Who Milks This Cow?

Nearly two thousand people died in the Bhagalpur riots. Many more were rendered homeless. Although Muslims were less than 20 per cent of the population, they constituted more than 70 per cent of those who had been killed or displaced. We visited a once-flourishing village of Muslim weavers, or julahas, whose homes and looms had been totally destroyed by a mob of Hindus. The survivors were being taken care of by a prosperous Muslim weaver in Bhagalpur town, who had laid out tents in his garden. Other refugees were being provided food and shelter by a Muslim religious organisation. Of government work in the resettlement and rehabilitation of the refugees there was not a sign.

I was shaken to see that my fellow Hindus would willingly partake of such savagery, and that my government would take no responsibility for the victims. Till then, the politics of religion had no place in my scholarly work or writing. My principal field of research was the environment. I had just published a book on the social history of the Himalayan forests, and had written scholarly essays on environmental conflicts in Asia and North America. However, I was now provoked to write an essay on the Bhagalpur riots for the Sunday Observer.

Ramachandra Guha in Outlook Here

A S Panneerselvan is new Readers' Editor of The Hindu

It is pleasing to note that veteran journalist of Chennai Br A S Panneerselvan has been appointed as the Readers' Editor of The Hindu. I have been reading Panneerselvan since his Outlook days.

From Outlook he shifted to visual media and provided strength and dynamics to Sun TV where he functioned as Managing Editor. He was also attached with Indiaweek, a weekly magazine popularly launched by Business India for some time.

We wish him all success. 

More Here

Vinod Mehta steps out of Outlook

Atlast Vinod Mehta has stepped out of Outlook. He had been the moving spirit, face and symbol behind Outlook.

I like Vinod Mehta. He may be a drunkard. He may have a dog with him and call it 'Editor'. But still he fought against the fascists - Sangh Pariwar. He may have played soft hindutva occasionally. He may have sided with Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen. But still he was the one of those who pierced the Hindutva balloon. He may have sided with the congressis but still he gave the voice for the voiceless, however feeble it may be. He may have brought out dirty, pornographic content as sex specials and bollywood specials. But still he was the one who cracked the betting syndicate in Indian cricket. He may have witch hunted Azharuddin but still he was the one who gave space for Arundhati Roy.

I had been one of the vivid readers of Outlook for ten years. I have criticised him bitterly and he continued to publish my letters in his magazine. I may not miss him as I stopped reading Outlook since 2006 when I was assigned an important project. The project absorbed all of my time and I could not afford to read Outlook and other magazines. But still I used to read it online now and then and continued to watch Vinod Mehta's utterances in Times Now and NDTV. 

He could never be a role model. Nevertheless his boldness, brazenness are admirable. He would always be remembered as the brave journalist who fought tirelessly against the Modis, Advanis and Singhals. I had always dreamed of giving him an award for communal harmony. 

As they say every good thing comes to an end. Alvida Vinod!


More Here and Here and Here

Khushwant Singh: "I may die any day now"

Last week, lakhs of newspaper readers across the country woke up to find their weekly fix missing. The ‘Sardar in the lightbulb’, loved and loathed in over 17 Indian languages, had hung up his pen without saying goodbye. After more than 70 uninterrupted years of ceaselessly needling readers, Khushwant Singh suddenly decided he’d had enough. “I’m 97,” (he isn’t, he’s 96) “I may die any day now,” is all he’ll say about his self-imposed exile into silence.

 “I’ll miss the money,” he says when I prod him, adding as an afterthought: “And the people fawning over me to write about them in my columns.” Fat chance, considering that the same evening, he was entertaining two editors, one of whom was trying to trawl yet another book out of his old columns and the other had brought along his latest novel for him to review. “You want me to praise it?” he asked, almost innocently. “Yes!” was the fervent response. Perhaps he did not know Khushwant’s column-writing days are over.

It couldn’t have been much fun: getting up before dawn every single day, an endless round of deadlines, chasing payments, readers’ letters, keeping track of events, and people dropping in, hoping to be written about. Now that he has given it all up, you’d think he’d rest. But he’s already reaching for his yellow legal pad, scribbling away as if it’s a guilty pleasure. “I can’t stop,” he says a trifle sheepishly, “I don’t know how to sit and do nothing.” The columns are done and over with—but it looks as if another book is on its way.

Sheela Reddy in Outlook. Here

Beyond Techno-coolies

Lord Curzon, the newly appointed Viceroy of India, was on the defensive in 1899. “I read in many newspapers,” he told graduates at the University of Calcutta, “that our system of higher education in India is a failure, that it has sacrificed the formation of character upon the altar of Cram.”

More than a century later, “the altar of Cram” still demands worship from students. Rote learning, fossilised curricula and arbitrary examinations are the norm even at India’s top colleges. Despite the growth in higher education and the much-vaunted success of the outsourcing and IT economy, the system can neither keep up with the rising demand nor can it, in many cases, provide a solid education. But change may be coming soon as about a dozen education-related bills are debated in Parliament. As India attempts to expand both the quality and capacity of its universities, a key question must be what role the liberal arts should play.

Many societies, including India’s, have recognisably liberal educational philosophies. Both traditional streams of Indian education, Sanskrit and Persian, valued broad-based knowledge and argumentation. In the West, the idea of a liberal education goes back at least twenty centuries to the Roman philosopher Seneca, who defined the liberal arts as the general education worthy of free men as opposed to the practical training required by slaves. Translating for our modern sensibilities, Professor Grant Cornwell, president of the College of Wooster, a top US liberal arts college, suggests that a liberal education develops “habits of mind and character that will equip young people as problem-solvers, independent thinkers and innovators”.

Arthur Dudney in Outlook. More Here

Could our Jantar Mantar become our Tahrir Square?

Those of our political leaders who have paid attention to the protests in Tahrir Square must be spending sleepless nights. Not because a floodgate of public rage is about to burst open in Delhi or Mumbai but because the reasons for the rage are so familiar to us who live in the proudly democratic republic of India. Allow me to list a few similarities. Open loot of public money. Political leaders who become fabulously rich while ordinary people remain horribly poor. Dynastic succession. In our case this idea has roots so deep and wide that there is almost not a single political party that is not a family business. Then, as in most despotic Arab countries, we have followed economic policies that have created a small super-rich elite while the majority of our people live on less than $2 a day. And, just like Egypt we have a huge population of young people most of whom will move to cities and towns in the next twenty years. 

From Tavleen Singh's article in Indian Express. More Here.

Could it happen here? The leaderless revolution in Egypt has caused some anxiety locally over whether the wretched of our earth could come out to challenge their rulers. Conventional and unconventional wisdom has it that the answer is an emphatic no. We have a vibrant democracy, regular elections, a free media, an alert judiciary—all these checks and balances, it is fondly assumed, provide a safety valve through which the above-mentioned wretched can ventilate their frustrations. It is a cosy and comforting thesis but it needs to be tested. Not just to shake us out of complacency, but to force us to ask some hard questions.
One could in fact argue that it is already happening here. The injustices the protesters at Tahrir Square are raging about—corruption, no jobs, rising prices, appalling governance—are rampant in our blessed land. The tribal population of India, over three times the size of Egypt’s total population, lives daily with hardships ten times worse than those faced by the aam aadmi in Cairo. The per capita income in Egypt is four times the per capita income of adivasis in Dantewada. Moreover, under the influence of the Maoists, our destitute have taken up arms in a do-or-die struggle against the Indian state. Altogether, we are confronted with a situation infinitely more dangerous than the one prevailing in Egypt. Indeed, in contrast to the carnival and celebratory atmosphere in Tahrir Square, our deprived and desolate are waging a grim and violent battle. India is already at war with its own people. If you asked a bow-and-arrow-wielding woman to throw down her weapon because she possessed a wonderful thing called “democracy”, I shudder to think what her response would be.
Shining India, fortunately, does not have to watch pitched clashes outside the street on which it lives. However, unless we wake up, that prospect is fast approaching. Supposing, 2,00,000 of our citizens march into Jantar Mantar demanding regime change or immediate redressal of their grievances, how will the Indian state respond?

Vinod Mehta in Outlook. More Here.

It is a shame that we will have more billionaires than Europe or Japan

 
On reforms with a human face: There is no human face. It is absolutely dehumanised. Let me be blunt. With so much of poverty and destitution, a billionaire has the audacity to build a house worth Rs 5,000 crore when half the population of Mumbai lives in jhopad pattis. This is what economic liberalisation has brought about.
On the rich and poor: Three hundred million Indians still starve, getting less than the minimum nutrition needed. Another 300-400 million are not starving but are poor. On the other hand, we have the emergence of billionaires. It’s a shame that we will have more billionaires than Europe or Japan. Discontent is going up as disparity gets pronounced. Sooner or later this will get mobilised, as in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Manipur. There will be more such pockets and we will face an incendiary situation. The politicians are unaware of the prospects that lie ahead. As for businessmen, they think they can rule forever through foreign favour and exploitation.

From Ashok Mitra's take in Outlook. More Here.

An open letter to Sonia Gandhi

Dear Mrs Gandhi,

Dr Manmohan Singh is believed to be one of the most honest prime ministers our country has had. But, ironically, he presides over arguably the most dishonest government machinery we have seen. The latest in the series of scams is the massive corruption in the Commonwealth Games. Despite charges of large-scale fund misuse and inefficient management, Suresh Kalmadi, almost defiantly, says he won’t step down till the PM or Sonia Gandhi asks him to do so. He seems to be confident that neither of you would ask him to step down!
The scale and arrogance of corruption in the Commonwealth Games is so bizarre that if it goes unpunished this time also, then there is no hope for this country. Both Dr Singh and you have said on several occasions that those involved in corruption in CWG will not be spared after the games. But which agency will investigate these cases?
.... .... ....

When corruption reached its peak in Hong Kong in the ’70s, it created an Independent Commission Against Corruption and gave it complete powers. The commission sacked 103 out of 107 police officers in one go. That sent a strong signal to the entire machinery. Such swift and effective action is needed in our country also, immediately.
You created history by renouncing the chair of the prime minister. We urge you to create effective systems in our country to rid this country of corruption.


From an open letter written by RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal in Outlook. More here.

''Gas is leaking from the plant. Run for your life" - a first hand account of Bhopal's night

I was then a resident of old Bhopal, just a couple of kilometres from the Union Carbide plant. Around midnight on December 2, 1984, after finishing a story for The Sunday Observer, I went to bed. Before I fell asleep, I felt a sharp pricking sensation in my throat. I thought I was going to catch a cold. But a few minutes later, I was coughing and had difficulty breathing. I then heard loud sounds from outside. Looking out of the window, I saw people running. And then I smelt a very strong, foul odour. I moved back to the bedroom to find my wife coughing too. I realised there was something terribly wrong.

I immediately shut the windows and switched on the fan in spite of the December chill. I asked my wife to sit under the fan and called the police control room. When someone responded, I could hear him gasp for breath and cough. “What’s happened?” I asked. “Sahab, Union Carbide ki gas tankee phoot gayee hai. Dam ghut raha hai. (Sir, a Union Carbide gas tank has exploded. I am suffocating).” He barely managed to speak in between bouts of coughing.

So it has actually happened, I told myself. Had my prediction come true? I first wrote about such a probability—of things going horribly wrong at the plant—for a local weekly magazine, Rapat, in September 1982. Then I wrote another piece on it for Jansatta, which ran with the headline ‘Bhopal jwalamukhi ki kagaar par (Bhopal on the edge of a volcano)’. No one listened to me then, and today everyone, it seemed, was going to die. Me too? Never before had I felt so gripped by panic. I looked at my wife, who was speechless with fear. Like me, she also knew about the deadly gas.

Within seconds, the fear of death was overpowered by a stronger feeling—the urge to help people who still had a chance to escape. I picked up the phone and called my friend N.K. Singh, who was then the Indian Express correspondent. He lived far from where I was, in new Bhopal. “Run,” I implored him. “Gas is leaking from the plant. My time is up, but you still have some. Run for your life.”

From Raajkumar Keswani's article in Outlook. More Here

''Bhopals will happen, but the country has to progress," said the Prime Minister

"Bhopals will happen, but the country has to progress.” Hard to believe, and enraging too. According to Sathyu Sarangi, a member of the Bhopal Group for Information & Action, a voluntary body, this is what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told him and six of his colleagues when they met him on April 17, 2006, to press for action against Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the American firm Dow Chemical Company since 2001. “Yes, I remember that clearly. This is what the prime minister said,” Sarangi tells Outlook.

Over quarter of a century after the gas tragedy in Bhopal, doubts linger that it is US pressure that may have enabled Warren Anderson, the then CEO of UCC, to go scot-free—being released from arrest in Bhopal and flying back home—and forced the government to rein its authorities from acting against UCC. Now, a set of new correspondence accessed by activists using the RTI, copies of which are with Outlook, reveals how the current CEO of Dow, Andrew Liveris, has been trying to lobby the prime minister and his office, along with senior ministers of the UPA government, to support the firm’s business interests in India despite continuing public opposition over its unwillingess to accept responsibility for Bhopal.

From Debarshi Dasgupta and K. S. Shaini's report in Outlook. More Here

"Nothing can match the post of a district collector", says M Abubacker Siddique

"I've broken the jinx" exulted Shah Faesal. One of the main reasons for this jinx is that Muslims do not appear in sufficient numbers for these examinations. Explaining why, Dr Syed Hamid says: “Apart from the small middle class, most other Muslims live in bastis where the din and dust would never let a student study in equanimity. Segregation has become so acute that I don’t see things changing very soon.”

But not everyone believes there is reason to despair. M. Abubacker Siddique, for one, is a delighted man today. Back in 1994, this HSC alumnus achieved the brilliant feat of securing the 2nd rank in the UPSC examinations, setting a record that has only now been broken by Faesal. The IAS officer, who is now the private secretary to Union home minister P. Chidambaram, says, “Finally someone has broken the record!” Giving a glimpse of the strong bonds that exist between the institute and its alumni, he says, “I still go back to HSC, and I was on a mock board that interviewed Shah Faesal. Faesal and I, we are the absolute evidence to show that the system is fair.”

As Siddique sees it, low recruitment of Muslims into the civil services is a matter of perception: “Any community needs to know that there is a good chance of getting through and doing well. Once you can see that happen, your numbers will start rising.” Creating more Siddiques and Faesals is clearly vital to changing perceptions, and in order to do so, Siddique says, HSC needs to widen the pool. He says that it should actually move away from the rigorous process of putting applicants through tests and introduce a canvassing system to find bright students and motivate them into giving the UPSC exams a shot. In order to do so, Siddique believes, what needs to be stressed is not the power echelons of New Delhi, but the power they will have to change things at the grassroots. “As an IAS officer, no post can give you more satisfaction than that of a district collector. You get to see things as they happen, and you get to intervene. Nothing can match that.”

From an article by Shreevatsa Nivetia on Hamdard Study Circle in Outlook. More than 165 Muslims have made it to Civil services through Hamdard Study Circle.

To Read More click here.
Read the success story of Shah Faisal and Mariam Farzhana Sadiq here and here

Abhinav, Godse and bombs!!!

Photo: Bhonsala Military School

Abhinav!!!
Until now it was the most charming name of the most eligible bachelor of our great country.
Abhinav!! Abhinav!! Who is Abhinav? Everybody knew him. He was the first Indian to win Gold in Olympics. His name instantly evoked mixed feelings of happiness, pride and joy.
But, of late the name has lost its sheen. Abhinav now evokes revulsion, pity and sorrow. All because of Abhinav Bharat.
What is the Abhinav Bharat? What is its aim? Who are its members? The hardcore Hindu outfit with its ideological links to Veer Savarkar and Gopal Godse now has links, allegedly, with the army and this sets a dangerous precedent in its fight against terror writes Saikat Datta in Outlook.

The organisation’s activities clearly reveal its virulent character. In one pamphlet, it even exhorts members to seek revenge for the "killing of millions of Hindus over several centuries". It has also organised several "conventions" in Bhopal, Raisen and Vidisha districts of MP, where it is particularly active. At these conventions, it has described Muslims as "dharma shatrus (enemies of the faith)". More in tune with its militant character, one of the outfit’s slogans reads, "Kshama yachna nahin, ab to ran hoga, sangharsh bada bhishan hoga (No mercy or apology, now it will be war; the battle will be extremely intense)." Major (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts, is the outfit’s working president.

What is Bhonsala Military School?
Spread over 160 acres, the Bhonsala Military School (See photo at the top) is different from other institutions of its ilk in that the curriculum stresses on religious instruction too. It seeks to instil "Bharatiya values" and the virtues of Lord Ram among its students. The school campus has been named Rambhoomi and its students Ramdandees. The symbolism blends the religious and the martial: they pray to an idol of Ram sculpted out of used cartridges. Kulkarni explains: "We created it out of the spent bullets fired by our students at the firing ranges."

To read the full article, click here.
Also read, 'If We Can Have Bullet For Bullet, Why Not Blast For Blast?'