A foreign woman's response to Mahesh Sharma: It's got nothing to do with dressing modestly

Sexual Harassment

A story of surviving India as a woman, and how things are changing, slowly but surely.

Carissa Hickling

Yesterday · 08:30 am   Updated Yesterday · 03:16 pm

Thank you Mahesh Sharma for reminding me that it is up to us foreign girls to dress modestly rather than for desi boys to behave appropriately or for the police to be actively part of ensuring everyone’s safety in India.

There is nothing new, however, in the tourism minister suggesting handing out welcome kits telling women not to wear skirts or go out at night. It eerily reminded me of the guidelines given to me over 25 years ago before I first came to India.

My first taste of India

Rewind to 1990 in Montreal. I sat through a pre-orientation for a Summer Study Abroad in India programme. We were provided tips on appropriate behaviour, dress, health and safety. Some of these suggestions were remarkably similar to the tourism minister’s controversial comments.

Traveling all over India, we were struck by the contrast in what was acceptable in different contexts and parts of the country. We witnessed clear gender segregation and strict hierarchies, norms of behavior in rural Gujarat that contrasted completely with young couples merrily sauntering hand-in-hand on the streets of downtown Bangalore.

And those guidelines? Dressing modestly was no magic shield from being harassed. Instead, traveling in a group, sprinkled with our limited male members, did the trick.

It was a remarkable experience and an early lesson on how multiple realities and rules coexist – particularly in matters of gender relations.

Introduction to eveteasing

Fast forward to 1995, I returned, as a student in Delhi. This time, I was on my own. No orientation, no guides, no group. I lived as a paying guest with a family for a year.

From the first week, I navigated Delhi Transport Corporation buses and was immediately acquainted with the real meaning of the innocuous sounding phrase eveteasing. On the buses, it meant various body parts rubbed and hands grabbed private places they had no right to.

Did what I wore make a difference? Only slightly. A simple salwar kurta did not prevent unwanted attention. I was young, blue-eyed, fair and, therefore, fair prey.

And then the family I was living with shared a story.

A story of how the matriarch mashi was driving past a bus stop near IIT Gate and saw a young woman being taunted by a young man on a bicycle. The girl kept her eyes downcast, shrinking into herself. The boy grew more emboldened. Until, mashi intervened.

She leapt out of her car, yanked the boy off his bike, grabbed her chappal and started hitting him on the head. “How dare you abuse this girl? Have you no shame? No mother? No sister?” Scared witless, the boy ran off.

But the story did not end here.

Mashi then turned to the girl. “Why did you let him get away with misbehaving? If he does this to you today, what more will he try in future?”

The girl in question was not a foreigner. It had nothing to do with her eye, skin or hair colour. Only her gender.

The story empowered me to shed my polite Canadian demeanour and fight back. Practising my rudimentary Hindi, I embarrassed the perpetrators by shaming them loudly, shoving away their groping fingers.

Simplistic notions of not wearing a skirt or going out alone at night were not enough to survive Delhi. What I had to learn was to behave boldly if required. To expect harassment and be prepared for battle.

It worked. And as I accepted this new reality, I began to see a social revolution around me.

Urban India was changing. Night clubs pulsed till the wee hours. Ad campaigns pushed the boundaries of censorship. Couples lived together before marriage.

And the hypocrisy that sometimes lay beneath conservative veneers was revealed.

That elderly tauji who demands you behave modestly, giving due respect to his stature? He had a long-term mistress with two daughters.

The India I knew on the inside was not the India people perceived on the outside.

Adopting India

For more than a decade, I’ve been fortunate to call India my adopted home.

And I found it ironic when I was asked to give advice for a Study Abroad in India programme.

How do I translate my years here to guide young women coming to India for the first time?

How do I encourage them to find a delicate balance between being true to themselves and open to new experiences and, yet, being sensitive to the different environments they will encounter?

Knowing that any step they take to reduce unwanted attention simply may not make a difference.

How do I alert them to the shifting sands of acceptability based on context, time of day, location, company and more?

How do I make them acknowledge that India is not alone in its male chauvinistic notions and its inability to keep the vulnerable safe, that sexual harassment is unfortunately universal?

Today, I have age on my side. I have grown from being a young didi to a mature aunty, my hair spiked with silver. In Mumbai, I can wear a dress, go out at night and, chances are, I will be fine.

Yet, I look back on those guidelines I was given in 1990 and wonder how much has really changed.

And isn’t there another story in that?

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin

Sedition, defamation charges cannot be invoked for criticism: Supreme Court

The observation came as Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for an NGO, said sedition was a serious offence and the law on it was being grossly misused for stifling dissent.

PTI | New Delhi | Published:September 5, 2016 5:11 pm

The court, while disposing of a petition filed by NGO Common Cause alleging misuse of the sedition law, refused to pass a direction on the plea that a copy of this order be sent to all Chief Secretaries of states and the DGPs. (File Photo)

Sedition or defamation cases cannot be slapped on anyone criticising the government, the Supreme Court on Monday said in a clear message.

“Someone making a statement to criticise the government does not invoke an offence under sedition or defamation law. We have made it clear that invoking of section 124(A) of IPC (sedition) requires certain guidelines to be followed as per the earlier judgement of the apex court,” a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and U U Lalit said while refraining from saying anything further on the issue.

The observation came as Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for an NGO, said sedition was a serious offence and the law on it was being grossly misused for stifling dissent. He cited the examples of sedition charges being slapped on agitators protesting against Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project and cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, among others.

To this, the bench said “we don’t have to explain the sedition law. It’s already there in the five-judges constitution bench judgement in Kedar Nath Singh vs state of Bihar of 1962.” The court, while disposing of a petition filed by NGO Common Cause alleging misuse of the sedition law, refused to pass a direction on the plea that a copy of this order be sent to all Chief Secretaries of states and the Directors General of Police.

“You have to file separate plea highlighting if any misuse of sedition law is there. In criminal jurisprudence, allegations and cognisance have to be case specific, otherwise it will go haywire. There can’t be any generalisation,” the bench said. Bhushan said law has not been amended after the Kedar Nath Singh judgement by the apex court and a constable does not understand the judgement but what he understands is the section in the IPC.

“Constables don’t need to understand. It is the magistrate who needs to understand and follow the guidelines as laid down by the apex court while invoking sedition charges,” the apex court said. The court was hearing a plea seeking the apex court’s intervention to address the “misuse” of section 124 A of the IPC contending that such a charge was being framed with a view to “instill fear and scuttle dissent”.

Source: indianexpress

The not-so-swachh life of the Railways’ cleaners

NEW DELHI, September 5, 2016

Sidhartha Roy

Safai Karamcharis, who keep the tracks clean of filth round the clock, are the ignored foot soldiers of the massive Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan.

Most people just look the other way.

Santosh Kumar* (38), however, walks down the rail track next to platform 13 of the New Delhi railway station. His is face an inscrutable mask as he begins cleaning the track — leftover food, plastic bottles, packets, paper boxes — and human excreta. Remains of a train that has ended its journey.

The railway tracks, which resemble a garbage dump, are Mr. Kumar’s workplace for 12 hours a day and have been so for a decade now. Safai Karamcharis is the tag given to Mr. Kumar and his co-workers, who get a monthly remuneration of Rs. 8,500 for their efforts to keep the railway tracks clean. The money is barely enough to make ends meet, but for a man un-educated, avenues of employment are limited.

The Safai Karamcharis are the foot soldiers of the Indian Railway's massive cleanliness drive as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, who keep the tracks clean of filth round the clock. Every day, a staggering 300 trains enter and leave the New Delhi railway station; five lakh passengers pass through the station. It is the responsibility Mr. Kumar and his colleagues to keep it clean — they are employed by private contractors to whom the Indian Railways has outsourced the work.

They work with their bare hands, wearing uniforms that are soiled. Armed with brooms and gunny sacks, the sweepers brave infections and disease every day as they wade through filth wearing only slippers. The gloves and boots provided to them are uncomfortable and of poor quality and hence generally not used.

In denial

The Railway Ministry categorically denies their existence. But they are manual scavengers. For Mr. Kumar, it provides a livelihood that he hates. “Sometime the water doesn’t get the job done or the drains get clogged. That is when we have to scoop up the excreta with ply boards, using our hands,” he said, matter-of-factly.

The Parliament may have banned manual scavenging, with the passage of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, but the Railways employs them, albeit having outsourced the task. On Wednesday last week, a Delhi High Court bench, headed by Justice B.D. Ahmed, directed both the AAP government and Centre to file an affidavit indicating the steps taken under the law, particularly under Section 36 of the Act.

The High Court was hearing a petition filed by an NGO — National Campaign for Dignity and Rights of Sewerage and Allied Workers — on rehabilitation of manual scavengers in Delhi. The court expressed its “shock and disquiet” when a report by the Delhi State Legal Services Authority showed that several thousand persons were working as manual scavengers in the national Capital. The report stated that these were working with the Delhi Jal Board, municipal corporations, Railways or for contractors hired by these agencies in 30 out of 104 wards in Delhi.

The High Court’s direction holds hope for Mr. Kumar and his team for better protective gear and hopefully, a better life. “Our hands get infected all the time and recurring fevers are a part of life but there is nothing you can do; the job has to be done,” he said. Being exposed to germs and infections has meant that most of the sweepers suffer from bouts of jaundice. “It would be nice if we could be provided with face masks,” he said.

“The gloves tear easily and the boots gave me sores when I tried wearing them for work. Also, it gets very difficult to scoop up garbage while wearing gloves as it makes hand movements difficult,” said Raju* (25), another sweeper.

“It is stipulated in the tender conditions of the contractor that they have to provide protective gear such as gloves and boots. It is possible that the contractor is at fault,” said a senior commercial officer of the Railways’ Delhi Division.

The day of a railway sweeper starts very early and since most of them live in peripheral areas of Delhi as they can’t afford to pay too much rent, quite a few hours are spent on the daily commute.

Mr. Kumar lives in Narela, 40 km from the New Delhi Railway Station. “I wake up at 3.30 a.m. and leave my house in time to catch the bus at 5 a.m. I reach the railway station by 6.30 a.m. when my shift starts. I take a bus back to home after 6.30 p.m.,” he said. “By the time I return, I have no energy left to even talk to my children. It’s just eating and going to sleep again to wake up for the next day’s shift,” he said.

The stigma attached

Manoj Kumar (35), lives in a village in Haryana and the long commute and 12 hour shifts means he doesn’t get to spend time with his family either. When he first got the job five years ago, he didn’t know how to break the news to his family. “I was ashamed to tell them that I would have to pick up garbage. Though now they know, my neighbours and relatives still don’t know what I exactly do at the railway station,” he said.

More than gloves and boots, however, it is the low salary and long working hours that perturbs the sweepers of New Delhi railway station. “Our salaries should be hiked keeping in mind the inflation and also, if I get more time for myself, I would like to spend it with my wife and two children,” Mr. Manoj Kumar said.

“When I reach home exhausted and reeking of garbage, my wife doesn’t let me go near my children before I take a thorough bath for fear of an infection,” he said. “The stench, however, is the last to leave my body.”

*Names have been changed to protect the workers’ identity

Source: thehindu

Hillary Clinton Is America’s Machiavelli

Chris Kutarna | Aug. 30, 2016 

Justin Sullivan—Getty Images

Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign even at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nev., on Aug. 25, 2016.

 

And Donald Trump is a fanatic prophet

Though the epic presidential battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton may feel unique, these same personalities have clashed before.

More than 500 years ago, the prophet Savonarola enthralled Renaissance Europe while Machiavelli, chief policy wonk of the age, scorned the showman’s demagoguery. Trump and Clinton are replaying those parts—and will leave similar marks on history.

Trump is a prophet. That is the clearest way to understand the man’s methods, his popular appeal and his psychology. His improbable presidential run has followed closely the script set forth by the chief doomsayer of the Renaissance, Girolamo Savonarola.

A friar and political outsider, Savonarola exploded from obscurity in the 1490s to captivate the city of Florence, sweep away a Medici establishment that had ruled for half a century, and incite a mass campaign against liberal values that ended with his historic Bonfire of the Vanities.

How did Savonarola do it? First, by shouting an apocalyptic message that stoked people’s deep anxieties. Ottoman Muslims loomed to the east. The French invaded and carried away the city’s wealth in a lopsided peace deal. In a vague way, Savonarola had predicted both and concluded, to quote Trump: “We don’t win anymore!” The moment called for strong leadership—both moral and political—but as Savonarola said: “O Florence, Florence, your cup is full of holes.”

Second, he owned the news cycle. Print media was just emerging, and Savonarola harnessed its potential better than any. He delivered fiery sermons to crowds of thousands, and then print houses helped him reach thousands more with the sure-to-sell printed version. Popes and princes repeatedly declared him false. Every time, Savonarola answered by flooding the streets with cheap pamphlets—15th-century tweets—that twisted those denunciations into proof of elite corruption.

Third, he believed. Savonarola’s most fervent follower was himself. He believed God had appointed him the task of renewing the city, and so whatever words he spoke, they were true. That ecstatic confidence was his greatest strength. It drew to his every sermon a horde of sensation-seekers, plus citizens who had lost faith and longed to have it restored by the man’s reality-bending powers.

But the same confidence also blinded him to political realities. The Paul Ryans of the day who had supported Savonarola’s agenda—evicting the Medici oligarchs, broadening citizen representation in the city’s councils—shook their heads in frustration at his incapacity to rein in the messianic ego when prudence demanded. (Bad-mouthing the Pope has never been a vote-winner.)

If The Donald is a modern Savonarola, then Hillary is America’s Machiavelli.

Niccolò Machiavelli was Florence’s anti-prophet: a career politico who was too steeped in the nuts and bolts of the republic’s problems to stomach Savonarola’s loose and sudden populism. “In my opinion, he shifts with the times, and colors his lies to suit them.”

Savonarola shouted airy phrases from a pulpit; Machiavelli wrote dry policy papers from the chancery. For years he labored tirelessly as a chief secretary, then as a diplomat. Nine out of every 10 of his thoughts were political, and his close associates praised his astounding intellect and work ethic. Despite all his passion for public service, to quote Clinton: “The service part always came easier than the public part.” Machiavelli himself said it better: “I burn—but the burning makes no mark outside.” 

In opposite ways, the prophet and the policy wonk together reshaped the center of Renaissance Europe—and are reshaping America now.

Savonarola’s legacy was to give voice to the political and cultural tensions of his day—tensions that the Medici had muffled. The prophet himself was silenced (burned at the stake) by his political opponents the moment his popularity wavered. He had made too many enemies: on the “left,” those who rejected his moral austerity; on the “right,” those who feared a trade war with the pope; and up high, those who feared the loss of their privileges. But his death did nothing to reunite the city. His strident indignation could not be unshouted.

For the rest of his life, Machiavelli tried to channel those raw energies into sensible reforms. He may have detested the mad monk’s methods, but he also believed that occasional citizen-driven crises were the mark of a healthy, vital republic.

It was a tough road. Over decades of success and failure in and out of office, the ambitious secretary came to two famously harsh beliefs: that the ends justify the means and that the first rule of politics must be self-reliance—since no one can be trusted fully.

History still remembers Machiavelli best for this cynicism. It forgets that he was driven to continue his service by a deep faith in the people’s power to shape their collective future. Clinton, no stranger to high unfavorables, claims the same drive.

This election cycle has been full of surprises, but how history will remember its chief protagonists is already becoming clear. Trump’s legacy will be how he whipped up the tensions of his time. Clinton’s will be how she spent her life trying to make America stronger.

Source: time

Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary: ‘No one believes me now, but I knew nothing’

Brunhilde Pomsel worked at the heart of the Nazis’ propaganda machine. As a film about her life is released, she discusses her lack of remorse and the private side of her monstrous boss 

Kate Connolly

Monday 15 August 2016 16.05 BST

‘Everyone thinks we knew everything. We knew nothing. It was all kept secret’ ... Brunhilde Pomsel. Photograph: Blackbox Film & Medienproduktion 

 ‘It was rare for us to see him in the mornings,” says Brunhilde Pomsel, her eyes closed and chin in her hand as she recalls her former boss. “He’d walk up the steps from his little palace near the Brandenburg Gate, on to which his huge propaganda ministry was attached. He’d trip up the steps like a little duke, through his library into his beautiful office on Unter den Linden.”

She smiles at the image, noting how elegant the furniture was, the carefree atmosphere where she sat in an ante-chamber off Joseph Goebbels’ office with five other secretaries, how his nails were always neatly manicured.

“We always knew once he had arrived, but we didn’t normally see him until he left his office, coming through a door that led directly into our room, so we could ask him any questions we had, or let him know who had called. Sometimes, his children came to visit and were so excited to visit Daddy at his work. They would come with the family’s lovely Airedale. They were very polite and would curtsy and shake our hands.”

Pomsel is giving one of the first, and last, in-depth interviews of her life; at the age of 105, and having lost her sight last year, she says she is relieved that her days are numbered. “In the little time that’s left to me – and I hope it will be months rather than years – I just cling to the hope that the world doesn’t turn upside down again as it did then, though there have been some ghastly developments, haven’t there? I’m relieved I never had any children that I have to worry about.”

So what is the motivation for effectively breaking her silence only now, as probably the last living survivor from the Nazi leadership’s inner circle?

“It is absolutely not about clearing my conscience,” she says.

‘They were both very nice to me’ ... Goebbels and his wife, Magda, with Hitler.

While she admits she was at the heart of the Nazi propaganda machine, with her tasks including massaging downwards statistics about fallen soldiers, as well as exaggerating the number of rapes of German women by the Red Army, she describes it, somewhat bizarrely, as “just another job”.

A German Life, compiled from 30 hours of conversation with her, was recently released at the Munich film festival. It is the reason why she is willing to “politely answer” my questions. “It is important for me, when I watch the film, to recognise that mirror image in which I can understand everything I’ve done wrong,” she says. “But really, I didn’t do anything other than type in Goebbels’ office.”

Goebbels was a good actor, says Brunhilde Pomsel in the trailer for A German Life.

Often, end-of-life statements such as these are suffused with a sense of guilt. But Pomsel is unrepentant. As she holds court, gesticulating wildly, with a broad grin on her face, it seems as if she even takes something restorative from her insistence that she simply acted the same way as most other Germans.

“Those people nowadays who say they would have stood up against the Nazis – I believe they are sincere in meaning that, but believe me, most of them wouldn’t have.” After the rise of the Nazi party, “the whole country was as if under a kind of a spell,” she insists. “I could open myself up to the accusations that I wasn’t interested in politics but the truth is, the idealism of youth might easily have led to you having your neck broken.”

She recalls being handed the case file of the anti-Nazi activist and student Sophie Scholl, who was active in the White Rose resistance movement. Scholl was executed for high treason in February 1943 after distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich. “I was told by one of Goebbels’ special advisers to put it in the safe, and not to look at it. So I didn’t, and was quite pleased with myself that he trusted me, and that my keenness to honour that trust was stronger than my curiosity to open that file.”

Pomsel describes herself as a product of Prussian discipline, recalling a father who, when he returned from fighting in the first world war, when she was seven, banned chamber pots from the family bedrooms. “If we wanted to go to the toilet, we had to brave all the witches and evil spirits to get to the water closet.” She and her siblings were “spanked with the carpet beater” whenever they were disobedient. “That stayed with me, that Prussian something, that sense of duty.”

She was 31 and working for the state broadcaster as a well-paid secretary – a job she secured only after she became a paid-up member of the Nazi party – when someone recommended her for a transfer to the ministry of propaganda in 1942. “Only an infectious disease would have stopped me,” she insists. “I was flattered, because it was a reward for being the fastest typist at the radio station.”

She remembers her payslip, on which a range of tax-free allowances was listed, alongside the 275-mark salary – a small fortune compared with what most of her friends were earning.

She notes how life for her vivacious, red-haired Jewish friend, Eva Löwenthal, became increasingly difficult after Adolf Hitler came to power. Pomsel was also shocked by the arrest of a hugely popular announcer at the radio station, who was sent to a concentration camp as punishment for being gay. But she says that largely, she remained in a bubble, unaware of the destruction being meted out by the Nazi regime on its enemies, despite the fact she was at the physical heart of the system.

Brunhilde Pomsel, in about 1943, in a suit given to her by Magda Goebbels Photograph:
Blackbox Film & Medienproduktion GmbH

“I know no one ever believes us nowadays – everyone thinks we knew everything. We knew nothing, it was all kept well secret.” She refuses to admit she was naive in believing that Jews who had been “disappeared” – including her friend Eva – had been sent to villages in the Sudetenland on the grounds that those territories were in need of being repopulated. “We believed it – we swallowed it – it seemed entirely plausible,” she says.

When the flat she shared with her parents was destroyed in a bombing raid, Goebbels’ wife, Magda, helped to soften the blow by presenting her with a silk-lined suit of blue Cheviot wool. “I’ve never possessed anything as chic as that before or since,” she says. “They were both very nice to me.”

She recalls her boss as being “short but well kept”, of a “gentlemanly countenance”, who wore “suits of the best cloth, and always had a light tan”. “He had well-groomed hands – he probably had a manicure every day,” she says, laughing at the thought. “There was really nothing to criticise about him.” She even felt sorry for him because of the limp he had, “which he made up for by being a bit arrogant”. Only occasionally did she get a glimpse of the the man who turned lying into an art in pursuit of the Nazi’s murderous goals. She was terrified to see him on stage at Berlin’s sportpalast delivering his infamous “total war” speech in February 1943. She and another colleague had been given ringside seats, just behind Magda Goebbels. It was shortly after the battle of Stalingrad and, Goebbels hoped to get popular support to pull out all the stops to fight the threats facing Germany. “No actor could have been any better at the transformation from a civilised, serious person into a ranting, rowdy man … In the office he had a kind of noble elegance, and then to see him there like a raging midget – you just can’t imagine a greater contrast.”

The details Pomsel chooses to focus on may reflect the way she has edited her own story so that she feels more comfortable with it. But it is also conceivable that a combination of ignorance and awe, as well as the protection offered by the huge office complex in the government quarter really did shield her from much of reality.

It was the day after Hitler’s birthday in 1945 that her life as she knew it came to an abrupt halt. Goebbels and his entourage were ordered to join Hitler in his subterranean air raid shelter – the so-called Führerbunker – during the last days of the war. “It felt as if something inside me had died,” says Pomsel. “We tried to make sure we didn’t run out of alcohol. That was urgently needed in order to retain the numbness.” She lifts an index finger as she takes pains to tell events in their right order, recalling how Goebbels’ assistant Günther Schwägermann came with the news on 30 April that Hitler had killed himself, followed a day later by Goebbels. “We asked him: ‘And his wife as well?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And the children?’ ‘And the children too.’” She bows her head and shakes it as she adds: “We were dumbstruck.”

She and her fellow secretaries set about cutting up white food sacks and turning them into a large surrender flag to present to the Russians.

Discussing their strategy ahead of their inevitable arrest, Pomsel told her colleagues she would tell the truth, “That I had worked as a shorthand typist in Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda ministry.” She was sentenced to five years’ incarceration in various Russian prison camps in and around Berlin. “It was no bed of roses,” is all she will say about that time. It was only when she returned home that she became aware of the Holocaust, she insists, referring to it as “the matter of the Jews”.

She quickly resumed a life not dissimilar to the one she had had, when she found secretarial work at the state broadcaster once again, working her way up to become the executive secretary to its director of programmes and enjoying a privileged life of well-paid work and travel before retiring, aged 60, in 1971.

But it would take her a full six decades after the end of the war before she made any inquiries about her Jewish schoolfriend, Eva. When the Holocaust memorial was unveiled in 2005, she took a trip from her home in Munich to see it for herself. “I went into the information centre and told them I myself was missing someone, an Eva Löwenthal.” A man went through the records and soon tracked down her friend, who had been deported to Auschwitz in November 1943, and had been declared dead in 1945.

“The list of names on the machine on which we found her just kept on rolling non-stop down the screen,” she says, leaning her head back, the finger tips of one hand tracing the line of her necklace.

Source: theguardian