How can communities decide criminal cases?

It’s barely been two days since Nidhi Gupta and her two kids died. Her father, Bimal Jalan, has mentioned harassment by her in-laws but has not yet filed a police complaint. A report says that some members of the Marwari community have intervened:

“We are here to negotiate with Nidhi’s father. It’s a community matter. Taking matters to court and the police will only worsen matters. The community will meet and take this issue to its logical end.”

Logical end? Death too is. What are they planning to negotiate about – that her suicide note was genuine (it may or may not be), that she was happy, that he should accept his daughter was mentally disturbed for other reasons? Negotiate! Disgusting.

How is this case a community matter? It is not a domestic dispute. Three people have died in an unnatural manner. The cops were called in. How can any community decide on such things and in effect make the police and the courts seem redundant?

Are we planning to have individual community durbars? I have already expressed my views against fatwas. This is no better. But being an influential group, who knows what will happen? How many media people will question this attitude and try interfering as they usually are wont to do in other ‘lesser’ people’s affairs?

The Misinterpreters of Kashmir’s Maladies

Squabbling over the spoils

The Misinterpreters of Kashmir’s Maladies
by Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, November 12-14

Kashmir has gone. It has gone out of the hands of those affected – the ones who are killed, who have suffered for two decades, who are unemployed, and those who are victims of the state and of militancy. Today, it is a hothouse plant being nursed by activists and interlocutors. A state under siege has been taken over by ‘well-wishers’ that span the whole yard between talking the language of the government to talking the tongue of separatists, and there is no uniform separatist stand, a moot factor they completely ignore in their enthusiasm to be anti-establishment proponents.

They are mimicking the positions taken thus far with not a single new insight or solution. The theory of accession and dialogue with Pakistan have been mentioned by the local population and voiced by extremist groups for long. Why, even the Indian government has talked with Pakistan and brings separatist organisations to the table. Almost overnight the Valley has begun resonating with ‘packages’, sedition charges and cries of censorship. Instead of being a mirror to people’s aspirations, these moves are alienating the movement at the bottom and becoming a case for a Kashmir caretaker manoeuvre. Did you hear of sedition charges and hate-mongering when stone-pelters came out in the streets? People are indeed put behind bars, often for no reason other than suspicion. Did anyone take up their cause? Were fears expressed over their freedom of expression being curtailed?

Headlines like ‘Kashmir on the boil’ should be about the genuine dissent among the local population. Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s calendar of protest days is not the cause of Kashmiri angst; it is the result of it. It is Geelani who is capitalising on the movement. The holed-up seminar lobbies cannot incite those who have already suffered and been victims of gunfire. They are merely riding on the wave, as they often do, and the result is that the media creates pedestals for their verbal bravery, spreading rumours about their possible incarceration, sometimes prompting the state to act against them. They become the visible visage of a movement, a five-star concern industry that has no hands-on experience.

The urban media treats them as the legitimate voice, ignoring that they are merely employing smarter words, obfuscating them carefully with a general tone of being against injustice anywhere. No one is interested in the state of their conscience; this is a nuts and bolts issue and merely standing before ‘Azaadi’ banners means nothing. What is the freedom from and what is the freedom for?

The government appoints a team of interlocutors - journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, academician Radha Kumar and former Information Commissioner M. M. Ansari. What is their understanding of the Kashmir issue? I do not mean skiing down the Gulmarg slopes or even visiting Lal Chowk in a bullet-proof vehicle and then returning to write about ‘disaffection’. Yet, surprisingly, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah pronounces, “In a small period that they have spent in the Valley, the views of interlocutors are attracting more attention than those expressed by the people who are staying away from them.” In a curfew-ridden place even loud bird sounds would draw attention. This reveals glaringly the government’s lack of confidence and acts as a diversionary tactic.

Then there is the Kashmir Committee headed by BJP’s Ram Jethmalani who is back in the TV studios issuing statements like, “We had a written agreement with the Hurriyat on five key issues. The main points are — violence and terror were to be totally outlawed; the solution must be acceptable to all parties and sections, which means it included people of Ladakh and Jammu. Extremist positions like scrapping of Article 370 of the Constitution and the demand for secession were to be abandoned, displaced Pandits have to be rehabilitated with full dignity; and that the new dispensation will be a democracy of equal rights.”

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq of the Hurriyat Conference immediately declared there was no such agreement. Besides, these five points do not offer anything concrete. How can terror be outlawed when on paper it is a crime? Does he expect that the people will just give up their demands? And who has stopped the Pandits from returning to the Valley? If equal rights are of such great import, then he might like to take a look at the displaced Pandits and the Muslims in the Valley and see the difference in their levels of rehabilitation. Only because he agreed with the viewpoint regarding dialogue with Pakistan, his party is reportedly gunning for him.

The problem is that there are many martyrs-in-the-making in the Tower of Babel that the Kashmir issue has become. Activist groups are squabbling over the spoils but they cannot decide Kashmir’s fate. The shoe-throwers are different from the stone-pelters, although the victims of the former get more mileage. Each group will claim that it is speaking on behalf of the people, conveniently forgetting that the ground-level protestors remain faceless and small media sections in the Valley are constantly under threat. It makes all blabbering about freedom of speech hollow and ironical. But, for the urban angels on their tourism with a purpose agenda, these real voices do not count. It is all about their democracy, a most dictatorial position to take.

Another ceasefire drumroll

You create a scenario where there is enough space to meddle and then when you are asked to close that space, you renege. Why does Arundhati Roy do that?

She has been clear about her verbalised opinions on the Maoist issues with a few tantalising ifs and buts thrown in. It reveals the paucity of thinking in the electronic media that she is asked if she’d take on the role of mediator between the government and the Naxals. What prompted that query?

She said in a television interview that a ceasefire between the security forces and the Maoists was "urgent" and "unconditional". Have the security forces been given a carte blanche to make such announcements? Will the Maoists who have been waging this war for many years and many reasons suddenly give up their conditions? And if all this is urgent then why dilly-dally?

When asked if she would like to make a statement calling upon the Maoists to come forward for talks, she said, “No. Not when there are two lakh paramilitary forces closing in on the villages.”

Did she not mention unconditional? Why does she not wish to put her mouth where her mouth is?

“I would not like to be (a mediator or part of people’s committee to mediate between the government and Maoists). I don’t think I have those skills... I don’t think I am good at it. I am a maverick... I’ll try. I don’t know how to think about it.”

If she is good enough to go on lecture tours, meet the comrades, question the government, then why not? And she forgets that she is not the real maverick here – it is the Maoists who are, the ones she thinks should call for a ceasefire as though they can be herded like sheep for someone else’s intellectual high.

“I don’t think it should be one person. I think there should be a group of people who are used to taking decisions collectively…If you studied the peace talks process in Andhra, you see that this business of picking one person and announcing it to the media... both sides have done it. Home minister P Chidambaram has arbitrarily picked Swami Agnivesh. Maoists arbitrarily announced that they want this one or that one. That is not how it works.”

Indeed. For one, collective decisions can be taken when there is uniformity in thought and action. This has not been the case. Two, there will be individuals chosen arbitrarily because they are either the face of the movement or have a record of such mediatory roles. Interestingly, she herself has suggested that rights activity B D Sharma should be included in such a committee. And isn’t she the spokesperson of several causes? Whose arbitrary decisions are those?

If the Maoists send a peace envoy and he gets killed, then she believes the government does not want peace. So, why is she asking for this committee to be formed and why this sudden ceasefire talks?

Are the Maoists getting out of hand and doing their own thing, not quite concerned about who says what at seminars?

The golden mean and the go-betweens

Maverick: The golden mean and the go-betweens

By Farzana Versey

Covert, Feb 1-15

It’s time for ideological palm-greasing. The very same industrialists who were weeping over terrorism a couple of months ago are now propping up Narendra Modi as the leader at the helm.

But, are we sitting in judgment only because we are talking about prominent people, when we are well aware that bribery is a part and parcel of everyday life – even our own?

Why must we get so uptight and upright over such backing, when we are a country of middlemen? Have we, even in our daily lives, got things done without the services of a well-wisher, a balancing force?

If today you know of some obscure people, it is because they have paid to become known. As P.T.Barnum, the public relations biggie, said, “The bigger the humbug, the better the people will love it.” So, the wannabes get to hobnob with the cream of society, many of who are of doubtful merit, and the impression given is that, look, we believe in equal opportunities, we don’t care about who is who. Few are honest as an advertiser was in one of our respected financial papers, when he stated clearly: “Wanted person experienced in the art of ‘lubricating’ top executives in banks.”

Isn’t this a regular occurrence? Can any of us get any work done without paying for it in cash or kind? Does the middleman not make life somewhat easy, just like the blackmarketeer at a cinema hall, the helpful peon at a government office whose only demand is chai-paani and the high-ranking official, who miraculously provides water in drought-prone areas because the private sector, which he publicly claims to hate, provides him with a brown paper packet?

Why get into this serious area of moral accountability? Births, marriages and deaths, all need someone to make the passage clear.

Social workers are go-betweens of another kind. They act as buffers between good and evil. They also get catapulted into the forefront of a movement or sit in air-conditioned offices of corporate honchos, sipping herbal tea and demanding donations.

Demanding has become a normal practice. If you are a beleaguered soul seeking justice or merely have a case in the courts, the black-robed ravens swoop down on you. The ‘names’ charge a neat 50,000 rupees for a one-page consultation. Some straightaway ask for a cut if it is a property matter.

Real estate agents are another bugbear. Forget what they promise you. Just watch the gleam in their eye as you sign on the dotted line and they get their two per cent commission.

The doctor sends you to a specialist; the specialist parcels you off to a bigger guy; the cut at the end could be in lakhs. While the general physicians have to make do with weekly luncheons that pass off as conferences, the ones with fancier degrees get all-expenses-paid trips abroad sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. How does it affect you? Your friendly doctor will insist you use those medicines which might be infinitely more expensive.

The media cannot be absolved. It is the most in-demand profession. Hacks who have managed to re-word a press release a few times on a certain topic are called experts and invited on junkets to hold forth on the subject. Academicians enjoy similar elevation, based purely on the number of footnotes in the paper they present.

God has not been spared. When you go shopping for a guru or a saint, you are looking not so much for solace as for a nice middleman. Everyone knows that the Real Thing is somewhat confusing, an abstraction, and understanding this entity can get time-consuming, besides taking a toll on your brains. So you deposit your searching soul at the feet of a holy one and leave it to him/her to pass on your messages, requests, and complaints to God. Along the way you drop some money into a donation box or sprinkle ghee into fire or slaughter an animal, depending on what you are told to do. This is not to appease any Higher Power, but to make your earthly messenger feel that something is being done.

When two sides have a dispute, it is the ‘agents’ who get away, pleading quite truthfully that they are merely caught in the middle.