Comment
The ‘conscience’ put to rest?
RIGHT or Wrong? That is an invalid option when it comes to India. With plurality in every precinct of the land, there could only be multiple opinions. And, in our nation state, each time nationalism is evoked, it can’t possibly be seen in isolation of the context; the timing plays a role. But yes, there exists something called as ‘collective conscience’ that we the ‘Indians’ share. Influenced, induced, manoeuvred, hegemonized, even coerced, but it comes into existence, cited at times and completely ignored at another.
The hanging of Afzal Guru is not just about justice delivered, for the connotations are many and it only confounds the Kashmir discourse further. But if the silence and the rage is followed by violence, the Indian ‘collective’ shouldn’t be surprised.
According to the French sociologist, Émile Durkheim, society is an ensemble of ideas; it indicates a reality that is produced when individuals interact with one another, resulting in the fusion of individual consciences. Hence, society becomes greater, bigger than the sum of its parts and it supersedes the existence of any one particular individual and is wholly new and different from the parts that make it up. This refers to collective conscience. Within that framework, Indian nationalism becomes that collective unifying force.
So, I, as part of the collective, try to make sense of the pages devoted to ‘Afzal Guru Hanging’, for media is the agency that evokes and articulates the collective conscience. The front page headline announces: ‘Afzal Hanged at Last’ (Hindustan Times, 10 February 2013). Of course, the collective must have rallied for it. Finally, it happened. ‘Better late than never,’ says wife of the slain sub-inspector, who was among those killed in the Parliament attack (The Hindu, 10 February 2013). For her, justice has been delivered. The BJP repeats the same words, though all political parties agree that it should not be politicized.
Power, politics and violence. Can they be isolated from one another?
One needn’t be a student of political theory to understand that ‘all politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence’, but delve deeper and Hannah Arendt’s aphorism appears apt: ‘Power and violence are opposites; where one rules absolutely the other is absent. Violence appears when power is in jeopardy’ (On Violence). As for the capital punishment, I know the story – the man attacked the symbol of Indian democracy, hence must be punished.
The reference to the consensus on this has been made in the judgment, the excerpt of which The Indian Express (10 February 2013) carried: ‘The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender…’ Satisfied, I should be.
But immediately, it is the page one photograph in The Hindu (also on the back page of The Tribune) of the same day that comes in the way. The captions read: Bajrang Dal activists clash with Kashmiri students who were protesting the hanging of Afzal Guru, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Of course, it was not about India versus Kashmir. Correct me if I am wrong, aren’t protest and dissent essential to the functioning of a healthy democracy? Contested ideas and competing opinions, even when offending the prevailing sensibilities, are crucial to the existence of a free society. But, in practice, the voice that isn’t part of the chorus is stifled. It struggles for legitimacy despite being the mainstay – and not a glitch – of democratic governance. The verdict can’t be undone, too late for that.
As far as the legality of the verdict and the hanging is concerned, loopholes have been underscored. While senior advocate Kamini Jaiswal, who represented S.A.R. Geelani in the same case, says that ‘the government’s decision to hang Afzal Guru was fuelled by political considerations… his right to live has been violated’, senior lawyer Gopal Subramaniam maintains that Afzal Guru was given a free trial and the courts ensured his legal rights (The Hindu, 10 February 2013). The leaders of Kashmir, the activists in India, the lawyers, all should have worked overtime, aroused the collective conscience, convinced it of what was right, where things were missing. So, no point going on that street now. But this is not to say a protest can’t be articulated. It had the context.
The Kashmiris may not agree, but the Indians – the collective conscience – believe that Kashmir has always been an integral part of India, hence also its people. They have the right of space to protest. Can the slogan of nationalism legitimize the crushing of dissent? Do Bajrang Dal activists represent the collective conscience? Even if they get away by saying that the other party provoked or initiated, what about a Bajrang Dal activist having a ‘ladoo’ to celebrate the ‘justice’. Repulsive. Neither nationalism nor Indianness would sanction such a ‘reaction’. Let the collective conscience not be fooled. What is an Indian citizen supposed to read the picture as? What would a Kashmiri youth in the valley make of it? The answers, perhaps, needn’t be spelled out.
Yet again, there is no single interpretation of the ‘justice delivered’. No matter how hard you try, it can’t be dismissed: the Kashmir connection.
In 2006, in an interview to Vinod K. Jose, Afzal Guru had introduced himself in the following words:
Afzal as a young, enthusiastic, intelligent, idealistic young man, Afzal a Kashmiri influenced like many thousands in the Kashmir Valley in the political climate of the early 1990s, who was a JKLF member and crossed over to the other side of Kashmir, but in a matter of weeks got disillusioned and came back and tried to live a normal life, but was never allowed to do so by the security agencies who inordinate times picked me up, tortured the pulp out of me, electrified, frozen in cold water, dipped in petrol, smoked in chillies you name it, and falsely implicated in a case, with no lawyer, no fair trial, finally condemned to death. The lies the police told were propagated by you in media. And that perhaps created what the Supreme Court referred to as ‘collective conscience of the nation.’ And to satisfy that ‘collective conscience’, I’m condemned to death. That is the Mohammad Afzal you are meeting. (countercurrents.org)
Afzal’s story is that of many Kashmiri youth, also a counter-narrative to Indian nationalism. The security forces had a job to do, yes. They did it to the best of their ability, yes. But the human rights violations can’t be shelved as collateral damage. The cases where the high-handedness of the Army has been proved, the responsibility must be owned up. This is not to say that the acts of ‘men in green’ have solely been the doings of the security forces; for, there have been the jihadis or STF too. For the ordinary people it is misery, left, right and centre. If, on the one hand, the mujahideens hit them then, on the other hand, the state atrocities, humiliation on a daily basis through identity checks in one’s own homeland, the occupation of not just the territory but the mindspace of the two generations since 1989 has turned life into mere existence. The year 2012 was calm though tense; there was silence of violence but always simmering to flare up. So, the Indian collective shouldn’t be surprised if sounds of violence are heard once again.
The armed movement may have lost the momentum, but in Kashmir there can be no guarantees. We have seen that in 2008-2010.
Afzal’s body was buried near Jail No. 3, right next to the grave of Kashmiri separatist Maqbool Butt, who too was hanged in Tihar on 11 February 1984. But a jail official, on condition of anonymity, points at the dissimilarity: ‘But there is a difference between the two. While Butt was a separatist leader, Afzal never spoke about secession of Kashmir from India. In fact, he used to tell us that he had been unnecessarily dragged into this. In fact, he actually believed in ridding India of corruption’ (The Hindu, 11 February 2013). The two Kashmiris hanged may have had different ideologies, diverging trajectories, not the same status among the masses, yet the two have something in common: empty graves in the ‘martyr’s graveyard’ in Kashmir.
Just as Bhat became a rallying point, Guru too will in the Kashmir discourse. In fact, has already been ‘memorialized’ as a reference point. On 11 February 2013, TimesNow news channel reported separatist JKLF leader Yasin Malik sharing the dais with 26/11 Mumbai terror attack mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba chief, Hafiz Saeed, to mourn the execution of Parliament attack conspirator Afzal Guru in Islamabad. In the background, the poster carrying pictures of Maqbool Bhat and Afzal Guru read: ‘Hanging Bhat did not work, Hanging Guru will not work.’ Never mind Afzal Guru’s ideology, he is now the new motif for struggle, resistance and rebellion in the valley.
If J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, even if his motive is to guard his political interests, says that the present generation has found their own ‘hero’, the ‘martyr’, to identify with, he isn’t wrong. How does one deny the collective conscience of the people of Kashmir? As far as stroking the sentiments, well the Indian government has done that by sending a ‘speed post’ to inform Afzal’s family about the rejection of the mercy petition and execution, knowing fully well that it wouldn’t reach in time: The Union Home Minister and the Home Secretary’s public statement that the family was informed at the ‘right time’ about the decision stands exposed as the government dispatched the courier only 32 hours before the hanging. (Deccan Herald, 11 February 2013)
The intention, perhaps, is clear. Or rather, lack of any intention is more apparent.
Why did the government take almost two days to dispatch the letter on 8 February at 12:07 am to Guru’s family when the letter (number F3/SCJ3/AS (W)/2013/189) was drafted by superintendent Tihar Central Jail No. 3 on 6 February to inform Guru’s wife, Tabasum, about his hanging. It was delivered to Tabassum on 11 February at 11:03 am at her Sopore residence – which was two days after he was hanged, as per the newspaper reports. If anybody thinks that this story will not be passed on through the generations in Kashmir, the person is only being idealistic. Travel into the interiors in Kashmir and stories and rumours are the only reality that the people know.
Security may be the reason, but it is hard to buy. Be it the baggage of history, trust deficit between Kashmir and the state and the repression that followed since 1989, the events in Kashmir are viewed differently, depending where you are positioned. In an answer to Jose’s question as to what he would want to be known as, Afzal had pronounced his own name. But what followed perhaps is his perspective of reality, how the collectives differ:
I am Afzal for Kashmiris, and I am Afzal for Indians as well, but the two groups have an entirely conflicting perception of my being. I would naturally trust the judgment of Kashmiri people, not only because I am one among them but also because they are well aware of the reality I have been through and they cannot be misled into believing any distorted version of either a history or an incident. (countercurrents.org)
In not so many words, Afzal Guru seems to have underscored the relationship between India and Kashmir – trust deficit, to begin with. But the point I am trying to make through the reading of the ‘Afzal Guru Hanging’ is that there are too many questions left unanswered. Also, for the ordinary masses, who make the ‘collective conscience’, taking sides is the only option left. The Right is manipulated and perhaps the collective unconsciousness is aware of this.
Manisha Gangahar
Is small beautiful?
THE votaries for the reorganization of the existing large states often maintain that ‘development problems’ are more effectively and efficiently administered in smaller states because political and administrative functionaries can reach every part of the state and develop a live contact with their citizens. Further, alongside an effective overseeing of developmental activities, the quality of governance can also improve because the local people become more democratically active as they see that the ‘government is close’ to their districts, tehsils, panchayats et al. Democratizing the politics of development is feasible only if state boundaries are manageable and viable. Interestingly, neither the Fazal Ali Commission for the Reorganization of States appointed by the Nehru government in 1956, nor the latest Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee appointed by the Manmohan Singh government to examine the arguments advanced by the champions of a separate Telangana state demanding the reorganization of the existing Andhra Pradesh, accepted that the creation of new states or the reorganization of the existing large states was a simple issue of ‘development and democracy’, as supporters of the idea of small size claim.
The Fazal Ali Commission, after a comprehensive study of the complex problem of redrawing the administrative map of India tried to marry the challenge of reconciling the sensitive issues of language and culture with the need for good administration. It is thus simplistic to claim that after the Fazal Ali Commission Report, India was administratively restructured on the basis of linguistic-cultural considerations of the inhabitants of various states of India. The Fazal Ali Commission had equally to grapple with the problem of minority language groups in every state, and special rights and protections were suggested for minority linguistic areas in Kannadiga speaking Karnataka.
Though a Telugu speaking Andhra Pradesh was established after Potti Sriramulu’s fast unto death, the regions of Rayalseema, coastal Andhra and Telangana, all Telugu speaking people, are at loggerheads with one another and want a separate state because Telugu language and culture, which was expected to bind them together, is proving a weak link and the Justice Srikrishna Committee had to suggest ‘six options’ for a solution to the complex problem of the creation of a separate Telangana.
It was not only the Nehru government or the Manmohan Singh government, Indira Gandhi too in 1966 had to divide Punjab into three states – Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh – not because of any demand for administrative viability of small states, but because of the agitation by the Akali Dal and Sant Fateh Singh’s fast unto death for creation of a separate Punjab state for the majority Sikh population. It is worth remembering that neither reorganization of states nor bifurcation of an existing state has ever been a ‘smooth affair’, a fact recognized by Jawaharlal Nehru who warned the then chief ministers of the need for not falling prey to the burst of emotions on the issue of creation of new states in post-independent India.
The upshot is that by itself a strong cultural binding of a linguistic community-based state like Andhra Pradesh or Uttar Pradesh has not proved effective enough to keep the state united and the demand for the creation of new states on the ground of ‘backwardness’ of sub-regions in a large state has gained steam. It is not only that the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and other political formations are agitating for a separate Telangana from Andhra Pradesh, in Hindi speaking Uttar Pradesh, even after the creation of Uttaranchal, the Bundelkhand region is also demanding separation because it has been neglected and ignored by the ruling groups of Uttar Pradesh.
The Marathi speaking Vidarbha region too is itching for ‘separation’ from Marathi speaking Maharashtra state because the dominant political groups in a united Maharashtra have left Vidarbha backward. It clearly shows that the demand for new states is ‘grievance based’ because the dominant political groups have ignored the issues facing backward sub-regions in their states. It is thus time that we shift focus away from culture, language or grievance based arguments as mentioned above, to examining the empirical political and economic reality of the new states of small size which may be created.
I argue that development is size neutral and it hardly matters if the state or region is ‘large or small’ because ‘development’ is primarily based on the existing power structure in a specific region and the social groups which control the levers of power decide and determine their priorities keeping in view the needs or requirements of their own specific social constituencies.
The distribution of public resources is politically determined and development and underdevelopment of a country, a region or a sub-region, large or small, essentially depends on those who rule. Consequently, regional backwardness cannot be eradicated by merely redrawing the territorial boundaries of regions because politics of development, even in the new created states, will be decided only by those social classes who rule them. The new state of Jharkhand, a dreamland for ‘tribals’, has already experienced President’s Rule three times and eight governments have been formed in the state during the 12 years of its existence. Incidentally, the President had to suspend the current assembly on 18 January. Further, the tribal chief ministers of Jharkhand have only followed the foot-steps of the small state of Haryana created in 1966 which gained notoriety for practising the ‘politics of Aya Ram-Gaya Ram’. Many former chief ministers of these new and small states are in prison for corruption and misuse of authority while in office.
The new tribal state of Chhattisgarh, be it under Ajit Jogi or Raman Singh, has made little difference to the situation in Bastar district where forest friendly and forest dependent tribals remain neglected and oppressed, forced to live like ‘the wretched of the earth’. So does small size automatically lead to development for the hitherto neglected poor tribal population who have been betrayed by their own leaders, a situation no different from the rest of India? It should not be forgotten that challenges to development faced by the entire country in this age of globalized finance capitalist system has forced every prime minister and chief minister, of large and small states, to stand in a ‘queue’ for FDI and in this cut-throat competition, the winner or loser is decided by multinational corporations and international financial institutions where ‘size’ of the country or state government just does not matter.
The backward tribal regions, including in new states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, are under siege by powerful MNCs because these tribal states are rich in mineral resources and coal mines which are required by big business, both Indian and foreign. If the whole of India is structurally integrated into the global capitalist system, and if leaders of every political formulation, whether all-India or regional or sub-regional, work on the basis of ‘consensus’ on the capitalist path of development, it needs no prophet to predict that since ‘development and underdevelopment’ are a product of the logic of capitalism, in this race, ‘others’ will move forward and ‘some’ will be left behind.
It hardly matters whether the state of Gujarat is small or large. The chief minister, Narendra Modi, has managed to successfully project himself, thereby attracting leaders of the European Union or the United States and Indian billionaires for making investments in Gujarat. The backward state of Odisha too has attracted large investments by the South Korea’s POSCO or Indian conglomerates, without providing any protection to the displaced inhabitants even as Navin Patnaik of the Biju Janata Dal continues to champion the cause of development of Odisha.
It bears reiteration that every state is following the same model of development, and none of the new so called ‘baby states’ have experimented with an alternative model of development. If small size states could be an Aladdin lamp for the eradication of inherited backwardness, all the ‘little sisters’ of North East India would have been shining examples of peace and prosperity. Social conflicts, whether attributed to people’s war groups or tribal vs tribal in the North East, have not and cannot be resolved merely because of the small size of the states. The upshot is that the rising demand for the creation of new small size states is untenable, because it is not ‘size’ but the ‘model of politics’ which creates essential conditions for development. At best, this demand is a ‘diversionary tactic’ adopted by competing powerful groups with a view to capturing power in the areas of their social influence.
C.P. Bhambhri
Puritanism or play?
‘He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it in the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fantasy, and winged it with paradox.’
– Oscar Wilde
DO ideas grow only by logical reasoning or do they also grow, as children do, in sleep, in dreams, in play, in flashes of insight? Those who advocate that all our speech be such as cannot possibly hurt the feelings of any individual or any group anywhere, are in effect requiring that we restrict ourselves to mathematical propositions. Even in mathematical argument we would not be able to go much beyond two plus two equals four. Because if we suggest that groups which constitute a majority of the population must logically also constitute a majority of those engaging in an activity that almost the entire population is known to engage in, we could still end up hurting the feelings of those groups.
Most of us would agree that political speeches anywhere in the world today are much less interesting as texts than novels or poems. This is in part because modern politicians have to watch every word they say. Interesting and complex ideas do not arise when we are anxiously policing every word we say or write. Rather, they arise when we wander in the wilderness of thought, by indirections finding directions out. To begin a discussion absolutely sure of the rightness or wrongness of every possible proposition involved is to end it having learnt nothing and having suggested nothing to our interlocutors. More important, there is little that is pleasurable in such a discussion except perhaps the pleasure of thinking we are right, a petty pleasure not conducive to growth.
Literature and philosophy are grounded in intellectual and imaginative play. Our puritanical era is deeply suspicious of playfulness. We want a literary or philosophical work to read like a political speech or a sermon, and philosophers to sound like politicians. Yet whether or not we admit it, our imaginations also yearn to be surprised, even shocked into fresh thought. Ashis Nandy is one of the few thinkers who manages to surprise and sometimes shock us. He was speaking at a literary festival, not a political party’s convention, and yes, at the risk of offending all those who think there is no difference between literature and politics, let me insist that there is a difference, if in no other respect, then in the kind of pleasure to be derived from a literary event and a political event.
India has long-standing and powerful traditions of encouraging playful, paradoxical, puzzling speech. Invoking one such tradition, that of batras or the pleasure of conversation, Hindi writer Archana Varma writes: ‘Intellectual examples of batras once abounded in academic forums. In the duet between beauty and vulgarity, philosophical propositions could be presented in completely unexpected contexts. … But the age of batras has passed. This is the age of the politics of hurt feelings and political correctness. Either die of staying alert every moment or be killed for not staying alert. This is the predicament of a batrasiya like Ashis Nandy.’
1That which gives one person pleasure may be painful to another; this is a fact of life. If I do not like a certain painting, cartoon, film or conversation, I have the right not to look at or listen to it. I also have the right to criticise it in speech or in writing. Do I, however, have the right to forbid anyone else to enjoy it? In most cases, no. If I find techno music jarring, I cannot forbid my neighbours to listen to it unless they play it so loud that they inflict it on me. But if I can claim that it offends or hurts me as a member of a group, I can invoke the law not only to forbid others to enjoy it but actually to get the musician arrested and jailed. To take this to its logical conclusion, we must do as the seventeenth-century Puritan government in England did – forbid all fiction, theatre and music, and shut down free speech altogether. That way, we will be sure that nobody gets hurt. We will also be sure that no one exercises that most dangerous faculty of all – the imagination.
Ruth Vanita
Footnote:
1. My translation from her post on Facebook.
The politics, and art, of protest
THERE is something vaguely discomfiting about policemen in uniform going around a gallery, taking photographs of the exhibits on the walls, especially since the paintings in question have drawn the ire of protesters outside. Is this the collection of ‘proof’ against something that might hurt popular sentiment? Or make it a cognizable offence? Or is it merely intended as dining table conversation as the uniformed men – remarkably well behaved and supportive – share a favourite, or promiscuous, or witty image with a spouse?
We are on edge because the gallery phone lines and email box have been flooded by calls and mails remonstrating over an exhibition on Indian nudes, a historic exposition that studies the manner in which modern masters have treated the human form over a little more than a century. We must withdraw the exhibition, the callers entreat those who respond to their telephone calls. The threat of violence is implied, never spelled out. But a group of women from the Durga Vahini hold a demonstration outside the gallery after claiming to be disgusted with what they claim to have viewed inside the gallery.
The Durga Vahini and Matri Shakti are the women’s wings of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a right-wing formation, and collectively – so they inform us – they have planned a protest against the exhibition two days later. They let Delhi Police know as well, and of course, the media. They have only one agenda: the exhibition must shut down.
In the gallery, we are sure that we will not give in to the bullying and arm-twisting. The exhibition must stay open. I send out a text to friends asking them to support us by joining us at the same time as the protestors. The police make their bandobast, complete with barricades. Friends – writers, columnists, artists – trickle in, but are little match for the strength of the media, which is largely supportive but also equally intrusive. Not many are art writers, so I seize the opportunity to give them a curatorial summation on the politics of the human body as an art prop, how in viewing the exhibition it is important to make the distinction between the naked body and that which might be considered a nude, and how this adds up in the narration of art over the extent of the 20th century. There is a tradition of nudity in Indian art, writers and artists assembled within the gallery tell the gathered media. While I do not oppose this view, I find that argument fundamentally flawed – and defensive. The exhibition is not based on past practices, it looks at only the context of modern art and therefore it’s validity and legitimacy lies in the present. It does not require Khajuraho or the Kamasutra to validate it. The exhibition would have cogency even in the absence of Khajuraho or Konark or the Kamasutra, I tell the press. They acknowledge the rationality of the argument.
The protestors are late; maybe they will not come, after all. Our support group wanders off – some to work, others to lunch. By the time the protestors do show up, only a few are left, but the media has remained behind. The group of women – between thirty and fifty – hold placards, chant slogans. The few of our support group leaves the sanctuary of the gallery to try and talk to them, something that a VHP ‘leader’ tries to discourage. There are paintings of the Delhi gang-rape victim, the protestors tell our support group (untrue). The images commodify women, which may be partially true, but in a retrospective of Indian nude art, it forms merely part of a narrative in which issues such as violence, gender, femininity, feminism, ownership of the body, science, colonial politics, all form part of an art historical discourse.
The women protestors, though, claim to be incensed. Would the support group – many of them women – allow their mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, to see the exhibition? Yes they would, or they already have, they’re informed. An impasse has been arrived at. What next? Would they like to see the art, the supporters ask, to understand what the curator has to say? There is hesitation. A senior policeman enters the gallery to ask if it is okay for the protestors, all or even a few, to enter the gallery. In view of their attempt of only a short while ago to break the police barricade, the genuine fear of vandalism, but mostly in view of the presence of the media in which they might attempt to sensationalise their protest, I decline. I will welcome them, I say, provided they withdraw their protest.
Given the stalemate, with nothing new to add, the rally begins to flail, the slogan shouting in now limp. The media senses nothing new is about to happen. Cameras and dictaphones are switched off. The protestors walk back to their bus. The media withdraws. The police barricades remain, but the police presence reduces. The policemen and women have been friendly – or, at least, they have not been hostile. They have the experience of similar protests and understand better than us something that has been stage-managed as a media event. The following day, like the protestors, they are gone too.
Did the protestors really care? The answer to that is only too evident. That the exhibition happened in a private gallery and space is perhaps the only reason why, despite being targeted, it has not been pulled down. Would a state institution have been able to withstand similar dissent? Given the capitulation of the political class and the administration in recent times, there is little ground for hope on that score.
Kishore Singh
* The exhibition ‘The Naked and the Nude, The Body in Indian Modern Art’, is on view at Delhi Art Gallery, 11 Hauz Khas Village, till 20 March 2013. The writer is the curator of the exhibition, and head of exhibitions and publications at the gallery.
