PaRCha - JNU - AISA - 2013 ID-6611
.
A3 .
.
... .. .
consideration, and even condoned as a necessary price to pay for 'national security.' Regardless of which party rules, mdividual or groups painted as 'enemies of the nation' can be arrested, tortured and eliminated at will-no questions asked -in the guise of 'national security' and 'war on terror.' .
~-hen fake encounters and fabricated charges of terror combine with the usimperialist agenda of 'war on terror', It IS a huge boost in the arm for the ideological climate of communal fascism. This is all the more so because it isn't linked to one party-the BJP-alone. When prc;>minent and respected media commentators argue that 'law' should be sacrificed for 'order'; that the Indian spy agencies should be allowed to conduct 'controlled killings'; and that the IB and national security cannot survive unless exempted from obligations to the Constitution; such opinions do not provoke widespread outrage and are rarely described as 'fascist.' But these are the insidious ways in which the fascist .
consensus is created. .
When rul~ng ~lass parties do raise these issues of fake encounters or custodial killings, there is often a cynical opportumsm Involved. So, Salman Khursheed will shed tears for Batla House at Azamgarh during an election meeting, or V.:ill apologise -in Kashmir -for the Kunan Poshpora mass rape by the Army-at the same advising Kashmiris to forgive, forg~t and move on. But the UPA Government will resist any judicial probe into the Batla House encounter, and has consistently protected Army personnel accused of rape, be it in Kashmir or Manipur! .
~n Delhi, as the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party's election campaign unfolds, similar concerns arise. The MP did ISsu: a statement_on the Ish rat Jahan fake encounter. A letter by Arvind Kejriwal addressed to Muslims in Delhi raises th~ ISs~e of the Witch-hunt ofMuslims in false terror charges, and reminds them that Prashant Bhushan is an advocate active 10 the struggl~ for justic: in the_Gujarat ~002 pogrom, Ish rat Jahan and Batla House cases. But simultaneously, AAP leader ~umar_VIshwas, a_s1_nger w1th ~ cons1derable following, has been taking public positions pandering to quite anoth;r -nght-_wmg, chauvm1st -constituency. On the lshrat Jahan case, he commented on Facebook: "Is lshrat lah~~5 death bigger than the death of50000 innocents of Uttorakhand?, going on to lament the 'conscience-less po~ttJcs that slyly knots up the coun:ry's major problems in irrelevant questions to pit people against each other." On Tw1tter, Kum~; Vishwas was _asked, wo~ld ~~~e to hove Ram Mondir ot the site or not?? My question is to Kumar not AP:,~,membe: , and Kum~rV1shwas repl1ed, Every Indian wants Ram Mandir at its site except BJP because then they wr .~sean tssue ofmakm~people foolu. Again, the notion that 'every Indian' wants a Ram Mandir where the Babri .
~~~J~d~;;'e~db~\~~~:~~~-loaded one, but Vishwas seems free to pander to these sentiments without being .
If one believ~s that~ 19-.year~o/d girl drugged and killed in cold blood by police is an 'irrelevant' issu d h ~-ecausesh,e rs a Muslim gtrl accused in death ofbeing a terrorist, she should be contrasted as r e: a? ~ at, trrelevant) with the 'innocents' ofUttorakhand and children o'Bihor one sho ld t ( P esumably guilty and .
h h 1;, J ' ' no presume to speak of'de , .
w ere t e IJe ond freedom ofeach citizen is ofequal value irrespective of their iden( 1M mocracy' Bat/a House issue figure only in the MP's letter to Muslims? Isn't it even more im rty. e wo~~er-why should the on these issues? Wouldn't a letter by AAP to its own leader Kumor v· h h. port/ant to sensltJse the non-Muslims .
t . . rs wos Jmse'f be more in orde t . .
ou rageous positrons that ore pondering to communal and chouvinist sentiment? r, o correct his .
Th~s~ who defend scams, corporate plunder, destruction of people's livelihood to . . . .
policies, fake encounters and custodial killings· those who Vl.olat I b I appease tmpenallst economic .
.
· e a our aws and trample · d · h.
t ose who defend rape and prescribe lakshman Rekhas for wo th h on '" ustnal democracy, .
D l.t . . . men, ose w o protect perpet·at f .
a 1s, mmont1es, and adivasis those whoj·ustify impunity for A ' ors o massacres of .
. ' . rmy personne 1who rape and k'll · h.
K h.
as m~r-all must be made accountable for democracy to have its true meaning. I In t e North East and .
On the eve of Independence Day, let us resolve to challenge the false terms of deb t .
ensure that the issues of peoples' movements-issues at the h rt d I . a e set by the ruling class and · 1 ea an sou of democracy _ ·.
I.
c ear In e ecttons, in public discourse, in classrooms and in the streets. are raised loud and .
16.8.13 -An Abridged and edited version of "Towards Lok Sabha 201.f. p · r, Movements Back In The Frame" By Kal'ita Krishnan, 24 .July lOJ~ttc'~'g 'he Concerns OfPeople's .
· . oumercurrenrs.org .
Anubhuti, Vice-President, AISA, JNU Sarfaraz, Jt. Secy, AISA, JNU .
4 .
.
CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES-II .
8~1~ad 'DeH«J.~: Unpack The Ruling Class Political Discourse That Seeks to Silence Burning Questions of People's Movements Recent years have witnessed .sustained democratic struggles and intense people's movements. There were massive waves of protest against corruption, corporate plunder and the policies that promote it, against rape and rape culture .
and for women's freedom. .
Pitched battles have been waged at Nagri near Ran chi and against the Keodankulam, Jaitapur, POSCO, Vedanta projects, that threaten to grao land and livelihood and endanger safety. Workers ·have held unprecedentedly successful mass scale all-India strikes, and have struggled against crackdowns on labour laws. ana industrial democracy, most notably at Maruti's Manesar factory. .
Sustained campaigns to expose and demand justice in fake encounter and custodiaHorture and custodial death cases and against witch-hunt of Muslim youth are taking place -in the Batla House, lshrat Jahan, Malegaon and Mecca Masjid cases, at Azamgarh and Darbhanga, to name just a few. Efforts of activists have yielded results in exposing extrajudicial killings under cover of the AFSPA in Kashmir and Manipur, and lrom Sharmila's heroic fast has drawn enormous support in her .crusade against the AFSPA. .
Even as perpetrators of Dalit massacres in Bihar were set free, campaigns against the judicial massacres have emuged .
with new determination. We have seen the struggles of adivasis fo; justice against massacres masquerading as fake .
encounters in Odisha and Chhattisgarh, and against the atrocities of the Salwa Judum. And in the face of all odds, .
brave women like Zakia Jafri (wife of Ehsan Jafri, butchered during the Gujarat 2001 massacre) and Bibi Jagdish Kaur .
and other women who survived the Sikh massacre of 1984, are keeping the struggle for justice alive. .
A Choice between 'Governance' and. 'Secularism'? .
As the Lok Sabha polls of 2014 approach, the mainstream media and ruling parties are defining the ctioice before the Indian citiz.en as a choice between 'governance' and 'secularism'-a short-hand description of choice between 'Modi as equivalent to governance' and 'Congress as equivalent to seculaTism'. It is impl.ied that if we want 'governance', we should concede that communal violence or 'fake encounters or corporate land g.rab are irrelevant questions. And it is implied that ifwe want 'secularism', we must likewise agree to overlook massive corruption, open plunder, opportunism, .
and outright repression. .
Must we resign ourselves to this 'choice'? Or must we assertthat such a 'choice' is an affront to the tough questions .
posed by the people's movements? .
On the eve of Independence Day let us instead strive to unpack the official, superficial discourse of 'governance' and 'secularism', which empties these terms of any democratic content -and define it in terms that are compatible with the highest, most consistent democratic norms, with the goals for which people's movements are striving. .
The New Myths of.'Governance' and 'Development' .
the corporate media1s language, 'governance' and 'development' have always meant neoliberal, pro-corporate.
1 pnolicies (supposedly 'good for the economy'), insulate? from the comp~lsi_ons of 'populism' ~read democra~). And if .
people protest ag~inst what's 'good for th~ ~conomy but bad for the1r nghts to land, llv~hhood, labour nghts .
'good governance' is supposed to be the ab1hty to control and suppress protests. .
· ·mportant to reca ll that, until the Radia Tapes and revelations of multiP.Ie scams spoilt the story,.
Itis 1. , d 's· -.
f ted by the corporate media as a model leader representing goo governance. 1m11ar1y, we ca was e ently Bihar eM Nitish Kumar was the media d~rling, hailed for changil'lg the old 'feel-bad' Bih;u .
very rec , · g.in an agenda of 'development' and 'growth.' Today, the new corporate-backed superman of.
h.
us enn 'd ·di .
osed to be Narendra Modi. But in each of these cases, these votaries of eve1opment are pres1 ng over ~:i~ies that are :he_harbingers of crony capitalism, widespread displacement, environmental degradlatiOR .
loss of Jives and hvehhoods. .
Intensify the struggle for Doubling MCM! Fight Administrative .
support JNUSU's Indefinite Hunger Strike l!('i;J .
.
Minakshi (VicePresident, JNUSU), Akbar (Convenor,SSS), Sandeep :tau .
(Councillor, SSS}, Sarfaraz (Councillor, SL}, Anand, Anuj, Ashish, Azram, .
Ashutosh (Convenor,SIS}, Sudeep (Councilor,SIS), Abhay, Anjali, Ch,tu.
011 Rclny Oay 3 .
Hirnankar, Kusum, Lakshml, Manisha, Mohasin, Pooja, Preaksha,.
Aug 15-16 .
.
.
PaRCha - JNU - AISA - 2013 ID-6611
.
A3 .
.
... .. .
consideration, and even condoned as a necessary price to pay for 'national security.' Regardless of which party rules, mdividual or groups painted as 'enemies of the nation' can be arrested, tortured and eliminated at will-no questions asked -in the guise of 'national security' and 'war on terror.' .
~-hen fake encounters and fabricated charges of terror combine with the usimperialist agenda of 'war on terror', It IS a huge boost in the arm for the ideological climate of communal fascism. This is all the more so because it isn't linked to one party-the BJP-alone. When prc;>minent and respected media commentators argue that 'law' should be sacrificed for 'order'; that the Indian spy agencies should be allowed to conduct 'controlled killings'; and that the IB and national security cannot survive unless exempted from obligations to the Constitution; such opinions do not provoke widespread outrage and are rarely described as 'fascist.' But these are the insidious ways in which the fascist .
consensus is created. .
When rul~ng ~lass parties do raise these issues of fake encounters or custodial killings, there is often a cynical opportumsm Involved. So, Salman Khursheed will shed tears for Batla House at Azamgarh during an election meeting, or V.:ill apologise -in Kashmir -for the Kunan Poshpora mass rape by the Army-at the same advising Kashmiris to forgive, forg~t and move on. But the UPA Government will resist any judicial probe into the Batla House encounter, and has consistently protected Army personnel accused of rape, be it in Kashmir or Manipur! .
~n Delhi, as the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party's election campaign unfolds, similar concerns arise. The MP did ISsu: a statement_on the Ish rat Jahan fake encounter. A letter by Arvind Kejriwal addressed to Muslims in Delhi raises th~ ISs~e of the Witch-hunt ofMuslims in false terror charges, and reminds them that Prashant Bhushan is an advocate active 10 the struggl~ for justic: in the_Gujarat ~002 pogrom, Ish rat Jahan and Batla House cases. But simultaneously, AAP leader ~umar_VIshwas, a_s1_nger w1th ~ cons1derable following, has been taking public positions pandering to quite anoth;r -nght-_wmg, chauvm1st -constituency. On the lshrat Jahan case, he commented on Facebook: "Is lshrat lah~~5 death bigger than the death of50000 innocents of Uttorakhand?, going on to lament the 'conscience-less po~ttJcs that slyly knots up the coun:ry's major problems in irrelevant questions to pit people against each other." On Tw1tter, Kum~; Vishwas was _asked, wo~ld ~~~e to hove Ram Mondir ot the site or not?? My question is to Kumar not AP:,~,membe: , and Kum~rV1shwas repl1ed, Every Indian wants Ram Mandir at its site except BJP because then they wr .~sean tssue ofmakm~people foolu. Again, the notion that 'every Indian' wants a Ram Mandir where the Babri .
~~~J~d~;;'e~db~\~~~:~~~-loaded one, but Vishwas seems free to pander to these sentiments without being .
If one believ~s that~ 19-.year~o/d girl drugged and killed in cold blood by police is an 'irrelevant' issu d h ~-ecausesh,e rs a Muslim gtrl accused in death ofbeing a terrorist, she should be contrasted as r e: a? ~ at, trrelevant) with the 'innocents' ofUttorakhand and children o'Bihor one sho ld t ( P esumably guilty and .
h h 1;, J ' ' no presume to speak of'de , .
w ere t e IJe ond freedom ofeach citizen is ofequal value irrespective of their iden( 1M mocracy' Bat/a House issue figure only in the MP's letter to Muslims? Isn't it even more im rty. e wo~~er-why should the on these issues? Wouldn't a letter by AAP to its own leader Kumor v· h h. port/ant to sensltJse the non-Muslims .
t . . rs wos Jmse'f be more in orde t . .
ou rageous positrons that ore pondering to communal and chouvinist sentiment? r, o correct his .
Th~s~ who defend scams, corporate plunder, destruction of people's livelihood to . . . .
policies, fake encounters and custodial killings· those who Vl.olat I b I appease tmpenallst economic .
.
· e a our aws and trample · d · h.
t ose who defend rape and prescribe lakshman Rekhas for wo th h on '" ustnal democracy, .
D l.t . . . men, ose w o protect perpet·at f .
a 1s, mmont1es, and adivasis those whoj·ustify impunity for A ' ors o massacres of .
. ' . rmy personne 1who rape and k'll · h.
K h.
as m~r-all must be made accountable for democracy to have its true meaning. I In t e North East and .
On the eve of Independence Day, let us resolve to challenge the false terms of deb t .
ensure that the issues of peoples' movements-issues at the h rt d I . a e set by the ruling class and · 1 ea an sou of democracy _ ·.
I.
c ear In e ecttons, in public discourse, in classrooms and in the streets. are raised loud and .
16.8.13 -An Abridged and edited version of "Towards Lok Sabha 201.f. p · r, Movements Back In The Frame" By Kal'ita Krishnan, 24 .July lOJ~ttc'~'g 'he Concerns OfPeople's .
· . oumercurrenrs.org .
Anubhuti, Vice-President, AISA, JNU Sarfaraz, Jt. Secy, AISA, JNU .
4 .
.
CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES-II .
8~1~ad 'DeH«J.~: Unpack The Ruling Class Political Discourse That Seeks to Silence Burning Questions of People's Movements Recent years have witnessed .sustained democratic struggles and intense people's movements. There were massive waves of protest against corruption, corporate plunder and the policies that promote it, against rape and rape culture .
and for women's freedom. .
Pitched battles have been waged at Nagri near Ran chi and against the Keodankulam, Jaitapur, POSCO, Vedanta projects, that threaten to grao land and livelihood and endanger safety. Workers ·have held unprecedentedly successful mass scale all-India strikes, and have struggled against crackdowns on labour laws. ana industrial democracy, most notably at Maruti's Manesar factory. .
Sustained campaigns to expose and demand justice in fake encounter and custodiaHorture and custodial death cases and against witch-hunt of Muslim youth are taking place -in the Batla House, lshrat Jahan, Malegaon and Mecca Masjid cases, at Azamgarh and Darbhanga, to name just a few. Efforts of activists have yielded results in exposing extrajudicial killings under cover of the AFSPA in Kashmir and Manipur, and lrom Sharmila's heroic fast has drawn enormous support in her .crusade against the AFSPA. .
Even as perpetrators of Dalit massacres in Bihar were set free, campaigns against the judicial massacres have emuged .
with new determination. We have seen the struggles of adivasis fo; justice against massacres masquerading as fake .
encounters in Odisha and Chhattisgarh, and against the atrocities of the Salwa Judum. And in the face of all odds, .
brave women like Zakia Jafri (wife of Ehsan Jafri, butchered during the Gujarat 2001 massacre) and Bibi Jagdish Kaur .
and other women who survived the Sikh massacre of 1984, are keeping the struggle for justice alive. .
A Choice between 'Governance' and. 'Secularism'? .
As the Lok Sabha polls of 2014 approach, the mainstream media and ruling parties are defining the ctioice before the Indian citiz.en as a choice between 'governance' and 'secularism'-a short-hand description of choice between 'Modi as equivalent to governance' and 'Congress as equivalent to seculaTism'. It is impl.ied that if we want 'governance', we should concede that communal violence or 'fake encounters or corporate land g.rab are irrelevant questions. And it is implied that ifwe want 'secularism', we must likewise agree to overlook massive corruption, open plunder, opportunism, .
and outright repression. .
Must we resign ourselves to this 'choice'? Or must we assertthat such a 'choice' is an affront to the tough questions .
posed by the people's movements? .
On the eve of Independence Day let us instead strive to unpack the official, superficial discourse of 'governance' and 'secularism', which empties these terms of any democratic content -and define it in terms that are compatible with the highest, most consistent democratic norms, with the goals for which people's movements are striving. .
The New Myths of.'Governance' and 'Development' .
the corporate media1s language, 'governance' and 'development' have always meant neoliberal, pro-corporate.
1 pnolicies (supposedly 'good for the economy'), insulate? from the comp~lsi_ons of 'populism' ~read democra~). And if .
people protest ag~inst what's 'good for th~ ~conomy but bad for the1r nghts to land, llv~hhood, labour nghts .
'good governance' is supposed to be the ab1hty to control and suppress protests. .
· ·mportant to reca ll that, until the Radia Tapes and revelations of multiP.Ie scams spoilt the story,.
Itis 1. , d 's· -.
f ted by the corporate media as a model leader representing goo governance. 1m11ar1y, we ca was e ently Bihar eM Nitish Kumar was the media d~rling, hailed for changil'lg the old 'feel-bad' Bih;u .
very rec , · g.in an agenda of 'development' and 'growth.' Today, the new corporate-backed superman of.
h.
us enn 'd ·di .
osed to be Narendra Modi. But in each of these cases, these votaries of eve1opment are pres1 ng over ~:i~ies that are :he_harbingers of crony capitalism, widespread displacement, environmental degradlatiOR .
loss of Jives and hvehhoods. .
Intensify the struggle for Doubling MCM! Fight Administrative .
support JNUSU's Indefinite Hunger Strike l!('i;J .
.
Minakshi (VicePresident, JNUSU), Akbar (Convenor,SSS), Sandeep :tau .
(Councillor, SSS}, Sarfaraz (Councillor, SL}, Anand, Anuj, Ashish, Azram, .
Ashutosh (Convenor,SIS}, Sudeep (Councilor,SIS), Abhay, Anjali, Ch,tu.
011 Rclny Oay 3 .
Hirnankar, Kusum, Lakshml, Manisha, Mohasin, Pooja, Preaksha,.
Aug 15-16 .
.
.