‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogan at anti-CAA rally was ill-conceived – but it is not sedition

SEDITION LAW

The decision to yell a contentious slogan at a public rally may be worth criticising, but it is not grounds for a sedition charge.

Amulya Leona, who shouted pro-Pakistan slogans at an event in Bengaluru on Thursday. | PTI

Sruthisagar Yamunan

Feb 20. 2020

Eighteen-year-old Amulya Leona was charged with sedition on Thursday after she shouted “Pakistan Zindabad” at an anti-Citizenship Amendment Act rally organised by the All India Majlis e Ittehad ul Muslimeen in Bengaluru.

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A Facebook post by Leona on February 16 that came to attention after the incident seems to show that the teenager did not intend to single out Pakistan for praise so much as to make the point that humanity should be placed above the territorial idea of a nation state. A translation of the original Kannada message seemed to indicate what Leona was about to say before she was asked to stop her speech at the meeting.

“Hindustan zindabad, Pakistan zindabad, Bangladesh zindabad, Sri Lanka zindabad, Nepal zindabad, China zindabad, Afghanistan zindabad, Bhutan zindabad,” Leona had written. “Whichever country it may be, zindabad to all countries.”

She added, “Children are taught that country means territory. But, we, the children, want to tell you –a country is its people. Every person is entitled to basic amenities. All the people should have citizenship rights. The governments of all countries should look after its people in a good manner. Zindabad to everyone who works in the service of people.”

Despite the criticism of Leona’s action, it is clear is that the police’s decision to invoke the sedition 

law is disproportionate.

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As many such as Left activist Kavita Krishnan have pointed out, Leona’s intention was never to celebrate Pakistan. It seems the legitimate anxiety that the chant created at the event led to the unfortunate consequence of her being stopped from completing her statement. As a result, she is heard shouting “Pakistan Zindabad” three times before the microphone was taken away from her.

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PUBG and Warcraft can’t teach the life lessons that these traditional Indian board games did

A store in Hyderabad is trying to re-popularise South Indian games such as puli-joodam, basavanna-ata, daadi and others. 

Mallik Thatipalli 

Oct 16, 2019

For Sangeeta Rajesh, a bout of illness in 2014 turned out to be providential. She was homebound, playing a board game with her friend Archana Reddy, when a question struck them: why do children today suffer from more anxiety and mental disorders?

“We see many troubling issues in today’s children,” said Rajesh, 42, a remedial therapist. “We wondered why such a change occurred in a generation.”

Putting down some of the ills to the excessive use of technology among children, the friends decided that one antidote could be less technology. They thought back to the traditional games they played when they were young – the games back then “were simple” and “taught ethics”. “Unlike technology, which is a one-way street, they inculcated life lessons,” said Reddy, 38, who owns a school in Hyderabad.

Their concerned musings led to extensive research and travels. Eighteen months later they founded Good Old Games, an online and offline store dedicated to re-popularising traditional games common to South India.

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For 18th century painters, Indian port cities Calcutta, Bombay and Madras held a very special place

Artists like William Hodges, Jan Van Ryne, William and Thomas Daniell travelled across the ports, painting what they loved.

A perspective view of Fort William in the Kingdom of Bengal, belonging to the East India Company; by Jan Van Ryne, 1754. | Wikimedia Commons

Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri

Oct 30, 2017

A painting created in 1818 by British artist Benjamin West features Mughal emperor Shah Alam II presenting a scroll to Robert Clive, a British colonel. According to historian John McAleer, the event depicted in West’s painting can be categorised as one of the most crucial events in the history of the British Empire and one of the most important legacies of the Battle of Plassey that took place in 1757 in Palashi, Bengal.

The scroll, which forms the focus of the painting, was responsible for transferring tax-collecting rights and the authority to administer justice in Bengal to the East India Company. It set the ball rolling, establishing the East India Company as a major power and Calcutta as its seat.

The artwork appears in Picturing India: People, Places And The World Of The East India Company by McAleer, a lecturer at the University of Southampton. The coffee-table book, published by Niyogi Books, explores Britain’s complicated relationship with India through images of the Indian subcontinent, by artists and travellers in the 18th and 19th century.

In a chapter, titled Politics, Power and Port Cities, McAleer outlines the background of the East India Company’s position in mid-18th century India, its maritime trade routes and activities, the port cities it occupied and the depiction of India in a variety of texts and images. The three main ports featured in the narrative are Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.

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శ్రీ కౌముది ఫిబ్రవరి 2020

శ్రీ కౌముది జనవరి 2020

India: Intimations of an Ending

Racism And Discrimination

The rise of Modi and the Hindu far right.

By Arundhati Roy

November 22, 2019 

 

            

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers participate in a rally in Guwahati on January 21, 2018. (AFP via Getty Images / Biju Boro)

"In India today, a shadow world is creeping up on us in broad daylight. It is becoming more and more difficult to communicate the scale of the crisis even to ourselves. An accurate description runs the risk of sounding like hyperbole. And so, for the sake of credibility and good manners, we groom the creature that has sunk its teeth into us—we comb out its hair and wipe its dripping jaw to make it more personable in polite company. India isn’t by any means the worst, or most dangerous, place in the world—at least not yet—but perhaps the divergence between what it could have been and what it has become makes it the most tragic."

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The ghosts of a literary Indian hill town still haunt the writers of the present

The lychgate of the Camel’s Back Road Cemetery.

GULABI AND PAHARI

By Arup K Chatterjee February 20, 2017

“All hill-stations have their share of ghost stories” writes journalist Sheela Reddy. “But the Doon must be the only spot that can boast of so many writers, living and dead, who have turned their home into their muse.”

The Doon is a quiet valley of hamlets in the state of Uttarakhand, India. It is home to a nearly 200-year-old English literary tradition and many Victorian styled decaying structures. Of all its little townships, Mussoorie and Landour comprise what is arguably the most fertile literary territory in the country.

Well-known writers from the valley include the legendary octogenarian author Ruskin Bond; historian Ganesh Saili; Stephen Alter with his warmhearted recollections of an American boyhood in the Indian hills and intrepid romances; the travel writer and spiritualist Bill Aitken; and the thespian-turned-essayist Victor Banerji.

Around the mid-1820s, Mussoorie became the first sanatorium in British India. It was established by Captain Frederick Young, founder of the Sirmour Rifles regiment, who also sowed the first potato seeds in the valley.

While Rudyard Kipling seemed to be more partial towards his beloved Simla, Victorian writers such as Emily Eden, Fanny Parkes, John Lang, and Andrew Wilson gave us numerous literary and epistolary writings on Mussoorie.

Most of them became characters in the ever-expanding folklore of the valley. Some turned into the endeared ghosts that are said to haunt the region.

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