हम अब हिंदी मैं लिख सकते हैं। यह बहुत मजेदार नया feature हैं। अब तो मैं होमवर्क भी यहाँ कर सकती हूँ। Ok, that's enough. I shall test this feature out now and then. This is extremely cool. I feel like a kid with a new toy.

That's the logo of the ZCU or the Zimbabwe Cricket Union. Looks nice, bright and cheerful, doesn't it?? Apparently it is deeply subversive...so says the secret police. The stumps could be a "M", the red ball a "D" and the green boundary rope a "C"...which makes MDC...the Movement for Democratic Change, i.e. the main opposition to Mugabe. If this whole thing sounds way too far fetched for you....umm...I agree.

Some thoughts about 11/3

Which was, despite being my birthday, a relatively sad day as GWB was elected for a second term. Given all the hand-wringing following the US presidential elections, a number of people were quick to jump on to the 'trust the American people to be dumb enough to vote for Bush' bandwagon. I will admit that I was disappointed by the election results, and appalled by the intolerance towards gay marriage. But I don't think it's good politics (no matter where u stand on the political spectrum) to denounce your opposition as 'stupid' simply because they surprised you. Dilip D'Souza, whose book The Narmada Dammed is a fantastic summary of the issues involved, and a book I used for my Oxford thesis, has this to say about the results of the elections. I couldn't agree more.

The Best Bakery case- what's the truth

I've been following the Zaheera/Best Bakery case intermittently, and can't provide any kind of informed analysis. I'm quite clear about where my sympathies lie- both with Teesta Setalvad and with Zaheera. She's obviously really brave to have agreed to testify in the first place, and given that she's under the protection of the Gujarat police (what a joke, you assign the protection of the witness to the very same body that stood by and did nothing while the riots happened) one can only imagine the pressure she's under. What amazes me is that given that 2000 people died in Gujarat, all attention is now focussed on this one trial. What happened to the rest of the cases? What about justice for all those affected by the Gujarat riots?

Trying to get back to this blog

I've seriously neglected this because I've realised it's really hard to follow politics from so far away. But what I'm going to do is I'll post (from my other blog) as well as some other newer posts, about things, usually political that interest me. If I do write/read anything about Indian politics that I think I need to write down, I'll also use this blog. Sorry for the absence but grad school is a killer.

9/11 documentary

In my post exam lethargy I borrowed a DVD from the county library called "9/11- A filmmaker's commemorative DVD". Not really sure what to expect I sat down to watch it yesterday and was completely blown away. Let me be honest, it's not a great documentary in that it's not brilliantly made. But the sheer power of the raw footage on display is enough to overcome that. It's been a few years since 9/11, some of the goodwill generated for the US of A on that day has dissipated and many in India have argued: look, we have our own disasters and own tragedies. We don't make the fuss that you guys do. Move on with your lives.

Actually I realised yesterday why that was so wrong. In India we don't honour our dead enough. I'm not just talking about Kargil, but also about victims of say the Orissa cyclone where over 10,000 died just a few weeks before 9/11 or the earthquakes in Gujarat and Latur. There are a few human interest stories in magazines and then we forget and move on. I know we must move on, but I think sometimes it's good to sit down and remember that behind each tragedy (whether it kills 20, 200 or 20,000) is a story and much grief that we must occasionally recognise. And the documentary helped me to do that.

I remember on the second anniversary of 9/11 when they were painstakingly reading out the names of the dead, someone in the room saying to me: oh god, what a bore, are they actually going to read 3000 names? On hindsight, well, why not? Each life lost there was precious and even if I don't agree with how the Bush administration has handled things since then (or before that), what's wrong with reading out the names of the dead- it reminds you that those who died were not 3000 people unlucky to be caught in the WTC or the airplanes that day, but actually people like you or me. It is indeed a very humbling thought.

Apart from containing the only available footage of the first plane crashing into Tower 1, it also contains incredible footage of the courage and calm of the New York Fire Department. What I found most moving was the fact that hours after having escaped with their lives and a quick shower, all of them were willing to go out there and start searching for survivors. There was no bravado, no heroism, no jingoism- just shock and weariness on their faces and the knowledge that they would have to go right now and rescue those they could.

BBC report on Afghanistan

The only reason I am blogging this is because of the last line. This is a very heart-rending account of a three year old kid who was systematically amputated by criminals in Afghanistan as his father was unable to pay the ransom demanded. It also raised important questions about the criminal justice system, the rise in kidnappings and so on. However, read that last bit again:

But paying more to judges and government officials won't solve the problem of lawlessness in Afghanistan.

It's too deeply entrenched in the very structure of society.

Don't know about you, but to me that's deeply racist. What Jenny Cuffe is trying to say is that look, whatever has happened in Afghanistan's past and it's present mess is not the fault of the various imperial powers colonizing it, but really fundamentally their own fault. After all, they are a bunch of lawless nomadic tribes, and surely we can't expect Western style civilization from them, can we? And seen in that context, amputating the limbs of kids makes perfect sense of course...

Some quirky shaadis

Well, a number of reports covering various versions of Indian marriages (I suspect the rise in interest in Indian marriages is a consequence of the Mittal wedding..) but take a look at this article. It mentions a certain Amar Nath Verma who will get to marry two brides- Ragini and her sister Preeti. The latter is disabled and their father wants them both married off at the same time. Apart from the fact that this is completely illegal, what is more worrying is the attitude to the disabled girl. It's as if she's a piece of property to be disposed off. (On the other hand, our society is remarkably insensitive to the disabled, and so if she was an unmarried girl, I wonder what her life would have been like).

On the other hand, there are these people, who are having a 'desi wedding' because they think their marriage will last longer. a) Are they trying to say that the high rate of divorce in the West is a product of the rituals they follow? b) Are they aware of the many sexist connotations of our traditional marriages and how demeaning they can be to women? (In Bengali marriages, the mother of the groom does not attend. Instead she sits at home while the marriage ceremonies go on, and her son before leaving tells her that he has gone to get her a 'slave'). c) There's a deeper sociological point here that they are clearly missing. It's not as if Indian marriages are uniformly happy. Either most women do not or cannot express their unhappiness, divorce is hugely frowned upon and the 'death do us part' belief can be incredibly stifling- not always the ideal model to follow perhaps?

Rape, laws and the Indian state

I got the idea for writing about an extended post on rape in India, not just from the Dhananjay Chatterjee incident, but from a comment on this networking site called Orkut. The Calcutta community on this site has been having a furious debate on the death penalty for Dhananjay Chatterjee and one guy, Siddhartha, has some interesting things to say. I am cutting and pasting the comment that got me thinking:

I'm not particularly fond of death as a concept. There have been many people who have been raped and have managed to reconstruct their lives (Germaine Greer?). Death is a one-way road. I personally would choose hope (however faint) over finality. If only for revenge. If only for the struggle to survive and rebuild. There's a very strong urge to hang on to life.

If I were a woman, I think I would prefer to be raped than to be murdered. Now womens' rights groups please don't attack me -- I do NOT, emphatically NOT, even faintly condone either crime. Both are abhorrent and both should be punished exemplarily.

Anyway, this got me thinking about death versus rape etc. And this is what I wrote in response to what Siddhartha had to say:

Bit ambivalent about the death versus rape thing. On the whole, as a woman, I guess, I'd reluctantly agree with Siddhartha- I'd prefer to live and rebuild my life. Although I guess that might be a function of my family, those around me, the class I belong to etc- which will allow me to rebuild my life. Can't say I speak for a majority of women....

I guess, as I said in an earlier post, rape is every woman's ultimate nightmare. So what do you do when you get raped in a country where a woman is raped every hour? Well, ideally you should not bathe, shower, or change clothes. This is important to preserve any evidence of the rape. Go to a friend, well known social worker or to a place where you know someone can help you. Report the rape to the authorities. Seek counseling; this can help you deal with the issues you might face after the attack. But all of this sounds easier said than done. Because if you do wish to seek action against the rapist, you will then come up against the rape laws of the Indian state. I found two aspects of rape laws in India very troubling (and I'm no lawyer, this is very much a layperson's perspective)- first, that your personal life is a matter of concern. As the Mathura case showed, if you are considered of 'loose moral character' that will be exploited to the hilt by the defence lawyers. However, I have a even more fundamental question: what if you are a prostitute and you are raped? Does the fact that you sell your body for money mean that your body can be violated at will?

Here's another article about the unfairness of rape laws in India. What really disturbed me about this article, was the bit about 'Other Unjust Judgements' and that takes me to the second aspect of rape laws in India- that of consent. If you are raped, to secure conviction you must show that you resisted. So how do you show that? As the Mohammad Habib case showed, if you're a 7 year old girl, and were unable to inflict damage on the rapist's penis, he might go scot free. This whole consent thing is very disturbing because if you are say, being gangraped, by say five men, and you are a 16 year old, struggle becomes almost futile. You might be beaten up, you might become senseless.

One of my friends in Delhi told me something interesting once. She said that she was once fighting physically with her kid brother almost five years younger, who was about 15 at this time and she said, he's become so so strong. He can hold my wrists in an iron grip and I can't get out. (She's 5' 10" and a big girl to boot). It got us talking about resisting men and she rightly pointed out, "how on earth do I resist successfully against someone who rapes me if my 15 year old brother while playfully fighting can pin me down and overpower me?" This is a very critical point, simply because as the Sakina case showed, a 16 year old girl, sold into prostitution, and forced into having sex, couldn't plead rape, because it was assumed that she was having sex willingly. And of course, the entire Mathura case revolved around the concept of consent as well.

So, how much should I resist, and how should I resist someone bigger and stronger, or instead some people, if I have to prove that I was raped against my consent?

I think there are some important questions here that deserve to be answered before rape laws can truly become gender sensitive.

More on the death penalty...

Here's a Hindu article on the death penalty in the Dhananjay Chatterjee case. Slightly disappointing article because it doesn't give you any extra stats or information. However, it does make the interesting point that the death penalty allows no room for restitution, which after should be one of the aims of the justice system. But then again, as a number of readers have pointed out on Jivha's blog that Chatterjee is not just being punished for rape, but for murder as well...and that too for a 14 year old girl. This is a girl whose life is gone forever, and whose family's silence says a lot about what they feel.

I'm not sure about the legal point it makes about Chatterjee's guilt. Even his family so far hasn't really denied that he guilty, or could have raped and killed the schoolgirl. Nor has Chatterjee himself vigorously protested his innocence. So really in this the argument about his guilt isn't valid. However, it could be applied more widely when guilt is not conclusive.
Jivha has an interesting post on why the death penalty should not be applicable for rape. All I will add to this is my earlier point about a) convictions becoming harder to secure, thereby making life even harder for rape victims b) the general bias in the judicial system.

But then again, you read about cases like this and you really wish the persons responsible to be wiped off the face of the earth.

P.S. I thought I'd add a link to this article about the hangman Nata Mullick. There have been a number of articles on him but this is ironically very tragic indeed. Somehow the elaborate ritualistic preparation to "murder" a human being sickens me a bit.

Doping and Indian Sports

Having just spent a glorious People's Sunday at Wimbledon watching Roger Federer play some sublime tennis (and Tim Henman some pretty sub standard stuff), I felt the need to blog this:

There's this article in the Telegraph today that has been making less waves than it has. But I was looking up some old articles about doping in Indian sports, particularly following the Sunita Rani controversy and came up with this astonishing article. If this stuff is true, then our entire sports structure is not that different from the erstwhile East Germany. It would also explain really poor performances at the Olympics and so on. All this is very mystifying for another reason as well. If you do take banned stimulants, and this is an 'official programme' then the least one ought to aim for is international glory. But assuming that this true, this systematic doping doesn't seem to have improved our performances at the international level at all.

Weightlifting, of course has been in the spotlight before. Further, India is hardly alone in this whole doping controversy thing. With the noose tightening around Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, clearly there's a lot we ordinary sports fan don't know about.

(On a personal note, I must say all this is hugely disappointing. Growing up, I've always hugely admired those with sporting talent, and I'm sure many of us revere those with extraordinary sporting abilities. The truth is that most of these athletes- dope tainted or not, would be pretty special anyway- I don't think only steroids could have made Marion Jones who she is- she's clearly hugely talented anyway. But it means that come August, when I switch on the TV to follow the Olympics, the niggling doubt that pretty much every single athlete or maybe even swimmer, was possibly on performace enhancing steroids will seriously rob me of the joy of watching them perform).

Some links- and a controversy

I promised to blog some of the more interesting links I found, but let me begin by mentioning this excellent blog by Amardeep Singh.
I came across it, because he has covered in fair depth, the controversy surrounding Hinduism Studies. (Go to June 22 post for a further update, I can't seem to be able to link to it). Now, I will admit that Hinduism Studies per se is fine, honestly it is. I think there is a problem with left wing secularists in India who think that anyone who believes in God is a potential Modi. No they aren't. And you alienate them by believing thus. I know plenty of my own relatives who are fairly devout but would never ever vote for the BJP or fall for their anti Muslim rhetoric and are appalled by it. So let's not dismiss everyone who believes.

Next, I will admit that I am worried by the way South Asian courses are designed in Western universities. There is an emphasis on 'what is wrong' with India, rather than 'what is right'- and for god's sake, we are country with over 20 distinct languages, 6 major religions and so on, and we've remained relatively united. Give us some credit please.

At the same time, the Hinduism Studies crowd often worries me, because some of them, and I do insist on the word 'some', have links with more dubious organizations. But while there is a lot of misinformation about Hinduism in the West (and what about Islam eh?), I am not sure these guys are tackling it the right way. (No pun intended!!)

Ok, so here are some of the other links I promised:
SACW is obviously the best resource for any South Asian scholar. But it has a special section on the textbook controversy and on history writing in India. There is this other site called Akhbar which has a great set of essays on a wide variety of subjects, including the curricula in Pakistan.

On Pakistani textbooks, here is Rosser's article. But there is also this report, which you can find on the SDPI site- the A.H. Nayyar report on the curricula.

Finally the Feb 2003 issue of Seminar, has an excellent collection of articles on 'ways of representing our shared past'. They are a must read.

History textbooks to be revised

The NCERT has decided to 're-write' history again and revise the textbooks that Murali Manohar Joshi wanted to introduce. All very well, and from my ideological point of view, an excellent move. However, as I will blog in the next few days and argue, this whole business of 'rewriting' history that is problematic. In fact the earlier textbooks (the original ones of Thapar, Bipan Chandra et al), through their omissions and silences actually gave the space for these 'alternate' histories to be written. This is not to say that all alternate histories are equally legitimate. There is after all, 'good' history and 'bad' history, to be judged on the basis on how accurately one can draw reasonable conclusions from the evidence placed before oneself. And no one is arguing that Joshi is a 'reasonable' person! But what is heartening about the NCERT's move is that it seeks not to introduce a standardised book for each Class, but a series of books or reading materials, that children can draw upon. This means that you will have one or two core textbooks, but for those further interested in the subject, the NCERT will provide some guidelines on what else they could read. Considering how boring and appalling the CBSE history exams are, this could only be a Good Thing.

Hanging on the edge- the death penalty in India

This news report, sums up what happened yesterday. Dhananjay Chatterjee who was supposed to have been hanged for the rape and murder of Hetal Parekh lives for another day. As I read that article a number of thoughts flashed through my mind. First, while we don't use it on the same scale as the United States, India does execute people now and then. The most famous case is that of the assassins of Indira Gandhi but as this article, which explains in detail the nuances of the issue (it IS however anti death penalty), it is meant to be used in the 'rarest of rare' cases. Now this for me raises two questions.

First, is Dhananjay's case one of the 'rarest of rare' cases. On first glance it would seem not. After all, horrible as it may sound, rape and murder of teenage girls is not that uncommon. The fear of rape after all is the single biggest fear, perennially unspoken that a woman carries with her. If you ask a roomful of women, what their greatest fear is, you'll probably hear banal answers like: flying, cockroaches or spiders! So while no one will ever articulate it, most will admit when pressed by other women (I tried this once...), that rape is their ultimate fear and the ultimate form of degradation. What Hetal Parekh suffered was agony of the worst kind and what her parents continue to suffer today must be unbearable. And even if this is not one of the 'rarest of rare' cases, it could be argued that instituting the death penalty for rapists might act as a deterrent.

But it won't. And here's the counter argument. First, the problem with rape cases in India is that women are afraid to come forward, that the judiciary and the police are insensitive and the laws are often skewed. Merely threatening to kill rapists will achieve very little. Since most rapists know they will go scot free, I don't think this will unduly bother them.

So that takes us to the next question, that of the concept of the death penalty itself. As one of the above articles that I've linked to points out, 114 countries have abolished the death penalty and India is one of the few last remaining countries. While I sympathise greatly with the Parekhs and I cannot even begin to comprehend the horror that Hetal went through, I must say that I don't support the death penalty. Not for the usual 'it won't bring the girl back' kind of logic, but because the death penalty achieves very little and is so open to misuse in this day and age of TADA and POTA. Further, as someone who believes that counter terrorism by the state is no answer to terrorism, I can't quite see how I can stand up for the death penalty. However, one other thought: Dhanajay Chatterjee through all of this is becoming quite a celebrity. Let's not make him into a martyr (and hanging him might just do that), he's a killer and rapist. Let him languish in prison forever. Let him spend the rest of the 30 or so years that he will live, regretting what he did. A rape is a not a 'mistake', it's a deliberate and diabolical act and let's not be moved by his family members claiming that 'he's suffered enough'. Rubbish.

There is also the act of death by hanging which our Supreme Court has declared is not derogatory, humiliating, aking to torture and so on. Again, I am not sure I agree. Death by hanging is both barbaric and anachronistic. I oppose the death penalty per se, and would prefer to have life sentences instead, but at least if you have to kill, do so humanely. On the other hand, in America, where they do kill humanely, they telecast the killing of people like Timothy McVeigh which people watch with some absurd kind of voyeuristic 'pleasure'. Let's not go down that road, please!