Month: February 2017

Only Hate Can Come from the Politics of the Graveyard

What is to become of us if communal, majoritarian language continues to be used and we do not oppose it?

What is to become of us if communal, majoritarian language continues to be used and we do not oppose it?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Credit: Reuters/Amit Dave/Files

Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Credit: Reuters/Amit Dave/Files

During a recent election rally in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke against discrimination – about graveyards and crematoriums, electricity for Muslims and for Hindus. To many, it seemed like a harmless remark. In reality, there was a communal message being sent across.

It is a common perception among many Hindus that they are victims of discrimination. For a very long time, we have been hearing people complain about how the supply of water is cut on Holi while there is no shortage during Ramzan; how there are power cuts on Diwali but not on Eid. This is nothing but a myth.

Another deep-seated myth surrounds welfare and compensation payments to Muslims. Hindus often complain about how Muslims are the only ones to benefit from government schemes.

The RSS constantly plays on these myths and poisons ordinary Hindus with the idea that they are being discriminated against. When the bile has already been built up, all it takes is a little provocation here or a harmless speech there to get people agitated.

Union power minister Piyush Goyal had alleged before the first phase of the UP elections that the state government had denied power supply to Hindus while routing it to Muslims. A senior state government official rubbished the remark saying that it was false.

Goyal made this irresponsible and incorrect statement casually, providing no concrete evidence to back it up. Modi did something similar in Bihar last year. He accused the [Nitish Kumar] government of taking away seats reserved for the ‘extremely backward classes’ and granting them to people of ‘a specific religion’.

In UP, he was not so coy about identifying the ‘specific religion’ and pointedly referred to Muslims. Clearly, the myth of discrimination and prejudice planted by the RSS 90 years ago is now being reinforced. It is nothing but communal propaganda, which is a culture intrinsic to the RSS.

How far this strategy will prove beneficial to the BJP is difficult to assess, because a lot depends on human psychology – which is itself a mystery. But it is important to realise that for the practitioners of communal politics, no issue is too small to be used. Just as it seemed as if the Ram mandir issue was over and done with, it has resurfaced – and with the same vigour.

The entire game of communal politics is structured around a few points that are constantly reiterated – the Ram mandir, Article 370, uniform civil code and so on. These points are exploited in a number of ways based on local issues.

A 150-year-old myth which is still doing the rounds is that of a growing Muslim population as opposed to that of Hindus. For a century and a half, Hindus have feared that Muslim men forcefully marry Hindu women, that they produce more children and that the Hindus will become a minority at some point in future. After the crushing defeat in Bihar, it was thought that the BJP will drop this agenda, but it hasn’t. They will continue to resort to such language until people get used to it.

There is nothing new about this kind of rhetoric. But no matter how many times it has been used in the past, its effectiveness is a product of several other factors.

Victory is important in elections, but influencing the way people think has far-reaching effects. The defeat of the BJP in Bihar does not guarantee that communalisation has not taken place.

Seeds of envy have been sown amongst Hindu men against Muslim men on the issue of four marriages. Myths have been created about a Muslim population boom. They have come to believe in rumours that being non-vegetarians, Muslims are violent in nature. After a recent  communal clash in Trilokpuri, Delhi I visited the area and witnessed people discussing how Muslims got their training from mosques.

A large section of the Hindu population believes that mosques hoard weapons and bombs. This idea has been a part of the Hindu subconsciousness for a long time. It is easy to manipulate these sentiments and build support for violence.

Will Uttar Pradesh succumb to such political rhetoric? And more importantly, what is to become of us if such language continues to be used and we do not oppose it?

It is significant that none of the newspapers raised an objection to Modi’s communal speech. Back in 2014, Modi’s provocative remarks were defended, saying that he needed that kind of rhetoric to come to power and now that he is in power, he speaks only of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas‘.

And so, it continues. After Bihar, the strategy was employed in UP. If some people believe that it is merely a phase which will pass, I wish to warn them that is part of a communal project. It may pause for a while but will only get worse.

Unfortunately, there is hardly anybody to stand up to it. Almost all political parties in the country have given in to a ‘Hindu fear’. They are afraid to upset the majority community by speaking the truth.

The courage of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru is the need of the hour, where political leaders can boldly call a spade a spade.

There is violence against minorities by the majority Sunni community in Pakistan. In Burma, Buddhists have waged an insurgency against the Rohingya people. In Sri Lanka, the Tamils, a Hindu community, have been victims of atrocities carried out by Sinhalese chauvinists. Until a voice like Gandhi’s speaks up against majoritarianism, it will continue to pose a threat in the entire Indian subcontinent.

We need to talk about it every day. If communalism can be a repetitive subject, why can’t we have a daily dose of secularism? Why do we get tired of it? Why do we find it repetitive and look for new subjects every day?

Rahul Gandhi clearly understands that his fight is against communal forces. But the Congress, on the other hand, is trying to shed the image of being a ‘pro-Muslim’ – and thus, ‘anti-Hindu’ party. Due to this, it hesitates to comment on such issues.

The Congress needs to clearly emphasise secular values without compromising and be vocal about it.  But even when Rahul displays some courage, none of his party leaders back him up as strongly as they should.

After the Gujarat riots of 2002 in which Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed, none of his party colleagues visited his widow Zakia Jafri. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has not met her yet. The party believed that the Gujarati Hindu community would be upset if the slain leader was paid respects.

Similar calculations was made after Mohammed Akhlaq’s murder over beef in Dadri. Finally, Rahul did visit his family. He even visited the protesting students in Jawaharlal Nehru University. It is important to display courage and shed all hesitation, if the party wants people to have faith in it.

Social scientist Ashis Nandy, along with Achyut Yagnik, had interviewed Narendra Modi in the early 1990s. This was well before he had become chief minister. After the interview, Nandy told Yagnik, “For the first time, I have met a textbook case of a fascist.” This is not the opinion of a political leader but that of an expert – a psychoanalyst. Even after Modi has been elected prime minister and raised slogans of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikaas’, Nandy still stands by his opinion.

Modi’s personality is not natural but manufactured. It is a product of the Muslim-hate filled environment of the RSS.

Violence is another factor that shapes his personality. Remember the keynote address Modi delivered at the Ramnath Goenka Awards in which he used the metaphor of a Dalit hit and run by a BMW. The point of view is that of the BMW driver and not the Dalit. A similar analogy was drawn by Modi earlier in his puppy remark.

Such language is the sign of a violent tendency and this violence he owes to the RSS. This violence cannot be cast aside because it forms the very basis of his kind of politics.

Apoorvanand teaches at Delhi University.

This is an English translation by Naushin Rahman of an interview he gave to Brijesh Singh. The Hindi original may be read here and a video of the conversation can be viewed here.

The Fortune Teller of My Childhood

Much before iPhones and YouTube, a gaudy machine on our railway platforms provided entertainment and information. It’s all but gone, but a fortuitous meeting makes Pallavi Aiyar’s childhood spring to life.

Much before iPhones and YouTube, a gaudy machine on our railway platforms provided entertainment and information. It’s all but gone, but a fortuitous meeting makes Pallavi Aiyar’s childhood spring to life.

Weighing machine at Elphinstone Road Station. Credit: Rakes/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Weighing machine at Elphinstone Road Station. Credit: Rakes/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Nostalgia transforms ordinary objects into talismans. The constituents of the material life of one’s childhood can, just by the feel of their names rolling in the mouth, evoke pathos: a longing for the past, its innocent excitements and vast promise.

I grew up in the pre-liberalisation Delhi of the 1980s. Childhood in those days meant Ambassador cars with seats so high that little legs couldn’t touch the floor. It recalls a white heat, relieved only by chilled banta, spicy lemonade in glass bottles, stoppered with a marble. There were Harrison talas with which to lock cupboards, 150-gram Nirma detergent tikiyas to wash clothes and Hawkins pressure cookers for the kitchen.

There was also the railway-station weighing machine. This was a time when to travel meant taking a train (airplanes were objects of almost unbearable, and unattainable, luxury). But train stations with their red-coated coolies weaving through the throngs, piles of suitcases balanced on their turbans, the balletic steam of spicy chai wafting in the air, the aural assault of train announcements and people yelling to each other to be careful and eat well and not to forget to write, were an intrinsic part of the weft of life.

But for me the greatest thrill was receiving a one rupee (or was it 50 paise?) coin from my parents to slot into one of the ubiquitous weighing machines that dotted train stations. Once the coin was in, the multicoloured pinwheels located behind the glass casing along the semi-circular top of these machines began spinning like manic ballerinas accompanied by all manner of whirring and pinging. Rows of green, red and blue lights flashed. And then out came a rectangular ticket-sized piece of cardboard with not only one’s weight printed on it, but also a fortune. The railway weight ticket was the Indian version of the Chinese fortune cookie.

The fortunes were almost always optimistic, their language dignified. I often didn’t understand the words and only rarely understood the import. But at a time when I owned very few things, the fortune-weight tickets were mine. I hoarded these for years in the drawer of my desk.

“EAT well and thrive,” one said. A tad ironic given that this was a weighing machine.

“JOVIAL in disposition and cordial in manner, your passions are healthy, spontaneous and without inhibitions,” read another. The machine knew me well.

“SUDDEN travel and change of place may be imminent. Be prepared,” warned a third. Well, this was a railway station.

The whole process of acquiring a ticket from these machines evoked a pleasure that combined elements of the fun fair, divination and consumerism. It was heady.

The years rolled on. Fast-forward a few decades and I hop on planes almost as frequently as I change socks (snarky folks, I mean a lot), but only rarely take trains. When I do, I pass the time like everybody else by staring at my iPhone, checking email and looking at cat videos on YouTube. I haven’t seen a one rupee coin in about 15 years. My Fitbit takes care of any weight-related queries I might have.

The railway-station weighing machines of my childhood were thus in the process of quietly disappearing from my memory, until a chance meeting with an Australian neighbour in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta. In the style of the weighing machine fortunes: TRUTH is stranger than fiction.

I’d been living in a leafy, residential neighbourhood of south Jakarta for about three years when I received a note, slipped under the door, inviting me to a housewarming party at a new neighbours’. I duly rang the bell of the immaculate bungalow that stood diagonally opposite our more humble home that evening and was let in by Raj, an Indian Malaysian whom I learnt had lived in Jakarta for close to a decade. His wife was a statuesque Australian, Michelle Somerville, who tended to haunt the pages of magazines like Indonesia Tatler.

Glory Days: Michelle, in Jakarta, with a photograph of Nehru’s visit to Eastern Scales. Credit: Pallavi Aiyar

Glory Days: Michelle, in Jakarta, with a photograph of Nehru’s visit to Eastern Scales. Credit: Pallavi Aiyar

I noticed an unusual preponderance of Indians at the party, which I ascribed to Raj’s ethnicity. And it was only after we gradually became friends that I realised the one with the deeper connection to India was in fact the very blonde Michelle. My Australian neighbour had grown up in Calcutta, the city that was home to her family’s manufacturing company, Eastern Scales Pvt. Ltd. – makers of my beloved railway-platform weighing machines.

The company was established in 1939 by J.H. Somerville, Michelle’s paternal grandfather, an Australian of Scottish descent, who immigrated to India drawn by the lure of economic opportunity in the aftermath of the Great Depression. He’d been stationed in India during the First World War, which was when he first became attracted to the idea of seeking his fortune in what was then a British colony.

Somerville started out life in Calcutta importing miscellaneous goods, amongst them ticketing and slot machines, delicatessen scales and railway weighbridges. At one point machines owned and operated by Somerville printed virtually all the tickets to India’s major tourist attractions, including the Taj Mahal and Victoria Memorial, as well as bus tickets around the country.

But it took a few decades for the signature weighing machines of my childhood to make their debut. Initially Somerville simply imported huge, wrought-iron weighing scales from West Germany. These were drab and lacking the carnivalesque accoutrement of later models. But, after Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi restricted the trading activities of Indian companies in the 1970s, Eastern Scales was forced to adapt by manufacturing its own scales. With an infusion of the tickets, coin slots, flashing lights and weight displays that had characterised the company’s early imports, the railway-platform weighing machines I remembered were born.

§

Michelle had almost no memory of her grandfather, who had died soon after she was born. But we spent a few hours looking through old family pictures at her home one morning, over generous slices of plum cake and a decadent glass of champagne. There was a whiff of colonial grandeur in my neighbour’s lifestyle, which sense only intensified as I flipped through the pictures.

I was particularly captivated by a shot of Grandpa Somerville and his wife, Grandma Dunhill (a relative of the eponymous cigarette dynasty), probably aged about 30. They are a dashing couple. She is wearing pearls and a flapper dress, her large, kohl-rimmed eyes gazing into the distance. Somerville is decked out in bow tie and pinstriped shirt, his hair groomed to perfection. “He loved machines. He understood them,” said Michelle of her grandfather. In the photographs he looks more like an aristocratic fashion model than the adventuring tinkerer he must have been. Somerville went on to have three boys: Jack, who was the eldest, Bill and Jim. It was Michelle’s father, Jack, who eventually took over the reins of Eastern Scales from 1980, until his passing in 2004.

Glamour couple: JH Somerville and his wife. Credit: Michelle Somerville

Glamour couple: JH Somerville and his wife. Courtesy: Michelle Somerville

While researching this story I found a blog on a shipping website in which a British sailor posted his memories of meeting with a “tall laconic Australian,” Jack Somerville, in Calcutta in the 1970s. “Jack was quite high-up in the social pecking-order of Calcutta and introduced me to people who wouldn’t, normally, even glance at me! One guy, who was a great friend of Jack’s, was a very wealthy Indian called ‘Daddy’ Mazda and I remember going to a party in his flat and was absolutely floored by the sheer luxury and opulence of the place. It had massive tiger-skins on the floors in the main sitting-room, which was absolutely huge, and the whole place just reeked of wealth and there was me! …Jack was rather partial to Scotch whisky and would come aboard whichever ship I was on and sink copious amounts of it and then get wafted home, feeling no pain, in his Ambassador by his driver.”

There was very little “India” in the pictures Michelle showed me. The backgrounds were mostly parties in stylish living rooms that could have been anywhere in the world. The exception was one framed black-and-white portrait of Prime Minister Nehru visiting the shop floor of Eastern Scales.

Michelle lived in Calcutta until she was seven years old, after which she studied in Hong Kong and Australia. Her memories of her time in India are hazy. She talked about her parents playing bridge at the Tollygunge Club. And being forced to take horse-riding lessons even though horses terrified her. Her afternoons were spent with her ayah whose job it was to bathe and feed her. It was only after little Michelle was made “presentable” that she was taken to see her mother in the evenings.

Calcutta Days: Michelle Somerville and her father, Jack. Credit: Michelle Somerville

Calcutta Days: Michelle Somerville and her father, Jack. Courtesy: Michelle Somerville

Michelle’s mother, Roberta Somerville, is now 82 years old and until a few months ago lived in Calcutta in the family bungalow. But Eastern Scales itself has fallen into near-bankruptcy. It’s been a somewhat precipitous decline.

For example, as recently as 2001, the weighing machines made Rs 26 lakh in the city of Mumbai alone, but by 2012 this figure had fallen to Rs 1.7 lakh. There are multiple reasons for this fall. The regularity and frequency of trains have improved in many cities, reducing downtime on platforms. More and more commuters now own scales at home. And the entertainment value of weighing machines is not much of a match for smartphones and iPads.

One critical blow to the weighing machines was a new commercial circular regarding the scales that was issued by the Ministry of Railways in 2010. Under these the share of revenue received by the railways was increased from 35 to 60% and every railway division had to issue a tender for new weighing machine contracts. Almost no one bothered to do so and Eastern Scales ended up with only two contracts. The company is also mired in damaging litigation that has followed from a family dispute.

Michelle told me that she couldn’t imagine returning to India to try and revive the business. She finds India “stimulating to an extreme” and too much of a cultural shock. She was sad, nonetheless, that Eastern Scales’ days are probably numbered. “It’s like closing the door on an era,” she said with a wistful shrug.

A few days later she WhatsApped me pictures of some of the fortunes that her grandfather had composed himself. I found myself tearing up.

“YOU will emerge triumphant from your most serious reverses. A happy and comfortable old age.”

“IF you are a woman you have a rare unapproachable delicacy, poise and a charming manner.”

I felt an ache, I suppose, that just as meeting Michelle had jogged my memory about those magical moments on railway platforms when I was little and the future vast, I simultaneously became aware of their imminent demise. There is pain in the impermanence of objects for it only points to our own ephemerality. Eventually, it was one of Michelle’s grandfather’s fortunes that made me laugh: “YOU have a great reverence for the past but an exaggerated idea of its virtues.”

This article was originally published in the Jan-Mar 2017 issue of The Indian Quarterly.

Remembering George Gadbois, American Scholar of the Indian Supreme Court

His meticulous study is even today referred to by the Indian bar and bench.

His meticulous study is even today referred to by the Indian bar and bench.

George Gadbois.

George Gadbois
March 14, 1936 – February 16, 2017

On a radiant blue evening last August, I flew from Chicago to Lexington to visit an ailing friend. As the plane made its final approach, Kentucky’s rolling green hills came into view. Upon landing at Blue Grass Airport, my cell phone lit up. “Hullow Vikram,” announced a gravelly voice. “Let’s meet tomorrow as early as possible.”

The next morning, I drove down to the suburbs. Stud farms lined the route and there were horses everywhere. Equine breeding in the area dated back to Daniel Boone and its first settlers. George Gadbois, whom I had come to visit, grew up in Boston. But he had lived in Kentucky since the late 1960s. On that glorious day in verdant Lexington, I could see why Gadbois, had chosen to remain there in his “colony home.”

I recalled that meeting recently when I heard of his passing earlier this month at the age of 80. I had first learnt about Gadbois at law school in the early 1990s. He was described as the American trailblazer of Indian “jurimetrics.” During the late 1960s and 70s, he pioneered the use of statistical techniques to analyse the judgments and dockets of Indian courts. By contemporary social-science standards, Gadbois’s quantitative methods were simple and basic. Yet, early his data-driven work on the Indian legal system remains relevant and unrivalled even today.

As a graduate student at Duke University, Gadbois initially wanted to study China. But he wasn’t good at languages, so he chose India. Duke had no India experts at the time. Gadbois “introduced himself to the country” by reading widely and befriending A.K. Ramanujan, the polymath linguist. What Duke lacked in scholarship it made up for in libraries. It had acquired thousands of Indian books and journals with rupees from American wheat sales.

Utilising these materials, Gadbois wrote his masters’ thesis in 1961. Writing lucidly yet elegantly, Gadbois criticised Nehru and his colleagues for believing that citizens who asserted their fundamental rights impeded governance and economic progress. He presciently warned that civil liberties in India would be jeopardised if the courts did not vigorously defend them. But robust judicial oversight alone wasn’t enough. Public opinion had to be decisively mobilised to secure the survival of citizens’ fundamental rights.

Three years after his MA thesis, Gadbois completed his dissertation on the Indian Supreme Court’s early history. He traced the Court’s beginnings to a 1921 proposal by Hari Singh Gour. Jinnah enthusiastically supported Gour, but Motilal Nehru bitterly opposed them. A decade and a half later, the Federal Court was established. Gadbois carefully surveyed that court’s powers and performance as it influenced the design of the present Supreme Court. The thesis ends with a comprehensive discussion of the Supreme Court’s decisions during its first fifteen years.

After India, Gadbois spent a year teaching in Honolulu. He then moved to Lexington to join the University of Kentucky’s political science department. Like his contemporaries, Gadbois was caught-up in the “Kennedy mystique.” He joined the U.S. Peace Corps and directed its Lexington operations. His team trained small farmers from Karnataka’s Raichur district in improving crop yields. But scientific agriculture wasn’t for Gadbois. He soon returned to full-time teaching and research.

In 1968, Gadbois wrote an illuminating essay in the Law and Society Review, a leading American legal journal, with the caption: Indian Supreme Court Judges: A Portrait. In it, Gadbois offered a generic profile of a prototype India judge. He was typically a man in his late fifties. He was most commonly a Hindu from a prestigious family. He had been educated either in England or India and had little involvement with the national movement.

In the essay and in subsequent work, Gadbois also focused on the process by which Indian judges are selected. His pioneering research on Indian judicial appointments hasn’t received the recognition it deserves. For it not only influenced subsequent research on this important topic it also emphasised the need for transparency and accountability in the appointment process.

In 1969, Gadbois returned to Delhi on a Fulbright fellowship. He arrived as the Court had begun delivering a series of landmark decisions on the right to property. These decisions revealed serious ideological differences among the judges. There were at least one or more dissenting opinions in every case. For the social scientist in Gadbois, all this was “sizzling terrain.” He began systematically analysing how Indian judges “behave.” Writing in the Economic and Political Weekly, he grouped judges into four broad categories: classical conservatives, modern conservatives, classical liberals, and modern liberals. A judge’s voting patterns, he argued, betrayed his beliefs and biases.

The EPW piece was widely read. But Gadbois was disappointed that the Indian bar took no notice. “It simply fell like a stone,” he later complained. Undeterred, he began an ambitious study of Indian litigation patterns. Assembling large datasets, Gadbois sought to identify the winners and losers before courts. He reported that the government was often the biggest loser. It consistently lost forty-percent of its cases.

On a trip to Dhaka in 1971, Gadbois was enraged by the brutality he encountered. Once home, he actively campaigned against Nixon’s pro-Pakistan foreign policy. Unimpressed by this activism, the Indian government denied him a visa. Gadbois was shocked and surprised by the decision. He later blamed it on the Home Ministry’s unfounded suspicions that he was a CIA agent. He went reluctantly instead to Papua New Guinea where he spent a year studying the legislature.

Gadbois eventually came back to Delhi in 1983. Cold case statistics no longer interested him. He wanted to understand the lives of judges and how they got to the bench. Unlike his earlier work, this new project required extensive interviews. But Gadbois began work by first reaching for his golf clubs. At the Delhi Golf Club, he met his life-long friend S.M. Sikri. The former chief justice helped immeasurably with introductions and references. Beyond the greens, Gadbois’s earthy charm and sincerity impressed distinguished judges like Hidayatullah, Vivian Bose, K.S. Hegde, and V.R. Krishna Iyer. They spoke candidly to him about the Court and each other.

By the end of 1984, Gadbois had interviewed every sitting or retired judge who was still living. Just as he began writing, however, he fell badly ill. Unable to teach, he retired prematurely. Eventually, he recovered, but lost interest in research. Instead, he began lecturing on cruise ships.

A young George Gadbois

A young George Gadbois

In 1990, Gadbois was invited to speak at a London conference about judicial appointments. He opened his garage and dusted the fading stacks of interview notes. He was ready to resume work, but assembling a manuscript wasn’t going to be easy. An ultra perfectionist, he shredded draft after draft. The book finally went to press only in 2009. It bore the simple title: Judges of the Supreme Court of India.

The book contains essays on the 93 men who sat on the Court between 1950 and 1989 (Gadbois completed his research before the first woman was elevated). The essays discuss each justice’s background, qualifications, and accomplishments. In the book, Gadbois tackles two questions that had obsessed him for forty years. Why were certain judges rather than others chosen? And who were the people that selected them? In dealing with each question, Gadbois offers direct evidence or responsible speculation about each judge’s appointment. As Gadbois enticingly noted in the preface: “much of the material in this book no one else has, nor ever will.”

It is no surprise that the book attracted considerable attention from the bar and the bench. As an encyclopeadia on Supreme Court justices, it is widely consulted by judges, lawyers, researchers, and law students. Some reviewers were disappointed that the book ignores judges’ voting patterns and preferences. But Gadbois had been there and done that. He wanted to focus exclusively on his subjects’ neglected biographies and how they were elevated to the bench.

Interest in the book spiked as Parliament debated and adopted the constitutional amendment and bill establishing the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC). As the leading scholar on judicial appointments, Gadbois gave a number of interviews. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the Supreme Court overlooked his work when holding the NJAC amendment and its accompanying act unconstitutional.

Looking out with me over his vegetable garden, Gadbois vividly recalled every single interview he did for the book. “Which was the most memorable one?” I asked. “A.N.Ray,” he promptly replied. Widely criticised for pro-government positions, Chief Justice Ray had retired in disgrace. He gave no interviews but agreed to see Gadbois. The two men met in Kolkata in early June 1983. As they shook hands, Ray exclaimed: “You look like Ernest Hemingway.” This broke the ice and they sat down to mangoes and tea. “How did you decide whom to recommend for an appointment?” Gadbois inquired. “Oh, he must be from a good family,” Ray blithely declared. “Doesn’t that sound like a matrimonial ad?” asked the flummoxed American. Ray smiled but said nothing.

In retrospect, Gadbois felt that Ray wasn’t to be trusted. Even so, he resolved to treat the judge fairly. His essays weren’t meant to be critical tell-all narratives about the secretive men in judicial robes. Indeed, his privileged access to Ray and his colleagues obliged him to make responsible and balanced assessments. For, as his soon-to-be-published dissertation reveals, Gadbois always believed he was first and foremost an institutional historian of the Court. He had worked hard to earn that privilege, he told me, even as he chuckled about whether the Home Ministry might let him keep that extraordinary distinction.

Vikram Raghavan is working on a book on the founding of the Indian Republic

Battle For LGBTQI Rights Gains Ground at the UN

In 2017, the struggle to define same-sex marriage and LGBTQI rights as they appear in the Declaration of Human Rights is growing increasingly fierce.

In 2017, the struggle to define same-sex marriage and LGBTQI rights as they appear in the Declaration of Human Rights is growing increasingly fierce.

Tolerance. Credit: Flickr. CC BY 2.0.

Tolerance. Credit: Rebecca/Flickr CC BY 2.0

UN: Religious advocacy groups have a long history of working with the UN, pushing back against progressive interpretations of the terms ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

That effort was seemingly rewarded in 2016 as more people voted across the globe for political parties promising conservative interpretations of both, in stark contrast to moves by some countries in recent years to legalise same-sex marriage and enhance protections for LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex) people.

In 2017, the battle to define these terms both as they appear in the declaration and in law is growing increasingly fierce.

Like most advocacy directed at UN or Washington policy makers, lobbying by religious groups typically takes place behind the scenes, with success often measured in terms of whether or not progressive social policies get adopted.

Two of the most active and successful players are the World Congress of Families (WCF) – with its longstanding ties to African, Russian and Eastern European governments, as well as conservative US politicians – and the legal advocacy group the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has had many successes in international courts defending Judeo-Christian rights. Both organisations cite their consultative status at the UN as a key to their reputations.

WCF managing director Larry Jacobs says that, given the current political climate, WCF and its supporters have cause for optimism.

“There’s been a fundamental denial over the last 50 years that the family is needed,” he told IPS, referring to the diversification of family structure away from the ‘traditional’ or nuclear model favoured by conservatives towards a more open interpretation. “Much of it is a result of the agenda of sexual revolution lobbyists,” he added, a view also shared by many involved in religious social policy.

“I think one of our greatest successes is protecting Article 16.3 (The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State). Other groups are trying to redefine existing mandates in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the idea that family is ‘natural’ is one of our biggest successes.”

Pope Francis echoed these sentiments during his address to the UN, describing the family as “the primary cell of any social development”. While Pope Francis has preached acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality, he has never shown support for the non-nuclear family or gender fluidity.

The WCF coordinates conservative groups and has been linked to major international policy shifts, such as Russia’s law prohibiting the promotion of ‘non-traditional sexual relationships’, and Hungary’s ‘family-friendly’ policies. These moves have been linked to a rise in persecution of and violence against LGBTQI citizens. Members and associates of the group have been linked to the passage of laws outlawing homosexuality throughout Africa, and the failure of the Estrela Resolution to pass the European parliament, a proposal to treat abortion as a human right and standardise sexual health education.

In the opposite corner to these groups, but likewise drawing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the foundation for its work, is LGBTQI advocacy group Outright Action International. Outright argues that denying the expansion of ‘family’ beyond a nuclear structure and ‘marriage’ beyond a heterosexual union violates human rights.

“We need to ensure that cultural reasons or ‘traditional’ values aren’t used to undermine the universality of human rights principles, or equal application of existing law in regards to everyone,” says Outright’s UN programme coordinator Siri May. “We felt very grateful for the support of (ex- UN secretary general) Ban Ki Moon. He became a strong advocate for universality.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom joined the World Congress of Families in UN consultative status in 2014, with its declared aims to “help craft language that affirms religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family. Chief counsel Benjamin Bull wrote: “ADF can now have a say when UN treaties and conventions are drafted that directly impact religious liberty and important matters related to the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.”

“No person – anywhere – should be punished simply for holding to Christian beliefs,” says Bull. Bull opposed former UN secretary-general Ban’s support for Ban’s LGBTQI rights arguing that it privileged “the demands of sexually confused individuals over the rights of other individuals.”

Cases for which ADF have advocated in the US, Europe and in the Global South, most notably in Central and South America, have drawn accusations of human rights violations.

One key act during Ban’s tenure was the creation of a special rapporteur for sexual orientation and Gender Identity. Inaugural appointee professor Vitit Thingburam has been charged with identifying instances where human rights are violated based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Thingburam only narrowly kept his role after the legitimacy of the office was challenged twice by the UN General Assembly, reflecting deep divisions within the UN’s membership on this issue.

“Vigit has a very focused brief so we’re excited to be working with him and other mandate holders,” says Outright’s May. “We’ll be looking to provide him and other experts with the best information available.”

WCF’s Larry Jacobs is keen to point out that, despite being designated a ‘hate group’ and ‘virulently anti-gay’ by both mainstream news media and human rights advocacy groups, he does not condone violence.

“We are not anti-gay. Homosexuals are the people that need a natural family the most. We are the ones that want to help the victims of the sexual revolution, the victims of divorce, the victims of people who have lived a promiscuous lifestyle. I think the question about homosexuality is ‘how do we deal with brokenness?’ ”

But May contests this. “We know throughout history that family units are not about one man, one woman and two children. That’s quite a western construct. There are many examples of same-sex couple families with children that provide love. Human rights are applicable to the individual, and family units are very important, but they should never trump the right of the individual.”

“What we know about gender-based violence and LGBTQI rights are that they’re needed to protect an individual that might be at risk from their family. They have rights and obligations within human rights law and those rights should never be used to privilege heterosexuality.”

Despite their marked differences, both Jacobs and May are cautiously optimistic about the UN’s approach under new Secretary-General António Guterres, a man who forged his political and diplomatic career balancing socialist beliefs with his Catholic faith.

“We’d expect the incoming secretary general would have the same interpretation of human rights law and traditional cultural values as Ban Ki Moon,” says May. “We feel very encouraged about his statements.”

“It’s a very exciting time,” concurs Jacobs. “Even when his party went against him on abortion, Guterres stayed true to his faith and his values. He wasn’t afraid to talk about the sanctity of human life from conception to death, so this is an exciting time.”

(IPS)

Listen: How Does Listening To Music Trigger Our Emotions?

Researchers have done significant work to find out how music connects to our brains and how just a few notes can trigger specific responses among us.

Researchers have done significant work to find out how music connects to our brains and how just a few notes can trigger specific responses among us.

What does music mean to you? Credit: t3rmin4t0r/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

What does music mean to you? Credit: t3rmin4t0r/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Music has a power to move us. A few notes of a piece of music can make us feel intensely elated or deeply melancholic. Researchers have done significant work to find out how music connects to our brains and how just a few notes can trigger specific responses among us. This episode of The Intersection goes into the science behind the sounds of music.

This is the latest episode of The Intersection, a fortnightly podcast on Audiomatic. For more such podcasts visit audiomatic.in.

Forced Into Leaving Pakistan, Afghan Refugees Struggle To Start Afresh

Afghan refugees, some who have spent decades in Pakistan, have been forced to return to their home country, which continues to struggle with recovering from its history of wars and violence.

Afghan refugees, some who have spent decades in Pakistan, have been forced to return to their home country, which continues to struggle with recovering from its history of wars and violence.

Afghan-refugee-camp_reuters

After nearly 40 years of Pakistan hosting Afghans, refugees now appear to have become the new worst enemy. Credit: Reuters

Karachi: Ever since Abdul Haseeb, an Afghan refugee, was forced to leave Pakistan and return to his home country, a thought keeps nagging him – wouldn’t he have been better off picking up a gun and joining a militant group? Joining ISIS would at least have been lucrative.

These thoughts keep coming to him because all the efforts he has put into earning an honest living have proved worthless.

Haseeb arrived in Pakistan with his family in 1981 and settled in Shamshato Camp on the outskirts of Peshawar, where many Afghans have sought refuge since the Soviet invasion. Nearly three decades later, in October 2016, his family was forced to leave Peshawar and return to their hometown of Jalalabad due to increasing harassment and discrimination by Pakistani authorities. “Our two generations were born and raised in Pakistan and now the government has forced us to leave the land,” he says.

At 38, Haseeb’s means of livelihood was selling dry fruits on the streets of Peshawar. Now he has to start all over again in Afghanistan, which has still not risen from the wars he had left behind. He is yet to find any employment opportunities in Kabul and the move from Pakistan was so expensive that his family doesn’t have any money left to start a business.

“Sometimes I think the only option left for me would be to pick up a gun and join ISIS in Afghanistan.. How else do I feed 19 people of my family?” he said in a telephone interview to The Wire from Kabul. Apart from his own family, Haseeb has to look after the family of his brother who was killed in an attack in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, in 2012.

After nearly 40 years of hosting Afghans – and building a narrative around its hospitality – refugees now appear to have become the new worst enemy. Incidents of terrorism are increasingly blamed on Afghanistan, with the rising hostility being borne by Afghan refugees.

The attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014 was among the major trigger points. Nearly 140 children were killed after Taliban militants attacked a school run by the military. Children were shot point blank in the school auditorium. Following the attack, largely seen as the worst terrorist incident in Pakistan, a counterterrorism policy called the National Action Plan was formulated. Among other things, such as reinstating the moratorium on the death penalty and establishing military courts, the policy included the rehabilitation of all Afghan refugees. The plan also included registering undocumented Afghans, a process that never really started even as the deportations did.

Afghan refugees are seen at UNHCR’s Voluntary Repatriation Centre in Peshawar, Pakistan, June 23, 2016. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood

Afghan refugees are seen at UNHCR’s Voluntary Repatriation Centre in Peshawar, Pakistan, June 23, 2016. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood

In 2016 alone, following deportation threats by Pakistan’s federal and provincial authorities, nearly 600,000 Afghans of the 1.5 million registered and one million unregistered refugees were forced to move in what the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called the “world’s largest unlawful mass forced return of refugees in recent times”.

Gul Bano was among the thousands who were forced to leave. She came to Pakistan in 1980 to seek refuge from the war. It was in Pakistan that her two daughters were born, making Gul Bano a mother of five. Her husband Abdul Haq, a Mujahideen commander, was killed in Kabul in 1985 while fighting Russian troops. In order to earn a living, she started cooking chickpeas at her home, which would be sold by one of her sons would at Peshawar’s Board Bazaar area. 

Now in her seventies, the life she built in the host country bit by bit has suddenly been wrapped up. She is now alone in Kabul and is trying to take each day as it comes. “I survived the hardest times and when better times came and I could afford my own home, I bought a house in Hayatabad in 2003. Now I am back to where I started, ” she said in a telephonic interview from Kabul. 

As the Pakistani government started its clampdown on Afghan refugees and announced that no one would be allowed to rent or sell property to Afghans, Gul Bano was told by the country’s authorities that she could no longer live in her house, forcing her to leave. She had realised that it would be harder to live there after a group of men burglarised her house last summer. Tied to a chair, Gul Bano watched them take away everything she had gathered over the years. 

In Kabul, the harassment has been worse. She has been robbed four times in ten months. One time she was also beaten by the robbers. “This is not a place where a woman can live alone,” she said.

Her children, all grown up now, have managed to settle in England on refugee status, but for Gul Bano, her only desire is to settle in Pakistan. “It’s difficult for me to survive as a single woman in Kabul… My children cannot come here, it is not safe. They would visit when I was in Pakistan but then they stopped getting a visa.”

Afghan refugee women sit with their babies as they wait with others to be repatriated to Afghanistan, at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office on the outskirts of Peshawar, February 2, 2015. Credit: Reuters

Afghan refugee women sit with their babies as they wait with others to be repatriated to Afghanistan, at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office on the outskirts of Peshawar, February 2, 2015. Credit: Reuters

‘Voluntary’ repatriations

While the repatriations are said to be voluntary, the circumstances around which Afghans have left have been such that people have had no choice but to leave. One person interviewed by HRW for its report released on February 13 said, “The situation with the police got so bad about three weeks ago [early October 2016] that we could not leave the house. The police were stopping us all the time, asking for money. They took everything we had so we stopped working and just stayed at home. We realised we had to leave [Pakistan]”.

There is no reason to believe that things will get any better. Pakistani authorities continue to blame the Afghans for terrorism and this belief has trickled down, making Pakistanis feel that the road to a safer Pakistan lies in sending Afghans home.

Most recently, following the blast at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine in Sehwan that left at least 85 people dead on February 16, the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at Torkham has been shut for an indefinite period. This is in sharp contrast to the past when Afghans were allowed to cross the border without any specific identity documents.

Those considered legal refugees are Afghans with a ‘proof of registration card’ that serves as an identity document. But since 2007, no more refugees have been registered. Since Pakistan announced that refugees must go back to their home country, the proof of registration has been extended and consequently so has the deadline for repatriation. On February 8, the federal cabinet approved the extension of proof of registration cards until December 31, 2017. An earlier deadline for repatriation was December 31, 2016, but many families left months before that deadline for the fear of being deported during harsh winter months and not being able to find shelter in time.

An Afghan family, who were living as refugees in Pakistan, carries bundles of supplies at a humanitarian aid station in Torkham, Afghanistan, October 22, 2016. Credit: Reuters

An Afghan family, who were living as refugees in Pakistan, carries bundles of supplies at a humanitarian aid station in Torkham, Afghanistan, October 22, 2016. Credit: Reuters

However, while the deadline has been extended, living there has become harder for Afghans with government announcements and messages conveyed through mosque loudspeakers telling them to leave. Almost every Afghan interviewed for the report, which is based on 115 interviews, said how the police extortion had worsened. Beginning in July 2016, refugees said, Pakistani police repeatedly stopped and extorted between 100 and 3,000 rupees from them each time.

A 27-year-old man interviewed in the HRW report said: “In early August, when it was very hot, the police came to our house very early in the morning, about 4:30 am. They entered our house without asking, pushed all the women to one side and took all of the men, including me, to the police station. The women were all very afraid. There were about 200 other Afghans at the station when we arrived. They held us there all day and did not give us water or let us go to the toilet. Our relatives came and paid to get us out. In early October, I saw in a newspaper that the police would do more search operations and that they were going to put Afghans in prison. So we knew we had to leave.”

There are also reports of children being excluded from Pakistani state schools and authorities shutting down Afghan refugee schools, leaving countless children stranded. HRW documents cases of police coming into schools, breaking security cameras and shutting the school premises.

Another significant factor that has influenced people to leave is the cash grant by UN’s refugee agency United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that doubled the payment from $200 to $400 per person to persuade people to return. While this may have been a tempting sum for some families, it is certainly not enough for people to re-settle in Afghanistan. However, it was enough to attract and encourage people to move.

UNHCR’s role

In the report ‘Pakistan Coercion, UN Complicity’, the HRW heavily criticises the UN refugee agency saying its interventions were “woefully inadequate to end the widespread abuses affecting hundreds of thousands of Afghans.”

“The UNHCR was aware that widespread insecurity and economic collapse in Afghanistan meant that returning refugees were, for the most part, unable to integrate into their home,” and that the “UNHCR did nothing to proactively communicate this information to Afghan refugees contemplating return, so they could make an informed choice on whether to stay or go.”

But the UNHCR outrightly rejects this claim as well as what HRW calls the largest forced return. In an email interview to The Wire, Duniya Aslam Khan, the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Pakistan, said, “UNHCR’s view is that the return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan in 2016 were not “refoulement” or “ largest forced return” as claimed by HRW.”

Migrants line up to receive personal hygiene goods distributed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Credit: Reuters/Alkis Konstantinidis/Files

Migrants line up to receive personal hygiene goods distributed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Credit: Reuters/Alkis Konstantinidis/Files

The UNHCR cites regional political dynamics, changing bilateral relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan and tighter border controls as among the reasons of the large number of repatriations.  “We strongly refute the accusation that UNHCR was complicit in mass forced refugee returns from Pakistan,” the email said.

On its part, the government of Pakistan denies all accusations of coercion. “Notwithstanding any isolated or individual incidents, there is no policy of coercion on part of government of Pakistan,” said a statement released by the foreign office in response to the HRW report, adding, “The government also remains mindful of its responsibility to ensure security and vigil against suspicious elements, unlawful activities and the menace of terrorism, including through improved and regulated border management.”

For people like Haseeb and Gul Bano, however, Pakistan was their land. Haseeb sees the border part of a greater Pashtun land separated by two governments who have both betrayed their people. “We were deceived by both the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, they promised us green pastures and we got nothing. In Pakistan, we were forced to leave the only home we have really known,” he said.

For Gul Bano, there is a deep desire to just go back to her home. “I’m back to where I started – alone. All I really want is to go back to Pakistan and die there in peace. My heart remains in Peshawar.”

Zehra Abid is a freelance journalist and an editorial consultant for The Express Tribune in Karachi, Pakistan. She mainly reports on human rights concerns, particularly with respect to minority communities.

Additional reporting by Muhammad Irfan.

Watch: Delhi University Marches to Stand Its Ground

More than a thousand students marched in north campus to protest against the recent violence by members and supporters of ABVP, the student wing of the BJP.

Around two thousand students from Delhi University, as well as other universities and colleges, marched in the north campus of DU to protest against the recent violence by members and supporters of ABVP, the student wing of the BJP.

Tata Sons Moves to Settle $1.18 Billion Legal Dispute With DoCoMo

The move comes days after N. Chandrasekaran took over as the chairman of Tata Sons following the ouster of Cyrus Mistry late last year.

The move comes days after N. Chandrasekaran took over as the chairman of Tata Sons following the ouster of Cyrus Mistry late last year.

A woman walks past a brach of Japanese mobile communications company NTT Docomo in Tokyo, Japan, May 16, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Thomas Peter

A woman walks past a branch of Japanese mobile communications company NTT Docomo in Tokyo, Japan, May 16, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Thomas Peter

Mumbai: Tata Sons has agreed to pay NTT DoCoMo $1.18 billion to buy out the Japanese firm’s stake in a telecoms joint venture, paving the way for the settlement of a long-standing dispute days after a new chairman took charge at the Indian conglomerate.

Tata Sons said it reached an out-of-court agreement with DoCoMo to enforce a decision taken by a London arbitration court and both companies had applied to the Delhi high court asking it to accept the settlement.

“The settlement terms, if approved by the Delhi high court, clear the way for the $1.18 billion already deposited by Tata Sons with the Delhi high court to be paid to DOCOMO,” Tata Sons said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that the Indian court’s nod will allow DoCoMo to transfer its shares in Tata Teleservices.

DoCoMo has also agreed to end all legal proceedings against Tata in the UK and the US for a period of time, the statement said.

The move comes days after N. Chandrasekaran took over as the chairman of Tata Sons following the ouster of Cyrus Mistry late last year.

DoCoMo entered India in 2009 with an investment of nearly $2.2 billion in Tata group’s telecoms arm Tata Teleservices for a 26.5% stake in the venture.

Competition and a low subscriber base forced DoCoMo to rethink strategy and it decided to get out of India in 2014. Under the terms of the deal, in the event of an exit, DoCoMo was guaranteed the higher of either half its original investment, or its fair value.

But Tata was unable to find a buyer for the Japanese firm’s stake and offered to buy the stake itself for half of DoCoMo’s investment.

India’s central bank blocked Tata’s offer, saying a rule change the previous year prevented foreign investors from selling stakes in Indian firms at a pre-determined price.

DoCoMo proceeded to initiate arbitration in a London court and won it. Tata was asked to pay a penalty of $1.17 billion, which it has deposited with the Delhi high court.

(Reuters)

As Students Protest Against ABVP, Gurmehar Kaur Withdraws From Campaign After Threats

Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur has withdrawn from a protest march against campus violence and has decided to leave Delhi.

Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur has withdrawn from a protest march against campus violence and has decided to leave Delhi.

Gurmehar Kaur. Credit: Twitter

Gurmehar Kaur. Credit: Twitter

New Delhi: Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur, who has face threats and intimidation after participating in a social media campaign against the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), withdrew from a protest march against campus violence and has decided to leave Delhi, NDTV reported.

Following violent clashes at Ramjas College instigated by the ABVP, Kaur had changed her Facebook profile picture to one showing her holding a placard that read: “I am a student from Delhi University. I am not afraid of ABVP. I am not alone. Every student of India is with me. #StudentsAgainstABVP.”

But after being subjected to repeated threats and harassment, Kaur withdrew from the student campaign. She expressed her sentiments in a series of tweets, encouraging people to attend the protest march in spite of her absence.

The 20-year-old was given police protection yesterday after she received rape threats, allegedly from ABVP members, over her Facebook post. The Delhi police has also registered an FIR against unknown persons over the threats, the New Indian Express reported.

On February 21, the ABVP accused Ramjas College of promoting “anti-national activities” after it invited JNU student Umar Khalid, who was accused of sedition last year, to speak at a seminar titled “Cultures of Protest”. A day later, the ABVP clashed with students protesting the manner in which it had disrupted the event the previous day. In response, students from Delhi University and JNU are holding a protest march today (February 28), captured by The Wire on the ground.

Also read: ‘We Beat Teachers Too’: True Confessions of an ABVP Footsoldier

Kaur, the daughter of a soldier killed during a counter-insurgency operation in Kashmir, has also been targeted for a video she made last year in which she appealed for peace between India and Pakistan with messages on placards. One placard she held read: “Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him”. This, she said, was a lesson her mother taught her as part of her efforts to get Gurmehar to let go of the irrational hate – towards Pakistanis, and even towards Muslims – that she had felt as young girl when she learnt of how her father had died.  Although her video had been praised at the time, in light of her protest against the ABVP Kaur faced intense social media backlash from many prominent figures and others who picked on the particular comment from the video and presented it out of context.

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju tweeted wondering who was “polluting” Kaur’s mind

Another BJP lawmaker, Pratap Simha, compared Kaur to terrorist Dawood Ibrahim.

Former cricketer Virender Sehwag also shared an image purportedly mocking Kaur’s message about her father’s death.

In his ‘Jan Ki Baat’ series for The Wire Hindi, Vinod Dua discussed the social media backlash Kaur faced for her video, linking it to the collapse of free speech and the threat posed to democracy.

On the other hand, political figures such as Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal came out in support of Kaur. Kejriwal tweeted that he would demand action against “ABVP goondaism and rape threats” upon meeting Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal. While sharing Kaur’s statement, he wrote:

Also read: Editorial: Vandals, Not Vidyarthis

Meanwhile, teachers at Lady Shri Ram College have voiced their support for Kaur, Firstpost reported. “We unequivocally and strongly support our student Gurmehar Kaur and her right to express her opinion on issues that embroil our university,” faculty members of the English Department said.

“It is immensely gratifying to us as her teachers that she has responded sensitively, creatively and bravely to events in her immediate context rather than seek the safe refuge of silence,” the statement said.

The Refugee Crisis at the US-Mexico Border No One Is Talking About

Donald Trump’s executive orders are already causing chaos at the US-Mexico border, where 30,000 Haitian asylum-seekers are now trapped in legal limbo.

Donald Trump’s executive orders are already causing chaos at the US-Mexico border, where 30,000 Haitian asylum-seekers are now trapped in legal limbo.

Haitians migrants wait to make their way to the US and seek asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in Tijuana, Mexico, July 15, 2016. Credit: Reuters

Just what they say about Mexico: so close to the USA, so far from God. Credit: Reuters

A US federal court has blocked President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order barring citizens from seven majority Muslim countries from entering the US, but the impacts of the travel ban are already being felt at the nation’s borders. The Conversation

The suspended order halts general refugee admissions for 120 days and Syrian admissions until further notice, and puts a limit of 50,000 admissions per year, down from 150,000. It also imposes major legal hurdles for those processing asylum applications.

Along with the Trump administration’s proposed wall along the US-Mexico border, this situation has dealt an historic blow not just to Muslim immigrants but to the American asylum and refugee system in general – including to the more than 30,000 asylum seekers and migrants now trapped in Tijuana, Mexico, just a few miles from San Diego, California.

A human tragedy in the making

While public attention is distracted with the travel ban’s current legal struggles and the US president’s bombastic anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric, refugees have been building up at border crossing points between the US and Mexico, trapped in a legal limbo.

I travelled to migrant shelters in early February to document this developing human rights crisis. I met the kinds of people one would expect: Mexican women escaping cartels and gender-based violence, as well as Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorians fleeing Central America’s unceasing gang violence.

‘No room for women or children’ at Tijuana’s La Casa del Migrante shelter, where many Haitians have taken refuge. Credit: Reuters

‘No room for women or children’ at Tijuana’s La Casa del Migrante shelter, where many Haitians have taken refuge. Credit: Reuters

There are also less likely suspects: Haitians who sought refuge in Brazil after the 2010 earthquake in their home country, but who have been forced to move on again due to Brazil’s profound economic and political crisis, which has dramatically reduced job availability. These Haitians aren’t necessarily the typical “economic migrant”; many are engineers, physicians, architects between 20 and 30-years-old.

Indeed, this little-known group makes up the bulk of migrants stuck in Tijuana. According to Tijuana migrant activist Soraya Vázquez from the Comité Estratégico de Ayuda Humanitaria Tijuana, six Haitians arrived in Tijuana on May 23, 2016. The next day there were 100. Two months later: 15,000.

By the end of December 2016, nearly two months after Trump’s surprise election, some 30,000 Haitians had gathered there, most by way of Brazil, apparently through a trafficking network that Vázquez says is not yet documented.

For comparison, 10,000 Syrians have applied for asylum in the US in the same period.

An ad from Tijuana traffickers seeking to lure Haitians, saying ‘If you speak French, we’re an option for you’. Credit: Ariadna Estévez

An ad from Tijuana traffickers seeking to lure Haitians, saying ‘If you speak French, we’re an option for you’. Credit: Ariadna Estévez

Asylum seekers cannot legally work, have no permanent residence, and, if they’re Haitian, often don’t speak Spanish. Yet they must support themselves and their families while they wait for US immigration officials to figure out whether or when their asylum applications can be granted.

They live in Tijuana’s open-air dumps, sewer-system holes and the surroundings of improvised migrant shelters. Many seek all manner of menial jobs on the black market, cleaning houses and offices, working in sweatshops, or delivering pizzas for as little as US$1.30 a day.

Women are frequently offered generic “jobs” in Canada, no description included, along with airfare. All they have to do is give up their passports. The web pages associated with these alleged companies show a permanent error message. These are, not surprisingly, typical trafficking strategies.

Disposibility pockets

When I was there, the whole sad situation on the border recalled what scholar Henry A. Giroux calls the “machinery of disposability”:

What has emerged in this new historical conjuncture is an intensification of the practice of disposability in which more and more individuals and groups are now considered excess, consigned to zones of abandonment, surveillance and incarceration.

And so people forced to flee natural disaster and unimaginable violence in their home countries become disposable; human clutter in Mexico’s dumps and gutters, at the gateway to one of the world’s richest nations.

These are what I’ve coined “disposability pockets” areas where vulnerable populations, especially migrants, are forced into inhumane living conditions and illegal labour markets, with tacit approval of the government that should, in theory and under international human rights law, be their stewards.

It’s a radicalisation of what sociologists call “poverty pockets”, that is, neighbourhoods where the extremely poor tend to be corralled into ghettos, even as prosperity grows all around them. And they’re cropping up not just in Tijuana but all along Mexico’s northern border thanks to the US clampdown.

A disposability pocket. Credit: Reuters

A disposability pocket. Credit: Reuters

Lingering, waiting and working

By late 2016, Tijuana’s five existing migrant shelters were bursting, so many more had to be built, and quickly. Today, there are 33 overcrowded shelters adapted to house the ever-increasing numbers of Hatian arrives.

I visited two: Father Chava’s Desayunador Salesiano and the Scalabrini Sisters’ women’s shelter. Father Chava’s is one of the biggest, and it used to be a soup kitchen for 1,300 to 1,500 homeless Mexican migrants. Now, it is a refuge for an equal number of asylum-seekers. They sleep in sleeping bags, small children and babies alongside their mothers, many under improvised tents erected in the garden at night.

The Scalabrini shelter is smaller; it’s clean, even cosy. Built for 44, it now houses 90 women and children, and sometimes as many as 150. Overcrowded doesn’t describe it. The husbands and partners, who stay in the Scalabrini shelter for men, must wait outside to visit their wives and kids. They linger there, wandering around, filling the disposability pockets.

Because there were so many Haitians at the border, the US government established that they could process only 50 interviews a day, which has delayed their interviews for up to three months. This made the situation worse for Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorians who were already in line.

Waiting for space at Father Chava’s shelter. Credit: Reuters

Waiting for space at Father Chava’s shelter. Credit: Reuters

Even before Trump’s January executive order was issued, Haitians were already being deported after their interviews (Barack Obama deported more immigrants than any US president before him). Under such circumstances, many Haitian asylum seekers decided not to attend their meeting with US officials. As of today, 300 asylum applications are in limbo.

After up to eight months of waiting, many of the Haitians now say they want to stay in Mexico. That won’t be easy. Not only is the US border situation forcing Mexico to handle a record number of asylum applications, but racism, poverty, crime, corruption and unemployment in the country leave migrants vulnerable to exploitation.

Besides, these disposability pockets are turning out to be convenient for employers and the local political economy in general.

Why roll out the welcome mat for immigrants, legalise them, and pay them a living wage – in either Mexico or the US – when you’ve got a ready-made workforce willing to work for poverty wages in the border-area factories and population centres that NAFTA helped build?

The Conversation

Ariadna Estévez is a professor at the Center for Research on North America, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.