Tag: shiv sena

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Enough said

Another ‘victim’, another time

This is the story of Jyotirmaya Sharma, a professor attacked by Right Wing goons in 1993 because he ‘looked Muslim’.
by Humra Quraishi

Mohsin ShaikhAs the details of the daylight murder of the Pune-based techie Mohsin Shaikh (in pic on left) by a Right Wing brigade came in, I was reminded of another such incident that had taken place in Mumbai earlier – only it ended with the victim surviving death.

The victim, professor Jyotirmaya Sharma (in pic above), had been brutally attacked, allegedly by a group of Shiv Sainiks, simply because he ‘looked like a Muslim’!

Jyotirmaya had told me about the incident on a previous occasion, but after Mohsin’s killing in Pune, I got in touch with him again to know all the details. He is a well-known academic and author, the Professor of Political Science at the University of Hyderabad and has authored three books on Hindutva, the RSS and the making of a Hindu rashtra.

This is what Jyotirmaya had to say: “I had returned from London and had joined the New Delhi-based CSDS as a Research Fellow. Though the rest of my bags and suitcases had arrived, those containing my books were stuck at the shipping company’s office in Mumbai. So I had to travel from Delhi to Mumbai to get them back.

“I landed in Mumbai and hired a taxi to reach the shipping company’s office. It was on January 10, 1993, and riots were erupting in Mumbai. Soon, my taxi was stopped by a bunch of Shiv Sainiks. While the taxi driver fled, these goons caught hold of me – because of my beard, they thought I was a Muslim. I kept telling them my name and showing them my passport, but they kept beating me, saying my passport was fake and so was my name.

“They were so certain I was a Muslim…when I told them I could recite the Gayatri Mantra, they said even Muslims had learnt the Mantra. Finally, one of them told me to recite the Gita. I did and they let me off. By then, I was badly thrashed and my shoulder was dislocated.”

He never complained to the cops, even as the city burned and a Canadian Sikh was killed on the street because somebody thought he was a Muslim. But Jyotirmaya continues to keep his beard to this day. “One can’t give in,” he says. One has to keep on resisting. You cannot be bullied by these Right Wing fanatics. Today they say, ‘Don’t look like a Muslim’. Tomorrow they will say, ‘Wear only saffron robes’. Where will this end?” he asks.

I have been to Mumbai just once, in the winter of 2006. While commuting in the city, I saw several young women, many of them college students, moving about in hijabs or burqas. I asked some of them if it was okay for them to ‘stand out’ as Muslims. One girl, Hasina Khan, said, “I am without a veil, but my college going sister insists on wearing a hijab. She says wearing a hijab makes her feel protected…”

I also learnt that more middle class Muslim women in Mumbai wear veils and burqas. As Rehana Mubeen Khan and Safia Khatoon Abdul Khaliq told me, they cover their heads because they feel it’s the way a dignified woman ought to look. “What’s wrong in us showing our identity? We keep to ourselves, to our own community people. It’s safer that way,” they said.

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 timesofap.com, www.cbc.ca)

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Big story

Thousands lose their homes while the rain pours down

Several hutments were demolished recently at different spots in Mumbai. Where will these people go while rains lash the city?
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

khar east andolanThe monsoons have set in Mumbai and Maharashtra in earnest, at least three days before expected time of arrival. And while the monsoon brings its usual problems for the average Mumbaikar – water-logged roads, floating garbage, leakages in walls and erratic trains, for some Mumbaikars, this monsoon is going to test their survival skills.

On June 4, 2013, some slums in Mumbai were witness to demolitions via bulldozers and they also suffered their share of police brutality as they tried to save their homes. “Bulldozers mowed down houses at Ganpat Patil Nagar, Sanjay Nagar, Indira Nagar and Adarsh Nagar. Around 250 houses were demolished at Ganpat Patil Nagar and more than 300 houses were broken down at Adarsh Nagar-Indira Nagar and Sanjay Nagar,” said an activist attached with the Medha Patkar-led National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM).

“As always, the police force was present in huge numbers and disrespectful to the protestors that included men, women, children and the aged. Even the pregnant ladies were not excused of high handedness. With the onset of the monsoon, these people’s vulnerability is increased as they have no roof over their heads and their belongings either crushed or lying here and there,” he added.

NAPM alleges that the demolition drive at Ganpat Patil Nagar was done under the pretext of ‘protecting mangroves’ as per the orders of the Bombay High Court, “which not at all had said anything about demolishing slums. The over enthusiasm shown by the local MLA of Shiv Sena – Vinod Ghosalkar – in demolishing this slum and evicting the families from the land exposes the nexus with the land mafia which wants to transform this locality into high rise buildings and towers. Even the Forest Department has informed that they do not want for demolition of slums but only protection of mangroves.”

At Indira Nagar, Adarsh Nagar and Sanjay Nagar, the demolitions were done to widen a nallah (sewerage line) in time for the rains; demolitions were carried out at the same spots last year for the same reason. Activist Siraj Ahmed, who was detained by the police for protesting the demolition, said that the nallah was never widened despite repeated demolitions.

“Most shocking and deplorable is the fact that in January this year, no less than the Chief Minister of Maharashtra and the Chief Secretary had promised to under take a survey of the these khar eastsettlements for the purpose of declaring them as slums and provisioning of basic amenities,” an NAPM release says. “Instead of water pipe lines and toilet blocks, they have sent bulldozers and police force. It seems that the slogan of ‘slum free India’ is to be realised by bulldozing the existing slums and not be upgrading or resettling them.”

(Pictures courtesy tehelka.com, khareastandolan.wordpress.com. Pictures are file images)

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Learn

Bandh? What bandh?

Except for nationalised banks and RTOs, everything was in working order in Mumbai on Day 1 of two-day national strike.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

In recent times, and most recently after the death of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray last month, any cry for bandh in the city and with which the Shiv Sena is associated, has always been met with almost unanimous participation. However, in what can only be seen as good news for the country’s financial capital, Day 1 of the two-day national bandh went off without anybody realising that it was a bandh at all.

Except for nationalised banks, which remained closed and will remain closed today as well, and employees not of the rank of officer at the city’s RTOs, every other service was available to the public yesterday. Apart from autorickshaws and taxis plying, BEST buses turned out in full force, registering a 100 per cent attendance among bus conductors and 98 per cent attendance among drivers.

Meanwhile, all essential services were available to the city all day – except, of course, from chemist shops, which resolutely downed shutters at 6 pm yesterday as well.

Day 2 of the bandh is expected to go along the same lines as Day 1 in Mumbai. However, the rest of the country has not been so fortunate, with reports of commuter woes and closed shops and establishments doing the rounds since yesterday.

(Picture courtesy phulme.wordpress.com)

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Diaries

News event of the year

The Palghar Facebook arrests showed us the foolhardy side of police action, thus forcing the Government to make swift reprisals.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

It was an innocuous post on Facebook, as most posts go. A student from Palghar, 21-year-old Shaheen Dhada, was upset over the total lockdown of Mumbai and its outlying suburbs after the death of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on November 17, 2012. Taking to Facebook to vent her anger, little did Shaheen know that a simple post questioning the logic behind the shutdown would soon get her arrested.

Similarly unaware of the impending storm was her friend Rinu Srinivasan, also 21 and also a Palghar resident. Rinu ‘liked’ the post.

And there the matter would have rested.

However, the post was brought to the attention of Bhushan Sankhe, Palghar’s Sena shakha pramukh,  who was suitably upset by Shaheen’s remark and Rinu’s appreciation of it. Very soon,  a mob of Shiv Sainiks was mobilised into action, they went to Shaheen’s house, vandalised her uncle’s clinic, and that night, Shaheen and Rinu were arrested.

These arrests marked a watershed moment in a year that saw the imprisonment of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi and the taking down of his website, the jailing of a Kolkata professor after he forwarded a cartoon of Mamata Banerjee over email, the abrupt cutting off of video channels like Vimeo at the hands of entertainment giants like Reliance and the mass blocking of Twitter and Facebook accounts in the aftermath of the Assam violence, to name a few.

The public, already bewildered by the seemingly indiscriminate clampdown on its internet freedom on various pretexts, was pushed past the boiling point after the two girls were arrested. Already furious over being forced to wait out Thackeray’s funeral in their homes, the city erupted in protest after Shaheen and Rinu were not just arrested, but a local magistrate awarded them a 14-day judicial custody term.

Spurred into action by the rising protests, first from Mumbai and then from all over the country, the State Government ordered a probe into the matter, then after the police action was deemed inappropriate and hasty. The girls were finally let off, the charges against them were subsequently dropped, and both the girls are now back on Facebook.

But perhaps the biggest offshoot of the entire incident was that the public, used to not voicing its opinions on the Shiv Sena, went full throttle in its criticism of the party’s strong-arm tactics.

‘Diaries’ is a series of stories on one theme. The Yearender Diaries seek to capture the most telling moments, happenings and people in the city this year. Watch out for Personality of the Year tomorrow.

(Picture courtesy indiavision.com) 

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Diaries

Event of the year

The biggest funeral in Maharashtra this year, after Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s in 1956, came with its fair share of controversies.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Part 2 of our Yearender Diaries 

It was expected to be a funeral of somewhat large proportions. The city of Mumbai was to pay a silent homage, and was told to be off the streets. Some unkind people even said that if you had the money and the muscle power, it wasn’t that tough to get a big crowd together. That fear of retribution would force people to attend the funeral, just as fear had compelled every Mumbaikar to silently take whatever the dead man had thrown at the city all his life.

Bal Thackeray, founder of the Shiv Sena, passed away on November 17, 2012. It was a Saturday, and when the announcement was finally made from his residence, Matoshree, it was 3 pm. In a few minutes, the city began to shut down – first the shops, then its offices, then its transport. As the grieving at Matoshree began, so did another momentous phenomenon: a bandh which the late leader had not called for, for the first time the Sena’s life.

It was probably a fitting tribute to Thackeray; bandhs had characterised his party’s workings for a better part of forty-odd years, and a bandh it was that saw him through on his last journey.

Everything remained shut till Sunday night, by which time the late leader’s funeral had already taken place at Shivaji Park. But those two days of a total lockdown were difficult to get past – most people, accustomed to doing their shopping on Saturday evening, found they had no milk, vegetables or anything to eat. Sunday dawned without respite, and in some places, without newspapers. By evening of that day, all entertainment channels on TV had been blocked. So all one could do was watch the funeral live.

On the other side, there was a genuine outpouring of grief. Not after Dr BR Ambedkar’s funeral in 1956 had Maharashtra witnessed such a deluge of mourners descending on the city in such a short span of time. It would be churlish to say that all of those gathered were Shiv Sainiks and their families alone – the crowd largely comprised Sena voters and Bal Thackeray admirers – and nobody was ordered to be part of the funeral procession.

And even before his mortal remains had reached the cremation grounds, rumblings over what the party would do without his stewardship began. Questions about the Uddhav-Raj equation resurfaced. Declarations of ‘The Shiv Sena is finished!’ were made, sometimes on TV. But all the screaming rhetoric quietened as the body was finally laid to rest. When the funeral pyre was lit, everybody cried.

It has been over a month since his death, but the man is anything but forgotten, and not just because of controversies linked to where his memorial should be, or if people should be arrested merely for stating an opinion on a social networking site. It is said that the measure of a man’s life is made by the numbers of people who show up at his funeral. If the numbers at Bal Thackeray’s funeral were anything to go by, he lived a very successful life indeed.

‘Diaries’ is a series of stories on one theme. The Yearender Diaries seeks to capture the most telling moments, happenings and people in the city this year. Watch out for News Event of the Year tomorrow.

(Picture courtesy bbc.co.uk)

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Event

Ghashiram Kotwal is 41 years old

A response to the rise of the Shiv Sena in the ’60s, controversial play celebrates 41 years of stage time.

The Marathi theatre scene of the 1960s and ’70s was known for its bold, contemporary and often brutal analyses of dominant social themes of the time. And one of the foremost writers and playwrights of the time was the late Vijay Tendulkar, who penned some of his masterpieces during this time, such as Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe, Gidhade and Ghashiram Kotwal.

This last celebrated 41 years of being on the Marathi stage on Sunday, December 16. Originally directed by Jabbar Patel, the play boasted some truly excellent music by the late Pandit Bhaskar Chandavarkar and choreography by Krishnadev Mulgund. The play is based on the life of Nana Phadnavis, who was a prominent minister in the court of Peshwas of Pune, and it talks about  men in power who give rise to certain ideologies to serve their purposes, and later destroy those ideologies when they become useless.

Reproduced below are late music director Bhaskar Chandavarkar’s thoughts on the play:

‘Ghashiram Kotwal was first staged in December 1972. Within a span of ten shows (a short period of some weeks) it became a controversial play. Vijay Tendulkar, the playwright, has already faced severe, some times violent opposition to his earlier plays. He was subjected to a humiliating  ‘manhunt’ because of Ghashiram. The controversy revolved around two points. The first was that he has misrepresented history and the other was that he had trivialised and defamed Nana Phadnavis.

Actually, the points were political. The play has, to this day, remained extremely relevant because of the measured political statement it makes about fascism. The a-historic legend or myth, around which the playwright weaves his plot, seems to surface in many parts of the world. Violence, political manipulations, and the nexus between crime, sex and power is what Vijay Tendulkar explores. The historians may not agree with the interpretation of history that the playwright visualises. But the
playwright asks if there is any objectively ‘true’ history? And do we learn from history at all?

Ghashiram Kotwal became a path breaker because of the form of presentation. ‘Dashavtari Khele’ a folk theatre form like the Tamasha, Lavani, Gavlan etc. that have found their way into the presentation. The play therefore becomes a musical. It is not a musical comedy that has been modeled on the American Broadway type. In an innovative way, the folk sensibilities and basic
political awareness have been woven together in a typically Indian setting.

Songs, dance and music have to shoulder responsibilities other than that of being merely entertaining numbers. They are here to bring out the strong feelings, the undercurrent of the social protest. If the establishment uses the established music as its political tool to perpetuate power, artists must use non-established forms of art to rebel and revolt. Ghashiram Kotwal thus becomes a political statement.

The presentation and staging will hopefully transcend the language barrier because, tragically, we still have Ghashiram-like situations happening all over the world.’

(Pictures courtesy Yaashee Entertainment)

 

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