More than 100 people died in bank queues trying to get to their own hard-earned money. Eight thousand crore rupees were spent to print notes. Billions of hours were wasted waiting patiently in bank queues. Bank staff forgot all their other works as well as night sleep. The working poor lost livelihood, for the notes to pay them with were nowhere to be found. All this, it appears, is a trifle in the worship of the fuehrer, er, the Bharatmata.
RAIOT Posts
Gauri Lankesh – woman, journalist, activist, woman – murdered in front of her home the other day while returning from work. What is the anatomy of such a murder – the ingredients that go into its making? And what are the levers, policy and otherwise, that can be put to use to address such events? And what can we, as individuals, do? Where and how can we intervene?
There is a famous Khasi middle class story about selfishness and it goes something like this. There were a number of crabs in a bucket and they were all destined to become dinner at some point in time. The crabs knew about this and they realised that they needed to escape this horrible fate. The story goes on to tell us about how one of the crabs had somehow managed to get a firm grip on the rim of the bucket and was proceeding to pull himself out to the relative safety of the outside world. However, just as he was about to complete his great escape, the other crabs resorted to pulling him back down to the bottom of the bucket. He was, thus, doomed like the rest.
This year, 25 districts and more than 32 lakh of people have been affected by flood and over hundred people have lost their lives. However, the issue unfortunately and unsurprisingly fails to grab the national limelight. In the national dailies, this issue only finds a neglected corner.
Journalists play a unique and pivotal role in every society and must be able to do their work without interference from the state. But as the boundaries between journalists and nonjournalists continue to erode and any meaningful definition of journalism becomes more and more elusive, journalists have to recognize that their rights are best protected not by the special realm of “press freedom” but rather by ensuring that guarantees of free expression are extended to all.
Delhi Police on Thursday registered an FIR against Vikramaditya Rana (whose FB Profile is registered as Ashok Brahma), who supposedly works in Department of Accounts in Shillong who openly threatened to eliminate four eminent women and a noted journalist, all of whom he termed “anti-national”.
Some deaths are like rituals
No one even remembers the dates.
Some deaths are remembered forever
To haunt you and even in your sleep.
Almost seven years ago, to the week, I had sent off instructions to Gauri Lankesh about who would receive her at Imphal airport and then take her up to Ukhrul. She was part of a team of women writers from different parts of India who had been invited to travel across the Northeast and write stories about their experiences
We are curious about why the government wants to block our website. A traveling arts project is not exactly threatening the status quo. Further, curiosity and engagement with processes of identity construction is necessarily an open-ended process. There is no in-advance condemnation of any particular party, politician or any social group. From concerns about language, to food habits, to religion, marriage, divorce, clothing, color of skin and other minutiae of public and private life, identity has acquired weight if you live in India.
After the historic triple talaq judgement, it is an important time for all of us to think about its possible ramifications and ask some questions.
If you’re waiting for Jaggi to transform India’s rivers, don’t hold your breath. In Jaggi’s world, there are no strangers. Only friends that haven’t met. Also, there are no bad things that have to be stopped — like dams on rivers, the Ken-Betwa interlinking that will drown a tiger habitat, or the indiscriminate pollution from coal mines and coal power plants operated by his partners in this campaign. All these bad things can be cured by doing just one good thing — planting trees.
Dogs mean different things in Naga society: pet, companion, food, medicine, guard, spirit sensors, thief catchers and cat chasers. They also feature centrally in the most famous origin myth about the Naga script, which is connected to identity and language. According to legend, a dog ate the Naga script written down on animal skin, and from that day onwards, Naga tradition and knowledge has only been received and shared orally. The relationship between dogs and people in Naga society is an intimate one, and is integral to everyday lives. Dog meat has been part of Naga cuisine for a long time, yet, before dishes started to appear on restaurant menus and before vendors starting selling the meat in the market place, there was no debate or national campaign to ban dog meat.
Do you know what today is? INDIAN FOOLS DAY.
The good news is, Urijit has finished counting the notes.
The bad news? 99% of all the demonetized notes in Nov 8, 2016 have come back.
It has become commonplace in India to try to invalidate any concerns expressed by liberals regarding atrocities committed against minorities, such as Muslims, or Dalits, with a technique known as “Whataboutery.” This technique, used by people from the Hindu right wing, involves putting the liberals on the defensive by aggressively questioning them as to whether they were or are as concerned about injustices done to the majority community, and implying that since they have not shown the same passion regarding injustices suffered by the majority Hindu community, their concerns are inadmissible.
“Whither is our democracy bound?”—It can be said that the present time is marked by a deterioration of circumstances in which such questions can be raised. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government and its fraternal organisations have defined democracy in their own terms. These organisations have also tried to define citizenship to suit their agenda by trying to determine who is an Indian and a patriot as well as who are anti-nationals. As a result, the fundamental ideas about free speech have also transformed. It has been seen that the ruling party and its fraternal organisations have given priority to those who are their ideological allies when it comes to appointing the heads of institutions of higher education and research in the country. A parallel may be drawn between the situation that prevails today and the curtailment of free speech during the emergency in the 1970s. During emergency, it was not possible for independent writers to publish articles or broadcast radio plays in government media unless they maintained the interests of Indira Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi family or promoted the twenty point programme and the five point programme introduced by Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. Even private newspapers were censored or they succumbed to the iron grip of the government. The situation today is more or less the same if not worst.
It was not that all of grandma’s tales about Partition were bitter. One in particular was of extreme generosity and gratitude. The hero of this tale was the son in law of the same sister, the husband of her niece. This gentleman was employed in a government office in Lahore. When grandma was trapped alone with her daughter in her house in a Muslim majority neighbourhood, it was this gentleman who arranged for and came with a military truck to move her to the main refugee camp of Lahore, no doubt with considerable threat to his own life.
Food as cultural identity in regards to dog meat is an under researched area in South Asia or places where dog meat is consumed; in the case of Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram- consumption of dog meat is very much in their cultures (for some it is a choice) and can be counted as an expression of their cultural identity. When practice like this happens in places like Delhi, it is meted with sneering and disgust from the pedestal of high moral ground.
Dog meat is not a taboo. Dog meat is exotic. It is one of the costliest culinary traditions of the Nagas and in parts of the Northeast. A kilo of dog meat costsRs. 350/- or more. Mutton is not even half the taste of it. I bet.
It’s that time of the year again. My facebook page is flooded with posts and shared memes either commenting on how the national media and the centre ignores Assam’s flood or asking people to donate stuff. The great floods of Assam are such a part of Oxomia life that it affects not just the affected but also all others who are affected by the effect on the affected. It affects the Oxomia jati, irrespective of whether your bheti has been washed out by the Lueit, Kolong or Pagladia. In fact you could be comfortably perched on a hilltop like me and still be affected by flood. I will tell you how.
The struggle for a separate state of ‘Gorkhaland’ in the Darjeeling hills is several decades old. But an emerging class division within the movement is characteristic of major tensions in Indian regional politics today.
I feared and angered
In my younger years,
When men ask me at the bus stop,
“Chinky kitna?”
Until the numbers
Tired me.
And my own violence
Violated my sisters on the streets.
So now i respond –
“Sau lakh” (or more).
Random notes made in the wake of the conviction of Dr. Baba Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insaan of Dera Saccha Sauda for the offense of rape in Panchkula, Haryana, with some attention paid to the testimonials of his close friends.
The police has arrested a person on the charge of rape and abduction of a minor girl of Namsai district of Arunachal Pradesh. The person, stated to be a RSS pracharak, was arrested on Augutst 22, Namsai superintendent of police C K Mein said on Friday.
Tonight Gurmeet Ram Rahim from his prison cell calls upon you to dance and purify yourself to his tunes and join his followers in the new world they are creating. So get charged you sons of lion.
MPCA urges upon all concerned and at various levels of authority not to breach upon the right of privacy of each and every individual while attempting to get maximum number of persons for Aadhaar enrolment during a given period of time. As we have received the Ruling on the Right to Privacy, so shall come the Ruling on Aadhaar enrolment and registration. “Force, unaided by judgement, collapses through its own weight.” (Horace, 65-8 BC: Ode)
A few months back as I was laying out the table of contents for a magazine I publish on Asian art, culture and spiritual traditions, I inserted the names of two Sufi writers. On spotting the Muslim names, one of the volunteers, a white woman in her late sixties launched into an unhinged rant, claiming Sufi writers were in fact Jihadis in disguise, and accused me of enabling terrorists to invade and conquer Hindu lands.
When we were sitting in the park in Surya Nagar, I had asked him about the title conferred on him by a magazine – The Henri Cartier Bresson of India. I had a feeling that he doesn’t enjoy the title much and he insisted on being called as the S Paul of India, if referred to as anything apart from his name. Most of us would kill to be compared on that scale yet Paul wasn’t.
Not so long ago, Naxal movement and the conceptual renderings or reflections of it used to present an alternative view of politics, from economics and International relations to the culture and campus discussions. Never a dominant view, but this Naxal-inspired argument about everything would temper and have an impact on the liberal, left and even mainstream points of view.
The Hindutva ideology, much like other fundamentalist undercurrents would have us deny the humanism of Manto and the syncretic traditions of Husain. It is in this context that the Partition themed fiction provides an effective counter-narrative to all efforts at social engineering. It need hardly be mentioned that the absence of an effective political discourse challenging the RSS-BJP combine, willing to transcend the secular-communal binary, mandates a search for a different language sensitive to past history and cognizant of our own failures.
My mother once told me a story
Of when she was a little girl,
How the entire village huddled up inside a church,
When the bombs dropped.
And the surprise checking they endured
My grandmother would pick her up
And carry her on her back
Praying they would not rape mothers and children.
Even after hearing news of thirty or sixty or three hundred children dying
I don’t do much of anything at all, just close my eyes for a little while
Ka TUR ka pynrem jur ia ka jing ibein bad jingymsuidniew jong ki katto katne ki riew Kristan ia kiba long ki nongbud Jong ka Niam Khasi Niam Trai
“Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.”
“His birthday is everybody’s birthday
Let’s say born to light
The day of burning the lamp of hope
Let’s say born to light”
“Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR) condemns the intolerant residents and the dorbar of Shnong Madan iingsyiem, Mylliem who tried to prevent the cremation of (Late) Mr. Kulam Nongrum (President Sengbah ki Nongshad Nongkheiñ) in accordance with Niam Khasi faith in his village. It was only after the intervention of the District administration and an offer of space by Seng Khasi Hima Mylliem that Late Mr. Nongrum could be cremated. The fundamentalist and intolerant behaviour of the some of the Christian majority of the village ensured that the solemn funeral procession was also an occasion for hurling insults on the adherents of the indigenous faith.”
How can Industry survive incompetent policies? The answer is ‘not very well’. In the case of Meghalaya we see this very clearly. Industry has never been a thrust area for this (and hardly any preceding) government. This is probably down to the fact that massive profiteering is easier when industry is unorganized and unarmed. If the industrial policy were ‘proper’, industrial organization would have to be proper. The result as things stand has been a ‘doomscape’ of inconsistent production and subsidy pilfering.
In the past few months, the “Not In My Name” protests, PM Narendra Modi’s (hollow) call to stop lynching and several other appeals to morality have curbed neither the climate of hatred nor the trend of lynching.
Do we then need to make an economic argument against lynching?
Over the past three years, Madhumita Pandey has interviewed more than 100 convicted sex offenders in New Delhi to try and understand the endemic sexual violence that women experience in India. After talking to one of these men, she set out to find what had happened to his five-year-old victim and her family.
An Open Letter to Assam Chief Minister, Shri Sarbananda Sonowal on the killing of Lafiqul Islam Ahmed of All BTC Minority Students Union (ABMSU)
Mission 2020, a Northeast Frontier Railways initiative to connect the capital cities of the northeast as well extend railway line to other parts, has for over a year now run into obstacles in Meghalaya. In particular, two ongoing projects – the Teteliya-Byrnihat line and the Byrnihat-Shillong line for which approximately Rs 4500 crore has been earmarked, have been put on hold. Initiated by the Khasi Students Union (KSU) there are now a host of dissenters against the railway extension plans, demanding that without a proper mechanism to check the influx of immigrants the railway project must not proceed. As a result, land surveys have been interrupted, NOCs from KHADC have not been provided and headmen have denied railway authorities access into villages. On the other hand, the state government sees the introduction of these railway lines as an important means to benefit the economy of the state – through tourism and reduced costs of goods, while committing to check influx through a number of administrative and legal ways including fencing the international border with Bangladesh. At the end of May the protests began to turn violent leading to altercations between the protesters and the police.
Will this ‘Rally’ help the rivers?
The high profile rally initiative to save India’s rivers taken up by well respected religious guru Sadguru and his followers is noteworthy, and the most recent case in point. It is striking that so many film stars, politicians, governments, and public personalities, are joining the call. Lakhs of children are expected to join in the program. While we welcome such an outpouring of good intentions and good will as a demonstration of the positive energy all around, unfortunately, we have seen no evidence either from the rally organisers, on their website or their messaging, that they understand or plan to address the real threats faced by our rivers and their sorry state.
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