Three days before the Nellie massacre the message of the police officer about the gathering of the marauders for imminent attack on the minority people was not acted upon. Looking forward to 2002 Gujarat the Faizabad collector and intelligence officers there and elsewhere in the BJP administered state of UP under Chief Minister Rajnath Singh did not comply with the rules and file any report on the movement of the karsevaks of the Sabarmati express train while IGP (Intelligence) Sreekumar did his part honestly. He was not only ignored but snubbed and demoted. In the aftermath of the Nellie massacre the National Police Commission in a report on April 4, 1983 stated that the police were wont to shirk their duty vis-à-vis the minority in dealing with a communal riot. Even the political leaders have by and large shown indifference. The defence minister George Fernandes dismissed the rape and murder of Muslim women in Gujarat 2002 as casual. About the Nellie massacre Mathu Dandvate, Finance Minister in the Janta party government of yore, did not say anything to condemn the bloodbath. He rather made a joke. Railway Minister Ghani Khan had dismissed or transferred many officials on March 4th 1983. Professor Dandvate described the dismissal and transfers as “carnage in the Railway Bhavan.” Many people were shocked by the shameful silence of Dandvate on the massacre and sudden saturnine humour.
What is wry humour is often so macabre that the victims brutalized and demonized in riots also have to bear the brunt of carrying the load of blame for what others have done to them. A regular columnist in a Sunday edition of a national daily imputed the Muslims for feeling proud that their killers in 2002 pogroms were more important than the killers of Sikh in 1984. Why did not he look beyond?
Amitav Ghosh calls the trading of charges as “pathological inversion”. As this is typical of our political leaders within the country, it also follows in international arena. India and Pakistan traded charges during the disturbances and riots that took place across the borders when the holy relic of the prophet’s hair was stolen from the Hazratbal mosque on December 27, 1963 and was mysteriously restored on January 4, 1964. However, Maulana Masoodi it was who had asked the people not to carry green flags but black to protest the theft. The Kashmiris of all religions took to the streets to express their outrage. There was no violence while scores were killed in Calcutta, Khulna and Dhaka. That kind of solidarity was sorely missing in the rest of the country.
Malegaon and Bhiwandi have been sensitive towns in Maharashtra on account of a consciously nurtured pathological culture of riots. The 1965 aggression of Pakistan was a handy cause for the communalists and they used it as manure. As Justice Madan Mohan Commission noted: “In April 1969 these extremist Hindu leaders, finding that they were unable to have their way, walked out of the Shiv Jayanti Utsav Samiti and resigned from it, with the result that by their absence the procession that year became a model of what such a procession should be, though these persons and their associates met the procession at various points, threw excessive gulal at it, especially at the Muslim leaders, and raised objectionable slogans. Communalism breeds communalism and the inflexible attitude adopted by some of the Hindu extremist youths was matched by a section of the extremist Muslim youths who became equally adamant that the procession should not pass by the Nizampura Jumma Mosque.”
June 26th 1983 riot of Malegaon would be the first in history which would simmer for months and engulf neighbouring villages and towns like Satana. It had heavy toll of innocent being killed and injured. In one incident a woman was suckling her baby child of 9 months when the police bullet hit the cranium and scattered the brain in the hair of the mother. The same bullet entered another hut where it broke the arm bone of a girl and hung her arm in an angular shape. The town was witness to periodic communal violence and some kind of patronage of the trouble makers was evident. Sharad Pawar was in political wilderness. In the third week of February 1983 he allegedly accompanied Bal Thackeray and G.M. Puntamberkar to the mantralaya. Puntamberkar pleaded for the repeal of the extradition order of Ashok Chaudhary, owner of Bajrang tea shop. Puntamberkar was also indicted by Justice Madan for making communally inciting speeches in Bhiwandi. Some people wanted to give communal colour to what was ordinary incident. On July 7th Suresh Avadoot wrote in the Marathi Deshdoot that the attack on one Shellar had nothing to do with riot and yet it was made out to be a communal incident. Thus the society was in a pathological situation without nationalist minded people with holistic view present on the scene.
Since then the pathological condition has so degenerated that in the late 1980s women were singled out to suffer from the worst crimes humans can perpetrate on them. I was traveling through Ahmedabad in 1986 for a world conference in Udaipur marking centenary of publication of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. I had stopped over in Ahemdabad and what I saw and heard was soul wrenching. The reservation agitation had degenerated into worst communal riots of that time. Women were attacked and killed; patients were thrown down from fourth or fifth floors of hospitals! This did not stop there but rose in a crescendo as women were used to demonstrate the macho nature of what Babu (Patel) Bajrangi calls khitchi eating males who could perform so well on Muslim women. Many were raped and murdered in 2002 but a few like Bilkis Yakub survived the ordeal.
After ascertaining the pathological condition of riots what cure is there? There is a great need to establish truth first of all. Reconciling the people comes next. The law of the land must not only be respected but also allowed to take its course. Every human life is possible only because of civil society or else we lapse into primitive life of the jungle where laws of the jungle prevail.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Pathology of Riots -I
Pathology of Riots-I
What is unfolding in Kenya must drive home the lesson we in India must learn. Howsoever a stable and democratic a country with its much vaunted well off middle class, it takes a few wrong steps to bring it to the verge of self destruction. Whatever hue of a so called strong leader unless all sections are accommodated in the polity sans discrimination, democracy can be nightmare. No sooner do the strong leader like Tito and the stable country like Kenya face another challenge than cracks appear. The question is how and what we prioritize. That becomes news as do views become news.
On 6th of March 1983 the opposition leader in the parliament Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee told the BJP supporters in Pathankot that the February 1983 elections in Assam were conducted in a bloodbath and BJP would not accept the results because the elections were not “free and fair”. On the following day, Monday March7, the Non Alignment Movement conference opened in Delhi, Free Press Journal called it a big tamasha. Such a gathering of heads of states and governments was the only one time that so many had gathered there. The views of the nascent BJP and the gala festivity that went with the NAM to-do threw the bloodbath in Assam into oblivion. Fast forward to our time, the election in Gujarat 2002 was also of the same nature, an attempt to ride on communal divide and place the pogroms on the backburner.
On February 18, 1983 about 3000 Muslims long settled in Assam were murdered in and around Nellie. Among them were mostly children and women who could not run away from the reach of the well organized and armed marauding mobs . One caption of India Today photo on the ghastly scene captured by Bhawan Singh reads: “This is Assam for you. They paid with their lives so that democracy could be put back on the rails in that God forsaken land!” BJP demanded that the governor order inquiry as it always did at that time thought not in Gujarat 2002. But the party had the agenda scripted much earlier according to its priority: not the tragic massacre of the victims per se but the timing and place and vicinity to the borders and proximity to elections.
The marauding crowds included upper caste Hindus leading the mobs which would ultimately vote their regional party into power. BJP had successfully indoctrinated the mobs against the Muslims, quite unlike the schisms of Bihari versus Assamese and tribals with prerogative of reservation versus immigrant adivais sans reservation in Assam of recent times. “The BJP leaders are understood to have sought to convince the agitation leaders (in Assam 1983) that it is vital to make a distinction between the Hindus and the Muslims among the immigrants from the erstwhile Eastern Pakistan.”
Thus the chasm created on the communal lines among the Bengali speaking people settled there resulted in violence which boded ill for the country. People in Bombay collected 40 lakh rupees and in Punjab 20 lakh rupees for the flood affected in Assam 1974. But there was no relief fund for 1983.
The Assamese till 1983 were much like the Kenyan of 2008. The violence in Assam was unabated even in late March 1983. The people were known for their lahe lahe style of life, a life of being soft and docile. Who brought about the change in the chemistry of the people? Why? A book that appeared on October 30, 2007 throws light on the disturbing questions. Neelie, 1983: Asom Andolonor Borborotom Gonohatyar Postmortem Report (Neelie, 1983: A Postmortem Report into the Most Barbaric Massacre of Assam Movement) by author Diganta Sharma records how 688 cases were registered of which 318 were dropped and after the final report 310 were registered but when Asom Gana Parishad, the political wing of the AASU came into power all were dropped.
The reason: there were no eye witnesses. The victim survivors were there but they were so traumatized and intimidated that they had no chance to meet anyone. How could they when the police were complicit in the carnage. As can be seen in the message of sent by the officer-in charge of Nogaon Police Station to the Commandant of 5 th Assam Police Battalion in Morigaon, Officer-in charge of Jagi Road Police Station and Sub-Divisional Police Officer on 15 February, 1983 the contents of which are:INFORMATION RECEIVED THAT L/NIGHT ABOUT ONE THOUSAND ASSAMESE OF SURROUNDING VILLAGES OF NELLIE WITH DEADLY WEAPONS ASSEMBLED AT NELLIE BY BEATING OF DRUMS (,) MINORITY PEOPLES ARE IN PANIC AND APPREHENDING ATTACK AT ANY MOMENT (,) SUBMISSION FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION TO MAINTAIN PEACE (,)
It is quite ironical that much of the debate on Gujarat pogroms 2002 veers back to 1984 massacre of Sikhs but not to massacre of Muslims in Nellie 1983! In an acrobatic fashion we try to be politically correct in one and yet we are ‘political and incorrect’ in the other!
What is unfolding in Kenya must drive home the lesson we in India must learn. Howsoever a stable and democratic a country with its much vaunted well off middle class, it takes a few wrong steps to bring it to the verge of self destruction. Whatever hue of a so called strong leader unless all sections are accommodated in the polity sans discrimination, democracy can be nightmare. No sooner do the strong leader like Tito and the stable country like Kenya face another challenge than cracks appear. The question is how and what we prioritize. That becomes news as do views become news.
On 6th of March 1983 the opposition leader in the parliament Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee told the BJP supporters in Pathankot that the February 1983 elections in Assam were conducted in a bloodbath and BJP would not accept the results because the elections were not “free and fair”. On the following day, Monday March7, the Non Alignment Movement conference opened in Delhi, Free Press Journal called it a big tamasha. Such a gathering of heads of states and governments was the only one time that so many had gathered there. The views of the nascent BJP and the gala festivity that went with the NAM to-do threw the bloodbath in Assam into oblivion. Fast forward to our time, the election in Gujarat 2002 was also of the same nature, an attempt to ride on communal divide and place the pogroms on the backburner.
On February 18, 1983 about 3000 Muslims long settled in Assam were murdered in and around Nellie. Among them were mostly children and women who could not run away from the reach of the well organized and armed marauding mobs . One caption of India Today photo on the ghastly scene captured by Bhawan Singh reads: “This is Assam for you. They paid with their lives so that democracy could be put back on the rails in that God forsaken land!” BJP demanded that the governor order inquiry as it always did at that time thought not in Gujarat 2002. But the party had the agenda scripted much earlier according to its priority: not the tragic massacre of the victims per se but the timing and place and vicinity to the borders and proximity to elections.
The marauding crowds included upper caste Hindus leading the mobs which would ultimately vote their regional party into power. BJP had successfully indoctrinated the mobs against the Muslims, quite unlike the schisms of Bihari versus Assamese and tribals with prerogative of reservation versus immigrant adivais sans reservation in Assam of recent times. “The BJP leaders are understood to have sought to convince the agitation leaders (in Assam 1983) that it is vital to make a distinction between the Hindus and the Muslims among the immigrants from the erstwhile Eastern Pakistan.”
Thus the chasm created on the communal lines among the Bengali speaking people settled there resulted in violence which boded ill for the country. People in Bombay collected 40 lakh rupees and in Punjab 20 lakh rupees for the flood affected in Assam 1974. But there was no relief fund for 1983.
The Assamese till 1983 were much like the Kenyan of 2008. The violence in Assam was unabated even in late March 1983. The people were known for their lahe lahe style of life, a life of being soft and docile. Who brought about the change in the chemistry of the people? Why? A book that appeared on October 30, 2007 throws light on the disturbing questions. Neelie, 1983: Asom Andolonor Borborotom Gonohatyar Postmortem Report (Neelie, 1983: A Postmortem Report into the Most Barbaric Massacre of Assam Movement) by author Diganta Sharma records how 688 cases were registered of which 318 were dropped and after the final report 310 were registered but when Asom Gana Parishad, the political wing of the AASU came into power all were dropped.
The reason: there were no eye witnesses. The victim survivors were there but they were so traumatized and intimidated that they had no chance to meet anyone. How could they when the police were complicit in the carnage. As can be seen in the message of sent by the officer-in charge of Nogaon Police Station to the Commandant of 5 th Assam Police Battalion in Morigaon, Officer-in charge of Jagi Road Police Station and Sub-Divisional Police Officer on 15 February, 1983 the contents of which are:INFORMATION RECEIVED THAT L/NIGHT ABOUT ONE THOUSAND ASSAMESE OF SURROUNDING VILLAGES OF NELLIE WITH DEADLY WEAPONS ASSEMBLED AT NELLIE BY BEATING OF DRUMS (,) MINORITY PEOPLES ARE IN PANIC AND APPREHENDING ATTACK AT ANY MOMENT (,) SUBMISSION FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION TO MAINTAIN PEACE (,)
It is quite ironical that much of the debate on Gujarat pogroms 2002 veers back to 1984 massacre of Sikhs but not to massacre of Muslims in Nellie 1983! In an acrobatic fashion we try to be politically correct in one and yet we are ‘political and incorrect’ in the other!
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Changes in the Offing for the Academia
The academia is again poised for great changes with daring schemes and plans shortly to be introduced and implemented. What are some of the dossiers in the hat which we can draw and peep into the future? To anyone who is in the field of education many things are familiar but not so well spelled out. But some proposed changes are making rounds at the discussion tables of conferences and seminars.
Education in the twenty first century can not be confined to the traditional set up of buildings and campuses. Nor can students be required to home in to their beehive institutions of learning for usual lectures and facilely scribbled and easily available notes. The UGC is now bringing out a major change of allowing a student to study in Bangalore for a degree of Delhi University. Of course, you have your choice of one place for study and research and another place with its own institutions for degree. This is not all that new as it sounds. For example, I did my whole research at the American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad, for two years but got Ph.D. in English from the then Marathwada University in Aurangabad. Interestingly there were two other fellow students who had much varied education than I. Sukrita Paul, a poet, did post graduation from Delhi and research at Marathwada University as well as Hyderabad. Nirupama Rao (nee Menon), another poet and now ambassador to China, was schooled, as she puts it, all over the country. But she did her post graduation from Marathwada University and took the same as centre for her IAS and IFS and stood first in the country.
However, much water has flowed down the river. Nirupama Menon and I had studied the same syllabus under the same teachers in MA English class and resourced the same library and got degrees from the same university. But now, what with internet and Google and all, the students of today can resource any material from any place at any time of day or night. We studied original works of literature and wrote our own note. But now the original books and notes on them are mostly freely available at the click of a mouse. This is one reason why it is now easier to study anywhere for a course of a university or college which is situated may he thousands of miles away from your residence or place of study.
In tandem with this is the proposed uniform syllabus for all colleges and universities. One syllabus for all the classes of a particular course of a particular level will make students of the country know the books and contents well. They will be all familiar with the same stuff. But will it be very enviable? Stereotyping knowledge is as tedious as stereotyping people.
Similarly teachers are inevitable howsoever we may change the system. The great variation in the teaching skills and excellence of individual teachers will have its impact on the learning. An Anne Sullivan teaching Helen Keller will still rule the roost. No doubt dedication and efficiency will matter but teachers will have to increasingly compete with the high tech world including the internet.
Upgrading the existing infrastructure in all the nooks and corners of the country will be an imperative. It is simply daunting to even imagine the overhauling the whole system across the length and breath of the country. This will be truly Herculean, but when we have still not washed our Aegean stables of learning making more stables would be simply unimaginable. Is the UGC prepared for ushering this phenomenal change?
Motivation and preparedness must be there before the changes are inducted. When the first workshop of National Accreditation and Assessment Council was organized jointly by the Association of Indian Universities at the turn of the century the accreditation and assessment was still not made compulsory. After attending the workshop and the conference on Delore and education when I returned and told the principal and other senior teachers about the NAAC they dismissed it out of hand. It was not just indifference but the absence of motivation and the necessary preparedness. This was the general condition quite prevalent then. But soon assessment and accreditation was made compulsory. The lecturers, professors and principals and others were sucked into a new and additional work of time consuming and straining nature. Getting five stars for maximum grants rather than change from within became the order of the day.
But in December 12, 1994 issue of AIU University News I had written for the need to have oneself assessed and accredited by some reliable private agency rather than a government one. Such a voluntary work would have obviated the need for the establishment of NAAC but would have begun a process of change from within.
“To illustrate what I call self-correction I refer to an instance in 1989, of how out of every ten school teachers left service of the state schools in Britain because he was not satisfied with his own performance and there was no appreciation of his work by the society. Looking at our own performance here in India there is hardly a teacher who leaves teaching at college or university level because of his own lack of satisfaction at his performance. It is anybody’s guess if the society is satisfied with the performance of the teacher. The latter fact is so delicate an issue that the less said the better. Those teachers in Britain who left their teaching service must have gone through self introspection and then must have left what they could not do satisfactorily. I do not want to read in their cases the theory of of natural selection. As they felt they were not up to the satisfaction of what they expected or what society expected, they left. The others, who chose to remain in teaching must have changed themselves, in their own eyes first, to suit the teaching profession, and then in the eyes of the society. This related development is quite significant. It is also not true to say that the remaining nine out of ten who continued to teach were all perfect in their performance. What it does signify is the urgency there of self assessment and self correction leading to more suitability in the fast changing time. While over here, we have not only taken things for granted but we have also taken everyone for a tide”.
Education in the twenty first century can not be confined to the traditional set up of buildings and campuses. Nor can students be required to home in to their beehive institutions of learning for usual lectures and facilely scribbled and easily available notes. The UGC is now bringing out a major change of allowing a student to study in Bangalore for a degree of Delhi University. Of course, you have your choice of one place for study and research and another place with its own institutions for degree. This is not all that new as it sounds. For example, I did my whole research at the American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad, for two years but got Ph.D. in English from the then Marathwada University in Aurangabad. Interestingly there were two other fellow students who had much varied education than I. Sukrita Paul, a poet, did post graduation from Delhi and research at Marathwada University as well as Hyderabad. Nirupama Rao (nee Menon), another poet and now ambassador to China, was schooled, as she puts it, all over the country. But she did her post graduation from Marathwada University and took the same as centre for her IAS and IFS and stood first in the country.
However, much water has flowed down the river. Nirupama Menon and I had studied the same syllabus under the same teachers in MA English class and resourced the same library and got degrees from the same university. But now, what with internet and Google and all, the students of today can resource any material from any place at any time of day or night. We studied original works of literature and wrote our own note. But now the original books and notes on them are mostly freely available at the click of a mouse. This is one reason why it is now easier to study anywhere for a course of a university or college which is situated may he thousands of miles away from your residence or place of study.
In tandem with this is the proposed uniform syllabus for all colleges and universities. One syllabus for all the classes of a particular course of a particular level will make students of the country know the books and contents well. They will be all familiar with the same stuff. But will it be very enviable? Stereotyping knowledge is as tedious as stereotyping people.
Similarly teachers are inevitable howsoever we may change the system. The great variation in the teaching skills and excellence of individual teachers will have its impact on the learning. An Anne Sullivan teaching Helen Keller will still rule the roost. No doubt dedication and efficiency will matter but teachers will have to increasingly compete with the high tech world including the internet.
Upgrading the existing infrastructure in all the nooks and corners of the country will be an imperative. It is simply daunting to even imagine the overhauling the whole system across the length and breath of the country. This will be truly Herculean, but when we have still not washed our Aegean stables of learning making more stables would be simply unimaginable. Is the UGC prepared for ushering this phenomenal change?
Motivation and preparedness must be there before the changes are inducted. When the first workshop of National Accreditation and Assessment Council was organized jointly by the Association of Indian Universities at the turn of the century the accreditation and assessment was still not made compulsory. After attending the workshop and the conference on Delore and education when I returned and told the principal and other senior teachers about the NAAC they dismissed it out of hand. It was not just indifference but the absence of motivation and the necessary preparedness. This was the general condition quite prevalent then. But soon assessment and accreditation was made compulsory. The lecturers, professors and principals and others were sucked into a new and additional work of time consuming and straining nature. Getting five stars for maximum grants rather than change from within became the order of the day.
But in December 12, 1994 issue of AIU University News I had written for the need to have oneself assessed and accredited by some reliable private agency rather than a government one. Such a voluntary work would have obviated the need for the establishment of NAAC but would have begun a process of change from within.
“To illustrate what I call self-correction I refer to an instance in 1989, of how out of every ten school teachers left service of the state schools in Britain because he was not satisfied with his own performance and there was no appreciation of his work by the society. Looking at our own performance here in India there is hardly a teacher who leaves teaching at college or university level because of his own lack of satisfaction at his performance. It is anybody’s guess if the society is satisfied with the performance of the teacher. The latter fact is so delicate an issue that the less said the better. Those teachers in Britain who left their teaching service must have gone through self introspection and then must have left what they could not do satisfactorily. I do not want to read in their cases the theory of of natural selection. As they felt they were not up to the satisfaction of what they expected or what society expected, they left. The others, who chose to remain in teaching must have changed themselves, in their own eyes first, to suit the teaching profession, and then in the eyes of the society. This related development is quite significant. It is also not true to say that the remaining nine out of ten who continued to teach were all perfect in their performance. What it does signify is the urgency there of self assessment and self correction leading to more suitability in the fast changing time. While over here, we have not only taken things for granted but we have also taken everyone for a tide”.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Molestation: Society, Police, Judges in Dock
The molestation of two women at JW Marriot hotel will become the most outrageous instance of how our society slides down to bestiality. When the society at large fails the woman what can you expect other than what you are getting in the streets of Mumbai, Kolkat and Delhi. Kolkata was most cultured and yet it also has joined the rest. Experts have been warning for decades now that the ratio of women has gone down as compared to men making our streets unsafe for women and girls. Some have also expressed concern that during riots and pogroms the woman is singled out for horrendous revenge. A society that does not heed either will have it coming to them sooner or later. Ahemdabad gave way to this bestiality in the 1980s with women falling victim to hatred of communalism. Never before had the woman been made to suffer by people on both sides of the great divide. Had we in our conscientious uprightness addressed this issue then much of the cruelty to women in the public would have been checked. All the wings of government have proved ineffective. The worst among them is the police. A former police commissioner of Delhi had the temerity to say that much of eve teasing, molestation and rape are on account of women wearing provocative dresses. Even political parties like the Shiv Sena joined the issue with a cultural agenda in hand. Whether they object the skimpy dress on the Marine Drive or provoking apparel in Connaught Square in Delhi, the police and the political parties blame the victims rather than the male perpetrators. Male chauvinism went so far that Kiran Bedi had to seek voluntary retirement and resign because of it. The reason among others behind denying Bedi commissionership is the lurking male scare of territorial right. The women are much less corrupt, more modest and incapable of placating the political bosses without their spouses. The political parties of all hue and colour have used the woman for their selective narrow electoral goals. In the New Year eve molestation in Mumbai Shiv Sena supported the police rather than the victims. BJP would use Shah Bano case and would patronize Taslima Nasrin rather than take up the case of the bereaved widow Pryanka Todi not to speak of the widows and victims of the Gujarat carnage of 2002. Now women feel so left out of the polity that they have woken up to the last resort of forming their own political party. They came together on January 7, 2008 in Delhi to form a political party called United Women’s Front under the chairperson Suman Krishan Kant, widow of a former vice president of the country. The chairperson of the party remarked "Women have simply not been getting the kind of governance they deserve. Take Delhi for example. It has a female chief minister, yet it is one of the most dangerous places for women . . . All this is precisely because we do not have enough women in decision-making and in the political process. Even the courts have failed the women. In the famous rape case of Ms Mathura in Nagpur region the girl was victim of her own friend. She went to complain to the police against his violation of her modesty. The police themselves raped her. The shopkeepers in the neighbourhood heard her cries and gave witness in the court. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the cops saying that there were no physical marks of nails or other wise to prove the rape. In another famous case an inexperienced ward boy of KEM hospital raped a female doctor and injured her spinal cord thereby paralyzing the young doctor for life. He was exonerated because he had penetrated the anus and not the vagina!
In the case of the Juhu hotel the police should have taken extraordinary caution in view of the crowds of revelers and the attitude of certain political parties to the revelry. There seems to be some design in the molestation and attacks on women. For around the same time Koena Mitra, a model and actress was inside the Sahara Star hotel in Mumbai. A stalker attacked her. Like the police commissioner of Delhi the police in Mumbai blamed the women. Mitra says “The cops told us to wear decent clothes and threatened to punish us if we broke the dress code for our performances on New Year's Eve." The question that the right minded people have always asked and what others including the political bosses must ask now is: what exactly is the decent clothing? Most of the rapes take place not in cities but in villages across the country where our daughters, sisters and mothers wear nine war or yard saris. What should the country side women wear to prevent molestation and rape?
The two victims of Marriot hotel area were decently dressed. There was no nudity of any kind or variety. On the other hand they were fully covered and rather formally dressed. What is more their skirt, coats and pants were black, a colour of mourning rather than revelry! It is shame that a crowd of about seventy men set upon them tearing even the skirt of one in their attempt to disrobe them.
Disrobing and not the kind of dress was the prurient predatory desire of the male!
In the case of the Juhu hotel the police should have taken extraordinary caution in view of the crowds of revelers and the attitude of certain political parties to the revelry. There seems to be some design in the molestation and attacks on women. For around the same time Koena Mitra, a model and actress was inside the Sahara Star hotel in Mumbai. A stalker attacked her. Like the police commissioner of Delhi the police in Mumbai blamed the women. Mitra says “The cops told us to wear decent clothes and threatened to punish us if we broke the dress code for our performances on New Year's Eve." The question that the right minded people have always asked and what others including the political bosses must ask now is: what exactly is the decent clothing? Most of the rapes take place not in cities but in villages across the country where our daughters, sisters and mothers wear nine war or yard saris. What should the country side women wear to prevent molestation and rape?
The two victims of Marriot hotel area were decently dressed. There was no nudity of any kind or variety. On the other hand they were fully covered and rather formally dressed. What is more their skirt, coats and pants were black, a colour of mourning rather than revelry! It is shame that a crowd of about seventy men set upon them tearing even the skirt of one in their attempt to disrobe them.
Disrobing and not the kind of dress was the prurient predatory desire of the male!
Monday, January 7, 2008
Islam and Blasphemy
A guest among strangers was also Taslima Nasrin. But she broke not only propriety of being guest but put the hosts into an embarrassing situation .She turned abusive and wanted to take upon the whole umma. The Muslims in India are part of the complex configuration of the society. As a foreigner her contemptuous, irreverent talk about god and his messenger and the message turned into a nightmare for her and threatened to divide the hosts. As if burning purda and renouncing the holy book was not enough of apostasy. She dared to say the abominable, nauzbilla, to mention the awfully unmentionable: “Such then has been the character of this rascal of a prophet; and concealed within the folds of his raiment is the hoax known as Allah” This caused the street protests in Kolkata as did “The Satanic Verses” of Salman Rushdie in Mumbai. Islam is practiced by a large number of people in the subcontinent as well as the Scandinavian countries. Blasphemy will have violent reaction because it dangerously challenges the believers and dares to test their belief.
But what about sharing the attributes of god with man, is that a lesser evil? Fiction is stranger than reality and reveals more. There is a novel of the Pakistani writer Tehmina Durrani called “Blasphemy”. A Muslim divine, the pir, marries Heer, an underage girl. Her parents offer her to him on a platter as an offering almost. He perpetrates cruelty upon her and rapes her whenever he likes and practices child abuse with others. This horrible practice results in the death of the abused children. He even makes video films of raping his wife and having friends raping her on the camera. He replays the films for perverted pleasure. Finally a victim kills him. Heer takes the films to the friends and shows how they had abused their pirni. They are stunned by the sacrilege. One even kills himself for what he had done with the better half of the divine! But then Heer’s own son turns against her. To maintain his fiefdom he incarcerates her. But by then the tabligi jamat has made appearance and Heer hopes for reform. This is a novel, of course, and cannot be taken as a testimony of a truth. But it lifts the cover a little and reveals much.
Child abuse is one evil and there are other practices that are anathema to religions, not just to Islam. Irshad Manji has no inhibition about her sexual orientation. She is a lesbian but still believes she is a Muslim. Although this explicit phenomenon is recent in the history of mankind, more time is needed to sort out what kind and degree of homoeroticism is violation of religion.
On the horizon of Islam the tabligi jamat appeared late, in the fifties in India. These are the people who have struggled against what is sacrilegious and blasphemous. They are totally unworldly in their endeavour to bring pristine practices of religion back in everyday life of Muslims by correcting what are not religious, but indigenous rites. They do not concern themselves with other religions and strictly keep within the fold and the parameters of Islam. It is one of the most refreshing events of post partition that the members of the tagli jamat went into Punjab. With the wounds of partion still raw they could not but get very hostile reception. They landed up with their founder in a police station. The police officer on duty had lost his family in the partition riots when they had tried to escape into India. He could have perpetrated any degree of torture on the tabligi jamat. But he was such a devout Hindu himself that he showed mercy to them and sheltered them rather than turning them out to the hostile crowd of people. Another incident is about a group of tabligi jamat from Malegaon that had gone to China where the group interacted with the Chinese Muslims and others peacefully despite official disdain. In both the cases the jamat steadfastly dealt with religious practices of the followers of Islam and how to make the believers stick to them. Margaret Metcalf of California University in write up on this in the special number on Islam in the American journal ANNALS argues that there is a peaceful aspect of Islam for which it attracts others to its teaching. It negates the popular misconception that sword rather than pen and preaching played major role. Among the jamat group was Hanif Mili whose travelogue she had read and remarked that he must have authored many books and must have been well read. If the prophet had asked Muslims to go to any distant place for seeking knowledge going to China was not carrying coal to Newcastle, the English Dhanbad. Traveling is humbling as well as enlightening and hence necessary according to the prophet. The tabligi jamat are the people you come across on roads with their bedding and suitcases on shoulders and heads marching in regular formation, strictly keeping to themselves and their side.
But what about sharing the attributes of god with man, is that a lesser evil? Fiction is stranger than reality and reveals more. There is a novel of the Pakistani writer Tehmina Durrani called “Blasphemy”. A Muslim divine, the pir, marries Heer, an underage girl. Her parents offer her to him on a platter as an offering almost. He perpetrates cruelty upon her and rapes her whenever he likes and practices child abuse with others. This horrible practice results in the death of the abused children. He even makes video films of raping his wife and having friends raping her on the camera. He replays the films for perverted pleasure. Finally a victim kills him. Heer takes the films to the friends and shows how they had abused their pirni. They are stunned by the sacrilege. One even kills himself for what he had done with the better half of the divine! But then Heer’s own son turns against her. To maintain his fiefdom he incarcerates her. But by then the tabligi jamat has made appearance and Heer hopes for reform. This is a novel, of course, and cannot be taken as a testimony of a truth. But it lifts the cover a little and reveals much.
Child abuse is one evil and there are other practices that are anathema to religions, not just to Islam. Irshad Manji has no inhibition about her sexual orientation. She is a lesbian but still believes she is a Muslim. Although this explicit phenomenon is recent in the history of mankind, more time is needed to sort out what kind and degree of homoeroticism is violation of religion.
On the horizon of Islam the tabligi jamat appeared late, in the fifties in India. These are the people who have struggled against what is sacrilegious and blasphemous. They are totally unworldly in their endeavour to bring pristine practices of religion back in everyday life of Muslims by correcting what are not religious, but indigenous rites. They do not concern themselves with other religions and strictly keep within the fold and the parameters of Islam. It is one of the most refreshing events of post partition that the members of the tagli jamat went into Punjab. With the wounds of partion still raw they could not but get very hostile reception. They landed up with their founder in a police station. The police officer on duty had lost his family in the partition riots when they had tried to escape into India. He could have perpetrated any degree of torture on the tabligi jamat. But he was such a devout Hindu himself that he showed mercy to them and sheltered them rather than turning them out to the hostile crowd of people. Another incident is about a group of tabligi jamat from Malegaon that had gone to China where the group interacted with the Chinese Muslims and others peacefully despite official disdain. In both the cases the jamat steadfastly dealt with religious practices of the followers of Islam and how to make the believers stick to them. Margaret Metcalf of California University in write up on this in the special number on Islam in the American journal ANNALS argues that there is a peaceful aspect of Islam for which it attracts others to its teaching. It negates the popular misconception that sword rather than pen and preaching played major role. Among the jamat group was Hanif Mili whose travelogue she had read and remarked that he must have authored many books and must have been well read. If the prophet had asked Muslims to go to any distant place for seeking knowledge going to China was not carrying coal to Newcastle, the English Dhanbad. Traveling is humbling as well as enlightening and hence necessary according to the prophet. The tabligi jamat are the people you come across on roads with their bedding and suitcases on shoulders and heads marching in regular formation, strictly keeping to themselves and their side.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Islam Today: One and Only Book and Other Books
There are more books written on Islam today than on any other topic affecting people living across continents. It has been a matter of heightened interest and expectation that such research and compilation of books would produce a critical mass that would lead to important changes. That changes are underway is a sure sign of the time. Marking the festival of sacrifice on December 19, 2007 the Saudi monarch king Abdullah pardoned “the woman of Qatif” for what would have been legitimate case of stoning to death had a conservative and fundamentalist interpretation been allowed to sway. She had an affair with a friend, might have been a liaison, in fact. She called another friend to chaperon her to her minion of yesterday to recover photographs which would have come in the way of marriage sooner or later now that she was engaged. Seven men way laid them and raped her as well as her male companion. This would have been in itself disastrous even for her male companion. Strict punishment would have been throwing sodomy practitioners down from the highest point on land, or from a flying plane or helicopter. The monarch must have considered all the aspects of the case, its impact on the relationship with the west, the weltanschauung or world view on Islam as well as the spirit of sacrifice on the festival day and pilgrimage.
Thank god the worse did not happen. Can not such holistic approach to matters of life vouchsafe a wiser interpretation of the holy book? The answer lies in what Tariq Ramadan, the descendant of the founder of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, says. “For Muslims the Koran stands as the Text of reference, the source and the essence of the message transmitted to humanity by the creator. It is the last of a lengthy series of revelations addressed to humans down through history. It is the Word of God — but it is not God. The Koran makes known, reveals and guides: it is a light that responds to the quest for meaning. The Koran is remembrance of all previous messages, those of Noah and Abraham, of Moses and Jesus. Like them, it reminds and instructs our consciousness: life has meaning, facts are signs. It is the Book of all Muslims the world over. But paradoxically, it is not the first book someone seeking to know Islam should read. (A life of the Prophet or any book presenting Islam would be a better introduction.) For it is both extremely simple and deeply complex. The nature of the spiritual, human, historical and social teachings to be drawn from it can be understood at different levels. The Text is one, but its readings are multiple.” If a monarch can exercise his individual right to one kind of reading why not others, including Mohammad Parvez of Toronto suburb, did the same?
Texts, precepts and injunctions are not the only things Islam has. As life is multifaceted so are the religious applications of the revealed truth. In his book “God’s Ccrucible:Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215”, David Levering Lewis describes Abd al Rahman the only Umayyad King who escaped the Abbasid assassins. While on the run he saw his brother cut down on the banks of the Euphrates by the Abbasids close on his heels. Abd al Rahman crossed the straits into Spain, on Aug. 14, 755. He was bestowed the Arabic sobriquet “al-Dakhil”; the term means not merely “immigrant,” as usually translated, but also “a guest among strangers” — in effect, an alien. He ruled 32 years. He could be the prototype of the Mughal emperor Akbar in India for he brought “a uniting vision of community” and a principle of “civilized coexistence that might have served as a model for the continent.” His civic harmony displayed in his 32 years of Umayyad Spain is just one of the many multifaceted ways of living with the revealed truth.
Muslims in Europe are often at odds with the new surrounding. Their status at first is not different from guests among strangers. Modern welfare state laws of citizenship should be rather taken to temper with the teachings of Islam not in the sense of interference but mutual understanding and togetherness. Without yielding space to all the sundry people of Europe for all the types of issues there is still scope for reaching out to each other and living in tolerance. Scarf, yes, but with mutual understanding and sans exaggeration or too much insistence. Guests among strangers then become fellow citizens.
Thank god the worse did not happen. Can not such holistic approach to matters of life vouchsafe a wiser interpretation of the holy book? The answer lies in what Tariq Ramadan, the descendant of the founder of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, says. “For Muslims the Koran stands as the Text of reference, the source and the essence of the message transmitted to humanity by the creator. It is the last of a lengthy series of revelations addressed to humans down through history. It is the Word of God — but it is not God. The Koran makes known, reveals and guides: it is a light that responds to the quest for meaning. The Koran is remembrance of all previous messages, those of Noah and Abraham, of Moses and Jesus. Like them, it reminds and instructs our consciousness: life has meaning, facts are signs. It is the Book of all Muslims the world over. But paradoxically, it is not the first book someone seeking to know Islam should read. (A life of the Prophet or any book presenting Islam would be a better introduction.) For it is both extremely simple and deeply complex. The nature of the spiritual, human, historical and social teachings to be drawn from it can be understood at different levels. The Text is one, but its readings are multiple.” If a monarch can exercise his individual right to one kind of reading why not others, including Mohammad Parvez of Toronto suburb, did the same?
Texts, precepts and injunctions are not the only things Islam has. As life is multifaceted so are the religious applications of the revealed truth. In his book “God’s Ccrucible:Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215”, David Levering Lewis describes Abd al Rahman the only Umayyad King who escaped the Abbasid assassins. While on the run he saw his brother cut down on the banks of the Euphrates by the Abbasids close on his heels. Abd al Rahman crossed the straits into Spain, on Aug. 14, 755. He was bestowed the Arabic sobriquet “al-Dakhil”; the term means not merely “immigrant,” as usually translated, but also “a guest among strangers” — in effect, an alien. He ruled 32 years. He could be the prototype of the Mughal emperor Akbar in India for he brought “a uniting vision of community” and a principle of “civilized coexistence that might have served as a model for the continent.” His civic harmony displayed in his 32 years of Umayyad Spain is just one of the many multifaceted ways of living with the revealed truth.
Muslims in Europe are often at odds with the new surrounding. Their status at first is not different from guests among strangers. Modern welfare state laws of citizenship should be rather taken to temper with the teachings of Islam not in the sense of interference but mutual understanding and togetherness. Without yielding space to all the sundry people of Europe for all the types of issues there is still scope for reaching out to each other and living in tolerance. Scarf, yes, but with mutual understanding and sans exaggeration or too much insistence. Guests among strangers then become fellow citizens.
Islam Today
Islam is a way of life and when it comes in contact with unknown people in unknown places there is a chemistry of change. There is a new set of thinking and practices that people accepting Islam adopt. For example, the distinction between the sacred and the profane assumes significance as the people new to Islam begin to learn Islam. Alcohol and promiscuity are profane and hence forbidden. But when Muslims migrate to places which are alien to Islam they develop what Lee Harris calls ‘defense mechanism’. Muslims naturally want to defend themselves from things like alcohol and promiscuity. Veiling women is an attempt to forestall what would lead to temptation and beyond. Muslims are under siege in a cultural survival. But in the case of war and conquest, at least in the early years, force alone did not change much. The most beloved uncle of the prophet did not accept Islam altogether; almost all the others did. The result accordingly is “a total and revolutionary transformation in the culture of those conquered or converted.”
However, the west still views Islam with skepticism bordering on hostility. Harris himself speaks of self defense mechanism as fanaticism of Islam and rational explanation of world phenomenon of Islam as “fanaticism of reason”. There is Noam Chomsky who believes that the Muslims are victims of an evil system and are not terrorists themselves. Then there is Paul Wolfwitz who blames the medieval Dark Age kingdoms in the Middle East for terrorism. Neither Harris in his book “The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the Enlightenment” nor Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book “Infidel” is ready to accept the fanaticism of reason. Both are irked by the rational apologetics of the western leaders. Even so Harris views Islam in America as admirable for the individual’s choice of faith is his or her personal matter. Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the other hand feels disturbed by the import of immigrants’ legacy of the distant Islam; in particular what she calls “the law of the jungle, with its alpha males and submissive females.”
There are mixed incidents of the last critique of Islam. Recently a father killed his daughter for not wearing the hijab. Aksa Parvez, 16, lived in a Toronto suburb. She would be wearing loose garment and veil herself while in house but remove the hijab and wear more fashionable westernized dress when she went to college. Her devout father strangulated her for not wearing the scarf. Even so the father did not look sufficiently into the other injunctions of the Koran where it is asserted that there is no compulsion in religion. Mohammad Parves, 57, of Pakistani origin, acted more tribal than religious. Individualism of belief in America seems not to have crossed borders. Moreover the ijtehad or individual’s independent reasoning in a critical context that is allowable in religious matters is suppressed for the sake of mere outward conformity. What better instance of suicide of reason than denying the allowable and not keeping patience! Giving time and patience and more careful upbringing would have prevented what was lost in a whirl of social pressure and conformity. This traumatic experience does not bode well for any, but only reiterates “the law of the jungle, with its alpha males and submissive females.” No denying that it is constructed into the textual fabric of faith but must be looked at in the larger mosaic of the designs of the fabric to make a splendid picture of faith. It should be much like the Cordoba, Spain, mosque, splendour of breath taking sight produced by the warmth of faith and prayerfulness.
However, the west still views Islam with skepticism bordering on hostility. Harris himself speaks of self defense mechanism as fanaticism of Islam and rational explanation of world phenomenon of Islam as “fanaticism of reason”. There is Noam Chomsky who believes that the Muslims are victims of an evil system and are not terrorists themselves. Then there is Paul Wolfwitz who blames the medieval Dark Age kingdoms in the Middle East for terrorism. Neither Harris in his book “The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the Enlightenment” nor Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book “Infidel” is ready to accept the fanaticism of reason. Both are irked by the rational apologetics of the western leaders. Even so Harris views Islam in America as admirable for the individual’s choice of faith is his or her personal matter. Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the other hand feels disturbed by the import of immigrants’ legacy of the distant Islam; in particular what she calls “the law of the jungle, with its alpha males and submissive females.”
There are mixed incidents of the last critique of Islam. Recently a father killed his daughter for not wearing the hijab. Aksa Parvez, 16, lived in a Toronto suburb. She would be wearing loose garment and veil herself while in house but remove the hijab and wear more fashionable westernized dress when she went to college. Her devout father strangulated her for not wearing the scarf. Even so the father did not look sufficiently into the other injunctions of the Koran where it is asserted that there is no compulsion in religion. Mohammad Parves, 57, of Pakistani origin, acted more tribal than religious. Individualism of belief in America seems not to have crossed borders. Moreover the ijtehad or individual’s independent reasoning in a critical context that is allowable in religious matters is suppressed for the sake of mere outward conformity. What better instance of suicide of reason than denying the allowable and not keeping patience! Giving time and patience and more careful upbringing would have prevented what was lost in a whirl of social pressure and conformity. This traumatic experience does not bode well for any, but only reiterates “the law of the jungle, with its alpha males and submissive females.” No denying that it is constructed into the textual fabric of faith but must be looked at in the larger mosaic of the designs of the fabric to make a splendid picture of faith. It should be much like the Cordoba, Spain, mosque, splendour of breath taking sight produced by the warmth of faith and prayerfulness.
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