Month: December 2019

LDF, UDF Come Together as Kerala Assembly Passes Resolution to Scrap CAA

While DMK in neighbouring Tamil Nadu has lauded the move, the Centre has sought to remind that only parliament can pass citizenship laws, and not state assemblies.

New Delhi: The Kerala assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution demanding scrapping of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), making the Left-ruled state the first to oppose legislatively the controversial law that has triggered nationwide protests.

The Centre, meanwhile, is likely to make the entire process of granting citizenship under the CAA online to bypass the opposition by some states, officials said in Delhi.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is mulling the option of doing away with the present procedure of routing the applications for the citizenship through the District Magistrates and designate a new authority.

Opposition DMK in Tamil Nadu and a ruling state Congress leader in Maharashtra wanted the respective state assemblies to follow the Kerala example in demanding scrapping of the new citizenship law.

Also read: A Modest Proposal for Simplifying the NPR and NRC

Setting aside their political differences, Kerala’s CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and opposition Congress-headed United Democratic Front(UDF) once again came together to launch a joint offensive against the Centre on the CAA.

While all the members of two fronts unanimously supported the resolution and vehemently criticised the Centre, O. Rajagopal, the lone BJP MLA in the 140-member house, opposed the resolution, terming it as “illegal and unconstitutional.”

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who moved the resolution and Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala of the Congress, who seconded it, alleged that the CAA was an attempt to make India a religious nation. Rajagopal rejected the charge, saying the Act was being “misinterpreted” and lies were being spread by the fronts for narrow political gains.

The chief minister said the implementation of the act will lead to religion-based discrimination in granting citizenship, which was against the secular values enshrined in the Constitution.

Just because both houses of Parliament have passed the CAA, it cannot be implemented as the act was against constitutional values, the CPI-M veteran said.

The resolution was passed at the special session of the Assembly convened to ratify the extension by another 10 years the reservation for SC and ST community in the state assemblies and Parliament.

Several non-BJP Chief Ministers like Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal and Amarinder Singh of Punjab have announced they would not implement the CAA but the state assemblies have not approved any formal resolution yet.

DMK lauds move, asks TN govt to follow example

Tamil Nadu’s opposition party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, on Tuesday urged the ruling AIADMK to follow Kerala’s example with regards to the CAA.

“It is the overwhelming desire of the people of this country that every state assembly should adopt such a resolution to guard the basic features of the Constitution,” the DMK chief said in a Facebook post, reported The News Minute.


BJP govt opposes move

Hours after the Kerala assembly passed the resolution, Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said parliament alone has got powers to pass any law regarding citizenship and not state legislatures, “including Kerala assembly.”

“It is only the parliament which has got the powers to pass any law with regard to citizenship; not any assembly, including Kerala assembly,” he told a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram.

Prasad said the CAA did not relate to Indian citizens and it neither creates nor takes away citizenship.

According to the amended law, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 and facing religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship.

The MHA officials said if the process of granting the Indian nationality becomes completely online, there will be no intervention of the state government at any level in the process of granting Indian citizenship to anyone under the CAA.

MP requests contempt proceedings

A BJP MP has urged Rajya Sabha chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu to initiate breach of parliamentary privileges and contempt proceedings against Pinarayi Vijayan.

Noting that the resolution was moved by Vijayan, G.V.L. Narasimha Rao wrote to Naidu that if the chief minister’s “misdemeanour and ill-conceived” statements and actions go unchecked, it will set a dangerous precedent and lead to administrative chaos and constitutional mayhem in the country.

“What (then) stops one state legislature from passing a similar resolution against another state government or Parliament, passing resolutions against bills passed by state governments to gain political one-upmanship?” Rao said in a communication to Naidu.

(With PTI inputs)

Shaheen Bagh Heralds a New Year With Songs of Azaadi

Now into its 18th day, the Shaheen Bagh protests exude warmth in what is one of Delhi’s coldest winters.

It began simply and without fuss. On the night that Jamia Millia Islamia was attacked, ten women walked out of their homes and onto the road next door that connects Delhi with Uttar Pradesh with a resolve not to move, come what may.

These women who describe themselves as jahil and uneducated, like the 90-year-old great grandma being asked to prove that she is Indian or the 55-year-old mother who educated her son only to find that he has no prospects or the young woman staring at an uncertain future with a 20-day-old baby — are still sitting there as you read this, through a bitterly cold Delhi December, in defense of the Constitution and in a fight they call — kalam ki ladai.

A few hours earlier on that day and on that road, there had been a protest composed of few hundred young men against the new citizenship law. But it couldn’t last. The protest quickly devolved into a showdown with the Delhi police involving stones from one side and rubber bullets from the other.

Women with their children at Shaheen Bagh. Photo: Rohan Kathpalia

But when the 10 women, with their boys in tow, walked out on to the road and found a spot a little away from the footbridge where the violence had taken place, the nature, tone and meaning of the protest changed instinctively. The young men gathered in a protective ring around the women and the Shaheen Bagh Protest was born.


More women joined, more men came, a tent was pitched and when the crowd got large, a raised stage was erected from where the young, the old, men, women and children began to learn about the Indian constitution and the long fight to protect it.

In public meetings everywhere, whenever there is a crowd facing a stage, there is always a politics that surrounds the raised platform that faces the crowd. This politics is not just about what is said, but also access — who is seen, who addresses the crowd, for how long and in what order. The manch at Shaheen Bagh too has a politics and in spirit and practice, it’s as resolutely democratic and chaotic as this country.

Also watch | Women, Homemakers Lead Protests Against CAA at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh

Over the last 18 days and nights that the protest has gone on, the Shaheen Bagh manch has played host to poets and professors, housewives and elders, civil society groups and civic leaders, actors and celebrities and of course students – from Jamia, JNU to the local government school.


Everyday there are speeches and lectures but also shayari and rap. At Shaheen Bagh, the announcers’ primary task at any given point has been to simply streamline the number of people jostling to speak.

And this includes women who are rarely seen out, never mind speak, in public. Sometimes the odd politician shows up too, like Salman Khursheed once did. But they don’t stick around for long.


On the Shaheen Bagh manch, politicians fight for their 15 minutes alongside the local elder known for his shayari and the pony-tailed school girls reciting poetry they just wrote on how we are all one regardless of our religion.

If the Shaheen Bagh stage has a bias, it is towards women and those, from academia and elsewhere, who can educate them not just on CAA-NRC-NPR, but also the freedom struggle, Ambedkar, Gandhi and the ideas that animate the preamble to the constitution.

Also read: The Brave Women of Shaheen Bagh

Next to the stage is a flowchart in Hindi explaining the connection between CAA-NRC. A signboard directing traffic towards Noida has been obscured by a large poster of Ambedkar.

The footbridge under which things had got violent on that first day, now serves as a pelmet to long banners that stream across and below. Even the grilled enclosure around the electricity transformer, is now a people’s gallery of protest art and resistance poetry.


When the loudspeaker goes off at midnight, people watch films in the 2 degree cold. Like a BBC documentary on detention centres or the 1981 film Lion of the Desert which tells the story of how a Libyan tribal leader, Omar Mukhtar, fought Mussolini’s army. The message over and over again is that this is not a ‘Hindu vs Muslim’ issue.


This is a fight to save India from Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, and that it’s a fight that must be, by principle, legacy and strategy, non violent.

If the women are the heart and soul of the Shaheen Bagh protest, their arms and legs have been a group of committed young men who work in day and night shifts. Their first duty has been security and keeping the peaceful integrity of the protests.

Photo: Samrat Chakrabarti

Young men like Mohammad Rameez, 22, studying B-Com in DU who says, “We work in teams to make sure there is no trouble here. Once we were alerted about a bunch of ABVP types trying to enter, but we very firmly and politely asked them to go somewhere else to ‘fix their phones’. You see all these showrooms that are closed along this road, we make sure that no part of their property – shutters, signages, CCTV cameras – are touched. You’ll see ‘NO-CAA’ graffiti everywhere but you won’t see a single one on these shutters.”

Photo: Samrat Chakrabarti

Mohammad Rizwan, 19, who studies interior design at Jamia, says “Arrey, even the cops tell us they are very happy with this protest. We provide them with food, made a place for them to sit and we even made a makeshift toilet for them to use.” The protesters have left one of the lanes free to let in ambulances.

Rizwan adds, “On one of the days when we made way for an ambulance to get through, they thanked us so profusely and said they had never seen a protest that would do this.”

Since the first morning after the women came out on to the streets, food, tea, wood for fire, warm blankets, mattresses, heaters, water, medical supplies have reached Shaheen Bagh from well wishers.  Sometimes the husbands grumble that there is no one to cook at home, but they are quickly shushed and they eat like the rest of Shaheen Bagh on the street.

“People refuse to take payment from us,” says Rizwan. The stuff just appears from inside and outside Shaheen Bagh. “These mall owners, who are both Hindus and Muslims, are suffering because their shops are closed during season, but even they have come out in support. One of them comes everyday sometimes with his family. One Sikh man showed up with food and supplies on the second day,” says Rameez.


Rizwan says that support has come from as far as Faridabad to nearby non-Muslim colonies like Sarita Vihar and Jasola. “Its not a Muslim protest, this. Our non-Muslim friends and classmates from nearby colonies help us everyday and come in solidarity. They want us to organise something similar there.”

A hoarding at Shaheen Bagh. Photo: Rohan Kathpalia

When well-heeled outsiders from posh south Delhi come, residents of Shaheen Bagh sometimes thank them, and they are thanked by these outsiders in return. ‘No-CAA’ and ‘no-NRC’ stickers are now found everywhere from the local cafe, to ATM doors to a briefly lived phase on Christmas Day when it was found on Santa Claus hats. Children run around the little streets shouting “Inquilab”, “Azadi” and in one instance “Hindu-Muslim-Sikh sipahi”.

Some of the older influential local organisers with political connections, finding themselves outside the center, grumble with resentment at real and imagined concerns.

When they go to the cops for help dismantling the protest, the cops tell them to handle it themselves. But the problem for them is that Shaheen Bagh is behind the protest. No one dares speak to the women directly. And without a leader, who do they approach?

Back at the tent, a few feet from the stage is a 90-year-old woman who speaks without her teeth. She says,” My son’s name is Faizan, his father’s name is Imtiaz, his father’s name was Fakhruddin, his father’s name was Riyaz, his father’s name was Akbaruddin, let this Modi come and ask me if I belong here. I’ll show him.”

The 55-year-old woman next to her tells me, “When the poor like us have to move, we move with the clothes on our back and whatever we can carry. He is going to come and ask us for our papers? Enough. Now every small thing he does we will be on the streets. This is desh ki ladai. If we stay silent now, we have to give the almighty an accounting of our silence. Better that I speak now and die in the land in which I was born. Modi eats a full meal and feels cold in this winter. We eat namak and roti and we are burning with heat.”

Samrat Chakrabarti tweets @beat83.

India Issues Record Number of 15 Lakh Visas to Bangladeshis in 2019

Bangladesh alone constitutes about 20% of foreign visitors to India.

New Delhi: India issued the largest number of visas to Bangladesh nationals in 2019, which has been “economically beneficial” for South Asia’s largest country, as per Indian high commissioner to Dhaka, Riva Ganguly Das.

The Indian high commission in Bangladesh issues largest number of visas among all missions across the world.

Also read: Bangladesh Says it Will Take Back Undocumented Immigrants Who May Have Crossed to India

“We’re seeing the results. Even a few years back, we used to issue 6.5 lakh to 7 lakh visas yearly. This year, we issued 15 lakh visas,” Das told reporters in Dhaka at a function to mark the milestone on Tuesday.

At the event held at Indian Visa Application Centre, the high commissioner handed over five-year multiple entry visas to three freedom fighters of the 1971 liberation war.

According to news agency UNB, Das was asked by the media whether India had benefited economically from the large number of Bangladeshi visitors.

She replied that India would have gained, as many Bangladeshis were going there for shopping and business purposes. “People go there for shopping on various occasions like Eid and weddings. Businessmen go and find new avenues and it is the foundation of people-to-people diplomacy,” she said.

As per bdnews24.com, India issued 13.8 lakh visas in 2017, which increased to 1.46 million visas in 2018. Bangladesh alone constitutes about 20% of foreign visitors to India.

Relations between India and Bangladesh have hit a bit of a speed bump in recent times following the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act. The new legislation aims to give fast-track citizenship to non-Muslim minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Bangladesh foreign minister A.K. Abdul Momen had cancelled his visit to India earlier this month after Rajya Sabha had approved the bill. Before the cancellation, Momen had contended that the information given by Indian home minister about prosecution of minorities in Bangladesh was inaccurate.

However, India and Bangladesh had officially claimed that Momen’s visit was postponed due “some sudden pressing national events at home”. These national events were the Victory Day celebrations, which have been marked every year since Bangladesh’s independence.

Kashmir: Internet Services in Govt Hospitals to Be Restored From Midnight

Jammu and Kashmir official spokesman Rohit Kansal made the announcement on Tuesday.

Jammu: Internet services in all government-run hospitals and SMS to all mobile phones will be restored from December 31 midnight in the Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Kashmir official spokesman Rohit Kansal said on Tuesday.

On December 10, some short message service (SMS) were enabled on mobile phones in order to facilitate students, scholarship applicants, traders and others.

Also read: No Social Media, Full Data Access to Cops: Kashmir Internet to Come With 6 Conditions

It has now been decided to fully restore the service throughout Kashmir from midnight of December 31, Kansal said.

The unprecedented and nearly five-month long internet blackout in the Valley has not only affected normal life, but severely curtailed media freedom. It has also come in the way of students applying for examinations and for courses, in addition to affecting businesses as well.

JU Professor Heckled After Objecting to ‘Anti-Muslim’ Slurs at Kolkata Pro-CAA Rally

The attack on the professor took place at a public meeting attended by BJP Bengal unit leaders, Lok Sabha MP Shantanu Thakur and Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta.

Kolkata: An English professor at the city’s Jadavpur University was heckled by attendees of a pro-Citizenship Amendment Act rally organised by a rightwing group, when she allegedly protested mildly to anti-Muslim sentiments in a speech.

On her way back from work on Monday, assistant professor Doyeeta Majumder noticed a small gathering in support of the CAA, organised by the Hindu rightwing Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Smarak Samity. The meeting was attended by BJP Bengal unit leaders, Lok Sabha MP Shantanu Thakur and Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta.

Around 50-60 people had gathered near the small dais at a busy bus stand, close to Jadavpur University, which has seen steady protests against the CAA by students.

Speaking to The Wire, Majumder said she had stopped to listen to what the speakers were saying in support of CAA. “Barely a minute passed and the speaker started spewing naked hate speech against Muslims. Soon after he started attacking the campus (Jadavpur University), saying this University is the root of all evil, students and teachers all chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ every day,” she said.

She said she shouted ‘lies’ in Bengali, twice. In a few seconds, she was surrounded by a mob, mostly comprising women, who were attending the gathering. “Middle-aged women surrounded me. They soon started pushing me down and hitting me,” said Majumder.

Doyeeta Majumdar (in grey) at the venue of the pro-CAA rally. Photo: Madanmohan Samanta/social media

“A young man tried to protest, he was roughed up too. Ultimately I was dragged kicking and screaming by two presumably BJP men who kept saying, ‘Didi, don’t create a problem here, just leave’,” Majumder said.

The young professor said she did not suffer any serious injuries. She has filed an FIR at the Jadavpur police station.

A senior police official in the station said, “An FIR has been filed, but she hasn’t named anyone in particular. Currently, we are investigating it.”

Jadavpur MLA Sujan Chakrabarty, who is the leader of CPI(M) in the state assembly said he condemned the incident and requested administration to initiate a thorough inquiry. Speaking to The Wire, Chakrabarty said, “BJP is creating an environment of hatred and violence across Bengal after the fallout of the CAA legislation.”

Eyewitness and Jadavpur local Sudip Sengupta said the heckling occurred with little provocation. “She (Majumder) was alone, and there was no provocation from her side. Suddenly, around 10-15 women surrounded her and started beating her up. Later, bystanders came to her rescue,” he added.

General secretary of BJP in Bengal, Sayantan Basu told The Wire that no BJP workers were involved in the incident. “She came there along with a group of people to disrupt the event, but common people resisted,” he said.

Basu’s line finds resonance in the several bullish comments made under a Facebook post Majumdar wrote recounting her experience.

The university has been at the eye of anti-Centre storm for a while now. Last week, West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who is the chancellor of state universities was shown black flags and greeted with “go back” slogans when he had gone to the campus to attend the convocation ceremony. He had to return without attending it following the protests.

Back in September, West Bengal witnessed unprecedented unrest following an incident where a section of the students allegedly “heckled” Babul Supriyo, the Union minister of state for environment, forest and climate change. Supriyo was attending an event organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) when he was shown black flags and asked to leave by agitating students.

Also read: Peaceful Protests Will Continue Until CAA Is Revoked: Mamata Banerjee

The attack on Majumdar is not an isolated incident. Photographer and filmmaker Ronny Sen claimed he was attacked for his outspoken stance against the BJP’s proposed NRC across the country and the recently passed CAA. While the situation in some parts of the country is tense with incidents of police brutality over the issue, Bengal had seen relatively peaceful days of dissent.

Himadri Ghosh is a Kolkata-based journalist.

Why Scheduled Caste Refugees of Bengal Are Resisting CAA and NRC

Namasudra refugee activists say that their disenfranchisement was caused by a 2003 amendment to the Citizenship Act, which was also under an NDA government.

BJP working president J.P. Nadda declared during the Abhinandan Yatra rally in West Bengal that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) has bestowed citizenship upon Scheduled Caste refugees of the Namasudra community of Bengal. This is in keeping with the many instances when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah have promised protection and citizenship to Hindu refugees.

However, a significant section of Namasudra refugee activists are wary of such a magnanimous gift. Many among them remember only too well that their disenfranchisement was caused by the 2003 amendment to the Citizenship Act passed by the BJP regime led by A.B. Vajpayee.

Sukriti Ranjan Biswas, a Namasudra community leader and president of the Joint Action Committee for Bengali Refugees (JACBR) pointed out that “three provisions of the CAA 2003 caused the problems for Hindu Refugees that the BJP apparently seeks to solve with CAA 2019”. Clause 2.1(b) and 3(c) of the 2003 Act had made it possible to first mark refugees as “illegal migrants” and secondly disenfranchise their children born on Indian soil. Section 14(a), created by the same amendment, nationalised the process of mandatory registration of citizens, which was till then limited to the state of Assam.

As with any policy, the bulk of the negative impact is often faced by the most vulnerable sections of the population. In 2005, the state government of Odisha, led by then-NDA ally BJD, attempted to deport 1,551 Bengali refugees from SC communities.

A protest against CAB and NRC in Howrah district of West Bengal on December 13, 2019. Photo: PTI

Biswas remembers joining protestors in Kendrapara only two weeks after the first hunger strike held by the Namasudra Matua community against CAA 2003, in Thakurnagar town of West Bengal. Over the next 15 years, the community has led several agitations demanding citizenship, including a hunger strike in Delhi in the winter of 2011 and another in Kolkata in 2015. In 2014, the JACBR had also filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court demanding full and unconditional citizenship. It is this long-standing demand for citizenship by a vulnerable group that BJP seeks to capitalise on by implementing CAA 2019.

BJP MP Shantanu Thakur, a scion of the family of Horichand Thakur, the founder of the Matua religion, praised the Act in the Lok Sabha and thanked the current regime for granting citizenship to his community. For other Namasudra refugee leaders like Mamatabala Thakur and Sukriti Ranjan Biswas however, the limitation of the 2019 amendment is that it does not directly confer citizenship.

Moreover, the Modi-Shah regime has ensured that the religious ideological nature of the Act undermines the social legitimacy of the genuine demands of the scheduled caste refugee organisations. The refugees have been accorded only the right to apply and that too is conditional upon proof of persecution in neighbouring Muslim majority countries. Members of the JACBR believe that furnishing such evidence will be impossible for the refugees.

While answering inquiries of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, officials from the Intelligence Bureau, R&AW and the Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed that the Bill was meant to help only 25,447 Hindu refugees residing in India. This number is based on existing applications and registrations scrutinised by government agencies. They farther clarified that all future claims will be verified by external and internal intelligence and security agencies. Such a process will not only be long-drawn but will render stateless already settled refugees who have been loyal citizens of India for all intents and purposes for half a century or more.

Adding insult to injury, the current leadership of the country is attempting to limit the rights of the refugees to settle in the Inner Line states, including Manipur. This may precipitate an internal displacement crisis for refugee families who had to contend against similar policies in the 1950s. Large numbers of SC refugees from East Pakistan were relocated from West Bengal to 17 different states and development areas, where they remained without access to reservations in education and employment. Over the past several decades, this population has had to combat political and economic adversity in order to establish a semblance of belonging. The current law may end up destroying their hard earned rights and entitlements by creating investigative hurdles to citizenship, along with internal displacement owing to the exemptions granted to the Northeastern states under the ILP system.

According to a report prepared for the home ministry in 1989 by the Estimates Committee of the Parliament, there were approximately 52.31 lakh refugees from East Pakistan. The committee had highlighted the fact that even with liberal policies for granting of citizenship; these displaced persons did not have the necessary documents to register for citizenship. Even by a conservative estimate, this population should by now stand at a minimum of 1.30 crore, dispersed over 20 states and union territories in contemporary India.

Other government reports say that around 70% of this population was made up of agriculturist communities and were mostly from scheduled castes. Approximately 13 lakh refugees had resisted dispersal policies or not received rehabilitation at all due to various reasons. They had fallen through the documentation net of the rehabilitation division. This population will be extremely adversely affected by exercises like the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the CAA. The amendment of 2003 was, therefore, made with full knowledge as to who it would primarily and adversely affect. The CAA of 2019 seems to go a step further in appropriating the pain caused by the earlier Act and recycling it as electoral capital.

Md Quamruzzaman, joint convener of the Nagorikotwo Surokkha O Songram Moncho [Citizenship Security and Struggle Forum (CSSF)], a joint Namasudra and Muslim forum protesting against the NRC and CAA, explained that the resistance is founded upon our support of the demand for immediate and unconditional citizenship of all refugees. “That does not require any discrimination on the basis of religion,” he said.

Sukriti Ranjan Biswas, also a joint convener of the CSSF, underlined the need for the new forum by stating that only rolling back the CAA and abandoning the proposed nationwide NRC will not see the demands of the SC refugees met. “Even if these policies are stalled, we will remain non-citizens under the provisions of the 2003 amendment. The government should roll back the three exclusionary provisions of the 2003 act and confer unconditional citizenship to all residents of the country,” he said.

By doing so, the CAA of 2019 will become unnecessary, he said. “Rolling back 14(a) will ensure that exclusionary exercises like the NRC will not take place. This way, we can secure the existing citizenship and entitlements of minority communities in India, while extending citizenship to the scheduled caste Hindu victims of Partition,” Biswas said. At the core of the politics of such organisations is the idea of co-operative rather than competitive claims to citizenship.

Modi-Shah’s regime is trying to appropriate the pain caused by the 2003 amendment and recycle it as electoral capital. Credit: PTI

Protecting refugees of persecuted minority communities is certainly a noble aim. Such an attempt should have cemented India’s status as a protector of refugee rights. But, far from receiving international applause, the Indian government has earned the suspicion of its own vulnerable and minority communities and the criticism of global human rights agencies. In fact, the implementation of CAA 2019 may derail India’s relationship with other booming economies and regional allies like Bangladesh during an economic slowdown.

The current political acrimony over CAA-NRC stems from the fact that these policies and laws are false solutions to a real issue. It is the finest contemporary example of the Brahminical method of inclusion, where the rights of a person are founded upon his will to exclude others from society. The Modi-Shah regime is offering the SC refugees citizenship conditional upon the demonisation of the Muslim community as religious persecutors. The choice before Indian citizenry is between two models of citizenship – the inclusive cooperative model proposed by organisations like the CSSF or the Brahminical competitive model proposed by the Modi-Shah regime. This may very well be one of the most significant choices for the future of Indian polity.

Himadri Chatterjee is assistant professor, political science at Kazi Nazrul University, West Bengal.

Rajasthan HC Terms Delimitation of 627 Gram Panchayats Void; Sarpanch Elections on Hold

The state has moved to the Supreme Court through a special leave petition against the high court order.

Jaipur: While deciding on the challenge to the delimitation notification of 627 gram panchayats in Rajasthan, the high court has termed it void.

The state has now moved the Supreme Court through a special leave petition against the high court order, the hearing for which is scheduled on January 8, 2020.

“The state government had issued delimitation notification on 15-16 November this year. Then, it issued another delimitation notification on December 1 and again on December 12,” Ashok Kumar Jain, deputy secretary at the state election commission (SEC), Rajasthan told The Wire.

“The notifications issued after November 15-16 were challenged in the HC, and the court turned them void. The delimitation has reconstituted 449 gram panchayats and created 178 new gram panchayats because of which elections can’t be processed,” Jain said.

This means that out of the 11,142 gram panchayats in Rajasthan, only 9,171 will go to polls during the panchayati raj elections.

The SEC had announced the dates for elections to 9,171 gram panchayats and 90,400 ward panchs which will be held in three phases in 2020 – January 17, 22 and 29.

In the first phase, scheduled on January 17, elections will be held for the posts of 80 sarpanchs and 860 ward panchs.

In the second phase, scheduled on January 22, elections will be held for the posts of 80 sarpanchs and 954 ward panchs.

In the third phase, scheduled on January 29, the elections will be held for the posts of 83 sarpanchs and 901 ward panchs.

In the 1,952 gram panchayats, the voter’s list have been issued but it would be finalised on January 22. The tenure of the remaining 19 gram panchayats hasn’t yet come to an end.

In a Tumultuous 2019, These Four Hindi Films Brought Out Our Shared Humanity

Harsh Mander’s selection of movies that looked at India with empathy and hope.

The year that we leave behind was one of the darkest in the journey of our republic, a long night broken suddenly in the last fortnight of the year with the brilliant unexpected light of resistance founded on solidarity, love and hope.

Amidst the heady hope stirred by the spontaneous movement surging across the land, to claim a country not divided by hate and religious divides, led by India’s young people, I almost lost my annual date with The Wire with my listing of my favourite Hindi films of 2019. But between attending protests across the land and planning meetings, I bring together here my roll of the films which raised my spirits in a year in which my hope had begun to ebb.

2019 was a year in which India seemed to consolidate hard into a majoritarian republic of hate, the antithesis of humane and inclusive country for which our founding fathers and mothers had fought, and the reversal of our constitution built on principles of equality, justice, freedom and non-discrimination. The films which most spoke to me this last year were those which affirmed the compassion, humanism and justice of our legacy which we seemed to be wilfully forsaking.

Hamid

In a year in which the lives and spirits of the people of Kashmir are being crushed by a constitutional coup and a savage military and internet crackdown which seems with no visible end, it is perhaps fitting that my favourite film of the year is one which seeks kindness, healing and resistance, amidst its painful truth-telling of lost childhoods of the brutalised, stricken and wounded Valley.

In an iridescent fable-like story, Aijaz Khan’s Hamid, a young boy grapples with his father’s disappearance one night in the hands of the security forces and his mother’s embittered agony which had grown tall like a wall between them that they both cannot cross.

The boy is told that his father has gone to Allah, and he is determined to speak to Allah and plead with him to send him back. He phones a number repeating the sacred 786 three times, and at the other end answers a lonely and angry CRPF soldier. The film is an exquisite and consistently compassionate rendering of the boy’s relationship with the soldier he thinks is Allah, and his mother whose grief has curdled into an anger against her son, and who cannot forsake the fragile hope that her husband will return home one day.

Also read: ‘Hamid’ Is a Humane, Clever Look at the Aftermath of Violence

Each of the three in the sometimes unbearably painful conclusion of the film come to terms in their own ways with the reality of their lives. It is a film every Indian should see: it should be streamed in every classroom and television channel, for the possibility of empathy and solidarity emerging in an India substantially estranged from the immense suffering and injustice of the Kashmiri people.

The film is uncompromising in its depiction of lives mangled by the brutal militarisation of Kashmir, of the people forced to endure for decades the oppressive shadow of the gun. But it includes in its empathetic gaze also the soldiers tasked with enforcing a pitiless regime of repression. That director Aijaz Khan succeeds in drawing even the soldier into his circle of compassion as much as the boy and his mother awaiting the impossible return of the father and husband who the soldiers have eliminated, is a rare, luminous moral and aesthetic accomplishment.

Gully Boy

Another outstanding film of the year which pierces right through the tangles of our layers of prejudice and indifference is Zoya Akhtar’s exhilarating Gully Boy.

The central protagonist is a Muslim boy, obviously from the underclass, raised in a slum in Mumbai. The film maps with observant precision and empathy the unconscionable inequalities that scar new India. In this backdrop, it tracks, cheers and celebrates the slow and often bumpy rise of the college boy from the Dharavi slum as a popular rapper. His story becomes emblematic of a huge demographic of restless dispossessed young Indians, who are surcharged with talent, potential and ambition, but denied opportunity, deprived of a chance. These are young Indians who refuse to be left behind any longer. The film’s theme song ‘Apna Time Aayega’ (My time will come) has become a resounding national slogan for young Indians spiritedly leaping across chasms of centuries-old denials, humiliation and injustice, to seize their rightful place under the sun.

Also read: ‘Gully Boy’ Strips Hip-Hop of Its Crucial Link With Identity

But for me, the triumph of Akhtar’s film is in its portrayal of the moral landscape of the young rapper. He is ambitious, but never brattish or aggressive. There is an endearing and unexpected gentleness to his character, an abiding sense of responsibility to people around him. He is protective to his mother and brother as his abusive father brings home a second wife; there is tenderness in his bonds with his feisty and possessive girlfriend. He is always caring: in a beautiful understated scene, he wants to comfort a distraught young woman in the rear seat of the car he is driving, but holds back because he is her chauffeur.

Article 15

The third film in my list this year is a searing, taut, visceral exploration of our social underbelly, of a social order which few Hindi films have been brave enough to interrogate. I can count Hindi films about the violence and atrocities which Dalit people continue to endure in new India on the fingers of one hand. This wilful blindness to the everyday reality of millions of dispossessed Indians trapped in the most disadvantaged castes has been unconscionable. Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15 is crafted as a riveting crime drama about three young Dalit girls who are kidnapped and gang-raped. Two are found hanging from a tree. A young police officer leads a harrowing search for the third survivor, and for those responsible for the cruel gang-rapes and murder of the young girls. But the format of a crime drama is deployed as a brave and riveting vehicle for the forensic investigation of uncompromising caste inequalities and discrimination in new India.

Also read: ‘Article 15’ Is Riveting Story Backed by Solid Filmmaking

This compelling film is a continuance of the cinema of empathy and solidarity initiated by Anubhav Sinha last year, with Mulk, an intensely moving portrayal of a Muslim family falling apart after one of its members becomes a suicide terrorist. But I preferred Mulk – which had topped my list of best films in these columns last year – because Mulk tries to tell us the story of dispossession and marginalisation from the inside: the main protagonists are the members of the Muslim family who are forced to bear the guilt and shame of their demonization by the state and their neighbours. When the patriarch says – ‘How can I prove my love for this country?’ you grieve in his anguish as your own.

Article 15 instead tells the story of Dalit oppression from outside, through the eyes of the young police officer who had studied in St Stephen’s College and descends on a rural India writhing in caste divisions and hatred. You learn with him the horrors and indignities of caste violence. But I would have greatly preferred if Sinha had, as in Mulk, made his central characters the families of the three kidnapped Dalit girls, and we were introduced to caste and untouchability through their experience of it, their voices and perspectives. Instead they remain marginal and mostly cardboard characters at the periphery rather than the centre of the film’s narrative.

Soni

My fourth selection is Ivan Ayr’s Soni, released through Netflix. Its portrayal of two women police officers in Delhi is deeply affecting. Separated widely in the police hierarchy, they are bound by an unspoken trust and understanding, as they negotiate their personal and professional lives. The junior of the two, Soni, is always on a short fuse, and plunges headlong into trouble repeatedly when, in a series of episodes, she roughs up a street goon, a drunk and arrogant naval officer, and finally a group of young men abusing drugs in a restaurant washroom.

Her senior Sandeep fights the system, and even her husband, a senior colleague, to protect her. This deceptively thin storyline works brilliantly in slow burn mode as a carefully observed and empathetic depiction of the many ways that casual patriarchy works in highly masculinist spaces like a police station, and the manner in which strong women both negotiate this and support each other. It is understated, free of diatribe, but staunch, truthful and unwavering.

Also read: In ‘Soni’, Two Women Fiercely Emerge From the Long Shadows of Patriarchy

We enter the new year in 2020 with greater hope than we have experienced for a long time, secure in the optimism and faith that our young people will restore our country to one which is equal, just and kind. In the idealism of the early decades after freedom, our cinema was a vehicle for affirming and celebrating our pluralism, our comfort with our multiple shared identities.

As the people of India today fight the toxic politics of hate which had created a million partitions in our hearts, I hope that many films we see in the year that lies ahead are founded on the idea of equal belonging and rights of people of diverse faiths, castes, ethnicities and language, and ultimately on empathy, compassion and the conviction of our common, shared humanity.

Harsh Mander is a social worker and writer.

Bangladesh Suspends Mobile Networks Along India Borders Citing Security

The Bangladesh government’s directive came days after the Indian government passed the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act.

Dhaka: The Bangladesh government has suspended mobile networks along the borders with India, citing security reasons “in the current circumstances”, a move that will affect around 10 million users in the area, according to media reports.

The operators suspended the networks on Monday within one kilometres of the borders with India, the Dhaka Tribune reported.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), in its order to telecommunications service providers – Grameenphone, Teletalk, Robi and Banglalink – on Sunday, said network coverage in the border areas should be suspended until further notice “for the sake of the country’s security in the current circumstances”, it said.

“A high-level meeting of the government took this decision, following which the instructions were issued,” BTRC Chairman Jahurul Haque was quoted as saying by bdnews24, declining to give further explanations.

Also read: Home Ministry Set to Miss Deadline for Fencing India-Bangladesh Border

A BTRC official was quoted as saying in the Dhaka Tribune that around 2,000 base transceiver stations have been closed that would affect around 10 million users in 32 districts that share a border with India and Myanmar.

According to the report, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen expressed ignorance over the government’s decision.

“I do not have any such information. Let me know about it first and then I will comment,” Kamal said.

Brig Gen (retd.) S M Farhad, secretary-general at the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh, said, “mobile network operators in Bangladesh are compliant with government regulations; accordingly, the directive on border network coverage has already been implemented.

“This decision will certainly have an impact since a large segment of citizens in the border areas will be out of the range of the internet, voice and other services.”

The Bangladesh government’s directive came days after the Indian government passed the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act.

According to the law, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014, following religious persecution there will get Indian citizenship.

Also read: Bangladesh Postpones Meetings With India on River Management

Reacting to the protests erupting in India over the CAA, Foreign Minister Momen on December 22 voiced concern that any “uncertainty” in India is likely to affect its neighbours.

He said that Bangladesh has requested New Delhi to provide a list of Bangladeshi nationals living illegally in India, “if any”, to be repatriated.

He had also cancelled his visit to India beginning December 12, hours before he was to arrive in New Delhi.

However, diplomatic sources in New Delhi had said that Momen and Home Minister Khan cancelled their visits to India over the situation arising out of the passage of the controversial Citizenship Bill in Parliament.

Bangladesh was learned to have been upset following the rollout of the NRC in Assam around four months ago even though India conveyed to it that the issue was an internal matter of the country.

The NRC has been prepared to identify genuine Indian citizens living in Assam since March 24, 1971, or before, and identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the state.

Out of 3.3 crore applicants, over 19 lakh people were excluded from the final NRC published on August 30.

Sudan Sentences 29 Intelligence Agents to Death for Teacher’s Killing

Thirteen defendants were sentenced to prison terms and a further four were acquitted in the ruling, which could face several stages of appeal.

Khartoum: A Sudanese court sentenced 29 members of the national intelligence service to death by hanging on Monday over the killing of a teacher in detention in February during protests that led to the overthrow of former president Omar al-Bashir.

The group that spearheaded the protests welcomed the ruling, the first to deliver sentences over crackdowns on demonstrations in the months before and after Bashir was toppled in April.

Prosecuting members of the intelligence services are seen as a test of how far Sudan‘s transitional government will go to erase Bashir’s legacy and challenge the security apparatus.

Also read: 18 Indians Among 23 Killed in Sudan Factory Fire

“This day is a victory for justice, a victory for all Sudanese and a victory for the revolution,” teacher Ahmed al-Khair’s brother Saad told reporters after the verdict.

Thirteen defendants were sentenced to prison terms and a further four were acquitted in the ruling, which could face several stages of appeal.

The judge listed 27 agents from Kassala, the capital of eastern Kassala state, who received death sentences. Another two agents from Khashm al-Qirba, the town in Kassala state where teacher Khair was killed, were also sentenced to death, a lawyer said.

Khair’s death became a rallying point during 16 weeks of protests against Bashir’s rule. His family said security officials initially claimed he had died of poisoning, though days later a state investigation found he had died of injuries from beating.

Hundreds of people rallied outside the court in Omdurman where the verdict was delivered on Monday, some waving national flags or holding pictures of Khair.

Also read: At Least Six Killed As Security Forces Open Fire On Iraq Protesters

They broke into celebration after the ruling. Security forces fired tear gas to try to clear the rally and reopen roads. One woman, who suffered from asthma, died after inhaling tear gas, according to a doctors’ committee linked to the anti-Bashir protests.

The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), which spearheaded protests against Bashir, said the trial restored confidence in the judiciary.

“With this ruling, the revolution will have paid off its debt to the martyrs a first time, to be followed as many times as the number of martyrs,” it said.

The SPA is an important member of the Forces of Freedom and Change coalition that struck a three-year power-sharing deal with the military in August.

Dozens of protesters were killed during crackdowns on the protests against Bashir, and dozens died when security forces cleared a sit-in pushing for further change in June.

(Reuters)