Tag: narendra modi

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Enough said

When scenes of strife sicken

Images of riots make us yearn for human suffering to stop. But what about those who actively manufacture that suffering?
Humra QuraishiHumra  Quraishi

I realise that I am talking about the Muzzaffarnagar riots for the third consecutive week through this column. And I also realise that it is futile to keep harping on the patterns of riot and how similar they were to those witnessed during the Partition.

In this connection, I remember interviewing Sunil Dutt soon after the Mumbai riots of the 90s. I asked him if there was any solution to the civil strife and the rioting. And he’d nodded and said, “Yes, there can be a solution. Last night I was going through the latest issue of Time magazine, and the horrifying photographs of war-ridden Somalia shocked me so much that I couldn’t eat. It was dinner time but I couldn’t touch a morsel. Those pictures of people dying, injured and ill, rendered so helpless that most couldn’t even walk.

“And now I am going to suggest that those pictures and others be displayed all over our towns and cities, at all public places and sunil_dutteducational institutions of our country. They should be displayed with this caption, ‘See what war can do to you, your country, your fellow human beings.’”

I had probed him on allegations that he was working only for the minorities during the Hindu-Muslim riots. Looking suitably pained, he’d said, “These are filthy allegations. These are things I can’t even dream of – like people calling me a Pakistani agent or a desh drohi married to a Muslim! Why this propaganda that I’ve worked only for Muslims? When I undertook a padyatra from Mumbai to Amritsar, it was for no Muslim cause, it was for Hindus and Sikhs!

“Even during the Bombay riots, I helped whoever was affected. Obviously I couldn’t first ask them their religion and then help them. Though I have been a victim of the Partition myself, I have suffered tremendously, but my mother taught us never to hate another human being. I have passed this on to my children. It’s important to spread this message because once there is anarchy, it ruins everything.”

And while the tension abates somewhat over Muzaffarnagar (or that is what we believe, safe in our homes elsewhere), I am wondering about former army chief General VK Singh’s recent revelations. Sitting on his safe perch, assured of a strong political career with Narendra Modi as his chief, with an adequate monthly pension to boot, the General has only now spoken about money being given to certain politicians in the Kashmir Valley.

VK singhTwo things: one, if General VK Singh was aware of this, why didn’t he speak out earlier? Why now? Also, if what he is saying is true, is it really as shocking as all that? Don’t we all know that it is an ongoing trend to have money pumped from one location to another – to silence many voices and to keep one’s rule intact?

Little wonder, then, that in each and every conflict zone of this country, a certain section of society thrives. It’s this section – comprising politicians, informers, suppliers, sometimes even the police – that gets rich and flourishes. No wonder, also, that so many conflicts take place in the country fairly regularly.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.the-south-asian.com, www.firstpost.com, www.topnews.in)

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Enough said

Why the silence on ‘those’ rapes?

Several women were reportedly raped and molested during the recent Muzaffarnagar riots in UP. Why is nobody talking about them?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Last week saw two crucial announcements taking place – one, death for the four Delhi rapists of Nirbhaya, and two, the official appointment of Narendra Modi as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate for the General Elections next year.

Both these announcements put to mind a certain fact – hundreds of women were raped in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, and more recently, there were reports of rape and sexual harassment of women from the ‘weaker sections’ during the Muzaffarnagar riots.

I cannot fathom the silence about these atrocities. Why were these victims not allowed to lodge formal complaints? Who are these rapists? Why are there no arrests? Why were no death sentences passed against them? Why are the criminals allowed to go untouched, or even allowed to escape?

What is the establishment saying: that rapes taking place during a pogrom or a communal riot can be forgotten or bypassed? That they are modi not important enough to merit investigation? Except for certain sections of the national media, not one political party in the country has spoken about this extremely disturbing news; that women were harassed and raped and molested during the recent rioting in West Uttar Pradesh. And that they and their families have not dared to file a formal complaint, perhaps out of fear of the aftermath.

So many women sit bruised and broken…

It is this acceptance of such grave injustice that worries me the most. And it has been happening right from the 2002 pogrom. I have been meeting Muslims affected in Gujarat on and off since 2002, and they have been saying over and over that they have learnt to live like second class citizens, with third class living conditions. They dare not speak out against the powers that be, for that could mean doom. If they have to survive, they have no choice but be silent spectators to their own pain and humiliation.

Some of them, I fear, could even be lured towards Modi’s political party, a party that wears a multitude of masks! The BJP is a party that believes in multiplying through an array of shrewd strategies amidst a conspiracy of silence and clever attacks.

Even more worrying is the feeling of doom in the air…much before the elections of 2014 come about, there have been very worrying developments in the country. A very militant sort of communalism is rearing its ugly head bit by bit. Are we to sit and quietly await developments, even as injustices are meted out every day?

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy daily.bhaskar.com, www.sandeepweb.com)

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Enough said

Saluting a young girl’s courage

It isn’t easy to stand up to a politically well-connected Indian godman, but Asaram Bapu’s victim has shown tremendous grit.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

What a lot of news has been capturing our attention in the last few days! Narendra Modi being nailed by his own men. Zubin Mehta’s concert in Kashmir in jeopardy. The Indian Rupee bouncing back a bit after the appointment of a new RBI Governor. And of course, other items of interest, such as daily rising inflation, scams and yet more rapes…

But what has gripped the nation the most is the recent arrest of self-styled godman Asaram Bapu, who is facing charges of sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl. And though he evaded arrest for a while and was later caught, what remained constant throughout was how tenaciously the victim stuck to her story.

Initial details of the case have revealed strong traces of perversion and an almost sickening level of lust in Asaram’s several alleged sexual encounters. As well-connected as he is, it took sustained media pressure and queries from the general public about the delay in his arrest to finally get the Government machinery to act against him. And this is why it is important to applaud his teenaged victim, the girl who had the grit to not just give details of his misdeeds with her.

It is not easy to go to a police station and give a written complaint of this nature. Such a complaint is accompanied by the most intrusive and insensitive of questions – ‘Who raped/molested? How? When? How much? Where are the injuries? Who are you? What does your family do? What is your private life like?’

And so on.

It must be utterly traumatic, after already having undergone a severe trauma, to then be asked to narrate details about one’s own rape, then undergo medical tests and face severe media speak out against sex offencesfocus. But this girl and her family have gone through all this bravely, without the slightest trace of fear. I hope that the Government deems it fit to provide her and her family with protection, because who knows what might happen next?

After Asaram’s arrest, it seems worthwhile to once again believe in the adage, ‘Truth does prevail’. There will be several obstacles till the girl finally gets justice, but the truth does hold out.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy indiatoday.intoday.in, www.rediff.com) 

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Enough said

Petty speeches and hard talks

This week saw some low-level political discourse at one end of the spectrum, and an illuminating talk on the other.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Look at the irony. Tomatoes and potatoes are selling at astronomical prices, but politicians are going cheap – for just Rs 5.

Truly gone are the days of Gandhi and Nehru, when their mere words stirred the masses into action. Today, politicians are catering to the lowest common denominator, with crude and crafty speeches laced with ideas that should not enter a decent person’s thoughts, let alone creep into his public speech.

This freedom of expression cannot be used to borderline vulgarity, to say the unthinkable. Where are the leaders who unite the masses narendra modithrough stirring speeches and debates? Instead, we’re left with people who will say and do anything to make the news, who firmly believe in the adage that ‘any publicity is good publicity’. When was the last time we heard a really profound speech from a politician?

In the backdrop of these political shenanigans, last week there was a talk by noted academic Dr Vasudha Pande at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). The very focus of her talk should get the Uttarakhand Government focussing on what the erstwhile kings of the region did to harness their resources – terraced cultivation to save agricultural land and crops.

Dr  Pande is currently a Fellow, NMML, researching the environmental history of Uttarakhand. I quoting this abstract from her talk at the NMML:

“Katyuris are the much celebrated kings of Uttarakhand. The narrative of the Katyuri state marks the shift from pre-history to history – with copper plates, inscriptions, architectural works and folklore. Despite the great interest expressed in the Katyuri state system, little attention is paid to the most momentous contribution of the Katyuris—the shift to settled, terraced cultivation and the emergence of petty peasant production.

uttarakhand“Since Uttarakhand as defined today as a specific construct, the presentation will not restrict itself to this geographical unit. It will explore regions contiguous with present day Uttarakhand –Nepal in the east, Tarai in the south, Tibet in the north and Himachal in the west. Articulated in terms of river valley systems it will extend from the Karnali in the east to Kali, to Ganga, to Yamuna up to Sutlej in the west. By spreading the net wide, we hope to document the gradual, piecemeal change in terms of resource utilisation by hunter gatherers, fishing communities, pastoral groups, and those practicing trans-humance in this part of the Himalayan mountains.

Katyuri period, roughly defined from the 9th-14th CE as a momentous conjuncture which successfully stitched together the various food production systems then prevalent in the Central Himalayas. This brought about an increase in population and productivity. The emergence of agriculture is transformative and the result of many cumulative changes in production strategies, technology, demography, and adaptation to specific niches. How did this happen, what precipitated this transition? The Himalayas provide a wide variety of habitats across different altitudinal zones, what kinds of adaptive strategies did humans adopt in this landscape? How did these then interact with each other?”

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.thehindu.com, ibnlive.in.com, www.images22.com)

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Overdose

Politics bachao

Saying ‘I hate politics!’ does not absolve us of our duties as Indians. When are we going to demand change?
Jatin Sharmaby Jatin Sharma

Chanakya said that a country is not ruined by corrupt and evil ministers, but it is ruined by the youth that hates politics and doesn’t believe in the political system.

What the father of Indian politics prophesied a thousand years ago stands true today. Today we as the youth have completely given up on our political system. We just like to comment on politics and political statements that are fed to us by the media channels, several times out of context. Repeated exposure to the news makes us think that we are experts on the topics that are currently ‘hot’ in the newspapers, or are trending in the social media space.

Whatever side of the fence we’re on, whatever our political inclinations, we believe in shouting only when we can direct a hate message towards our politicians. Okay, so Narendra Modi may not have actually rescued 15,000 Gujaratis, but bhavnaon ko samjho. And why just Narendra Modi, we are cynical about any and every politician, even the small fry down the road who contests the corporation elections and loses every time. And whenever we come across a story that speaks about the positive actions of a politician, our first reaction is that of disbelief, and we justify our thinking by saying that he or she must have some vested interest in doing the good that he or she did. We, a supposedly educated bunch, are buffoons when it comes to understanding the systems and the people that run our country. We love playing a victim, helpless against the system, when secretly, we enjoy the political tamasha on Youtube or TV and enjoy the venomous hatred we and others spit.

We have stereotyped all our politicians (and anybody who disagrees with us deserves to be called the choicest names); while someone is a mute puppet in the hands of an Italian hateremote control, someone else is a gaai-bhains neta. Someone is a statue-making machine neta, and someone else is a regional North Indian hater. But have we thought of going to the roots of all these characters, who, whether we like it or not, are strong forces in today’s politics? Let alone anything else, have we questioned our own undying hate for our politicians?

Isn’t it because it is easier to hate our politicians than to love our country?
Isn’t it easier to blame someone for the mistake we are committing?
Isn’t it easier to pass on the guilt of our own actions and enjoy our lives without stress?
Isn’t it easier to be a stupid person with half-baked opinions (such as ‘All politicians are CORRUPT! If you don’t agree with me you are an idiot!’) than to become an intelligent one who cares enough to clean the mess?

What disheartens me the most is that the people today have actually started believing that no matter what, nothing can be changed. And what is worse is that they are not letting their negative energy express itself in positive ways. All of us choose to vent in our social groups, over alcohol and snacks or in tweets and status messages. We look at our own country and laugh at the ‘fact’ that nothing can be done, that we are not expecting a change. We are not remotely interested in being the change.

But think about it: the politicians that we accuse of corruption can also turn around and point a finger at us. How many of us can truthfully say that we have never paid a bribe? That we have not tried to influence our bosses’ minds by being sycophantic? That we have not told a lie in front of our children? That we have not used foul language towards a member of the opposite sex? That we have not had corrupt thoughts about an attractive person who is not our wife or husband?

If we have done any or all of the above, how different is our corruption from that of our politicians’? And what gives us the right to use profanities against politicians when our own moral compass needs correction?

people powerWe need to blame ourselves for becoming so helpless that we feel we cannot effect a change in our surroundings. We need to stop making fun of our mute PM when we ourselves are silent on several burning issues. We need to stop making excuses and start loving politics, start demanding the kind of politics that is inclusive and pro-development of society. Writing something clever and getting a hundred retweets is not a solution to any problem, and laughing at jokes on the falling rupee will not ease our economic woes. All of us need to become a force, a pressure point. Becoming an Indian in the real sense is the biggest favour that you can do yourself and your nation.

And who knows, we might just clean up our politics, too.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

(Pictures courtesy www.facebook.com, thatswhatshesaid922.blogspot.com)

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Enough said

A victim of his own moves?

LK Advani is unfortunately placed – he seems stifled within his party but he’s not allowed to move away, either.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

This entire episode around LK Advani seems layered. Even the politically naïve can understand that Advani has not been allowed to resign, despite his initial outbursts. He has not been allowed to break free from the controlling powers of his political party, the BJP. It almost seems as though he is being forced to retain his mask, keep up the façade of ‘togetherness’ of the Right-wing brigade.

There seems to have been a complicated build-up to this turn of events. Is it possible that Advani couldn’t cope with the frustration of being sidelined and finally wanted to break away from it? How interesting that all these years, he’d diligently worked at so many gimmicks and indulged in hate politics to gather votes for his party, and the same party is most likely stifling him for a long time now.

Who can forget Advani’s master move, the idea that sparked the kind of fire in the country that it is still not being put out? In the early advani's rath yatra90s, he undertook the rath yatra all the way to Ayodhya, whipping up communal frenzy along the entire route and reveling in it. His rath yatra can be termed as one of the turning points in modern Indian history, for it sowed seeds of communal divide and hatred between communities, left a permanent imprint on minds. That communal hatred still continues to poison the atmosphere of this nation.

And who can forget that photograph of him and Uma Bharti and Murli Manohar Joshi, hugging and clasping each other as the Babri Masjid was being destroyed? The disturbing events of those times continue to simmer to this day, with riots periodically breaking out and terrorists planting bombs in the name of jihaad and the memories of 1992.

As the baton passes to Narendra Modi (or it seems to be forcibly grabbed by Modi and his men in a bloodless coup!), there is not just worry but a growing unease for the safety of this land and the people living in it

Ironically, we can turn to these lines from a poem written by BJP patriarch Atal Bihari Vajpayee from his book of poems, Twenty One Poems, for some succor. The poem is tilted ‘Power’:

advani1“To those who try to reach/

The throne of power/

Over mounds of dead bodies/

Of innocent children/

Old women/

Young men/

I have a question:/

Did nothing bind them/

To those who died?/

Their faiths differed;/

Was it not enough that they too were of this earth?/

‘The earth is our mother, and we are her sons’:/

This mantra from the Atharvaveda,/

Is it only to be chanted, not lived?/

 

Children charred by fire,/

Women savaged by lust,/

Houses reduced to ash/

Constitute neither a certificate of culture/

Nor a badge of patriotism,/

 

They are proof of bestiality,/

Proof of degradation,/

As if these be the deeds of sons,/

Mothers should not wish for any./

 

A throne smeared with the blood of the/

innocent/

Ranks lower than the dust of the cemetery,/

The lust for absolute power is worse/

Than a thirst for blood.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.livemint.com, www.frontline.in, www.hindustantimes.com)

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