Who was here first? A new study explains the origins of ancient Indians

THE BURNING QUESTION(S)

By Rohan Venkataramakrishnan | April 3, 2018

bioRxiv/Screenshot
It’s a long story.

A new paper authored by 92 scientists from around the globe that was posted online this weekend could settle some major questions about the subcontinent’s history and what that means for various theories of Indian civilisation. The paper, titled “The Genomic Formation of South and Central Asia,” which still has to go through peer review, uses genetics to examine the ancestry of ancient inhabitants of the subcontinent. Below is a quick summary of what you need to know.

Who authored the study?

There are 92 named authors on the study, including scholars from Harvard, MIT, the Russian Academy of Science, the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences in Lucknow, the Deccan College, the Max Planck Institute, the Institute for Archaeological Research in Uzbekistan and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. Among the co-directors of the study is geneticist David Reich, whose new book has inspired much recent discussion about ancient human history and racial theory.

How was the study conducted?

The researchers looked at genome-wide data from 612 ancient individuals, meaning DNA samples of people that lived millennia ago. These included samples from eastern Iran, an area called Turan that now covers Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and South Asia. Of the 612, the DNA of 362 ancient individuals was being examined for the first time. They then compared this data with that taken from present-day individuals, including 246 distinct groups in South Asia.

What were they looking for?

A lack of sufficient ancient DNA as well as proper inquiry into the matter has meant that we still do not understand how central and South Asian populations were formed. There have been various theories about this, with some very closely connected to politics both in South Asia and abroad. The Nazis, for example, helped propagate the Aryan Invasion Theory in which blue-eyed fair people swept into the Indian subcontinent on horses, conquering everyone they saw along the way. Hindutva proponents have argued the opposite altogether, what is known as the Out-of-India theory, claiming that, if anything, Indo-European languages originated in India and spread out westward from there.

DNA and other human science-based research has thrown up confusing signals in the past, with mitochondrial DNA, which is only transferred from female to female, being mostly unique to the subcontinent. This suggested that the inhabitants of India have been indigenous for thousands of years. However, Y chromosomes, which are passed from male to male, showed much more connection to West Eurasians, whether Europeans, people of the Irani plateau, or Central Asians.

Amid all this, there is the question of whom the Indus Valley people were. Were they more connected to those we now know as Dravidians, only to be pushed south by migrating Aryans? Or were they themselves Aryans, who eventually moved southward?

In many ways, the study set out to resolve this contradiction and answer some part of the question: Who are the people of the subcontinent and how did they get there?

What did they find?

The paper, which you can read in full here, builds on the genetic understanding that there were two separate groups in ancient India: Ancestral North Indians and Ancestral South Indians, or ANI and ASI. These two groups were, as Reich explains in his new book, “as different from each other as Europeans and East Asians are today.” But where do these two populations, which solidify in around 2000 BCE, come from?

There are three potential groupings that, when mixed in various combinations, could be responsible for the creation of the Ancestral North Indian and Ancestral South Indian populations.

•     The first are South Asian hunter-gatherers, described in this study as Ancient Ancestral South Indians or AASI, the oldest people of the subcontinent, related to modern-day Andaman islanders.
•     Then there are Iranian agriculturists, who were known to have come to the subcontinent, possibly bringing certain forms of cultivation of wheat and barley with them.
•     And finally, there are the Steppe pastoralists, the inhabitants of the vast Central Asian grasslands to the north of Afghanistan, who were previously known as “Aryans.”

There is another important population with South Asian connections that sits somewhere amidst these three: the Indus Valley population.

In Turan, the area north of modern-day Iran also known as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, there was a huge community of ancient people who seem to have little genetic connection with the inhabitants of the subcontinent. Yet the authors found three individuals from this ancient complex that did have some connection to India, specifically an ancestry mix of Iranian agriculturists and South Asian hunter-gatherers or Ancient Ancestral South Indians. This matched individuals from the Swat Valley in Pakistan, another Indus Valley site. Because the researchers didn’t have direct access to ancient DNA from India’s Indus Valley sites, the paper prefers to call them Indus Valley periphery individuals. These three individuals are key to the findings.



Where does the Indus Valley fit in?

The reason the researchers call them Indus Valley periphery individuals is because they cannot be sure that their genetic makeup is the same as most of those who lived in the Indus Valley, because they did not have access to ancient DNA from Indian sites. But for the most part they seem to use these individuals as proxies for the people of that civilisation.

The make-up of Indus Valley periphery individuals is straightforward: a mixture of Iranian agriculturists and the South Asian hunter-gatherers, or Ancient Ancestral South Indians.

The study finds that these two ancestries are also there in both of the subsequent populations, of Ancestral North Indians and Ancestral South Indians, except for a couple of key differences.

•     First Ancestral South Indians have the same basic mix: South Asian hunter-gatherers and Iranian agriculturists, with a higher amount of the former.
•     And second, importantly, Ancestral North Indians have one more ancestry mixed in that is not to be found in Ancestral South Indians: the Steppe pastoralists or, to use the old term, Aryans.

What does the paper conclude?

•     In simple terms, the mixing of Iranian agriculturists and South Asian hunter-gatherers first created the Indus Valley population.
•     Then around the 2nd millennium BCE, Steppe pastoralists moved south towards the subcontinent encountering the Indus Valley population in a manner that was likely to have caused some amount of upheaval.
•     What appears to happen afterwards is that some of the Indus Valley population moves further south, mixing more with South Asian hunter-gatherers to create the Ancestral South Indian population
•     Meanwhile, in the north, the Steppe pastoralists are mixing with the Indus Valley population to create the Ancestral North Indian grouping.
•     Most subsequent South Asian populations are then a result of further mixing between Ancestral North Indians and Ancestral South Indians.

This also means that the people of the Indus Valley Civilisation are the bridge to most extant Indian populations. “By co-analyzing ancient DNA and genomic data from diverse present-day South Asians, we show that Indus Periphery related people are the single most important source of ancestry in South Asia.”

What does all this mean?

Many things that would be hard to summarise. Journalist Tony Joseph, explains a number of implications in this piece, but here are a few main ones:

•     Some form of “Aryan” migration did take place, even if that term is not used. The introduction of Steppe pastoralists into the subcontinent might have been the way what we know as Indo-European language and culture spread, since it was the same lot of Steppe peoples that also moved West into Europe.
•     Moreover, there may be connection between the Steppe migration and priestly caste and culture. The researchers say they found 10 out of 140 Indian groups with a higher amount of Steppe ancestry compared to Indus Valley ancestry. These two were titled “Brahmin_Tiwari” and “Brahmin_UP”. More generally groups of priestly status seem to have higher Steppe ancestry, suggesting those with this mixture may have had a central role in spreading Vedic culture.
•     The Out-of-India theory is now even more unlikely, at least at the genetic level. The researchers say early Iranian agriculturists did not have any significant mixture of South Asian hunter-gatherer ancestry, “and thus the patterns we observe are driven by gene flow into South Asia and not the reverse”.
•     That said, there is some evidence of movement of the Indus Valley people out towards the Turan area, based on data from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. Ancestries of people there suggest some very small amount of South Asian hunter-gatherer mixture, and the presence of the three outlier individuals is believed to possibly be proof of Indus Valley inhabitants migrating to Turan.
•     The Indus Valley Civilisation ancient DNA data from the Haryana site of Rakhigarhi, which was supposed to be released last month, should add to this picture of the ancestry of South Asian populations.
•     For further reading, see these two pieces by Razib Khan and the aforementioned analysis by Tony Joseph.

This piece was first published on Scroll.in. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

Source: qzcom

Ancient rock carvings in India hint at a 12,000-year-old lost civilisation

THE DARK AGE

By Maria Thomas | October 11, 2018

Blast from the past.

In the late 1980s, while exploring around the villages of Maharashtra’s coastal Konkan region, Sudhir Risbud came across a big square pattern engraved near the road to the beach town of Ganpatipule.

The electrical engineer and bird-watcher had no idea at the time that it was a petroglyph, a form of rock carving associated with prehistoric people, that was one of the earliest depictions of art created by humans in the Konkan region. Nor did he know that it dated from a time that archaeologists have dubbed the area’s “dark age,” for which no historical information was previously available.

Risbud and fellow explorers Dhananjay Marathe and Surendra Thakurdesai spotted a few more examples over the years, but it wasn’t until a historian accompanied them on one of their trips that they learned about the potential significance of these engravings. So, in 2012, they began to search for more in earnest.

Sudhir Risbud
Risbud and his fellow explorers have uncovered a number of human figures.

“For the earlier period of about two years, we were just groping (in) the dark. The villagers themselves, too, were not aware that such rock arts do exist in their villages,” Risbud, 45, told Quartz in an email. “But then, one day, an octogenarian from the Dhangar (shepherd) community told us about one site, and then on we trudged ahead using the thread provided by him, and hence started our mission of exploring the petroglyphs.”

In April 2015, they stumbled upon a cluster of 42 petroglyphs, depicting birds, animals, and human figures. In the years since then, the trio has uncovered over 1,200 engravings at 90 different sites across Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri districts, the latter best-known for its sweet Alphonso mangoes.

“All these sites are located in remote places on (the) laterite plateau quite far away from the villages,” Risbud explained. Exposed to the elements and out of sight for most villagers, no one had yet investigated the importance of the petroglyphs nor given any thought to their preservation.

“As we started exploring these sites, it dawned upon us that they were under the threat of destruction from various activities such as mining, road construction, and plantation,” he added.

So, they appealed to the Maharashtra state government’s department of archaeology and museums for help.

Tejas Garge, director of the department, says some of the figures had come into official records as far back as the 1990s, when a bystander had spotted a few while a road was being constructed towards the village of Nivali. But it took over two decades before the state department officially got involved in exploring and recording the sites, which it began last year.

“We are documenting them scientifically, and we are trying to gather data from stone tools and other evidence which would be helpful to date them,” Garge told Quartz.

The stone tools they’ve found so far are from the mesolithic era, otherwise known as the Middle Stone Age, dating back to about 10,000 BCE. Based on this, Garge and his team estimate that the petroglyphs could date from between 10,000 BCE to 2,000 BCE.

“They were not done in one shot, there’s successive generations of people who were doing this,” Garge explained. “This activity may have prolonged for centuries.”

So far his team has explored 45 sites in Ratnagiri, where they’ve broadly categorised the figures into fauna, human figures (often seen with their legs spread, believed to have some relation to fertility), and abstract geometric patterns that they haven’t been able to interpret yet. But what’s most interesting is that the animal, bird, and amphibian figurines include a number of creatures that aren’t found in the region today, such as the one-horned rhino, suggesting that they may have once been present in the area.

While the process of documenting and analysing the figures is still in the early stages, archaeologists believe they could solve the mystery of how the Konkan region transitioned from a stone-age society to a settled one.

“If you look at the cultural record of Konkan, you have the Middle Stone Age (upper Paleolithic period) and you have evidence of the early historical era,” Garge said. “In between, there is a gap of 25-30,000 years; there’s no evidence for human habituation. It was sort of the dark age of the Konkan.”

Now, this dark age is starting to become a little clearer.

It will take a few more years before archaeologists can accurately interpret the petroglyphs. So far, 15 of the sites have been protected, and the archaeology department wants to eventually draw tourists to the area. In the meantime, Risbud and his fellow explorers are raising awareness among the people living in the vicinity, so that the public knows they’re in the presence of the rare remnants of India’s ancient history.

Sudhir Risbud
One of the animal figures engraved on the rocks.

Sudhir Risbud
One of the largest engravings, located near the Kasheli village.

  

Sudhir Risbud
Besides animals and human figures, some of the engravings feature abstract shapes that experts are trying to decode.

Source: qz.com

Jammu & Kashmir: From a State with autonomy to two Union Territories

Downgraded at the stroke of a pen

Malavika Prasad

August 08, 2019 00:05 IST | Updated: August 08, 2019 14:49 IST

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) acceded to India in 1948 on terms recorded in the Instrument of Accession. Picture shows J&K Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah taking oath as member of Constituent Assembly in June 1949.   | Photo Credit: HINDU PHOTO ARCHIVES

The move to convert Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories could open a Pandora’s Box

The Indian government’s decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) raises many constitutional questions. One important question is whether the President had the powers to make all the provisions of India’s Constitution apply to the State. Another is whether the Indian government was authorised to do this in the face of its own obligations to J&K under Article 370. Even assuming for a moment that these questions did not arise, a further question that does crop up is: Did Parliament have the authority to bifurcate J&K into two Union Territories (UTs)?

The last question assumes importance because the conversion of a State governed by an elected legislature into a UT/UTs adversely affects a people who had earlier enjoyed the freedom of full democratic participation. In the case of J&K, the centrally appointed administrator — called the Lieutenant Governor — will now have the power to make a wide range of decisions, as opposed to a regular State Governor, who must act typically on the aid and advice of the State’s Council of Ministers.

Moreover, while the legislature of the UT of J&K — which the reorganisation law states will be akin to Puducherry’s — will have the power to enact laws on matters in the State List and the Concurrent List of the Constitution, Parliament will retain the power to enact overriding laws. Consequently, the arenas open to decision-making by elected representatives will be diminished.

The Delhi parallel

The total reorganisation of a full-fledged State into two UTs is historically unprecedented in India. However, one example here that can be cited is that of Delhi.

When the Constitution of India was adopted, Delhi was a ‘Part C’ State administered by the President acting through a Chief Commissioner or Lieutenant Governor. From 1952 to 1956, Delhi had a Legislative Assembly empowered to make laws on all matters in the State List excepting law and order; constitution and powers of municipal corporations and local authorities; and land and buildings in possession of the Central government situated in Delhi. However, in 1956, Delhi and all the other Part C States were divested of their legislative powers and converted into UTs that would now be administered by the President acting through an administrator appointed by her.

Within some years, the other UTs were given legislatures, and by 1987, the UTs of Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura and Goa were even made into States. Only the restoration of a Legislative Assembly in Delhi was stalled, out of concern that Delhi holding legislative powers over matters in the State List would compromise the Union government’s ability to discharge its functions towards the nation in the national capital.

Even when Delhi received partial Statehood in 1992, with full legislative powers on subjects in the State List — except public order, police and land — the elected government in Delhi found its hands tied by the powers of a centrally appointed Lieutenant Governor. This tussle for democratic power in Delhi finally culminated in 2018, when the Supreme Court recognised that the Constitution has sought to create a democratic and representative form of government in Delhi. Only in the exceptional case that the elected government and the Lieutenant Governor differ on matters fundamental to Delhi’s governance could the latter’s decision override democratic will.

Accession after Independence

However, J&K’s entry into the Indian Dominion is not comparable with Delhi’s beginning as a ‘Part C’ State. Delhi was an integral part of India during Independence and later, when the Constitution came into force. J&K on the other hand was a sovereign Princely State at the time of India’s Independence and acceded to the Indian Dominion in 1947 on terms recorded in a treaty — the Instrument of Accession. Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which accorded a special status to J&K in comparison with other States, was an embodiment of the treaty’s terms.

However, J&K’s special status was not a claim to sovereignty. This is apparent from Section 3 of the Constitution of the State of J&K, 1956, which recognises it as an integral part of India.

The special status merely meant that provisions of the Indian Constitution (other than Article 1 defining India as a Union of States; and Article 370 itself) were permitted to be applied to J&K differently from the way they applied to regular States. Such a modified application allowed J&K a higher degree of autonomy.

For instance, while Parliament had exclusive powers to make laws pertaining to States, on all matters not in the State and Concurrent Lists, the residuary power rested with the State legislature in the case of J&K. With this autonomy, the people of J&K on paper had an even larger arena than regular States for enacting laws through democratic participation. Therefore, J&K’s reorganisation into a UT amounts to a more severe curtailment of democratic rights than that of Delhi in 1956.

Not a constitutional amendment

Further, Delhi’s conversion into a UT and the subsequent restoration of its Legislative Assembly were both carried out through constitutional amendments, which cannot easily be amended further. J&K’s conversion into a UT, on the other hand, was effected through a regular law of Parliament, which can easily be amended at the behest of a majoritarian consensus from time to time.

Special status for States is not extraordinary in the Indian Constitution. Several States in India enjoy differential rights in their relationship to the Union by constitutional design, depending on their unique cultural, ethnic and geopolitical compositions. The thinking underlying this arrangement is that the interests of States with stronger intra-group ties or ethnic bases — like Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland — are better represented in the Constitution and the structure of the government, if we account for their subjective contexts.

The Constitution of India’s chosen federal principle was to honour these subjective contexts to hold together the diverse Indian States in the Union, as B.R. Ambedkar stated in the Constituent Assembly. Therefore, the evisceration of the right to full democratic participation of an entire section of people, as happened earlier this week in the case of J&K, should make us all wonder: what if more such laws are enacted, disregarding the subjective contexts of our other States and downgrading the States into Union Territories?

Malavika Prasad is a lawyer and doctoral fellow at the Nalsar University of Law

Source: thehindu

India’s Sudden Kashmir Move Could Backfire Badly

Argument

New Delhi’s crackdown could send the region spinning into instability.

By Michael Kugelman | August 5, 2019, 4:47 PM


Supporters of the Pakistani militant organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) take part in an anti-India protest rally in Karachi on August 5, 2019, in reaction to the move by India to abolish Kashmir's special status. Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images

India has made a series of drastic, and in some cases unprecedented, moves in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir, which is administered by New Delhi but claimed by Pakistan.

On Aug. 2, the state government of Jammu and Kashmir issued an extraordinary order. Citing terrorist threats, it ordered tourists and pilgrims to evacuate, and it shuttered schools. This came several days after New Delhi deployed thousands of new troops to the region. Then, on Aug. 4, officials in Kashmir cut off internet access and placed several prominent leaders under house arrest.

That was wildly disproportionate to any given threat of attack, especially in a region that’s faced terrorism before. Clearly, something bigger was at play. New Delhi was taking steps to head off potential unrest in a region with sizable levels of support for independence. Polls have found that as many as two thirds of the residents of the Kashmir valley want regional independence, though surveys find that support for independence tends to be weaker in Jammu. The last time the government took such dramatic measures was in 2016, when Indian security forces killed Burhan Wani, a charismatic young militant revered by Kashmiris as a freedom fighter, and implemented a regionwide crackdown.

Sure enough, on Aug. 5, India announced that it plans to revoke Article 370, a constitutional clause dating back to 1949 that gives Jammu and Kashmir its special autonomous status. The scale of this move cannot be overstated. Abrogating Article 370 represents a major tipping point for an already fraught dispute—and it could easily backfire on India.

The Kashmir dispute goes back more than 70 years, to when India and Pakistan became free from British rule. After Partition in 1947, the leader of Kashmir could not decide whether to have his Muslim-majority region join India or Pakistan. After fighters entered Kashmir from Pakistan, Kashmir agreed to an accession treaty with New Delhi in return for India’s intervention to push back the Pakistani fighters. In 1948, the United Nations called for a plebiscite to occur after the region was demilitarized, in order to determine the future status of Kashmir. That never happened, however, and ever since then Kashmir’s status has remained unresolved. The region has also triggered multiple wars between India and Pakistan.

Article 370, however, enables Kashmir to craft and implement policies independently, with the exception of key spheres such as foreign affairs and defense. It also prevents outsiders from acquiring land in Kashmir. Article 35A, a separate constitutional clause also likely to be scrapped, strengthens Kashmir’s autonomous status by providing special rights and privileges to its permanent residents.

It’s easy to understand New Delhi’s decision to remove Kashmir’s autonomous status.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)has frequently telegraphed its intention to ax Article 370, which is explicitly described by the constitution as a purely “temporary provision.” The BJP has long viewed the region as an integral part of the nation and rejects the idea that Pakistan has any claim to the territory. By dispensing with the region’s autonomous status, it can formally consummate that integration and deliver a definitive blow to the region’s separatist impulses. It can also better take advantage of investment and broader development opportunities for Kashmir. For these reasons, many Indians will celebrate the decision as a bold but necessary move.

Two recent developments probably pushed the government to act now. The first was U.S. President Donald Trump’s offer to mediate the Kashmir dispute. The second is a rapidly progressing Afghanistan peace process, facilitated to an extent by Islamabad, which could lead to an eventual political settlement that gives the Taliban a prominent role in government. Each of these developments strengthens Pakistan’s hand. Making a dramatic move on Kashmir enables New Delhi to push back against Islamabad. It also sends a strong message to Washington about New Delhi’s utter lack of interest in external mediation.

Domestic politics are also at play. A big-bang, early term move from the newly reelected BJP is sure to attract strong support from its rank and file, and such backing can blunt potential disillusionment and unhappiness down the road if the government struggles to ease India’s growing jobs crisis. Indeed, it may not be a coincidence that the party, during its previous term, stepped up its Hindu nationalist policies—another surefire way to attract support from its base—after it struggled to carry out an oft-promised economic reform agenda.

But the repeal of Article 370 is fraught with risk. India is unilaterally altering the territorial status of a highly disputed territory that is, per square mile, the most militarized place in the world. Something has to give, and New Delhi understands this—which is why it implemented a draconian lockdown before the announcement.

For many Kashmiris, Article 370 had more symbolic than practical meaning, given that the long-standing and repressive presence of Indian security forces had undercut the notion of autonomy. Many Kashmiris face daily restrictions on their freedom of expression and movement, along with the constant risk of rough treatment from security personnel. Still, for many Kashmiri Muslims, the dominant group in Jammu and Kashmir and the victims of what they regard as an Indian occupation, the revocation of Article 370 is a nightmare scenario, because it brings them closer to an Indian state that they despise. Most of them want to be free of Indian rule.

Instead, they will be formally living under it—and confronted with the repression left in place, which could well be amplified in reaction to the unrest that will eventually follow. There is also the risk of further social turmoil once those outside Kashmir, following the repeal of Article 370, are allowed to acquire land. For many Kashmiri Muslims, the fear is that this influx of Indians will eventually change the demographics of the Muslim-majority region and exacerbate communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

Furthermore, Kashmiris—and Pakistan, for that matter—have long argued, citing previous U.N. resolutions, that the status of Kashmir should be decided through a plebiscite. To be sure, they often fail to acknowledge that the U.N. has stipulated that a plebiscite should only take place after Kashmir has been demilitarized—though no one can agree on just what that means. But in at least one way, India’s unilateral move goes against its own prior arguments. Indians have long rejected external mediation on Kashmir—along with the option of a plebiscite—by citing the Simla Agreement, a 1972 accord between India and Pakistan that stipulates that the two countries settle their differences (including those on Kashmir) through bilateral negotiations—that is, not unilaterally.

Finally, the optics of India’s move are troubling. New Delhi allowed no debate on a major decision with far-reaching ramifications, with those most affected by the decision—Kashmiris—kept in the dark and cut off entirely. India may be the world’s biggest democracy, but the way Article 370 is being repealed is inherently autocratic—dictated from a distant center with no input from the people most affected.

For now, a major question is how key players will respond. So long as New Delhi maintains its security lockdown in Kashmir, unrest is unlikely. But if that grip is loosened, violence could ensue—suggesting that the lockdown could remain in place for an extended period. Then there is Pakistan. Islamabad’s immediate priority will be to step up its long-standing campaign to get the Kashmir issue on the global agenda and to get the world to condemn India’s policies. Up to now, Pakistan has largely failed to sell its case to the world. Pakistan’s image problems have left India winning the PR war. Indeed, many protesters who might rally for Tibet or Palestine don’t go out of their way to mobilize for Kashmir.

But as India’s move spurs press coverage worldwide, Islamabad has its greatest opportunity in years to internationalize the dispute. This isn’t to suggest that the world is about to gravitate to Pakistan’s side—far from it. But Islamabad can at least expect some supportive statements from Pakistan-friendly countries—Malaysia and Turkey have already expressed their backing for Pakistan following India’s move—and from entities such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

A more immediate risk for New Delhi is that Pakistan will retaliate by resorting to its tried-and-true tactic of sending militant proxies into Kashmir to target Indian security forces. In recent years, much of the unrest in the region has been perpetrated by local Kashmiris radicalized by local conditions, with less direct involvement from Pakistan than in earlier years. But India’s repeal of Article 370 gives Islamabad fresh incentive to deploy its prized asymmetric assets.

While India may regard the repeal of Article 370 as an internal matter that will remove many headaches and should be of limited concern to its neighbors, the reality is quite different. The Kashmir problem has not been solved, as some Indians have suggested. On the contrary, it’s just gotten a lot more complicated—and potentially a lot more destabilizing.

Michael Kugelman is Asia Program deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He can be reached on Twitter @michaelkugelman and at michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org Twitter: @michaelkugelman

Source: foreignpolicy.com

Diary of Srinagar lockdown

Cut out like never before

By Sankarshan Thakur

Published 8.08.19, 2:49 AM . Updated 8.08.19, 3:11 AM

A Srinagar street is seen through barbed wire on Tuesday AP

I may have never ever felt so shut out and so shut down. Not during the protracted military operations of the IPKF in northern Sri Lanka. Not during the many weeks I was on the frontier reporting the Kargil war. Not during the Tahrir Square uprising in Cairo. Not even during the darkest I have witnessed in Kashmir over the past decades.... This was not even censorship, not about what you can or cannot report. This was being cut out and left cold"

-The Telegraph’s Sankarshan Thakur returned to New Delhi from Srinagar on Wednesday and wrote this diary on the information blackout

A reporter’s worst nightmare is not being able to tell the story; this week, the powers enacted it coldly, and with singular completeness. But it’s poor form to complain of being pinched when everything around you is being hammered. The reporter in Kashmir this week was a niggling collateral to seismic enactments whose impulsive after-tremors have been stilled by jackboots and commanded at gunpoint to behave.

These are fragments from a diary that lay proscribed for days:

Saturday, August 3

Shortly after I arrive in Srinagar mid-afternoon, a friend of several decades comes around and insists on ferrying me home. “No point getting locked up in a room with nowhere to go. It isn’t safe, a big lockdown is coming.”

“How do you know a lockdown is coming?” I ask him, a little irritably.

“If a lockdown isn’t coming, why are you even here?” he retorts.

Argument over.

We visit a retired bureaucrat whose sense and instinct I have long trusted. He isn’t himself; he is unshaven and has a bedraggled look about him. “What news have you got from Delhi?” he asks me. “You tell me, I’ve merely arrived sensing something, nothing more,” I reply.

He throws up his hands. “I’ve been burning the phones, but is there anyone here I know who knows? Nobody. Something is happening but what? I am at wits’ end.”

We drive around Srinagar, through the arterial Maulana Azad Road, and dip into the warren of the downtown and weave about — Khanyar, Nowhatta, Zainakadal, Alikadal, Amirakadal, Idgah, Soura, singed flashpoints that haven’t ceased from erupting.

There’s a hint of panic in the traffic and all the honking that suggests more than just weary weekend rush. Folks are queued up at ATMs. Long, gnarled lines of cars at petrol bunks. Boys waving bottlefuls of diesel or petrol like trophies. Jostling around chemists’ counters.

“Can you not see everyone’s panicked?” my friend fumes. “What are they up to? Are they telling us all this is for nothing? That they have abrogated the Amarnath Yatra and whistled away the tourists for nothing?”

He’s on edge, he is breathlessly running through the gamut of possibilities. “What plans do they have for us? Take away 35A? Trifurcate us? Kill 370? Do you think they can do that? Is that even possible? But they can do anything, can’t they?”

It’s dark by the time we reach. The outskirts of Srinagar have turned, the air is less hurried. Governor Satya Pal Malik is exhorting calm on television. “Nothing is happening. Why is everybody panicking? There is no reason to. I know of nothing happening, but I don’t know about tomorrow.”

It rains for a bit — black, dark rain — and it puts a shine on the road. Presently a convoy carrying troops passes by, sweeping up the shine, the tyres mulching in the rain. Nothing else moves, or can be heard. Not even birds. Just the convoys, and later into the night, the report of boots getting deployed.

Sunday, August 4

I drive into Srinagar. It’s a washed, sunny morning. The traffic’s thin; it’s a Sunday. But no, it’s not thin. On the edges of Srinagar, barricades have come up overnight. And many more platoons are moving up and down, taking position. The troops are calm at the back of the trucks; some of them look tired and lost, as if they don’t yet know where they’ve been ordered to. Boys are at cricket in neighbourhood fields.

The regulation Sunday street bazaar has unfurled on Residency Road; it’s churning with hawkers and buyers, multicoloured candyfloss is flying off the carts like there won’t be a tomorrow. I see people buying cigarettes in stacks; the bakery shelves are thinning by the minute, its loaves of bread are vanishing the fastest.

I spot an elderly woman screaming down her boy for spilling a bagful of cookies on the pavement: “Now don’t ask me for biscuits a whole month, you deserve that, you clumsy!”

Central Srinagar is a whirl all its own. Did anyone even pay any heed to Malik’s plea for calm? Or do these folks know better?

“It’s practice, Sir,” a restaurateur known to me for years tells me. “Kashmiris have a keen sense of foreboding, they’ve been trained by you for years and years. If there’s panic, there must be a reason.”

I try knocking a few important doors on Srinagar’s most important street. But I run into a barricade at Gupkar Road. It’s where Farooq and Omar Abdullah live; it’s where Mehbooba Mufti is too.

“Permission nahin hai,” the paramilitary guard tells me. I try to reason with him. I show him an exchange of texts I had earlier had with Omar and push for access. He pulls the roller gates shut and waves me off. “Permission nahin hai.”

I take a detour to more approachable doors — homes of civil servants and the odd police officer I’ve known, senior journalists in town. For every question I ask, I get a question in return: “But why don’t you tell us what’s happening? You’re the one from Delhi.”

Something’s about to happen; nobody has a farthing’s clue what.

I get called by a friend on my way back. “Two truckfuls of troops just took over a polytechnic in front of our house. They were in riot gear, helmets, rubber knee-caps, helmets, guns. There are many of them, two truckfuls in just our narrow lane.”

I call my Srinagar-based colleague Muzaffar Raina to find out if he’s well and any wiser. “I don’t know, I don’t know, people are saying many things, all sorts of things, but something may happen tonight, hai na?”

We exchange “take care and keep in touch” advisories. That is the last I have spoken to Muzaffar since.

By the time I get home, another friend has called me from Srinagar and informed me she is on her way to secure a curfew pass. “When are they imposing curfew?” I ask her. “Tomorrow morning, I am told; speak to you later.”

She texts me shortly after. “Relief. No curfew tomorrow. I was told to keep in touch, but no curfew tomorrow.”

“Are you certain?” I text her.

“So I was told,” she replies, “But very frightened and uneasy. Take care, speak soon.”

An hour later, as I mull the weariness of heaping my newspaper with another “nobody knows, everything’s uncertain” report, I receive a missive from a friend in the police control room.

“The phones are going off in a while, everything.”

“Meaning?” I ask.

“Meaning everything’s off, and no movement tomorrow. See you on the other side.”

My friend who’d gone seeking a curfew pass has been walked up the path.

I make several calls to people in Srinagar who may know, but nobody responds. My friend and host tells me sagely: “Relax, they are busy. Everything is shutting down, get used to the idea.”

At 10.54, the Internet on my friend’s phone snaps. He has a local number; mine, a Delhi number, is still working.

I send a text to my editor, R. Rajagopal: “They have begun snapping Internet services incrementally.”

At 11.04, I send him another text: “It can safely be added that the administration is bracing for imposing ‘restrictions’ on movement tomorrow in the Valley.”

At 12.26, I begin writing another text to Rajagopal: “Don’t know what the cabinet will decide in Delhi tomorrow, but the iron curtain is about to….”

My phone snaps.

Like at the throw of some switch somewhere. Internet gone. WhatsApp gone. Connectivity gone. The signal towers have collapsed.

I run down to the landline. “This line is currently out of service, please try later.”

I will only ever be able to try whenever it is I am in Srinagar next.

I try heading out, but there’s nowhere to go. There are pickets and barricades, and soldiers frilled out around spools of concertina wires. Lockdown.

I may have never ever felt so shut out and so shut down. Not during the protracted military operations of the IPKF in northern Sri Lanka. Not during the many weeks I was on the frontier reporting the Kargil war. Not during the Tahrir Square uprising in Cairo. Not even during the darkest I have witnessed in Kashmir over the past decades.

All through the widespread eruption of armed militancy and the consequent flight of Pandits from the Valley in 1989-90, there was always the old reliable Post and Telegraph Office to carry your typewritten copy to for transmission.

This was not even censorship, not about what you can or cannot report. This was being cut out and left cold.

Monday, August 5

Touch phones don’t come alive from rubbing them; only their screens do. I rub my phone nevertheless. I switch it off and restart it. Meantime, I coo into the landline’s receiver like I could seduce it to come back to life. I rub my phone again. But for all the magic these instruments possess, they are no Aladdin’s lamp; and the djinn was never at my command.

But bless the skies and satellites. The television was working — not cable networks, but we were blessed, we had a dish overhead.

A bombshell came down it a little past 11 in the morning.

Home minister Amit Shah had announced to the world a bouquet of decisions that would be received in Kashmir, the core intended area, as a bunch of nettles: the spirit of Article 370 lay snuffed, Article 35A had been killed as consequence, Jammu and Kashmir itself had been both bifurcated and downgraded to a Union Territory.

Jubilation and uproar flickering off the live screen from the Rajya Sabha. Astonished silence where I sat with others gathered around, as if everything had turned to wood.

“Haaaaah, that is it then, wham-bam thank you Sam,” one of them recovered to remark. “Oh, so Kashmiris had set out to demand azadi, and now they are being asked to demand statehood. That’s how far we have come. Bravo! Bravo!”

You had to hear that tone to sense the depth and pathos of the sarcasm.

“Kashmir?” the voice rang out again, “Oh, its now forever lost.”

Source: telegraphindia

The Narendra Modi government scraps Kashmir’s special status under Indian constitution

HISTORY REVERSED

By Manavi Kapur 
August 5, 2019

REUTERS/DANISH ISMAIL

India has repealed Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which grants special status to the restive state of Jammu & Kashmir.

This law gave J&K autonomy over its affairs, except in foreign affairs, defence, and communication.

Addressing parliament today (Aug. 5) following two days of heightened security in the state, home minister Amit Shah announced that Article 370 would no longer exist. President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, has signed this notification. Shah’s announcement was met with loud protests from opposition parties.

The central government was obligated to take the government of J&K into confidence before such a dramatic move, but it completely bypassed this provision. It helped that the state is under the central rule currently.

With this move, Ladakh district of the state of Jammu & Kashmir has been turned into a union territory, which will be governed by the central government. The move also renders the regions of Jammu and Kashmir Valley union territories—however, these will have their own legislative assembly, like the state of Delhi.

 J&K notification signed by president Ram Nath Kovind.

The Modi government’s move sparked a furious debate across India. For instance, Omar Abdullah, the former chief minister of the state and a leader of the J&K-based National Conference party said it will have dangerous consequences and that “our darkest apprehensions have come true,” news channel NDTV reported.

Abdullah, along with other top leaders of the state like former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, has been placed under house arrest since late last night.

What did J&K get for acceding to India? Another partition along communal lines? Our special status isn’t a gift bestowed upon us. Its a right guaranteed by the same 🇮🇳 parliament. A contract entered into by J&K leadership & India. Today the very same contract has been violated

— Mehbooba Mufti (@MehboobaMufti) August 5, 2019

We support the govt on its decisions on J & K. We hope this will bring peace and development in the state.

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) August 5, 2019

Source: qz.com

శ్రీ కౌముది ఆగస్ట్ 2019

Sri Koumudi August 2019

From Achhut Kanya in 1936 to Article 15, how Indian cinema has dealt with caste

Seema Chishti

From Achhut Kanya in 1936 to Article 15 in 2019, how Hindi cinema has looked at caste. 

Across the Divide: Article 15 grows on you as a sophisticated whodunnit as its central protagonist, a Brahmin, Stephanian IPS officer played by Ayushmann Khurrana, tries to navigate caste hierarchies and maintain santulan or the status quo.

Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit (1939) is a rendition of a poem on racism in a time when lynching of Black men was common in America. More recently, rapper Kanye West used it in his album Yeezus (2013), the haunting lyrics speaking of strung-up bodies of Blacks lynched for acting above or outside their station and breaking the harsh code of the times: Southern trees bear a strange fruit/Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Strung-up bodies serve as a warning universally. So, like in the deep south in the US, in India, too, two minor Dalit girls, raped and murdered, were found strung on a tree in Badaun in UP in 2014. Ever since he read a news report on it, filmmaker Anubhav Sinha could not get the image out of his mind. He looked deeper into the story and built a simmering narrative around it, of the system, its politics, the acceptance of caste as well as the revolt against it in his recently released film, Article 15.

Award-winning BBC journalist Priyanka Dubey who has written powerfully on this case in her No Nation for Women: Reportage of Rape from India, the World’s Largest Democracy (2018), says, “Caste is an undeniable reality of today’s India and women’s bodies are often used as a tool by upper-caste communities to prove their false pride. My reporting experience on the Badaun double-murder case reinforced my conviction that the road to justice becomes much tougher if the victim(s)’s family belong to the ‘lower caste’ or are Dalits. I followed up the story till after one year of the murders and the ruthless highhandedness with which the investigative agencies behaved with the victims’ family made me feel that their parents have absolutely no agency as citizens of this country.”

  

As far back as in 1936, the Ashok Kumar-Devika Rani starrer Achhut Kanya told the love story of a Dalit girl and a Brahmin boy, sundered by the caste system.

Article 15 grows on you as a sophisticated whodunnit as its central protagonist, a Brahmin, Stephanian IPS officer played by Ayushmann Khurrana, tries to navigate caste hierarchies and maintain santulan or the status quo. But its strength lies in its success in looking caste in the eye, unflinchingly.

Much before Article 15, caste was explored in Hindi cinema — even before Independence. As far back as in 1936, the Ashok Kumar-Devika Rani starrer Achhut Kanya told the love story of a Dalit girl and a Brahmin boy, sundered by the caste system while Bimal Roy’s Sujata in 1959 placed a Dalit character at its centre. But essentially, the focus of these films remained on the personal struggles of their Dalit characters and not on the issues that the the community faced. It was left to Goutam Ghose to take on the issue in his powerful Shabana Azmi-Naseeruddin Shah-Om Puri starrer Paar in 1984.

A decade ago in 1974, Shyam Benegal had trained his lens on feudal relations and the exploitation written inherently in them in his directorial debut Ankur. Says Benegal of the character played by Shabana Azmi who is betrayed at the end, “She was, of course, Dalit, but at that time, no one used that phrase. The term, perhaps, was also not much in use 40 years ago. It was more ‘us’ and ‘them’. Caste and class were deeply interlinked then also, but things were not stated so explicitly.”

More recently, down south, while Pa Ranjith’s Rajinikant-starrer Kabali (2016) was a response to the 2012 Dharmapuri caste riots, Marathi film Sairat (2016) with its story of young love and old barriers caught the imagination of cinema-goers outside Maharashtra as well. But Sairat‘s remake in Hindi, Dhadak (2018), a much watered-down version, showed just how Hindi cinema skirts around the uncomfortable questions of caste and its reluctance to confront the full horrors of it.

      

Though there have been occasional films centred around Dalit characters like in Neeraj Ghaywan’s sleeper hit Masaan (2015), Dalit characters are mainly missing in Hindi cinema.

Though there have been occasional films centred around Dalit characters like in Neeraj Ghaywan’s sleeper hit Masaan (2015), Dalit characters are mainly missing in Hindi cinema. Says Dr Amit Thorat, an economist who has written on exclusion and disparities faced by marginalised groups, “I think Dalit heroes need to be represented more in popular cinema. They also need to be presented as normalised in their social and personal relationships.”

A common criticism against Sinha’s Article 15 has been on its choosing a Brahmin as its central protagonist. “I don’t know if the film loses out by not having a Dalit hero. That would have been a different film. In this film, I wanted the camera to enter the landscape from the point of view of our young colleagues who think caste differences and atrocities are a thing of the past. I wanted the camera to firmly rest on our shoulders. It is addressed to all those who will make the New India in the next 10 years,” says Sinha.

How caste is chosen to be spoken about in the news or in popular culture often shows us what exactly the issue of the time was. The term ‘Harijan’ or ‘people of god’, eventually got negated as patronising and was replaced by the term ‘Dalit’, popularised by Dr BR Ambedkar, that means ‘suppressed’ or ‘downtrodden’. But the films made then and even afterwards steered clear of the term. “We were masters of shorthand then, with words, with expression and how to show what was not stated upfront. People did not say, ‘I am Dalit’ with pride then and if the term untouchable was used, it was like abuse,” says Benegal.

Shorthand goes a long way today, too. Sinha says this is the most arthouse he has gone in in any film, with symbolism imbued in almost all shots of Article 15. Water, particularly, is shown with a menacing air. “Throughout the film, water is trouble. You don’t know what will be fished out from beneath. The shot of a Dalit boy going down to clean the sewage is the only one which is 150 frames to a second as I wanted the audience to be completely up close to him. We usually think someone else cleans all the sewage. We have no awareness of the task he performs,” says Sinha. Hindi cinema may be gradually beginning to train its lens on these overlooked tasks but does, or can, a film like Article 15 show the full extent of the horrors of some Dalit lives?

Perhaps it can’t. Truth, after all, remains stranger than fiction.

This article appeared in the print edition with the headline ‘Anatomy of Atrocities’

Source: indianexpress