BJP’s ‘Ekta Yatra’ and the Logic of its Nationalism

Marx wrote in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce”. One feels tempted to repeat the same in the case of BJP’s recent concluded ‘Ekta Yatra’ which started from Kolkata and which was supposed to be culminated at Lal Chowk, Srinagar with the hoisting of national flag on 26^th January. The present campaign of BJP reminds of May, 1953 when Shyama Prasad Mukherjee along with some other Jan sangh members attempted to cross the state borders and were arrested. This campaign gives us a chance to revisit the BJP history from Jan Sangh onwards and analyze how and why they take such campaigns/yatras. What is it, that BJP targets again and again be it Mukherjee’s journey in 1953, Advani’s rath yatra in 1990, Murli Manohar Joshi’s ‘Ekta Yatra’ of 1992 or the present ‘Ekta yatra’ of the BJP youth wing, Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha. This campaign also gives us a chance to unravel the claims of nationalism, national integrity, respect to national flag and all other questions which they pick up while on the ‘Rath’ and forget  after  that. In this article I will attempt to briefly touch upon the Yatra which Jan sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee took in 1953 demanding assimilation of J&K fully into Indian union by abrogating Art. 370 and will try to juxtapose it with the recent concluded BJYM’s ‘Ekta yatra’.

Mukherjee and Jan sangh

Mukherjee started his career as a Vice-chancellor of Calcutta University and from there he turned to be the founder of Jan sangh in 1951. Apart from the political compulsion of his time, it seems that the influence of his mother was very much on Mukherjee. After his death in Srinagar in one of the letters written to Pandit Jawahar lal Nehru his mother wrote “I had long dedicated my son for the selfless service to the country and my son sacrificed his life for the cause of the motherland”, (Balraj Madhok, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, A biography, pp.3-4).  Mukherjee while being the VC of Calcutta University also gradually started to drift towards the Hindu right particularly towards Hindu Mahasabha. Thus in 1941 along with Hindu mahasabha and a breakaway faction of Muslim league, Mukherjee formed a coalition ministry in Bengal. But soon in 1943, falling in line with the Indian National Congress, Mukherjee resigned from the ministry in protest to the repressive measures followed by the colonial state. When the debate of independence and partition started he became one of the biggest champions of Bengali Hindus and demanded that Bengal be divided along communal lines, West Bengal for Hindus and East Bengal for Muslims. But he was one leader from Hindu right wing i.e. from RSS or Mahasabha who was regarded as a moderate Hindu leader. This image gave Mukherjee the cabinet ministry formed under the prime ministership of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru in the first Lok sabha. But soon the conditions in West Bengal where a large no. of Hindus had started to  migrate from East Bengal and the tribal raid in kashmir started changing Mukherjee’s future course of action (B.D Graham, ‘Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and the communalist alternative’, in Soundings in Modern South Asia,ed by D.A Low). In his highly passionate and articulate speeches in the Indian parliament he criticized the policies by Nehru and Congress regarding Bangladeshi migrants and ‘Delhi agreement’ signed between Pt. Nehru and Liaqat Ali khan, the Prime minister of Pakistan. Mukherjee resigned from the ministry on 1^st April, 1951 and in October of the same year formed All Bharatiya Jana sangh, which was seen by many as an alternative to the Indian national Congress. Jan sangh though never declared openly but they had definite links with RSS since the very start of its formation, (Myron Weiner, State politics in India, the development of Multi-party system). This is the background from where we can try and understand Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and the whole politics which Jan Sangh did in the coming years.

 Jammu and Kashmir, Sheikh and Mukherjee

The conditions in Jammu and Kashmir after the tribal raid were turbulent but despite this Sheikh Abdullah and National conference had been pushing hard to implement the agendas they had raised in ‘Naya Kashmir’.  The first and foremost being of Land reforms and abolition of Land Lordism. The most radical clause in the ‘Big Landed Estates Abolition Act 1950’ was that no compensation was to be provided to the land lords and the ceiling of land had to be 22.75 acres (182 kanals). This step was not comfortably taken by the Landlords who were mostly Dogras and they by 1952 with the help of Ex-Maharaja of J&K  started a vigorous campaign against Sheikh Abdullah and National Conference with the name Jammu Praja Parishad. The demand of compensation to the landlords was mixed with the emotional cry of Jammu being subjected ‘kashmiri raj’ and abrogation of Article 370. Jan sangh which was trying to build itself throughout these, found a fertile ground in Jammu and an able ally in Jammu praja parishad. From late 1952 onwards Mukherjee continuously raised the issue of ‘Jammu being discriminated’ in the Indian parliament, and in one of the letters dated 9^th January, 1953 to Nehru, Mukherjee wrote. “If people of J&K think otherwise, must Jammu also suffer because of such unwillingness to merge completely with India? Ek nisan,ek vidhan, ek pradhan-one flag, one constitution, one president-represents a highly patriotic and emotional slogan which the people are carrying on their struggle”, (Integrate Kashmir, Mukherjee-Nehru and Abdullah Correspondence).  Mukherjee later even went to the extent to suggest that Jammu and kashmir be divided into three parts in which Jammu and ladakh would be the completely merged into India while the fate of the valley to be decided by plebiscite or any other formula. Many scholars like Balraj puri look at the Praja Parishad movement as the first of those examples which did send a message to the Kashmiri people that their complete integration with India might not be so soothing as they had thought it to be. Apprehensions were seen from Nehru’s side also and in a letter dated 10^th, January, 1953 he wrote to Mukherjee, “Suppose some remnants of the Muslim league in the valley of Kashmir started an agitation which was anti-India and pro-Pakistan, how should we deal with it? What affect do you think has Praja parishad agitation on such persons in the valley or elsewhere? If you open Pandora’s Box, then all kinds of unexpected and undesirable things come out of it.” But despite Nehru’s advice the Pandora’s box was opened and his apprehensions were to a large extent true and the very basic characters of the Indian state, be its democracy, socialism or its secularism for which Kashmiri’s joined India, are now the characters for which they are fighting.

The movement in Jammu had soon turned to be violent and huge public property was lost, not only that, the movement soon took a communal angle and Muslims of Jammu were targeted. To prevent the influence of external forces like Jan sangh Govt. of India had put a permit system on the movement across the state. Mukherjee and Jan Sangh saw in it an easy method of raising an issue and thus on 11^th May, 1953 as he was about to cross the state from the Madhopur bridge he was arrested with two other leaders of Jan sangh. From there all the three were made to sit in a jeep and after spending their night at Batote next day they reached Srinagar where they were made to stay in a small Villa. Due to his ill health, (cold and symptoms of Gouts) Mukherjee died while in valley on 24^th June, 1953. The death of Mukherjee was the last nail in the coffin and sheikh Abdullah was charged as a murdered and slogans like ‘Gaddar Abdullah ko fansi do’ were raised. Even the attitude of Nehru had started to change towards his friend Sheikh Abdullah and eventually on 8^th August, 1953 Sheikh was dismissed, put behind bars and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed was made the puppet Prime Minister.

Slogans and rhetoric of National integration continues

From 8^th August, 1953 to the present day when the ‘Ekta yatra’ is the talk of the town  the unending saga of repression of Kashmiri’s continue and their only crime being that they time and again tried to make Indian leadership realize its promises and to fulfill the same. The Jan sangh in the Lok Sabha elections in 1957 won only 4 seats and their vote percentage increased from 3.1% in 1952 to 5.9% in 1957. Though the results show that they couldn’t cash on the Praja Parishad agitation and the slogan of ‘national integration’, but the whole period of 1952 to 1957 set the trend for the future generations of Jan sangh/BJP, and even know the same slogans are invoked time and again by BJP or other right wing Hindu organizations. I go back to my basic argument what is it that BJP is targeting and when? The rhetoric of Nationalism and national integration is one of their biggest weapons, a nationalism which is majoritarian and exclusive. Muslims and Christians don’t form a part of this national discourse. They are the ‘others’ of ‘us’, ‘outsiders’ for the ‘insiders’, because nationalism as defined by their ideologues is not only decided by religion, but also by history and culture.  Thus M.S Golwalkar wrote, “The non Hindu people of Hindustan  must either adopt Hindu culture and language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of the Hindu race and culture” (Gowalkar, M.S ,We or Our Nation defined.. pp-. 55).  Every nation requires the creation of a ‘self’ and ‘other’ dichotomy, sometimes the ‘other’ is inside (like Muslims in India, Jews in Germany)  the national boundary while at other times it might be outside (French for Britons). In both the cases nationalism acquires an exclusionary tendency.

BJP often plays upon the basic fear psychosis of the majority i.e. of Hindus and fabricates the history and narratives of ‘Muslim oppression’, ‘Muslim population explosion’, demonize Islam as a ‘violent religion’. Apart from this creation of Muslim as ‘other’, the cartographic anxiety of a nation is continuously evoked. A post-colonial state like India which has fluid boundaries around it (be it Bangladesh in 1971, Sri Lanka, or even Kashmir in 1948) is extremely conscious of its boundaries i.e. has a great degree of ‘cartographic anxiety’. Like a ‘female body’ the body of a nation is linked to pride or izzat and any impingement upon that challenges/invokes the masculine identity of any nation. Evoking the similar notion of nationalism and ‘cartographic anxiety’ Mukherjee in letter dated 9^th January, 1953 asks Nehru, “one third of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir is now occupation of Pakistan… It will be nothing short of national disgrace and humiliation, if we fail to regain this lost portion of our country”. In this definition of nationalism, Kashmir gets the most focus because unlike other parts of India, it has a majority Muslim population and also it’s close to Pakistan thus invoking the worst kinds of cartographic fears among the Majority in India. As one of the columnists recently wrote the message of the yatra isn’t the Ekta or integrity, but it’s rather an invasion to a foreign land. Infact kashmir has always been as invincible territory which despite being within the boundary of India, still is not fully into, which despite being a physical part of India is mentally something to be conquered.

Symbols play an important role in right wing yatras and they are used to generate more passions and thus sometimes the body of country is shown as ‘Bharat Mata’ and sometimes furling of flag (the recent campaign and M.M Joshi’s yatra of 1992) demarcates a nationalist from that of an anti-national. If Somnath  (BJP argues that it was it was at Somnath  where the assault on Hindu temples and shrines is was started by Ghazni) choosed to be the starting point of  the yatra in September, 1990 by L.K Advani, Kolkata the ancestral home of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was used in the recent ‘Ekta Yatra’. In this game of politics everything is arranged strategically by BJP. One more aspect of all the yatras has been the timing of these yatras, if Mukherjee defied the permit system when Jan Sangh was at the lowest ebb, the recent Yatra aimed at full filling Mukherjee’s mission when they have almost been rooted out of last Lok sabha elections. Also the coming elections in UP and West Bengal is of course very well in the mind of the BJP ideologues and strategists. Apart from that as the issue of Ram Janam Bhoomi is more or less dead, Yeduruppa is also involved in corruption and most importantly when Assemananda  case has surfaced so BJP is desperately  in need of an issue which brings it back into the picture and also veils ‘Hindu terrorism’ and huge scams throughout the country. Nothing better than the rhetoric of Nationalism and that also when linked with Kashmir gives the best response. 

Amit Kumar, Research Scholar Dept. of History, DU

It’s the women’s compartment!!

The Delhi Metro has started reserving the first coach of the metro trains for women. We have seats reserved in buses since a long, long time. Well, the reservation culture of our country is understandable; we have all sorts of castes, groups and communities crying out loud for it. The demands of some are of course justifiable. But the women never demanded reservations in mediums of conveyance. They never cried out for it, what they talked about and always wanted was a decent kind of travel environment which I guess is everyone’s right, men women alike. In a country like India, where there is a tense relationship between material resource and human resource, one of the places where it is most evident is the travelling scene- fast life, less of time which is aggravated by lack of adequate transport facilities. In a fully loaded bus or metro and I am speaking here as a woman and woman alone , where as it your back is pressing against somebody’s ass, if someone tries to pinch your butt or feel you up, you sometimes don’t even have the space to turn around and confront that pervert!! We do not mind standing but we want our decent space as every sane person does. Some sympathetic person in authority must have thought about reserving seats for women but we all know how far we can claim it. The recent spats in metro’s first coaches between women commuters and men who try to encroach on their ‘space’ have been in news. During one such encounter, I heard a man saying, “Yeh wahin auratein hain jinko kuchh din pahle tak hum apni seatein dete the! Aaj humko aankein dikha rahin hain kyunki inko khud ka compartment jo mil gaya hai!!”

What is evident here is anger and a very resentful grievance against the space allotted to women. When I stand in the reserved coach of the metro, I always feel some male eyes burning into me as if it’s my fault to be there, as if we women have committed a grave crime. And it’s not, that my community is all innocent. Whenever travelling with a male companion, some women tend to let their companion/s into the reserved coach and defend their presence. Well, if you so much want to be with your friends, why not travel in the general coach. But we see all kinds of hues here. There is a tussle between claiming and encroaching, vehement disapprovals, silent negotiations, and distasteful disinterest. Nonetheless, the women’s coach creates a ‘pink’ space, with a women only feel. It’s a sisterhood of the fairer sex which creates a different kind of bond between the fellow travelers, though it may be silent. Welcome to the women’s compartment.    

Yagyaseni Bareth, Research Scholar, CHS/JNU   

Student Politics and AMUSU Elections...

“Our coming generations will ask us for an answer...will ask us, where were you when new social forces were being unleashed...Where were you when the people who live and die every moment, every day for their rights...Where were you when there was assertion of marginalised voices of society...They will seek an answer from all of us”. (Com. Chandrashekhar)

After a persistent struggle, involving many sacrifices, the students of AMU were able to achieve the holding of AMUSU elections on 19^th January 2011. They have been witness as to how the administration has taken advantage in the last few months in the absence of a union and implemented many anti-student policies in the university. The campus has been turned into a place where students’ voices have been muzzled; even today CCTV cameras closely follow throughout the campus closely monitoring every student’s actions, as if they are not students of a university but criminals living in a prison camp. Voicing of any dissent against the administration results in suspension or eviction from the hostels. But recent AMUSU election presented the student community with an opportunity to provide a mandate which would enable them to resist the continuous attacks which are being mounted against them.

The AMUSU elections were held at a critical juncture when the country is witnessing the biggest scams in its history. CWG, Adarsh Society Scam, 2G Spectrum Scam, and Yeddyurappa’s Land Scam have all openly looted the resources of our country. AMUSU elections were  held at a time of spiralling inflation, when cars are getting cheaper but Dal is becoming unaffordable!, and when Arjun Sengupta Committee has shown that 77% of the country’s population survive on less than Rs. 20 per day,  when every half an hour a peasant is committing suicide in this country, where every one minute an adivasi is being displaced, where the tide of hunger has engulfed every district in the country.

AMUSU elections were held at a time when the findings of Sachar Committee has revealed beyond doubt the systematic injustices meted out to the Muslim community in the last 60 years. Today the percentage of Muslims in Government services are next to null, whereas the place where Muslims are found the most are in the jails of our country! AMUSU elections were held at a time when we are witnessing increased attacks on democracy by the state. Killing of youth has become a routine affair in places like Kashmir and voices of Kashmiris and people from North-East are being silenced whenever they open their mouth for voicing their anger. While Dr. Binayak Sen is labelled anti-national and put to jail, for having stood by the poorest and weakest against state repression, the Hindutva groups are enjoying all legitimacy.

The AMUSU elections were held at a time when in more than 95 percent of the campuses across India has not yet seen the student union elections. In the recent AMUSU elections we have seen how the guidelines and rules of Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations were flouted. The printed materials which are banned during the elections were pasted on the walls of university in such a fashion that not even an inch of space was left vacant. The use of hoardings and banners costing hundreds of rupees were found hanging from rooftop to the ground in various departments and faculties. In the name of curbing money-muscle power Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations were actually implemented to curb the democratic rights of the students. In fact money flowed like a flooding river and nobody knows where the money came from and muscles were flexed to silence the alternative voices that could have strengthened the democratic spirit of the university As Terry Eagleton, noted British Marxist academician and scholar has said, “What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, and human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future”. The same statement runs true for Sibal’s, industrialists and technocrats of our country who are hell bent on selling out our education and resources.

The most historic and most remarkable attempt in this Students Union election was shown by the girls who participated in large numbers. Though they were defeated, this election provided them the opportunity to come forward and provide a platform to raise the voice of women in campus and outside the campus. An active Gender Cell to address the sexual harassment cases and the security of women students in Aligarh Muslim University is the need of the hour, and this was demanded by most of the female candidates.

Aligarh Muslim University has a glorious history and proud legacy of providing intellectual leadership not only to the Muslim community but also to the whole country. Today the need is to further strengthen that glorious legacy. It is the need of the hour that the Muslim youth should join radical, secular, democratic organization which raises their issues from Minority witch-hunting, Batla House, Babri Masjid, illiteracy and to unemployment.

The mainstream parties from Congress to Mulayam to Laloo and Nitish Kumar have become impotent enough to tackle our grievances. The fake Batla House encounter in 2008 and others and the state of Muslim youth in both U.P and Bihar have shattered our minds to question the past and visualize our future with revolutionary politics of organizations like AISA and CPI-ML (Liberation) which have always raised and championed the issues of minorities.

In this AMUSU election a candidate for Cabinetship supported by AISA got a massive support from student community of AMU with 4,400 votes. The massive support and response by the student community to this alternative revolutionary student politics of AISA has provided us an opportunity to build an alternative intellectual and political leadership from the Muslim community. As Comrade Chandrasekhar once said, “At this juncture of history, the content of history has moved far ahead and it is trying for new language, new voice and therefore one feels that at this juncture of Indian history two visions of nation building are contending with each other, one that of a fascist, autocratic, totalitarian India, another that of a democratic secular and egalitarian India...AISA stands for the latter, AISA stands for a democratic India”.

As we all know, we are the few thousands from our community, and our country to have been lucky enough to come to such a great university to learn and enlighten ourselves and it becomes our responsibility to lead the rest by being a democratic and inclusive model for the entire country. Let us all be a part of a radical, secular, democratic organization in shaping and making this country more democratic and voice of the wretched and marginal people.

Shakeel Anjum, SIS/ JNU

Understanding Sexuality

Throughout the history of political philosophy, women have rarely been considered a relevant political category worthy of serious intellectual or theoretical imagination. Even when this huge gap was pointed out, it was understood as no more than a ‘trivial oversight’ that could be remedied by some superfluous changes in the language and form of theoretical endeavor. The social inequalities based on sex were thought of as having little significance to ‘grand’ philosophical projects about the Man and Progress.  In contrast, feminist theory’s primary task is to bring women at the centre of all political analysis as concrete social beings. Hence, the theoretical task of feminism is closely interlinked to its political practice, which aims at transforming all existing social relations and institutions. Given the range of experiences of women as well as differing conceptions of human society, there are a large number of strands within feminist theory and practice. These include such diverse ideas as liberal feminism, socialist feminism, dalit feminism, radical feminism, black feminism, its variants inspired by the ‘post’ turn, etc. Although each of these variants energizes women’s struggles in different ways, the focus of this essay is on feminist theorization that draws its inspiration from Marxist philosophy. Frederich Engels’ The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State marked one of the most radical departures from conventional understandings on issues of patriarchy and women’s subordination to men.

Inspired by the aforementioned work as well as their experiences in revolutionary Russia, feminists such as Alexandra Kollontai have had an enormous influence on feminist thought and practice. She, as we know, was writing against the backdrop of early 20^th century Russia, which was characterized by scarcity, inflation and unemployment. Given this, the fate of women seemed inescapably linked with the issue of class. In fact, a strike by women workers in Petrograd was a major triggering point for the February Revolution. Thus, mobilization of working class women was of fundamental significance to the socialist cause. However, unlike orthodox Marxism which relegated the women’s question to the domain of the superstructure, feminists like Kollontai made a case for a degree of ‘super-structural autonomy’. She argued that the economic base and its ideological superstructure are also in a dialectical relationship and that the latter is not a passive reflection of the former. In doing so, Kollontai demonstrated the recognition that the task of building a socialist society would not be about macro variables alone –  it was important to also politicize and reinvent what was conveniently invisibilized as the ‘personal’. Although Kollontai herself was increasingly marginalized from the Party due to her radical insights and the tight leash of Stalin, her influence in anticipating socialist feminism of the 1960s cannot be underestimated. 

In theoretical terms, socialist feminism can be understood as an attempt at fusing insights from radical feminism with the traditional Marxist method of analysis. It accepts the radical feminist assertion that sexual activity, child bearing and child rearing are characterized by unequal power relations and should therefore be subject to political analysis. However, it rejects the assumption that these practices are biologically determined. Instead, borrowing from Marxist tradition, socialist feminists argue that the manner in which these activities are organized is inescapably linked with class and ethnic differences. To paraphrase it in Marxist vocabulary, socialist feminism focuses on the dialectical relationship between sex and society as it appears through activity organized along gendered norms.

Even though Marx and Engels indicated these connections between procreation and production, the orthodox interpretations did not explore the creative possibilities contained therein.  Instead, they blindly accepted the ‘commonsensical’ notions of sexuality that understood it as being a fixed attribute of hu­­­­­man beings, bereft of any real implications for power structures in a society. Thus, despite theoretical possibilities that may have pointed otherwise, sexuality was relegated to the ‘naturally ordained’ non-political realm. Even if it was recognized as a debatable issue, it was accorded a subordinate position to class and was therefore made a ‘secondary contradiction’ that would automatically be taken care of as part of the class struggle.

But with socialist feminism of the late 20^th century, there began a more nuanced and complicated analysis of patriarchy and the myriad aspects of oppression and exploitation of women. It was argued that questions of patriarchy and capitalism could not be simply collapsed into one another, and that the present conditions were that of capitalist patriarchy. Hence, feminist politics is as crucial as the anti-capitalist struggle towards the creation of a just and free society.

By deploying a historical-materialist understanding to comprehend all aspects of society, sexuality is accorded its rightful place at par with the material domain. Indeed, both procreation and production now constitute the base. Rather than being a natural attribute that remains unchanged throughout the changing material conditions and production processes, sexuality is to be understood as socially constructed and hence dynamically evolving with material changes. Its changing nature needs to studied through different historical epochs and the present form needs to be understood as affected by and affecting capitalism. The two, in fact, are to be recognized as inseparable.

Having traced the historical lineage and theoretical implications of socialist feminism, let us bring this discussion to a close by reflecting on the avatars of patriarchy today. Whether it is caste panchayats dictating who to love or to television ads educating us about the ‘21^st century girl’ who, curiously, must conform to set norms of occupation, beauty and aspirations, the aforementioned linkages between production and procreation are more than evident. Thus, the theoretical connections explored above have a ubiquitous presence in our lives. Given this, a genuinely emancipatory political project cannot but acknowledge them, and an egalitarian social order can only be achieved by fighting the demons of capitalism and patriarchy simultaneously.

Ardra, Research Scholar, CPS/JNU

Crimes of ‘Honour’ or National Shame?

“...In every home a burning ghat

In every home a gallows

In every home are prison walls

Colliding against the walls

She falls...”

- Gorakh Pandey, ‘Band khidkiyon se takrakar’, (She collides against closed windows) 1982.

• In 2007, Manoj and Babli of Kaithal, Haryana got married. On the orders of a khap panchayat they were killed. Even more shameful is the fact that the police officers, who had been ordered by the Court to protect the couple, betrayed them and deliberately allowed them to be abducted by their killers.
•  In May 2009, a young journalist Nirupama was killed by her family in Ranchi because she had wanted to marry a fellow journalist from a different caste in Delhi
•   In June 2009, two young 19-year olds of Delhi, Asha and Yogesh decided to get married. But Asha’s family opposed the marriage on the grounds that Yogesh was from a ‘lower caste’. Asha’s father and uncle captured the couple, tortured them all night and then killed them by electrocution. 

These stories, unfortunately, are not the stuff of legends of Laila-Majnu and Romeo-Juliet. They are just a few of the hundreds of ‘honour killings’ that take place all over our country. Every year in our country, at least 1000 couples are killed in cold blood – at the behest of khap panchayats or parents and brothers. Their only ‘crime’ is that they chose to love or marry in defiance of caste and community norms.

 In Haryana, Punjab, and Western UP, it is caste panchayats (‘khap panchayats’) which often order these killings – when people marry within the same ‘gotra’ or when a woman from a ‘higher’ caste marries a man from a ‘lower’ caste. In urban centres like Delhi or Ranchi, it is often close family members who kill their own daughter along with the man she has chosen for her life partner. The killers defend their act in the name of ‘community honour’. According to them, when a woman chooses her own life partner, especially if he is from a different religion or caste, or from the same ‘gotra’, the family’s or community’s ‘honour’ receives a terrible blow. This ‘dishonour’, they claim, can be avenged only by killing the daughter and her partner.

Is there anything honourable in these killings? Or do they represent the worst assault on women’s freedom, the most vicious expression of casteism and feudal values? Can we continue to allow and condone such attacks in the name of ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’?     

Even more shameful than the killings themselves is the role of police and politicians. The police, political leaders and Governments are committed to upholding the law of the land. And according to the law, every adult woman or man has a right to choose a life partner freely. But when young couples do break caste, community and class barriers to marry, they find that police and political powers support their killers! As was seen in the Manoj-Babli case, it is common for the police to betray the couple and hand them over to their killers.

What about political leaders? The Congress Government of Haryana is taking no action at all against the khap panchayats which issue their ‘death sentences.’ Chief Minister Bhupinder Hooda and his son, Rohtak MP, Bhupinder Hooda, have expressed sympathy for the ‘sentiments’ of khap panchayats, while Naveen Jindal, an industrialist and Congress MP from Kurukshetra, has praised the khap panchayats for their ‘yeoman service to society’!

And what about the BJP? The BJP Governments of Gujarat and Karnataka have patronized violent gangs like the Bajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sene – which attack inter-religious couples. These groups have even ‘banned’ women from attending college because Muslim or Christian men may be their classmates! They have also attacked women for wearing jeans or other clothes of their own choice. So, they attack even women’s freedom to acquire education or dress according to choice.

In other states too, the story is the same – be it in the Nitish Katara murder in UP or the Rizwanur Rehman murder in West Bengal. Even in these states, the police and government backed the powerful families which killed the young men chosen as life partners by their daughters.

The ‘honour’ crimes are a grotesque version of the more common ideology and practice of ‘guardianship’ (brother as guardian of sister’s honour) celebrated by popular cinema and serials and normalised by the festival of Raksha Bandhan. Adult women are legally beyond the scope and control of ‘guardianship’. Yet in the patriarchal common sense, the ideology of guardianship (closely tied up with control of female sexuality, reproduction and labour) holds sway – closely linked to the ideology that makes women the repositories of izzat or honour of the community/nation. The women’s movement has achieved changes in the Hindu marriage and succession laws, allowing a daughter to inherit land and property – and ‘honour’ killings are in many cases an attempt to retain control over land and property, since a daughter who makes an own-choice marriage is more likely to claim her legal share of land/property.

The phenomenon of ‘honour’ killings is a powerful reminder of the ‘semi-feudal’ character of India’s capitalism: the most virulent expression of the ‘honour’ crimes phenomenon is not in ‘backward’ regions of our country – but rather in the areas which have witnessed the most advanced capitalist development in agriculture.

We believe that we cannot stand helplessly by as Nirupamas around us have to give up the partners of their choice or be killed. We believe that we need to stand up and make ourselves heard against honour crimes, and declare that we will not allow caste panchayats, communal outfits and community or family diktats take away our right to live and love according to our choice.     

Kavita Krishnan, Editor, Liberation, Monthly organ of CPI (ML)

Month of February and celebration of 'Resistance'!!

The month of February brings with it a season of ‘love’ and ‘freedom’. For young couples the month of February means a symbol of ‘revolt’ against the set norms of ‘patriarchy’ in order to exercise their choice of choosing their partners. Since the coming of ‘private property’, women sexuality is always seen as a threat for this male dominated society and is tried to be curbed every time and everywhere. The coming of ‘purdah’, ‘Sati system’ all symbolise the fears of a ‘patriarchal society’. In our times also, ‘love’ comes with a cost and curbing of every such expression of ‘choice’ continues day and night out.

The memory of ABVP goons beating and forcing young couples to tie rakhi’s in DU campus in recent years, or the 2009 Mangalore pub attacks are very fresh in our mind. In retaliation to that AISA held two big conventions in 2009 and 2010 with title ‘Love in our time’, where the rights to ‘love’ and choose our life partners was asserted. Both the years we had huge rallies throughout the DU campus and Kamla Nagar and slogans condemning ‘moral policing’ were raised. It is the strength of the progressive student movement throughout various campuses  that right wing forces have been pushed back and our right to ‘love’, ‘live’ and ‘wear’ what we want has been asserted. Despite this achievement we have to be vigilant against all these patriarchal and feudal forces so that they don’t again raise their ugly head.

Apart from the challenges which we face from the right-wing forces the custom of ‘khap panchayats’ and ‘honour killings’ has once sent jitters down the spines of young couples. Be it the case of Manoj and Babli of Kaithal, Haryana or the case of young journalist Nirupama, all of them were killed by their own parents and relatives only because they decided to love person of their choice. The Dracula of ‘khap panchayats’ and ‘honor killings’ stands open-mouthed in front of us and the challenges seems to be tough than ever, as in the case of ‘Khap’ whole of the community seems to be in conformity with this inhuman custom.. But wherever there is ‘repression’, ‘resistance’ also becomes the norm and throughout history we have seen how people have resisted every effort to curb their freedom. The ‘women’ of Egypt, Tunisia or Kashmir have shown in the recent upsurges that they can be equally assertive and can fight against an oppressive regime or ‘state repression’. There have been examples from Kashmir that women have been fighting paramilitary forces with stones in hand in the streets of Srinagar and other small towns in Kashmir. In February when we are celebrating ‘love’ and ‘freedom’ we should also salute the women of Kashmir, and various parts of India who are fighting ‘Operation green hunt’, ‘State repression’, UAPA, AFSPA and all other draconian laws and policies of Indian state. We should also salute various Irom Sharmila’s who have been fighting Indian state’s war on its people in the name of fighting ‘Maoism’. Salute them for keeping the banner of ‘resistance flying high’!

When we are in a fight against the ‘patriarchal forces’ and ‘state repression’ we have also to be aware of the definition of ‘love’ which the capitalist system offers to us.  We have to be aware that even ‘love’ and ‘sexuality’ have a price in the capitalist world and thus like other commodities ‘love’, ‘sexuality’ and even a ‘female body’ is sold in the market. On 14^th February when people will assert their ‘right to love’, millions of women will be sold in flesh market and forced to sell their bodies against their wish. Celebrating ‘love’ can also be celebrating ‘resistance’ and ‘women assertion’. Editorial, Students Voice, February, 2011

Season of Scams

One thing in which the year 2010 broke all previous records was the sheer scale of scams which are shameful  even by Indian standards.The UPA government and congress  presided over large-scale loot:- the Adarsh society,IPL, Scorpene submarine deal, paddy export, cash-for-votes, Prasar Bharti, the CWG... The last being the one which led to tremendous evictions of poor from Delhi and students from U.G hostels in the name of beautification, immense exploitation of wage labourers in the course of constructions and even extreme caused to the city residents for  months. Whereas, even before the games have had started, we got to see the naked corruption and misuse of public money done by games organisers while on the other hand government turned a blind eye towards it and continued to hail the games as the golden chapter of indian history in an even more louder voice.   As if it was not enough, we came to know about 2-G spectrum scam,dubbed as the mother of all scams in India involving as it does a whopping Rs,1,76,379 crores lost to the public exchequer. The only action taken has been a few face-saver resignations. Recent revelations-like the phone tapes involved in the telecom scandal- underline forcefully that the UPA government is being run to serve corporate powers, who vie amongst each other to decide policies and even ministerial berths. The
corporate media is no less 'embedded'- playing middleman corporate lobbyist. What this demonstrates is that the decline of the 'quota-permit raj'-yesteryear's' convenient whipping boy for rampant corruption- did not lead to any decline in the menace. Quite to the contrary, all pervasive liberalization and globalization have throne the floodgate of corruption wide open, bolstering the black economy and further degrading the quality of politics. Not surprisingly, 'Transparency International's corruption perception index' report covering the public sector in 178 countries shows that India fell by three positions from its ranking of 84th in 2005 to 87th this year in terms of  corruption. 

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 2G SPECTRUM SCAM: 

According to CAG report,immense procedural violations took place to unfailingly benefit certain companies, granting them 2-G spectrum-a national asset- at throw away prices leading to loss to the public exchequer to
the tune of Rs 1.76,379 crores.It was not auctioned but allocated on a 'first come first serve' basis at dirt cheap rates, and even this tampered with to 'fix' the match in favour of certain companies. Of the 122 licences issued in 2008,85 were found to fall short of the eligibility conditions prescribed conditions prescribed by the ministry itself. Further some of the companies which bagged the spectrum allotment for a mere Rs 1651 crore, didnot have any prior experience in the business of mobile phones and then within a matter of six months sold off shares to foreign companies at the prevailing market rate making at the least 700%return on their on their invest. From the very beginning itself in 2007-2008, the 2-G spectrum allotment process was so outright corrupt that the CV the IT department started prima facia investigation amidst huge public and political outcry. Strangely, the Mr. Clean P.M paid no heed and allowed A.Raja to continue with his ways. it is only when things came to a head recently after the CAG report that Raja was asked to go but still not without brazen attempts on the part of congress to undermine and trivialize the mind boggling findings and indictments by this constitutionals body. Despite more then a month a month-long logjam by the opposition in the Parliament, why is the government stubbornly refusing a Joint Parliamentary Committee(JPC) probe?Is it not because the JPC, unlike the Parliamentary public accounts committee(PAC) would be empowered to summon ministers and look into political dimensions of the the scam, whereas the Congress seeks to reduces the huge loss due to the scam to a debate over "accounting" alone? One must forget that this is the same government that mooted  Food Security Bill and did not table any money with the passing of Right to Education Act giving excuses of fiscal deficit or lack of finances.But the amount (1,76,379 crores- 3% of our GDP) that we are talking about can fill  both tasks and many other public beneficiary schemes easily. The P.M must tell the people- why did he turn a blind eye and allow this massive loot of the public exchequer- that will, as we can see from the above sample of facts, affect the lives of millions of the country's poor- to continue
unabated?                              

CRONY CAPITALISM:-

Corruption in the telecom sector has come hand in hand with privatisation of this sector. More than a decade ago, Congress Minister Sukhram was at the centre of a telecom scam that accompanied the centre of a telecom . And now, the size and scope have grown with more rapid privitisation of this sector.In the wake of scam revelations, neoliberals commentators have and probity while defending the "clean PM' (or, in the case of CWG,'cleab Shiela Dixit') as opposed to corrupt individual leaders like Kalmadi OR Chavan and allies like DMK. There is also very little focus on the main actors in the corruptions drama- the CEOs and corporations
themselves-choosing instead to focus on individual politicians. And there is a careful 'see no evil' policy regarding the neo-liberal economy itself. A close observation, however, reveals that cronyism is  inbuilt into liberalization,which was ushered in by Manmohan Singh himself in the early 1990s. How? In the first place, liberalization dictates that scarce national and natural resources- land, water, minerals, magnetic air waves etc.- as well as public sectors assets are to be privatized and handed over in a platter to corporate to exploit for their own profit. here, the myth is that the anonymous and fair forces pf the 'market' will somehow ensure that the most suitable company gets the resources. But such fair competition is a myth-in reality, competing corporates jostle with each other in the arena of bribes and cronyism(closeness to a particular minister, for e.g) that decides which corporate gets which resource. No wonder the era of liberalization has time and again seen bigger and bigger loot of such resources.

           

Sunny Kumar, Research scholar, Dept. Of history, DU