A Little Bit of Diplomacy With A Lot of Style

An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in a recent session of the United Nations General Assembly that made the world community smile.

A representative from India began: 'Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named.

When he struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, "What a good opportunity to have a bath." He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.

After a long, leisurely bath, when he got out of the water and looked around for his clothes, he found they had vanished.

At this point, the Indian delegate paused, for dramatic effect, and then as a rapt audience of international diplomats waited to hear what happened to the missing clothes, he added, straightfaced : "You see, a Pakistani had stolen the clothes."

Understandably furious at this allegation, the Pakistani representative jumped up and said angrily, "What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren't there in Kashmir then."

The Indian representative smiled, almost grinned, and then said, "And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech."

The Khairlanji Verdict

The eagerly-awaited verdict on the Khairlanji case is out. The fast track court trying the most notorious case of caste violence in recent memory has sentenced six persons to death, and two have been given life sentence.

The verdict has been hailed as a landmark judgement on account of two things. First, in a nation not exactly known for speedy trials, the verdict has come less than two years after the crime was committed. Second, by awarding six death sentences among eight accussed, the judge has sent a tough message.

Having said that, a number of activists who have been following the Khairlanji case for a while now are deeply upset that the judge has not charged the accused under The Prevention of Atrocities Act.

In 1989, the Government of India passed the Prevention of Atrocities Act (POA), which delineates specific crimes against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as “atrocities,” and describes strategies and prescribes punishments to counter these acts. The Act attempts to curb and punish violence against Dalits through three broad means.

Firstly, it identifies what acts constitute “atrocities.” These include both particular incidents of harm and humiliation such as the forced consumption of noxious substances, as well as the systemic violence still faced by many Dalits, especially in rural areas. Such systemic violence includes forced labor, denial of access to water and other public amenities, and sexual abuse of Dalit women.

Secondly, the Act calls upon all the states to convert an existing sessions court in each district into a Special Court to try cases registered under the POA.

Thirdly, the Act creates provisions for states to declare areas with high levels of caste violence to be “atrocity-prone” and to appoint qualified officers to monitor and maintain law and order.

One reason why the Khairlanji case attracted such a lot of media attention was because all those killed were Dalits. Even the fast-track court was set up by the Maharashtra government to assuage the Dalits who were angry over the initial inaction by the authorities even three days after the Khairlanji massacre.

If ever there was a crime that should have been tried under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, then it should have been the Khairlanji case.

For those not familiar with the case, on September 29, 2006, a group of villagers in Khairlanji village in Bhandara district in the western Indian state of Maharashtra forcibly entered into the house of one of the residents, Bhaiya Lal Bhotmange. Bhotmange wasn't at home at that time. The crowd dragged Bhotmange's wife, his teenaged daughter and his two sons out of the house, beat them with stones, iron rods and anything else that they could get hold of.

The four members of the Bhotmange family were dragged into an open area about 50 yards from their house. Bhotmange's wife and daughter were stripped naked and gangraped by the villagers until they died. His two sons were beaten and stabbed, their bodies repeatedly thrown up in the air and, according to eyewitnesses, the lynch mob cheered as the bodies crashed on the hard ground. It went on until both the boys were dead.

The Bhotmanges were among four Dalit Buddhist families who lived in Khairlanji, a village dominated by OBC (Other Backward Classes) families. Unlike most Dalits in the area, the Bhtomange family was comparatively well off. The two sons worked with their parents on their land and daughter Priyanka was in her final year of school.

Over the years, there had been several run-ins between the upper caste members of the village and the Bhotmanges. Once the standing crop of the Bhotmanges was destroyed. On another occasion, an attempt was made to forcibly carve a road through the Bhotmange land. What upset the upper caste villagers most was the pride, and the lack of subservience, with which the Dalit family conducted their life.

Matters came to a head when a family friend of the Bhotmanges was beaten up by a group of villagers, and Bhotmange's wife and his daughter identified nine men as the culprits. Later, when they were released on bail, these men led the angry mob which attacked and brutally killed four members of the Bhotmange family.

Curiously, the judge trying the Khairlanji case has ignored the history of animosity that existed between the upper caste villagers of Khairlanji and the Bhotmange family. In his judgement, he described the incident as "revenge killings", thus absolving the accused of the caste violence charge.

A few NGOs are also upset that of the 48 people initially arrested and tried for the case, only eight were eventually found guilty by the judge. This, despite the fact that almost every eyewitness called to testify in the trial, deposed before the court that a mob of at least fifty people had attacked and killed the Bhotmanges.

An Interesting Take On The US Economy

Dr. Marc Faber, the celebrated contrary investment guru, concluded his monthly bulletin with the following observation:

''The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.

The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I've been doing my part ."

A Marriage Bureau for HIV Positive People

"I have come here because I want to get married. I am HIV positive," says Rasik Bhai, a 31-year-old diamond polisher.

"We are a marriage bureau. You have to give us some details about you, about your family background, about yourself, " replies Daksha Patel, with a pleasant smile.

It is a typical day at work for the woman who runs India's first marriage bureau for HIV positive people. art of an non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with HIV-positive people in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the bureau has so far helped seven couples to get married.

Among those looking for a bride is Rasik Bhai. He has to convince the bureau he is capable of taking care of his wife.

Daksha asks him how much he earns.

"My income is 3,000 rupees," he replies.

"You will have to look after yourself and your wife - you are both HIV positive, maybe you will have to spend on medicines," says a concerned Daksha.

"Will you be able to manage all this with your income?"

A steady stream of people move in and out of the modest one-room office of the marriage bureau. A prospective bride-seeker insists the bureau should find a match from his caste only. Another tall man looks aghast when told that no girl presently registered with the bureau wants to marry someone of his height.

I ask Daksha Patel what prompted her to start the bureau.

"The idea of starting a marriage bureau came when I began to work with the NGO here. "I came across a number of men who were HIV positive, also lot of women, some of them young widows. "They all had one question - should they get married?"

She adds: "Besides, there was a lot of social pressure on most of these people - pressure from their family to get married."

"I am married myself. A few months after my marriage I found out I was HIV positive. I have been living happily with my husband all these years - without problems, so why can't these people get married?"

Over the past few months, the number of people who have registered with the bureau has steadily increased. Not surprising in a town like Surat, where more than 2,500 people have tested positive for HIV. The city of 2.4m people is the headquarters of India's diamond cutting and polishing centre and has a large population of migrant workers.

Kamlesh Patel, a diamond polisher, got married last December after registering with Daksha's marriage bureau. "I was not very keen for marriage. There was pressure from home," he said. "I saw my wife on several occasions at the support group meetings. I never thought she would marry me," says Kamlesh.

"Daksha asked me if I wanted to marry - but I repeatedly refused. Then last November - during the festival of Navratri - we used to meet in the evenings. Then I decided to get married."

Now Kamlesh is a part-time counsellor with the bureau. He says his association with the NGO that runs the marriage bureau has been a life-changing experience for him.

"It seems a new life has begun for me after coming here. Earlier my weight had gone down considerably, now my health has improved," says an evidently-happy Kamlesh. "When I am under some stress I come here - a few meetings and I am fresh again."

Kamlesh's wife, Nimisha had been married previously. Her former husband abandoned her after she tested positive for HIV during her pregnancy. She says she had a harrowing time in her earlier marriage. She learnt about the marriage bureau from a doctor who had been treating her.

"I had read about this organization which worked with HIV positive people and ran a marriage bureau. I had come to find out more about the bureau - for the purpose of marriage only," says Nimisha.

"I did not want a very handsome person, or a very rich person. I just wanted a husband who can understand me - and who can provide for three square meals a day." From the broad smile on her face, it is not difficult to gauge Nimisha has found that man in Kamlesh.

The fledgling bureau has a problem though. The bride-seekers out-number bridegroom-seekers almost ten to one. Of the 70 people presently registered with the bureau, only eight are women.

In India, few women can afford to come in the open about their HIV status, because of the stigma attached to Aids. Daksha is full of praise for the women who have come forward and registered with the bureau.

Indian authorities draw solace from the fact that India is still behind South Africa as the country with the largest population of HIV positive people.

A lot of NGOs, however, see India as an Aids ticking time bomb.

As the authorities and NGOs quibble over Aids statistics, and the ways and means to combat the proliferation of the dreaded virus, both agree that initiatives such as the marriage bureau for people living with HIV are a step in the right direction.

What is so Hot about Lutyens' Delhi?

From Comrade Somnath Chatterjee to the messiah of the Muslims, Mulayam Singh Yadav. From our videshi icon, Sonia Gandhi to his swadeshi bete noire LK Advani. From the technocrat Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the rustic Laloo Yadav.They all reside in this cosy comfort zone of colonial bungalows with lush green manicured lawns and servant quarters bigger than the average Delhi apartment. I am talking about that oasis of tranquility, surrounded on all sides by a city bursting at the seams, which answers to the name of Lutyens Delhi.

Nowhere in the world, from Comrade Carat's beloved communist China to the imperialist United States of America, from the impoverished nations of sub-Saharan Africa to the prosperous Western Europe, is there such an exclusive residential district for the country's politicians and bureaucrats. The upkeep and maintenance of which is paid for by you and me.

As Delhi grows vertically (simply because there is no empty space any more to expand horizontally), any building activity remains prohibited in Lutyen's Delhi. Ostensibly to maintain the aesthetic nature of that area.

Dearly departed Rajiv Gandhi, another man with exemplary asthetic taste, actually got a law passed that decreed the sanctity of the Lutyens bungalow zone must be maintained. The poor fellow was cut down in his prime. Methinks if he had been around longer, he would have surely built a multiplex on Shahjahan Road. So much more convenient for Rahul baba to get his Hollywood fix. Even Vajpayeeji could have seen his favourite Hindi movies there, without stepping out of his comfort, oops I mean bungalow zone.

Hey, but what about us? The Chakravartys and Chaddhas who spent a small fortune to buy flats and houses in different parts of a Delhi in the 1970s and 1980s, a Delhi that was until then unspoilt by the mindless building boom that has overtaken it since? What about maintaining the asthetic sense of the place I live in? What about my private slice of sunlight whose entry into my bedroom window has been blocked by the monstrosity that has come up next door, simply because I happened to live in a house that wasn't located in Lutyen's Delhi?

Have you ever heard a squeak from any member of the Indian Left, the self appointed champion of India's toiling masses, about this den of inequity? You would think an anti-imperialist party like the CPI(M) would have nothing to do with something as steeped in colonial history as the Lutyens Bungalow Zone. The left parties protest about the docking of USS Nimitz in Chennai, they cry hoarse about atrocities in Nicaragua, and they shed tears for the hungry in Sudan. But nary a word about the prime piece of real estate on which the India's ruling elite reside.

And, honestly, why pick on just the Left? The Manmohan Singh government makes all the right noises about ushering in a market economy and doing away with subsidies. Most members of that government live off water and electricity supplied at highly subsidized rates in Lutyen's Delhi. Most importantly, the supply of both is uninterrupted , 24 x 7. Phone lines are never down in this land of plenty.

Despite that subsidy, unrealised water and electricity bills from India's political elite run into crores of rupees. The dubious list of defaulters reads like the Who's Who of Indian politics. And such is the love for life in this beautiful part of India's capital city, that several occupants of these colonial mansions simply refuse to vacate the premises even when they have lost in the elections and thereby lost the right to live there.

And now as if free water, electricity and telephones were not enough, to ease the miserable life of our country's first citizens, the New Delhi Municipal Council has decided to subsidize internet connectivity in the area. An NDMC team is visiting Bangalore to meet up with Infosys honchos and discuss ways to make Lutyens Delhi a wifi zone. I checked with a friend in the Delhi government if entire Delhi could be converted into a wifi zone. He gave me a look which suggested he was deeply concerned about my mental well being.

Lutyens Delhi is not by the far the only or even the worst den of inequity. But it is more in-your-face than others, you pass by it, you read about its residents in newspapers and watch them on TV preach and pontificate us ad nauseum about the life we should lead, and then lead the life they lead. You drive through Lutyens Delhi, look at those bungalows and idly wonder: "Tumhara ghar mere ghar se zyada safed kyon hai?" To me it is a bit like what Bastille was to the average Frenchman during the times of Luis XVIth, a constant reminder of a life beyond his reach.

I invite the socialist, secular democratic rulers of India to step out of that cocoon of comfort and see how the lesser mortals live. May be live in a flat in Rajouri Garden or a house in Lajpat Nagar. Face electricity shortages in South Delhi and deal with water shortages in west and north Delhi and have a nodding acquaintance with the unfortunate neighbour whose son or daughter became the latest victim of Blueline rage.

Many many years ago, an Indian prince stepped out of his royal palace and witnessed firsthand the lives of the common people. The experience proved to be life altering for him. May be modern India's rulers need to borrow a leaf out of that book.

And who knows, come election time next time round, when they don their starched khadis, fold their hands and oh-so-humbly tell us how they are one of us, I just might buy that story without choking on my food!

Kashmiri Right To Self Determination

I was more disturbed than I cared to admit when a close friend of mine recently took US citizenship. I had been cool with his decision to move to the United States some ten years ago. But the taking of US citizenship to me constituted an official abandonment of India. It was his private decision, but one that left me rather peeved.

I may not wear my patriotism on my sleeve and I am admittedly extremely wary of the jingoism that goes on in the name of nationalism these days, and you will not see me as part of candle-lit vigils at India Gate, be it for world peace or justice for Jessica Lal.

Make no mistake, though, I take the business of my being Indian most seriously. The blood that runs through my thin, diabetes-affected veins is as much Indian as it is B Positive.

So I was more than upset when I had to witness first hand a group of angry youth first trampling all over the Indian flag and then setting it afire. That, too, on Independence Day.

It is very difficult to remain oh-so-professional at moments like that and calmly film the goings-on. On our way back to the hotel that morning, and on many occasions since then, the flag-burning scene has played and re-played in my mind, forcing me to face the question where do I stand on the vexed issue of self determination of the Kashmiri people.

Like any answer to the complex Kashmir issue, this one isn’t simple either.

In Diglipur, in Andamans, there were no newspapers. My earliest memories of Diglipur are of my father fiddling with the old Murphy radio, trying to tune in to the BBC World Service, and on other occasions, to Binaca Geet Mala, broadcast those days by Radio Ceylon.

My first memories of a newspaper are in Delhi when every morning as I left for school I would see my grandmother reading the newspaper to my near-blind grandfather. As I would get ready for school I would hear stories of American B-52 bombers bombing the North Vietnamese countryside.

Methinks my first political thoughts were shaped by what I heard my grandmother read out to my grandfather. In my eight-year-old mind, I pictured North Vietnamese peasants with their bamboo hats, hiding with their children, amidst the tall grass of their lush green fields as B-52 bombers screamed overhead and dropped napalms. I was in no doubt that the Americans were the bad guys and my sympathies, as those of my grandparents, lay solidly with the Viet Cong.

Later on, in my teens, when I first read books like Exodus and Mila 18 by Leon Uris, and read more about the Holocaust, a part of me almost overnight became a Jew. I couldn’t quite fathom how the world could forgive a Germany that had gassed six million Jews during the Second World War.

Still later as I learnt about the Palestinian freedom movement, I had to re-examine my loyalty towards the Jews. I realised rather sadly that the victims of Germany had turned into oppressors of Palestine, and Yasser Arafat and the PLO became my new heroes.

Point is, I grew up supporting the underdog. Hell, I even rooted for Ivan Lendl to win the Wimbledon.

Under the circumstances, the unsavoury sight of the trampling of the Indian flag, notwithstanding, how does one not support the Kashmiri right for self-determination? A few months ago, I completely identified with the Tibetan cause. I can’t see what is good for Tibet, why can't it be good enough for Kashmir too?

And the demand for this right for self-determination is not being mouthed by AK-47 wielding militants, or Pakistan-backed terror groups, but by 13, 14, 15-year-old boys who aren’t armed with anything more sinister than stones and bricks. Worryingly for the Indian authorities, these school boys are also armed with a fierce determination that bullets wouldn’t be able to quell.

Significantly, during the agitation in the Kashmir valley over the past couple of months, not a single member of the security forces has been killed. The restraint is both a reflection of the maturity of the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination as well as a change of tactics by the Hurriyat leadership which now has come round to the view that an armed struggle against the might of the Indian military might not be the most prudent way to get azadi.

At the same time, on the streets of Srinagar, and in other towns across the Kashmir valley, there is a new determination among the common people – they want azadi. It is not just the old demand for what Pandit Nehru once promised and then reneged – the right to self determination of the Kashmiri people. There is fair a degree of unanimity among the people of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. They demand quite unequivocally azadi from India.

As far as I am concerned, this is not even an issue of right or wrong. For too long the whole Kashmir issue has remained a foreign policy debate, and different sides have played verbal ping pong with not just the emotions, but even lives of ordinary Kashmiris. It is not for us to debate whether Kashmiris should get independence, or whether it is in India’s strategic interests to grant even a degree of autonomy to Kashmir.

I simply think it is the birth right of every Kashmiri to exercise his or her right to self-determination. The rest of us should just respect the verdict of that referendum, whatever it happens to be, and ensure its honest implementation.