[WSMDiscuss] South Africa in movement…, Solidarity in movement…, India in movement…. : Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Resist Modi! Night Vigil and Picket at India-SA Business Summit *** 29th April 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at Sandton Convention Centre: Human Rights abuses a part of the DNA of Indian politics & Society under nationalist BJP Government
JS CACIM
jai.sen at cacim.net
Sat Apr 28 15:18:55 CEST 2018
Saturday, April 28, 2018
South Africa in movement…, Solidarity in movement…, India in movement….
[So here is how India today looks to someone from South Africa (and for that matter, to many of us within the country)… admittedly to someone more than average intensely engaged with India and what is happening here, but nevertheless in South Africa; and what he / his organisation is proposing needs to be done. An ugly picture, but one that is vital to face and to know…. Please read this long post. And start by reading the excerpt I give below from just one of the articles included in this post.
[Except for the awkward question : Is it really the case that this picture is only true of politics and society under Modi ? Have we not also seen this feral venality at play during when the Congress has been in power, and also of the Left in power at state levels; and maybe also under other more centrist parties ? In other words, while we are definitely today, under the present regime, going through a period of the most violent manifestations of this, and to the extent that as one article argues,
“… We are in a radical breakdown of the rule of law in BJP ruled India and in these regions mob rule now obtains. … On the 22nd of June 2017, the Republic effectively ended. India is no longer a secular constitutional republic but on the precipice of being transformed into a majoritarian state ruled by an ethnic and religious majority”,
are human rights abuses not in fact a part of the DNA of Indian politics and society as they are, period ? And so where what we are seeing in India is a matter of degree ? Or…. are we in India today entering a new stage ?
[While I tend to the latter position, this awkward question seems to me to be crucial to also phrase and to digest. Otherwise we not only let the other parties off the hook – which, since no party in India has as yet publicly atoned as a body for what it has done, they do not deserve – but we thereby ourselves reduce / surrender our moral legitimacy to challenge them when their time comes; and in addition, because we are in principle lowering our guard, which left leaning liberals and progressives tend to do, where we stand then becomes complicit in what they do… ?
Resist Modi ! Night Vigil and Picket at India-SA Business Summit *** 29th April 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at Sandton Convention Centre, in Johannesburg, South Africa :
Human Rights abuses a part of the DNA of Indian Politics & Society under nationalist BJP Government
Salman Khan, Chairman, SAKAG (South African Kashmir Action Group) and Kashmir Centre for African Union (KCAU)
Including the following articles :
What the Rape and Murder of a Child Reveals About Modi’s India
Mitali Saran
Asifa Bano : The child rape and murder that has Kashmir on edge
Sameer Yasir
Gauri Lankesh : A 'fearless' Indian journalist silenced : Outspoken editor known for her criticism of far-right Hindu groups murdered at her residence in Bangalore.
Saif Khalid
INDIA’S DIVIDE
This is part of a series about oppression and violence against women in India as a rising generation collides with old social mores
Annie Gowen
Why Two Hundred Ordinary Hindus Did Not See A Dead Muslim Child On A Railway Station In North India
Aarthi Sethi
“From a purely social scientific viewpoint if we do not today as a society attend to the symptoms that reveal the ascendance of a logic of war against our own people incarnated within the social body, we are heading to mass slaughter. The public messaging by the current regime, and the silence of ordinary Hindus, has been well diagnosed by journalists. The BJP regime currently holding state power in the Sovereign Socialist Republic of India has declared through acquiescence, commission and omission that it is open hunting season on Muslims and Dalits. Two conclusions follow: 1) We are in a radical breakdown of the rule of law in BJP ruled India and in these regions mob rule now obtains. We are in the terror days of state supported goondaraj [hoodlum rule]. From which flows the second conclusion: 2) On the 22nd of June 2017, the Republic effectively ended. India is no longer a secular constitutional republic but on the precipice of being transformed into a majoritarian state ruled by an ethnic and religious majority. The hunting of Muslims and Dalits in today’s India should concern every right thinking Indian because it demonstrates a prowling consuming violence aided and abetted by the Narendra Modi regime leaking through the social body. As all our public institutions erode under increasing assault, as the space of public discourse and exchange is vitiated through threat, coercion and open violence, we are teetering on the edge of becoming a country in which children are not safe on the trains. A country in which people run scared of what their neighbours think they are eating, and armed thugs patrol small town streets hunting young lovers. 15 year old Junaid’s body, the broken body of a young Muslim boy that ordinary Hindus chose to un-see, shows India the shape of things to come. We are 1.3 billion people spread over one of the largest contiguous landmasses in the world. Imagine the scale of social violence, what it will consume, what will be left, what can escape, once it begins. We should prepare for the future being put in place for us.”
…...
Thanks for posting this, Patrick.
JS
fwd
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> From: Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za <mailto:pbond at mail.ngo.za>>
> Subject: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Resist Modi! Night Vigil and Picket at India-SA Business Summit *** 29th April 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at Sandton Convention Centre: Human Rights abuses a part of the DNA of Indian politics & Society under nationalist BJP Government
> Date: April 28, 2018 at 1:18:22 PM GMT+5:30
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Subject:Urgent Press Release : Night Vigil and Picket at Indian South Africa Business Summit 29th April 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at Sandton Convention Center. Human Rights abuses a part of the DNA of Indian politics & Society under nationalist BJP Government
Date:Fri, 27 Apr 2018 19:41
Night Vigil and Picket at Indian South Africa Business Summit
29th April 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at Sandton Convention Center
27 APRIL 2018
PRESS RELEASE:
Human Rights abuses a part of the DNA of Indian politics & Society under nationalist BJP Government
As South Africans celebrate Freedom Day today - which saw the birth of a non, racial, non-sexist democracy, rooted in social equity, non-racialism and social cohesion, one of our key trade and political partners, India- under the right wing BJP party is taking a sharp turn to right wing ideology, apartheid style social policies, and wide scale human rights abuses.
"To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." - Nelson Mandela.
The massive public relations PR strategy of the BJP government to hide and deflect criticism of its trade partners like South Africa should be unpacked and critically analyzed. By exploiting the ‘ narrative of our shared histories of the Indian diaspora from the days of Ghandi, the BJP seeks to use/abuse Gandhiji’s legacy to gain legitimacy of South African policy makers, media and society. The visit by Indian PM Narendra Modi in July 2016 to our Constitutional Court and Ghandi’s monument is an affront and insult to the historical legacy role that the great Mahatma Ghandi and Congress movement played in the formation of liberation movements.
The hosting of the South Africa- Indian Business Summit 2018, from 28-30 April 2018 is a case in point. While trade and investment from any nation is welcomed there should also be a critical discussion on human rights records and apartheid style policies of some nations like India under the BJP party.
1. Culture of Rape as a political weapon in India…
The brutal abduction and rape of 5 year old Asifa Bano 2 weeks ago - on the eve of Commonwealth has galvanized Indian and global civil society. Police have arrested eight men, including a retired government official, four police officers and a juvenile in connection with Asifa's death.However, the arrests sparked protests in Jammu - lawyers tried to stop police entering the court to file a charge sheet and two ministers from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attended a rally in support of the accused.
2. Neo Liberal , Anti working class and suppression of trade unions
Another core area of attacking progressive society is the full attack by the BJP- backed by powerful Big Business and industry on the working class and poor. This is backed by a neo-liberal policy that seeks to reduce wages, and provide ever more subsidies in favour of the powerful big industries and upper caste that is on a full scale attack on the working class and trade unionism, thus further eroding the most progressive social base in Indian society.
3. Occupation of Kashmir is 70 years and still brewing…
The occupation of Kashmir is one of the long standing occupations of our times- going back 6 decades, has become increasingly brutalized and militarized since the BJP come to power in 2018. The killing of 17 protestors in early April 2018 has again exposed the fractured fault lines between Hindu-majority Jammu and the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in a sharply divided state. The Kashmir valley has a tumultuous relationship with India - there has been an armed revolt in the region against Indian rule since 1989. All of these are fuelling tensions in this nucearliased zone and there is need to create a de-nuclearised zone
4. Understanding right wing nationalist, exclusivist Hindutva policy of the BJP
The ideology of the ruling BJP government in India – Hindutva – is a right wing religious-poltico-ideology, very similar to the Nazi party and third reich in Nazi Germany. The BJP is in the midst of implementing nationalist-exclusivist social policies- very much like the old Aprtheid National Party did. A full frontal attack on human rights, religious and linguistic minorities, Muslims and Dalits, as well as the working class and unions are the norm of todays Indian society.
5. What is to be done?
Going forward, we humbly request your organization to critically debate the issues.
v To critically engage our bi-literal relations within South African civil society and our engagement with India by highlighting the following intersectional issues:( host seminars, write to media, etc)
a. Wanton human rights abuses esp. of women and minorities in India;
b. The attack on working class and trade unions due to alliance by ruling BJP government and Big Business in India;
c.High levels of corporate corruption is the norm of Indian business culture;
d. The rise of fascism and apartheid style ideology under BJP which marginalizes many communities;
e.The unchecked power of the Brahmin upper caste over Indian society - an exploitative caste system that spans thousands of years;
f.The culture of rape and political protection racket of the BJP Indian politics & society ;
g. The occupation of Kashmir which is more brutal than ever before and use of live ammunition and violence;
h. The monetization policy of Modi’s BJP that left tens of millions of Indians poorer;
i.The new alliance of India-Israel in 2017-2018 which goes against our life long struggle of solidarity with Palestinians is another affront to the global movement for human rights in Palestine and our own foreign policy. By forming an alliance with Israel, BJP has nailed its regional foreign policy to align itself with a serial human rights abuser and occupier.
# End BJP Fascism in India & promote Human Rights campaign 2018
Info
Salman Khan. Paul Harris Fellow
Founder & Chairman
SAKAG South Africa Kashmiri Action Group
082 691 6048
Abdul Razak Noorbhai : 082 337 8648
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RESOURCES
APPENDIX:
A Selection of recent articles on the wanton Human Rights abuses and rising fascism in BJP ruled India
What the Rape and Murder of a Child Reveals About Modi’s India
By Mitali Saran
Ms. Saran is a journalist based in New Delhi.
April 17, 2018
Image
A vigil for 8-year-old Asifa Bano in Jammu, India, on April 14.CreditJaipal Singh/EPA, via Shutterstock
NEW DELHI — India is sliding toward a collapse of humanity and ethics in political and civic life, as the recent reports of the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl from a seminomadic Muslim community in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir reveal. Politicians from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party defended the men accused of the crime and ignited a furious debate about the fundamental character of the country.
The child was abducted in January and imprisoned for a week in a temple, where she was drugged, starved and raped repeatedly before being murdered. Her body was thrown into the forest. At the time the crime passed without much comment beyond the local press.
Outrage finally exploded last week, after a front-page report in the Indian Express newspaper revealed terrifying details from the police charge sheet, including the fact that one of the accused, a police officer, had asked his co-conspirators to hold off killing the child so that he could rape her once more.
The charge sheet and other reports strongly suggested that this was not a random crime but one deliberately in line with the ugly sectarian politics playing out across India. Intimidation of religious minorities and violence against them has increased since Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 2014. India’s traditional secularism is now locked in battle with the new majoritarian, Hindu chauvinist politics he represents.
The 8-year-old girl belonged to the Muslim Bakarwal people, who move with their sheep and horses between high mountain pastures in the summer and the plains of the Hindu-dominated Jammu region in winter. There is tension with local Hindus over the right to graze animals on the land. According to the police, the motive of the premeditated crime was to terrorize the Bakarwals and dislodge them from the area. The bereaved parents were not even allowed to bury the child in the village. They have since fled the area.
A newly formed group called Hindu Ekta Manch, or Hindu Unity Forum, organized a protest march in defense of the accused, who include a retired government official and two police officers. Thousands joined in, many waving the Indian national flag. Vijay Sharma, a co-founder of the group and an organizer of the march, was also a high-ranking leader of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the region.
Mr. Modi’s party shares power with a regional political party in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Two B.J.P. ministers in the state government joined the protest in defense of the accused. “So what if a girl died?” one of them remarked. “Many girls die every day.”
They demanded that the investigation be transferred from the state police — the investigators included Muslim officers — to the federal Central Bureau of Investigation, a largely delegitimized institution that serves as a de facto arm of the ruling party. Lawyers at a court in the city of Jammu tried to physically prevent officials from filing charges against the accused and have threatened the lawyer who is representing the girl’s family.
Over the past week, horrified Indians have protested vigorously on social media and in some cities. The disgust and the fury at the complicity of politicians, and the federal government’s silence, grew into a thunderous chorus demanding that the prime minister speak up and fire the ministers backing the Hindu Ekta Manch.
Belatedly reacting to popular outrage, Mr. Modi finally said: “Incidents being discussed since past two days cannot be part of a civilized society. As a country, as a society, we all are ashamed of it.” He promised justice. His vague statement delicately alluded to another case in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where a lawmaker from Mr. Modi’s party is accused of rape. Mr. Modi stayed away from his party’s involvement in both cases.
Yet instead of uniting India in horror, the incident has deepened religious, political and ethical divides. It has also made clear that there is no automatic political cost to crime or falsehood if it furthers the hegemonic political narrative. The politicians involved were sacked only after a huge public outcry. Government ministers, officials, right-leaning media and right-wing supporters have been perfectly sanguine about using the dead child to polarize society with whataboutery, fake news and wild conspiracy theories.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Modi’s party, Meenakshi Lekhi, attacked opposition protests, suggesting that they were selective and opportunistic. “You see their plan,” she said. “First shout ‘minority minority’, then ‘Dalit Dalit’ and now ‘women women’ and then try to somehow fix blame of state issues on the center.” An influential ex-editor tweeted that Muslim Rohingya refugees were to blame for the crime. A B.J.P. youth activist posted a comment, now deleted, on his Facebook page saying that the rape must have been fun. A pornography site reported a surge in searches for videos using the raped and murdered girl’s name.
The sense of national crisis today is because Indians feel a rising urgency to either counter this ethical collapse or to capitalize on it in the run-up to the next election.
Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, and four years into his term, religious and cultural bigotry stands mainstreamed in Indian society.
Many who voted for Mr. Modi’s economic promises are disappointed by his failure to deliver, and impatient with his deliberate silences around sectarian and sexual violence and hate speech by his party colleagues and ministers. The systematic destruction of democratic institutions is hard to ignore.
The B.J.P. and its Hindu nationalist affiliates are bent on refashioning India into a country that is increasingly hostile to secular, democratic, pluralist and minority Indians. The rape and murder of the little nomad girl has thus taken on a larger meaning, reflecting the struggle for the fundamental character of India.
An open letter to the prime minister signed by retired civil servantsstrongly protested “the agenda of division and hate your party … insidiously introduced into the grammar of our politics, our social and cultural life and even our daily discourse” and held him directly responsible for “this terrifying state of affairs.”
This battle for the soul and future of India is likely to get more violent in the lead-up to the national elections, scheduled for next year. Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. is braced for a desperate, ugly fight and has a long history of using religious polarization to electoral advantage.
It will be up to the citizens of India to fight for a tolerant, pluralist country and stop the degeneration of its civic and political life.
Mitali Saran (@mitalisaran) is a columnist for the Business Standard newspaper based in New Delhi.
***
Asifa Bano: The child rape and murder that has Kashmir on edge
• 12 April 2018
The brutal gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Indian-administered Kashmir has put the restive state on edge. Sameer Yasir, an independent journalist based in Srinagar, reports on how the investigation has split the region along religious lines.
On the morning of 17 January, Muhammad Yusuf Pujwala was sitting outside his home in Kathua when one of his neighbours came running towards him. He stopped in front of Mr Pujwala and broke the news: they had found his eight-year-old daughter, Asifa Bano. Her body lay in bushes in the forest, a few hundred metres away.
"I knew something horrible had happened to my girl," Mr Pujwala, a 52-year-old with deep sunken eyes, told the BBC in an interview recently. His wife, Naseema Bibi, sat beside him, faintly crying while repeatedly murmuring "Asifa".
Mr Pujwala belongs to a community of Muslim nomadic shepherds called Gujjars who crisscross the Himalayas with their goats and buffaloes.
The crime has shocked the community, exposing the fault lines between Hindu-majority Jammu and the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in a sharply divided state. The Kashmir valley has a tumultuous relationship with India - there has been an armed revolt in the region against Indian rule since 1989.
§ Was Delhi gang rape India's #Metoo moment?
§ Viewpoint: How a rape changed India
Police have arrested eight men, including a retired government official, four police officers and a juvenile in connection with Asifa's death.
However, the arrests sparked protests in Jammu - lawyers tried to stop police entering the court to file a charge sheet and two ministers from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attended a rally in support of the accused.
The BJP rules the state in a coalition with the regional People's Democratic Party (PDP).
How did Asifa disappear?
When she went missing on 10 January, her family was living in a village around 72km (45 miles) east of Jammu city. On that afternoon, her mother recalls, Asifa went to the forest to bring home the horses. The horses returned but Asifa did not.
Ms Naseema informed her husband. He and some neighbours started looking for her. Armed with flash lights, lanterns and axes, they went deep into the forest and searched through the night. But they could not find her.
Two days later, on 12 January, the family filed a police complaint. But, according to Mr Pujwala, the police were not helpful. One of the police officers, he alleges, said Asifa must have "eloped" with a boy.
As news of the crime spread, Gujjar staged protests and blocked a highway, forcing police to assign two officers for the search. One of those who was assigned, Deepak Khajuria, was himself arrested in connection with the crime.
Five days later, Asifa's body was found.
"She had been tortured. Her legs were broken," recalled Ms Naseema, who had rushed to the forest along with her husband to see the body. "Her nails had turned black and there were blue and red marks on her arm and fingers."
What do investigators believe happened?
On 23 January, six days after Asifa's body was found, the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Mehbooba Mufti, ordered a investigation by the crime branch, a special unit of the state police.
According to the investigators, Asifa was confined in a local temple for several days and given sedatives that kept her unconscious. The charge sheet alleges that she was "raped for days, tortured and then finally murdered". She was strangled to death and then hit on the head twice with a stone.
Sanji Ram, a 60-year-old retired government officer, allegedly planned the crime with the help of police officers Surender Verma, Anand Dutta, Tilak Raj and Mr Khajuria.
Lawyers protest on behalf of the accusedImage copyrightSAMEER YASIRImage captionLawyers in Jammu tried to stop police from entering the court to file a charge sheet
Mr Ram's son, Vishal, his nephew, a juvenile, and his friend, Parvesh Kumar, are also accused over the rape and murder.
Investigators allege that Mr Khajuria and the other police officers - some of whom lodged the complaint and accompanied the family in the search - washed Asifa's bloodied and mud-spattered clothes before sending them to a forensic lab.
They believe that the accused men wished to terrorise the Gujjar community into leaving Jammu. The shepherds use public and forest land in Jammu for grazing, which has recently brought them into conflict with some Hindu residents in the region.
"It was about land," said Talib Hussain, a tribal rights activist and lawyer. Mr Hussain, who led a protest in support of Asifa's family, alleges he was arrested and threatened by local police.
Ankur Sharma, one of the lawyers who protested on behalf of the accused, alleged that the Muslim nomads were trying to alter the demographics of Jammu, where Hindus are currently the majority. "They are encroaching our forests and water resources," he told the BBC. He said the accused had been falsely implicated while the real culprits were still free.
While the crime did not receive much attention in Jammu, newspapers in Srinagar, the capital city located in the Kashmir valley, carried the story on their front pages.
In Jammu and Kashmir state assembly, Mian Altaf, an influential Gujjar leader and an opposition legislator, waved the newspapers with photographs of Asifa while demanding an inquiry. Rajiv Jasrotia, a BJP lawmaker, said the incident was a "family matter" and blamed Mr Altaf for politicising the crime.
§ Kashmir: Why India and Pakistan fight over it
§ The Kashmiri teenager blinded by pellets
What happened at Asifa's funeral?
The Gujjars wanted to bury Asifa in a graveyard where they had purchased some land a few years ago and had already buried five people. But when they arrived there, Mr Pujwala said, they were surrounded by Hindu right-wing activists who threatened them with violence if they were to continue with the burial.
"We had to walk seven miles to bury her in another village," Mr Pujwala said. Two of his daughters were killed in an accident some years ago. On his wife's insistence, he adopted Asifa, the daughter of his brother-in-law.
His wife described Asifa as a "chirping bird" who ran like a "deer". When they travelled, she looked after the herd.
"That made her the darling of the community," Ms Bibi said. "She was the centre of our universe."
***
Gauri Lankesh: A 'fearless' Indian journalist silenced: Outspoken editor known for her criticism of far-right Hindu groups murdered at her residence in Bangalore.
People in several Indian cities held candlelights to pay tribute to the 55-year-old editor [Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images]
by Saif Khalid
Gauri Lankesh, an Indian journalist, publisher and outspoken critic of right-wing groups, was shot dead by unknown attackers in front of her home in the southern city of Bangalore on Tuesday. She was 55.
"The fact that she was so vocal made her a prime target," Sudipto Mondal, a Bangalore-based journalist based in Bangalore, told Al Jazeera.
"And I suppose that goes for a lot of people over here, which is why there are fears that other people might be in the line."
The news of Lankesh's killing met shock and outrage, with journalists, civil society members and students across the country sharply condemning the murder.
"Gauri Lankesh was a known critic of the central government on key issues and had fearlessly expressed her views in the newspaper she edited, as well as in other forums," the Editors Guild of India said in a statement.
"Her killing is an ominous portent for dissent in democracy and a brutal assault on the freedom of the press.”
She was raped at 13. Her case has been in India’s courts for 11 years — and counting.
INDIA’S DIVIDE | This is part of a series about oppression and violence against women in India as a rising generation collides with old social mores.
By Annie Gowen August 15, 2016 Email the author
https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/07/20/Foreign/Images/2016-05-27_13.10.071465908611-21469031792.jpg?uuid=RmZRME6WEea_J0BRBoNvlg <https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/07/20/Foreign/Images/2016-05-27_13.10.071465908611-21469031792.jpg?uuid=RmZRME6WEea_J0BRBoNvlg>
Courts in India are overburdened, with rampant judge shortages and 22 million pending cases — some taking 10 or more years to complete. In one case, a woman who was gang-raped in 2005, when she was a teenager, waited 11 years for a guilty verdict for the ringleader in the case, and it's not over yet. The young woman, pictured above, is now in her 20s. (Annie Gowen/The Washington Post)
LUCKNOW, INDIA — She was still a teenager when a pack of young men pulled her into a car, tortured her and gang-raped her.
The young woman, now a poised student, endured more than three dozen court appearances, six separate trials and endless legal wrangling.
The last of the rapists, the son of a powerful family, was convicted this past spring — 11 years after the crime. During her ordeal she was forced to leave school, was put in a home for runaway girls and even now lives with police protection out of fear that allies of the rapists could exact revenge.
Her supporters say her extraordinary perseverance helped her overcome forbidding legal odds.
“I decided I had a single goal,” said the young woman, the daughter of an illiterate junk dealer: “Justice.”
Violence against women and the number of rapes in India have risen for over a decade — more than two rapes occur every hour on average, one study says — yet activists, attorneys and officials say that female crime victims still face many barriers in the country’s courts. These include poorly trained doctors, callous police, shoddy forensic practices and the delays that permeate India’s judicial system — delays so disheartening that some victims lose their nerve or settle with attackers’ families.
In recent years, India has responded by toughening its rape law and creating fast-track courts to speed prosecution of rape cases and other crimes against women. But these new courts have their own delays — and in some states, strikingly low conviction rates.
In April, when the last of the gang rapists in the case was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the victim put on a pink sari and fed sweets to her joyous family and the activists who supported her during years of demanding action. But the journey is not over.
“I have thought about this continuously,” the young woman said recently. “Why did they do this to me? Why did they ruin my life — just because they had money and I’m poor?”
https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_60w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/08/03/Foreign/Images/GettyImages-4655772661470255491.jpg?uuid=aRtOmFm3EeaLSAyzRCIRMQ <https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_60w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/08/03/Foreign/Images/GettyImages-4655772661470255491.jpg?uuid=aRtOmFm3EeaLSAyzRCIRMQ>
At night in the city of Lucknow, a few women on the streets stick to the main lighted streets. (Jonas Gratzer/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Kidnapped from the street
The victim, about age 13, was walking home from her job as a housemaid with her younger brother one rainy night in 2005 when a car with tinted windows pulled up. Four young men — who ranged in age from about 17 to 19 — were drunk and looking for a girl, one of them later told police. Two got out of the car, forced her in and drove away, ignoring the frightened cries of her brother.
For several hours, the victim said, the young men held her down and tortured her — sodomizing her with a gun and burning her repeatedly with a cigarette lighter. Others joined when they arrived at a remote plot of land, taking her to a dusty workshop ringed by eucalyptus trees, where she was raped on a wooden pallet. Police later recovered strands of her hair, her panties and her sandals at the scene, on land they said was owned by the powerful political family of the alleged ringleader, Gaurav Shukla.
Uttar Pradesh, the northern Indian state where the attack occurred, has a population of more than 200 million, about the same as Brazil. It is poor, deeply patriarchal and criticized for its thuggish political culture, the “Goonda Raj.” Instances of reported rape have increased faster in the state than in the rest of India in recent years, with the number of rapes more than doubling between 2014 and 2015. The leader of its governing political party, Mulayam Singh Yadav, caused a stir two years ago when he suggested that rapists should not be given the death penalty. “These are boys,” he said, “they make mistakes.”
Shukla was 18, cocky, the “destroyed son of a rich man,” as one of his neighbors put it. His attorney says that he was not involved but confirms that he faces separate charges of attempted murder and conspiracy — including a case still pending in what is known as “Gangster Court.”
Shukla’s brother, a lawyer, declined to comment on behalf of the family.
After the assault, the young men dropped the teen on the side of the road, threw down a 20-rupee bill (worth about 30 cents) and drove away. She could barely walk, but eventually found some village women and asked for help. She was in such bad shape that the women first thought she was a ghost.
“I said, ‘I’m not a ghost, I’m human, please help me,’ ” she recalled.
R.K.S. Rathore, the deputy inspector general of police in Lucknow, said he has not forgotten his first sight of the bleeding, limping teen when she was brought to the police station a few hours later.
“It was quite evident she had been brutally handled,” Rathore said.
The victim had support from the police early on as well as from her father, a white-bearded scrap dealer named Sabruddin, who was outraged at what his daughter had gone through.
In this, she was lucky: Many families don’t report rapes for fear it will bring dishonor upon them. And police have long discouraged women from filing complaints out of indifference or a desire to keep crime statistics down, although that is changing with new laws.
The victim was taken to a nearby emergency room where a doctor noted cuts and abrasions and referred her to a female physician for a rape exam.
Although the victim was hospitalized a day later because of excessive vaginal bleeding and would continue to bleed for weeks afterward, the female physician wrote in her report that there was no bleeding and did not mention the burns on her body obvious to police and her family. She noted that the girl’s hymen was no longer intact but concluded that “no definite opinion about rape” could be given.
Many rape cases are hampered by poorly trained doctors, sloppy evidence gathering and a dearth of forensic labs, experts say. Sexual-assault examination guidelines for doctors were established only in 2014.
The doctor also performed what is known as the “two-finger test,” a once-routine practice in rape exams where two fingers are used to determine the pliability of the hymen. The exam has long been used by defense attorneys as evidence that a victim had an alleged prior sexual history, although courts have said that should have no bearing. This “blame the victim” mentality long outraged human rights groups.
Although new medical guidelines for doctors forbid its use and the Supreme Court outlawed the two-finger test in 2013, “that is still being done,” according to Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the chair of the National Commission for Women.
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Many court files are not digitized, leading to huge stacks like this one in a law office in Lucknow. (Annie Gowen/The Washington Post)
Stress on the family
One recent evening, the victim and her parents sat in the front room of their modest concrete house in a lower-class neighborhood of Lucknow, sipping gingery tea and nibbling hot jalebi sweets. An occasional train thundered past. As darkness fell, a single lightbulb gleamed above.
“In the past 11 years there was not one single day we enjoyed life happily,” said her mother, who still speaks the regional language of the eastern state of Assam, where they farmed before floods washed away their land and they moved to the city.
The mother still can’t speak without crying about the days and nights following the attack on her daughter, how the family was threatened and urged to drop the case by Shukla’s supporters, how her daughter was taken from her and put into protective custody, locked in a facility for runaway girls for nearly 18 months, permitted to see her parents just a few times a month.
Police eventually arrested Shukla and five accomplices that summer, tying them to the attack with the aid of a tipster and cellphone records, Rathore said. Two men were convicted in the case in 2007, and a third in 2013. Two juveniles spent time in detention facilities and later died in separate road accidents.
Meanwhile, Shukla and his attorneys waged a lengthy legal battle to prove that he was a juvenile rather than an adult at the time of the crime. As the years wore on, they were repeatedly admonished for not showing up to court, calling in sick and other excuses.
Defense attorneys often drag out trials to avoid jail time for their clients, according to Padm Kirti, a lawyer and legal writer in Lucknow. Bar associations cause delays by refusing to work on minor religious holidays or by going on strike. The system favors those who can afford pricey lawyers; meanwhile, the victim’s family had to sell its two buffaloes and solicit donations to pay its legal costs.
In her long wait for justice, the victim was not alone. The average lower-court trial in India takes more than six years, according to Daksh, a civil society organization in Bangalore that analyzes the Indian legal system, and can stretch even longer with High Court and Supreme Court appeals. In U.S. state courts, by contrast, various studies have found that the median time between arrest and adjudication for all felonies is about 110 days; for rape, about 250 days.
[India now has nearly 400 fast-track courts for rape cases. But ‘fast’ is a relative term.]
The system in India is clogged with rape-charge cases filed by families simply trying to save face when their daughters elope, or who are angry that a man broke a marriage promise. These take time and resources from actual victims.
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A life on hold
As the case wore on, India was changing. Millions of young women were taking new jobs in an expanding economy, buying mobile phones and joining social media — venting their frustration over the gender violence and patriarchal attitudes that seemed to be holding India back.
The victim said she felt that she remained frozen, her life on hold. When would she go back to a normal school, go to the market and eat street snacks, giggle with girlfriends? Meanwhile, Shukla had a lavish wedding, and a son.
“Everybody knows about the case, people from my neighborhood,” she said. “At the same time I’ve lost my dignity, I’ve lost my childhood, he’s living a happily married life.”
Then came 2012 and the devastating fatal gang rape of a New Delhi college student on a bus, which prompted protests and outrage around the world and forced India to begin confronting, at last, the ubiquity of sexual assault. In its wake, the government tightened laws on rape, sexual harassment and human trafficking and set aside $289 million for rape crisis centers, help lines and special investigators. More than three-quarters of that has not been spent, according to a government report.
Protests continued, and a year later, hundreds of women were on the streets of Lucknow, agitating for women’s justice — including fast-track courts and a trial in the Shukla case.
In January 2015, the court referred the case to one of the new fast-track courts, among nearly 400 set up across the country.
But even then things did not go smoothly. Shukla’s attorneys continued to miss hearings. Two were rescheduled because the bar association had ordered a strike. In May last year, the entire court file mysteriously went missing, reappearing months later.
“The process in the fast-track courts is still slow,” said Bulbul Godiyal, the additional advocate general for Uttar Pradesh. “They are more effective than regular courts,” she said, but because of the overall problems in the system, “prolonged delays still occur.”
The state’s Legal Services Authority estimates that the conviction rate in these courts is low — a mere 5 to 10 percent, less than half the national rate for crimes against women.
The victim came face to face with her attacker in court in December, a few days after the trial finally began. She had not seen him for years. He had grown a mustache. His body had filled out. He had become a man.
When she testified a few weeks later, she became so emotional that she became sick and vomited. Court was adjourned.
Starting again
With the encouragement of the women’s advocates who assisted in her case, the victim managed to resume her education at an alternative school and complete 11th grade.
She had tried to enroll in ninth grade in a regular school, but dropped out because she felt ashamed when people pointed, stared and referred to her as “the rape girl.” She wants to be free of it, this case that has consumed half her life.
Now in her mid-20s, she is entering 12th grade and dreams of becoming a judge or maybe marrying a young man from Assam.
“He would have to know about what happened, accept me, then never mention it again,” she said with a slight smile.
A local advocate who helped the victim said she rarely got discouraged during her long battle.
“She is remarkable,” said Madhu Garg, an activist with the All India Democratic Women’s Association in Lucknow. “The case dragged on for so long, but the strength of her character and her determination helped us win.”
A daily computer class in a nearby storefront is the victim’s salvation. There, no one knows her history, and she makes it a point to keep it that way, giving her police guards the slip when she heads out.
“When this incident happened I was scared of boys,” she said. “But the boys I have been studying with give me respect; they say ‘hi,’ ‘hello’ and help me if I don’t understand something in English.”
The young women gossip and giggle, and although she hasn’t joined in yet maybe she will soon. “I am feeling a lot lighter now,” she said.
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Gaurav Shukla after he was convicted in the gang-rape case in a fast-track court in Lucknow, India, on April 13. (Ajay Kumar/The Times Of India Group)
The verdict
The trial concluded in February, paving the way for Shukla’s conviction April 13. A few days later, he was charged with forging a high school certificate that said he was a minor at the time of the rape.
The man had been a familiar sight at the courthouse, turning up in designer sunglasses and blazers for his court appointments, driven in a government car, his “chamchas” — Hindi slang for henchmen — by his side. But the day the judge pronounced him guilty, Shukla hid his face with a white towel, sweaty and shaken.
His attorney, Gopal Narain Mishra, said that he is appealing because the prosecution pinned its case on the testimony of the victim alone and presented no physical evidence tying his client to the crime.
“This is a false conviction and an unsustainable case,” he said. “Gaurav Shukla is not involved.”
For the victim, Shukla’s conviction provided a measure of relief.
“After all these years, the wait is finally over,” she said.
Palestinians unhappy over Modi snub on Israel trip
Palestinian Deputy Foreign Minister says Indian PM should have visited both states 'to spread the message of peace'.
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The Palestinian Authority (PA) has expressed its concern over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision not to meet President Mahmoud Abbas during his historic three-day trip to Israel.
Modi was welcomed by his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Tuesday as he became the first Indian leader to visit Israel.
In addition to Netanyahu, Modi also met Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday.
Modi met Abbas in New Delhi in May.
Trump holds talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials
"We expected him [Modi] to visit both Israel and Palestine," Palestinian Deputy Foreign Minister Tasir Jaradat told Al Jazeera.
"To play an important role between the two sides and to be able to spread the message of peace, one should visit both."
India, which has a history of advocating the Palestinian cause, opened up formal diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992.
During the Cold War, India was a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement of developing countries and sided staunchly with the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel.
Before 1992, India would not even allow its citizens to enter Israel on an Indian passport.
But since then, the two countries have cultivated warm ties, particularly in the areas of technology and defence cooperation.
READ MORE: Narendra Modi in Israel to meet 'friend' Netanyahu
It is common for world leaders to also travel to Ramallah in the occupied West Bankduring official trips to Israel.
US President Donald Trump held talks with Netanyahu and Abbas on his visit in May.
The snub by Modi also attracted criticism from residents of the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank.
"It's very sad that Modi did not come to Palestine," Ali Mohammad Abushbak, a Palestinian student, told The Indian Express.
"A lot of people believe the story of Israel, but what about the Palestine story? We are feeling discriminated [against] by this approach of the Indian government."
India is seeking closer defence ties with Israel, particularly as it moves away from relying on traditional ally Russia for its military hardware.
Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from Jerusalem, said: "The PA is talking in terms of surprise, rather than outright criticism, that Narendra Modi has decided not to make time for its president in the course of a three-day visit."
Why Two Hundred Ordinary Hindus Did Not See A Dead Muslim Child On A Railway Station In North India
ON 27/06/2017 BY AARTI SETHI IN CULTURE, EVERYDAY LIFE, GOVERNMENT, IDENTITIES, IMAGES, LANGUAGE, MEDIA POLITICS, POLITICS, RELIGION, RIGHT WATCH
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On 22 June 2017 fifteen-year old Hafiz Junaid was stabbed to death on a Mathura-bound train from New Delhi. He was traveling home for Eid with his brothers and two friends. A dispute over seats resulted in a group of men repeatedly assaulting and stabbing Junaid and his companions. The assailants flung their bodies onto the Asoti railway platform. A crowd gathered. At some point an ambulance was called and two bodies were taken away. Junaid is dead. His companions are in critical condition. While one person has been arrested the police investigations are running into a wall of social opacity since they have been unable to find a single eye-witness to the incident. Of the 200 hundred strong crowd that assembled on Asoti railway platform on Thursday evening, the police cannot find one person who can say what they saw. The police cannot find a witness because something very peculiar seems to have happened to those present at Junaid’s death. A report by Kaunain Sherrif M in the Indian Express provides specific details. When asked if he had seen anything that evening, Ram Sharan a corn-vendor whose daily shift coincides with the killing, Sharan said he was not present at the time of the incident. Two staffers who were sent to investigate by the station master were unavailable for comment. Neither the station-master, the post-master or the railway guards saw the event they were present at.
In this startling piece the journalist reports how the public lynching of a Muslim child becomes a social non-event in contemporary India. He shows the reconfiguring, and splitting, of a social field of vision. He reports all the ways in which people – Hindus- did not see the body of a dead – Muslim – child that lay in front of them. The Hindus on the Asoti railway platform managed to collectively not see a 15 year old Muslim boy being stabbed to death. Then they collectively, and without prior agreement, continued to not see what they had seen after the event. This is the uniquely terrifying aspect of this incident on which this report reflects: the totalising force of an unspoken, but collectively binding, agreement between Hindus to not see the dead body of a Muslim child. Hindus on this railway platform in a small station in north India instantly produced a stranger sociality, a common social bond between people who do not otherwise know each other. By mutual recognition between strangers, Hindus at this platform agreed to abide by a code of silence by which the death of a Muslim child can not be seen by 200 people in full public view on a railway platform in today’s India.
If this has happened we are far beyond the Gujarat pogroms, perhaps because the logics unleashed at that time have reached their final denouement. In 2002 we saw the clasped hands of a Muslim man pleading for his life from armed Hindu mobs. In 2017 there is nothing to see and no one to see it. One way to read this public blindness is as the breakdown of a social contract in purely descriptive terms- that of recognizing the body before you as being one to whom fundamental social obligations (such as the protection undertaken by adults towards children) are owed as a result of membership within the social body. The Hindus on this railway platform did not believe that any fundamental obligations, indeed even the most basic as an acknowledgment of his (dead)existence, were owed to Junaid. I stress this one social relation -that between adults and children -because its public disregard usually occurs in those situations (such as warfare, pogroms, genocides, lynchings) when social bonds have come asunder. When some adults refuse to see some dead bodies as dead children (the Holocaust, slavery) it means that the persons these children would have grown up to be are not deemed worthy of living on into membership in the socio-political order. The affective alienation by which a gathered crowd of Hindus can lynch, break, stab, tear into pieces a Muslim boy, and then not see what is left, is because these Hindus do not think Muslims belong in the social body.
Yet this analysis goes only so far because something much more terrifying seems to have occurred: not the breakdown of a social contract but the production of a new contract in today’s India, one from which all Muslims, even children, are now affectively felt to be outside. In this case it is not simply that those present did not intervene to save Junaid and his friends from harm. This is common in India. Most people do not stop to intervene or help in a violent situation because they are scared. We should cease lamenting the indifference of “the Indian public” and ask instead what forms of obligation to strangers can exist in a society as radically unequal as ours. In this case then it is not that those present were indifferent to the public lynching of a 15 year old Muslim boy. They were not indifferent at all. Rather they made a collective agentive decision to abide by a common sense to not see the public savaging of a Muslim boy. The blind wall behind which Junaid’s body lies reflects a positive action on the part of the Hindus present to collectively agree to refuse him the most basic recognitions humanity (that is the force by which humans recognize each other as sharing a common being and bond) demands.
What are the social logics revealed on Asoti platform? What is the nature of these principles of willed unseeing to which the ordinary Hindus on Asoti platform seem to hold?
Anthropologists identify a fundamental organizational logic of human society, that of mutual exchange. Humans living in society, i.e. in a social order, i.e. in a rule-governed order, enter into relations of exchange with other humans also living in society. Thus persons are those with whom one trades, barters, goes to war, enters into ties of mutual obligation and marries. Sometimes under extreme social torsion the principle of inter-social and inter-subjective mutuality breaks apart and certain groups are ejected out of the socio-political order. The force of the social as mutual exchange is withdrawn and they become humans with whom one does not marry, trade, go to war (since even warfare assumes negotiations) or exchange food, even what they eat ejected from the category of the edible. One does not respect their dead, revere their gods, nor recognize their marriages. In such circumstances these persons occupy a frightening new location in the social order. Towards such persons (prisoners captured in warfare, slaves, pacified populations) the forms of mutual exchange that undergird full membership in the social order are no longer operative. Instead another principle of social differentiation and interaction takes over- that of the hunter and the hunted. Social forms descend into bloody spirals of violence as former exchange partners withdraw social relations of mutuality and obligation. There is no more talking (the exchange of words), no more selling (the exchange of goods) and no more love (the exchange of kinship).
Such a notion may seem archaic, out of the pages of a yellowed structuralist text which once excelled in tracing the social logic of hunting and warfare in “non-state” (acephalic) societies. But we can discern the operations of this logic in modern polities. The hunting of black bodies that accompanied the conquest of Africa, the genocides that accompanied the founding of modern America and Australia. And a brief look at the bloody political history of the twentieth century shows us what happens when a hyper-nationalist militarized majority (as Pritam Singh points out below the anti-Sikh pogroms, Nazi Germany, Kosovo) begins hunting minorities. We saw the intimations of this logic – this experiment with open violence as a means of terrorizing Indian Muslims and Hindus into expelling Muslims from the national socio-political body in the Gujarat pogroms in 2002. At that time what struck and horrified a watching Indian public in this hyper-mediatized pogrom was the intimate and perverse nature of the violence directed at Muslim bodies. The rioting Hindus in Gujarat did not simply kill Muslims: they dismembered them with swords and knives. Pregnant women were ripped open, unborn fetuses thrown on fires. Mass rape accompanied by mutilation. The organic desecration of Muslim places of worship. North India is today Gujarat, except now the ruling dispensation does not need to incur the expense of a full blown pogrom since its organizing logics are abroad in the social body. Its operations can be discerned in the myriad ways in which vigilante Hindu meṅ are spreading across towns and villages in north India hunting Muslims for sport.
To return, we can and should locate this blindness of ordinary Hindus in the historical narrative we now know of the ascendancy of the Hindu Right as a social and political force in modern India. Yet the historical arc is what social scientists would call a necessary but insufficient explanation. Necessary because it is from out of this that what is coming will come. But it cannot explain the form it is taking- the peculiar horrifying quality by which non-pathological sane people cannot see the dead body of a child. Something more fundamental seems to have broken in today’s India.
As we have come to expect with the Narendra Modi regime and the national blindness it is imposing on the country, the central government has also refused to see Junaid’s body. The eyes of the state which see almost everything else did not see Junaid’s body as it lay on the platform and once it had been removed. The statements by functionaries of the state on what they did not see are instructive. Om Prakash, the Station Manager, managed to not see what was by his own admission a “huge crowd” gathered 200 ms away from his office. The two guards he sent to investigate this crowd which he himself could not see also did not see anything since by the time they had arrived 200 people had vanished. Bhagwat Dayal, the Post-Master, managed to be in two places at once and at none of them did he see anything: from his office he asked a railway officer to call an ambulance, while at the same time he was at home “relaxing”. And indeed the CCTV camera – that technology of unmediated sight normalized in public consciousness by the security state through the long decade of the 2000s- has by dint of being damaged no vision to offer. A field of invisibility in which it is impossible for Junaid’s body to be present is thus constructed through public agreement between the ordinary Hindus on this railway station and a state apparatus that has earned the necrotic distinction of blinding 1200 people in Kashmir within the past year. The ordinary Hindus at this station eschewed the use of their own eyes and turned them towards the purposes of the blind state.
From a purely social scientific viewpoint if we do not today as a society attend to the symptoms that reveal the ascendance of a logic of war against our own people incarnated within the social body, we are heading to mass slaughter. The public messaging by the current regime, and the silence of ordinary Hindus, has been well diagnosed by journalists. The BJP regime currently holding state power in the Sovereign Socialist Republic of India has declared through acquiescence, commission and omission that it is open hunting season on Muslims and Dalits. Two conclusions follow: 1) We are in a radical breakdown of the rule of law in BJP ruled India and in these regions mob rule now obtains. We are in the terror days of state supported goondaraj. From which flows the second conclusion: 2) On the 22nd of June 2017, the Republic effectively ended. India is no longer a secular constitutional republic but on the precipice of being transformed into a majoritarian state ruled by an ethnic and religious majority. The hunting of Muslims and Dalits in today’s India should concern every right thinking Indian because it demonstrates a prowling consuming violence aided and abetted by the Narendra Modi regime leaking through the social body. As all our public institutions erode under increasing assault, as the space of public discourse and exchange is vitiated through threat, coercion and open violence, we are teetering on the edge of becoming a country in which children are not safe on the trains. A country in which people run scared of what their neighbours think they are eating, and armed thugs patrol small town streets hunting young lovers. 15 year old Junaid’s body, the broken body of a young Muslim boy that ordinary Hindus chose to un-see, shows India the shape of things to come. We are 1.3 billion people spread over one of the largest contiguous landmasses in the world. Imagine the scale of social violence, what it will consume, what will be left, what can escape, once it begins. We should prepare for the future being put in place for us.
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ASOTI ATROCITY AGAINST DALITS IN HARYANA ATTACKS ON MUSLIMS BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY (BJP) HAFIZ JUNAID HINDU HINDU FASCISM HINDU RASHTRA NARENDRA MODI
As Narendra Modi arrives this week for the first state visit ever by an Indian prime minister to Israel, both he and his host Prime Minister Netanyahu will be marking a significant warming up of ties between the two countries. But it will also express the fulfillment of a long-unrequited desire, dating back to the early days of the
Jewish state, for close ties with, and recognition from, India.
>>Follow Haaretz's live updates and analysis of Modi's historic visit to Israel ■ The secret of Israel's water miracle and how it can help a thirsty world
In those early years, David Ben-Gurion and other key Zionist leaders made strenuous bids for political and diplomatic support from Indian nationalist leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
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Ben-Gurion himself made personal contact not only with central Indian political figures to seek their support, but even convinced Albert Einstein, a reluctant Zionist, to write to Jawaharlal Nehru, soon to be India's first prime minister, in the summer of 1947 to push for a sympathetic hearing for Zionism. Einstein’s four-page letter presented the nuances of political Zionism and highlighted both sides’ common predicament: that Jews, like Indians, were very much in need of a state of their own:
"Free Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the right of the Jews to continue the upholding of their ancient homeland without artificial restrictions, will increase the sum of wellbeing in the world. It is time to make an end to the ghetto status of Jews in Palestine, and to the pariah status of Jews among peoples. I trust that you, who so badly have struggled for freedom and justice, will place your great influence on behalf of the claim for justice made by the people who for so long and so dreadfully have suffered from its denial."
But not even Einstein could convince Nehru. India voted against the UN partition plan of Mandate Palestine in 1947 and later, in 1950, extended recognition to the State of Israel but without establishing diplomatic relations.
David Ben-Gurion was enamored of Indian culture, and tried leveraging Einstein to persuade Nehru of Zionism's merits. Ben-Gurion in his study at Kibbutz Sde Boker, 1966Shalom Buchbinder/Tzrif Ben-Gurion Archive
Ben-Gurion wanted much more than formal ties with the new Indian republic; he desired a wider friendship and cooperation. He was personally fascinated with Indian civilization. After a decade of India’s opposition to relations with Israel, Ben-Gurion wrote, in September 1957, to Dr. Indra Sen (of the Aurobindo Ashram) praising the distinctive Indian approach to religion: "From Buddhism I have learned much about the history of religion and philosophy in India in general –and after I was enchanted by the Vedanta I began the study of the schools of Sankhya and Yoga." In his bedroom in the Negev kibbutz of Sde Boker, there was only one leader’s portrait: Gandhi’s.
In the absence of any ideological or diplomatic support from Gandhi for Zionism, or later from the Indian Republic for Israel, it was an unusual and difficult affection for Ben-Gurion to carry – much like a one-sided love affair.
For India, Zionism was 'contaminated' by colonialism
India’s diplomatic choices before and after independence were guided by the principles of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and Third World solidarity. Having sought British support through the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the Zionist movement was 'contaminated' by colonialism and as such, poles apart from how the Indian national movement saw itself. That breech was deepened by the choice of Zionist leaders to build strong relations with the West, particularly the imperialist West, instead of choosing solidarity with the struggling Asian national liberation movements.
Self-determination for the Palestinian people was a significant issue for Nehru, who gave them strong support and turned away from relations with Israel. There was a regional political consideration for India in the 1950s: the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. India hoped for Arab support for the Indian case against Pakistan by extending its strong support to the Palestinians and not towards Israel. However, India’s support for the Palestinian cause or solidarity with the greater Arab world did not result into any tangible diplomatic gain for India from the Arab world.
It wasn’t until 1992 that India established full diplomatic relations and an exchange of ambassadors with Israel. External factors facilitated this about-turn.
First, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet Union created a new diplomatic matrix for India. As a result, Indian foreign policy was revised.
Second, Israel was an excellent source for armaments and defense systems just as the Soviet Union and its associated weapons industries were crumbling. India’s poor military capabilities played a crucial role in opening relations with Israel. Israel supplied arms to India in 1962 during its war with China; Nehru himself wrote a letter to Ben-Gurion asking for help in November that year.
Third, Israel was negotiating, for the first time, with Palestinian leaders like Yasser Arafat on the basis of a two-state solution. That readiness, even though it didn’t lead to Palestinian self-determination, neutered some of India’s long-held reservations about dealing with Israel.
India's interested, but there's a knowledge gap
Since then, India-Israel relations have grown increasingly close. In two-and-a-half decades Israel has emerged as one of India’s core diplomatic allies. Both are developing common ground beyond strategic defense and security collaboration issues, including technology transfers in agriculture and water conservation.
How Israel went from 'contaminated' by colonialism to India's strategic ally: Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at the Mahatma Gandhi memorial in New Delhi on his state visit.
November 15, 2016.
PRAKASH SINGH/AFP
Academic collaboration is another area of growth. The University Grants Commission of India and the Council for Higher Education of Israel have established joint research grants for Indian and Israeli scholars to collaborate. In November 2016, President of Israel Reuven Rivlin visited India with the presidents and heads of the Israeli universities and research institutes. It was no accident that his delegation included a sizeable Israeli academic representation.
In Indian academia, there is a growing interest towards Israel, including think tanks close to New Delhi’s centers of powers exploring potential areas of strategic growth. Yet there is still a lack of substantial knowledge about Judaism, Zionism, Israel’s multi-ethnic society or pluralistic culture. The Jindal Centre for Israel Studies, where I work, was established in 2012 to fill this knowledge gap; it is the first of its kind in the Indian subcontinent.
Pragmatism isn't a dirty word
The strategic partnership between India and Israel is fueled by political pragmatism and mutual interests, and as such, it offers a win-win situation for both.
That kind of pragmatism was impossible back in the era of Ben-Gurion, when the challenging dynamics of newly decolonized states meant strategic partnerships were based on strict political affinity. There were few supplementary or alternative cultural or intellectual routes for finding common ground. Today, however, the transnational requirements of trade and commerce have somewhat flattened older political oppositions, and relations between India and Israel are built on these kinds of mutual interests. To some extent this has been India’s instrumental approach towards Israel.
With bilateral academic collaborations growing, and the field of Israel Studies emerging in India, the study of Israel won’t be limited to policy circles. The cultural and intellectual intersections between the two societies is something that will grow slowly but substantially in the long term.
Ben-Gurion himself would have celebrated this. At the end of his letter to Dr. Sen, he expressed a desire to see Indian students at studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and for Israeli students to study Indian philosophy. This cultural and intellectual exchange has already progressed far. Israeli academia has advanced studies on ancient India including Sanskrit, Tamil and Buddhism; young Israelis, particularly after their mandatory military service, have flocked to India for decades; more and more, Indian students are choosing Israeli universities for research studies, particularly post-doctorate courses in the pure sciences.
The first 25 years of pubilc India-Israel relations have accrued significant gains. And India's governing party, the Bharatiya Janata (Indian People’s Party), a long-time advocate of Israel in the Indian political system, is likely to anchor India’s ties with Israel with even greater alacrity. That would indeed be a realization of Ben-Gurion's long-held but frustrated hopes of decades ago.
Khinvraj Jangid is Assistant Professor and Faculty Coordinator at the Jindal Center for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs, Haryana, India.
Salman Khan. Paul Harris Fellow
Chairman SAKAG & KCAU South African Kashmir Action Group
Kashmir Centre for African Union
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Jai Sen
jai.sen at cacim.net <mailto:jai.sen at cacim.net>
www.cacim.net <http://www.cacim.net/> / http://www.openword.net.in
Now based in New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) and in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Anishinaabe territory (+1-613-282 2900)
CURRENT / NEW publications :
Jai Sen, ed, 2018b – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?, Indian edition. New Delhi : Authors Upfront, in collaboration with OpenWord and PM Press. Hard copy available at MOM1AmazonIN <https://www.amazon.in/dp/9387280101/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522884070&sr=8-2&keywords=movements+of+movements+jai+sen>, MOM1Flipkart <https://www.flipkart.com/the-movements-of-movements/p/itmf3zg7h79ecpgj?pid=9789387280106&lid=LSTBOK9789387280106NBA1CH&marketplace=FLIPKART&srno=s_1_1&otracker=search&fm=SEARCH&iid=ff35b702-e6a8-4423-b014-16c84f6f0092.9789387280106.SEARCH&ppt=Search%20Page>, and MOM1AUpFront <http://www.authorsupfront.com/movements.htm>
Jai Sen, ed, 2017 – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?. New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press. Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press <http://www.pmpress.org/>
Recent publications :
Jai Sen, ed, 2016a – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ? and Jai Sen, ed, 2016b – The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our Dance (both forthcoming in 2017 from New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press), ADVANCE PREFINAL ONLINE MOVEMENT EDITIONS @ www.cacim.net <http://www.cacim.net/>
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS :
Jai Sen, ed, 2018 – The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our Dance. Volume 5 in the Challenging Empires series (New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press)
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