Sunday, May 9, 2010

[ZESTCaste] King with the Midas touch

http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/columnists/king-with-the-midas-touch/171665.html

Columnists

King with the Midas touch


Aditya SinhaFirst Published : 08 May 2010 12:45:00 AM ISTLast Updated
: 08 May 2010 02:14:59 PM IST

Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister, Mr Kalaignar, claimed everyone was
picking on Union communications minister A Raja because Raja was a
Dalit. "That is why dominant forces are levelling malicious charges
against him," he mumbled.


Actually, the controversy arose when Raja fixed the allocation of
second generation (2G) services of spectrum for mobile and other
wireless services; Raja was alleged to have favoured two unknowns in
the telecom field, Swan telecom and Unitech, by fixing the auction in
such a way that no one else could hope to properly participate. The
two companies — which had backgrounds in real estate, a field without
obvious connections to telecom — obtained the 2G licences at throwaway
prices, which they subsequently sold at hefty premiums; the government
lost an estimated Rs 60,000 crore, say experts. Politically
influential persons may have personally earned Rs 5,000 to 10,000
crore.

When such sums of money are involved, controversy is usually stirred
up by business rivals. It could be that one or more of the big boys in
telecom — Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications or Tata Teleservices
— might be interested in seeing the 2G scam roil Parliament so that,
at the very least, they don't get hoodwinked when the 3G spectrum
auction happens. Incidentally, the 3G auction has been postponed on
several occasions; the Union Budget for 2009-'10 had counted on about
Rs 40,000 crore accruing from this auction, and if Union finance
minister Pranab Mukherjee allowed the postponement of an auction that
was going to make his job easier by Rs 40,000 crore then you can
imagine how seriously Prime Minister Manmohan Singh views the
controversy. (By Mr Kalaignar's logic, though, the postponement would
have been anti-Dalit).

If a leading telecom is interested in exposing the 2G scam, it is not
because it is interested in seeing Raja resign or go to jail. In fact,
business houses prefer corrupt politicians to remain because they are
easier to manipulate, and if something lucrative is around the corner,
the business houses would rather have the same corrupt minister in the
seat, but now at their mercy, rather than an unknown or inimical
person take his place. For instance, the UPA-2 desperately needs Mr
Kalaignar, having alienated the Yadavs with the Women's Reservation
Bill and Sharad Pawar with allegations of food inflation and IPL
tomfoolery; so if the question of replacing Raja arises then it would
have to be with another DMK MP. At least one company, Tata
Teleservices, would not want Raja replaced with textiles minister
Dayanidhi Maran, as his brother Kalanithi runs a rival business.

Recently there was speculation that Nira Radia, the lobbyist figuring
in Raja's tapped telephone conversations, is linked to Tata, but the
Tatas have denied this. There has also been speculation that some
telecom players would rather have Kanimozhi than Maran as
communications minister. But in the murky politics of Mr Kalaignar's
family, she's aligned with fertiliser minister M K Alagiri. Alagiri
does not want younger brother M K Stalin, now the deputy chief
minister, to become boss once Mr Kalaignar passes away, and had
recently made a series of discordant noises (in between trips to
Australia and the Maldives). For the time being, Mr Kalaignar seems to
have pacified Alagiri; he was at Alagiri's bungalow during his recent
visit to Delhi, and suddenly Alagiri is taking language lessons and
attending to files. (Probably Mr Kalaignar & Son realised they could
not accuse Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar of being anti-Dalit, even
though she has loudly voiced her exasperation with Alagiri's
behaviour, seeing that she is the daughter of Babu Jagjivan Ram).

One wonders, though, that whatever arrangement Mr Kalaignar has
proposed to Alagiri, the chief minister perhaps would not want to
upset the balance within his family; and the best way to do that is to
keep Raja as a minister. (It could also be that Mr Kalaignar doesn't
think his daughter has the intellectual wherewithal to handle such a
lucrative ministry). The word from Delhi is that during his trip Mr
Kalaignar met Congress boss Sonia Gandhi, and knowing that she wanted
two of the six Rajya Sabha seats from Tamil Nadu that are up for
election, he told her she would have the seats if Raja stayed.

This is admittedly a complex situation; which is why a simplistic
explanation like saying that all of this happened because Raja is a
Dalit is not only incorrect but also absurd. Telecom companies are
pro-profit and not pro-Dalit, so their rivals cannot be anti-Dalit.
The telephone-tapping agencies are not anti-Dalit. Nira Radia is not a
Dalit.

However, if Mr Kalaignar really wants to call a spade a spade, then he
ought to be courageous and question the Congress party's pro-Dalit
credentials. The UPA-2 only under great pressure agreed to enumerate
castes in the current census, the first time this is being done since
1931. One of the people against caste enumeration was Mr Kalaignar's
great chum, Union home minister P Chidambaram, who argued that
census-takers are not sociologically-sensitive enough to enumerate
caste. (This was actually not a reason but an excuse). Enumerating
caste is unlikely to benefit the upper castes; the gainers will be the
backward castes and the Dalit populace. If you are a Dalit, the
resistance to caste enumeration by Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram can
only look anti-Dalit; yet Mr Kalaignar kept his mouth shut. (The
Congress is fortunate to have a politically savvy decision-taker in
Pranab Mukherjee).

Mr Kalaignar will get other opportunities in the coming days. Events
in the recent weeks indicate Rahul Gandhi has given up on the Dalit
vote in UP. Mayawati proved she is a better politician when she pulled
out her garland of notes; she outsmarted Rahul on Dr Ambedkar's
birthday when he flagged off several rath yatras by subverting his
rallies; and she showed her indispensability to the UPA-2's survival
during the Opposition's two failed cut motions in Parliament. She has
the Dalit vote sewn up. The only way Rahul can hope to put on a good
Congress showing in UP in next year's municipal elections and then in
the assembly elections due in 2012 is to put together a non-Dalit
coalition. He needs to do well in UP if he's going to be credibly
projected as the prime ministerial candidate in the 2014 parliamentary
elections. But to successfully put together a coalition in UP, he will
have to woo backward caste voters and Dalit Muslim voters who are
bitterly opposed to Dalits. To successfully woo them, he will have to
make some symbolic anti-Dalit gesture at some point.

At that juncture, will Mr Kalaignar call him anti-Dalit? Probably not.
He perhaps uses this tactic only when there's a threat to the goose
that lays the golden egg, principled leader that he is.

editorchief@expressbuzz.com

About The Author;

Aditya Sinha is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The New Indian Express' and
is based in Chennai.


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[ZESTCaste] Caste in the stone age

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Caste-in-the-stone-age-/articleshow/5906263.cms

Caste in the stone age
TOI Crest, May 8, 2010, 11.19am IST

Ever heard of a body that can not only annul a marriage but also
convert husband and wife into brother and sister? Well, an
extra-constitutional authority called khap panchayat has been
traditionally allowed to exercise such extraordinary powers,
destroying families and claiming the lives of innocent couples. And,
thanks to the cowardice of the political class, khap panchayats —
medieval caste institutions found mostly in Haryana, western Uttar
Pradesh and Rajasthan — are now also beginning to look like super
legislatures.

For, in deference to the numerical strength of khap panchayats,
politicians did not dare protest any violation of the freedom to marry
a person of one's choice. If anything, former chief minister of
Haryana, Om Prakash Chautala, supported their demand to amend the
Hindu Marriage Act providing a statutory backing to their traditional
ban on marriages within the same gotra and within the same village.

The contention of these retrograde elements is that any marriage that
takes place in violation of their restrictions should be deemed to be
between brother and sister. Their anxiety to prevent incest is however
gratuitous as the law already deals with it adequately through the
concept of 'sapinda' (third generation in the line of ascent through
mother and fifth in the line of ascent through father). The khap
panchayat notion of extending prohibited relationships to the whole
gotra and the whole village creates a category of people running into
thousands or even lakhs.

Though khap panchayats have traditionally engaged in honour killings
in the course of their vigilantism, the judiciary got the full measure
of this crime for the first time only on March 30, when it imposed
death sentence on five perpetrators and life sentence on one khap
member for the double murder in 2007 of Manoj and Babli, a newly
married couple belonging to the same gotra in Kaithal. The couple was
murdered even after being provided security by the court. If the
pattern of impunity in honour killings ended with this one, it is
thanks to the exceptional courage displayed by Manoj's mother
Chanderpati and the trial judge Vani Gopal Sharma. Thanks to the clout
wielded by khap panchayats, Sharma was subsequently forced to seek a
transfer fearing for her life.

Besides breaking marriages, khap panchayats have a record of
instigating caste atrocities against Dalits. One such case came to
light last month in a Haryana village called Mirchpur where Jats,
jealous of the growing prosperity of Dalits, especially Valmikis,
allegedly engineered an arson attack in which 18 houses of the
targeted community were destroyed and, worse, a man and his
polio-stricken daughter were burnt alive.

Mercifully, this incident provoked an unusually angry reaction from
the political establishment. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi sent a
stinker to Haryana chief minister B S Hooda saying it was a "matter of
shame and horror" that such an incident occurred at all, that too in
the presence of the police. "This cannot be allowed to pass without
firm and severe action against those responsible for the crime," Sonia
thundered. Equally significant, her intervention was followed by a
visit to Mirchpur by Rahul Gandhi. It is just as well that the first
family of the Congress responded to the Mirchpur tragedy as the
20-year-old atrocities law, which is a legacy of Rajiv Gandhi, has
been subverted across the nation by local authorities through errors
of omission and commission.


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[ZESTCaste] Video: Discrimination against dalits in MP

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZNXDf32Ubk

NewsX video: Discrimination against dalits in MP

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[ZESTCaste] Dalits call off indefinite dharna after govt assurance

 

http://www.ptinews.com/news/644606_Dalits-call-off-indefinite-dharna-after-govt-assurance

Dalits call off indefinite dharna after govt assurance

STAFF WRITER 14:31 HRS IST

Hisar, May 8 (PTI) Dalit families of Mirchipur village affected by
caste violence called off their fortnight-long dharna following the
state government's assurance that their demand would be fulfilled.

They Dalits had been on an indefinite dharna in front of the
mini-secretariat here demanding adequate compensation for the victims
of caste violence incident and rehabilitation outside the village,
prompting Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to visit the village.

They returned to their village last evening after getting assurance
from the authorities, Deputy Commissioner O P Sheoran said here today.

Tara Chand (70) and his daughter Suman (18) were burnt alive on April
21 when members of a particular community torched 18 houses belonging
to Dalits, sparking violence.

Sheoran said teams from the Public Works Department and District
Welfare Office will visit the village and construct the houses of the
Dalits which were damaged by the miscreants.

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[ZESTCaste] Khap panchayat: signs of desperation?

http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article424506.ece?homepage=true


Editor Opinion » Lead Published: May 7, 2010 23:03 IST | Updated: May
7, 2010 23:07 IST May 7, 2010

Khap panchayat: signs of desperation?
Jagmati Sangwan

The Hindu An All castes (Khap) Maha Panchayat in progress in
Kurukshetra. File Photo: Akhilesh Kumar
The number of cases in which the totally unconstitutional caste
panchayats have openly defied the law of the land by issuing illegal
diktats has increased manifold.

In Haryana today, rapid capitalist transformation is accompanied by a
regressive feudal consciousness. As education and political awareness
spread among Dalits, women and backward sections, alongside there is a
massive consolidation of caste (khap) panchayats in defence of the
status quo. The number of cases in which the totally unconstitutional
caste panchayats have openly defied the law of the land by issuing
illegal diktats has increased manifold. Attacks on young couples,
Dalits and progressive-minded people have become frequent.

A recent landmark judgment by the Additional Sessions Court at Karnal
in the Manoj-Babli "honour" killing case, in which five accused were
given the death sentence, sent shock waves among caste panchayat
leaders, as it reminded them that they were not above the
Constitution. The court took serious note of the fact that the
policemen deployed for the security of Manoj and Babli actually
facilitated the accused in perpetrating the crime.

Though geographically small, Haryana is socially and culturally
heterogeneous. For example, in some areas and among certain castes,
marriages within the village and even intra-gotra marriages are not
uncommon. At the same time, such marriages are treated as incest in
certain other areas, and among other castes. Even the caste or khap
panchayat is not a feature prevalent throughout the State, as many
believe, but is confined to a particular region. Thus, a section of
people of one particular caste proclaims itself as the cultural
representative of Haryana, refusing to acknowledge the customs and
traditions practised by others in their own neighbourhood.

A look at the demography of the State and its development statistics
would help to contextualise the problem. The State that stood second
in per capita income in the country has one of the lowest sex ratios
(821 in the 0-6 age group). Female foeticide is rampant, and the
situation is so bad that wives are being brought from far off States.
Not once have these panchayats called a maha-panchayat to pass a
resolution against female foeticide or dowry or even in connection
with the crisis in agriculture — problems staring the people of
Haryana in the face.

After the judgment in the Manoj-Babli case, however, a congregation of
caste panchayats representing the Jat neighbourhoods from Haryana,
Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan was called at Kurukshetra on April 13. It
was decided that panchayats would now fight for legal status to
legitimately maintain the "social order." One of the main agendas of
this sarv-khap panchayat was to push for amendments to the Hindu
Marriage Act, 1955 that would ban marriages within the same gotra
(clan within which men and women are considered siblings and hence
cannot marry). Under this Act, marriages between certain lineages from
the paternal and maternal sides are already barred.

Most of the khap panchayat diktats are against couples who are not
from the same gotra. In fact, not more than one case of honour killing
has been of a couple within the same gotra. By creating the false
impression that all marriages of choice between young couples are
incestuous, what the khaps are actually opposing is the right to
choose a marriage partner. Among the several instances of khaps
issuing fatwas in Jaundhi, Asanda, Dharana, Singhwal, Hadaudi,
Maham-kheri, Ludana and other villages, not a single one was an
intra-gotra marriage, yet the married couples were declared siblings,
and families made to suffer boycotts and excommunication from their
villages.

A sad example of the gotra row is that of Ved Pal Moan, brutally
beaten to death last year when he tried to secure his wife who was
confined by her parents at Singhwal village in Jind district. He was
escorted by a police party and a warrant officer of the High Court.
Ved Pal had married neither within his gotra nor within the same
village. In this case, another absurd code was invoked by the khap:
that the couple violated the custom of not marrying in the
neighbouring village as it forms part of bhaichara (brotherhood). A
khap congregation held in March 2009 publicly pronounced the death
sentence for Ved Pal, and it succeeded in executing it in June. As
couples are selectively targeted, it is clear the real motive is to
control women's sexuality to ensure that property remains within the
patriarchal caste domain (mainly Jats in Haryana).

The sarv khap panchayat also called for social boycott of individuals
who raised their voice against the caste panchayats. A former police
chief of Haryana, himself a self-styled caste leader, went on record
threatening khap-critics. How can a former DGP publicly threaten
law-abiding citizens, and yet continue to enjoy the hefty perks and
pension out of the public exchequer?

The caste panchayat leaders have decided to stifle any voice of
assertion from the backward sections. On April 21 more than 20 houses
of Dalits were burnt down at Mirchpur village, in the presence of a
police force, allegedly by thugs belonging to a dominant caste,
resulting in the death of an 18-year-old handicapped girl and her
ailing father. A panchayat of khaps convened at Mirchpur three days
after the carnage not only declared all arrested persons innocent but
also issued an ultimatum to the government for their release! This was
exactly the pattern adopted by caste panchayats in the Gohana (2005)
and Duleena (2002) incidents, where brutal attacks on Dalits took
place.

Even elders from socially and economically weaker families are not
spared. At Khedi Meham in December 2009, the father of a newly wed
groom was forced to hold a shoe in his mouth in front of the whole
village by the panchayatis. Ordinary citizens are caught in the
contradiction between two sets of values — the blind consumerism of
the neo-liberal dispensation, and the outdated feudal values
represented by the khaps. The first is no replacement for the second,
and indeed, pseudo-modernism only strengthens the forces of
revivalism. The alternative to both types of distortions lies in the
spread of healthy and progressive values that can be unleashed through
only a new social reform movement in the entire Hindi belt.

Limited but crucial role

The judiciary does have a crucial role to play but has its limitations
too. On June 23, 2008 Justice K.S. Ahluwalia of the Punjab and Haryana
High Court made a revealing observation while simultaneously hearing
10 cases pertaining to marriages between young couples aged 18 - 21:
"The High Court is flooded with petitions where … judges of this Court
have to answer for the right of life and liberty to married couples.
The State is a mute spectator. When shall the State awake from its
slumber [and] for how long can Courts provide solace and balm by
disposing of such cases?" A legislature with little political will and
a pliant executive will have to be made responsive under pressure of a
mass movement.

The voices of dissent are also getting consolidated under the umbrella
of organisations like the AIDWA and other democratic forces. The
younger generation must stand forth as responsible social activists
and lead the struggle for change in an otherwise feudal society that
lives by the dictum "Jiski lathi uski bhains" (the powerful call the
shots). In Haryana each passing day is costing the lives of innocent
women and men.

(The author is Director, Women's Study Centre, Maharishi Dayanand
University, Rohtak, and State President of AIDWA, Haryana.)


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