INSAF Bulletin 231, July 2021 International South Asia Forum http://www.insafbulletin.net Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015) Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey). Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst). Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
[1] EDITORIAL: IS PROTEST TERRORISM? MODI REGIME THINKS IT IS BUT DELHI HC DISAGREES
Vinod Mubayi
India, which boasts of being the “world’s largest democracy”, has a peculiar legal system for addressing protest or dissent against the regime in power. Despite a liberal secular constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and assembly, in practice people can, have been, and are being arrested for criticizing public officials or their policies under laws dating back to the colonial era such as the law on sedition. What is worse, however, is that if someone arrested manages to get bail under the original charge, the police, at their whim, re-arrest the same person, under far more draconian laws, such as the “anti-terrorist” UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) that makes bail extremely difficult, if not impossible, while the “investigation” drags on, rendering someone incarcerated for years before any trial begins. The judiciary, especially at the lower levels, intimidated by the executive bows to the whims of the police and prosecutors thus making a shambles of the entire legal process. As is common knowledge, this practice has significantly intensified in the era of the Modi regime that came to power promising “minimum government, maximum governance” but does the opposite to any dissent from its policies and actions. Meanwhile, actual perpetrators of violence, BJP political leaders shouting “goli maro salon ko” (shoot the bastards) and egging on mobs of Hindutva goondas to attack minorities and destroy their properties are not touched most likely on the orders of the political masters of the police.
In this fetid atmosphere redolent with the stinking air of police lying and intimidation accompanied by judicial timidity, a judgment of the Delhi High Court awarding bail to three students, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, and Asif Iqbal Tanha, arrested under a variety of charges including UAPA, has come as a breath of fresh air dispelling, at least partly, the stink and gloom enveloping the Indian legal system in recent years. The background to the judgment arises from the arrests made by the police following the widespread peaceful protests last year against the discriminatory CAA/NRC (Citizenship Amendment Act/National Register of Citizens) that culminated in the Delhi riots of late February-early March 2020. Many neutral observers pointed to the Hindutva role in fomenting the violence with complicity on the part of the Delhi police who are ruled by the Central Home Ministry led by Amit Shah. Instead of the perpetrators the police arrested scores of peaceful protestors, many of them students at prestigious institutions such as JNU and Jamia Millia Islamia, including Natasha, Devangana and Asif. Initially they were charged under ordinary criminal law but after they got bail under the criminal charges the police immediately charged them under the terrorist sections of the UAPA and they were re-arrested.
Despite a clear lack of any evidence the police claimed that it was the Muslims and radical students who had conspired to cause the riots, a claim that was thoroughly exposed and debunked by the Delhi High Court in the cases of Natasha, Devangana and Asif. [The details of the case and the egregious conduct of the prosecution are outlined in an article by the distinguished retired Supreme Court justice Madan B. Lokur that we carry separately in this issue]. What the Delhi High Court did was to shine a bright light on the defects of the UAPA law itself under which hundreds of people have been incarcerated as undertrial prisoners for years and years only to be eventually acquitted after trial and set free but having a substantial portion of their life destroyed in the process.
The well-known lawyer and legal analyst Mihir Desai writing in The Wire of June 16, 2021 remarks that the “importance of these Judgments lies in their rigor, logic and creativity…while discussing the facts in detail [the judgments] find that none of the accused were prima facie involved in any terrorist activities. The Delhi High Court goes into the history of the UAPA and comes to the conclusion that …it applies only in situations where the defense of India is threatened and not merely where a law and order or even public order situation arises.” This observation of the Court destroyed the prosecution case that was based entirely on innuendo and specious arguments that were thoroughly exposed by the Court.
The judgment indicated “There is absolutely nothing in the subject charge-sheet, by way of any specific...allegation, that would show the possible commission of a ‘terrorist act’ within the meaning of section 15 UAPA; or an act of ‘raising funds’ to commit a terrorist act under section 17; or an act of ‘conspiracy’ to commit or an ‘act preparatory’ to commit, a terrorist act within the meaning of section 18 UAPA. Accordingly, prima-facie we are unable to discern in the subject charge-sheet the elemental factual ingredients that are a must to found any of the offences defined under section 15, 17 or 18 UAPA”.
Alarmed at the High Court order that at one stroke threatened to demolish the legal basis of the UAPA, which would have led to freedom for many undertrial detenus, the minions of the government led by the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta rushed to the Supreme Court to cancel the orders of the High Court awarding bail. A vacation bench of the Supreme Court refused to cancel bail but gave a partial nod to the government by saying that the observations of the Delhi Court on the UAPA would not have “precedent value” in other cases.
It is difficult, however, to see how the Delhi High Court’s logic and legal reasoning on UAPA can be reversed unless it is done on purely political grounds by passing more black laws or the Supreme Court meekly bows to the government and overturns the Delhi High Court’s judgment.
[2] FIVE QUESTIONS ON THE SHAMEFUL PROCEEDINGS AGAINST NATASHA NARWAL, DEVANGANA KALITA, ASIF IQBAL
Madan B. Lokur
Appalling. That’s the only way to describe the manner in which the proceedings against Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Asif Iqbal Tanha have been conducted and are being conducted by the police and prosecution till now. In the process, the underbelly of our criminal justice system stands exposed in some respects, and it’s a pretty ugly sight. No comment is being offered about the recent judgment by the Delhi high court in their case, but certainly about the process, which has shown scant respect for human rights, rule of law and justice.
A brief background of the cases
Devangana Kalita
Of the four FIRs against Devangana Kalita, the first is FIR 250/2019 registered on December 21, 2019 – she was arrested under this FIR on May 30, 2020 (a year later) but was later granted bail on June 2. On the day of her arrest, Kalita was already in jail in connection with a fourth FIR. The allegation against her is primarily of rioting with a deadly weapon. There is no allegation of sedition.
The second is FIR 48/2020 dated February 24, 2020, for which she was arrested on May 23, 2020, but bailed out the very next day. The essential allegation against her is that of rioting and when she was granted bail, the order passed by the trial judge noted that the “accused was merely protesting against the NRC and CAA and accused did not indulge in any violence”.
The third FIR against Devangana is FIR 50/2020 in which she was arrested on May 24. The Delhi high court has observed that “Immediately upon being released on bail by the learned Duty Metropolitan Magistrate [in FIR 48/2020], then-and-there in the same court-room, the appellant was re-arrested by police officers from P.S.: Crime Branch in FIR No. 50/2020.” She got bail in this case on September 1. The basic charge against her is that of rioting with a deadly weapon. Usually, defendants are not arrested in the courtroom – the last time this happened was in Amitabh Bachchan’s Shahenshah!
The fourth FIR against Devangana is 59/2020 dated March 6, 2020. This FIR is the subject matter of the bail recently granted by the Delhi high court. She was arrested in this case on May 29 (three months later) while she was already in jail. A chargesheet was filed against her in connection with this FIR on September 16, 2020, and cognizance of the offences was taken on September 17.
To put it into perspective, Devangana was first arrested on May 23, 2020, then on May 24 and May 29 and finally on May 30. How desperate can the police and prosecution get?
Be that as it may, Devangana filed an application for bail in November 2020 in connection to the case relating to FIR 59. Quite obviously, it was filed before the charge sheet was served to her since the bail application was rejected by the trial judge on January 28, 2021 and the charge sheet served to her on or around March 25, 2021. Interestingly, there are copious references in the order of the trial judge to statements of some protected witnesses like Beta, Delta, Echo, Jupiter, Smith, Johny and Gama (where’s Charlie?). None of these statements are in the knowledge of Devangana or shared with her. Is this fair?
This order was under consideration in the Delhi high court.
Natasha Narwal
There are three FIRs against Natasha Narwal. The first is FIR 48/2020 dated February 24, 2020. She was arrested on May 23 in connection with this FIR but bailed out by a common order on May 24.
Again, as in the case of Kalita, Narwal was arrested from the courtroom itself on May 24 in connection with a second FIR, FIR 50/2020 dated February 26. The essential charge was of rioting with a deadly weapon. Narwal was granted bail by the trial judge on September 17.
The third FIR against Natasha is FIR 59/2020 dated March 6, 2020, in which she came to be arrested on May 29 when she was already in jail. She applied for bail in this case in September 2020 and obviously before the charge-sheet was served upon her. The bail application was rejected on January 28, 2021. The decision of the trial judge is the subject of discussion in the judgment of the Delhi high court of June 15.
Asif Iqbal Tanha
On December 16, 2019, an FIR 298/2019 was registered against Asif Iqbal Tanha for rioting. There was no allegation of sedition or terrorism. The FIR was registered in connection with peaceful protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). In our constitution, a peaceful protest is called a peaceable assembly and without arms. It is a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 19(1)(b) of our constitution. Except section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), there is no law that places any reasonable restriction or prohibits, in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India or public order, peaceable assembly without arms.
The exercise of power under section 144 of the CrPC is hedged in with conditions about which the administration doesn’t care. But that’s another story. So, notwithstanding the peaceful protest by Tanha against the CAA, he was charged with rioting and that too of being armed with a deadly weapon. He was also accused of attempted murder. For these alleged offences, he was arrested sometime in May 2020 but granted bail by the district judge on May 28, 2020.
Contumacious denial of charge sheet to the accused
During this entire period, three important events occurred. First, there were riots in North East Delhi in late February in 2020. Soon thereafter, an FIR 59/2020 dated March 6 was registered against Devangana, Natasha and Asif for rioting. Second, on April 19, a charge of terrorism under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) was added to the FIR along with a charge of sedition while the three were still in judicial custody. Third, Asif was arrested on May 20 and Devangana and Natasha were arrested on May 29 in connection with FIR 59.
On conclusion of investigations relating to FIR 59, a charge-sheet was filed on September 16 against the three accused (and others) and the trial judge took cognisance of the offences on the next day, except the offence of sedition since the necessary sanction had not been received by the prosecution from the concerned authorities. On September 17, the trial judge passed the first order for supply of a copy of the charge sheet to Devangana, Natasha and Asif.
As a matter of right, they are entitled to a copy of the charge sheet filed against them. Section 207 of the CrPC provides for it. It was supplied to them in a pen drive on September 21 in compliance with the order of September 17 passed by the trial judge. A soft copy having been supplied to them, were they – and others – given free and unlimited access to a computer in jail, whenever they desired?
Has the prosecution tried reading a 17,000- or 19,000-page document on a computer to ascertain how convenient or inconvenient it is? It is not the letter of the law, but the spirit that has to be complied with, particularly in a matter of liberty. But, does the prosecution care or even acknowledge the existence of statutory rights?
On the next date, September 19, while explaining why a physical copy of the charge sheet could not be supplied to them, it was submitted by the prosecution that the charge sheet has thousands of pages and there are 15 accused persons and some approvals including financial have to be taken. Obviously, disapproving of such a submission, the trial judge proceeded to pass a second order for the supply of the charge-sheet to the accused clearly mentioning that a physical copy of the charge-sheet will be supplied to all the accused persons in the jail itself.
Continuing the harassment, a physical copy of the charge sheet was still not supplied to the three. On October 21, the prosecution submitted before the trial judge that it needed government sanction of funds for supplying a hard copy of the charge-sheet to the accused. This submission was made one month after the trial judge had passed an order for supply of the charge-sheet. Was it not possible for the prosecution to seek sanction during this period? More importantly, is government sanction required for compliance with natural justice principles? Amazing, isn’t it?
The trial judge rightly rejected this submission of the prosecution while observing that it is “not impressed” with this submission. It was noted that “Once the charge sheet has been filed by the Investigating Agency, as voluminous as it is, with some alacrity, a copy of it has to be provided in hard copy to every accused which was also a direction of the court. They may require sanction of funds for the said purpose; however, they were supposed to act promptly.” It was then directed, for the third time, that a physical copy of the charge-sheet be supplied to every accused before the next date of hearing “without fail”.
If the prosecution chooses to file a voluminous document and needs financial sanction for photocopying it, it is entirely the prosecution’s concern but it must supply the charge-sheet to the accused persons. Photocopying 17,000 or 19,000 pages and getting financial sanction may be a hassle for the prosecution, but depriving a citizen of his or her constitutional right to liberty does not seem to be a problem.
Seemingly the supply of a physical copy of the charge sheet became a prestige issue and as a continuation of its caprice, the prosecution challenged the orders of the trial judge by filing a petition in the Delhi high court. The petition was entertained by the high court on November 4 and it passed an order on November 10 staying trial in the case. The petition suffered several adjournments and eventually on March 23, 2021, it was submitted to the high court that a complete hard copy of the charge sheet was ready and the accused were at liberty to collect it from the trial court on March 25, 2021.
In view of this statement, the petition was disposed of by the high court. In other words, a charge sheet that had been filed on September 16, 2020, was actually made available to Devangana, Natasha and Asif only on March 25, 2021, after a gap of six months, and all this while they remained in jail without knowing the actual allegations and charges against them.
Bail hearing without charge sheet and relevant documents
In the meanwhile, the three accused persons independently filed an application for bail, pending completion of investigations, but they were was rejected. Also in the meanwhile, the police continued with their investigations and filed the first supplementary charge sheet on November 22, 2020, and the second supplementary charge-sheet on March 1, 2021. What this really means is that investigations overall were not completed but those who were initially accused of a crime – such as Devangana, Natasha and Asif – were required to be detained until the investigations are complete.
Theoretically, there is nothing to prevent the prosecution from filing a third, fourth and fifth supplementary charge-sheet since investigations can go on and on for another one or two years and this can be used as a ground by the prosecution for continuing the detention of the accused in jail since it is possible that they might influence investigations. In fact, this was noted as a submission (though not in as many words) made by the prosecution. It was stated in this regard that, “As regards further investigation, it was pointed out [by the prosecution] that it is still going on till all the perpetrators are apprehended and all evidence collected.”
Question 1: Why should those against whom the investigation is complete and charge-sheet filed remain in jail “till all the perpetrators are apprehended and all evidence collected”? Is it not possible to segregate their case and close the chapter as far as they are concerned? Supplementary charge-sheets can be filed against others as when more facts get revealed on further investigation, but why punish others?
Be that as it may, the bail applications were filed before the charge-sheet was filed and cognisance taken of the offences. They were rejected. But what is more important is that a bail application was also filed after the charge-sheet was filed and cognisance taken. These applications were rejected by the trial judge (in the case of Devangana and Natasha on January 28, 2021 and Asif on October 26, 2020).
When the subject bail applications were filed and decided, the prosecution and the trial judge had a copy of the charge-sheet but the accused did not – despite a legitimate statutory demand. The three accused had to argue the bail application without knowing the alleged facts and charges against them. Remember, a copy the charge-sheet was supplied to them in accordance with section 207 of the CrPC only on March 25, 2021. Supply of the charge-sheet on a pendrive was meaningless.
On the other hand, both the prosecution and the trial judge had a grossly unfair advantage of having a copy of the charge sheet and were entitled to use, and did use, the material against the accused without their knowing the contents of the charge-sheet. Statements of Beta, Delta, Echo, Jupiter, Smith, Johny and Gama were within their knowledge, were used against them and evidently would have influenced them. Clearly and obviously, the dice was heavily loaded against the three accused and under these circumstances they certainly could not have expected that the bail application would be allowed. They had to fight the bail application with their hands virtually tied behind their back against an ‘armed’ prosecution.
Question 2: Do you think fair play died guttering, choking and drowning during the bail hearings? What does justice mean in matters of personal liberty? Is justice important?
Implementing the orders of the Delhi high court
Naturally feeling aggrieved by the denial of bail, an appeal was filed by the three accused before the Delhi high court sometime in January or February 2021 and which came to be decided by the judgement and order dated June 15, 2021. Soon after pronouncing the judgment and granting bail, the high court directed that information be sent to the trial judge for information and compliance forthwith.
A constitution bench of the Supreme Court has interpreted “forthwith” as meaning without undue or unreasonable delay. But as will be seen a little later, the prosecution and police contumaciously did everything possible to cause undue and unreasonable delay in releasing the accused. Perhaps, the prosecution and police believe that they are above the law.
Contumacious conduct part II
Having lost the battle of the charge sheet, the prosecution and police decided to devour time. First it was submitted before the concerned judge that the address of the three accused had to be verified. Believe it or not, these three accused had been arrested more than once each and had been in jail for more than a year and yet the police had no time to verify their address. Natasha had been released from jail soon after her father had passed away and Asif had been granted interim bail to study for his exams, and one would assume that the police had verified their address at that time. As for Devangana, the police wanted to take the Rajdhani to Assam, while, if you remember, Disha Ravi was brought by plane (specially chartered?) from Bangalore to Delhi. Did the police have the financial sanction for the train or plane journey?
Question 3: Is this an admission by the police that maybe they had arrested the wrong Devangana Kalita, the wrong Natasha Narwal and the wrong Asif Iqbal Tanha? It’s a question worth asking, no?
Then the police said that they wanted to verify their Aadhar cards and that they need to consult the Unique Identity Authority of India. What if an accused does not have an Aadhaar card? Does it mean that he or she can never be released on bail? What if the UIDAI does not confirm their Aadhaar card?
Then the verification of the sureties. Brinda Karat, a former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) stood as a surety for Natasha. Who is she, by the way? What is her address? Does she have an Aadhaar card? What is her bank balance? Absolutely mind-boggling filibustering by the police. This is what Karat had to say: “I was in (trial) court all day and it was a shameful day when the Delhi Police … did everything to subvert and sabotage the Delhi High Court judgment granting bail to the UAPA detenus. My surety for Natasha was double-checked by the Delhi police – once yesterday and then today in the morning – as they did with the others. Despite this, the Delhi Police said in court that their verification was still incomplete.” Can you imagine?
What did a former judge of the Delhi high court (Justice Jaspal Singh) have to say about this entire episode? He said, “In my long years as a judicial officer since 1964 and as a high court judge for eight years, I have never seen a magistrate ask the police to verify a bail bond or a surety being verified. Courts see if the surety has proper control of the accused … so he does not abscond. This is entirely in the domain of the court.”
During the years I spent in the Delhi high court, the practice would be to sacrifice a few minutes of one’s lunch and tea so that a bail order could be dispatched immediately and hopefully the prisoner released before the prison gates closed. There was no need to specify in the bail order that it should be complied forthwith. I believe this practice continues even today, the only change being that now the honourable judges have to direct immediate compliance, and that direction is disregarded at the whims and fancies of the police and prosecution.
Question 4: Is it possible for the police and prosecution to sink to lower depths? Would this ‘show of strength’ amount to disrespect, if not contempt of court?
The conduct of the police suggests that they were desperate to file an appeal in the Supreme Court before Devangana, Natasha and Asif were released. They are entitled to file an appeal, but with undue haste? They did use every trick to stall the release and prepare an appeal overnight and get it ready for filing.
Contrast this alacrity with the speed at which the trial is being conducted. Not one witness has been examined so far by the prosecution. The reason is that the investigation is not complete. When will it be complete? Nobody knows and until then some of them will remain in jail as undertrial prisoners. Assuming the trial starts quickly. When will it conclude? Nobody knows. The prosecution has cited 740 witnesses. If one witness is examined every day, it will still take three years to conclude the trial. Aisi bhi kya jaldi hai?
Question 5: Did the police get the financial sanction for appealing to the Supreme Court and if so, when? How did they manage it so quickly? Assuming everything in their favour, did the police assume that the Supreme Court would stay the release of the activists for the asking? When does the prosecution expect to begin and conclude the trial? Any guesses?
Sorry, but the manner in which the processes in the criminal justice system has been footballed around, someone deserves a direct entry to the Euro Cup. Clearly, in some ways the scales of processual justice are heavily loaded in favour of the state and the victims are ordinary people like you and me – not the privileged few. That is why people spend years in jail as undertrial prisoners in inhuman conditions. We need to seriously think about these gaps in our constitutional and human rights. We also need to think about the dignity of the citizen. We have miles to go before we sleep. And miles to go before we sleep.
Madan B. Lokur is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India.
[3] KASHMIR MEET AFTER TWO YEARS OF RUIN: A RECKONING OR A NEW TACK?
Muzamil Jaleel
Is New Delhi’s outreach to pro-India parties a tactical step to normalise the devastating changes introduced in J&K since August 5, 2019? Has the Sangh Parivar’s Kashmir project run up against a roadblock or has it been compelled by international players to change course?
In Kashmir, people make big houses, bigger than they should, and often bigger than they can afford. Big enough to host wedding feasts for their children, big enough for mourners to gather when the time comes. For sorrow and for joy, Kashmiris say.
In Kashmir, home is also the place to hide. For the past thirty years, it has been the last refuge from the violence that runs mad on its streets, and over its lush meadows and hulking mountains. It isn’t really safe, of course, what with random midnight raids that often end in an inhabitant’s arrest, torture, and sometimes death. And if a militant is found holed up in one, it’s almost invariably blasted into rubble. Yet, home is where Kashmiris feel the safest. It is an island of life in a deluge of violence, which, in its newest form is being inflicted through the blunt instrument of demographic change, a deluge brought to drown Kashmiris once and for all.
Home and land, like political aspirations, are central to the conflict in Kashmir. On August 5, 2019, when India unilaterally removed Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomy, split the state into two territories ruled directly from New Delhi, and repealed the law that safeguarded the native population’s residency and property rights, it launched the final assault on the homeland of Kashmiris. The plan is, and always has been, to rob Kashmiris of their land, flood it with settlers, and eventually render the natives into a disempowered minority that’s not fully human, but human object, a thing.
The RSS – the mothership of the Sangh Parivar, a fleet of Hindu nationalist groups, including the ruling BJP, that seeks to turn India into an enthonationalist Hindu state – has publicly decried Jammu and Kashmir’s Muslim majority demography as “oppressive”, “a thorn in the flesh”, and “a headache for our country”. These devastating changes launched on August 5, 2019 are integral to this civilisational project of the Sangh Parivar, which has long considered drastic demographic change, through what is essentially a settler colonial project, as the only way to end the Kashmir dispute for good. In fact, they publicly speak about taking inspiration from Israel to further their goal.
Once the Permanent Resident Act, a law enacted in 1927 to safeguard the demographic and cultural identities of Kashmir’s many ethnic and religious groups, was removed, it eased the legal path to set up townships for settlers in the region, under the protection of the massive military apparatus. The 1927 law ensured that only permanent residents of J&K competed for government jobs in the state, voted in local elections, and obtained property. These special protections existed in a complicated historical context.
After the British Raj folded up, India’s leadership promised a plebiscite for the people of J&K to determine their political future. In November 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru told All India Radio that J&K’s fate was “ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given not only to the people of Kashmir but also to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it”. A few days later, he told India’s Constituent Assembly, “We have suggested that when people of Kashmir are given a chance to decide their future, this should be done under the supervision of an impartial tribunal such as the United Nations Organization.”
Nehru’s assurances came after India secured conditional accession of J&K, thanks mainly to Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, then the state’s most popular leader. He argued for J&K to go with India rather than Pakistan without seeking to determine the wishes of the population. Abdullah even represented India’s case at the United Nations. “I and my organisation never believed in the formula that Muslims and Hindus form separate nations,” he said. “We do not believe in the two-nation theory….”
Seventy years later, Abdullah’s words sound hollow. Almost every leader of Kashmir’s pro-India political camp, including three former chief ministers, were detained for months and gagged after New Delhi put the region under lockdown to preempt mass protests against the August 5 move. In fact, the Indian government divested all their local intermediaries, including Abdullah’s party, of any political standing in one fell swoop.
Back in 1947, however, Abdullah had insisted that J&K’s accession to India came with a condition: J&K was to have a special status within the Indian union. It took India’s top leaders and Abdullah, by then prime minister of J&K, nearly five months until October 1949 to negotiate the terms of this special status.
This arrangement, though, has never been accepted by one of the two broad ideological camps that have dominated J&K’s political landscape since 1947. They are those who resist India’s rule, arguing that the people of J&K have never been allowed to exercise their right to self-determination, promised by India’s first prime minister and endorsed by the UN. The pro-India camp, however, believes that J&K’s accession to India is final, but insists that the now revoked special status, guaranteed by the Indian constitution, formed the basis of the relationship. Indeed, they consider J&K’s special status the mainstay of a solemn compact between two sovereign peoples – which meant that when it was unilaterally revoked, all the terms of J&K’s entry into the Indian Union were voided. This compact also ensured that J&K had its own constitution, its own flag, prime minister, president and its own official language, Urdu. All these symbols of special status are gone. In fact, even pro-India political parties in J&K whose participation in local government elections India would use as an argument before the world against the demand for the right to self-determination, stand decimated. The distinction between Kashmiris who questioned India’s sovereignty over J&K and those who had been India’s face in the region has disappeared. They are all unwanted suspects.
To signal the essence of this Kashmir project in the larger Hindu supremacist agenda, the first anniversary of the abrogation of J&K’s semi-autonomy and dismemberment was chosen to lay the foundation of the Ram temple, which is coming up on the site where the Babri Masjid existed until it was violently torn down by Hindu extremists in 1992. India’s prime minister, fellow BJP leaders, and top RSS functionaries attended the celebration.
In the years since removing J&K’s semi-autonomy, the Indian government has taken a series of decisions to take forward its plan and each step is part of the single path towards altering the demographic complexion of the erstwhile state.
A new domicile law has been introduced, and implemented retrospectively, to provide legal cover to demographic change. Under this law, any Indian citizen who has resided for fifteen years in J&K or studied for seven years and appeared in class 10 and class 12 examination from a school located in J&K can become a domicile, as can the children of Indian federal officials and members of Indian armed forces who have served in the region for 10 years. Since the law does not specify that the period of residency or service must be at a stretch, any Indian citizen who has lived or served in J&K for the prescribed length of time over multiple stints would qualify as well. The exact number of Indian citizens who have thus become eligible to take domicile in J&K isn’t known but there is no doubt that it has already considerably altered the region’s demographic complexion.
Over the last several months, Pakistan has taken several reconciliatory steps towards India. It imposed an unconditional ceasefire along the Line of Control which was an advantage for New Delhi at a time when tensions along the LAC with China were rising. The Pakistani leadership has muted criticism of India’s prime minister and the BJP, and especially stopped comparing them with the Nazis. Cross-border infiltration is almost zero, as the J&K police and other Indian security agencies have publicly admitted. Save one recent instance, there has been no encounter involving non-local militants in the last eight months or so. Islamabad has provided some relief to India in the case of Kulbhushan Jadav, a former Indian navy officer who Islamabad says is a RAW agent involved in terror attacks inside Pakistan.
Is New Delhi’s shift on Kashmir an outcome of the changed regional and global power dynamics and the talks facilitated by the UAE? If these steps taken by Islamabad are indeed an outcome of the back-channel talks facilitated by the UAE, what reconciliatory measures has New Delhi agreed to take to reciprocate? The answers to these questions will become apparent once the purpose and contours of the meeting called by Modi are known.
But if New Delhi doesn’t address the main concerns of the people and instead limits its outreach to bring J&K’s pro-India camp on board in lieu of the restoration of a truncated state, it will only mean that there has not been a rethink on the Indian government’s Kashmir policy. It will be seen as a mere ploy to prop up local political faces to normalise the devastating changes effected with the scrapping of J&K’s semi- autonomy. On the other side, even if J&K’s local pro-India parties, which have been opposing New Delhi’s unilateral decisions on and after August 5, 2019, submit to this new scheme, it won’t dent the public alienation with New Delhi. It will, in fact, delegitimize these parties further, paving for the public anger to eventually explode.
Muzamil Jaleel is a Kashmiri journalist who has been reporting and writing for more than 25 years. He is currently Deputy Editor at The Indian Express.
[The above is an excerpt. The full article can be accessed at https://www.inversejournal.com/2021/06/24/kashmir-meet-after-two-years-of-ruin-a-reckoning-or-a-new- tack-by-muzamil-jaleel/]
[4] CULPABLE CARNAGE: HOW THE MODI GOVERNMENT’S FAILURE TO ACT LED TO INDIA’S COVID-19 CATASTROPHE
Chahat Rana
ON THE MORNING OF 17 APRIL, amidst a chorus of loud cheers, Narendra Modi walked across a stage to stand at a podium, all set to address an election rally in the city of Asansol, in West Bengal. As the prime minister found his place at the podium, he promptly removed his snugly-fit white mask, rubbed his face and stroked his flowing white beard. For a few seconds, Modi took in the cheering crowd through impassive eyes, before raising his hands in a namaskar above his head. The rally had begun.
Thousands of supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party had gathered at Asansol’s Nigha airbase. The venue was chosen because it could accommodate more people than the Asansol Polo Ground, which is where most local political rallies are usually held. BJP workers were certain of a huge turnout and insisted that the large grounds of the airbase would allow them to ensure social distancing, as necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. By 10 am, as the crowd grew—people sat in plastic chairs squished next to each other, or stood huddled together in groups at the back—social distancing appeared to be a distant reality.
As Modi delivered his speech, taking jabs at West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress and its chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, a mass of faces looked on. Some attendees sported a loosely fitted saffron mask, often embellished with the BJP’s lotus symbol. Others wore surgical masks around their necks or up to their mouths, leaving their noses exposed. And still others could be seen sitting without any masks at all, coughing into their hands, before looking up and waving at a camera.
Five minutes into his address, after delivering some preliminary remarks, Modi once again surveyed the crowd, before telling them that he wanted to express a shikayat—a complaint. “I have come here twice before, before the Lok Sabha elections, to ask for your vote,” he said. “But, at those times, not even one- fourth of the crowd I see here was in attendance.” He added, “Aaj aapne aisa dam dikhaya hai, aisi takat dikhayi hai. Main jahan dekhta hun wahan mujhe log dikh rahein hain, baki kuchh dikhta nahin”—Today you have shown such courage, such force. Wherever I look, I see people, nothing else. After that, the crowd erupted into chants of “Modi, Modi.”
In mid April, as the health infrastructure in several states was collapsing during the second wave of the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a massive election rally in West Bengal. PTI
On the same day, about a thousand kilometres away, Manish Jangra, a 26-year-old doctor in Delhi, was going through one of the most traumatic days of his life. Jangra, who works at the central government-run Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, had tested positive for COVID-19 a few days earlier. On 17 April, he began developing severe symptoms of the disease. He struggled to breathe, and his oxygen-saturation levels plummeted well beneath the minimum levels expected in a young and healthy adult. “So, without a second thought, my friend and I headed to RML on a scooter,” Jangra told me. “I knew if I don’t get oxygen support in time, I might not survive this.”
A rude surprise awaited Jangra outside the hospital’s trauma centre. Citing full capacity and a lack of beds, the guards outside the hospital refused to grant him entry. “I told them I am an employee,” he said. “They knew me, I am sure, some of them even recognised me. It was heartbreaking, standing outside begging them to let me in.” As Jangra’s friend, a doctor himself, went to speak to senior administrative officials, he waited close to the hospital’s triage ward for COVID-19 patients, sitting alongside desperate family members hoping to get loved ones admitted to the hospital. Within a few minutes, Jangra felt like he was losing consciousness—he described it as “slipping into the darkness.” “I felt like I couldn’t just wait anymore; I was in panic and everyone around me was in the same state,” he said. “As a doctor, I have never felt so helpless. I could hardly take care of myself, let alone others around me.”
After an hour of waiting, Jangra was finally admitted to the triage ward, where patients were being given first-aid support until beds were available in the dedicated COVID-19 ward. The ward was brimming with severely ill patients, all in need of some level of oxygen support. Jangra shared a bed and the two of them passed the same mask back and forth. “Everyone was sharing a bed as well as oxygen at the ward,” he said. Another long wait began, this time for admission to the COVID-19 ward. It was a ward he was familiar with, a ward where he had spent the past year tirelessly working to save lives.
Elsewhere in Delhi, similar scenes of despair and desperation unfurled. As a healthcare professional, Jangra was one of the lucky few who was able to fight his way to a bed with oxygen supply. Through the second half of April till early May, thousands waited outside hospitals or shuttled between various healthcare facilities in ambulances to secure treatment for their loved ones. At the time, Delhi’s Aam Aadmi Party government said there were still a few thousand beds available in the national capital, but securing a bed with oxygen supply or inside an intensive-care unit was next to impossible.
In other parts of the country, public-health systems had already begun to crumble under the deluge of COVID-19 cases and deaths. In Gujarat, Modi’s home state, patients were dying inside ambulances and outside of hospitals before they could access hospital care. At a gas crematorium, the metal frames of a furnace melted as bodies burnt round the clock. Open grounds were turned into mass-cremation sites, and families ferried bodies of deceased relatives to open fields in nearby rural areas because they were sick of waiting outside crematoria to perform last rites. As stocks of vital resources, including oxygen, medication and testing kits, were depleted across the country, the demand continued to surge and desperate families turned to the black market, buying ineffective medication at exorbitant rates. Defunct government helplines and a failing public-health system compelled people to send out urgent pleas for hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and medication via social media. Civil-society and volunteer groups stepped in to fill in the vacuum left by ineffective governance.
As India rapidly turned into the global epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic, political leaders continued to hold massive election rallies, and to champion the gathering of millions of devotees for the Kumbh Mela. The newly appointed chief minister of Uttarakhand, Tirath Singh Rawat, defended the decision to hold the massive religious gathering in his state amid rising cases. “Most importantly, Kumbh is at the bank of the River Ganga,” he said. “Ma Ganga’s blessings are there in the flow. So, there should be no corona.” The Modi government spent hundreds of crores on the Kumbh, which saw the congregation of 3.5 million people.
The country’s citizens paid a massive price for this. All evidence points to the fact that India’s official figure of around three hundred thousand deaths from COVID-19 until the end this May is a gross underestimate. According to a report published by the New York Times, India’s true death toll was at least two times the official toll reported by May 24. Even this, the report said, was a conservative estimate; it pegged a “more likely” death toll at more than five times the official count, at 1.6 million estimated deaths. A possible “worse scenario,” the report said, might mean an estimated death toll of 4.2 million.
The magnitude of unseen and unacknowledged COVID-19 deaths was best reflected in the corpses found floating in the Ganga or buried in the sand along its banks. With crematoria running out of space in Uttar Pradesh, people began dumping bodies into the river. Instead of helping conduct the last rites of the deceased, authorities in the state were more concerned about removing the shrouds over their shallow graves and covering them with more sand, so that they were harder for journalists to capture in photographs.
As COVID-19 patients continued to die due to a lack of oxygen in Uttar Pradesh’s hospitals, the Allahabad High Court observed that their deaths were “not less than a genocide.” International media organisations called out the Modi administration for choosing to protect its image over its people. “Despite efforts to squelch the bad press, everyone knows who is to blame for the fatal disaster unfolding today,” an editorial in the Washington Post said. Editors of one of the world’s most reputed medical journals, The Lancet, wrote that, at times, the Modi government “has seemed more intent on removing criticism on Twitter than trying to control the pandemic.”
… As of mid May, daily COVID-19 case numbers had officially begun to drop again, leaving room for more optimistic analysis and declarations that the country had surpassed the peak of the second wave. This implied that case numbers were only going to drop from now on. Such optimistic projections, however, are based on official figures—figures that scientists know better than to rely on. Further, even if this current wave is truly on a decline, there is no certainty as to how this pandemic will pan out in the next few months. Government officials have already declared that a third wave of the pandemic is well on its way.
Regardless of how early officials predict another wave, the country will continue to lose more lives unless its leaders change the way they respond to this humanitarian crisis. Currently, the government is responding by filing first-information reports against those who question its vaccination policy, booking desperate family members for posting appeals on social media in order to secure oxygen for a dying relative and harassing overburdened healthcare workers into resigning from their posts. “In short, you are spending valuable resources to control information and manage perception,” Patel said. “It is despicable. People will never forget this violation of their trust in governmental systems and institutions.”
As a former health secretary who has closely observed how healthcare systems operate in India, Rao said that it is still not too late for the Modi government to rectify its mistakes and fall back on the mechanisms that helped India deal with public-health crises such as the AIDS and polio epidemics in the past. “There are clear-cut boundaries laid down as to what the centre must do and what states must do in matters of infectious diseases,” Rao said. She believed that these guidelines should be followed by the Modi government instead of changing things around and centralising processes merely to claim credit for the job. “And as for the credits, the prime minister does not need his photo on the vaccine certificate,” Rao said. “If lives are protected and people feel they are cared for, such outward demonstrations are not required. People know.”
Nawab Malik, the minister of minority development in the state of Maharashtra, had a reasonable take on the issue. “The way PM Modi’s photo is put on vaccination certificates, we demand that PM’s photo should be put on death certificates also,” Malik said. “If they are taking credit for COVID-19 vaccination, then, they will have to take responsibility for deaths too.”
[The above is an excerpt. The full article can be read at https://caravanmagazine.in/health/modi- government-failure-led-india-covid-19-catastrophe]
[5] NARRATIVES OF SACRIFICE IN THE PAK ARMY
Asma Faiz
[A review of the book Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army by Maria Rashid, Stanford University Press, USA].
Maria Rashid’s Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army is a fascinating insight into the phenomenon of militarism in Pakistan. Examining the relations of affect (the observable manifestations of an experienced emotion) between soldiers and their families at one end, and the military as an institution at the other, the book analyses the broader structural dynamics of military life in modern societies in general, and Pakistan in particular.
What makes this study unique is the author’s own military background, as she describes her father as a third-generation army officer. Thus, military life, with its accompanying rigours and emotions, is nothing new for Rashid. With this background, she is able to provide a critical account of the manufacturing of soldiers, the rituals and performance of martyrdom and the unique challenges that the Pakistan Army faced in fighting the ‘war against terror’.
Dying to Serve is a welcome addition to the study of the military in Pakistan because it departs from the existing research that typically looks at the institution and its intervention in politics, its organisational structure and its dominance within the structural framework of the state in Pakistan.
Instead, Rashid attempts to link the individual stories of soldiers and their families with the macro-level policies of the army as an institution. One can argue that the book opens up a new area of research into the mechanics of transforming personal grief into collective pride in the framework of laying down one’s life for the nation. Moreover, it covers some crucial research questions pertaining to military history and sociology, such as the recruitment pattern of the army for more than a hundred years, couched in the myth of martial races.
The book neatly delineates the universe of military cantonments, which is typically cut off from its civilian counterpart, and which creates a military public deeply rooted in its distinct worldview. It points to the power of the discourse led by the men in uniform that produces impressions of the existence of an umbilical cord between the army and the nation. The author employs an ethnographic approach to analyse the soldiers and their families’ ties of affect with their parent institution and the way it facilitates the larger narrative of the military as the saviour of religion and nation.
A compelling account examines the structural dynamics of military life and how they fit with the broader pursuit of the Pakistan Army’s agenda
In pursuit of these goals, Rashid conducts ethnographic research in five villages of Chakwal — long viewed as a martial district in northern Punjab. She also conducts fieldwork at the infantry-training centre in Abbottabad. She was able to have access to the Youm-i-Difa [Defence Day] celebrations held at the military’s general headquarters (GHQ).
Thus, she’s in a unique position to provide a first-hand account of how Pakistan’s military constructs soldiers, the emotional and material aspects of relations between the soldier and the institution, and its impact on the larger process of narrative-building pursued by the army.
After providing a broader context of militarism and affect — both in theoretical literature as well as in the available research on Pakistan — Rashid narrates a comprehensive account of the nationally televised ceremonies of Youm-i-Shuhada [Martyrs’ Day] and Youm-i-Difa. These ceremonies have helped to construct the image of the “manly soldier and his family as willing, nationalistic beings” who offer the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of national honour and duty.
The author provides an interesting rationale behind the start of the Martyrs’ Day celebrations from 2010 onwards. According to her, these reflected the anxieties of the military leadership, as it grew deeply involved in the ‘war against terror’ against militants on Pakistani soil. This conflict created a unique crisis of legitimacy for the Pakistan Army. Unlike past conflicts, the army’s claims of fighting for Islam were now challenged by extreme right-wing Islamist elements.
For instance, as early as 2004, Maulana Abdul Aziz of Islamabad’s Laal Masjid [Red Mosque] had issued a fatwa against the Pakistan Army’s operations in South Waziristan. He went to the extent of opposing the burial of soldiers in Muslim cemeteries, since they had died fighting against the so-called mujahideen. Rashid lays out the challenges the army faced to its monopoly over claims of shahadat [martyrdom] in the service of Islam.
Subsequently, the army came up with the idea of arranging events such as Youm-i-Shuhada to reclaim that sacred place in the public imagination. In this way, the army sought to play the “moral card” through projection of the sentiments of soldiers and their families, which served to popularise the militaristic narrative of service to the nation and religion.
One major contribution of Rashid’s book is its exhaustive account of life in the martial districts of Pakistan — primarily villages in Chakwal — where she engaged in conversations with military families. Thus, she goes beyond the mere rhetoric of service and looks at the continuing choice of the army as a career among families in northern Punjab. She provides a history of the concept of martial races and identifies the patterns of continuity between the colonial and post-colonial periods. Her findings point towards the presence of material benefits as a major incentive for pursuing this line of duty. Prospects of a stable salary and post-service welfare benefits are still the most important variables in shaping the choices of young men in rain-fed Chakwal district. Rashid examines, in detail, the much- talked-about ethnic composition of this institution. In her view, the institution continues to be dominated by Punjabis — with Pakhtuns as the second most populous group — even as efforts have been made to expand ethnic outreach by inducting soldiers from Sindh and Balochistan.
The author acknowledges that this dimension has given a tactical advantage to the ruling elites of Pakistan, dominated by Punjabis, and it facilitated the conduct of military operations in former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Balochistan and Sindh without any internal fissures or challenges.
The chapter ‘Manufacturing Soldiers’ provides an engrossing account of the subaltern soldier, his metamorphosis into a professional fighter after recruitment and the concomitant perceptions of the institution towards the individual. Rashid’s reflections are rooted in her detailed narrative of military training in Abbottabad. The transformation of “uncouth primitives” into modern, professional soldiers is achieved through rigorous physical and psychological training at the academy.
In the author’s view, the “management of emotion” is a key variable in the process of manufacturing the modern soldier. Strategic employment of emotions involves building on hatred for the “other”, to reliance on feelings of kinship through projection of the homeland as “mother” and military units and officers as “family.” This examination of the mechanics of a soldier’s ‘construction’ gives a unique insight into the army as an institution.
The author also examines the complicated role of religion after the onset of the ‘war on terror’ at both macro and micro levels. While state managers increasingly promoted a Sunni brand of Islam in pursuit of “national interest” since the 1980s, the situation on ground became more complex with the emerging conflict between Sunnis and Shias and, later, between Deobandis and Barelvis.
To make religion a part of shaping the soldier, the army employs khateebs [clerics] at the training academy. However, the khateeb remains a “paradoxical figure”, located at a much lower rung of authority. Instead, regular army officers teach the Awareness and Motivation course which, at the academy, is part of the syllabus that deals with religion.
In another interesting discussion, Rashid profiles the growing sectarian and religious divide in Chakwal with its reflection in popular perceptions of the ‘war against terror’. As she aptly points out, the villagers expressed reservations towards Pakistan’s participation in the ‘war against terror’ — a reflection of the macro-level confusion that has shaped public opinion.
In an interesting observation, Rashid recounts the everyday views about militants against whom the Pakistan Army was fighting. Even in the martial lands of Chakwal, militants were either seen as “Muslim but misguided” or rejected as Muslims. Essentially, they were considered foreign agents aided by India, Israel or the United States. Rashid describes the various ways in which all soldiers who died in service are branded shaheed [martyrs] irrespective of whom they were fighting against.
A compelling account of how micro-level developments fit with the broader pursuit of the Pakistan Army’s agenda and narrative, Dying to Serve should be compulsory reading for students and scholars of the army, politics and nationalism at the grassroots level. https://www.dawn.com/authors/9396/dr-asma-faiz
The reviewer is assistant professor of political science at Lums and author of In Search of Lost Glory: Sindhi Nationalism in Pakistan. [6] THE 'HINDUTVA ECOSYSTEM' HAS A NEW ANTI-MUSLIM NARRATIVE. THIS TIME STREET VENDORS ARE THE TARGET
Alishan Jafri
After floating “land jihad”, “love jihad”, “corona jihad” and “civil services jihad”, a new kind of ‘conspiracy’ called “redi jihad” (street vendor jihad) has been ‘unearthed’ by Hindutva activists intent on targeting Muslims in the national capital and elsewhere.
The activists are from various radical Hindutva groups but local leaders from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party are involved in this communal campaign, as is at least one television news channel, the Noida-based Sudarshan TV. This, despite the information and broadcasting ministry having recently tightened its oversight mechanism for violations of the code of ethics for broadcast media.
On June 18, 2021, a Muslim fruit vendor was brutally beaten in Uttam Nagar, New Delhi by unidentified men who were shouting ‘Jai Sri Ram’. Two days later, on June 20, Hindutva activists blocked a busy road in the area to protest against what they said was violence and encroachment by ‘jihadi’ fruit sellers. The activists raised anti-Muslim slogans and gathered with lathis to send a “strong message” to the mostly Muslim vendors that they were not welcome in the neighbourhood. Later, in the evening, activists and local shopkeepers recited the Hanuman Chalisa in the middle of the road in a display of ‘Hindu unity.’
According to locals, the immediate cause of the current tension is a scuffle which had taken place a week before in which a local shopkeeper was allegedly attacked by one or more fruit sellers. In a live video streamed from Uttam Nagar on June 20, unidentified men said on camera that they had driven out Muslim vendors from the area. A Hindutva activist said all street vendors were Muslim. He alleged that they cheat customers and were a “walking cancer”.
Disputes between street vendors and shopkeepers are a staple of urban India, with the absence of civic planning and livelihood opportunities fuelling tension. In Uttam Nagar, however, a review of social media posts and online comments from April 2021 indicates a deliberate and concerted effort has been made by right-wing activists to promote a communal angle to the dispute in the area.
‘Communalising a civic menace’
Bordered by Janakpuri to the east and Najafgarh to the west, the Uttam Nagar area is a dense residential colony on the western edge of Delhi with a heavy presence of daily wagers.
The road between the Milap Nagar tiles market in Uttam Nagar and Dwarka Pass has suffered from acute traffic jams for the past two decades, partly because of encroachment by fruit sellers and e-rickshaws. The mushrooming of coaching centres in the area has compounded the problem, as students park their vehicles on the roads. Dainik Jagran and the Times of India have reported on how the residents and shopkeepers of the area have complained several times about the lackadaisical attitude of the administration and police in clearing encroachments.
Instead of demanding action by the authorities or going to court to compel the municipality and police to act, however, local Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and various Hindutva organisations have taken the route of vigilantism. But apart from threatening to evict Muslim fruit sellers from the area by force, but the activists who descended on June 20 also called upon Hindus to stop doing business with Muslims.
Sudarshan News, a far-right TV channel often accused of broadcasting hatred against Muslims, reported the Uttam Nagar protest in an extremely inflammatory manner. Throughout the show, Sudarshan reporter Sagar Kumar and anchor Shubham Tripathi referred to Muslims as “jihadis” and used other derogatory terms.
“For the first time Hindus have come out so aggressively with lathis in Uttam Nagar against jihadis,” Shubham said.
“Today, Hanuman Chalisa will be recited at Uttam Nagar and calls to boycott jihadis will be made. Sudarshan News has been advocating the economic boycott of jihadis for a long time,” added Sagar Kumar.
Abhay Pratap, a columnist for Sudarshan News, wrote: “We have even received information that most of these Muslim vendors are Rohingyas who have committed violence in the past.”
Pulkit Sharma, the BJP’s Najafgarh district vice-president, said during the Uttam Nagar protest: “Customers who complain about their habit of cheating are threatened with knives. We will wait for some time but if we don’t get a solution then we will launch a chakka jam here…” In a video uploaded on his Facebook page that day, Sharma said that there was nothing communal about the protest. But he shared videos with provocative and communal sloganeering that belied his words.
Brutal beating
Two days before this show of strength, a Muslim vendor named Rizwan was assaulted by unidentified Hindutva activists.
“It started because of a petty fight between a fruit vendor and shopkeeper. However, many anti-social elements got involved and communalised this matter. Later, one of our vendors named Rizwan was targeted by a mob armed with sticks and rods. He was grievously injured and admitted to Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital. Instead of arresting the criminals, the police are harassing the street vendors now,” Ajay Singh, the leader of the fruit vendors in west Delhi told The Wire on Sunday.
“Around 9 PM on June 18 2021, I was pulling my fruit cart away from the market. An angry mob of 10 to 15 people attacked me. They said nothing but rained blows. I don’t know who they are,” Rizwan told The Wire. While Rizwan was reluctant to speak about the matter and wanted to move on, the FIR registered by the Bunda Pur police station in Delhi’s Dwarka on June 19 notes that he was accosted by a group of men shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’, asked to give his name and then brutally assaulted when he said it was ‘Rizwan’. They told him he should no longer bring his cart to the area.
Though Rizwan sustained serious injuries and the FIR describes an attack which is clearly communal in nature, Delhi Police did not invoke the relevant – and more serious – IPC sections (i.e. 153, 295 or 505) and instead limited the case to one of ordinary assault.
Ajay Singh, the fruit vendors union leader, said that the attack was committed by anti-social elements with patronage of local politicians. He alleged that the vendors had complained against illegal ‘vasooli’ and harassment by the administration. “For a long time, this communal build-up was being allowed because of ulterior motives. I had complained to the Police that this can disrupt peace and even provoke riots in the area,” Singh added, sharing several call recordings with the PCR in which he had complained about this violent build-up.
His claim is also supported by the fact that there have been multiple incendiary videos and social media posts by Hindutva activists targeting Muslim vendors for more than a year.
While the Hindutva activists are presenting this boycott as a reaction to the recent conflict in Uttam Nagar, The Wire found photographs of at least four fruit vendors with the banner of Sudarshan Vahini after Vinod Sharma’’s India Gate protest calling for the economic boycott of Muslims in March 2020.
We also found inflammatory videos promoting anti-Muslim violence on Hindutva social media networks in which all the Muslim fruit vendors in Delhi were declared as Rohingyas. Present with Vinod and Pulkit Sharma was another prominent protestor, who featured in many videos, Himashu Yadav, a prominent local BJP local leader in Najafgarh. “Some people will say that 90% of these people are Rohingyas. I believe that all of them are Rohingyas. They send juveniles and women forward to attack and murder people.” Yadav has posted photos of himself with Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma on his Facebook page.
On June 25, he also shared photos of paramilitary personnel in the area, claiming that the DCP has sent them on his request to protect “us from Jihadis (sic).” “If any Jihadis so much as look at our Hindu shopkeeper brothers, the consequences would be really bad,” he wrote.
After the violent protests in West Delhi, Suresh Chavhanke broadcast a video on Sudarshan TV of a group of Hindutva activists forcing a Muslim street vendor in Yamunanagar to paint over the word ‘Gupta’ on the cart he uses to sell burgers. Chavhanke also tweeted the same inflammatory video. “Miyan was selling burgers using the name Gupta for 18 years,” he wrote, using a common slur for a Muslim. “People removed it. Wake up Wake up.”
After posters bearing the Bajrang Dal’s name and calling for an economic boycott of Muslims went viral on social media this weekend, the DCP Dwarka tweeted on Sunday that the local police have been directed to investigate the matter.
A systematic hate campaign
The communalisation of protests by local shopkeepers in Uttam Nagar is in line with a long-run Hindutva campaign that has gained some prominence since March 2020. Right after the anti-Muslim violence in Northeast Delhi in February 2020, Sudarshan News editor Suresh Chavhanke called for a protest at India Gate on March 4, 2020. This protest was preceded by a week of TV debates on the channel calling for an economic boycott of “rioters”. Chavhanke did not mention who these “rioters” were, but gave strong cues through the graphics and narration on his channel that he was referring to Muslims.
“If you want to stop them from slitting your throat, then you have to stop donating your money in their ‘green chadar’ now,” Chavhanke said on his channel, when he had organised the protests in the first week of March. He went on to describe the “rioters”: “They get even more money than our army. If these rioters get more money than the army, then what will they do? Even barbers have an economy of 11,000 crore! … If you make a list of the professions of the rioters, then there are many professionals like barbers, carpenters, puncture fixers, fruit vendors and most importantly, the meat businesses.”
On June 17, 2021, in an interview to a Hindutva YouTube channel called Satya Sanatan, BJP leader Kapil Mishra, while discussing an alternative to the “Halal economy”, said, “The Hindu ecosystem is working to ensure that our food is served by people who don’t spit in it.”
Last year, the BJP had distanced itself from statements like this and even reprimanded its leaders for targeting Muslims. But Mishra and his “Hindu ecosystem” continue to peddle the “thook (spit) jihad” bogey, a conspiracy theory that Muslim cooks and vendors spit in the food they make and sell in order to spread disease.
In the interview with the Satya Sanatan channel, Mishra went on to say that Hindu youths have been systematically removed from certain jobs. “Hindus are being robbed of economic opportunities in a planned and phased manner. It is very hard to find a Hindu barber to get a haircut these days. In new jobs, they [Muslims] dominate home delivery. We have to change that. To resolve this issue, the Hindu ecosystem will work towards training the members of the ecosystem.”
The thoughts of Mishra and Chavhanke on the subject of Muslim domination of certain informal job segments are echoed by Vinod Sharma of Sudarshan Vahini, another right-wing Hindu organisation. Sharma was one of the prominent activists at the protest in Uttam Nagar on June 20 and is an ardent proponent of the economic boycott of Muslim businesses. Last year, he had joined Mishra his pro- Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests.
Sharma live-streamed the “redi jihad” protest on YouTube on June 20 and can also be spotted in several videos with Hindutva leader Ragini Tiwari and Sudarshan News’s Suresh Chavhanke. The Wire profiled Sudarshan Vahini and its involvement in violent protests in a series of investigative reports. Sharma had also joined Chavhanke’s protest at India Gate, calling for the economic boycott of Muslims.
“We want to support all Hindu brothers who want to get into the business of fruit-selling, hairdressing or tyre fixing. Everyone knows the problem, we are working on the solution. Suppose we tell you, don’t get a haircut from ‘them’ [Muslims] then we have to give options… if we want to remove ‘them’ from these businesses then we need to have our own men,” Sharma had said last March at the India Gate protest. His speech was recorded in a video that went viral.
And now a Hindutva leader named Jitendra Saraswati has vowed to launch a campaign against “redi jihad” and has called upon Hindus to join his protest. Some months ago a video of Saraswati allegedly asking Hindus to keep weapons to defend themselves from ‘ghosts and demons’ had gone viral. “I am saying things legally,” he said. “I hope you understand who the ghosts and demons are”.
Saraswati featured as a panelist in CyberSipahi’s YouTube live video from Uttam Nagar and listened carefully as another speaker suggested that Muslims in India have created a parallel economy worth $3.4 trillion.
The validity of this claim can be judged by the fact that India’s GDP stood at $2.71 trillion in 2020- 21.But Suresh Chavhanke as well as Hindutva organisations like Hindu Jagriti have made similar accusations in the past about Muslims conspiring to create a “parallel economy”. They describe this as the “economic jihad” route to the Islamisation of India.
The goal of the Hindutva groups’ ‘redi jihad’ campaign is to cripple Muslims economically and drive them out of informal trade and social life in India. To achieve this goal, right-wing activists spread the fear that India’s Muslims are conspiring to take over Hindu livelihood and employment opportunities. However, the campaign is not limited only to the fringe elements of the Hindutva movement. It gained more currency after the media trial of the Tablighi Jamaat in 2020 when BJP MLAs and right-wing leaders obstructed the entry of Muslim hawkers in their neighbourhoods, sticking up boards outside villages that banned the entry of Muslims and marking the carts of Hindu vendors with saffron flags.
In April 2020, the Hawkers Federation of India issued a statement on the discrimination against Muslim vendors during the lockdown. “They [the hawkers] are being profiled and surveilled, stopped and harassed, and heckled and beaten up by vigilante groups who are acting with complete impunity. These incidents seem to have been spurred by a maelstrom of disinformation and propaganda campaigns being run by motivated agents and spread amongst people through social media [platforms] like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and WhatsApp,” the statement said.
Effect of shrinking informal economy
Ghazala Jamil, assistant professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and author of the 2017 book Accumulation by Segregation: Muslim Localities in Delhi, explained the politics and economics behind the militant Hindutva campaign targeting Muslim livelihoods.
“Labour market segments in the informal sector in India are organised largely around caste and kinship networks. This is why you will see only people of certain castes and regions working in certain occupations. Muslims are known to be segregated into certain sectors. For example, the term ‘puncture wala’ is used as a slur for Muslims because a lot of automobile mechanics are Muslims,” she told The Wire.
“Through complicated processes that include subtle discrimination, open hostility, targeted violence and caste-based notions of pollution and purity, Muslims tend to be segregated into segments that contain the worst jobs, marked by low wages, thin profit margins, low on dignity too, but high on hardships. They are able to take up space in these segments because these jobs are either not desired by others or are out of bounds for others. Street vending is one of these segments,” Jamil added.
She believes that the large-scale shrinkage in the informal economy due to the lengthy lockdown in 2020 to control the COVID-19 pandemic is catalysing these campaigns. The ever-present anti-Muslim prejudices are merely being refashioned as fear-mongering related to COVID-19 infections or economic attacks on Hindu livelihood, she said.
“They want to push Muslims out of more labour segments. The boycott might be successful in edging many Muslims out of the fruit- and vegetable-selling business on the streets, but only so far, as not many [Hindu] workers are willing to work in this segment,” Jamil explained.
One thing is certain: public places have become more hostile towards Muslims in the last few years; not only to those who are visibly Muslim, but even to Muslims who are working hard to somehow earn a livelihood. The Hindutva vigilante drive has made their lives even more precarious.
‘Road to genocide’
In the ten stages of genocide described by Gregory Stanton, founding president and chairman of the international NGO Genocide Watch, discrimination through boycotts occupies the third position.
In January 2021, addressing a “Hindu Panchayat” in Meerut, controversial anti-Muslim preacher Swami Anand Swaroop explained the rationale of these campaigns in clear words: “My argument is that if you [Muslims] want to remain associated with us, you should first stop reading the Quran and stop offering namaz.” Then he offered a solution to Hindus: “You decide that you will not buy anything from a Muslim. If you destroy them socially, politically and economically, they will begin converting to Hinduism from Islam.”
In the past, majoritarian economic boycott campaigns against minorities eventually led to mass violence. Just like Chavhanke and his associates today, the Nazis manufactured and propagated conspiracy theories that claimed Jews had too much influence on the economy and then made it their mission to remove this ‘extreme Jewish influence’ from the economy. This “Judenboykott” (Jewish boycott), launched in 1933, was not particularly successful as ordinary Germans ignored the Nazi call, but five years later, in 1938, the Nazis took matters directly to hand in the Kristallnacht pogrom.
In India, boycott campaigns via inflammatory pamphlets distributed by right-wing groups led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were employed in Gujarat during the anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002. More recently in Asia, Myanmar’s ultra conservative Buddhist nationalist Ashin Virathu’s 969 movement that boycotted Muslim businesses was one of the ingredients in the genocide of the Rohingya.
‘Violation of basic human rights’
After the ‘protest’ by Hindutva activists against the Muslim vendors in Uttam Nagar on June 20, 2021, The Wire spoke with Anas Tanvir, Supreme Court advocate and founder of the Indian Civil Liberties Union.
Tanvir said, “Protesting with lathis or any other weapon and openly advocating the boycott of a community is a criminal offence. It violates several sections of the Indian Penal Code and promotes enmity amongst Hindus and Muslims. Shockingly, it’s happening with no action from the police.”
In the wake of incessant calls to boycott Muslims after the Tablighi Jamaat media trial last year, lawyer Mohammad Afeef wrote in The Wire about the ‘unconstitutionality’ and explicit criminal nature of these boycott calls. According to him these calls violate basic international human rights law.
“Enacting an unambiguous law on inter-community boycott is not only urgently required in India, it will also bring India in accordance with its legal obligations under the United Nations Convention on Genocide,” he wrote. https://thewire.in/communalism/hindutva-ecosystem-muslim-fruit-sellers-threat-india
[7] THE KISAN COMMUNE IN INDIA
Vijay Prashad
On 26 June 2021, tens of thousands of Indian farmers will gather in front of the government offices in India’s twenty-eight states. They will come to commemorate the completion of seven months of their nation-wide protest against the extreme right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This gathering will be part of a long cycle of protests that started on 26 November 2020 as part of a day-long general strike of 250 million Indian workers and peasants. Since November, tens of thousands of farmers, or kisans, have surrounded India’s capital, New Delhi, forming a Kisan [Farmers’] Commune. This Commune came to being 150 years after the Paris Commune, out of whose defeat, Marx wrote, would rise the next experiment with socialist democracy. The Kisan Commune, standing alongside Venezuela’s comunas and South Africa’s land occupations, is one such experiment.
The farmers braved the Indian winter with defiance. What provoked them was the passage of three laws in September 2020 that delivered Indian agriculture firmly into the hands of a small group of mega- corporate houses. The Samyukta Kisan Morcha [United Farmers’ Front], made up of over forty farmer and agricultural workers’ unions, has called for the protest in June. Their slogan for that protest, Kheti Bachao, Loktantra Bachao [Save Farming, Save Democracy], sums up the farmers’ struggle.
The farmers and agricultural workers knew immediately when Modi’s government passed those laws that the mega-corporate houses would take control of the mandis, the marketplace for farm produce. The laws weakened the intervention of the state and handed over price mechanisms to powerful monopoly firms that have a close relationship to Modi and his party. The survival of agrarian life is at stake. This is not an exaggeration. The farmers know the impact of neoliberal policy: since 1991, when India adopted such policies in all aspects of economic life including for agrarian India, over 300,000 farmers have committed suicide. This protest movement, this Kisan Commune, is a scream against suicide.
The 2011 Census says that 833.1 million people out of a population of 1.2 billion live in rural India, which means that two in three Indians live in the countryside. Not all of them are farmers or agricultural workers, but all of them are in one way or another connected to the vitality of the rural economy. There are artisans and weavers, forestry workers and carpenters, miners and industrial workers. An entire social world premised on a sustainable and healthy agricultural economy is in danger of being wiped out. This is what the farmers know: that the capitalist attack will undermine the existence of India’s rural workers and their ability to feed the country’s growing urban population.
Two months into the protest, the farmers swarmed into Delhi. The date they chose for their entry into the city was 26 January, Republic Day, when the newly independent India adopted its Constitution in 1950. Farmers rode 200,000 tractors towards the heart of their capital city, while others arrived on horseback and on foot. The police stopped them at barricades along the major highways. The soundtrack for this clash between those who feed the people and those who feed off the people was provided in 1971 by the poet Sahir Ludhianvi in his meditation on Republic Day:
What happened to our beautiful dreams? When the country’s wealth increased, why this growing poverty? What happened to the path to increased prosperity of the ordinary? Those who had once walked with us to the gallows, Where are those friends, those companions, those beloveds?
Each street is on fire, each city is a killing field. What happened to our solidarity? Life drags us through the deserts of gloom. Where has the moon gone that once rose on the horizon? If I am a culprit, then you are also a sinner. Leaders of our country, you are guilty as well.
From Tricontinental Research Services (New Delhi) comes a remarkable dossier, The Farmers’ Revolt in India (Dossier no. 41, June 2021), which asks the simple questions: what has happened to agriculture in India and why are the farmers in revolt? At the heart of the dossier is an exploration of the agrarian crisis, a chronic condition whose symptoms are varied: the vagaries of agriculture, including crop failures, which result in low to negative incomes; indebtedness, underemployment; dispossession; and suicide. The roots of this crisis are not inevitable; they can be found in the structure of British colonial rule, in the failures of the new Indian state after 1947 (a state which capitulated to the landlord and bourgeois class), and in the accelerated failures of the neoliberal period from 1991 to the present.
It is one thing to recognise the revolt of the farmers; their active presence on the outskirts of New Delhi cannot be fully ignored. It is another to try and understand why they are there, to understand the deep roots of the crisis to which they respond with such fortitude. This dossier amplifies the views of the peasant unions and provides a thumbnail assessment of the Modi government’s full throttle handover of the Indian economy to the billionaire class, especially its closest cronies, the Adanis and the Ambanis families. In January 2020, Oxfam reported that India’s richest 1% possesses four times more wealth than the total wealth of the 953 million people, or the bottom 70% of the population, most of whom live in rural areas.
This inequality has only gotten worse during the pandemic. Between March and October 2020, Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, saw his wealth double to $78.3 billion, making him the sixth richest person in the world. In four days, Ambani made more than the total wages of his 195,000 employees. During this period, Modi’s government allocated a mere 0.8-1.2% of the GDP to its population for relief. The farmers and their families respond to this naked class warfare with the formation of their unyielding Kisan Commune.
Modi cannot easily back down from his commitment to mega-corporations, and the farmers and agricultural workers cannot surrender their lives. The stand-off has no easy exit. Large sections of the urban public are sympathetic to those who feed them. The application of force, often masked under the pretext of enforcing the lockdown, has been attempted, but it has failed. Will Modi’s government risk using greater force? If it does, will the public tolerate it? There is no easy answer to these questions.
An important study from the Society for Social and Economic Research by Vikas Rawal and Vaishali Bansal shows that Indian agriculture is wracked by massive economic inequality. More than half of the households in rural India are landless, while a few landlords own not only the largest acreage, but also the best land. Landlessness and inequality of access to land have increased over the past few decades, Rawal and Bansal demonstrate, and insecure tenancy relations have only become more common. The Indian countryside, they show, ‘is characterised by a vast mass of peasantry and rural workers who live in abject poverty, do not have access to decent education and health care, and do not have access to basic amenities for living a decent life’. This is the reason why they protest. That is why, Rawal and Bansal argue, land reforms are a precondition for their freedom.
[https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/24-kisan-comune/ has pictures]