Fundamentalisms – Page 3 – Anasuya Sengupta

My heart is in Nairobi…

The only downside to having lots of friends across the globe is that you worry about them when things fall apart. In Gujarat, for instance, or Pakistan. Or Kenya. A few of us have been trying to contact friends there over the past few days, but it’s been tough. I’ve been reading Global Voices and Ethan Zuckerman’s blog, and watching Al Jazeera’s coverage on YouTube.

For those of you who came in late, violence has broken out across Kenya over the disputed election victory of President Mwai Kibaki, though ethnic tensions are believed to underlie much of the violence. As The Economist puts it:

THE decision to return Kenya’s 76-year-old incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, to office was not made by the Kenyan people but by a small group of hardline leaders from Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe. They made up their minds before the result was announced, perhaps even before the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, had opened up a lead in early returns from the December 27th election. It was a civil coup.

According to the BBC, over 180,000 people have been displaced and more than 300 killed.

This is today’s news update from the Kenyan blogger M., writing at Thinker’s Room:

Official death toll is now 300. Unofficial death toll is much larger
Yesterday there were skirmishes in Bahati, Maringo, Kangemi, Arwings Kodhek, Industrial Area and Thika Road
A man was killed on Thika Road when police fired in the air, severing an electrical cable that fell on him
ODM rally was moved to Saturday
At long last Mwai Kibaki addressed the nation in a lackluster speech long on hot air, ambiguity, vagueness and lethargy and short of concrete solutions
Archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived and met with the ODM leadership. The grapevine has it that Kibaki initially refused to meet with him. Subsequently it turned out that a meeting was indeed scheduled for this day.
Again proving that no matter how low the bar is, stupidity will always find a way to slither under, Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua, rose eyed lens firmly on, castigates the international community for interfering.
Flies on the wall allege that Kibaki himself is pretty amenable to negotiation. But as is the hallmark of his regime other elements in his administration are taking hardline positions.
Same flies say that Kibaki is willing to form a coalition government with the opposition. This I have to see to believe.
Nairobi water company allays fears that the city water supply is poisoned.

Blog aggregators for Kenya can be found at Kenya Unlimited and Mashada. Reading bloggers’ accounts on them seemed horrifically akin to reading stories of communal violence in India; substitute ethnicities for religion and caste identities, and there you have it. Stupid, unnecessary, maiming horror. As they say in Swahili (or at least I hope this is correct), we need wakati wa amani; a time of peace.

***

Update: in an extraordinary combination of technology and activism, Kenyan bloggers have created an amazing website to track the violence in Kenya, at Ushahidi (in fact, I want to check with them if we can develop something similar for India, and elsewhere). Add serendipity to that: Ashwin saw this, and suggested to his friend, Nick Rabinowitz, that this was the perfect place for the timeline tool he’d created. Sure enough, a few emails later, here it is, an extremely useful addition to the Ushahidi site: the timeline of events. Yay for all those who put this together, and a special yay for Nick!
Image from the Thinker’s Room.

A message from Pakistan

Farida Shaheed, one of the founders of Shirkat Gah (a women’s resource centre in Pakistan) and WLUML (the network for women living under Muslim laws), wrote in from Pakistan. With her consent, I share this. It seems clear that despite her shortcomings, Benazir represented a hope for Pakistan that has been horrifically snuffed out.

Dear friends thank you for all your notes of concern,

As a new year starts, I sit here still numbed by the events, paralysed by the events that seem to have shut down our ability to think and act, unable to concentrate (like many others).

Only after her assassination have we come to realize just how many of our hopes were pinned on Benazir, her presence and leadership of the only mainstream party that consistently speaks of the federation, of the poor, the peasants, the workers; spoke of equality for all, especially the minorities and women. The one party with supporters until now across a deeply divided and troubled country, who gave us hope that, maybe – just maybe we could turn this nightmare around, if elections were held and if they were not entirely rigged, and if we received some breathing space…so many if’s and still we dared to hope.

I met Asma [Jahangir] on the 29th and thanked her for having inviting Benazir that night last month as soon as they lifted the house arrest on Asma and Benazir both. Asma said ‘but no, I didn’t call the meeting. Perhaps she was meant to meet us all that last time because it was she who phoned and asked for a meeting with civil society’…A meeting we were pleasantly surprised at, that left us commenting on how much she had matured. She listened to all of us with great patience and grace, answered with patience and good cheer, even some of the sillier points made/questions asked. She reserved her fire for a short passionate intervention on how the fight with the extremists was our own fight not someone else’s agenda and on how precarious Pakistan’s situation was, and how it was time to act.

And yes, it was important that she was a woman, a woman of great courage of defiance and of passion who led from the front foot (as they say in cricket). I am old enough to remember the day she became Prime Minister in 1988 and how immediately – and I do mean immediately – after eleven years of brutal and increasing oppression of women (and others) under Zia, the atmosphere shifted the sense of oppression in the streets lifted and women felt the burden lighten. And if she didn’t always deliver (and often she didn’t), as peasants said of her father, at least she made us the promises, and gave us hope.

Right now, it is difficult to foresee the future, whether and when elections will take place – what will happen during Muharram and ashura, around the corner, when nerves are ragged anyway and the menace of potential violence lurks.

We can only hope that some sense prevails somewhere, that elections are held as quickly as possible and that we find a way out of this spiral descending to madness…

Farida

Image from the Wikipedia entry on Benazir Bhutto.

Is there anything of cheer from 2007?

It’s been a rotten end of the year for us South Asians. Modi is back – and unsurprisingly – from all accounts of friends working on the ground in Gujarat. Most activists said that the Tehelka expose of the 2002 genocide – horrific, remarkable and courageous as it was – was bad timing; it polarised the polity further and strengthened rather than weakened Modi’s hand. However, Tehelka also explores what Modi’s victory might mean: for his party, his state and the rest of India. My 2008 hope: that Moditva cannot work anywhere else in the country. My 2008 worry that belies the hope: Can Karnataka be next on the hate list? There are many reasons to fear that it might well be, and I will explore that in another post (and one of my 2008 resolutions: when I tell myself I will do a blog post, I must *write* it, within… er… seven days??).

And then, in Pakistan, Benazir’s assassination. As Tariq Ali put it:

Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto’s behaviour and policies – both while she was in office and more recently – are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.

However, there is some cheer left in the year yet. As we look back, Medea Benjamin provides a list of ten ‘good’ things about 2007, which include the elections in Australia, where Labour Party’s Kevin Rudd beat the Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, and the one defiant stand of the Iraqi government and people against the US, which was to vote against its nationalised oil system becoming open to foreign corporate control.

She also celebrates – but not enough, methinks – my favourite politician of the year: the Papua New Guinea representative at the UN climate conference in Bali, Kevin Conrad. In the Telegraph’s account of it, the Indian ambassador (yes!) had begun by saying that the draft ‘road map’ did not clearly indicate the responsibility of industrialised nations to supply developing countries with clean technologies, finance and support to deal with the problem of climate change “in a measurable manner”. Paula Dobriansky, the chief negotiator for the US, replied that India’s proposed change was something “we are not prepared to accept”. With frustration mounting, the killer blow came from Kevin Conrad.

He used James Connaughton’s (Bush’s primary climate change advisor) diplomatic gaffe of earlier in the week to humiliate the Americans. Mr Connaughton had said: “We will lead. We will continue to lead but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.”

So therefore, at this impasse, when Papua New Guinea was called upon to speak, Kevin Conrad said this to the American delegates: “We seek your leadership. But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.” The audio of this remarkable statement is here.

Perhaps that is the wish we need for all politicians across the world in 2008: if you are not willing to lead with integrity, justice and courage, listening to the voices of your people, then please… Get out of the way.

Emergency in Pakistan: another dark night

On Saturday, President Musharraf imposed emergency in Pakistan, claiming the ‘visible ascendancy in the activities of extremists and incidents of terrorist attacks’ as the immediate provocation.

An excerpt from Tariq Ali‘s response in Counter Punch and the Independent:

Global media coverage of Pakistan suggests a country consisting of Generals, corrupt politicians and bearded lunatics. The struggle to reinstate the Chief Justice presented a different snapshot of the country. This movement for constitutional freedoms revived hope at a time when most people are alienated from the system and cynical about their rulers, whose ill-gotten wealth and withered faces consumed by vanity inspire nil confidence.

That this is the case can be seen in the heroic decision taken by the Supreme Court in a special session yesterday declaring the new dispensation ‘illegal and unconstitutional’. The hurriedly sworn in new Chief Justice will be seen for what he is: a stooge of the men in uniform. If the constitution remains in suspension for more than three months then Musharraf himself might be pushed aside by the Army and a new strongman put in place. Or it could be that the aim of the operation was limited to a cleansing of the Supreme Court and controlling the media. That is what Musharraf indicated in his broadcast to the nation. In which case a totally rigged election becomes a certainty next January. Whatever the case Pakistan’s long journey to the end of the night continues.

India’s official response, so far, has been cautious, merely asking for a ‘restoration of democracy’, without criticising Musharraf.

The fear of fundamentalisms

Open Democracy has set up a blog for women’s voices to be represented at the G8 summit, called ‘Open Summit: Women talk to the G8‘. They invited contributions (and are continuing to do so, for those who want to share); this was mine, cross-posted here.

Image courtesy Screen Sifar.

My day (and sometimes night) job is working with police officers in India on issues of violence against women and children; I coordinate a UNICEF partnership with the Karnataka State Police. One of the most critical aspects of this work is, as Anindita so succinctly described elsewhere on this blog, analysing the impact of our socially entrenched gender-based norms. The lack of value for our girl children – and if they’re lucky, for the women they grow up to be – has meant that we have lost, in our female population, the size of a small to middling European country.

But this post is not about genderocide. It is about that and more. It is about asking our governments – particularly the all powerful G8 – that in this context of ‘terrorism’, of an almost universal culture of production and consumption around ‘fear’ and ‘mistrust’, they analyse honestly and courageously their own contributions to a growing set of fundamentalisms: economic, religious, cultural, social and sexual. Women (and children) are often hit hardest by these fundamentalisms.

Identities are complex; we acknowledge that readily but seem willing to sacrifice that complexity for simplified categorisations and easy classification. More than ever, our language of ‘us’ and ‘them’ divides us over and over again, in the conversations we have, the advertisements we watch, the TV series we devour. And our politicians, our priests, our ulemas, our leaders – those who claim to represent us in all our complexity – speak the language of divisions, of fissures, best of all.

A young Muslim friend of mine lives in Gujarat, India. She explores, every day, what it means to be a woman, a Muslim, a young person, an artist, in the maelstrom of fundamentalism that is the Gujarat of today. She struggles with what it means to be a citizen: either of this country or of the globalised world. What does citizenship mean if you live constantly in the shadow of fear? Not just the fear of physical abuse, but worse still, the violence attached to labels? For her, wearing the hijaab is both an act of courage and an unintended performance: she is just never quite sure of her audience or its response.

There is complexity in hate-mongering too. In India, as possibly elsewhere, it seems as though the language of ‘empowerment’ for women has been claimed and reconstructed to mean ‘power’ rather than ‘dignity’ or ‘equality’ or ‘pluralism’. Not all our women politicians are feminist, and not all our fundamentalists are male.

These are not only issues of government. But they are issues for governments; our states are contributing, in no small measure, to these voices of fundamentalisms, of alienation. And worse still: sometimes it is they who create the vocabulary.

Breaking different silences

Friends, including those online (like the artist Raghu Menon), have been asking me about the silence on this blog. Again, as always, not because I haven’t had things to feel and words to say, but because there have been too many of those moments. And not enough time for the words…

Events have lurched between the sweeping landscapes of the political – Nandigram. Fake Encounters. Gujarat. Freedom for Art. Art for Freedom. More Gujarat. All anger-making, distress-filling. Amitabh Bachchan for President? Elections in UP. Definitely not Amitabh Bachchan for Prez. Cynical amusement. – and the small but significant mappings of the personal – Moving. When? Soon. Where? Berkeley. Why? Hmm… that’s Ashwin’s story to tell first, and he’ll tell it soon.

But in the meantime, I’ve also been working slowly, and not very steadily, at the blog for the Gender Sensitisation and People-friendly Police Project. Someone wrote in recently:

I am a victim of domestic violence where I‘ve been slapped by my brother-in law which resulted to the fracture of my jaw-bone and 11 long months of traumatic separation from my husband due to my husband’s inability and inefficiency in taking his own decisions.

Till date, I did not register a complaint against my brother-in-law for the domestic assault on me hoping, that my husband would some day realise his mistake and get separated with me from him. But to my utter grief till date neither did he gave me any financial assistance nor any mental support for his own brother’s behaviour and further did not take any step to prevent his behaviour.
Now I repent for my trust on my husband and wish to file a complaint in hope to get justice to me. what should I do? I am still yet to be operated on my broken Jaw-bone.

PLEASE HELP ME IMMEDIATELY…I DESPERATELY NEED UR HELP!!!

I replied, on behalf of the team:

We are terribly sorry to hear of your present situation, but would like to congratulate you for your courage in standing up against it. Breaking the silence around domestic violence is the first, and most difficult, step any woman can take.

What you need to do next:

1. Decide whether you would like to book a *criminal case* against your husband and brother in order to punish them for the violence inflicted on you, or whether you want to book a *civil case* against your husband and brother-in-law seeking compensation for the trauma you have undergone. You can also book both a civil and a criminal case in parallel, i.e. simultaneously.

2. If you decide to book a criminal case, please go to your local police station (PS) and register a complaint against your husband and brother-in-law. The IPC sections they would normally use would be sections for assault and grievous injury (319-327) as well as Section 498(A). Please be aware that 498(A) is about any kind of cruelty – physical and mental – inflicted upon a married woman by her husband or his relatives. This is not only in the case of dowry harassment, as is commonly (mis)understood.

3. Please make sure you keep copies of the complaint you file, and that you get an acknowledgment of this complaint, and a copy of the FIR filed at the police station. That is your right.

4. If you decide to file a civil case, under the newly enacted Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005), you can go either to your local PS or your local Protection Officer (the Dept. of Women and Child Development will be able to help you with details). Under this Act, you can make sure you are given protection within the marital home, as well as ask for compensation for the violence (physical and emotional) inflicted on you.

While doing all this, try and get as many family and friends to support you through the process, as well as contact a counselling centre or a women’s organisation near you, who can help you with the process and the procedures. You can also contact your State Women’s Commission or the National Women’s Commission.

We are not sure whether you live in Karnataka or not, so we can’t give you details of organisations close to you who might be able to help. However, one of our team members will contact you separately, and try and help further if you are from Karnataka.

All the best, more strength to you.

I think to myself: someone who can surf the net. Finds our blog. Needs our help. To know what every citizen in this country should know.

Breaking the silence is also about what words you then fill it with; those of us who live on the other side, who are there in support, need to make those words easy to find and easy to understand. Then comes the hard part.

My Indian of the Six Years

CNN-IBN is ratcheting up its focus on the ‘Indian of the Year’ award. My vote is for someone who isn’t even nominated. Irom Sharmila Chanu, the poet, the activist, the Menghaobi (what those in Manipur call her; ‘the fair one’). The woman who has been on a protest fast against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act for the past six years. The woman who has been under arrest and force fed through a nasal tube for almost as long. Perhaps I should call her My Indian of the Six Years.

I’ve written about her before, but two days ago, I found another appeal from a friend and colleague, Monisha Behal, of the North East Network (a women’s rights organisation) in my inbox:

We all know about Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast since 2000 against the Armed Forces Special Power Act. There are small movements in different parts of this country demanding the Centre to repeal this Act. Signature campaigns in favour of Sharmila are going on as well, especially from women’s organizations. I realized that news channels which publicized Jessica Lal’s case were unbelievably successful. NDTV conducted opinion polls through SMS on mobile phones. I never thought this new technique would work so well.

I visited Sharmila at a New Delhi hospital last evening. I conveyed to her messages of goodwill and support from friends and colleagues. And yet I knew that most do not know about her the way people know about Jessica. Just then Sharmila’s brother showed me an article about her in the Femina February 14, 2007.

I read the piece and saw a small message in the end of the final page. It says: DO YOU SUPPORT IROM’S WAY OF FIGHTING THE AUTHORITIES? SMS us your replies at 3636 (type FE [space] F0038 then your response, name and city).

I hope very much that this new technique of the media will do some magic to a woman who wants to live, see and enjoy the beauty of this world. Please, do SMS your support to young Sharmila.

Life and Times of Bangalore – burning

Saddam Hussein is executed in Baghdad on 31st December 2006. Protests are organised by Congress-I leader Jaffer Sharief in Bangalore on Friday, 19th January 2007. They turn violent. In seeming retaliation, the ‘celebration’ of Hindu right-wing ideologue Golwalkar’s birth centenary, on 21 January, organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, turns equally violent and leads to riots and curfew in some parts of Bangalore. Doctor-turned-destroyer Praveen Togadia thankfully stayed in Mysore, sowing his seeds of discord. In Bangalore, a young boy is killed, a police constable stabbed, and public and private property damaged.

Our honourable Chief Minister, Kumaraswamy, then announces the imminent tabling of a bill in the legislature, holding organisers of rallies responsible for disrupting public peace (TOI, Bangalore, 22 January 2007, Pg. 1). Great. But hang on; his reason? “Such incidents will bring bad image [sic] to Bangalore in terms of investments.”

Politics flourishes. Bangalore burns.

More from Pandit Gangu Hangal

Gangubai once told film-maker Vijaya Mulay, in the initial years of television: “If a male musician is a Muslim, he becomes an Ustad. If he is a Hindu, he becomes a Pandit. But women like Kesarbai and Mogubai just remain Bais.”

Ustad: master/teacher, Pandit: scholar/teacher, Bai: sister.

Baba Budangiri: a plural past, present and future?

Baba Budan probably never realised that being a gentle Sufi saint, revered by both Hindus and Muslims, would cause such trouble three centuries after his death. And the right-wing fanatics in our country don’t seem to give him any credit for bringing fragrant filter coffee into our land, either. The legend is that in 1670, he smuggled (bound to his belly) seven coffee seeds out of Arabia and planted them in Chikmagalur in Karnataka. The rest is not just history, but a severely contested present. The shrine of Baba Budan, known as Baba Budangiri (one of the most beautiful hill-stations in the State; giri means ‘mountain’), has been the site of communal tension over the past few years, between those who wish to celebrate its syncretic past and present, and those who wish to re-invent it to be a solely Hindu(tva) shrine.

In order to support pluralism, and fight fundamentalisms, both at Baba Budangiri and elsewhere, a rally and convention has been organised in Bangalore this Sunday.

In my mailbox, these details:

*Massive Rally and Convention*
*26 November 2006, Sunday, Bangalore*
*Rally from Malleshwaram grounds, 10.30 am*

Please attend the anti-communalism convention and demonstration to be held on 26th November. This is being organised by the Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike, which is a coalition of over 200 organizations working since 2002 to establish communal harmony and to fight against the agenda of communalism in Karnataka.

The Convention will bring together over 40 speakers from different progressive and secular organizations. The main speakers at the Convention will include Girish Karnad, Teesta Setalvad, Tontadarya Swami, Gauri Lankesh, Sanath Kumar Belagali, K.M. Sharief, etc.