Month: October 2023

Manipur: Kuki Groups Begin Indefinite Shutdown of Churachandpur Against CBI, NIA Arrests

In their statement, the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum called the arrested persons “abductees” and urged the NIA and CBI to release them in 48 hours.

New Delhi: Arrests by the Central Bureau of Investigation of four individuals from the Kuki community over their alleged involvement in the killing of two students who went missing in July, have led to retaliatory protests by members of the Kuki community who have called for an indefinite shutdown of the Churachandpur district.

Deccan Herald has reported that the CBI arrests, announced by chief minister N. Biren Singh, coupled with another arrest of a Kuki man by the National Investigation Agency a day ago led to the call for the shutdown. Seiminlun Gangte was held by the NIA over his alleged involvement in the “transnational conspiracy” that stoked the ongoing violence in Manipur, the report said. The NIA further claimed that Gangte played a role in an alleged network through which insurgent leaders based in neighbouring Myanmar and Bangladesh have provided funds to procure arms, ammunition and other “terrorist hardware”.

CM Biren said on Sunday, October 1, that the accused in the students’ death case had been taken to Guwahati by a special flight, according to Indian Express.

Biren noted in his tweet that the arrests had been made from Churachandpur and added lines on his government’s commitment to ensuring “maximum punishment, including capital punishment” for the crimes.

Footage pointing to the murder of the two students had led to widespread protests among Meitei community members. Allegations had also been levelled against security forces’ reported use of pellet guns.

The Kuki organisation Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) announced that it has resolved to shut down the district of Churachandpur, which they refer to as Lamka.

In their statement quoted by Deccan Herald, the group called the arrested persons “abductees” and urged the NIA and CBI to release them in 48 hours.

“All boundary areas with the Meitei will be sealed from Monday. No one will be allowed to enter or leave the buffer zones. All government offices will be closed from Monday,” their statement said.

Number of Students in Delhi Govt Schools Down by 30,000 in This Academic Year

Only the districts of north west A and central Delhi have not seen a decline in the number of students enrolled, according to the Directorate of Education’s RTI reply. 

New Delhi: The number of students in Delhi government schools in the current academic year has decreased by more than 30,000 as compared to the previous session, according to an RTI reply quoted by PTI.

“After the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of students in government schools in 2022-23 academic session was 17,89,385, while this academic year it decreased to 17,58,986, which is 30,399 less than the previous session,” PTI reported.

Delhi has 1,050 government schools and 37 Dr BR Ambedkar Schools of Specialised Excellence.

Only the districts of north west A and central Delhi have not seen a decline in the number of students enrolled, according to the Directorate of Education’s RTI reply.

“There were more admissions in government schools of Delhi during the pandemic. But as the situation became normal, some students again moved to private schools,” a DoE official told PTI.

“In the last four years, the number of students in government schools in the academic session 2019-20 was 15,05,525, which increased during the pandemic period to 16,28,744 in 2020-21; 17,68,911 in 2021-22 and 17,89,385 in 2022-23,” PTI quoted the RTI response as stating.

India’s Share in Global Exports in Labour-Intensive Sectors Declining, Says Top Exporters Body

The Federation of Indian Export Organisations said that the most “pressing concern” regarding the negative export growth is the “poor” performance of labour-intensive sectors. This phenomenon may not be sustainable in the coming years, it said.

New Delhi: India’s share in global exports in labour-intensive sectors such as apparels, marine products, plastics, and gems and jewellery has been declining during the last five years, India’s top exporters body has said.

The most “pressing concern” regarding the negative export growth is the “poor” performance of labour-intensive sectors, Business Standard reported, citing a report by the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO).

This phenomenon may not be sustainable in the coming years, it said.

It noted these sectors are immensely significant because of their job creation potential and their substantial contribution to net high-value addition.

However, these sectors have seen a modest growth rate from 1% to 2% only.

While the global trade in knitted garments expanded by 6%, India’s growth remained at a mere 2%.

“It calls for a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics at play, ranging from maintaining the competitive advantage, reducing the production costs and increasing efficiency to quality and innovation,” the report said.

The FIEO report noted that the spike in export growth of roughly $40 billion was due to a rerouting of crude oil trade routes via India to Europe.

In woven garments, India’s export growth has consistently been below 1% for years, as compared to a global trade growth rate of about 2%. Bangladesh and Vietnam are growing at 6% and 4%, respectively, the report added.

“In the footwear sector, the global trade expanded by 5%, but India’s exports have contracted. Bangladesh’s brilliant growth from $1 billion to $1.7 billion over three years is in contrast with India’s meagre growth from about $2.8 billion to $3 billion,” it said.

In India’s pharmacy sector as well, the sector’s growth has not matched demand, lagging at 9% while the global market grew by 12% in the past four years.

“Concerns arose due to criticism linked to cough syrup, underlining the need for an efficient trace and tracking system for quality assurance,” it said.

While the technology-driven sector has seen a surge in the global demand for machinery, auto components, electrical and electronics goods,  India’s current market share in these sectors stands at a mere 1%.

Such a decline in the labour-intensive sectors raises concerns about India’s competitiveness and sustained participation in these traditional jobs creating crucial segments, it said.

India’s goods exports contracted for the seventh straight month in August though the extent of decline narrowed to 6.86% from double-digit contractions in recent months, to hit a three-month high of $34.5 billion.

Earlier, FIEO president A. Sakthivel had told The Hindu that easy and cheaper credit should be provided to small enterprises. They also need marketing support such as promoting Indian products as well as exempting GST levies on freight for exports.

We Could Do With Putting on Gandhi’s Glasses – Now Reduced to a Swachh Bharat Logo

The Modi government represents its cleanliness mission with a logo in which one lens of a pair of Gandhi’s glasses has the word ‘Swachh’ written on it and the other has ‘Bharat’. These words do more to cloud our vision than unfurl it.

As the nation celebrates the 154th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi today, it is painful to discern a pattern – rather, an obsession – of the ruling regime at the Union government to limit Mahatma Gandhi to the idea of cleanliness alone.

This blinkered approach on the part of the regime links him with its flagship programme Swachh Bharat Abhiyan all the time. This transmits the message that Gandhi represented a fine example of an icon of our freedom struggle upholding the ideals of sanitation and hygiene. But these are not the only ideals he upheld.

The regime has grossly limited the representation of Gandhi’s worldview. Gandhi’s tenets were multiple and included communal amity, economic equality, women’s empowerment, farmers’ welfare, tribal upliftment and the eradication of untouchability.

Which is why, year after year since 2014 it is distressing to see Gandhi getting reduced to the cleanliness idea.

The Modi government represents the cleanliness mission with a logo in which one lens of a pair of glasses has the word ‘Swachh’ written on it and the other has ‘Bharat’.

Those two words written on the two lenses block our vision to a considerable extent when it comes to understanding Gandhi’s holistic ideals which affirmed an all encompassing worldview.

The threat to communal unity

One of the defining aspects of his extraordinary life, marked with the arduous quest for freedom, was to promote communal unity and harmony cutting across all faiths and other primordial identities.

Gandhi lived an exemplary life upholding communal harmony and eventually laid down his life in defence of that cherished ideal. Had Gandhi been alive today he would have been distressed to see the laws enacted in several BJP-ruled states of our country to target the so called ‘love jihad’ and very coercively deal with the inter-faith couples bound by matrimonial ties or aspiring to do so.

Such laws enacted to prevent people to opt for matrimonial relations cutting across faiths is severe blow to communal unity which Gandhi flagged as indispensable to make India free from British rule.

The ruling regime initially took a stand that ‘love jihad’ is a non-existent issue and statements to that effect were made in the parliament by senior ministers of the ruling regime.

Now several other ‘jihads’ such as ‘land jihad’ and ‘UPSC jihad‘ have been coined by Hindutva groups to exclude Muslims from the collective life and reduce them to a status where the constitutionally  guaranteed fundamental rights are denied to them with impunity. While ‘land jihad’ misinterprets the legitimate settlements of Muslims in the land or area lawfully acquired by them as a method of conversion, ‘UPSC jihad’ refers to the entry of Muslims to civil service by qualifying in the written test and via voce conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).

Also read: A List of All the False Claims Made in Sudarshan TV’s ‘UPSC Jihad’ Show

Such venomous interpretation given to the selection process based on merit and worth of candidates regardless of their faiths constitute an attempt to foster deep seated prejudice and hate against Muslims so that they get excluded from the civil service. Never ever in the history of India have such vicious and venomous terms been coined to exclude a section of citizens on the basis of their faith and assault the unity of our people professing diverse faiths. So the ruling regime, while invoking Gandhi in the context of Swachh Bharat, is deliberately trying to push to oblivion the ideal of communal harmony which constituted the foundation of India’s architecture of Swaraj.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Tea and water

He wrote with anguish about the obnoxious practice prevailing in pre-Independent India where vendors in public places and railway stations used to sell “Hindu tea” separate from “Muslim tea” and “Hindu pani or water”, separate from “Muslim pani.”

He had wondered how unity among Muslims and Hindus would be established if the division was so deep that even water and tea got divided on the basis of Hindu-Muslim binaries. He wrote in his booklet Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place, published in early 1940s: “The first thing essential for achieving such unity is for every Congressman, whatever his religion may be, to represent in his own person Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian, Jew, etc., shortly, every Hindu and non-Hindu”.

He pleaded: “In order to realize this, every Congressman will cultivate personal friendship with persons representing faiths other than his own”.

Remarking that such regard for the faiths of others would create a happy situation and there would be no disgraceful cry at the stations, of “Hindu water” and “Muslim water” or “Hindu tea” and “Muslim tea,” Gandhi described the action to be taken by Congress men as the beginning of a revolution which should have no political  motive and persuasively argued that “political unity will be its natural fruit”.

But it is worthwhile to note that ‘Hindu tea’, ‘Muslim tea’, ‘Hindu pani’ and ‘Muslim pani,’ were being sold in pre-Independent India not at the behest of the government.

Those were by products of religious prejudices which often got manifested in divisive narratives, impacting several aspects including beverages. Had Gandhi been alive he would have been happy to note that in independent India the practice of selling water and tea thus is no longer prevalent. However, he would have been deeply hurt to note that in the BJP-ruled state governments have employed legislation and taken administrative decisions against the bogeys of ‘love jihad‘ and ‘land jihad‘ and Hindutva leaders called for genocide and comprehensive social and economic boycott of Muslims and minorities.

Such frightening developments endangering the very idea of India are sustained by relentless spread of hate. Those controlling the state apparatus are maintaining a deafening silence on the issue. This is so in spite of some of the recent judgements of the Supreme Court that states must take suo motu cognisance of hate speeches and adopt strict legal steps to neutralise the threat arising out of those sordid developments.

The powers that be spin communal narratives and subtly use them as dog whistles to target minorities. A helpful media then transmits hatred day in day and out.

Permeation of hatred

Hate has permeated to deeper levels of society and larger collective life to such an extent that it was recently manifested in the killing of three Muslim passengers in a moving train by a Railway Protection Force (RPF) constable who, it is understood, identified them by their religion and shot them. He had also reportedly stated that to stay in India one has to vote for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath.

Hate on grounds of religion was evidenced in an ominous manner in a class room in a school in UP where a Muslim boy was beaten by his classmates on the express instructions of a teacher who pointed fingers at the faith of that child.

It is shocking that BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri used abusive language against Bahujan Samaj Party MP Danish Ali in Lok Sabha and made highly derogatory remarks on account of his Islamic identity. Even though all those remarks have been expunged from the proceedings of the House by the Speaker he has not taken any action against the erring MP except referring the matter to the Privileges Committee and issuing a warning that strict action would be taken against him if he repeated such conduct.

Mahatma Gandhi who wanted not just political unity but the unity of hearts among all religious groupings of India would have been appalled to see state apparatus used in independent India a calculated manner to generate, sustain and spread hate for electoral purposes by consolidating votes on religious lines.

The gathering crisis of communal upsurge engineered by powers that be in a very calibrated manner can be remedied by the people.

Such a remedy was recommended by Mahatma Gandhi on October 8, 1947, almost two months after India attained independence. While addressing a prayer meeting in New Delhi he referred to the emergence of press as a powerful medium and pointed out that several newspapers indulged in dirty propaganda, published unfounded reports and incited people on religious lines.

“…[W]hen we have become independent”, Gandhi said, “it is the duty of the public not to read dirty papers but to throw them away”.

“When nobody buys those papers they will automatically follow the right path”, he asserted.

Now in India, large sections of corporate-controlled media is hand in glove with the government of the day and is engaged in spreading hate propaganda against people in the name of faith. Gandhi’s 1947 call to the public to “not to read dirty papers but to throw them away” assumes greater significance.

On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Mahatma while paying tributes to him one fervently hopes that his vision of inclusive India would triumph over majoritarianism and polarisation.

S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India, K.R. Narayanan.

A Photography Exhibition Looks at Gandhi’s Assassination Through a New Lens

“It’s a way of reminding people of who killed Gandhi and why, because history is being re-written, re-interpreted in a very shallow manner,” curator Ram Rahman said.

New Delhi: A photography exhibition opening on October 2 in Delhi explores the curious histories behind the most iconic photographs of M.K. Gandhi. Titled ‘The Light Has Gone Out — Photography and Gandhi’s Assassination’, the exhibition is a culmination of 20 years of research by co-curator Ram Rahman.

The project features unpublished photos by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, rare photos from Cartier-Bresson’s original Magnum press prints, writings from Nayantara Sahgal and newspaper clippings on Gandhi’s assassination.

Rahman’s interest in this project sparked years ago when he found the Life magazine issue on Gandhi’s assassination — a multipage tribute with the famous photo of Gandhi and his spinning wheel by Margaret Bourke-White featured at the top.

He then became fascinated by the history uncovered by former journalist and historian Claude Cookman, who researched the professional relationship between Bourke-White and Cartier-Bresson, their varying approaches and their challenges while photographing Gandhi.

In his exhibition, Rahman will use Cookman’s research to tell the stories that happened behind the photos. These stories explain how Bourke-White’s use of flash stopped her from getting the perfect photo at Gandhi’s death and the real story behind Cartier-Bresson’s famous photo of the cremation grounds during Gandhi’s funeral.

To build on the photos themselves, co-curator and art historian Saarthak Singh compiled newspapers and archived texts for the project.

“We’re putting up lots of newspapers from that time in different languages — English, Hindi, Urdu — which covered that moment of the killing,” Rahman said. “So, it’s a way of looking back at a key moment in our history, but through a different lens.”

After years of research, Rahman and his team chose to release the exhibition now given current attitudes toward Gandhi’s assassination. In the past few years, Gandhi’s assassination has become a polarising historical event, with some Hindu nationalists praising Nathuram Godse and NCERT deleting texts relating to the assassination in school textbooks.

“It’s a way of reminding people of who killed Gandhi and why, because history is being re-written, re-interpreted in a very shallow manner,” Rahman said. “And we thought that this is a good way of bringing some kind of memory, particularly to the younger generation, which doesn’t know a lot of this history.”

‘The Light Has Gone Out — Photography and Gandhi’s Assassination’ will be open to the public from October 2 to October 21 at Jawahar Bhawan in Delhi. Rahman said he has designed it as a travelling exhibition and hopes it can be displayed in other parts of the country going forward.

Yasmeen Saadi is an intern at The Wire.

Reimposed Internet Shutdown in Manipur Extended Till October 6

The internet had been back in place for barely three days after the 143-day-long shutdown that began on May 3 before it was shut down again on September 26.

New Delhi: The internet shutdown in Manipur, which was reimposed on September 26, has been extended till October 6. The earlier order lapsed on October 1.

The internet had been back in place for barely three days after the 143-day-long shutdown that began on May 3 before it was shut down again.

“There is apprehension that some anti-social elements might use social media extensively for transmission of images, hate speech and hate video messages inciting the passions of the public which might have serious repercussions for the law and order situation in the state of Manipur,” the state government October 1 order said.

“It has become necessary to take adequate measures to maintain law and order in public interest, by stopping the spread of disinformation and false rumours, through various social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. on various electronic equipment…” it continued.

The extension came hours after the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested four people in connection with the killing of two young Meitei students. Two minors were also detained, according to India Today.

Protests against these killings had intensified the violence and been used as the reason for the reimposed shutdown.

While the government has claimed that the internet was used to spread rumours, reports from the ground and expert opinion suggest otherwise. The suspension has hindered the flow of information that could have revealed the true scale of violence, critics of shutdowns say. Emergency services have also been affected by the blanket ban.

One ground report said that in the absence of internet, “news and updates of events were often distorted. Information was distributed by those in positions of power, to shape a narrative that suited their convenience”.

‘What Fingers Can Create’: The Creative Possibilities of Gandhian Non-Violence

Gandhi’s non-violence was thus not just an absence of violence. It symbolised certain kinds of freedom, creativity, and means to an end.

In 1938, the Seva Sangh, under Gandhi’s broad directions arranged a rural industries and crafts fair in Beraboi village of Delang in Orissa. Delang was a railway station in pre-Independence times, not far from Puri town. Many livelihood activities were showcased in Beraboi that year with help from the provincial government, Puri Zilla Board, and several cooperative societies.  Orissa had been declared a separate province just two years prior, after a long and sustained language-based movement.

Spread over 2,60,000 square feet, the Beraboi exhibition was laid out in five separate galleries – Khadi, Village Industries, Health and Education, Farming, and the Arts. Craftworks made from ivory and brass and statues of the Buddha graced the arts stalls. Around 300 graphic posters providing information on topics, such as personal hygiene and alcohol consumption were arranged in the gallery marked Health and Education.

But why was Gandhi attending a week-long crafts fair in Orissa?

At the national level, Subhas Chandra Bose, who was challenging Gandhi, had been elected Congress president only a few weeks earlier.  The ongoing Spanish Civil War and Second Sino-Japanese War were foreshadowing the outbreak of a major global conflict, which manifested itself as World War II a year later. In other words, when violence once again threatened to overwhelm the world, was Gandhi frittering away his time and energy at a fair in a remote village in Orissa?

Addressing the public in the Beraboi fair, Gandhi said, “Agriculture alone cannot help us. We cannot sustain ourselves without other allied enterprises. We can now see what fingers can create and how these creations can help us enhance our income as a nation. That is why I ask you to look at the exhibits again and again. Select one of the items on display. The (Seva) Sangh hopes each household turns into a factory of handmade products. Look at the exhibits like a student and learn something that helps you to serve Orissa.”

The Beraboi conclave was not just a self-indulgent display in which the attendees were asked to behold, admire, and disperse. It also organised a seven-day-long seminar in which delegates debated everyday concerns. For example, the advantages of cow milk over buffalo milk were thoroughly debated by the speakers in the presence of large crowds. In other words, Gandhi was ingeniously devising ways of determining what we today call cost benefit analysis.

A violent revolution could not have supported such a discourse because the atmosphere would be saturated with feelings of fear, anger, and revenge. Truth be told, the very idea of having debates within a mass movement seeking transformative change is only possible if it is non-violent. If Gandhi had been leading a militant resistance, there would have been little scope for a spirited public debate as was held in Beraboi. Discussions would have been held in secret and commands would have been imperiously handed down from the top. Violence demands compliance, whereas non-violence leaves room for debate, creativity, and constructive dissent.

Inclusiveness is also another key characteristic of non-violence. In 1937, Orissa province had formed a Congress-led government under Prime Minister Biswanath Das. The Department of Education had arranged for school children to come to the Beraboi fair in large numbers. Not just men, but many women had also assembled to witness the grand exhibition featuring cow welfare, oil pressing, leather book binding, and horn crafts, among other livelihood avenues. Zamindaars and rich landowners rubbed shoulders with sharecroppers and landless labourers. Violent resistance to colonial rule would not have scope for the participation of all ages, classes, and genders. Beraboi’s seven-day conclave, from March 25 to 31, was also attended by Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Acharya Kripalani, Jamunalal Bajaj, and Maulana Azad. It was the non-violent nature of the event that allowed leaders of the movement to interact with the public rather than biding time in some mountainous lair.

Also read: Gandhi and the Future of Slow Philosophy

At the Beraboi fair, local vegetables, milk, and ghee were used in cooking for the organisers and those who stayed for more than a day.  This decision aligned with Gandhi’s unceasing advocacy for an ethical relationship between producers and consumers. Gandhi envisaged a far more meaningful economic system wherein all that is produced is largely consumed within the same locality.  Today, this concept has been tinkered with and remarketed as farm-to-table.

The Beraboi event strikes one, in today’s parlance, as fiscally prudent. It also relied on minimum support from the state. This was a ticketed event that cost each attendee 2 paise. Overall, 75,000 people thronged the fair over seven days. After expenses on the food and accommodation for thousands of visitors, the organising committee was left with a balance of Rs 2,000. While a substantial portion of the revenue was generated from ticket sales, chandaa (subscriptions) was also collected from attending Seva Sangh members. The Orissa government extended financial support only to the tune of Rs 1,000 – a comparatively lighter burden on a poor and newly formed province under the Empire.

The Beraboi gathering was perhaps one out of many projects that were only possible in Gandhi’s non-violent ecosystem. And all these were not faddish, antiquarian projects that were engaged in a quest to retrieve the past. Non-violence created here the space to accommodate modernity.

It allowed the scientist Satish Chandra Das Gupta to work within the movement and conduct experiments on low-cost spinning wheels. His research in chemistry also led to the invention of the iconic Swadeshi Fountain Pen Ink, later named Sulekha by Rabindranath Tagore. Fountain pens used to be expensive commodities because they were imported from Europe. Under the Gandhian non-violent vision, Das Gupta could develop useful and relevant indigenous technology.

History shows that violence is also exploitative and parasitic. Both sides in a conflict engage in it, appealing to a higher cause. Even the resistor, who resorts to violence against the oppressor, demands others support him unquestioningly with their resources. In Beraboi and elsewhere, we see the resistors generating resources, livelihood, jobs, and means of survival for the masses. This spirit also drove Gandhi’s American disciple, Satyanand Stokes, born Samuel Evans, to organise and scale up apple cultivation in Himachal Pradesh, an industry that has to this day sustained the state’s economy as well as its identity.

Gandhi’s non-violence was thus not just an absence of violence. It symbolised certain kinds of freedom, creativity, and means to an end. He used non-violence to demonstrate that revolutions need not be destructive, sinister, and traumatic for the millions that are sucked into them. From ink to apples, and from village crafts to exhibitions, thousands of fingers, instead of pulling triggers and assembling explosives, created a world that empowered the impoverished masses in subtle but significant ways. The conditions generated under non-violence were used by Gandhi to conduct experiments in which the idea of the nation was shaped and tested in miniature forms.

Factual details on the Beraboi exhibition have been taken from the Odia translation of a report titled Seven days of Gandhi Sewa Sangh in Delang, originally in Hindi and published in Wardha in 1938.

Sampad Patnaik is a freelance journalist. Jatindra Nayak is a translator and academic.

Watch | TB Patients Across India Struggle With Acute Drug Shortages, Govt Denies but WHO Worried

Union government reissued its denial about ‘media reports’ pointing medicine shortages on October 1 – five days later after its first one.

New Delhi: In an unusual repetition of sorts, the Union health ministry issued a press release on Sunday, October 1, denying any shortages of essential medicines for drug-resistant TB patients. It was only on September 26 that the ministry issued an almost similar statement.

“There have been some media reports claiming a shortage of anti-TB drugs in India. Such reports are false, misleading, motivated and seem deliberately intended to deceive and misguide people,” claimed the ministry’s release on October 1. 

It didn’t specify which media report it was referring to and when it was published. 

Also Read: Unprecedented TB Drugs Stock-Out in India: Union Health Minister Skips UN High-Level Meet

Incidentally, the second press release came only two days after 113 global TB organisations and more than 700 TB advocates from across the globe had dispatched a joint appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his urgent invention on the issue of stock-outs in India. These organisations were located in the US, UK, India, Zambia, Malawi, Canada, Uganda and several others. Their letter can be read here. 

Talking to The Wire on October 1, Blessina Kumar, associated with the Global Coalition of TB Activists and one of the signatories of the letter, said that the Prime Minister’s Office has so far not responded to the letter. 

The ministry’s October 1 statement claimed all necessary drugs were available in adequate stock – sourcing data from the Nikshay app. It made a similar claim in the September 26 statement. The ministry’s full statement issued on October 1 can be read here and the September 26 one here, here. Activists working with TB control say there is no way to independently verify the government-issued figures. They maintain that they continue to remain flooded with SOS calls from patients who are unable to get drugs. The two statements appear identical in many ways. 

(On left) Press Release issued by Union health ministry on September 26. (On right) Press release issued by health ministry on October 1. Source: Press Information Bureau.

Organisations working with people affected by TB and family members of TB patients had termed the September 26 statement of the government as mocking the struggles of patients. They even contested the claims of the government that six months of drug stocks were available — a claim repeated in the October 1 release too.

In fact, the husband of a Mumbai-based TB patient, after reading the September 26 statement that was plainly reproduced by a couple of newspapers, sent a voice note to this correspondent. He said, “What is happening here, I am not able to understand… I am running from pillar to post to get the drugs for my wife and the government is saying that stock is available for six months… DOTs centre is asking us to buy medicines from private stores, where also, they are not available.”

His full voice note is included in the video report below.

 

India Is Biggest Stakeholder in Indian Ocean Region, Says Advisor to New Maldivian President

Mohamed Muizzu as the next Maldives president has led to apprehension about relations with its largest neighbour. However, his advisor Mohamed Shareef ‘Mundhu’ doesn’t think that India should be worried that the new government would be hostile to New Delhi.

New Delhi: While the election of the opposition’s Mohamed Muizzu as the next Maldives president has led to apprehension about relations with its largest neighbour, India, there is no need to be alarmed as his government will continue to regard New Delhi as the “biggest stakeholder” in the security of the Indian Ocean region, a key foreign affairs advisor of the newly-elected president said.

The challenger Muizzu solidly defeated the incumbent Mohamed Solih, winning 54% of the final run-off of the presidential polls on Saturday. More than 86% of Maldivian voters had turned out to cast their vote.

Congratulating the victor, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on Sunday morning that New Delhi “remains committed to strengthening the time-tested India-Maldives bilateral relationship and enhancing our overall cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region”.

The opposition coalition Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM)-People’s National Congress (PNC) led a successful campaign which focussed on Solih’s ties with India, specifically alleging that his government had allowed the Indian military to be stationed in the island nation. The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) government had dismissed that there were no Indian military activities on the island nation.

Due to the campaign and the earlier ‘India out’ slogan from the PPM-PNC coalition, Muizzu had been perceived to be close to China, just as PPM leader Abdulla Yameen was believed to be strongly aligned with Beijing. India had a rocky relationship with the Maldives during the five years of the Yameen government.

However, the PPM’s vice president Mohamed Shareef ‘Mundhu’, the former Maldivian ambassador to Sri Lanka and Japan, doesn’t think that India should be worried that the new government would be hostile to New Delhi.

“All the fear-mongering about China is unwarranted,” said Shareef, a former PPM secretary general.

“We strongly value and want to work with India on the safety and security of the Indian Ocean, in which we have said that the biggest stakeholder will continue to be India,” he told The Wire on the phone from Malé. In the background, there were sounds of celebrations after local media had called the elections in Muizzu’s favour.

Mohamed Shareef ‘Mundhu’ with Mohamed Muizzu. Photo: Facebook/mundhu.shareef

“We do not believe that when it comes to the safety and security of the seas that any non-Indian ocean states have a stake or should have a stake,” he asserted, adding that the Maldives will “continue to be one of India’s strongest ally in the international community”.

Historically, the first foreign trip by a new Maldives president has been to neighbouring India. “Absolutely, we would like to continue that tradition,” he noted.

But while that is still to be negotiated, the incoming administration will also assess the various development initiatives initiated by India over the past five years, as pledged by Muizzu during the campaign.

“When it comes to projects, we will honour all projects. But we have yet to see the fine print of any of them. Unfortunately over the last five years, the government has refused to share any of the agreements with India either with the media or parliament… We would, of course, be reviewing it and if the agreements conform to our constitution, laws and they are feasible, we will continue naturally and we will strongly support the completion of all projects,” said Shareef.

He highlighted that a potential obstacle in the bilateral relationship could revolve around the matter of helicopters donated by India to the Maldives.

In June 2018, President Yameen asked India to withdraw the helicopters along with their Indian crew. Following the 2018 presidential elections, the opposition raised concerns, asserting that this arrangement served as a covert means for the Indian military to establish a presence in the Maldives – a claim that the Solih administration firmly refuted as “baseless”.

“India will be our nearest and dearest neighbour. However, we have continuously been making it clear to the media and also during the campaign that we cannot agree to have boots on the ground from any country, not just India,” said Shareef.

He stated that the critical issue with the agreement was that helicopters were to be handed over to the Maldivian military after local pilots were trained, but Indian pilots continued to operate the aircraft. 

Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands ahead of their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, India, December 17, 2018. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi

“We would want to discuss with the Indian government to find a way to transfer the helicopters to our military and not have any military presence .. that is the one issue which is a sticking point when it comes to Maldivian people,” said Shareef.

Maldives’ ambassador to India during the Yameen government, Ahmed Mohamed had the difficult job of keeping diplomatic ties at an even keel when New Delhi perceived that Malé had gone too far into China’s orbit.

He asserted that the new government will have to fulfil its campaign pledges related to Indian projects. “We should be able to continue to enjoy cordial relations with India or for that matter with any country without the need to have boots on the ground. In the past we have experienced Indian assistance and help, for example, the 1988 November 3rd incident, but without the need to continue Indian military presence indefinitely,” said Mohamed.

After the Solih government came to power in 2018, there had been a lot of talk, especially by former president Mohamed Nasheed, about reviewing Chinese projects and the ‘debt trap’. However, there had been no such public China-bashing from the Solih government and no Chinese projects were ever cancelled.

However, the Solih government did shelve or went slow on some Chinese projects that had raised eyebrows in India, like the Free Trade Agreement with China and also construction of an ocean observatory near a strategically located island.

Shareef also argued that the Yameen government had only done commercial deals with Chinese companies, which had no military value. 

“We continue to say over the five years and we challenged the government to present even one shred of evidence, whether we had any untoward arrangement with the Chinese government, which you wouldn’t find. Because our arrangement with China at that time was entirely commercial and there was no military angle to it whatsoever”.

In answer to a query, the senior PPM leader admitted that his party’s contacts with Indian diplomats in Maldives had been limited in recent times. He noted that the Indian embassy had “been in touch a few years ago”, but there has not been much contact “perhaps due to the campaigns”.

He regretted that India had begun to be seen “as the ally of the ruling party rather than as an ally of the Maldives”.

Another former Maldivian foreign minister Ahmed Shaheed, who describes himself as an MDP supporter, pointed out that China had “not put all their eggs in one basket in the Maldives”.

“Even when Nasheed was bashing China hard five-six years ago, Chinese diplomats were reaching out to MDP and taking them to Beijing and talking to them,” said Shaheed, who had been foreign minister between 2005 and 2010. He is currently a Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Essex.

He was confident that there would not be any substantial change in foreign policy direction for Maldives after the elections. “They are not going to kick India out. But what they are saying is let’s have more transparency. Let’s make sure that it (agreements) serves Maldives’ interest. They do serve Maldives’ interests but the government has failed to make it clear,” Shaheed told The Wire.

He was critical of the Solih government for its “over-secrecy and over-securitisation of everything Indian”. “The (Solih) government also wanted to close all access to India for the people to serve their own agenda. India was played out by this government by not letting India be seen as a neutral party,” he said.

Daniel Bosley, a British journalist who recently released a book based on his political reporting in the Maldives, noted that the while PPM coalition “captured headlines with its ‘India Out’ campaign, I don’t believe many Maldivians feel an intrusive Indian military presence”.

He termed it as “lazy populism by an opposition that has no democratic vision for the country”. He added, “The nation will pivot back towards China now, though it finds itself deeply indebted to both superpowers.”

Bosley, who had been editor of the Minivan News (later known as Maldives Independent), criticised the MDP for having squandered “an incredible opportunity” to push the democratic transition forward. 

“They were elected to stem the rampant corruption and extremist violence that was taking hold under the previous government. But progress on these fronts has stalled and the party has descended into farcical in-fighting.” The MDP’s split was a major factor in the defeat with Nasheed’s breakaway faction polling a respectable third in the first round of the presidential elections.

He felt that the general populace didn’t see much difference between the Solih and Yameen administrations, “save for a little less violence”.

“I fear this may be the first change we see, with dangerous terrorists – some charged with murdering my former colleague, Ahmed Rilwan – likely to return to the streets,” added Bosley.

One of the main developments a day after the election results was the transfer of former president Yameen, who is serving a sentence of 11 years, to house arrest.

Bosley pointed out this left president-elect Muizzu in precisely the same situation President Solih found himself in five years ago when former President Nasheed returned from exile and was exonerated. “As this election shows, the result was disastrous bickering. Yameen was unhappy that his party contested the election without him as the candidate, but he is also infamously comfortable wielding influence from the shadows.”

Admitting that future tensions between Muizzu and Yameen are inevitable, Shaheed, however, contended that both possessed a pragmatic outlook, which should prevent their personal dynamics from destabilizing the government. “Muizzu is a very pragmatic person. His pragmatism would mean that he would want survival, goodwill and not drama… Yameen is pragmatic enough to know that he shouldn’t sink his own ship.”

Gandhi and the Future of Slow Philosophy

Gandhi’s writings, much like the Socratic dialogues, are intended to bring about a change of attitude in the reader.

For over a hundred years, M.K. Gandhi’s life and work have attracted critical scrutiny and inspired socio-political movements across the globe. His political and social visions have been the subject of much controversy, provoking both admiration and criticism. Even though he saw himself as an ordinary political worker, his expansive writings on various subjects have become rich resources for scholarly reflections on a number of political, social, economic and environmental issues.

Despite his importance to political, religious and social transformations in the past century, scholars have rarely taken him seriously as a philosopher whose teachings transcend both his time, nationalist political struggles, and his religious doctrines. Read as a slow philosopher, Gandhi has much to offer to illuminate contemporary questions of human existence and struggles for meaning in our time. What kind of a philosophic figure does Gandhi make?

The French historian and philosopher Pierre Hadot, in his landmark book Philosophy as a Way of Life, divides the history of Western philosophy into two traditions – philosophy as a discourse and philosophy as a way of life. The first – philosophy as production of discourse – is the dominant tradition with its interest in producing novel concepts and theories more like a domain of science. This is the tradition that came to define what is taken to be philosophy in the contemporary world.

Also read: BJP’s Gandhi Dilemma: How To Use the ‘Brand’ While Destroying Its Spirit

The second tradition, however, has its concern both in the production of philosophical wisdom and exemplary philosophical life through what Hadot called ‘spiritual exercises’. Philosophy as a way of life is primarily focused on training the student of philosophy in the arts of dialogue, self-examination, self-transformation, attention, inquiry, slow and reflective meditation, reading, writing, relating to others and otherness in the world, ethical orientation, searching after truth, arts of public confession, and striving for human excellence.

In this tradition, philosophical texts become training grounds, not sources of new knowledge. They are formative, not informative. The discourses of the past philosophers act more like reminders of something the reader already knew but for some reason has forgotten. The object is the production of philosophical life and a figure of a philosopher exemplifying an image of possibilities of human excellence. The aim is to transform oneself through slow, laborious and even painful spiritual exercises involving both the body and mind so as to acquire a new orientation and reformation of unhelpful habits.

Hadot’s framework helps recast Gandhi’s life and work in a new light. Throughout his life, Gandhi insisted on experimenting on himself much like philosophers in the tradition of philosophy as a way of life. He believed that one should first change oneself if one aspires to change others. It is this impulse and principle that finds its best expression in the title of his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth. Gandhi’s writings exemplify the spirit of dialogue both in form and content. A dialogical form of communication and engagement demands as its primary condition that the speaker is trustworthy and is able to establish quick trust with his interlocutors. Gandhi’s engagement with others was not always successful; his best-known failure was his exchanges with Dr B.R. Ambedkar. That does not detract from his legacy of writing in a manner that opens minds rather than shuts them close.

Gandhi’s writings are carefully crafted to bring about a change of mind rather than win an argument. In other words, he is adept at a philosophical style that draws the reader to the completion of his texts rather than logical exposition. Gandhi insisted that he was searching for the truth without having found one. He wrote often that given the limitations of human understanding, any claim to infallibility would be dangerous and dogmatic. Even though he was a man of faith, he never was dogmatic, much like Dutch philosopher Søren Kierkegaard who insisted that faith rests on one’s willingness to take a leap into the unknown. As German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote, one can be truthful without knowing the Truth.

Also read: The Plot to Kill Gandhi Was a Manifestation of a Battle for the Soul of India

Gandhi’s writings, much like the Socratic dialogues, are intended to bring about a change of attitude in the reader. They are meant to be read slowly so as to bring about a change in the orientation of the reader. Gandhi wrote not only to inform but to transform the reader. In the journals he published in South Africa, Gandhi would insist that the readers take time, collect the articles they read, and re-read them often until they not only have absorbed the contents but the spirit underlying the mode of communication. Much like St. Augustine, Gandhi took seriously the idea that a genuine reformer should become a skillful public confessor – philosophy as a public confession. This is very demanding for there is nothing more difficult than to be truthful to oneself. Public confessions run the risk of being seen as inauthentic and hypocritical. Gandhi showed great mastery in this art. My Experiments with Truth is an exhaustive demonstration both of the necessity of this art and a skillful way to do it in practice.

As has been noted by many scholars, reading widely, slowly and equally selectively has been crucial to the formation of Gandhi’s worldview and life orientation. He took inspiration from religious texts such as the Gita, Bible, Koran, and other religious and philosophical texts, often retranslating them to serve his ethical project. His acts of translation are more in the nature of rewriting, and appropriating rather than fidelity to the literal. Arguably, his translation of the Gita, for example, takes its cues from Tolstoy’s reworking of the Gospels in Brief  – inventive, accessible, and creative appropriation, yet true to the underlying original message. This is a kind of originality and ingenuity few thinkers in history could claim.

Gandhi, like the philosophers in the tradition, placed great significance on the idea that the searcher after truth should be willing to die for his idea. The willingness to die for one’s belief marks Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, and others. The true mark of a genius seeking to transform the world is not their cleverness but their commitment, a commitment that might call upon them one day to make the ultimate sacrifice. Gandhi lived and ultimately died for his truth much like Socrates, making his life both memorable and tragic. The manner of his death, as much as his life, committed to the search for truth in the darkest corners of humanity, in itself, marks him as an untimely figure who will continue to shape human expectations and the quest for human excellence far longer like the figure of Socrates that he admired as a soldier of truth. Gandhi’s arts of slow thinking and slow living will continue to instruct and inform us in our search for a counter-tradition and corrective force in an age marked by speed and haste.

V. Krishnappa is Professor and Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Contemporary Ethics at RV University, Bengaluru. Views expressed are solely those of the author.