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By Ritwik Agrawal | July 9, 2010 6:17 pm

A few days back, thugs belonging to a radical Islamist outfit called Popular Front chopped off the right hand of Prof. T.J. Joseph, a private college lecturer in Muvattapuzha in Kerala as “punishment” for the  ”offence” of hurting religious sentiments. The Hindu has covered this story in some detail.

Dilip D’Souza has raised some pertinent questions in this regard:

* Why the college management “apologised”.

* Why the Kerala government saw fit to issue “instructions” that the professor should be suspended.

* Why the college followed the government’s instruction and suspended him.

* Why the police lodged a case against the professor.

The following is worth noting as well:

T. Vikram, Superintendent of Police, Ernakulam Rural, who was camping in the area, said: “We have talked to church leaders to convince them that an all-out effort is being made to nab the culprits.” (as reported in The Hindu)

I don’t understand why the police needed to specifically assure church leaders that the perpetrators of this ghastly attack will be brought to justice? Surely these “church leaders” should have been incensed regardless of the religious affiliation of the victim?

Of course, this episode would not have even become a news story had the attackers not committed the tactical error of chopping off Joseph’s hand. As it is, they had him on the run. A little bit of shouting from the rooftops had ensured that:

1. Joseph was suspended from his job. In what capacity did the state Government instruct a PRIVATE institute to suspend an employee is not clear.

2. He was picked up and harassed by the police.

3. After getting out on bail, he went into hiding to escape frequent death threats. In response, the police put out a wanted poster for his arrest

Why exactly were the government and the police so keen to prosecute Prof. Joseph? Why were the charges of “hurting religious sentiments” believed at face value and not investigated properly? What constrained the government to apply the serious charge of “fomenting communal hatred” on the Professor? What about the concept of an educational institution being an open space? Why did the state not defend Prof. Joseph’s fundamental right to expression?

Maybe the secular, progressive and people friendly Left Democratic Front government of Kerala can provide some answers.

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By Ritwik Agrawal | September 15, 2009 6:24 am

The Telegraph (UK) reports that Jon Amiel’s film Creation, a British project about Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution has not found a distributor in America. The film, which has secured positive early reviews, has had no problem in securing distributors in other territories all over the world.

It may be recalled that America has witnessed an acrimonious debate on Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is widely accepted as the best explanation for the origin of life and evolution of various life-forms. Creationists in America refuse to accept Darwin’s theory as it clashes with ideas propagated by Christianity.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as “a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder”. His “half-baked theory” directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to “atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering”, the site stated.

It is difficult to see this incident in isolation, given the increasing intolerance and jingoism shown by vast sections of the American media over the past few years, while covering matters as diverse as Iraq, health care and outsourcing.

It is also interesting that despite the election of Barack Obama, right-wing opinions seem to hold a great amount of sway over the country. This seems to rule out any hope of genuine “change”, at least for now.

For a society that prides itself on being free, America has touched a new low. One can only hope that sense will prevail and at least one distributor will show the guts to stand up for freedom of speech, in the land that is gave us Operation Enduring Freedom

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By Ritwik Agrawal | August 23, 2009 6:26 pm

Jaswant Singh's Controversial Book

Over the last week, there has been much brouhaha over Jaswant Singh’s new book titled Jinnah: India Partition Independence

The former BJP leader has tried to argue that Jinnah was a secular man who was “pushed” towards communal politics due to the inflexible attitude of senior Congress leaders.

This basic contention fits in well with the old RSS/BJP approach of using any stick to beat Nehru and other Congress leaders, and hold them responsible for all of India’s ills.  Jaswant Singh advocates that Jinnah’s recommendations to the Motilal Nehru Committee (demanding special concessions to Muslims) should have been accepted back in 1929. Singh contends that had this been done, Jinnah would have never orbited towards communal politics.

It is amusing to see a senior (now former) leader of a Hindu nationalist organization like the BJP advocating concessions to Muslims. One can well imagine what the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha response would have been (in the 1930s) had Jinnah’s recommendations been accepted by the Congress. For some reason, I can clearly hear “minority appeasement” echoing in my head.

I’ve always found it incredible how RSS/BJP sympathizers, who otherwise profess a deep hatred for Jinnah and his muslim communal politics, hold that if only Nehru had overcome his personal “greed” and allowed Jinnah to be prime minister, then partition would have never occurred.

These people set no store by the popular will of the people of India, who elected the Congress by record margins in all polls conducted till then. The Congress was the largest political organization in the country [by far], Gandhi was the tallest leader, and Nehru was both a tall leader and Gandhi’s handpicked nominee. None of these things seem to make any impact on the immune-to-logic grey cells of the Hindu nationalist crowd.

This is probably because inspite of public protestations to the contrary, I suspect that the RSS/BJP and their cohorts feel quite comfortable with Jinnah. Believing as they do in identity politics, they deem it natural for a muslim to speak for muslims, as a hindu must speak for hindus. It is incomprehensible for them to see Gandhi, Nehru and other hindus speaking for the minorities, and minority leaders Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan speaking for an inclusive nationality.

Thus, what has done in Jaswant Singh is not his exoneration of Jinnah, or putting the blame on Nehru. The seasoned politician that he is, Jaswant Singh must have realized that holding Sardar Patel equally culpable for the partition of the country would seriously ruffle feathers in the “parivaar”. Over the years, the RSS and its fronts like the BJP have successfully wrested Patel’s legacy from a stupor-ridden Congress, which seems to have forgotten it ever had leaders other than the “first family”. Patel’s aggressive nationalism and “iron man” image fits in well with the RSS idea of India.

In this light, one can well imagine the fury of RSS leaders. Jaswant Singh was identified as a very senior BJP leader, and organizationally speaking, it was extremely irresponsible of him to “tarnish” Patel with the same brush as Nehru, when the RSS has for years been trying to appropriate the former and demonize the latter.

To put it simply: in the RSS fantasy world, Nehru was a Europeanized brat, who tricked Gandhi and wrested the PM-ship to satisfy his personal greed, which led to the partition of the country. Patel was the good samaritan who had to bow down to pressure from Gandhi, but who nonetheless did unparalleled work in unifying the country. Jaswant Singh effectively shows Nehru and Patel to be working together, as a team, and not at cross purposes as the RSS would wants us to believe.

When the BJP says that Jaswant’s contentions are against it’s core ideological beliefs, this is what it is alluding to: a senior leader cannot undermine the years of ideological work done by committed RSS pracharaks, and consequently leave the parivaar in an indefensible position.

Politically speaking, if Jaswant Singh had not been expelled, then the self-styled “Chotte Sardar” Narendra Modi would have been taken to the cleaners by the Congress in Gujarat. Patel is a highly respected leader even outside his home state, and one can well imagine the BJP’s discomfort had it not taken prompt action by expelling Mr. Singh.

Thus, I find it incredible that the media [both print and broadcast] has been typifying the BJP’s action as intolerant. It is amazing that The Hindu faults the BJP for expelling Jaswant Singh, but didn’t bat an eyelid when Somnath Chatterjee was expelled for defying party orders. The latter didn’t even question his party’s core beliefs in marxism-leninism!

The BJP is right in expelling Jaswant Singh because a senior leader cannot publicly question his party’s view of history – that puts the entire ideology under a cloud of doubt.

I completely agree that Mr. Jaswant Singh should have freedom of expression, and thus I think it is reprehensible that his book has been banned in Gujarat [for I believe that no book should be banned], but as far as being member of a political party goes, he cannot continue being a member of a party unless he accepts it’s core ideological position.

To sum it up: it is right to expel jaswant singh, but wrong to silence him.

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By Ritwik Agrawal | August 5, 2009 4:05 am

Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe

Wonder how Indian leftists [in politics, media and academia] will go about defending this.

Hugo Chavez - revolutionary leader of the third world in the fight against American imperialism and messiah of the people, has not had much to say since the end of the Bush Presidency.

After all, George W Bush was everything a demagogue like Chavez could ever hope for.

Over the last decade or so, Chavez cleverly mixed socialist rhetoric & populist economic policies with shrill anti-Bush vitriol to win a cult following all over the world. In India too, Chavez has a committed band of sympathizers, including the entire spectrum of communist parties in the country. For example, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) proclaims:

Under President Chavez’s leadership, a radical transformation is taking place in Venezuela.
-People’s Democracy, December 12, 2004  (link)

All over the world, those inimical to Bush were more than ready to welcome Chavez with open arms, inspite of the fact that his authoritarian streak has become increasingly evident over the years. Even while he spewed venom on Bush, Chavez had no qualms about glorifying fascist Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.

Chavez has been relatively quiet for the past few months. As Denis Macshane notes in the Guardian, the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States robbed Chavez of his main anti-American plank.

But his enthusiastic supporters needn’t worry any longer, for their maverick leader has found a new enemy: the free press.

Hugo Chavez’s government has introduced a new draft law against “media offences”. Some provisions of this law:

Journalism hostile to the social peace, the security and independence of the nation can be punished by prison sentences of between six months and four years.

Journalists will also break the proposed new law if their writings are seen as an attack on public order or Venezuelans’ “mental or moral health”. Article 5 threatens imprisonment for “false information” that is prejudicial to the interests of the state.

On careful reading, it immediately becomes clear that such provisions can be used to muzzle the media to an almost unlimited extent.

Put simply, it means that once the proposed law is passed, journalists in Venezuela who do the kind of investigative stories that Tehelka excels in would find themselves behind bars.

Distressingly, the wording of the law runs counter to the very nature of journalism, which, in its true sense, is MEANT to highlight systemic lapses, instead of brushing them under the carpet.

One can imagine the [justifiable] protests that would ensue if such a law were ever to be conceived of in India or Western Europe or America.

I hope that our “opinion makers” [especially of the leftist/socialist/communist variety] do not shy away from condemning Chavez’s attempts at taming the media in the strongest possible terms.

After all, if Chavez’s “21st century Socialism” is such a panacea, then the people must not be deprived of an opportunity to hear about it from the press!

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By Ritwik Agrawal | July 17, 2009 4:59 am

Recently there has been a fair bit of comment on the Mayawati government’s decision to build statues and memorials to “Dalit icons” [including herself] at a cost of thousands of crores of taxpayer money.

While the commentary on this matter has been relatively recent, large scale edification has been on Mayawati’s radar ever since she first assumed chief ministership of India’s largest state, back in the mid nineties. Over the last two decades and more, erecting statues of Ambedkar and other Dalit icons has been seen as a potent symbol of the shift in the dynamics of power. Like all manifestations of identity politics, Dalit leaders sought to give their followers “pride”, as a substitute for real improvement in the ground situation.

Much of the reporting and “analysis” regarding the latest statue building exercise, in newspapers and on TV [between such vital topics as "dhoni ke dhurandar" and "rakhi ka swayamwar"] hasn’t touched upon the topic of electoral gain: will this statue building spree benefit Mayawati electorally? A happy exception is Gautam Bhatia’s article in Open magazine, in which Bhatia lambasts Mayawati for wasting not only vast amounts of money, but also a real opportunity of providing change.

Bhatia’s piece aside, the lack of electoral speculation is hardly surprising – the Indian media [particularly of the English language variety] has a terrible record of predicting electoral outcomes.

We must not forget that this is the same media which was projecting no more than 150 seats for BSP in the 2007 UP assembly elections [BSP finally got 200+ for a simple majority]. After that stellar performance, the media pendulum swung the other way, with commentators falling over themselves projecting 40+ parliamentary seats for the BSP. Some went so far as to project Mayawati as a viable candidate for Prime Ministership.

The people, sadly for the commentators and happily for the country, gave Mayawati a total of 19 seats, way less than any opinion poll prediction.

The media, still licking its wounds, has apparently decided not to stick out its neck once again, and is thus refusing to speculate about the electoral dividend [if any] generated by what one reporter has charmingly called the ‘BSP School of Architecture’. The reporter, an avid propagandist of the BSP movement, seems to have temporarily stopped writing on Dalit issues ever since the Lok Sabha results. Now, he wisely devotes his attention to matters such as LGBT rights and persecution of Uighurs in China.

Since I am not a journalist, nor connected to the media in any way, I will go ahead and do what most Indians are very happy doing in their drawing rooms/paan shops/offices/playgrounds etc etc – predict the fate of politicians and political parties.

I contend that this grand architectural exercise is not going to help Mayawati in any way. The fact remains that BSP candidates lost 15 out of 17 reserved constituencies in UP in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. This clearly implies that BSP’s trustworthy core votebank of Dalits deserted it in large numbers. It is my hunch that non-jatav dalits didn’t vote for Mayawati this time as enthusiastically as 2007.

Mayawati seeks to win back these sections through the tired old formula of “pride”. I firmly believe that his formula is now past its sell-by date.

How will I prove my assertion?

Well, certainly not through a “caste based voting pattern survey”, or whatever the hell it is called, brought out by comedian-in-chief Yogendra Yadav and his team at CSDS, election after election. In a secret ballot, how the hell does the CSDS team know that 33.67% leuva patels voted for BJP? Were Mr. Yadav and his cohorts hovering as invisible angels near the voting machines?

I have a much more reliable formula on which I base my political predictions. My weather vane is our ever unreliable Indian English media. Much as when the Met department predicts rain, I apply sunscreen, when I see a topic garnering massive attention in the English language press, it is clear that the issue has no great resonance with the masses.

For example, almost nobody wrote about Mayawati’s “social engineering” [going on since at least 2003] before the 2007 UP elections. After her stunning victory,social engineering was the buzz in town. This time, the English press focused only on social engineering, forgetting about such petty matters as crime and ganglordism, and the BSP was swept aside. In much the same way, statues had resonance in the 80s and the 90s, when the press was busy elsewhere [high number of beauty queens from India, for example]. Now that the press focuses on statues, I am sure the real issues lie elsewhere, such as water scarcity in Bundelkhand.

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By Ritwik Agrawal | July 8, 2009 2:21 am

This week NDTV 24×7 will be airing Kathryn Millard’s film, The Boot Cake at the following times:

The Bootcake – a film by Kathryn Millard – Part 2

July 11: 3 – 4 pm
July 12: 1 – 2 pm

A short synopsis (from NDTV)

A small desert town on the edge of western India’s famous salt plains is the unlikely home of the world’s largest population of Charlie Chaplin impersonators. The Charlie Circle of Adipur embraces businessmen, shopkeepers, a doctor who prescribes Chaplin movies for medicinal purposes, teachers, engineers, students and a three-year-old pre-schooler. They all share a passion for the silent film star of the early 1900s, with his twirling cane, wobbly walk and agitated eyebrows.

Award-winning Australian film-maker Kathryn Millard stumbled across the beguiling Charlie Circle during research for another film project. She was immediately invited to join their 116th birthday celebrations, which included a parade of Charlie look-alikes through town along with dancing girls, floats, strolling musicians and a camel. Would she do them the honour of bringing the grand centrepiece: the birthday cake?

And not just any cake, but one in the shape of a boot, as homage to the famous scene in The Gold Rush, where the starving Tramp boils and eats his own boot.

The Boot Cake is a wonderful, mad, poignant story of resilience and hope.