Long Live Revolution!

கலைஞர் கருணாநிதி அறக்கட்டளைக்கு
அழகிரி 'கல்வி' அறக்கட்டளை
10 இலட்ச ரூபாய் நன்கொடை!

After Modi's Vicory in gujarat elections, now the victory of BJP in Karanataka is called as a victory to Moditva, a new breed of Hindutva. Moditva is defined as the proper mixture of upper caste, anti-muslim, anti-christian, regional, linguistic chauvinist politics. It's the successful proven mixture of creating and instilling the 'other' in the minds of people and creating a fictious, dubious 'us' with a sense of statehood, covering the poisonous hindutva agenda. Harsh mander recalls the story of abhdulbhai and noorie below, which again shows the real picture of the Hindu Rashtra and how fascism is an every day way of life in one part of this country. Harsh mander is himself an answer to all those who may shook their shoulders and say, "what can i do for this?".

From The Hindu

Another Bakery, another Parzania
HARSH MANDER

The carnage of 2002 changed everything for Abdulbhai and Noorie.... This fortnightly feature introduces us to people in the margins, and their unheard voices.
PHOTO: A. ROY CHOWDHURY

Going up in flames: Even as faith and courage hold no answer....

Today, more than six years after it was charred in the flaming carnage of 2002 in Ahmedabad, their small cottage bakery remains shut. The rebuilt furnace stands forlorn and empty, the metal trays and moulds piled unused and rusting in a corner, like the skeletons of the dead. None of their former clients agrees any more to buy their flour biscuits, cakes and bread, although these were popular in the past.

When they had built their bakery a decade earlier, they had proudly named it Jai Hind. “Others name their shops after gods and goddesses. But we wanted to name our bakery in honour of our country,” they would tell their neighbours proudly. When Abdulbhai and Noorie Bahen had bought the land for the bakery and their home in 1992, they had not worried for a moment that theirs would be the only Muslim home and establishment in the Hindu settlement Thakkar Nagar. “There was no discrimination, no hate, no suspicion at all in the hearts of our neighbours at that time, and there was none in ours.” But then came 2002, with its tempests and fires of loathing, and it changed everything.

When the couple had returned from six months in the relief camp to the ruins of their home, part of their family missing, and their life’s earnings scorched, they were still not defeated. They first rebuilt a makeshift earthen furnace, borrowed money for working capital, and reopened Jai Hind Bakery. But their goods remained unsold, as consequence of a still pervasive city-wide boycott of Muslim products, enforced not just through a shadowy network of communal organisations, but also through large mass consent.

Abdulbhai set out his wares on a wooden cart to sell in parts of the city where people do not know his Muslim identity, shamed by the fall in his economic status, distraught that he needed to hide who he was. They earned a small fraction of what they did in the past.

For years after the slaughter, they held firm to hope and the belief that the trails of hate would one day end. But Abdul and Noorie are now defeated and dispensable in Modi’s resurgent, triumphant Gujarat. The state has no place any longer for people like them, people who worship an ‘alien’ God.

Material destruction

They have still not been able to rebuild the roof over most of their destroyed house. Noorie’s voice quivers as she takes us on a conducted tour of what their home used to be, but is no longer. They are now resigned and vanquished, desperate to find a buyer of their properties, so they can move to the safety (and penury) of a Muslim ghetto. But people know their desperation, and are unwilling to pay more than a small fragment of the market price.

They have lost a lot in 2002: their business, their home, the money they had saved and stored away in crevices of their home to marry off their children, but even more importantly the friendship of their neighbours, their faith and their spirit. However, most tragically of all, they have lost two children, for whom they still wait with throbbing longing and with long-frayed, decayed but stubborn hope.

From the morning of February 28, 2002, relatives started pouring in from various corners of Ahmedabad weighed down with terrifying stories of mass murder, rape, arson and pillage.

Abdul’s old friend, Rajendra, a Hindu lawyer, also dropped by to warn them, but the couple was convinced that their neighbours would never allow them to be harmed. Rajendra still insisted on taking one of their sons Zahid who was at the bakery at that time to his own home, to protect him from any danger. This eventually saved this boy’s life.

Evening fell, and Abdul was baking biscuits and Noorie cooking food for the frightened relatives who had gathered at their home, seeking haven after fleeing desperately from the massacres at Naroda and elsewhere. It was then that mobs converged from two directions to the lone Muslim home and commercial establishment in the neighbourhood, baying for their blood. Some neighbours dissuaded the leaders of the mob, but shortly after, police vans gathered, further inciting the mobs. The relatives and family ran in different directions in the frenzied confusion that followed.

The fire

Two sisters Salma and Sanno, both barely in their teens ran to the inter-state bus terminal. Abdul screamed to them to wait there, until they reached them. Noorie grabbed their youngest son Allah Deen, barely five, and hid trembling in a ditch behind their home, her palm clasped over his mouth all the while, petrified that he would scream and give them away. They watched in secret the mob loot their home and bakery, and set it on fire.

They also saw their oldest son, teenaged Wahid run in another direction with his youngest sister Saira. This was the last time any of them have seen the two children alive, or dead….

Late at night, after the laggards in the mob dispersed and the flames that razed their home were still smouldering, Abdul and Noorie, with their little son Allah Deen, escaped in the shadows to the highway and eventually to the bus stand, in cold dread of the fires blazing everywhere, the calls for assault, and the smoke and the screams that crowded the gathering darkness. At the bus stand, they found to their great relief their two girls who sat waiting for their parents in a corner.

Luckily Noorie was wearing a sari that day, and people took them to be Hindus. They went first to the home of a Hindu friend Thakur, pleading that they take in their two daughters. But the man was out, and the woman refused to open the door, frightened that the mobs would avenge this by torching their home. Noorie does not blame her. “Those were terrible times,” she recalls. “People were too frightened to even offer us a cup of water.”

Chaos rules

But they had more luck when they reached their other Hindu friend Rambhai. He readily — and hastily — took them in, but worried that the mobs would find them before long, as many knew of their friendship. He went out and found a para-military contingent, on whom he had more faith than the local police. The armed men in uniform escorted the family to a junior school building in a Muslim area, which the community had converted into a relief camp.

Their first task was to bring together again their family, scattered by the catastrophe. Two girls were with them. They were reassured about Zahid’s safety, as Rambhai spoke on the telephone to Rajendra, the lawyer who sheltered Zahid at his home for eight days. He finally dropped the boy at the camp, to be reunited with his grieving family. But Wahid and Saira were still nowhere to be found.

As the days and nights in the camp followed each other, laden with sorrow and loss for the thousands sheltered there, the camp organisers arranged vehicles for families to search for their lost loved ones. Hundreds went feverishly from camp to camp. Some like Shah Alam had more than 12,000 residents, and they had set up a unit near the large gate of the dargah to assist separated families to locate lost loved ones. The desperate Abdul and Noorie scoured the faces of several thousand children who were gathered there, but their own children were nowhere to be found.

The estranged parents finally accepted advice from the camp organisers to search among the unclaimed bodies at the mortuaries of government hospitals. There were rotting bodies piled one on top of the other, spilling out on to the corridors, and many frantic family members searched the faces of the dead, several burned or badly scarred by knife wounds. “In our desperation, we started tossing bodies aside, forgetting that they were bodies of loved ones of other people like us.” But they still could not find their children anywhere.

Their quest has not ended even after six long years. And who can say when their search will end, if ever? They do not have a single photograph of their children, as these too were burned down with the fire that the mob lit in their home, so they cannot advertise on television or the newspapers. People tell them that a child was spotted who looked like their children in some corner of this vast country, and they rush there, only to be disappointed. They have journeyed to Mumbai, Delhi, and their ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh, and always returned with empty hands and full aching hearts.

But who can ask a father and mother to abandon their search for their missing children, and by doing so affirm that they are slaughtered, never to return to them? They weep still inconsolably: “We do not know whether to hope any longer, or not to hope …”

Harsh Mander is human rights worker and writer based in Delhi. He is convenor of Aman Biradari, a people’s campaign for secularism, justice and caring.

Shrikrishna Kalamb...i don't know his face. no photograph of him is available in internet or anywhere...i don't know any of his poems other than the ones mentioned in the below article... but not really. i know him...i am able to see him...able to see the despair in his eyes... sense the agony in his voice...the voice of the mute 1,50,000 deceased peasants of india...the voice of the voiceless which couldn't penetrate the deafening hysterical noise of the superpower, which has no glamour, only sweat and blood.

excerpts from 'We cultivate pearls, but our children go hungry'

Two days before he hanged himself to death on March 24, fifty-year-old farmer of five acres Shrikrishna Kalamb penned his last poem.

My life
Is different
My death will be like untimely rain.

The cotton in black soil is like a poem to me
Its roots as sweet as sugarcane…

Symbolism and emotions fill the strong poems of Kalamb, who ended himself at his sister's home in Murtijapur town, 25 km from his native village Babhulgaon (Jahangir) in Akola district. Like other farmers, he had debts and responsibility – of marrying five daughters.

Kalamb's life as a poet-farmer and his musings symbolise the agrarian crisis that is wreaking havoc in the countryside, and taking a toll on the farmers. In his striking muse, Vasare (Calves), he pens:
Amhi vasare vasare, muki upasi vasare
gaya panhavato amhi, chor kalatat dhar
tapa tapa gham unarato, unarato bhuivar
moti pikavato amhi, tari upasi lekare

[We are calves, dumb hungry calves
We tend to the cows, thieves walk away with milk and cream
We sweat and sweat on fields
We cultivate pearls, but our children remain hungry]

Soaked in chaste Warhadi, a sweet Marathi dialect in Vidarbha, Kalamb's poems reflect on and resonate with life of an Indian farmer in changing economic order. Through his 50-plus poems, he commented on varied subjects from politics to the social changes, while keeping rural India at the centre of sweeping realities. In one of his poems titled Lek (Daughter), he goes on to showcase the tensions of a father, whose vocation is farming. The poem remains relevant for all times. In Itihaas, he questions ‘Time’ for preserving only the glorious history of rich and mighty, but willfully burying the resilient struggles of millions of poor. Kalamb was determined to die if one goes by his latest musing.

His crisis went well beyond the issue of outstanding bank loans. He could not earn enough to make both ends meet. The loan waiver won't raise his income levels magically. He too had perhaps cracked in the face of a gigantic crisis plaguing not just him alone but his entire farm neighbourhood. He had failed on financial front. There was virtually no income from his five-acre farm. But he owed Rs 20,000 bank loan, and over Rs 50,000 private debt. The private borrowings may be more."He sustained us on that money for ten years. But now, we had little options so he was contemplating selling remaining land," says his eldest daughter, Usha, 20. "He had asthma and would not work hard in the fields," she says.

Another major worry for Kalamb was the marriages of his daughters, his bereaved wife Rukmini reveals. "He was also sad that Usha was saddled by the family responsibilities and had to cut short her education," she says. On that fateful day, Kalamb tied up a rope to a door beam and kept tryst with it. People saw him walk into his room, but did not suspect his intentions. Says Vivek, his nephew, proudly reciting a few of his poems in remembrance, "It's difficult to fathom that the man who always supported others ended himself in isolation."

"A mass clinical depression is silently sweeping the farmers of Vidarbha", warns Dr Sujay Patil, a leading psychiatrist in Akola. Dr Patil offers a free treatment and counseling to farmers suffering from depression with roots in economic slide. Millions of farmers, he fears, are suffering silently from mental instability owing to a long prevailing economic depression. "It won't subside merely with waiver; the issue of income will have to be addressed seriously," he insists. Nearly 50 farmers have taken their own lives in Vidarbha from Holi festival on March 21, and more than 250 since January this year.

"He would hold us in rapt attention and sometime in tears, when he would recite his poems," remembers Vitthal. Usha has carefully rewritten all her father's poems in a register and wishes to see it published in the form of a collection.She says: "My father died as a farmer, in perpetual debt and worries. But he lived as a poet, and will remain immortal in his poems."

Also Read Manufacturing A Food Crisis, a must read article, to know who killed kalamb.

“What we’re witnessing is the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in independent India — the secession of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country. It’s a vertical secession, not a lateral one. They’re fighting for the right to merge with the world’s elite somewhere up there in the stratosphere.”

Hope everybody knew the slap episode of Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament. Today's morning newspapers have come up with photographs in its masthead of Bhajji (Harbhajan singh) hugging sreesanth and asking for apology. The kiddish cry of sreesanth and all the drama that has followed reminds another infamous episode, not in cricket but of the so-called entertainment industry. The great saga of Shilpa shetty in UK big brother show and the Indian brothers and sisters who fought for her!

Some may question why you differentiate them, as after all cricket too falls under entertainment industry. I appreciate the validity of the question. But since I am 'biased' and 'cynical', I thought of getting a fair opinion. I questioned about the money involved and the extravaganza of the Twenty20 to one of the cricket fan I know, and he shot back clearly. “Cricket is no more a sport, it's an entertainment business.” Yet he loves cricket just because he has got used to watching it. Cricket, Cinema and Religion are the three opiums of India and Twenty20 is the grand new reality show of the great entertainment business of this country.

We are able to see all the shining stars of the 'shining India', or in Shoba de’s words which they understand better, of the brand ‘Superstar India –from incredible to unstoppable’, come together at this grandeur event. Vijay mallya, Sharukh khan, Preity zinta, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, etc., etc… The only resentment was raised by saffron and that too was only on the attire of cheerleaders. The loose-controlled angry ‘rebels’ of the awakened, new Rang De Basanti generation and its gurus shot back. “The clothes and dance moves of Cheerleaders are not more vulgar than that of any Indian cinema. Then, why not this?” Satellite channel anchors condemned the Maharashtra BJP government of moral policing for banning cheerleaders dance in Mumbai IPL matches. So according to BJP, there is no issue if the cheerleaders wear full-covered saree after all even Bal Thackeray is also a lover of sports like cricket other than his favorite blood sports.

It’s not the targeted bikini clad cheerleaders but the entire Twenty 20 is a wicked and vulgar extravagant display of the so-called global Indians and it’s nauseating in its entirety. When Inflation and price rise of essential commodities is threatening the near existence of this country, When economists and even world bank officials warn of an awaiting unrest and chaos due to the food crisis in 33 countries of the world including India, when these nostradamus predictions have already got proved right in the food riots that took place in Haiti, Egypt, Senegal and Cameron in the last two months, when it’s a proven statistic that for every half-an-hour an Indian farmer takes the extreme step of his life, these bastards of bats and balls are bursting crackers in crores. Twenty 20 is the ugliest act of the Indian elite to show its urge to merge with the world elite. As Amit Bhaduri notes, "According to the Forbes magazine list for 2007, the number of Indian billionaires rose from nine in 2004 to 40 in 2007: much richer countries like Japan had only 24, France 14 and Italy 14. Even China, despite its sharply increasing inequality, had only 17 billionaires. The combined wealth of Indian billionaires increased from $ 106 to $ 170 billion in the single year, 2006-07 [information from Forbes quoted in Jain and Gupta 2008]. " Twenty 20 has become possible in India only because of the mushrooming new billionaires and the 'trickling down' of their wealth to some sections of the upwardly mobile classes and now, it's their party time.

The over enthusiastic media, cheering crowds, stars and dancers reminds me one of Prof. Madhukar’s post which follows below.

In a talk on Neoliberal Destructions - which are uploaded at Google video here (part1), here (part2) and here (part3) - that P Sainath gave in Univ of California , Berkeley, he ends his talk with the Cornelius Tacitus’ description of Nero’s parties:

Emperor Nero’s parties in his garden were attended by all the Who’s Who of Rome. Often the the parties were in progress, but then the dusk fell, and night arrived. There was no light around for the guests to continue to enjoy the festivities. Nero came up with a innovative solution to provide illumination: the prisoner and poors were brought and burnt on the stakes party all around the arena to illuminate the garden… Tacitus (The Annals, Book XV, C.E. 62-65 ) noted:

“(they) were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle.”

…and the party continued….

Of course, Nero, as most people know, was mad and cruel - and so, his conduct is perhaps not really so surprising - even if it was sensational.

But what about Nero’s Guests?

They were, after all, the prominent elites of Rome - the intellectuals, the traders, the artists… sort of the “owners” of Roman culture and prosperity… (one would perhaps find them similar to our contemporary urban eduacated elites in temperaments and aspirations)…

It is important to understand the psyche of people - our own, actually- who could enjoy their wine and food, while the crackling light from burning bodies provided illumination to their delights…

as the party (i.e., the GDP, the Shopping Malls, the brands, GDP, SEZs, etc.) continues…

….So, are you one of the “Nero’s Guests”?

I don’t even have a trace of belief that these whiz kids of globalisation will ever care our words. But the vast masses of India who are getting marginalized as waste by the same globalisation, will definitely arise against this system which is nearing by, thanks to the price rise and inflation. On that day, all Nero’s guests will be paid back in Bhajji’s language, one tight slap!

வேலூர் சிறையில்
கண்ணீரால் முறையிட்ட
ஆனந்த பவனத்து
குலக்கொழுந்துக்கு,
நளினி
என்ன பதில்
சொல்லியிருக்கக் கூடும்?
தெரிந்து கொள்ள
யாருக்கும் ஆர்வம் இல்லை.

பதில் கிடக்கட்டும்.
இந்தப் புதுமை
புல்லரிக்க வைக்கவில்லையா?
குற்றவாளி
தனது குற்றத்தை உணர்ந்து
குமைய வைக்கும் கண்ணீர்...
மனங்களிடையேயான
அகழிகளை நிரப்பும்
பாதிக்கப்பட்டவர்களின்
பரிசுத்தமான கண்ணீர்...
என்ன இருந்தாலும்
மேன்மக்கள் மேன்மக்களே!

ஆனால்,
கேவலம்
அவ்வாறு
கண்ணீர் சிந்தி கதறியழும்
வாய்ப்பையேனும்
என்றைக்காவது
எமக்கு வழங்கியிருக்கிறீர்களா
எசமானர்களே...?

தகப்பன் பாசம் கூட
சீமாட்டிகளுக்குத்தான்
சொந்தமோ?
மணிப்பூரின் தாய்மார்கள்
மன்மோகன் சிங்கை சந்திக்கவும்,
நரோடா பாட்டியாவின்
இசுலாமியக் குழந்தைகள்
மோடியை கண்டு முறையிடவும்...
முறையிட அல்ல,
மனுக் கொடுப்பதேனும் சாத்தியமா?
இவற்றுக்கும்
உளவுத் துறை
உறுதுணையாய் வருமா?

சீமாட்டிகளின்
பொழுதுபோக்குகளில்
சுவாரஸ்யத்திற்கு
பஞ்சமில்லை.
அதனால்தான்
அடுத்த சில நாட்களில்
அரை மணி நேரத்திற்கு
ஒரு விவசாயி
தற்கொலை செய்து கொள்ளும்
இழவு நாட்டில்,
சற்றும் துணுக்குறாமல் நடைபெறும்
வக்கிரக் கொண்டாட்டத்தில்
அம்மையார் பிரசன்னமானார்.

வேலூர் சிறை 'த்ரில்'
அலுத்துப் போயிருக்கலாம்.
ஷாருக் கானின் அருகாமையில்
புதிய 'த்ரில்'
தேவைப்பட்டிருக்கலாம்.
அல்லது
அங்கும் கூட
அன்பிற்குரிய
அப்பா தென்பட்டிருக்கலாம்.
உண்மைதானே,
21-ஆம் நூற்றாண்டுக்கு
இந்தியாவை அழைத்துச் செல்லும்
ராஜீவின் கனவு
20-20-ல் தானே நிறைவேறுகிறது...

ஆனால்,
பிரியத்திற்கிடமற்ற
பிரியங்கா அம்மையாரே...
ஒன்றை மட்டும்
நினைவில் கொள்ளுங்கள்...
தண்ணீரை விட மட்டுமல்ல,
கண்ணீரை விடவும்
இரத்தம் அடர்த்தியானது.