'How can one opinion represent a diverse university?' JNU professor attacked in Gwalior speaks out Vivek Kumar on the idea of Brahmanical merit and the notion of being anti-national.

Dalit issues

Scroll Staff · Yesterday · 12:19 pm

On Sunday, Vivek Kumar, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of Social Sciences, was attacked by activists of the Bharatiya Junta Yuva Morcha as he spoke at Gwalior’s Bal Bhavan. Kumar has done extensive research on Dalit assertions and political mobilisations. The BJYM, which is the youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party, called his speech “provocative and anti-national”. Kumar now recounts what he talked about and asks some questions.

     “I started with arguing that there are cultural and civilisational aspects of people that I respect, but that they should also respect my culture. I mentioned the Buddha, Birsa Munda, Kanshiram, Savitribhai Phule and others. Over the years, this history has been decimated. It is as if it had never happened. You have suppressed it because you did not debate and discuss it.

    I went on to talk about Ambedkar, who said that India was not a nation but a nation in the making. Because it was divided into 6,000 castes. These divides have created animosities.

    The idea of the nation is also tied up with self-representation of people in various institutions ‒ the institutions of governance, production and education. They need to be represented in the judiciary, in legislatures, in industries. I’m talking about women, Dalit, tribes, minorities. Where is that self-representation? All institutions have been monopolised by one group. Some people talk of nation building through the trickle-down effect. I say the other way to build the nation is to give people representation.

    Some people say that caste has refused to disappear because you have reservation. But I ask which came first, caste or reservation? Some say if you have representation then merit goes down. But tell me, is there a constitutional definition of merit? By merit you usually mean scoring high marks in an examination. You are fifth-generation, seventh-generation, tenth-generation learners. You convert your cultural capital into what you call merit. My parents probably never learnt how to read.

    Now they called that 'provocative'. What is provocative here? If there is logical dialogue, you can talk it out. But there is nothing you can say to violence. And that is very dangerous.

    Secondly, this was a programme organised by a Dalit group, the Ambedkar Vichar Manch, it was called Babasaheb Ke Sapno Ka Bhartiya Samaj (Indian society as envisioned by Babasaheb), its speakers were Dalit and its audiences were Dalit. How can you deny them that agency? Is that democratic? There seems to be a larger design in Gwalior and in Madhya Pradesh to wipe out Ambedkarism. This government celebrated Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary this year. But is that based on any deep understanding of Ambedkar or is it just politics?

    As a person of a particular identity, I have a certain duty to my community, to spread knowledge among them. Is that not nation-building?

    You construct your own idea of nationalism and use it to selectively target those who don’t conform to it. You brand people anti-national as it suits you. Sometimes you kill in the name of the cow, sometimes it is because of love jihad, sometimes it is because you have decided to call JNU-ites anti-national. These are dangerous constructions of nationalism.

    How can you brand a university which has so much diversity as any one thing? There are students from so many different places and communities and so many different groups. Is the ABVP [Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad] also anti-national? It has given several student councillors to JNU.

    General [GD] Bakshi keeps saying [during his frequent appearances on the Times Now channel] that we don’t commemorate the deaths of soldiers. But have the jawans themselves ever spoken on television? Who has given General Bakshi the right to speak for them? Is his nationalism representative of them? It is the same for the students. Can any one opinion represent a diverse university?

    We have produced civil servants and academics who are contributing to the production of knowledge, good actors and NGO workers. The former security advisor, Shiv Shankar Menon was our student. We have contributed directly to every sphere of society. What are you gaining internationally by calling us anti-national?”

As told to Ipsita Chakravarty.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in

Source: scrollin

Aamir Khan isn’t alone: I too am a little afraid of living in India

The actor was right. There is a sense of despondency in the country and Narendra Modi has done nothing to dispel it.

Rahul Pandita  · Today · 07:13 pm

We know that militant Islam does not get criticised in India as much as militant Hindutva. We know it is outright silly to compare the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with the Islamic State. We know a certain section of the intelligentsia will always display cantankerousness towards Narendra Modi. We know Mani Shankar Aiyar should have long retired from public life. We must also know that we cannot offer to send Aamir Khan to Pakistan for speaking his mind.

I have been in the United States for the last few months and I too have felt alarmed at the developments in India that Aamir Khan spoke about. I am told on social media that one can feel safe in India today only if one were an upper-caste Hindu male. I am all of this and yet, truth be told, I am a little scared of returning.

I am currently at Yale – an oasis of opportunity and exclusivity in the middle of a city where 30% of the adults cannot read and where many live in poverty and squalor. The crime rate is high, and every other day the university police chief writes to us about an assault or robbery that has occurred on a street that we may have walked minutes before the crime. But the city works; the system seems to be working. It feels like we have someone watching over us. We just have to press a red button on the street and someone wearing state insignia will turn up in a minute.

At Yale, I live close to a frat house where an apparent act of racism recently triggered massive protests across the university. But it never felt as if the issue was not being addressed at the highest level. The dean of Yale College spent hours amidst a belligerent crowd of black students and patiently heard their grievances. Every institute within Yale organised its own meetings to enable students to speak freely about their experiences. No-one said the protesters should be sent to Africa.

Sense of despondency

That does not mean racism has been dealt with in America, or that tomorrow a black man will not be needlessly pinned down by a white cop on a New York street. But it is okay to speak out, it is okay to write a pamphlet. Nobody who has a selfie with President Barack Obama as his DP will abuse you on Twitter, or throw ink at you, or come to your office and beat you up. In a way, governance here is akin to psychotherapy – the therapy may or may not work, but the patient should feel that he is in the care of a therapist. That the therapist is telling him, “I hear you.” It is the patient on the couch, not the therapist. But in India it feels as if the state is on the couch with its back turned towards its people.

What did Aamir Khan say that caused such outrage and prompted a reaction from the government? He said that for Indians to feel secure there must be a sense of justice; that when there is insecurity, people look to the head of the state to make reassuring statements. He said there was a sense of despondency, an atmosphere where people felt depressed or low.

One doesn’t have to be from the minority community to feel what he said. Where is a sense of justice in India today, in Dadri or beyond? On which topic – minority protection or otherwise – did we hear a word of reassurance from Modi? Did he tell his chief minister in Haryana to stop talking about cows and instead focus on removing pigs wallowing in muck outside the Cyber City in Gurgaon? Did his party offer a word of solace to the family of the poor Kashmiri trucker killed by goons on the Jammu national highway? Did he speak to his government in Rajasthan and ask why it felt the need to remove a Safdar Hashmi poem from a textbook?

The fact is that many in India do feel a sense of despondency today and it runs beyond the minority community. One doesn’t have to be a Muslim to see how Modi’s silence has emboldened hoodlums who see it as his tacit approval and, as a result, are leaving their internet troll avatars behind to come out on the streets.

Fear in the minority community

And then beyond this, there is something that only a minority can feel. No matter how empathetic members of a majority community are, they cannot fear certain patterns that members of a minority community do. A friend in the US tells me the story of her grandmother who lives in Mumbai and had to seek refuge in a neighbour’s house during the 1992 riots. After Dadri, she says, she has been checking several times whether the door that she used to slip into her neighbour’s house over two decades ago is opening properly. She has not returned any award or asked her son about resettling anywhere else. But she is scared. And that fear, whether it is justified or not, is genuine.

The bhakts are already blackening Aamir Khan’s face on film posters. Somebody will invariably ask him why he didn’t feel the same after the Babri Masjid demolition. Maybe he did, but we didn’t ask him. Maybe he did not then, but feels it now. Maybe he thought things will get better, that acche din will come. Maybe he saw the beaming face of the woman standing next to Maya Kodnani in a selfie that has recently surfaced on the Facebook and that scared him.

It is not that people have not been killed before for transporting cows. Or that Dalit kids were not brutalised during Manmohan Singh’s time in power. But like Narendra Modi, he never looked us in the eye and said: “May the force be with you.” Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe Modi meant: may the hoax be with you.

Rahul Pandita is a 2015 Yale World Fellow and the author, most recently, of Our Moon has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir. He tweets at @rahulpandita.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in

Source: scrollin

Good Read:  Patriotism paradox NRIs chasing wealth abroad are heroes, Indians fleeing hate are traitors 

Muslims, Christians and others are made to feel as second-class citizens: Dr Pushpa Bhargava

Friday, 30 October 2015 - 7:35am IST | Agency: dna | From the print edition

Nikhil M Ghanekar @NGhanekar

Bhargava, founder-director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, on Wednesday, decided to return his Padma Bhushan to protest against the decreasing space of dissent in the country. 

 Dr Pushpa M Bhargava - emminent scientist, writer and founder-director of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad Image Courtesy: Facebook

Reacting to Union finance minister Arun Jaitely's remark that the protest by writers, artists, historians and scientists is a 'manufactured rebellion', renowned scientist Pushpa Bhargava told dna that these protests are 'spontaneous reactions against the present atmosphere of intolerance'.

Bhargava, founder-director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, on Wednesday, decided to return his Padma Bhushan to protest against the decreasing space of dissent in the country.

"I am upset that the scientific and rational temper has not been maintained in the country. There is little space for dissent and minorities such as Muslims, Christians and others are made to feel as second-class citizens", Bhargava said. Commenting on the conflicts over cow slaughter and beef consumption, he added, "The present government wants to decide what I want to eat, what I think. It is also indulging in moral policing."

Source: dnaindia

In letter to PM, President, Admiral Ramdas alleges RSS pushing ‘Hindu Rashtra’ agenda

Ramdas, who was the chief of naval staff between 1990-93, accused the country’s leadership of playing with fire.

By: Express News Service | New Delhi | Updated: October 26, 2015 6:27 am

Ramdas, who was the chief of naval staff between 1990-93, accused the country’s leadership of playing with fire.

In an open letter to President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Navy chief Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas alleged that the “RSS and their network” were leading a “systematic and well orchestrated attempt to impose a majoritarian single-point agenda of creating a Hindu Rashtra in India”. Admiral Ramdas was also the former internal Lokpal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Stressing that the Hinduism he “knew” was “not filled with the kind of violence and intolerance represented by the current brand of “Hindutva” that was “fanning the flames of division and fear across the country”, he said that series of attacks on “minorities and Dalits” had forced him to hang his head in “shame”.

Ramdas, who was the chief of naval staff between 1990-93, accused the country’s leadership of playing with fire.

In his three-page letter, Ramdas wrote that it was “most shocking” to see no condemnation of such activities by those at the helm of affairs. He said that the “co-ordinated response of those in government seems to be to downplay the attacks – by terming them ‘sad’ and ‘unfortunate’.”

Later, speaking to The Indian Express, Ramdas said that he had no hope that the country’s top leadership will respond to his letter. “I have done my job by pointing out that the fabric of Indian Constitution is in danger.”

Source: indianexpress

90 Per Cent of Poor in India, South Africa Are Minorities: Former Justice Yacoob

By Express News Service                                       Published: 16th November 2014 06:21 AM
Last Updated: 16th November 2014 08:40 AM

Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Zakeria Yacoob sharing a lighter moment with CSD-SRC, Hyderabad regional director, Kalpana Kannabiran (left) and CSD managing committee chairman PM Bhargava at the CD Deshmukh memorial lecture in Hyderabad on Saturday | A SURESH KUMAR

HYDERABAD: Achieving equality in society is the only solution to eliminate poverty in this world, said Justice Zakeria ‘Zac’ Yacoob, Retired Justice of Constitutional Court of South Africa at the 13th CD Deshmukh memorial lecture here on Saturday. His lecture was on the topic ‘Equality, Non-discrimination, Religion and Disability: South Africa and India’.

“Once everybody in the society treats everyone equally, poverty will automatically be eliminated,” he said. He reminded that more than 90 percent of the poor in South Africa and India are from the minority classes.

Yacoob, who has been working in the field of Socio-economic Rights for a long time, said he strongly believes that discrimination is based on various factors such as race and religion. It has become one of the biggest hurdles in the path towards development across the world. He said both India and South Africa stand on the same position when it comes to inequality and discrimination against the vulnerable groups.

However, Yacoob felt that ‘race’ has been the most common factor for discrimination in both the countries. “Perhaps that is the reason, constitutions of both the countries chose to give reservations based on race,” he said. From his research on the social development of both the countries for past few decades, he said minorities have always been oppressed, while the majority section continues to dominate.

In the context of formation of Telangana state, Yacoob felt the new state is the result of discrimination that Telangana people faced for years. And now the state has manyopportunities to achieve social and economic development. “Every time a new state is formed, there is a great desire for development,” he said.

He said he finds hope in the fact that oppressed communities such as the Dalits in India and Black Africans in South Africa are now doing well in various fields like education and business. “The change is happening, but it is at a slow pace,” he added.

Organised by the Council for Social Development, the memorial lecture was attended by the research scholars and students from Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), University of Hyderabad (UoH) and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

Source: The New Indian Express