Home ministry vs home ministry: Were there 644 or 1,227 communal riots last year?

The ministry has ordered a probe to find out why its data on communal incidents vary from those of its subsidiary, the National Crime Records Bureau.

Rakesh Dubbudu, IndiaSpend.com  · Today · 07:30 pm

India experienced 644 communal riots in 2014, according to data released by the Home Ministry. But if you believe data released by the National Crime Records Bureau – a Home Ministry subsidiary – there were 1,227 riots that year.

The data discrepancy, reported by Factly.in, a data journalism portal, is important because as an intolerance debate roils India, much attention is being focused on whether such riots have increased or decreased since Narendra Modi took over as prime minister in May 2014.

The Home Ministry has now ordered a probe to find out why its data on communal riots vary from those of the NCRB, which it controls.

IndiaSpend previously reported how Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are India’s communal tinderboxes, according to data tabled in the Lok Sabha.

Is the way hate speeches are listed the cause of the data dispute?

The NCRB numbers could be high only because hate speeches qualify as “incidents” and are listed under riots in NCRB data, while they might not be counted as incidents by the human rights division of the MHA.

Even so, the NCRB numbers should be higher in every state.

The only plausible reason for the discrepancy is faulty reporting by state police and intelligence departments, calling into question the sanctity of government data.

The biggest difference in data is in Uttar Pradesh

India had 1,227 communal riots in 2014, with 2,000 people listed as victims, according to the NCRB data.

Leading the list is Jharkhand with 349 incidents, followed by Haryana with 207. Tamil Nadu is third with 120 incidents followed by West Bengal (104), Maharashtra (99), Bihar (59) and Gujarat (57).

Jharkhand, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal do not have significantly more riots, according to the MHA data.

Indeed, there are less than 20 riots in each of those states, as per the MHA data. Uttar Pradesh, which had the highest number of riots (133), as per the MHA, is eighth in the NCRB list with 51 communal riots.

The data disagreement extends to Haryana, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Telangana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Source: National Crime Records Bureau

Both data sets list about the same number of victims: the MHA 2,016; the NCRB, 2,001. There are other points of commonality.

What the home ministry and NCRB agree: 13 states reported no riots

Home Ministry and NCRB data match only for 13 states/UTs, and these are states where both NCRB and MHA report no riots.

There is a double-digit difference in 11 states, and the difference is significant in 10 states. The MHA reported only 10 riots for Jharkhand, while the NCRB reported 349.

  Source: National Crime Records Bureau and Ministry of Home Affairs data. 

How the NCRB changed its method of data collection

The NCRB maintains a secure national database of crimes, criminals and law enforcement agencies, collecting data from state police departments, compiling it into an annual Crime in India report.

The NCRB made significant changes to collection and dissemination of crime data in 2014.

In its new template for collection of crime data, there is a section on riots as defined under Sections 147, 148, 149, 150 and 151 of the Indian Penal Code.

There is a separate section for data on offences that promote enmity between different groups, as defined under Sections 153A and 153B of the IPC.

Before 2014, all the data related to riots were collected under one head called riots. From 2014, the data on riots is categorised into many different sub-heads, namely communal riots, industrial riots and riots for political reasons etc.

The data collected under Sections 153A and 153B is counted as communal riots.

The NCRB gets data from state police departments. These data are based on the sections of law mentioned in the first information report.

The NCRB also follows what is called the ‘Principal Offence Rule’ for counting crime. So, among many offences registered in a single case, only the most heinous crime will be considered as a counting unit, thereby representing one case.

This article was originally published on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in

Source: scrollin

శ్రీ కౌముది డిసెంబర్ 2015

Source: శ్రీ కౌముది

What really happened when Vasco Da Gama set foot in India

BOOK EXCERPT

The Portuguese explorer came in search of gold and spices, but ended up unleashing political fury.

Manu Pillai · Today · 05:00 pm

In July 1497 when Vasco da Gama set sail for India, King Manuel of Portugal assorted a distinctly expendable crew of convicts and criminals to go with him. After all, the prospects of this voyage succeeding were rather slender considering that no European had ever advanced beyond Africa’s Cape of Good Hope before, let alone reached the fabled spice gardens of India.

Da Gama’s mirthless quest was essentially to navigate uncharted, perilous waters, and so it seemed wiser to invest in men whose chances in life were not especially more inspiring than in death. Driven by formidable ambition and undaunted spirit, it took da Gama ten whole months, full of dangerous adventures and gripping episodes, to finally hit India’s shores.

It was the dawn of a great new epoch in human history and this pioneer knew he was standing at the very brink of greatness. Prudence and experience, however, dictated that in an unknown land it was probably wiser not to enter all at once. So one of his motley crew was selected to swim ashore and sense the mood of the “natives” there before the captain could make his triumphant, choreographed entrance.

And thus, ironically, the first modern European to sail all the way from the West and to set foot on Indian soil was a petty criminal from the gutters of Lisbon.

For centuries Europe had been barred direct access to the prosperous East, first politically when international trade fell into Arab hands in the third century after Christ, and then when the emergence of Islam erected a religious obstacle in the seventh. Fruitless wars and bloodshed followed, but not since the heyday of the Greeks and Romans had the West enjoyed steady contact with India.

Spices and other oriental produce regularly reached the hungry capitals of Europe, but so much was the distance, cultural and geographic, that Asia became a sumptuous cocktail of myth and legend in Western imagination. It was generally accepted with the most solemn conviction, for instance, that the biblical Garden of Eden was located in the East and that there thrived all sorts of absurdly exotic creatures like unicorns, men with dogs’ heads, and supernatural races called “The Apple Smellers”.

Palaces of gold sparkled in the bright sun, while precious gems were believed to casually float about India’s serene rivers. Spotting phoenixes, talking serpents, and other fascinating creatures was a mundane, everyday affair here, according to even the most serious authorities on the subject. But perhaps the most inviting of all these splendid tales was that lost somewhere in India was an ancient nation of Christians ruled by a sovereign whose name, it was confidently proclaimed, was Prester John.

It was long believed that there lived in Asia a prestre (priest) called John who, through an eternal fountain of youth, had become the immortal emperor of many mystical lands.

Some accounts said he was a descendant of one of the three Magi who visited the infant Jesus, while a more inventive version placed him as foster-father to the terrible Genghis Khan. Either way, Prester John was rumoured to possess infinite riches, including a fabulous mirror that reflected the entire world, and a tremendous emerald table to entertain thirty thousand select guests.

Great sensation erupted across Europe in AD 1165, in fact, when a mysterious letter purportedly from the Prester himself appeared suddenly in Rome. In this he elaborately gloated about commanding the loyalties of “horned men, one-eyed men, men with eyes back and front, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, giants, Cyclops” and so on. After vacillating for twelve years, Pope Alexander III finally couriered a reply, but neither the messenger nor this letter were ever seen again.

Luckily for Europe, the travels of Marco Polo in the thirteenth century and of Niccolo di Conti in the fifteenth painted a rather more rational picture of Asia on the whole, but they were still convinced of the presence of lost Christians there, egged on by religious fervour and the commercial incentives of breaching the monopolised spice trade.

If (Vasco) da Gama and his men, weighed down by centuries of collective European curiosity and imagination, anticipated the legendary Prester as they stepped on to the shores of Kerala in India, they were somewhat disappointed. For when envoys of the local king arrived, they came bearing summons from Manavikrama, a Hindu Rajah famed across the trading world as the Zamorin of Calicut.

This prince was the proud lord of one of the greatest ports in the world and a cornerstone of international trade; even goods from the Far East were shipped to Calicut first before the Arabs transported them out to Persia and Europe. Until the Ming emperors elected to isolate themselves from the world, huge Chinese junks used to visit Calicut regularly; between 1405 and 1430 alone, for instance, the famed Admiral Zheng He called here no less than seven times with up to 250 ships manned by 28,000 soldiers.

In fact, even after the final departure of the Chinese, there remained for some time in Calicut a half-Malayali, half-Chinese and Malay community called Chinna Kribala, with one of its star sailors a pirate called Chinali.

The city itself was an archetype of commercial prosperity and medieval prominence; it hosted merchants and goods from every worthy trading nation in its lively bazaars, its people were thriving and rich, and its ruler potent enough to preserve his sovereignty from more powerful forces on the Indian peninsula.

Da Gama and his men received one courtesy audience from the Zamorin and they were greatly impressed by the assured opulence of his court. But when they requested an official business discussion, they were informed of the local custom of furnishing presents to the ruler first. Da Gama confidently produced “twelve pieces of striped cloth, four scarlet hoods, six hats, four strings of coral, a case of six wash-hand basins, a case of sugar, two casks of oil, and two of honey” for submission, only to be jeered into shame. For Manavikrama’s men burst out laughing, pointing out that even the poorest Arab merchants knew that nothing less than pure gold was admissible at court.

Da Gama tried to make up for the embarrassment by projecting himself as an ambassador and not a mere merchant, but the Zamorin’s aides were not convinced. They bluntly told him that if the King of Portugal could afford only third-rate trinkets as presents, the mighty Zamorin had no interest whatever in initiating any diplomatic dealings on a basis of equality with him. Manavikrama, it was obvious, could not care less about an obscure King Manuel in an even more obscure kingdom called Portugal, and with a pompous flourish of royal hauteur, he brushed aside da Gama’s lofty ambassadorial claims.

The Zamorin was not unreasonable, however. He clarified that the Portuguese were welcome to trade like ordinary merchants in the bazaar if they so desired, even if no special treatment was forthcoming. Da Gama, though livid at his less-than-charming reception, had no option but to comply, having come all the way and being too hopelessly outnumbered to make a military statement to the contrary.

And so his men set up shop in Calicut, under the watchful eyes of the Arabs, peddling goods they had brought from Europe; goods, they quickly realised, nobody really wanted here in the East.
The hostility of the Arabs did not help either; for they, recognising a threat to their commercial preponderance, initiated a policy of slander, painting him and his men as loathsome, untrustworthy pirates. When complaints about this were made to the Zamorin, they were met with yawning disdain, not least because the Portuguese had precious little to contribute to business or to the royal coffers. The first European trade mission, thus, was a resounding flop as far as the Indians were concerned, and when da Gama’s fleet departed Calicut three months later, they left behind a distinctly unflattering impression on the locals.

Excerpted with permission from The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore by Manu S. Pillai, HarperCollins India.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin

Dictum & Diaspora: Silence or near silence on intolerance ill behooves PM Modi

Just as Prime Minister Modi can't ignore a foreign military attack on India, he doesn't have the option of turning a blind eye or of remaining silent in the face of intolerance, communal strife and religious violence within the country.

Written by Ujjal Dosanjh | Updated: December 3, 2015 8:40 am

Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking in Lok Sabha.

The intolerance being felt in the country is a serious threat to the idea of India. So is Prime Minister Modi’s silence or near silence about it. Recently my mind focussed on what it meant to be Indian – above and beyond the intolerance debate – when in answering a question from columnist Tavleen Singh, Aamir Khan criticised the extremists of all varieties including ISIS asserting he didn’t consider ISIS to be Muslims even if they held the koran in one hand butchering people with the other. Not satisfied with the answer, Singh went on to excoriate him in her column “Intolerance of the real kind” as a “Muslim leader” for not leading other Muslims in denouncing ISIS to the exclusion of all other extremists. I found it perplexing.

I have always thought an Indian is an Indian – no less than any other Indian. Aamir Khan is an Indian who happens to be an actor and a Muslim just as Tavleen Singh is an Indian who happens to be a columnist and hails from a Sikh family. None of that should matter and isn’t worth wasting even a smidgen of ink over. But it made me wonder whether any journalists had made an issue of any non Muslim Bollywood stars’ pronouncements or of whether they had ‘adequately condemned’ their coreligionists’ condemnable misdeeds. Recently, PTI reported Amitabh Bachan… on ‘growing intolerance’ as saying “Indian films taught… to banish communal prejudices”. He emphasised India’s social unity… at a time when “cultures are being questioned and prejudices against the communities are dividing the world.”

Nandita Das declared “I don’t think freedom of expression has ever been so threatened.” Ranbir Kapoor said as much in describing his father Rishi’s battles with the Twitterati: “Unfortunately in this country you can’t really speak your mind”…without being misconstrued. No one has questioned Amitabh’s, Nandita’s or Ranbir’s patriotism; no one has called them “Hindu leaders”. That is as it should be in a democracy.

While citizens’ outspokenness makes for a better society, in a democracy they are nonetheless free to be silent and no one should be shamed or forced into speaking up on any issue including for or against his/her coreligionists no matter how wonderful or vile the latter may be. No matter how disagreeable or cowardly the silence of citizens may be, they only have a moral obligation to speak up.

VIDEO: Rahul Tears Into Govt, Rajnath Defends: Parliament Debate On Intolerance



On the other hand, the Prime Minister has both a moral and a legal obligation to lead on these issues. Over and above working for India’s economic progress, maintaining its territorial integrity and defending its borders, the Prime Minister of India is the legal guardian of the peace, order and good government in the country. Just as he can’t ignore a foreign military attack on India he doesn’t have the option of turning a blind eye or of remaining silent in the face of intolerance, communal strife and religious violence within the country.

Peace and harmony within India goes to the core of who we are as Indians; I say we because what happens in India has an impact on others’ perception of us even in the diaspora. Even if the level of intolerance in India is the same as it was before or more it must be fought. The stifling of free expression must be challenged. The communal and religious tensions must be defeated whether they are as bad as before or worse. No matter when it all began, who started it, who further fuelled it or whether it also happened under the previous regime, unfreedom, intimidation, violence or disharmony in the nation mustn’t be greeted by silence and can’t be vanquished by Prime Ministerial silence.

The Prime Minister is the ultimate official, legal and moral trustee of India’s heritage, its inherent diversity and social solidarity. His continuing silence on these fundamental matters is a serious threat to the survival of the idea of India – of multitudes of different ethnic, faith, cultural and linguistic groups.

Instead of haranguing Aamir Khan who professes to be nothing more than an Indian and an actor – the last I checked he hadn’t contested elections to even be a dog catcher for Mumbai let alone the PM of India – we should be urging the otherwise prolific speech maker PM Modi and politicians of all stripes to more vigorously speak up and stand up for Indian diversity, equality and freedom of expression; and to strike a strong and lasting blow against the forces of hate, division, fear and denigration of minorities. Uttering mealy-mouthed pronouncements on diversity and pluralism will not strengthen the idea of India for all Indians one whit. Modi must invoke the ancient Indian ethos of peaceful coexistence to robustly and loudly urge upon all Indians a compassionate, just, inclusive, strong and peaceful India. Silence – even near silence – isn’t an option.

Dosanjh is former Premier of British Columbia, and former Canadian Minister of Health. Views expressed are personal.

© The Indian Express Online Media Pvt Ltd

Source: indianexpress

How India’s founding fathers saw the ‘nauseating principle of secularity of the State’

The Constituent Assembly still chose to be secular in a caste-ridden, Partition-scarred, newly independent India.

Ipsita Chakravarty  · Today · 04:30 pm

Secular, an adjective, used in its current form since around 1300, means “living in the world, not belonging to a religious order” or “belonging to the state”. It has been derived from the Old French “seculer”, from the Late Latin “saecularis”, meaning “worldly, secular, pertaining to a generation or an age”, from the Latin “saecularis”, or “of an age, occurring once in an age”, from “saeculum”, the word for “age, span of time, generation”.


According to one theory cited in the etymology dictionary, its Proto-Indo-European roots lie in the word “sai-tlo”, where “sai” means to bind or tie, “extended metaphorically to successive human generations as links in the chain of life”. It is also the source for the French word “siecle” and for “ludi saeculares”, an Ancient Roman festival celebrated once in 120 years. In English, since the 1850s, it has stood for humanism, and for leaving god out of morality or ethics.


It does not strictly translate into the term “sect-neutral” in Hindi, as Home Minister Rajnath Singh suggested in Parliament on Thursday. Though in the political life of nations since the 19th century, it has come to mean a separation of religion from the state.


Of an age


    “Another word is thrown up a good deal, this SECULAR STATE business. May I beg with all humility those gentlemen who use this word often, to consult some dictionary before they use it? It is brought in at every conceivable step and at every conceivable stage. I just do not understand it. It has a great deal of importance, no doubt. But it is brought in in all contexts, as if by saying that we are a secular State we have done something amazingly generous, given something out of our pocket to the rest of the world, something which we ought not to have done. We have only done something which every country does except a very few misguided and backward countries in the world. Let us not refer to that word in the sense that we have done something very mighty.”


 – Jawaharlal Nehru, Constituent Assembly debates on August 12, 1949.


    “The specious, oft-repeated and nauseating principle of secularity of the State. I think that we are going too far in this business of secularity.”


 – PS Deshmukh, Constituent Assembly debates on August 11, 1949.


Evidently, the Constituent Assembly argued a lot about secularism during the three years that it hammered out the Indian Constitution. There was general consensus that they were writing out a secular state, but not about much else.


During one session in 1949, HV Kamath moved an amendment to have the Preamble start with “In the name of God”. He was shot down – even if the god was not specific to any religion, it left out unbelievers. Brajeshwar Prasad, another member, proposed that “socialist” and “secular” be introduced in the Preamble. “Socialist” was ridiculed and “secular” fell by the wayside along with it. But the idea of a secular state still retained a powerful imaginative pull.


The Constituent Assembly debates somehow refract back to the origins of the word secular, to the living human choice made in a particular time and place, in a longer historical continuum. The debaters took an inherited Western idea and tried to work out what it meant to be secular, how best to be secular in caste-ridden, Partition-scarred, newly independent India. The version that emerged was peculiarly of an age.


Scholars through the decades have pointed out how it diverged from accepted definitions of secularism. Perhaps that is why the Constituent Assembly stopped short of using the word in the first place.


No concern or equal respect? 


    “It would have been enough if it had been said that the State should not interfere with any religion. Or, we could have said that the State should have a spiritual and moral outlook, instead of saying that it should be secular. The introduction of these words has created a lot of misunderstanding.” – Jagat Narain Lal, Constituent Assembly debates on November 25, 1949. 

As Shefali Jha has pointed out, much of the debate was a struggle between two theories of secularism, “no concern” and “equal respect”. The first dictated that the state stay away from religion, that faith be a private matter or, more radically, a matter strictly confined to the private sphere. It privileged the rights of the individual citizen over the recognition of separate communities. Nation states that evolved in the 19th century, Jha says, promoted individual rights so that older allegiances withered away, leaving behind only the loyal citizen.


But it was argued that such a state could not adequately represent a society with deep traditions of religion. Besides, the West, with its arid conception of secularism, was in crisis. It was for India to show the regenerative potential of spiritual and mystical streams of thought. The state that took shape would not interfere in religion. But it would respect all religions, which would also find a place in the public sphere.


The wellsprings of tolerance that allowed this plurality were often cast as a Hindu tradition. But it was also conceded that all faiths had inner resources of tolerance. JB Kripalani defined tolerance as the “acceptance, to some extent, of someone’s beliefs as good for him”. It was this acceptance that would prevent religious conflict.


There were several arenas in which the debate between the two models of secularism played out. For instance, the assembly had to choose between freedom of religious worship, or the individual’s private right to belief and prayer, and freedom of religious practice, which involved the public performance of faith and the right to propagate it; between a uniform civil code which erased the personal laws of various faiths and a jurisprudence that allowed for variations in civil law.


Jha shows how the Constituent Assembly gravitated towards the equal respect theory, but how the borders between the two forms of secularism were often blurred. So we got a state which allowed freedom of religious practice, provided protections for personal laws, recognised linguistic minorities and allowed religious instruction in schools, but which rejected political safeguards for minorities.


National integration, it was felt, would take care of it by absorbing minorities into the political mainstream. “I want to tell the House, Sir, that there is no minority in this country,” said Tajamahal Husain. “I do not consider myself a minority. In a secular State, there is no such thing as minority.”


Principled distance


    “The draftsmen seem to be torn between two rival ideals: one suggesting the Constitution for a wholly secular State, in which religion has no official recognition. On the other hand, there seems to me to be a pull – somewhat sub-conscious pull, if I may say so – in favour of particular religions or denominations, whose institutions, whose endowments, whose foundations, are sought to be protected.”

     – KT Shah, Constituent Assembly debates on November 30, 1948.

As secularism evolved in India, equal respect did not always mean equal distance from all religions either. Rajeev Bhargav points out how Indian secularism has had to defend itself against charges of differential treatment. There were two main contentions.


First, the state insulated Muslim personal laws but reformed the Hindu code, abolishing child marriage and polygamy, modernising laws of inheritance. Several articles of the Constitution directly acted against the caste system of the Hindus. Not only did it muddy  the lines of separation between faith and state, it clearly showed different degrees of familiarity towards the two religions, which could be read as discriminatory towards Hindus and protective of Muslims or vice versa. Second, the Constitution allowed for group-specific social rights for religious minorities. They enjoyed, for instance, enjoyed certain autonomies over educational institutions run by them.


To both objections, Bhargav puts forward the rationale of principled distance, which distinguishes between equal treatment and treating everyone as an equal. The state could not be blindly neutral or equidistant from all religions. To achieve certain constitutional ideals of equality, it had to act on behalf of discriminated populations. Religious minorities had to be protected, just as the entrenched inequities of the Hindu caste system had to be wiped out.


Choosing secularism


This, then, was the sum of our secularism, born of violence, oppression and mistrust. Born also of the hope that India could be a plural, equal society, in spite of the appalling evidence of Partition and the brutalities of the caste system. Secularism in India has been about making this choice, over and over again, in spite of all odds. To hold it to preconceived formal standards or to quibble about the absence of the word in the original Preamble seems pedantic.


We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in

Source: scrollin

Real dirt of India lies in our minds not streets, says President Pranab Mukherjee

Mukherjee cited Gandhiji's vision of India as an inclusive nation where every section of population lived in equality and enjoyed equal opportunity and said the essence of being human is 'our trust of each other'.

IndiaToday.in   |   Ahmedabad, December 1, 2015

Posted by Dianne Nongrum | UPDATED 13:27 IST

 

President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday spoke about how the real dirt of India lies not on the streets but in the minds of the people due to their unwillingness to let go of the views that divide society into 'them' and 'us', 'pure' and 'impure'.

At a function in Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, where he inaugurated the Archives and Research Centre, Mukherjee cited Gandhiji's vision of India as an inclusive nation where every section of population lived in equality and enjoyed equal opportunity and said the essence of being human is "our trust of each other".

"Every day, we see unprecedented violence all around us. At the heart of this violence is darkness, fear and mistrust. While we invent new modes of combating this ever spiralling violence, we must not forget the power of non-violence, dialogue and reason," he said.

"We must make a success of the laudable and welcome Swatch Bharat Mission. However, this also must be seen as just the beginning of a much larger and intense effort to cleanse minds and fulfil Gandhiji's vision in all its aspects," said Mukherjee, who is on three-day maiden visit to Gujarat.

The President has been speaking against intolerance after the Dadri lynching incident and subsequent events.

He said Ahimsa (or non-violence) is not a negative force and "we must free our public discourse of all forms of violence, physical as well as verbal. Only a non-violent society can ensure the participation of all sections of the people, especially the marginalised and the dispossessed in our democratic process."

Source: indiatoday