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Something rotten in the State of India Journalist Gauri Lokesh was a robust member of an honourable profession. That surely is how the Fourth Estate is, or should be, perceived in a functioning democracy. Indians, by and large, are committed to democracy; if they weren’t, ever increasing numbers wouldn’t be queuing to cast their ballots in State or general elections, would not bother to open a television set to watch a news hour programmes, where contentious are discussed ad nauseam. India without newspapers would be a dystopia. India, being neither China nor Pakistan, is unaccustomed to decrees imprisoning journalists or murdering them through intelligence agencies or by mobs on call to mete out instant justice to perceived blasphemers of holy writ. The murder of Gauri Lokesh was a case in the latter category of three armed men, cowardly masked, arrived at her dwelling in Bangalore and shot her dead, then fled on motorcycles. There was no hint of a robbery. Until the assassins are caught and interrogated one can only presume that the brave Ms Lokesh was targeted for her serial criticism and lampooning of Hindutva nationalism and its considered verities, which more frequently than not, are ritualized abs urdities. She laughed at them and invited laughter from her readers. Those opposed to her views had an equal right to present their case. Heavens above, what a dull place would England be if all that on offer was the Murdoch press and papers of similar ilk. Private Eye steps into the breach, takes on the establishment and its sacred nostrums, stripping away their pretentious verbiage with humour and wit t hat is the stuff of enjoyment. Why else would Private Eye have a devoted readership that exceeds all the weekly magazines on the newsstands? One recalls with fond admiration and nostalgia the acerbic wit of
cartoonists like Laxman in India and the iconic Low and Vicky in Britain. Returning to Gauri Lokesh, what a waste of an exuberant life, for no civilized reason except that her views gave offence to thu ggish morons. Her brother has rightly said that her tragic death should not be politicized. Indeed, it should not, but India today is a country deeply at odds through discord and intolerance of the Other, that this eminently sensible and noble call has thus far been unheeded with accusations flying thick and fast across party alignments. If only party leaders, much given to preening rectitude, paused for a moment and considered the true implications of Gauri Lokesh’s loss. Do they not understand the blow to India’s time-tested values of respect for diversity, whether it be faith, ethnicity or the right of unbelievers to question the existence of a supreme deity? The Indian Constitution continues to uphold the basic rights of free speech and thought, of privacy and much else. For that we have to thank the Supreme Court and its valiant judges who have borne their responsibilities with uncompromising honesty and sense of duty. They are a shining light amid the encircling gloom. The State government of Karnataka has announced a substantial reward for any person giving information leading to the arrest of the murders of Gauri Lokesh. The people of the State are known generally for their tolerance, hence there is deep shock at this senseless crime. It is this sense of outrage that is likely to yield the information that the police and other law enforcement agencies seek. Hopefully the present nightmare will end sooner rather than later with the arrest of the criminals.
Doklam is a blip in a long game The belief expressed in certain sections of the Indian media the Sino-Indian relations will now be rebooted to take it them to the uplands of trust and cooperation is little short of cultivated hallucination. The irony is that China estimation of itself is rarely subject to close critical scrutiny by these newspapers who, prefer, instead, to endorse it. This cuckoo-land approach is mercifully cuts little ice with the military brass, guardians of India’s borders and its overall security. They see Chinese behavior at close quarters almost every day and what they see and purposefully digest ensures there are no lotus-eaters in their senior ranks. Hence amid bromides of a positive Sino-Indian relationship, the Army chief, the no-nonsense General Bepin Rawat announced that the country’s armed forces had contingency plans for a two-front war with Pakistan and China. This is not to say that he or his colleagues would welcome such a conflict. It is simply a reminder of a worst case scenario for which the country must learn to accept as a possibility. Preparation is the most effective deterrence to war. Diplomacy based on a scabbard without its sword is an invitation to indecent
exposure, as was, alas, the case in 1962. At the recent BRICS summit in Xiamen, a declaration condemning named jihadi organizations operating from Pakistan evoked optimistic response among a number of Indian columnists. However, no sooner had the new Pakistan Foreign Minister arrived post-haste in Beijing to explore the apparent Chinese volt face, he discovered to his pleasure and satisfaction that there had been no change in Chinese policy towards his country, that its BRICS stance was, in essence, an international public relations gambit. As proof, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that Pakistan was in fact a victim of terror, which the world had yet to fully appreciate. Presumably the jihadi assaults on Mumbai in March 1993 and November 2008 were perpetrated by creatures from another galaxy! Be that that as it may, Minister Wang floated a Chinese promised international conference in the near future consisting China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. India, Iran and Russia, not to speak of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, had best twiddle their thumbs. Rest assured they won’t just stand and wait.
Achyuta Samanta: Visionary of New India Deep inside Odisha’s tribal belt the vision of a remarkable man has transformed despair into hope, a seemingly unachievable dream into unbelievable reality. Tribal people beyond the pale, and hence long neglected, prey to Maoist intimidation and exploitation in the name of a false, beguiling liberation are shaking off the shackles of a blighted past. Theirs is now the liberated voice. ‘In the early 90s when the literacy rate of the tribe was 29 per cent and when nobody was paying serious attention to our plight, Dr Achyuta Samanta looked towards our emancipation through education…Maoists used to trap us. Our girls were lured to be the nets of human trafficking. We never knew how to deal with this menace. It was like fire to the frying pan. At this juncture Dr Samanta and KISS helped us and our children to…differentiate between a trap and truth.’ Dr Samanta set up India’s (and the world’s) first tribal university, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), and following twenty-five years of sustained endeavour has borne fruit with its guaranteed status as a university recognized by the central government in Delhi, and the assured funding that would will KISS to the next level.
Today KISS has an enrolment of 27,000 students lodged in a single campus where study and sports deepen the community spirit. Says Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director, World Food Programme: ‘KISS is the future of India as well as the world…KISS is the right platform to fufil your dreams.’ Justice Dalveer Bhandari of the International Court of Justice, The Hague, said: ‘I have been to more than 50 countries …and I have spent time in some of the countries much longer, but I have not come across any institution of this kind anywhere in the world.’ You have in a nutshell what KISS has achieved. But this is no justification to rest on its laurels. There is more work to be done, more hurdles to surmount, more challenges to overcome as the past is the present shade into the future. There is much talk in the public space about India being on the threshold of superpower status. But all is vanity if critical segments of Indian humanity remain mired in poverty, are socially disadvantaged and look despairingly at a future without hope. Such a country will remain insecure, despite the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power. Justice and magnanimity is not seldom the truest wisdom.
Asian Voice | 16th September 2017
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Everything that ever happens in life has an end as well as a beginning - Tonga proverb
Freedom for India – Freedom for widows I would like to congratulate all supporters of the Loomba Foundation, all readers of Asian Voice and all Indian Diasporas living in London on India’s 70th year of independence. This year has been an incredible year for Indo-UK relationship, with the Indo-UK Year of Culture, bringing the countries Lord Raj Loomba closer together and making their relationship stronger. This day would not have been possible, but for one man – a supreme leader of India’s freedom movement, and India’s greatest philanthropist, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Popularly known to Indians as Bapu, the father of the Indian nation, Gandhi was a great supporter of women emancipation, education and empowerment. He believed in the equality of women, and propagated education and skilled-based training to allow them to gain their own freedom, while contributing towards their family, and nationbuilding. “Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex,” quoted Gandhi. He recognised the evils attached to the practices of child-marriage and widowhood in India, and vehemently opposed the cruel practices and ostracisation of widows in the name of religion and age-old cultural practices. “In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakh girl-widows who could not understand the importance of the marriage ceremony... If we would be pure, if we would save Hinduism, we must rid ourselves of this poison of enforced widowhood,” said Gandhi. He realised the importance of skilled-based training to support impoverished widows, and had schemes to teach them to make yarn and weave the India cotton garment khadi. “Khaddar (khadi) brings a ray of hope to the widow’s broken-up home, the Charkha (spinning wheel) in the hands of a poor widow brings a paltry price to her,” Gandhi had said. Khadi became the symbol of freedom – freedom from ills imposed on widows by decades of religious and cultural conditioning, freedom from dependence on relatives and begging and the economic freedom needed to lead a live of dignity. His vision is similar to the work we, at the Loomba Foundation do. We have put in twenty successful years of fighting injustice against widows around the world. A Widows World Report, commissioned by the Loomba Foundation, has revealed that 258 million widows and over 584 million children suffer in silence worldwide. Over 100 million widows live in poverty struggling to survive. HIV/AIDS, ethnic cleansing, armed conflict and poverty are among the most prolific causes of widowhood. Through our skilled-based programmes in India, we have been able to train impoverished widows in tailoring, and given them foot-operated machines on completion of the training programme in Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Haryana, where we have supported widows and female inmates in all 19 district jails in the state. We also support the education of their children through five-year-long Loomba scholarships. The Loomba Foundation is honoured and privileged to be supported by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, who launched our Varanasi project last year to empower 5000 impoverished widows. Union Cabinet Minister for Women and Child Development Hon’ble Shrimati Menaka Gandhi is also building an ashram that would house around 1000 widows in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh in India. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, and we need to be prepared for several such initiatives to give widows the freedom that they have been waiting for. www.theloombafoundation.org The Loomba Foundation Loomba House 622 Western Avenue London W3 0TF 020 8102 0351