Posts Tagged ‘India’
November 22, 2009
The Nation, November 22, 2009
IT reflects poorly on New Delhi’s political sense that it has failed to realise that the more it tries to suppress the Kashmiris’ urge to get out of its cruel hold, the more entrenched in the people’s psyche becomes the freedom struggle and the more conscious the world gets of the urgency with which the dispute needs to be resolved. Amnesty International recently called upon President Obama to raise the issue of India’s brutal oppression in Occupied Kashmir when he meets Prime Minister Singh in Washington. Its words, “The Indian side of Kashmir is an area where the security forces commit mass human rights abuses with impunity…facilitated by the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and other similar laws.” Similarly, President Hu and President Obama, in a joint statement, have observed that the two sides, “agreed to cooperate…(in) bringing about more stable, peaceful relations in all of South Asia”. Secretary of State Clinton maintained, in an interview on Friday, that the US wanted the resumption of talks between India and Pakistan to sort out their differences, including Kashmir.
However, India has been greatly upset at these declarations and continues to defy the calls for an understanding look at the situation that the lingering dispute creates both within Occupied Kashmir and outside. It is a measure of Pakistan’s disappointment that Foreign Minister Qureshi had to say that though we were urging for the resumption of talks, we were not looking for a photo session; we wanted ‘constructive engagement and meaningful dialogue’. He stressed that any talks without the participation of Pakistan would be futile. He had in mind India’s efforts to engage the Kashmiri leaders from the occupied state to find a solution. Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit did some plain speaking, when he remarked that India did not want peace in the region. His conclusion is absolutely justified since New Delhi refuses to come to the negotiating table just because it would have to discuss Kashmir. It is well known that even when the composite dialogue was going on it avoided coming to grips with the issue. As the history of post-partition reveals, the fate of Indo-Pakistan relations is closely linked to the settlement of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the aspirations of Kashmiris.
Tags:brutal oppression in Occupied Kashmir, demand of Kashmiris, human rights abuses, India, Kashmir
Posted in Human rights, India, Kashmir, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
November 18, 2009
Yes it does!
By Badri Raina, ZNet, Nov. 17, 2009
Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page
“There has been a systematic failure in giving tribals a stake in the modern economic system—the alienation built over decades is taking a dangerous toll”. . .
“The systemic exploitation of our tribal communities. . .can no longer be tolerated.”
(Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, Hindustan Times, 14/11/09, p.10)
I
A government report just released on the situation of India’s tribals blames the government itself and companies like the Tatas and Essar for the disquiet in the tribal “hinterlands.” As you would expect, the latter have righteously washed their distinguished hands of the insinuation.
Brought out by the Ministry of Rural Development, the report (some tribute to aspects of Indian democracy) in a chapter titled “State-connived land alienation” speaks forthrightly of how land grabs in India’s mineral rich states—Orissa, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand—happen with “direct and indirect participation of revenue officials.” To those must be added the more notorious segments of the political class, now most strikingly represented by the erstwhile chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, who, by all accounts, is alleged to have made a pile of some Rs.4000/-crores over a span of five or six years of ‘rule.’ That Mr. Koda is himself a tribal leader must suggest how enticing and promising the dominant paradigms of ‘development’ are.
That the debate around the issue has penetrated the solid bastions of capitalist theorists is rather hearteningly evidenced by the following sub-heading in the editorial of Hindustan Times of Nov.,16: “‘Tribal land grabs’ aren’t just an ‘NGO’ theory.”
Continues >>
Tags:Badri Raina, India, India's tribals, Naxalism, violence
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, India, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 15, 2009
What Came First, Chicken or Egg?
By Badri Raina, ZNet, Oct 14, 2009
Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page
I
Even as the Indian state ponders the situation along its international borders with Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, and Nepal, it is increasingly challenged by the spread of left-wing armed extremism at home.
The strongholds of Indian Maoists are, not surprisingly, in the forested hinterlands of central states, such as Chattisgarh and Jharkhand, where the Adivasis (originary tribals) have through six decades of independent India remained almost wholly outside the consideration of the state, except often as brutal victims of influential land-grabbers and aspiring mining and other corporates, backed by the state in collaboration with multinational companies.
Extremist violence, popularly referred to as Naxalism or Maoism, indeed straddles as many as some 180 of India’s 600 or so districts in lesser or greater intensity, along an north-eastern arc stretching from Bihar through West Bengal to parts of Orissa, down to Andhra and Gadchirolli in Marharashtra that touches the Andhra border. With Jharkhand and Chattisgarh as the heartlands.
Continues >>
Tags:Badri Raina, India, Naxalism, the Adivasis, violence
Posted in Commentary, India, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 7, 2009
| Al Jazeera, Oct 7, 2009 |
|
|
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| Relief workers and troops have been trying to deliver aid where they can [AFP] |
Anger and desperation are growing in southern India as villages continue to be swamped by floodwaters that have left 2.5 million people homeless and left more than 250 dead.
Thousands of soldiers and relief workers have been trying to get much-needed aid to survivors, distributing food, water and medical supplies where they can.
Millions of people are crammed in overwhelmed temporary government shelters after heavy rains last week triggered what some officials have called the worst floods to hit the area in a century.
With vast tracts of agricultural land, including sugarcane and paddy fields, under water, the authorities estimate the damage across the three sprawling states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra to cost billions of dollars.
Continues >> |
Tags:damage, flood victims, India
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October 2, 2009
With Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas in mind, Ela Bhatt raised hope when she organized female labourers in India
By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun, October 2, 2009
Ela Bhatt
Photograph by:
Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun
Ela Bhatt never met Mohandas Gandhi, but as a child she caught a glimpse of him leaving her family’s home in Ahmedabad.
Her grandfather and great-uncle were among Gandhi’s followers who were jailed for civil disobedience. And it’s Gandhi’s philosophy that has profoundly influenced Bhatt’s own thoughts and actions.
As a young lawyer in 1972, she helped found a trade union for the 93 per cent of female labourers whose efforts aren’t counted as part of the Indian economy.
Continues >>
Tags:basic human needs, Ela Bhatt, female workers, Gandhi's infleuence, India
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October 2, 2009
The Socialist Worker, October 2, 2009
Arundhati Roy is the renowned author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1997. But Roy is equally well known as a determined social movement activist and leading voice of the global justice movement.
Roy’s new collection of essays, titled Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, examines the dark side of democracy in her native India. It looks at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism and neo-fascism simmer just beneath the surface in a country that projects itself as the world’s largest democracy.
Here, we republish an essay from the book that provides a brilliant account of the summer 2008 uprising against Indian occupation by the people of Kashmir–a disputed region partitioned between India and Pakistan, and subject to Indian military rule in the section it controls.
FOR THE past sixty days or so, since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half a million heavily armed soldiers, in the most densely militarized zone in the world.
Continues >>
Tags:Amarnath cave conflict, Arundhati Roy, Azadi, demands for freedom, democracy, free Kashmir, India, Kashmir, military occupatioin, military terror
Posted in Human rights, India, Kashmir, Uncategorized, war, war crimes | Leave a Comment »
October 1, 2009
By Badri Raina, ZNet, Oct 1, 2009
Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page
I
I have before me the full text of the report on Kashmir prepared by Beersman Paul, President, Human Rights Council, Geneva, submitted to the Council at its 12th session, 14th Sept.,-2nd October, 2009.
The report, which is titled “Belgian Association for Solidarity with Jammu & Kashmir: Solution Under the Indian Constitution,” encapsulates the interactions and findings of Mr. Beersman during his “study tour through Jammu & Kashmir State from June 30-July 27, 2009.
After a brief, factual introductory, Beersman lists the individuals and organizations he interviewed during what must clearly have been an exhausting job of fact-finding, covering all three provinces of the state of Jammu & Kashmir and most shades of opinion, although I do not find any entries either for Syed Ali Shah Geelani (the only separatist leader who holds fast to the objective of accession of the state with Pakistan, via, no doubt the formality of self-determination), for Yaseen Malik (JKLF, who steadfastly espouses “independence” from both India and Pakistan) or any interview with a Kashmiri Pandit spokesperson (remembering that the Pandits, at the other end of the spectrum, want the state’s accession to India to be unambiguously cemented.) The text can be accessed at http://basjak.org.
Hereunder is a bullet-point summation of the significant points made by some significant Valley leaders other than those whose allegiance to the accession with India remains firmly in place, often referred to as the “mainstream” parties and political groups. My catalogue is clearly not intended to reproduce the full text of what each individual/organization is recorded to have said in Beersman’s report, but to highlight what seem to me the chief concerns of each.
Continues >>
Tags:independence, India, Kashmiri Pandits, Pakistan, Paul Beersman report, state of Jammu & Kashmir, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Yaseen Malik
Posted in Commentary, India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 29, 2009
United Nations is to declare discrimination based on the Indian caste system is a human rights abuse.
By Dean Nelson in New Delhi, Telegraph.co.uk, Sep 29, 2009
The UN’s Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva, is expected to ratify draft principles which recognises the scale of persecution suffered by 65 million ‘untouchables’ or ‘Dalits’ who carry out the most menial and degrading work
Many of them work as lavatory and sewer cleaners and in remote villages as “night-soil carriers”.
They are considered unclean by many higher-caste ‘Brahmins’ who regard their presence, and sometimes even their shadow as ‘polluting’.
Continues >>
Tags:'untouchables' or 'Dalits', caste system, discrimination, India, UN's human rights council
Posted in Human rights, India, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 28, 2009
Of Nearsighted Progress, Feral Howls, Consensus, Chaos, and a New Cold War in Kashmir
Arundhati Roy, tomdispatch.com, Sep 27, 2009
While we’re still arguing about whether there’s life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By “democracy” I don’t mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.
So, is there life after democracy?
Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance, and end with a somewhat prickly, combative defense of democracy. It’s flawed, we say. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than everything else that’s on offer. Inevitably, someone in the room will say: “Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia… is that what you would prefer?”
Continues >>
Tags:Arundhati Roy, death and torture in Kashmir, democracy, elections in Kashmir, India, Kashmir, Kashmiri freedom struggle, war casualties in Kashmir
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Uncategorized, war | Leave a Comment »
September 19, 2009
By Badri Raina, ZNet, Sep 19, 2009
Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page
“He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dare not reason is a slave.”
(H. Drummond)
I
India’s Tamilians have always considered themselves a distinct race. Distinct from the Aryans who, history tells us, displaced their Dravidian ancestors after the conquest of the Indus-Valley civilizations. The Tamil language and script are perhaps of greater antiquity than Sanskrit and have remained largely free of its influence. Not to speak of Tamil literature which may be the richest India has to offer, both in depth and scope.
Which is why Tamilians break into passionate protest when any Tamilian anywhere be perceived as being under siege. Sri Lanka offering a prime example, as well as the situation of Tamilians in Malysia.
So, would it be right to infer that Tamilian civilizational homogeneity brooks no breach?
Wrong.
In the Peraiyur taluk of Madurai district in Chennai is a place called Uthapuram. And there, for the last two decades a ten foot high wall segregates Tamilians from other Tamilians, namely, caste Tamils from those without caste (“untouchabes”).
This wall was built to deny access to casteless Tamils of Uthapuram to public places and facilities frequented by caste Tamils on the other side.
Continues >>
Tags:Badri Raina, caste system, Caste Tamils, Dalits, India, Indian Tamils, segregation, segregation wall, Tamil language, TNUEF, Untouchable Tamils, Uthapuram
Posted in Human rights, India, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Does Ideology Matter?
November 18, 2009Yes it does!
By Badri Raina, ZNet, Nov. 17, 2009
Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page
“There has been a systematic failure in giving tribals a stake in the modern economic system—the alienation built over decades is taking a dangerous toll”. . .
“The systemic exploitation of our tribal communities. . .can no longer be tolerated.”
(Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, Hindustan Times, 14/11/09, p.10)
I
A government report just released on the situation of India’s tribals blames the government itself and companies like the Tatas and Essar for the disquiet in the tribal “hinterlands.” As you would expect, the latter have righteously washed their distinguished hands of the insinuation.
Brought out by the Ministry of Rural Development, the report (some tribute to aspects of Indian democracy) in a chapter titled “State-connived land alienation” speaks forthrightly of how land grabs in India’s mineral rich states—Orissa, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand—happen with “direct and indirect participation of revenue officials.” To those must be added the more notorious segments of the political class, now most strikingly represented by the erstwhile chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, who, by all accounts, is alleged to have made a pile of some Rs.4000/-crores over a span of five or six years of ‘rule.’ That Mr. Koda is himself a tribal leader must suggest how enticing and promising the dominant paradigms of ‘development’ are.
That the debate around the issue has penetrated the solid bastions of capitalist theorists is rather hearteningly evidenced by the following sub-heading in the editorial of Hindustan Times of Nov.,16: “‘Tribal land grabs’ aren’t just an ‘NGO’ theory.”
Continues >>
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Tags:Badri Raina, India, India's tribals, Naxalism, violence
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, India, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »