Category: Enough said

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Enough said

A victim of his own moves?

LK Advani is unfortunately placed – he seems stifled within his party but he’s not allowed to move away, either.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

This entire episode around LK Advani seems layered. Even the politically naïve can understand that Advani has not been allowed to resign, despite his initial outbursts. He has not been allowed to break free from the controlling powers of his political party, the BJP. It almost seems as though he is being forced to retain his mask, keep up the façade of ‘togetherness’ of the Right-wing brigade.

There seems to have been a complicated build-up to this turn of events. Is it possible that Advani couldn’t cope with the frustration of being sidelined and finally wanted to break away from it? How interesting that all these years, he’d diligently worked at so many gimmicks and indulged in hate politics to gather votes for his party, and the same party is most likely stifling him for a long time now.

Who can forget Advani’s master move, the idea that sparked the kind of fire in the country that it is still not being put out? In the early advani's rath yatra90s, he undertook the rath yatra all the way to Ayodhya, whipping up communal frenzy along the entire route and reveling in it. His rath yatra can be termed as one of the turning points in modern Indian history, for it sowed seeds of communal divide and hatred between communities, left a permanent imprint on minds. That communal hatred still continues to poison the atmosphere of this nation.

And who can forget that photograph of him and Uma Bharti and Murli Manohar Joshi, hugging and clasping each other as the Babri Masjid was being destroyed? The disturbing events of those times continue to simmer to this day, with riots periodically breaking out and terrorists planting bombs in the name of jihaad and the memories of 1992.

As the baton passes to Narendra Modi (or it seems to be forcibly grabbed by Modi and his men in a bloodless coup!), there is not just worry but a growing unease for the safety of this land and the people living in it

Ironically, we can turn to these lines from a poem written by BJP patriarch Atal Bihari Vajpayee from his book of poems, Twenty One Poems, for some succor. The poem is tilted ‘Power’:

advani1“To those who try to reach/

The throne of power/

Over mounds of dead bodies/

Of innocent children/

Old women/

Young men/

I have a question:/

Did nothing bind them/

To those who died?/

Their faiths differed;/

Was it not enough that they too were of this earth?/

‘The earth is our mother, and we are her sons’:/

This mantra from the Atharvaveda,/

Is it only to be chanted, not lived?/

 

Children charred by fire,/

Women savaged by lust,/

Houses reduced to ash/

Constitute neither a certificate of culture/

Nor a badge of patriotism,/

 

They are proof of bestiality,/

Proof of degradation,/

As if these be the deeds of sons,/

Mothers should not wish for any./

 

A throne smeared with the blood of the/

innocent/

Ranks lower than the dust of the cemetery,/

The lust for absolute power is worse/

Than a thirst for blood.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.livemint.com, www.frontline.in, www.hindustantimes.com)

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Some highs and some tremendous lows

This week has been an eye-opener on the state of the human condition in India. And it hasn’t been pretty.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

This has been a strange week, to put it mildly.

Still reeling in the capital city over the Chhatisgarh Naxal attack on the State’s top Congress brass, we are now waking up to a detailed five-page letter on why tribals in the country are angry at the establishment. Space constraints bar me from producing the entire letter, so let me just write the operative part of the communication.

The letter was written by a Minister in the Central Government, V Kishore Chandra Deo, Minister for Tribal Affairs and Panchayati Raj. He has written to the Governors of the Schedule V Areas, in which he mentions, “The main challenge that is staring at us today is the explosive situations (sic) that are prevailing in the Schedule V Areas of our country. These areas are inhabited largely by people belonging to the Scheduled Tribe communities, forest dwellers and other marginalised and deprived sections of our society.

“It is, therefore, not a matter of coincidence that we are today faced with a situation which is threatening to strike at the very roots of the basic structure of our polity, and has  become a threat to our national security…The root cause of this situation is, however, result of continuous exploitation, oppression, deprivation, neglect and indifference for decades.”

And so on.

Recently, Roli Books launched Incredible Ascents to Everest, which captures “extraordinary stories of ascents – from a blind man’s success to a sherpa’s record 21 climbs. From the oldest, two weeks before his 77th birthday, to the first person to ski down the Everest. From the first solo ascent without any supplemental oxygen to the first double amputee to scale the Mount Everest…the extraordinary stories of ordinary men and women who have risked their physical, emotional and financial well-being to make the momentous and perilous climb to the top of the world’s tallest mountain.”

Jiah KhanBefore I could get more details of these men and women scaling the highest mountain in the world, came the news of Bollywood’s Jiah Khan and her suicide. News reports claim that she couldn’t claim with the emotional turmoil and the struggles of everyday life. It is sad to hear of the death of a young, reasonably talented girl, who I wish had seen the positives in her life and not given up the courage to go on. Some day, I hope many such Jiahs will learn to look past immediate disappointments and just live.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a symbol of mingled hope and grief. An exhibition titled Nirbhaya by artist N Swarnalatha was launched here recently, and it bears sketches and paintings of the human form exploited, molested, raped and abused. To quote from the brochure to the exhibition, “‘Nirbhaya’, her current body of work reflects her angst on the plight of the Indian women today. The series is dedicated to Nirbhaya, Vinothini, Vidhya and all the women martyrs who have taught lessons of bravery and self esteem worldwide…”

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.warisboring.com, www.dayandnightnews.com)

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Who will ask why?

The question – why are tribals killing? – needs to be addressed before looking for answers to the Naxal problem.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Heated discussions are currently on in the corridors of power in Delhi, and the blame games are now taking off in the latest onslaught of Naxals on several Congressmen, in which they and their aides and other bystanders were killed in Chhattisgarh. Political lobbies are hard at work here, with the BJP and the Congress blatantly throwing charges at each other.

In the midst of this, every bit of news space is being hogged by so-called ‘experts’ invited to speak in newsrooms. Watching them and hearing them speak is tiring – most of them repeat themselves, suggesting outdated means to end the violence. Invariably, all their formulae are centered on hounding and then pounding; they are unmindful of the possibility that this may trigger another series of killings.

After all, paramilitary operations have seldom resulted in long-lasting peace. Countering violence with violence cannot get you moving towards peace.

In the last few days of watching a plethora of experts giving their views on containing the Naxals, only one voice seemed sanest of them all. That voice belongs to Director General of the BSF (Border Security Force), EN Rammohan. He has been the only one to ask the most important question: Why? It must have taken tremendous guts and grit to ask this basic question, but ask it he did – Why is the tribal taking to killing?

If you think about it, there have been ample background incidents that explain this violence, and indeed, the rise of the Naxal movement in the country. Why are those who had hitherto been living in complete peace in the tribal belts and villages provoked enough, today, to maim or kill those who govern them?

Is it only due to the widening gap between the rulers and the ruled? Or do political and business mafia also hold the key? The government of the day knows that tribal land and the naxal violence in indiariches it holds does not necessarily serve the actual owners of that land – the villagers and tribes living in those areas. Even as their ancestral lands are taken away from them, they sit waiting for justice that never comes.

In this scenario, what seems to be the only course to pursue – if this gap is to be shortened – is to engage the aggrieved parties in a dialogue. This dialogue should be carried out with the help of activists and grassroot-level workers who the tribals know and trust. Without speaking to each other in a peaceful environment, there can be no hope for the rulers to effectively rule. Trying to contain violence with further violence will only result in several more deaths and a never-ending cycle of terror.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy theopinionmag.com)

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Two Muslims, two stories

One was a liberal academic, the other was a feted Hindi film actor, but their lives were really quite similar.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

The passing away of Dr Asghar Ali Engineer recently saddened me, to say the least. Though I had met the scholar and academic several times in New Delhi and also in Sringar, I had met him just once in Mumbai. I was determined to catch up with him in Mumbai, because I have been to that city just once in my life and I wanted to meet him during that visit.

This was in the winter of 2006. From Colaba, I made my way to Dr Engineer’s Santacruz office, and it was lunch time when I got there. We spoke over lunch; his lunch, he said, was home-cooked and prepared by his daughter-in-law, who is a Maharashtrian. It was a simple spread – not the expected kormas or kababs or biryani, but two plain rotis, curd, curry, aloo gobi sabzi and some khichdi.

He spoke frankly of present-day realities. “Today, the government has to prioritise justice and security. I must emphasise that no Muslim group or individual wants to take revenge, even after the Gujarat pogrom. I have been talking to people, and everyone realises and knows that confrontation policies do not work, only healthy co-existence does. I have been going to Gujarat and talking to Muslims. They have been saying that all they want is security, so that they can live in peace. They’re worried about their lives, their livelihood, their children…”

He also said, “Our focus should be on how to clear those myths about Muslims. I’m trying my best to clear these myths by holding asghar ali engineerworkshops for the police, for college and school students. It’s only through dialogue that many misconceptions about Muslims can be cleared.”

I have read some really excellent research he had done on the communal riots. That afternoon, as he detailed and traced the history and potential of communal politics, it became apparent that it had peaked in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid’s razing.

Dr Asghar Ali Engineer always spoke calmly, with all the facts at hand. Probably this was what helped him reach out to so many people.

nargis and sanjay duttWith Sanjay Dutt going to prison, I have been reading this essay by writer Khushwant Singh on Nargis Dutt, Sanjay’s mother. I quote, “Nargis Dutt was introduced to me through the then editor of Femina, Gulshan Ewing. I’d seen her film Mother India, and I had met her when they (the Dutts) were not doing too well, and she had almost retired from films. She told me that two of her children were studying at the Sanawar School, not far from my home in Kasauli, and she asked if she could stay at my Kasauli cottage during the Sanawar Founders’ Week. With that I’d quipped, ‘Only on one condition, and the condition is that I have your permission to tell everyone that Nargis slept in my bed!’

She had a great sense of humour and laughed heartily on hearing this. Years later, when we were both nominated to the Rajya Sabha and given seats next to each other and whenever anyone tried to introduce us, she would say, ‘You don’t have to introduce us. I have slept in his bed.’

“…One thing that intrigued me was her (Nargis Dutt’s faith. Was she a Muslim or Hindu or both or nothing? She wore a bindi on her forehead, married a Brahmin, gave her children Hindu names and was often seen at Swami Muktanand’s ashram at Ganeshpuri. Nevertheless, she was buried with Muslim rites in a Muslim graveyard with her husband reciting the fateha. I can’t think of any Indian family which better exemplified the principle of Sarva Dharma Samabhav.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.news24online.com, sitagita.com, www.hindu.com)

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Two public statements on Modi

As General Elections 2014 approach, the heat seems to be well and truly on the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi.
by Humra Quraishi

I simply marvel at Jesuit Father Cedric Prakash. I admire his courage and his confidence to take on the political might of his home State, Gujarat. This priest runs a human rights centre, ‘Prashant’ in Ahmedabad, and right from 2002, I’ve heard him speak at various meets. Recently, he lashed out at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi once again.

“It is more than just a rotten tooth!” he thundered. As the poll results of the Karnataka Assembly elections trickled in on Wednesday, May 8, the one person who was in the eye of the storm was Narendra Modi. Over the years, the BJP in Karnataka had done everything possible to make certain their defeat: the terrorising of the minorities, the bashing up of youth who didn’t conform to their cultural ‘traditions’; the bringing in of a legislation that was directed at harming minority communities, the support to right-wing Hindu fundamentalism and much more; this was besides the corruption and scams of immense proportion.

However, the BJP party workers were confident that Narendra Modi would campaign in Karnataka, wave his magic wand and cast a spell over the State to ensure that the BJP would come back to power! Modi himself is a seemingly ‘safe’, somewhat frightened campaigner in places such as Karnataka; from his track record, it is obvious that Modi goes to places where he can either win or is confident of fooling the people. In Karnataka, he did become the BJP star campaigner, making forays to three areas -Bangalore, Mangalore andBelgaum. When he did so, he was able to attract crowds and throw barbs at the Congress party and the UPA.

In the rally he addressed in Mangalore, he struck the Hindutva chord and tried to rake up the “cattle slaughter” issue clearly targeting not merely the UPA but also the Muslim minorities. However, all his rhetoric did not pay dividends. The BJP has lost miserably in the places where he campaigned and where he was considered to be the main vote-getter!

Father Prakash (in pic on left) said, “After the election results were out, Modi developed a ‘sudden toothache’ and neither his many spokespersons nor his highly-paid public relations agencies were at hand to give his point of view on the defeat. One does not have to be very intelligent to know that Modi, like a little school boy, easily ‘falls sick’ when the going gets tough.  Even if he did have a toothache, why did his spokespersons not speak up on behalf of him? And how did this “very painful toothache” suddenly disappear when he addressed the Gujarati diaspora in the US through a video conference on Sunday, May 12?

“Yes one can surely, fool some of the people some of the time, but NEVER all of the people all of the time!”

I have just recently returned from an interactive meet with Zakia Jafri and her son Tanveer, apart from several political activists, who have been detailing the horrifying carnage of 2002 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. This meet was held on May 7, after Zakia Jafri filed a Protest Petition before the Magistrate on April 15 “ to get a fair and transparent investigation against a Chief Minister, his Cabinet colleagues, senior administrators, policemen and front men and women of the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal.”

Several politicians also spoke at this meet, and two of them came up with some startling facts. DP Tripathi of the NCP said that way back in the mid-80s, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Madhav Singh Solanki, had told Tripathi that there are “international forces”   which are working in the State to whip up communal frenzy and strengthen Hindutva brigades. But when probed further on Modi, Tripathi beat a hasty retreat and said he had to go to another function.

Then Sitaram Yechury of the CPI (M) said that when he got the news of the carnage in Gujarat he decided to go to Ahmedabad, and he went there with Raj Babbar, Amar Singh and Shabana Azmi. They were in Ahmedabad on March 1, 2002. He described the atmosphere prevalent in the city. “The Police Commissioner of Ahmedabad was not to be seen the entire day and night, not even in the Police Headquarters. And the same day, that is on March 1, 2002, when I got in touch with the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi and asked him about the mass killings of the Muslims and the uncontrolled rioting, he said, ‘In logon ko sabak sikhana tha, aisa sabak jo woh zindagi bhar yaad rakhenge! (I wanted to teach these people a lesson, a lesson they’d remember all their lives!)

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.religiousindia.org, www.outlookindia.com, ibnlive.in.com)

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Saluting a mother on Mother’s Day

Parveena Ahangar’s son was picked up for ‘questioning’ by Kashmir police in 1990. She’s still waiting for him to return.
by Humra Quraishi

In between several scams being unearthed in this country daily, the more unfortunate among us have already geared up for Mother’s Day. Oh yes, it’s a big day to tell your mother how you feel! No matter how contrived this entire exercise might sound, there are several givers and takers for this day.

This Day brings to mind several unsettling questions. Where are those chiddren who are missing from their homes? Where are our young boys, who were picked up various security agencies for ‘interrogation’, never to return? What is the fate that befell their mothers? What kind of days do these mothers lead?

During my journalistic journeys to various parts of the country, I have met families who have had horrifying stories to recount of how their young children went missing, or were picked up for interrogation and either detained, or who have had time behind bars choke the life out of their fragile forms. There are children missing for these reasons in every part of this land, but the Government still does not seem to care enough to find them.

This is an ongoing reality in the Kashmir Valley – of teenaged boys being picked up for interrogation by various security agencies, never to return. They are declared missing, and their story seemingly ends there.

When I first met Parveena Ahangar (see pic on left and feature image), the Srinagar-based woman who heads APDP (Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons), she told me about her young ‘missing’ son, Javed. Listening to her, I felt emotionally drained, wondering at the extent of the brutality of today’s governance, where the State does not even stop at snatching away our young. It has been an ongoing fight since 1990 for this now middle-aged Kashmiri mother; it was in 1990 that her school-going son was picked up from their home in Srinagar’s Batmaloo locality and taken away for interrogation. Javed never returned and there has been no official news of his whereabouts at all.

“My son, Javed, was picked by security agencies in 1990. Security men came to our home to pick him up, saying they were taking him for interrogation. We pleaded with them, saying he couldn’t have done anything wrong, that he had just passed his matriculation. But they didn’t listen and took him to the interrogation centre at Pari Mahal. We never saw him again,” Parveena recounts.

That incident shattered the life of the entire family. Ahangar’s husband fell ill because of the trauma, and gave up working. He remains in poor health to this day. The other three children in the family were too young to realise the implications of their brother’s disappearance at that point, but the ongoing trauma has left its impact on them, too.

Today, Parveena heads the APDP, the longest ongoing non-violent movement of parents whose children have been taken for interrogation and never come home. Hundreds of families have been ruined by their loss as they try to cope with the trauma, but Ahangar is one of the steely few who will not give up the search. She says, “All these years we have been living in sorrow. I keep very unwell. We have exhausted all our resources trying to locate Javed in the various jails of this country, appealed to every possible government authority, to politicians across party lines…but there have only been disappointments.

I’m not giving up, and I will fight for as long as I’m alive. Ours is a peaceful, non- violent struggle, but the State and these politicians don’t bother. I am determined to carry on with the struggle.”

But not many mothers have her grit. Many have already given up hope. Their words echo in my ears: “To bury your dead son is one thing, but to go travelling from jail to jail and from police station to police station, looking for your son, is another sorrow.”

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, who has authored Everyone Lives in Fear, a report on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir, said to me in  an earlier interview on the missing young men of the Kashmir Valley, “The family members of those that ‘disappeared’ have been campaigning for years. Parents have died waiting for a lost son to come home. Wives live with the label of a half-widow. These disappearances are a lasting wound inKashmir, and we hope that families will finally have some answers and receive justice.

“Disappearances are among the most heinous of human rights violations because families are left without answers, caught between hope and despair. I have met numerous families that are still waiting for news of their loved ones. Some keep hoping for a magical reunion. Others say that they want at least to be able to weep at the grave of their lost one.”

Noted academic Uma Chakravarti, who formed a support group for APDP in Delhi, had told me during an earlier interview, “We need a judicial commission to probe J&K disappearances. No one wants to address the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the immunity it gives to the security forces, and that rapes, custodial killings and forced disappearances that will continue unless there is legal redress for violations of people’s rights. The easiest thing seems to be to not react or to pick up an item for a little while and then drop it.  The Government keeps talking about dialogue and confidence-building measures but has done little in terms of action.

The first thing it should do is to set up an independent judicial commission into disappearances so that the average Kashmiri and the individual families that have been pursuing the cases of the disappeared can have a sense of closure. This has been done in Sri Lanka to investigate the large number of disappearances in the 1980s. It will be the first step in pursuing State accountability. It will have a tremendous impact in Kashmir. It will demonstrate the Government’s commitment to a rule of law.”

(Pictures courtesy inshallahkashmir.com, githahariharan.com, freepresskashmir.com)

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