The Phule’s struggle against the Shetjis and Bhatjis( Traders and Brahmins) got a new fillip withthe emergence of Dr. Ambedkar whose firsthistoric struggle for the dignity of Dalitsculminated in the burning of Manusmriti itself in1927. Interestingly most of the studies of theorigin and expansion of Hindutva brigade haverather concentrated on the anti-minority aspectof its foundation and have inadvertently or soskipped the anti-Dalit or anti-shudra aspect ofits formation which has led us to a situationwhere a concerted attack on the foundations ofthe politics Hindutva has not been possible.Although of late one does notice a significantchange in the appraisal and also a growingrealisation that anti-caste struggle needs to bemade an integral part of anti-communal struggle.

Explaining the reasons behind theformation of RSS Dr. Hedgewar rightly tells hisbiographer Mr. C. P. Bhishikar (considered theonly ‘official’ biography, ‘Sanghvriksha Ke Beej’)two component parts of its emergence. Of courselike any Sangh activist he does not say it soexplicitly and one has to gather inferences fromwhat he said. In it he talks about the risingcommunal tension because of end of Khilafatmovement and secondly, the way non-Brahminmovement (which was founded by Phule) hadraised its head.

It was not surprising that Golwalkar didnot take kindly to the affirmative actionprogrammes undertaken by the newlyindependent state for the welfare &empowerment of scheduled castes and scheduledtribes. He expressed his disapproval by sayingthat rulers were digging at the roots of Hindusocial cohesion and destroying the spirit ofidentity that held various sects into a harmoniouswhole in the past. Denying that Hindu social


system was responsible for the plight of the lowercastes, he held constitutional safeguards for themas responsible for creating disharmony.

Dr. Ambedkar had envisaged the specialprivileges for ‘Scheduled Castes’ for only10 years from the day we became arepublic in 1950. But it is going on,being extended. Continued specialprivileges on the basis of caste only, isbound to create vested interests in themin remaining as a separate entity. Thatwould harm their integration with therest of the society.It was the same period when attempts

were made to give limited rights to Hinduwomen in property and inheritance through thepassage of the Hindu Code Bill, which wereopposed by Golwalkar and his followers, withthe contention that this step was inimical toHindu traditions and culture. Looking back onecould say that RSS was one of the leading forceof this all India campaign to stop enactment ofthe bill. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who laterbecame the founding President of Jan Sangh -the mass political platform floated by RSS-, andwho happened to be a minister in Nehru’scabinet then also expressed his opposition to thepassage of the bill in no uncertain terms. It isnow history how the bill could not be passedwhen Ambedkar was the law minister and heresigned from the cabinet mainly on thesegrounds only.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, anotherleading light of the Hindu Right, who is supposedto be the pioneer of the idea of Hindutva, alsoexpressed his admiration for Manusmriti in nouncertain terms. According to him :

Manusmriti is that scripture which ismost worshipable after Vedas for ourHindu nation and which from ancienttimes has become the basis of our culture-customs, thought and practice. This bookfor centuries has codified the spiritualand divine march of our nation. Eventoday the rules which are followed bycrores of Hindus in their lives andpractice are based on Manusmriti. TodayManusmriti is Hindu law.Although much water has passed the

Ganges (and the Jamuna), it cannot be said that

there is any rethinking in the camp of Hindutvaabout Manusmriti or the social system sanctionedby it. The only difference which has occured isthat the critique of the present constitution -which at least formally (to quote Dr. Ambedkar)‘ended the days of Manu’ - has become moresophisticated. Not a day passes when one of thestalwarts of the Sangh Parivar criticises theconstitution for ‘bearing colonial imprints’ orsupposedly ‘not caring to local traditions andculture’. It was not for nothing that the BJP hadeven appointed a commission to review theconstitution under some specious plea.

Of course there are occasions when thecriticism does not remain so guarded and itmanifests itself in a blatant manner. One stillremembers how Giriraj Kishore, a RSSpracharak, who happens to be a leading light ofthe Vishwa Hindu Parishad, had rationalisedthe killings of five Dalits in Jhajjar, Haryana(October 2002) by a mob for committing the‘crime’ of skinning a dead cow by saying that‘in our religious scriptures (Puranas) life of a cowis more important than any number of people’.

It is now history how Uma Bharati (then asenior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party) ledM.P. government promulgated an ordinance forbanning cow slaughter with an official statementwhich extolled the virtues of Manusmriti.(Janurary 2005) It said : Manusmriti ranks theslaughterer of cow as predator and prescribes hardpunishment for him’. As Shamsul Islam, in hispiece ‘Hindutva and Dalits’ ( Ed. AnandTeltumbde) writes ‘It was for the first time in thelegal history of independent India that a law wasbeing justified for being in tune with Manusmriti.’It had no qualms in declaring its committmentto Manusmriti although it very well knew that itwas in contravention to the basic principles ofconstitution.

It is the same BJP which helped install amagnificient statue of Manu in the precints ofJaipur (capital of Rajasthan, perhaps the onlystate in India) highcourt in early’90s whenBhairon Singh Shekhawat - a longtime RSSworker and present incumbent to the VicePresidents’ chair- happened to be the ChiefMinister.

Yoginder Sikand, a leading scholar oninterfaith relations, in one of his perceptive


writeup Hindutva And The Dalit-Bahujans :Dangerous Portents (www.countercurrents.org)shares his experience interviewing Hindutvaleaders :

‘Top Hindutva leaders are on record asarguing that the Hindu Rashtra of theirdreams would, in emulation of theclassical Hindu state that they soardently espouse, be ruled according tothe draconian Bible of Brahminism, theManusmriti, that consigned the ‘lower’castes and even ‘upper’ caste women tothe most cruel form of slavery thathumankind has ever devised.’Interestingly, despite its fascination for

Manusmriti, the RSS alongwith its affiliatedorganisations have been able to win oversignificant number of Dalits as well tribals to itsside. Question would naturally arise how couldit do it ?

Whether it is related to the dynamics ofthe Dalit movement itself which underwent splitsafter splits in the post-Ambedkar era and couldnot figure out its correct bearings in the presentpolity ? Or it could be explained on the basis ofthe changed lifeworlds of the Dalits and theprocess of Sanskritisation which has slowlyovertaken wider concerns among them? Theensuing discussion would remain incomplete ifwe do not take a look at the changes in themodus operandi undertaken by the Hindutvaproject itself to make itself ‘attractive’ for thesubalterns.

UNFOLDING OF A MOVEMENTNineties happened to be a decade of great

turmoil in the life of the nation. Apart from theneo-liberal changes undertaken in the economyunder the canopy of globalisation, there weretwo parallel (at times overlapping) streams whichmade their presence felt in the socio-politicalarena - namely the phenomenon of Dalit-backward assertion and the ascendance of theHindutva right. In popular parlance it wasprojected as ‘mandal’ versus ‘kamandal’ politics.The assertion of the subalterns was on the onehand a slow reflection of the coming into ownof these sections as well as reflection of theirgrowing frustration with the Congress, whichhad accomodated them under its typical

paternalistic mode for quite sometime. Thefamous ‘Congress system’ was in fact a carefullycarved out block of Brahmins, Dalits and Muslimsmainly in northern India, which had proved tobe one of its winning combination.

One could even say that the nineties whichstarted with a bang wherein the wholephenomenon of Dalit- Backward assertion helpedcheck the growth of communal fascism at variouslevels ended in a whimper with a significantpart of the Dalit-Backward swell submergingitself into the ‘kamandal’ politics. This despitethe bitter fact that the Sangh Parivar, thefountainhead of BJP, had never deprecated theChaturvarna system largely responsible for theplight of the Dalits nor apologised, nor havemissed any opportunity to castigate Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar for his alleged ‘pro-British’opinions or oppose the policy of reservationsunder one or the other pretext.

It would be opportune to look at the postAmbedkar Dalit movement and do a stock takingof the changes within the Dalit politics tounderstand the phenomenon. The ups anddowns through which the Dalit politics passedthrough after the death of Dr. BabasahebAmbedkar can be broadly divided into threephases - Rise and decline of the Republican Partyof India, emergence of the Dalit Panthers andthirdly the growing assertion of Dalits forpolitical power and their consequent refusal toremain satisfied merely with education and jobopportunities arising out of the policy ofreservation.

There is no need to underline the immensepotentialities in the phenomenon of Dalitassertion in today’s caste ridden polity. There isno denying the fact that it is a step ahead in thereal democratisation of the Indian society andthe polity dominated by Brahminical values andtraditions despite fifty plus year experiment inelectoral democracy. The impressive interventionof Bahujan Samaj Party under Kanshiram-Mayawati in the national politics underlines thisthird stage. It is noteworthy that while in theearlier two stages in the post Ambedkar Dalitmovement, the unfolding Dalit politics inMaharashtra guided its orientation, its role hasbeen increasingly marginalised in the third stage.The success achieved by BSP has certainly


encouraged emergence of similar experiments indifferent parts of the country.

It is noteworthy that at this stage there isanother apparent groundswell in various Dalitcastes also. One could say that the phenomenonof assertion of identities has trickled down toeven subsections of the community/caste itself.These are organizing themselves under thebanners of their respective caste and sub-castefor achieving their rights. Consequently theirguns are trained besides the Varna system alsoon the so-called rich Dalit castes or the creamylayer in them which they feel have monopoliseda large part of the reserved posts. The Mahar/neo-Buddhists vs. Matang and charmakar debatein Maharashtra, Mala vs. Madiga in AndhraPradesh are symptomatic of this rising trend.So much so that in Andhra Pradesh the disputebetween Malas and Madigas, both of themcoming under scheduled category, gave rise to amilitant agitation of the Madigas. The Madigasunder the banner of Madiga Reservation PorataSamity launched a statewide militant massmovement for castewise categorisation ofreserved seats in educational institutions and jobsetc. so that extremely depressed castes whichcould not avail of the quota for historical reasonscould avail of it now.

It is indeed ironical that at a time whenthe issue of Dalit assertion has got acceptanceeven in the mainstream polity in the 90s acounter tendency has emerged which seem tofracture the new found identity. One could alsoperceive the whole process as an explosion ofidentities hitherto suppressed by the hegemoniccaste and class structure. In the beginning of the70s the term Dalit denoted a broad, homogenousfraternity. This is no more the case. If you justsay Dalit you are making an incompletestatement. It would be necessary to also specifywhether he is a Mala or a Madiga or a Matangor a Charmakar. This process has thrown upnew ‘icons’ from among the different castes andthe subcastes as well. There is also a danger ofthe old leaders who earlier claimed pan Dalitstatus being reduced to their ‘own’ caste leaders.The emergence of Avantikabai Pasi in UP or ofthe famous author Annabhau Sathe inMaharashtra as new leaders of the Matangsunderlines this ground reality. Incidently it isinteresting to note that Mr. Sathe remained a

Communist Party worker all his life and was aleading light of the progressive writersmovement. Nobody would have imagined in hislifetime that one day he would be projected asthe leader of ‘his caste’ and a saffron alliance inpower would present his selected writings beforethe people.

Parties opposed to Congress have skillfullyused the persisting differences between differentDalit castes. For example, when the Shiv Sena-BJP government held the reins of power inMaharashtra in mid-nineties, it saw to it thatthere was representation of Matang andCharmakar in the ministry and the Mahars orNeo-Buddhists are kept out.

It is worth noting that within the Dalitmovement especially among its intelligentsia thereare three sets of opinions as far as alliance withthe saffrons is concerned. Whereas one streamof opinion advocates such an alliance on tacticalgrounds and says that such temporary unitywould be beneficial in the longer run. Essentiallyits argument revolves round the inherentcontradictions between the upwardly mobilebackward caste people and the Dalits especiallyin the countryside. They feel that at the turn ofthe 20th century Dalits are more oppressed bythese new kulaks largely coming from thebackward castes and that their alliance withupper caste party like the BJP can save themfrom their onslaught. They clearly say that ‘socialfascism’ (as represented by the emergent Kulakleadership) is more dangerous than communalfascism. They even belch out statistics to showthe number of Dalits killed at the hands of theKulaks in different parts of the country.

The other stream while categoricallyopposing any type of alliance with the saffronseven for a shorter period advocates that the Dalitsshould search for their natural allies whichaccording to them can only be the leftists ofvarious hues? According to them the fascistproject is essentially aimed at the restoration ofthe Brahminical order and nothing should bedone to sanctify such a medieval project.

The third stream advocates equidistancefrom both the opponents of ‘communal fascism’or adversaries of ‘social fascism’. It talks ofdeveloping a strong Dalit movement on its ownstrength and then only become a key player inthe polity.

To be continued...


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SACH - isd.net.in · SACH SOUTH ASIAN COMPOSITE HERITAGE MAY—JULY 2011 VOLUME—1 ISSUE—23 In the previous issue of SACH we presented poems from Afghanistan. The poems reflected