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So Vande Mataram is once again in the news, with one of the 25 resolutions passed by Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind at its 30th general session in the presence of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, affirming that
"The [2006] fatwa of Darul Uloom (opposing recitation of Vande Mataram) is correct."
Here's a link to the full FAQ on the 2006 controversy, along with a link to the Congress Working Committee, in Calcutta on October 26, 1937, under the presidentship of Jawaharlal Nehru which provides a historical perspective.
And here's the full coverage from the Outlook Archives
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Nov 03, 2009 AT 20:13 IST
Expectedly, the Gujarat government's ban of the controversial book by Mr Jaswant Singh has been challenged in the High Court of Gujarat today.
On Saturday, V.Venkatesan had an excellent post at the Law and Other Things blog where he had pointed out, inter alia:
Not only the notification is silent on the grounds, but even the so-called justification for the ban as explained by the Gujarat Government's spokesperson is not legally sustainable. None of the reasons cited by the spokesperson, including the alleged attempt to defame Sardar Patel can attract Section 153A or 153B of IPC. If you use the reasoning adopted by the Bombay High Court in the Shivaji book ban case, the Gujarat Government has made its position vulnerable by claiming that all Gujaratis hold Sardar Patel in high esteem. If so, where is the question of promoting enmity between different groups on any ground, as there are no different groups on the question of holding Sardar Patel in high esteem. If the State Government thinks the book is likely to disturb the public tranquillity, it has not claimed so in the notification, let alone its obligation to explain it with some prima facie satisfaction.
However, even if the court rules favourably, it may hardly be grounds for jubilation, as I wrote in the comments section at the LAOT blog:
...even when legal redressal may be possible, publishers of books or exhibitors of films, for example, bow down to the mob pressures. For example, in the case of James Laine's book, if memory serves me right, the publisher decided not to pursue the matter even after the favourable Bombay High court verdict, which in any case was later challenged.
Frankly, looking at how often and easily various hoodlums have made life miserable for assorted groups, I have long felt that we need an Indian equivalent of ACLU:
I don't think PUCL/PUDR etc. have quite fulfilled the role they were set up for or are equipped to, or even wish to, play such a role.
I must admit, though, that I have not even followed ACLU other than very casually, but the little that I have -- in particular its famous stand, "ACLU has no love for the Ku Klux Klan, but does for the First Amendment" -- has always made me wonder why we do not have any such body of progressives in India who are willing to take a principled and uncompromising stand on free speech?
I wonder if LAOT would want to explore the possibility of a sustained campaign, looking into the constitutionality of various bans that are still in force -- I can imagine it would be quite a task to even compile a comprehensive list though we could begin with some of the high profile cases -- and at least to consider the possibilities of figuring out ways of fighting various ridiculous bans?
Or explore how publishers, editors etc could equip themselves to deal with law and order situations that are sought to be created, as the Statesman faced, for example, in Calcutta over the Johann Hari op-ed? I of course ask this as I have a vested interest in clarifying my own thinking over the many intertwined issues in such cases and would love to hear from all of you.
For more on this discussion, see the comments section in LAOT
Also See:
Postscript:
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Aug 25, 2009 AT 00:49 IST
Christopher Hitchens takes up the question of Yale University Press's decision to publish The Cartoons That Shook the World, by Danish-born Jytte Klausen without the 12 caricatures that originated the controversy, in Slate:
...the official statement from the press's public affairs department... informed me that Yale had consulted a range of experts before making its decision and that "[a]ll confirmed that the republication of the cartoons by the Yale University Press ran a serious risk of instigating violence."
So here's another depressing thing: Neither the "experts in the intelligence, national security, law enforcement, and diplomatic fields, as well as leading scholars in Islamic studies and Middle East studies" who were allegedly consulted, nor the spokespeople for the press of one of our leading universities, understand the meaning of the plain and common and useful word instigate. If you instigate something, it means that you wish and intend it to happen. If it's a riot, then by instigating it, you have yourself fomented it. If it's a murder, then by instigating it, you have yourself colluded in it. There is no other usage given for the word in any dictionary, with the possible exception of the word provoke, which does have a passive connotation. After all, there are people who argue that women who won't wear the veil have "provoked" those who rape or disfigure them … and now Yale has adopted that "logic" as its own.
It was bad enough during the original controversy, when most of the news media—and in the age of "the image" at that—refused to show the cartoons out of simple fear. But now the rot has gone a serious degree further into the fabric.
Read the full piece at Slate
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Aug 18, 2009 AT 04:47 IST
Hitch too isn't too thrilled with Obama's Cairo speech ("some of what he said was well-intentioned if ill-informed"):
Take the single case in which our president touched upon the best-known fact about the Islamic "world": its tendency to make women second-class citizens. He mentioned this only to say that "Western countries" were discriminating against Muslim women! And how is this discrimination imposed? By limiting the wearing of the head scarf or hijab.... The clear implication was an attack on the French law that prohibits the display of religious garb or symbols in state schools.
He goes on to quote "from an excellent commentary by an Algerian-American visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School, Karima Bennoune who says:
I have just published research conducted among the many people of Muslim, Arab and North African descent in France who support that country's 2004 law banning religious symbols in public schools which they see as a necessary deployment of the "law of the republic" to counter the "law of the Brothers," an informal rule imposed undemocratically on many women and girls in neighborhoods and at home and by fundamentalists.
More here
Also See: on the same speech: B. Raman ! Arif Mohammed Khan ! Noam Chomsky
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Jun 12, 2009 AT 22:27 IST
So we know that countries like Iran and China are notorious for their Internet censorship regimes. But a growing number of democracies are setting up their own great fire walls, says Joshua Keating in Foreign Policy:
What's targeted?
AUSTRALIA: Officially, child pornography and terrorism, but recent reports suggest the scope might be expanded.
FRANCE: File-sharingnetworks.
ARGENTINA: Celebrity dirt
SOUTH KOREA: North Korean propaganda
INDIA: Political radicalism, terrorist tools
What's behind the wall? India's Internet filtering is still sporadic, but the seemingly arbitrary nature of its enforcement has censorship watchdogs nervous. In 2003, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) was created to enforce the country's filtering regime. CERT-In is the sole authority empowered to block Web sites, and there is no review or appeals process once it blacklists a site. Many blocked sites have been found to contain obscene material, but CERT-In has also shut down Hindu nationalists and other radical groups on social networking sites such as Orkut. In 2003, thousands of Indian Internet users were blocked from accessing Yahoo! Groups because CERT-In objected to a message board for a minor North Indian separatist group consisting of 25 people.
When it was revealed that the terrorists responsible for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks used Google Earth to plan their assault, a prosecutor petitioned the Bombay High Court to block the popular site. The motion was ultimately thrown out, but security concerns are also dogging a rival satellite-mapping site being developed by the Indian government itself. The government agency building the program suggests that some sensitive sites might be blurred out in the final version.
More here
And not to forget, CERT's infamous attempts to block blogs
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Mar 27, 2009 AT 21:52 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep ON Mar 03, 2009 AT 03:44 IST
Aakar Patel in The News, Pakistan:
An advertisement film was made for the Shri Ram Sene on January 24. It was scripted and directed by Muthalik. It starred the boys that Muthalik had sent (he was not there himself -- clever). It also featured, involuntarily, the young men and women who were thrashed and molested. It was shot by the TV crews and freelance cameramen. Its broadcast, the most expensive part of advertising, was paid for entirely by the news channels. And it still is.
Muthalik set about that day to become a national story. He knew what he had to feed the television stations to become a big story: upper-class women, violence, moralism. And of course he needed to reach his audience. And he did that through a single act.
As they repeat the footage from that day, it is accompanied by high dudgeon from the television anchors, especially India's liberal English news channels. But this is a hypocritical indignation, because they are using the footage of the act, just as Muthalik used them to get the footage. The channels remind the girls, slapped, falling, fondled, of their humiliation every time they broadcast it, but they persist in doing it while insisting that they are on the girls' side.
Muthalik, who has played his cards excellently, comes across as calm. And like dogs being thrown a bone, the television journalists have chased the stories that Muthalik has tossed in the air after that day. Journalism is reactive. The reporter responds to the world and the editor must pick and choose what it is of interest. He must also decide what is compelling.
More here
HT: Navjot Sandhu
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Mar 01, 2009 AT 14:41 IST
K RAKA SUDHAKAR RAO in The Hoot:
L'affaire Mutalik brings us to the issue of how much coverage for incidents like this. Also, is the media willingly or unwittingly turning into a PR wing of such ragtag vigilante groups? Is media's over-enthusiasm proving totally counter-productive? The media, in all sincerity, should come up with a policy prescription for itself to ensure that its coverage does not achieve the exact opposite of what it intends to establish. After all, this year's Valentine's Day was the least colourful in recent times and strangely, the media ensured that it was so. Ironically, the media outdid Mutalik in this endeavour.
There is another deeper media issue involved in the Mangalore pub attack-coverage. Why was the media, the more sedate and supposedly more balanced print media included, utterly disinclined to inform the readers about Ram Sena's antecedents and its running battle with the Sangh Pariwar? Also, the media chose to ignore the fact that there were some local Congressmen among the Ramsena funders. Questions like whether Mutalik was deliberately being modelled into a Hindu Bhindranwale to embarras an unfriendly dispensation at Bengaluru, just as a similar exercise is on to establish Raj Thackeray as the real representative of Maharashtra pride, have never been probed by the media. Ram Sena's run-ins with RSS are only too well-known even to the general public in Mangalore. Why did the media fail to see the obvious? Is there a deeper and hidden agenda?
More Here
Also See: Arrested, Muthalik bats for BJP, he shared stage with political bigwigs day after attack
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 19, 2009 AT 15:15 IST
Johann Hari in the Huffington Post on l'affaire The Statesman:
... Every word I wrote was true. I believe the right to openly discuss religion, and follow the facts wherever they lead us, is one of the most precious on earth -- especially in a democracy of a billion people riven with streaks of fanaticism from a minority of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. So I cannot and will not apologize.
...The protesters said I deliberately set out to "offend" them, and I am supposed to say that, no, no offence was intended. But the honest truth is more complicated. Offending fundamentalists isn't my goal -- but if it is an inevitable side-effect of defending human rights, so be it. If fanatics who believe Muslim women should be imprisoned in their homes and gay people should be killed are insulted by my arguments, I don't resile from it. Nothing worth saying is inoffensive to everyone.
...The argument that I was "asking for it" seems a little like saying a woman wearing a short skirt is "asking" to be raped. Or, as Salman Rushdie wrote when he received far, far worse threats simply for writing a novel (and a masterpiece at that): "When Osip Mandelstam wrote his poem against Stalin, did he 'know what he was doing' and so deserve his death? When the students filled Tiananmen Square to ask for freedom, were they not also, and knowingly, asking for the murderous repression that resulted? When Terry Waite was taken hostage, hadn't he been 'asking for it'?" When fanatics threaten violence against people who simply use words, you should not blame the victim.
The solution to the problems of free speech -- that sometimes people will say terrible things -- are always and irreducibly more free speech. If you don't like what a person says, argue back. Make a better case. Persuade people. The best way to discredit a bad argument is to let people hear it. I recently interviewed the pseudo-historian David Irving, and simply quoting his crazy arguments did far more harm to him than any Austrian jail sentence for Holocaust Denial.
More of this must-read piece here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 17, 2009 AT 19:00 IST
Are bans, deportations, arrests etc the answer to perceived slurs on religion and revered figures? When does sharp criticsm become "incitement to racial/religious hatred"?
If we thought it is only in India that something like the outrage in Kolkata involving the Statesman editor and publisher's arrest and bail could take place only in India, here's a reminder from Bitain where "acontroversial Dutch politician has been sent back to Holland after trying to enter Britain to show his anti-Muslim film in the House of Lords," as the Telegraph, UK reports:
Geert Wilders had been invited to Westminster to show his 17-minute film Fitna, which criticises the Koran as a "fascist book", by a member of the House of Lords.
But on Tuesday Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary refused Mr Wilders entry because his opinions "would threaten community security and therefore public security" in the UK.
Mr Wilders went ahead with his trip anyway, and flew from Amsterdam to London on a British Midland flight.
When he arrived at Heathrow airport he was met by two plain clothed officers from the UK Border Agency.
As he was being led away, Mr Wilders said: "I am not nervous but is this how Great Britain welcomes a democrat?"
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 14, 2009 AT 00:31 IST
The Pink Chaddi campaign has ruffled enough feathers, it seems. First Mr. Muthalik of Sri Ram Sene said he had decided to send pink saris "with love" in response. The pink chaddi campaign retaliated by saying:
"We greatly appreciate this and hope he continues to choose similar, non-violent methods to get his point across, just as we have chosen to be non-violent and loving in response to the brutality of the attacks on lovers and women in Mangalore and other parts of Karnataka."
But a bunch of people have chosen to view the juvenile PInk Chaddi Campaign as a slur on Hinduism (perhaps they are upset because the logo used by the PInk Chaddi walas does have -- or at least did have -- a generic photo of RSS men's saffron shorts morphed into pink) and formed a "Consortium of assertive and proud Hindus who are sick of Indian sickulars conspiring to attribute every vice in the society to Hinduism" and stepped in with their very own campaign: This campaign has been started as a response to some self righteous and progressive people who started the Pink Chaddi campaign. Their chaddi campaign ends on Valentine’s Day of 2009, but this is just a beginning for us.
We are more democratic and transparent that the Pink Chaddi walas. We don’t claim inflated figures of support...
More Here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 12, 2009 AT 15:54 IST
The ever so-brilliant Hari Shenoy finds the fundamental interconnectedness between life, the universe, Barkha Dutt, Vijay Mallya, and everything else besides in an inspired press release:
The Shri Ravan Sene is a new organization that was formed a few days ago, in response to the formation and rise to infamy of the Shri Rama Sene.
( The Shri Rama Sene had previously changed it’s name to Shriram Nene, but have since reverted to their original name after nobody else except Pramod Mutalik and a certain idiot named Hari Shenoy found it funny. More so, they were not able to pinpoint Madhuri Dixit-Nene’s whereabouts.
The idiotic Hari Shenoy did suggest that they use the name, ‘the organization formerly known as Shriram Nene’, but the group's lawyers objected strongly, saying that they didn’t want Prince / TAFKAP / The artist formerly known as Prince suing the group....
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 09, 2009 AT 18:14 IST
Personally, I think Sri Ram Sena should be denied any oxygen of publicity, but this group protesting against them at least seeems to have a sense of humour, at least judging by its name: the Consortium Of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward women and their chosen method of protest, The Pink Chaddi Campaign:
The Pink Chaddi Campaign kicked off on 5 February 2009 to oppose the Sri Ram Sena. The campaign is growing exponentially (1,300 at this point in the life of our Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women) and that is not surprising. Most women in this country have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Of course, a lot of men have joined the group as well.
Here is we want to do with the Pink Chaddi Campaign. Join in. Be imaginative, have fun and fight back!
What can you do?
Step 1: It does not matter that many of us have not thought about Valentine's Day since we were 13. If ever. This year let us send the Sri Ram Sena some love. Let us send them some PINK CHADDIS.
Look in your closet or buy them cheap. Dirt-cheap. Make sure they are PINK. Send them off to the Sena.
The address to send the package is:
The Pink Chaddi Campaign,
C/O Alternate Law Forum,
122/4 Infantry Road
(opposite Infantry Wedding House)
Bangalore 560001
Karnataka
Contact person: Nithin (9886081269)
More Here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 09, 2009 AT 02:19 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 07, 2009 AT 03:22 IST
Trisha, a Delhi-based writer and anthropologist, cuts to the chase:
Why has the debate occasioned by the incident of violence against women in Mangalore been labelled a debate about “pub culture”, when it is clearly about something else?
...we need to abandon the misleading “pub culture” tag and start addressing the real issue. Which, it appears, is much less about the general unhealthiness or amorality of consuming alcohol (however much Anbumani Ramadoss may wish to deflect our thoughts in that direction) than it is about the outrage large numbers of men in this country feel about the perceived emergence of a class of women, Indian in blood and colour, but so shockingly Western in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect as to think nothing of bonding over a beer, in public, with men who are not even their husbands (with apologies to Lord Macaulay).
...Whether it’s the Delhi cops who book a (married) couple on obscenity charges for kissing in a metro station, or the villagers of Ghadi Chaukhandi near Noida’s Sector 71 who continue to express their outrage about “couples coming in cars... and doing disgusting things next to our homes” even as they defend their sons against rape charges, there is something going on which demands a more thoughtful engagement with class-based moral divides than we have seen so far.
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 05, 2009 AT 04:54 IST
Pratap Bahnu Mehta on how not to make it "into a high-pitched contest, supposedly between a prudish, patriarchal traditionalism on the one hand, and an assertion of freedom and progressivism on the other" and instead have a real conversation on how our sense of self and society is constituted, about "what is shaping our sense of self at different sites: family, school, religious institutions. What sense of lack and what anxieties are we encumbered with?":
If our social mores are producing characters that feel no compunction in beating up women in the name of tradition, if the mere holding of hands seems so threatening, if our sense of self esteem is so fragile that it will express itself in all kinds of violence against “outsiders”, what kind of politics are we likely to produce?
...Secularists lost political traction, because the secular/ anti-secular debate simply degenerated into slogan mongering and a show of force; secularists could not find a way of addressing real anxieties and complex issues. It became more a matter of thumping one’s own self rather than solving real problems. The debate over freedom also risks undermining the cause of freedom. The concept of freedom, in the liberal sense, is still not very deeply embedded in Indian society.
The principle of individual liberty has to be defended vigorously; no majoritarianism can take away individuals’ rights to lead the life they wish to, compatible with respecting others’ rights. On this there can be no debate. But we have to acknowledge that the culture wars we are witnessing about liquor are also about something else. Just around the time that Ashok Gehlot made his notorious statement, journalists in Rajasthan made a big fuss over Vikram Seth having wine on the podium while discussing literature. This fuss was almost laughable.
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Feb 05, 2009 AT 00:42 IST
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