Category: Culture

Depoliticising the History of Resistance: An Attempt to Dilute IPTA’s Radical Legacy

IPTA gave us some marvellously radical theatre and films that cannot be forgotten. To call its members ‘mildly political’ is an insult.

This government and its minions have perfected the art of depoliticising history and wiping out any mention of mass movements that strove not only to challenge imperialism and fascism but also a highly unequal social order within India. The objective of the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) formed in 1936 was to draw attention to patriarchy, poverty, social inequality, feudalism and to the struggle against reactionary forces. The Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) that reiterated these objectives was formed in the midst of tremendous global and national upheavals. A number of cultural organisations, troupes and activists came together in 1942 during the Quit India movement. IPTA was formally inaugurated on May 25, 1943 in Bombay. Professor Hiren Mukherjee presided over the session.

The international and the national context of the formation of IPTA was grim. Germany had overrun much of Europe, including Russia, during the Second World War. A global coalition of artists against fascism had created a platform to protest against the rising tide of Nazism that threatened to submerge major parts of the world. Members of IPTA were greatly influenced by the coming together of artists and literary luminaries across the world to resist the ideological onslaught of Germany and create a new culture of resistance. The formation of IPTA is in many circles credited to the Communist Party of India (CPI).

Like the PWA, IPTA was composed of members who held different ideological persuasions. What they had in common was commitment to struggle against the ills that submerged India and the belief that theatre as a way of reaching out to the masses and mobilising them. The role of theatre in particular, and art in general, in a highly exploitative society had to be rethought. This commitment to art not for the sake of art but for society had been enunciated in the manifesto of the Progressive Writers Association in 1936.

Also read: Murmurs of a Different Dream: Progressive Writers and Their Contribution to Indian Cinema

And now comes the oddity. While looking for the somewhat scant material on IPTA online, I came across a website under the aegis of ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, Ministry of Culture, Government of India: Digital District Repository Detail’. The short piece on IPTA tells us that the organisation was set up to integrate and popularise the cultural movement alongside the struggle for freedom. ‘The main aim of the organisation was to inculcate national pride in the people, raise awareness of the issues faced by the people, and encourage citizens to participate in the Independence movement.’

It is precisely here that we get an idea of how the official history of a radical cultural movement like IPTA has been stripped of its dynamism, the passion of the members to eradicate poverty and illbeing, and above all their criticism of the Bengal Famine as the result of not only British policies but the zamindari system.

‘IPTA’, according to this short piece, did not follow one political ideology, it welcomed many members who were ‘mildly political’ but believed that culture could aid the independence movement.

‘Mildly political’ is frankly an insult to the intense commitment of members of IPTA to expose the hypocrisy of Indian society, and the realm of unfreedom that constrained millions to live lives of desperation.

Not all members belonged to the left, though many of them were members of the CPI. But like the members of the PWA, all of them were progressive, anti-imperial, anti-feudal and anti-capitalist. We have to but recollect the names of some of the members of IPTA to recognize what ideology they stood for. Among the members were Sombu Mitra, Bijon Bhattacharya, Utpal Dutt, Bhupen Hazarika, Raja Rao, K.A. Abbas, Balraj Sahni, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Sadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander, Inder Raj Anand, Prithviraj Kapoor, Kaifi Azmi, A.K Hangal, Bimal Roy, Satyen Bose, Basu Bhattacharya, Durga Khote, Dina Pathak, Shaukat Azmi, Salil Chaudhry, Sajjan, Satyen Kappu, M.S. Sathyu and Anant Nag. These are a few of the luminaries but all of them were motivated by intense and passionate commitment to propel change in reactionary traditions that held Indian society in their iron grip, and to break chains of unfreedom. IPTA gave us some marvellously radical theatre and films that cannot be forgotten.

The strategy to take theatre to the people was highly imaginative. Plays were emancipated from closed halls, and the provenance of elite audiences, as performances were held under open skies and in common spaces. This theatre was realistic, vibrant and intimately related to life experiences. The objective was to express through art, the predicaments and the aspirations of the masses. Artists took up issues of social abuse, religious bigotry, political oppression and economic domination.

Also read: Habib Tanvir’s Plays Raised the Ethos of India’s Diverse Culture

In the wake of the great Calcutta famine of 1943, Nabanna (the bountiful harvest) staged under the direction of Sombu Mitra in 1944, is seen as the first major production of IPTA. The play was written by one of the founding members of the association Bijon Bhattacharya. The narration of the exploitation of peasants by landlords, that escalated poverty, starvation and death was heartrending. The great famine Bijon Babu stressed, was man-made, it was not a natural disaster, it was the product of intense deprivation. The play showed a group of peasants who leave their famine-stricken village and make the long journey to the city only to find themselves beggars, confronted by the indifference of the metropolis. Their stay in the city politicises them and they decide to return to the village with their new awareness.

Those who had turned their attention away from the corpses that littered Bengal in 1943 wept when they saw Nabanna. The play according to the great film maker Ritwik Ghatak demonstrated that theatre was not only a part of the social struggle, but also its weapon. Bijon Babu first showed, he said, how theatre had to be committed to the people and how to portray a fragment of reality as an undivided whole on the stage. To describe this theatre as mild politics is a gross misrepresentation.

Sajjad Zaheer’s Bimar, a one-act Hindi play written in the early 1930s, and published in 1941 in an English translation ‘The Living and the Dead’, presented sharply and evocatively the opposition between the peasant-labourer and the middle classes. On the verge of death, Bashir, the central character of the play says bitterly, “The law as it now stands says that he who labours shall not get the fruit of his labour; the custom is that those who do nothing become lord and masters of those who toil. The workers might die of hunger while the leisured spend their time in comfort and luxury. Convention demands that if those who labour ask for the fruits of their labour, then they should be called seditionists and rebels, and serve as targets for bullets…Wealth, which ought to be the fruit of labour, is in the hands of useless, inept, stupid, half-witted and short-sighted fools. And he who has wealth has power; and he who has power lays down the law and makes principles. For me obedience to such principles is a crime against humanity.” The political message was clear, the appropriation of labour ought to be one of the central concerns of theatre because it is at the heart of exploitation, misery and deprivation.

IPTA impacted Bombay films of the 1950s and 1960s greatly. Their films make us reflect on how India even after independence could not shrug off its chains of social and economic unfreedom. In sum, to describe the politics of IPTA artists as ‘mild’ is not only to do them injustice, it is to sideline marvellous organisations that came together to greatly expand the idea of freedom. If marginalising radical organisations is official history, then people in power fail to understand what politics is about. Politics is contestation. What is not contested is not politics.

Neera Chandhoke was professor of political science at Delhi University.

The Courtly and Refined Work of Jahanara, the Daughter of Shah Jahan

A new English version translation of a Tamil novel could have given a bit more context of the history and the translation.

This is a time of strong literary engagement with Indian history. Several contemporary writers, who may have earlier focused on a purely contemporary social realism, feel the call to confront distant pasts. What may be of note is that a simple idea of “our” past is expanding. While there may be a common sense idea of the units of belonging (region, language, community and so on), the engagement with the past is no longer by predictable constituencies. 

Thus, it may or may not be surprising that Tamil writers may be interested in an Agra- and Persian-centred Mughal paramountcy. Many southern Indian writers are making claims to this more universal idea of the Indian past. In this context, the noted litterateur Sukumaran’s Jahanara (translated by Kalaivani Karunakaran) is a skilful addition. 

Sukumaran’s
Jahanara A Novel,
Translated by Kalaivani Karunakaran,
Published by Eka (2024).

One need not know much about the princess Jahanara (1614-1681) to enjoy the book. Jahanara was the daughter of Shah Jahan, and the sister of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb. It is hard to imagine how the Persian or Hindustani bhasha of that world may flow into Sukumaran’s Tamil. Receiving it now as translated into English, this is hard to gauge – was English (for the Mughal court already had Englishmen) not much farther than Tamil to the world of the Mughals? 

One welcomes such venturings in languages, but perhaps a clearer and more extended note (by the author or translator) could have given a better context of both history and translation. It is often not entirely clear what the historical Jahanara wrote, and what the author’s reconstructions are from what has been imputed to Jahanara by generations of scholars and writers who have sought to re-imagine her life. 

In English, as a translator, a lyric fluency of Jahanara’s world has been achieved by Kalaivani Karunakaran. Jahanara had been privately educated in many literary and religious traditions. Sukumaran writes the initial chapters in the voice of the head of eunuch – Panipat. This solves a novelistic problem of access to inner quarters by an intimate, and one who possesses a historical knowledge of the family – and yet, also does some disservice to Panipat who is not developed sufficiently.

There are only rare moments when Jahanara finds solidarity with other undefended people of the court, such as the accountants who have to find the money to spend on lavish personal projects. As Panipat remarks on one of these, “Perhaps he too was just like me – someone who was against power, but entirely dependent on it for survival”.

More successful formal devices that create access to that world include creations of atmospheric mood – be they of funerals, coronations, mehfils, elaborate feasts with their mingling of the scents and cold perfumes of kasturi and sandal, of various kinds of warmed meat oe the extended chess games that went on with laughter all through the night. Yet, despite the romance of the palace, the novel is not quite able to ground romance in this milieu – understandably, working out of a sparse and speculative set of sources, the imagination of Jahanara’s love-life does not quite hold water.

Often the palace’s mood of dreams is cleverly linked to some geopolitical intrigue that marks the court. There is the realisation amid all the intrigue that “bravery is not courage alone but a combination of daring, ingenuity and fear”. There are cinematic images too: “ I slowly climbed down from the balcony and took cover in the darkness near the emperor’s throne”. 

There is a growing wariness of the single-minded, rising power of Aurangzeb, as ruthless in prayer as in war. He was thus seen from childhood: “He ate little, wore simple garments, spun caps and had them sold, offering the money earned to charity for the pilgrims”. When ill, he wanted to “heal through prayers and prayers alone”. In contrast, Jahanara wavered at crucial times–Panipat remarks that her (Jahanara’s) “power is just like an arrow in the hands of an expert archer who hesitates to shoot”.

In the 17th century, the pre-eminent sense of being an artist was that of architecture. A great deal of what is murmuringly beautiful of Delhi was Jahanara’s doing: she and her father brought to life a river-bank capital, a ”pond brimming with moonlight”, with the “moon at the window [heightening] the white marble walls and floors”. Like her father, more than war, it was building and gardening that gave them joy – there were whole gardens built to celebrate single flowers. This resolve deepens as Mumtaz dies in childbirth on a far, war-torn province of empire an hour before dawn, even as the opium dissolved in pomegranate juice makes its way through her body. 

Her mother’s death is used by Sukumaran to introduce Jahanara’s voice directly, without Panipat. This second part of the book however seems to introduce fewer new themes. This is ironic as it is finally in Jahanara’s voice. Perhaps as a matter of actual historical truth, her life indeed diminishes to just watching her brothers battling it out. She becomes a mere witness behind a “silk-curtained palanquin”.

 Everything is in suspension till one of the brothers triumphs. Delhi seems the eternal Kurukshetra, and she wonders if the “ air in Delhi always carry the germs that spread the lust for power”. As one of the characters says of the interminable war that seems a very constricted history: “ I am telling this story to someone other than me. To whom? To forgetting…”. 

As Jahanara loses her brother Dara, she writes: “Let my tears touch the ink. My tears aren’t colorless. They are black with despair.” An age at its most vile is reduced to the binary of takht/taboot (throne/tomb).

Though Jahanara bets on the wrong horse, she does over time manage to regain her position in the court. She survives, as sister and daughter, through the internecine inter-generational wars of fathers and sons and brothers. As Aurangzeb says when he refuses to meet his father: “This son won’t forgive the father who didn’t forgive him”. Against this grim view of eternal unforgiving, Sukumaran’s Jahanara survives as a counterpoint into our own time, as one whose words and white-marble architecture we can still inhabit in her beloved Delhi. 

Nikhil Govind, professor of literary studies at the Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal, and is the author, most recently, of the Moral Imagination of the Mahabharata (Bloomsbury, 2022). 

India, Globally: Modi’s Chance at Winning Over the World, Sri Lanka’s Adani Problem

A fortnightly highlight of how the world is watching our democracy.

The Narendra Modi government frequently posits India as a ‘Vishwaguru’ or world leader. How the world sees India is often lost in this branding exercise.

Outside India, global voices are monitoring and critiquing human rights violations in India and the rise of Hindutva. We present here fortnightly highlights of what a range of actors – from UN experts and civil society groups to international media and parliamentarians of many countries – are saying about the state of India’s democracy.

 Read the fortnightly roundup for November 1-15, 2024.

 International media reports

Bloomberg, USA, November 7

Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Dan Strumpf and Ruchi Bhatia write on the implications for India of Donald Trump’s win in the recent US presidential elections. They say Trump’s return gives Narendra Modi “a chance to bolster India’s image with the US and its allies”. With “increased scrutiny” of India for “its role in violence against Sikh activists”, India can “expect a new Trump administration to be less stringent in demanding accountability”. 

Irfan Nooruddin, a professor of Indian politics at Georgetown University, says India holds “long-term value as a strategic partner” given Trump’s continued view of China “as the greatest geopolitical challenge”. However, Milan Vaishnav, Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, cautions that questions of “trade, tariffs and market access” remain. With the US currently India’s biggest trade partner, increased tariffs promised by Trump could hit India’s economy. Trump’s “protectionist tendencies” may adversely impact cooperation on defence and critical technologies. His push for tighter immigration policies “could make life difficult for the Indians”.

Bloomberg, USA, November 7

Andy Mukherjee comparatively analyses India and China’s separate paths to economic growth and globalisation beyond the conventional lens of population policies and political structures. Situating the central question why “China’s per capita income is now more than double India’s”, he finds the answer lies in “sharp” differences in how the two nations “embraced modern education”.  Mukherjee draws from a paper by Nitin Kumar Bharti and Li Yang (scholars at the Paris School of Economics’ World Inequality Lab) entitled The Making of China and India in 21st Century. It relies on documentation “going back to 1900 to make a database of who studied what in the two countries, for how long, and what was taught to them”.  While India led in the 20th century by enabling a student population “eight times bigger than China”, China has outpaced India in the present by sending “a far bigger share” of its “university-age cohort” to higher education than India. Mukherjee argues that the relative strengths of China’s education system which have influenced greater economic productivity include a “bottom up” strategy which reduces early years school drop-outs and leads to more graduates and better performance in higher education, and the Chinese focus on engineering and vocational graduates over “humanities”.  

The Guardian, UK, November 11

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory, Richard Seymour analyses why “far-right leaders are winning across the globe”- from the US to Hungary, Italy, the Philippines, Argentina, the Netherlands, Israel and India. Seymour repeatedly cites Narendra Modi’s rise in India as a key example within his wider analysis. His main argument is that votes for the far-right cannot only be explained by people’s frustrations with economic issues. He recalls that “after average consumer expenditure fell, Modi was re-elected in 2019 with a 6% swing”.  For Seymour the appeal of the right-wing lies elsewhere – in replacing “real disasters with imaginary disasters”. A telling example in his words is “instead of confronting systems, they give you enemies you can kill”. A key takeaway for Seymour is that “far from being discredited by outbursts of collective violence, the new far right is galvanised by it”. He points out that Modi’s “rise to power began with an anti-Muslim pogrom” in Gujarat; Delhi experienced a “pogrom” against Muslims in 2020, and Trump’s 2020 campaign was “electrified by vigilante violence”.    

The Island, Sri Lanka, November 13

Sasanka Perera writes on the “intrigue and controversy surrounding the operations of India’s Adani Green Energy” in Sri Lanka, in the context of a power purchase deal currently under litigation in the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. The Adani power project is being challenged for violating fundamental rights and for controversies around how the project was approved. Perera says the project needs to be reconsidered also “in light of the global evidence against the Adani Group in general”, citing a long list of malpractices by Adani Group companies.

Perera reminds of a recent lawsuit in Kenya in which the High Court suspended a US $ 736 million agreement between the state-owned Kenya Electrical Transmission Company and Adani Energy Solutions after hearing the petitioner’s arguments that the deal was a “constitutional scam” and “tainted with secrecy”. He warns the new government of Sri Lanka to have the “moral and political strength” to reconsider a project that came “through an entire field of corruption both locally and elsewhere”.

Perera underlines that the Indian government may have had “backdoor” involvement as the project was offered to Sri Lanka “based on a request from Indian PM Narendra Modi to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.”  

CBC, Canada, November 13

Evan Dyer reports that Sunny Sidhu, a superintendent in the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), has been cleared of allegations aired by Indian government and media sources of “terrorism” and involvement in “Sikh separatist militancy”. After a year-long investigation into Sidhu by the CBSA itself, Luke Reimer (CBSA spokesperson) told CBC News that they have “no evidence to support the allegations made in the articles against our employee Mr. Sidhu”. In the midst of this, Sidhu received an “avalanche of threats” on social media, causing him to relocate with his family. Richard Fadden, former Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) said “India has a long history of making allegations without providing evidence”. The first CSIS Director to go public with allegations of foreign interference in Canada, Fadden also noted that “the scope of activities that we would put under foreign interference continues to broaden”. He suggested that these could include false allegations intended to sow suspicion and discord.

Parliamentarians and public officials advocate

In a press conference in Canberra on November 5 with Indian external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar while he was on a visit, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong responded to questions about Canada’s allegations regarding India’s targeting of Sikh activists. Wong made clear that Australia “respects Canada’s judicial process”.  She underlined that Australia takes a “principled position” on “rule of law” and the “sovereignty of all countries”.  Wong assured Australia’s Sikh community that they have a “right to be safe and respected”.  

Experts say

The Congressional Research Service, a research institute of the United States Congress which assists congressional committees and Members of Congress, published a report entitled “India: Religious Freedom Issues”, dated November 13. Authored by K. Alan Kronstadt, a specialist in South Asian affairs, the report covers a wide range of “areas of religiously motivated repression and violence” in India, including “anti-conversion laws, cow protection vigilantism, regional communal violence” and others. Notably, the Washington DC-based Hindu American Foundation (HAF) is described as part of a “Hindu nationalist ecosystem in the US” seeking to exert influence on US government officials, scholars and thinktanks. Kronstadt references sources saying that while HAF presents itself “as a nonpartisan, non-ideological group”, its critics see it as “a key node in the global Hindu supremacist (or Hindutva) movement”. The report concludes with some concrete actions for Congress to consider, including increased oversight of US foreign assistance to India “particularly in light of Indian restrictions” on NGOs, more funding to support marginalised communities, and to engage with the Indian government to reduce the use of terrorism and other laws “against human rights activists, journalists and religious minorities”. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed grave concern over the “relentless targeting” of journalist Rana Ayyub in a statement issued on November 8. CPJ describes that Ayyub, a global opinion writer at the Washington Post, was “followed and repeatedly questioned” by local security personnel while she was on a reporting trip in Manipur in early October. The officers wanted to know who she was meeting and what she was reporting. They said they followed her for “her safety” ordered by a “higher office”. Ayyub told CPJ a “right-wing account” shared her number on X on November 8, after which she received “at least 200 phone and video calls and explicit WhatsApp messages throughout the night”. CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih noted that “using surveillance and intimidation to deter journalists from reporting effectively has no place in a country that prides itself on being the mother of democracy.”

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) in its Asia-Pacific Climate Report 2024 predicts that “by 2070, climate change under a high end emissions scenario could cause a total loss of 16.9% of GDP across the Asia and Pacific region”.  For India, the predicted decline is 24.7%, lower only than Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia.  Likely factors that may cause loss of GDP include declined labour productivity, greater flooding, and increased expenditure on cooling.  On each count, the predictions for India are comparatively worse. While “the GDP loss in 2070 from reduced labour productivity” because of the heat waves is “4.9% for the region”, the figure for India – one of the “most impacted locations” – is 11.6%. On “increased river-based flooding”, the average predicted loss is 2.2% of GDP while for India, its “about 4% of GDP”.  Cooling related demands “may reduce regional GDP by 3.3 per cent, but for India, this figure could reach 5.1 per cent”. The report also notes that alongside such vulnerabilities, “the region includes three of the top 10 GHG-emitting economies globally” – China, Indonesia, and India.

Hafsa Kanjwal, an associate professor of South Asian history in the US, situates India’s ongoing “subjugation” of Kashmir in the context of “Third World Imperialism” in a recent essay. She argues that forms of colonialism in the Global South remain unacknowledged. She further points to how “porous” the “boundary between colonialism and postcolonialism” is in the way post-colonial states like India continue to advance their own “settler-colonial ambitions”. Kanjwal argues that “Kashmir is India’s colony” and like a colonial force, India has “sought to rule over Kashmir through subjugating its people and trampling their rights”. Made sharper by the revocation of Kashmir’s semi-autonomy in August 2019, key features of India’s contemporary colonisation in Kashmir include internet shutdowns (among the highest in the world), surveillance technology, displacement of indigenous communities, and the criminalisation of “all forms of dissent”. Kanjwal warns that “climate disaster” may accelerate in Kashmir “exacerbated by decades of military occupation” and companies that “do not adhere to environmental regulations” getting contracts to mine for minerals. 

Indian diaspora and civil society groups

Over 20 US-based organisations have urged the US government to “impose immediate and comprehensive travel and financial sanctions on India’s Home Minister, Amit Shah and National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval” for their role in “assassination operations” in Canada and the US respectively. In a press release dated November 1, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), Sikh Coalition, New York State Council of Churches, Hindus for Human Rights, and others stated they made this demand in a letter to the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the US Secretary of Commerce Janet Yellen. Deepali Gill, Federal Policy Manager at Sikh Coalition noted that such sanctions would ensure “not just accountability” but “deterrence” against violations of “Sikhs’ civil rights and U.S. sovereignty.” IAMC Executive Director Rasheed Ahmed said that “Amit Shah and Ajit Doval’s orchestration of violence” constitutes clear grounds for sanction under the Global Magnitsky Act.” Under the Global Magnitsky Act, the US can impose sanctions against any foreign person for human rights violations including “extrajudicial killings” targeting those who seek “to  defend”  internationally recognized “human rights and freedoms”.

Tech Justice Law Project, an international initiative which advocates for “better, safer, and accountable online spaces” along with the Indian American Muslim Council, India Civil Watch International, Hindus for Human Rights and Dalit Solidarity Forum released a report in the run-up to Jharkhand’s state elections in November. Entitled “Jharkhand’s Shadow Politics: How Meta Permits, Profits From, and Promotes Shadow Political Advertisements”, the report finds that a “huge” shadow network, boosted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is pushing out political ads on Meta. The report points out that while the official BJP pages highlighted issues related to “government programs and electoral promises”, shadow accounts posted “communally divisive content and attack ads”, including “dehumanizing images of the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Hemant Soren, depicted with horns”. Such ads are “in violation of India’s electoral laws and Meta’s own community guidelines”. The research “identified at least 87 such pages” which together have spent “almost the same as the BJP Jharkhand account” but received “almost quadruple the amount of impressions”. Meta claims to have a strict verification process, but the report finds that the information for these shadow pages “appears to be junk”.

Read the previous roundup here. 

Unshackling the Flesh and Blood Ambedkar From the Image

Anand Teltumbde’s compelling biography offers a multi-dimensional portrayal of Babasaheb Ambedkar. It is an invitation to reassess his complex and evolving strategies for social change.

We live in a time when the deification of Babasaheb Ambedkar has brought forth devotees who would rather worship him than engage with the sheer force of his ideas and his human aspect. In this scenario, Anand Teltumbde’s reflective biography of Babasaheb breaks new ground, opening up a much-needed space for introspection. 

Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Anand Teltumbde, India Viking, 2024.

The way Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar peels back the layers of hyperbole that vested interests have imposed on Ambedkar, offers readers a chance to discover Babasaheb Ambedkar’s true legacy.

The circumstances under which Teltumbde doggedly worked on the biography – incarceration under the draconian UAPA, compounded by the COVID-19 crisis and a general state of public despondency – speak of the urgency the author accorded to the work. 

The biography not only presents an insightful account of Babasaheb; it also serves as an example for biographers on how to depict their heroes with depth and honesty through case studies that future generations could objectively learn from. 

In the preface Teltumbde declares disarmingly that he has used the same methodology that Ambedkar followed in presenting his own ‘lord’, the Buddha, in his The Buddha and His Dhamma – namely, the obligation of a disciple to his preceptor. 

The book, spanning over 600 pages, is a comprehensive work. It includes a 45-page preface, 60 pages of notes and references, a 35-page long index, and select photographs that enhance the biography.  

The narrative, structured as per the historical chronology, divides Ambedkar’s life into seven phases. To this is added an eighth phase: his enduring, posthumous impact – how, as also stated by other scholars, Ambedkar became more powerful after his death than during his lifetime. Initially neglected by the mainstream, he came to be venerated as one of the central figures of the Indian political and social landscape. 

The author examines the land struggles sparked by some aspect of Ambedkar’s legacy where his followers were eventually undermined by the ruling class’s co-option strategies. He also looks at instances where Ambedkar’s followers have compromised his legacy for personal gains, leading to the fragmentation of the institutions he painstakingly established. There is a subtle suggestion that this outcome was, to some extent, foreshadowed in Ambedkar’s own life.

Assessing the tangible changes in the lives of Dalits is a significant part of the author’s analysis. He notes that despite Ambedkar’s immense contributions, their condition remains the same vis-à-vis the non-Dalits – a tiny Dalit middle class, like the tip of the iceberg, obscuring an entire structure of hopelessness beneath. Such a candid, introspective and in-depth account of the Dalit movement is rare.  

The author also scrutinises the posthumous deification of Ambedkar’s image. He emphasises that while Dalits should revere Ambedkar, they should recognise him as the embodiment of a collective history of their movement – a history that remains unstudied for its ramifications despite a plethora of literature – to which many have contributed and which remains a work in progress.

§

The first phase explores Ambedkar’s initial life journey. While the harsh reality of ‘untouchability’ was a fact of daily life for impoverished Dalits, some Dalits gained access to free English education by joining the British army during the colonial period. 

Bhimrao benefited from his father’s position as Subedar Major in the army, the highest position an Indian could reach in those days. With it came a stable financial background, English education and a new cultural environment. His father’s decision to settle in Bombay enabled Ambedkar to graduate from Bombay University. Thanks to the urban environment, association with social reformers and a scholarship provided by the princely state of Baroda, a path was created for an ‘Untouchable’ youth to achieve the highest academic qualifications from prestigious universities in the United States of America and England. It transformed an ordinary Mahar lad “Bhiwa” into the formidable Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. 

While charting these fortuitous circumstances, the author also highlights the focused, hard work put in by Ambedkar, which made him a bibliophile for life, moulded his character, thought process and ideological personality, influenced by teachers like John Dewey, James Shotwell, Edwin Seligman, and James Harvey Robinson. The narrative hints that these formative experiences informed many of Ambedkar’s later pivotal decisions and policies. 

The second phase charts Ambedkar’s evolution from a highly educated young man to the revered “Babasaheb” (1919-1927). Through meticulous research and newly discovered evidence, Teltumbde provides fresh insights into the establishment of the Excommunicated Benevolent Society, Ambedkar’s testimony before the Southborough Committee, the founding of the Marathi fortnightly newspaper, Muknayak, and his efforts to launch various educational initiatives. This phase highlights the emergence of Ambedkar’s distinct personality, with the author challenging inaccuracies in previous biographies, and offering a nuanced portrayal of Ambedkar’s early public and intellectual life.

For instance, while analysing the Chavdar Tank Satyagraha at Mahad he highlights the ‘upper’ caste community’s fierce opposition and the British administration’s biased stance. However, the author acknowledges the courageous support of a few Brahmin and ‘upper’ caste allies even when the focus is on describing the unwavering determination of the ‘Untouchable’ people willing to make any sacrifice for the cause. By revisiting Ambedkar’s strategic decisions,

Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt, Anand Teltumbde, Aakar Books, 2016.

Teltumbde offers a fresh perspective on how the satyagraha shaped not only Ambedkar’s leadership but also the foundational ethos of the broader Dalit movement, an aspect outlined in the author’s earlier book, Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt. 

Disillusioned by the entrenched attitudes of caste Hindus in Mahad, Ambedkar began to consider religious conversion as a means of liberation for the ‘Untouchables’ while simultaneously engaging more deeply in the political arena where new opportunities for representation for Dalits were emerging. The author contextualises his pivotal decisions, critically reflecting on Ambedkar’s strategies and actions. 

Whether one agrees with Teltumbde’s critique or not, this analysis is an astute examination of the significant dimensions of Dalit emancipation. It is a timely reminder to the activist community that well-defined strategic anchors are a must in the pursuit for social change.  

§

Ambedkar’s plunge into politics comprises the third phase of his journey in the biography. His legislative struggles in Bombay apart, this phase is dominated by his fierce disagreement with Gandhi at the Round Table Conference, following which Ambedkar emerged as a pan-India leader of Dalits, eclipsing many a provincial leader. 

Interestingly, the author makes the point that Ambedkar’s entire battle over the question of representation would have been unnecessary had he not been so fixated on the prevailing first-past-the-post system of election and had instead considered the proportional representation system that guarantees, at least in theory, representation to each person. 

The biography also highlights how Ambedkar was taken in by the enhanced quantum of representation of Dalits offered in the Poona Pact, which he later regretted. Ironically, he had to defend the joint electorate system for Dalits during the drafting of the Indian Constitution.

The fourth phase dwells on Ambedkar’s two contradictory approaches: a tryst with class politics through the Independent Labour Party (ILP) that he founded in the wake of the Government of India Act, 1935, to participate in the provincial elections of 1936-37; and the trajectory of a religious conversion movement. Teltumbde comments on the ILP’s electoral success in the 1936 elections, and looks at the favourable public response to Ambedkar’s historic march against the feudal Khoti system in the Konkan region and during the workers’ strike against the Industrial Dispute Act in 1938.  

It seems to the author that Ambedkar’s experiment with the caste-class struggle was short-lived. Even though he had serendipitously arrived at the correct answer to the issue of the caste-class struggle in India and, unbeknownst to him, even practised it successfully through the anti-Khoti struggle and workers’ strike, the moment was wasted. Ambedkar soon turned his focus on caste, dissolving the ILP and forming the All India Scheduled Castes Federation (AISCF). He also took the first step towards statecraft, as a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. 

The rest of the phases dwell on the 1940s and 1950s. In the political eddies that accompanied the transfer of power, Ambedkar again suffered neglect, mainly due to the AISCF’s poor performance in the council elections of February 1946. He managed to get elected to the constituent assembly from Bengal, thanks to Jogendra Nath Mandal, in the face of stiff Congress opposition. But when his seat went to Pakistan under the Mountbatten plan of partition, he was elected to the constituent assembly from Bombay by the Congress and even made the chairman of the important Constitution Drafting Committee. The book dwells on the clandestine manoeuvres behind these crucial developments. 

As is well-known, Babasaheb resigned from the Nehru cabinet in 1951 and even burst out against the attribution of having written the Constitution itself. The discussion on the Constitution and Babasaheb is informative.

§

This biography fills a significant gap in Ambedkar studies, building upon past efforts to contribute fresh insights and contextual depth. Earlier biographies by Dhananjay Keer, Changdev Khairmode, and B.C. Kamble, although extensive, had limitations that have been acknowledged by serious scholars. Khairmode and Kamble’s work extended to many volumes but often lacked the critical depth necessary for a comprehensive understanding. Recent scholarship by Ashok Gopal, Akash Singh Rathore, Scott Stroud, and Christophe Jaffrelot, which has delved deeply into Ambedkar’s socio-political and ideological dimensions, has been acknowledged in this biography.

Teltumbde’s work, with its multi-faceted portrayal of Babasaheb and bold reflections, is a seminal contribution to Ambedkar studies. Unlike many a previous authors who either glorified Ambedkar or rigidly analysed him within academic constraints, Teltumbde  transcends these boundaries. He repositions Ambedkar’s life and legacy within the framework of contemporary social struggles, particularly in the context of neoliberal capitalism and class struggles that necessitate the eradication of caste. 

Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar is more than a mere recounting of historical facts; it is an invitation to reassess Ambedkar’s complex and evolving strategies for social change. The author presents Ambedkar as a figure who, despite being a product of his time, offered solutions that transcended temporal and spatial limitations. 

Teltumbde achieves his purpose by presenting Ambedkar as a human being, complete with contradictions and ideological struggles — not only as a towering leader but as someone who adapted his roles to match the changing realities of his time, even when those adaptations seemed contradictory. 

The author argues that the Dalit movement, after Ambedkar’s death, lost its direction as various leaders pursued divergent interpretations of Ambedkar’s ideology for their own gain. He discusses how Ambedkar’s ideological conflicts, particularly with communists, were weaponised to divert Dalits from livelihood-centric struggles. Teltumbde also recounts the two major post-Ambedkar land struggles in the Khandesh and Marathwada regions as rare, bright moments demonstrating the revolutionary potential of Dalits before being co-opted by the ruling class – a strategy that marked the decline of the unified Dalit movement.

Teltumbde’s narrative suggests that Ambedkar’s deification by the establishment in the 1970s was a tactical move to neutralise his radical thoughts. Prising this constructed image apart, Teltumbde reveals a more authentic Ambedkar – relentless in his mission for caste eradication and deeply attuned to the socio-political complexities of his time. 

The author reframes the challenge of carrying Ambedkar’s legacy forward in a compelling manner, emphasising that Ambedkar’s vision can be a source of inspiration at all times, but the responsibility of addressing new challenges by adapting their insights to contemporary realities lies with each successive generation. 

 Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar should have been written at least 30 years ago, when Ambedkar’s writings started becoming publicly accessible. But, instead of making strategic sense of these writings, many an intellectual fell prey to the ruling class’s enticements to produce hagiographies in which every thought and action was lauded, divorced from its context as well as goal. It only deepened the confusion in the Dalit movements about how to face the harsh reality around them. 

What was needed was to present Babasaheb Ambedkar in flesh and blood, as a person struggling with his own strengths and weaknesses to create space for Dalits, as a dreamer who longed to see his ideal society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. Dalit youths would have learnt a lot from that. Although a bit ‘late’ in that sense, this biography restores a more real Ambedkar to us. 

In sum, this book is a must read not only for Dalits but for all those who are desirous of understanding the making of the Indian republic and its future.

Rahul Kosambi is a sociologist, an Ambedkar scholar and Yuva Sahitya Akademi Awardee, 2017 for his book Ubha Aadav.

Ahead of Maharashtra Polls, Shadow Accounts – Most Pro-Mahayuti – Spend Big on Facebook: Report

Some advertisements run by pro-Mahayuti shadow accounts featured hate speech and were not taken down, the report also said.

New Delhi: Pro-Mahayuti “shadow accounts” on Facebook spread communal advertisements ahead of the Maharashtra elections and spent over seven times more than their opposition counterparts on ads in recent weeks, a report by civil society organisations said.

Some advertisements run by pro-Mahayuti shadow accounts featured hate speech and were not taken down, despite hate speech being banned on Meta platforms, it said.

The report also flagged activity by government accounts it said raised questions about the misuse of the public exchequer.

Titled ‘Maharashtra’s Shadow Politics: How Meta Permits, Profits From and Promotes Shadow Political Advertisements’, the report released on November 13 was prepared by the Dalit Solidarity Forum, Eko, Hindus for Human Rights, the Indian American Muslim Council and the India Civil Watch International organisations.

In it, the civil society groups described the shadow accounts they studied as largely containing unverifiable or no contact information.

“This shadow infrastructure does not even meet the limited restrictions established by Meta for disclaimers in India,” the report also said, referring to Meta rules saying that ads about social issues, elections and politics require ‘paid for by’ disclaimers that “accurately represent the name of the entity or person responsible for the ad”.

“For several shadow pages, the disclaimer name is a vague term that cannot be traced back to any particular entity,” the report continued.

Such shadow accounts supported both the Mahayuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), it said. However, the number of pro-Mahayuti shadow accounts it counted outnumbered the pro-MVA ones by fourteen times.

While the report said the shadow accounts concerned were run by parties in the Mahayuti or the MVA, The Wire could not independently verify this.

Ads target ‘land jihad’, ‘politics of fatwas’

An example of a pro-Mahayuti Facebook page the civil society groups identified as a shadow page is ‘Maha Bighadi’, among whose ads is a poster – seemingly AI-generated – depicting bearded men wearing skull caps charging in the direction of the viewer and which warns of “land jihad”.

“Hindus, know the modus operandi of jihadis. Land jihad is done by usurping the land. An illegal mosque [is built] over time. When the local administration goes to demolish the construction, they create riots,” the poster said in Marathi as per the report.

In a different ad, Maha Bighadi depicts a man in a skull cap along with the caption “See the consequences of one wrong opinion! Courage of the jihadi tribe in Chhatrapati Shivaji’s Maharashtra. Now it has increased so much that they want 15% reserved seats in the election.”

Another such page is the pro-BJP ‘Lekha Jokha Maharashtracha’ on Facebook, which sponsored an ad cautioning Hindus to “beware, defeat the politics of fatwas and vote for Hindutva Mahayuti”.

Also read: Far-Right Shadow Advertisers Dominate Indian Poll Spending on Meta for Pro-Modi, Anti-Muslim Push

No information was provided on either Maha Bighadi’s or Lekha Jokha Maharashtracha’s disclaimers for verification, the report said, adding that the two pages spent Rs 27.62 lakh and Rs 42.12 lakh respectively in the 90 days between August 5 and November 2.

The report accused the Mahayuti’s main party, the BJP, of following a “differential” style of campaigning in which a “clean official front” is kept distinct from “a powerful perception-building attack machine through shadow pages”.

It also said that pro-BJP shadow accounts pushed content that was “overtly Islamophobic”, characterised by “fear mongering” and “full of hate speech”.

On the contrary, the report said it found “no hate speech or communal content” among the ads paid for by accounts aligned with the MVA.

Maratha issue prominent not on official pages but shadow ones

Even as issues concerning the state’s Marathas – including the demand within the community of OBC reservation – have taken centre stage this election season, political parties’ official pages on Facebook tend to be silent on the topic, the report said.

However, it added, the issue is prominently highlighted by shadow accounts, which “yet again reinforces the fact that shadow accounts are used to circulate politically sensitive content without being traceable to political parties.”

Shadow accounts “constantly rake[d] up the Maratha quota issue” by “branding the opposition as ‘anti-quota’ and ‘anti-Maratha’,” the report also said.

It reported that pro-MVA accounts put less emphasis on the Maratha issue but occasionally pushed content relating to Maratha pride.

Pro-Mahayuti accounts outspend pro-opposition counterparts

Another point of contrast between pro-Mahayuti and pro-MVA Facebook accounts that the report studied were the amounts of money they spent on ads.

Fifty-six shadow accounts promoting the Mahayuti pushed 32,114 ads between August 5 and November 2, spending a total of Rs 3.32 crore, while four pro-MVA shadow accounts sponsored 771 ads in the same period of time, costing them Rs 50.5 lakh – this amounted to a sevenfold difference between the two sides, the report said.

Also read: Who Has the Most to Lose in the Three Senas’ Race for the Marathi Vote?

In fact, the number of impressions garnered per rupee spent on ads for one pro-BJP account was higher than those for the official account run by the saffron party, the report said.

According to its findings, while the official BJP Maharashtra Facebook page between August and November saw nine impressions per rupee spent on ads, Lekha Jokha Maharashtracha – which the report alleged is “the main node of the BJP shadow network” – enjoyed 91 impressions per rupee spent.

Eko campaigner Maen Hammad said in a statement: “What’s unfolding in Maharashtra is a repeat offense by Meta – profiting from election ads while ignoring hate speech and illegal shadow campaigns boosting the BJP. Meta has prioritised revenue over enforcing Indian electoral laws and its own guidelines, allowing communal attacks and divisive narratives to spread unchecked.

“This isn’t just a policy failure; it’s a business model where profit takes priority over democracy and community safety.”

Government accounts spent money on ads largely before elections, report says

The report said it found that four Maharashtra government department pages spent money on ads in the months before the general elections earlier this year, stopped advertising after that, and resumed spending ahead of the state assembly elections.

These pages were for the Maharashtra Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board, the state Jal Jeevan Mission, the Other Backward Bahujan Welfare Department and the state women and children’s department, it said.

This “raises serious questions about the misuse of the public exchequer”, the civil society groups said.

RSS Disrupts Udaipur Film Festival Objecting to Tribute to Palestinian Children and G.N. Saibaba

Despite the disruptions, the organisers managed to conduct the festival at a different venue.

New Delhi: The ninth Udaipur Film Festival, a three-day event from November 15 to 17 at the Rabindranath Tagore Medical College was disrupted by members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Saturday, November 16.

The festival, jointly organised by Cinema of Resistance and Udaipur Film Society, was dedicated to the late rights activist G.N. Saibaba and Palestinian children killed in Israel’s ongoing strikes.

Speaking to The Wire, Sanjay Joshi, the national convener of Cinema of Resistance, said that the festival organisers had submitted the required application and fees, and obtained permission from the college administration. At around 2.30 or 3 pm during the post-lunch session, RSS members disrupted the event, prompting the college principal Vipin Mathur to summon the organisers and the RSS members for a meeting.

The principal questioned the Udaipur Film Festival convenor Rinku Parihar about the intention of the festival. The Wire tried to reach Mathur but he was unavailable for comment.

Joshi said that the festival featured banners and posters paying tribute to Saibaba and Palestinian children, to which the RSS objected. The RSS members also branded Saibaba a “terrorist,” Joshi added.

“The RSS members questioned me, ‘What about people dying elsewhere?’. We offered to extend this tribute to victims of all genocides but refused to apologise as demanded by the RSS members,” said Joshi. The organisers were forced to proclaim that they were against “Naxals and Maoists”.

“The representatives of the Udaipur Film Society said that they consider every single act of genocide a human tragedy and are ready to pay homage to all the victims of such acts. However, they refused to agree to the conditions presented by RSS volunteers – that the society must apologise for dedicating the festival to Palestinian children,” Parihar said.

Allegations of misbehaviour

Initially, about five RSS members entered the venue but their numbers soon doubled. The group misbehaved and pressured the organisers to stop the event. Eventually, the college administration forcibly stopped the screenings.

In a statement, Parihar said, “On the second day of 9th Udaipur Film Festival, due to pressure and terrorising of RSS activists, the RNT medical college administration forcefully stopped the film screenings.”

Also read: Elgar Parishad Prisoners’ Hunger Strike Marks a Momentous Victory for Prison Rights

Joshi also claimed that Facebook blocked advertisements related to the festival. No action was taken against the RSS members who disturbed the peace of the festival, Joshi also said.

The organisers were advised to escalate the matter to Udaipur district magistrate and district collector Arvind Poswal. When they tried to contact him initially, he was unavailable. Later, at around 7.45 pm, they met Poswal, who questioned the organisers instead of addressing the disruption and expressed his inability to take action. He asked the organisers to file a first information report. The Wire tried to reach Poswal but did not receive any response.

“The irony was the ball-passing game between the district collector and the college administration; both of them seeking permission from each other. Note that when the festival was illegally and forcefully stopped, the local police’s representative was himself present there,” Parihar stated.

Despite the disruptions, the organisers managed to conduct the festival. They arranged a new venue near Sandeshwar Mahadev temple to continue the event. “There were National Award-winning filmmakers among us, who stood in solidarity throughout,” Joshi said.

The new makeshift venue. Photo: Sanjay Joshi

Parihar said, “It is tragic that when the festival venue was barged into by these miscreants, Shabnam Virman’s film Had Anhad was being screened. The film has become an anthem for communal harmony in documentary cinema and carries the message of the poet Kabir.”

Also read: Even at 100, RSS Remains Unwelcome in National Imagination

The Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation (CPIML) also condemned the hooliganism by the RSS. “The CPIML unequivocally condemns the cowardly disruption by RSS goons of the screening of Had Anhad at the Udaipur Film Festival. This brazen attack on democratic spaces and progressive art reflects the growing attack on freedom of speech under the fascist regime, which seeks to stifle any voices critical of exploitation and injustice,” the party announced in a statement.

“The CPIML stands in firm solidarity with the Udaipur Film Society in its brave stand against fascist intimidation. The refusal of the organisers to remove their dedication to Palestinian children and professor Saibaba is a courageous assertion of democratic rights,” the statement mentioned.

This is not the first time such an incident has occurred, says Joshi. In a previous edition of the festival in 2016, the organisers faced a similar disruption when activists belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, objected to tributes for Rohith Vemula and a minor Dalit girl who was raped and killed. Joshi condemned the incident in the strongest terms and said that neither cinema nor any form of art can be stopped by such elements.

Poem | A Kind of Anthem

‘A nation you thought you knew,/ from Ashoka to Buddha to Gandhi to Nehru/ in a single decade unravels into/ Muslim, Christian, Hindu…’

The following is a poem from I’ll Have It Here, a collection of poems by Jeet Thayil. This is his first since the Sahitya Akademi Award–winning These Errors Are Correct, in 2008.

I’ll Have It Here, Jeet Thayil, HarperCollins India, 2024.

A Kind of Anthem

A nation you thought you knew,
from Ashoka to Buddha to Gandhi to Nehru
in a single decade unravels into
Muslim, Christian, Hindu,
unholy trinity of saffron, green and blue,
on a field of British white.

My girlfriend’s Chinese, my baby mama’s a Jew,
my husband’s red, white and blue.
When we’re out on the toot
in Chikmagalur, Diu and Kathmandu,
there’s no jealousy or rue.
We try to eat right.

We like our new brew.
We float past our differences and accrue
credit for the next Bardo. (Our karmic due!)
Either way, it’s true:
We’re dead if we don’t and dead if we do.
Got a light?

Jeet Thayil is the author of five novels and five collections of poetry, and is the editor of The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.

Amid Power Struggles, Free Speech Is at Stake in Jharkhand

Currently, the campaign for the upcoming elections is a war of words. As far as campaigning goes, it is a free for all. But not so much for journalists.

The young and mineral-rich state of Jharkhand carved out of Bihar in 2000 will soon have its 6th Legislative Assembly elections in two phases on November 13 and 20, 2024, to elect the state’s 81 legislators. The results will be declared on November 23, 2024.

In this state, where Adivasis comprise 26.21% of the population, the election is being largely fought between two coalitions – Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc, including the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) as well as Left parties and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU). Although the JMM-led coalition completed its term (2019-2024), it was marred by change in the leadership following the arrest of Chief Minister Hemant Soren (from February to July 2024) in a money laundering case.

The state battles multiple development challenges including multidimensional poverty, high instance of malnutrition, unemployment, low literacy, distress migration, development induced displacement, coupled with high levels of corruption as well as political instability.

All of this pose an immense challenge for reporters, journalists, YouTube journalists and influencers who seek to speak truth to power.

FIR slapped against journalists based on complaints by those sending threats from jail

Take for instance the case of Prabhat Khabar, a leading Hindi language daily news publication from Patna, for publishing news on illegal sale of liquor in the state. Based on the report, the Enforcement Directorate had one Jogendra Tiwari, member of the liquor mafia, sent to jail after a raid. Clearly a highly influential person, Tiwari was able to send death threats to Ashutosh Chaturvedi, chief editor of Prabhat Khabar, while he was still lodged in Birsa Munda prison.

When brought to the notice of concerned officials, Ranchi police instead filed an FIR under IPC sections 469 (forgery for harming reputation), 501 and 502 (print and sale of matter for defamation) against the chief editor Ashutosh Chaturvedi, resident editor, Vijay Kant Pathak and the managing director, Rajeev Jhawar, based on a complaint filed by the same person who was sending threats.

Demand for Journalists Protection Act

“Journalists in Jharkhand have faced immense challenge in several ways over the last decade – being slapped with cases of defamation, false cases of corruption, extortion, threats from liquor and sand mafia, are all common,” informed Amrit Lal, general secretary of Press Club in Ranchi and state head of Jharkhand Journalists Association (JJA), while speaking to FSC.

JJA members protest for a journalist protection act gets support from Congress politician Amba Prasad.

“And it is to counter these extensive attacks and repression of journalists across the state that compelled us to demand a Journalists Protection Act,” said Amrit Lal. When asked how this would benefit journalists or offer protection from the ongoing attacks and harassments from vested interests, he said JJA has recommended a committee formed of both police personnel and journalists to give the journalists a fair investigation.

Challenges of reporting from conflict areas

Another serious threat journalists face is while covering anti-Adivasi projects or initiatives by the government or even covering stories on Naxalite activities, as threats are from both sides – the Naxal groups as well as the police and administration, elaborated Amar Kant.

The arrest of Rupesh Kumar Singh, an independent Journalist, covering news of Adivasi Rights violations reflects the severity of reporting in the conflict areas of Jharkhand. Singh, considered to be an ‘eye-sore’ for the government was slapped with Sections 10 and 13 of the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) as well as IPC sections 420 (Cheating), 467, 468 and 471 (related to committing forgery) and arrested after a nine-hour long search in his house that started in the wee hours of July 22, 2022. Singh’s numbers were also listed in the surveillance list under the spyware Pegasus. As the case drags on, Singh continues to languish in prison.

Physical Assaults on journalists

Data collected by FSC reveals that, apart from arrest of journalists, the brutal attacks against journalists, are of grave concern, landing them in hospitals for a long duration.

As per the data gathered by FSC between 2021-24,

  • a video journalist Baijnath Mahta was brutally attacked in 2021 by unknown assailants. It was unclear if there was a motive behind his attack, the police were still gathering facts.

  • Jamshedpur journalist Anwar Sharief, a senior video reporter from News 11 was mercilessly beaten by unknown assailants in the early hours of  19 September 2023.  What appears to be religiously motivated as the assailants raised religious slogans before leaving, the journalists in Jamshedpur were upset over the lackadaisical attitude of the police in its action against the incident. .  In both instances, journalists sought speedy action against the culprits as it chilled reporters from stepping out in the night to do their work.

Anwar Shaikh, mercilessly beaten up in Jamshedpur

  • Mahadev Kumar Das, a corresponded of Dainik Nav Pradesh, a social media news portal, was assaulted by land mafia against whom he had filed and published reports. Das brought this to the immediate notice of the Navalshadhi police station of Koderma district and filed an FIR, for which he was targeted the same evening at his residence. He escaped the attack as he had been out on work.
  • reporter Avinash Mandal was beaten by mafia running illegal lottery sale on January 16, 2024, after Mondal published related stories on his web portal.  He managed to file a Fir against the six people who assaulted him.

Apart from the attacks, there are other challenges to freedom of expression in Jharkhand. They include:

Frequent internet shutdowns

Hemant Soren’s government has been infamous for its frequent internet shutdowns, severely hampering digital communication for citizens. Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), India, that keeps track of internet shutdowns across the country notes that, in this year alone, Jharkhand has had 8 shutdowns.

The government’s September 2024 order for an internet shutdown throughout the state of Jharkhand on 22 September 2024  to “contain paper leaks , spread of fake news on the subject” and “to maintain integrity of the recruitment process” to enable the government to fairly conduct the Jharkhand General Graduate Level Competitive Examinations, 2023 was stayed by the Jharkhand High Court.

Following a public interest litigation challenging the shutdown, Justices Ananda Sen and Anubha Rawat Choudhary, turned down the government order citing “disturbed balance between public at large and the concern of the State to conduct a proper examination.”

The case comes up again on November 14, and the judges directed that, “without the leave of this Court, no internet facility, in whatever form, will be suspended henceforth within the State of Jharkhand on the ground of conducting any examination.”

Media target of state anger in a vicious political campaign

Use of social media platforms to spread misinformation is a known devil, but the manner in which social media platforms would be used for political disinformation to run down a candidate through “shadow advertisements” came to light recently in a research report of a study undertaken by several civil society organisations under the Tech-Justice project.

The report revealed how Meta, the most popular social media platform was used by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a major contestant in the upcoming elections, to push “a network of shadow accounts to post ‘communally divisive content and attack ads’ spending lakhs of rupees. This is in complete violation of ‘electoral law and Meta’s own policies on political advertising’ stated the report. These ads demonised Hemant Soren, the report said. The report records  creation of 87 such shadow pages on Meta that had a spiralling circulation.

However, in a situation of biased media reportage, the axe falls on free speech per se. An insecure Soren government, feeling the heat, behaved no differently. In August 2022, the Soren government made threatening calls to media houses if his name is linked to the person against whom ED raids were being made that led to the recovery of two AK rifles.  This was two years before Soren’s arrest in July 2024.

Currently, the campaign for the upcoming elections is a war of words. As far as campaigning goes, it is a free for all, as the opposition BJP urges the people of Jharkhand to thrown away the Hemant Soren for enabling infiltrators or calling the Hemant Soren government a burnt transformer and the JMM led government accuses the Union government of not having the guts to fight him from the front.

Either way, it remains to be seen if freedom of expression in this resource rich state with the second highest rate of ‘multi-dimensional” poverty, is the ultimate casualty.

Malini Subramaniam is an independent journalist, and former head of the Chhattisgarh chapter of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This article has been republished from the Free Speech Collective.

Horror Comedy, the Essence of Our Times

Beneath their paradoxical twists and turns, Bollywood’s horror com films offer us an ineffably human magic of an age great and sick at the same time.

By now, ‘the world is changing’ sounds a trite cliche. But how and why? There is little sensible analysis available on that – only a few hints, which gleam as cursors do on our screens, and are also like them in that they herald the shape of the beast lurching towards the world.

In 1921, barely a few years after the Russian Revolution began, the Czech writer Karel Capek (in his play RUR) first narrated a scary story about an extremely disciplined and insensitive man-made group of robots eliminating mankind and establishing their own order on Earth. In Prague, around the same time, another group of writers began to write darkly comic stories about the hidden, menacing and morbid face of totalitarianism and progress.

In 2024, with young Indians turning away from print to audio and video, our republic of Bollywood is becoming a hall of mirrors reflecting the intimate secrets of Vishwaguru India’s soul. Surprising! So far it has been largely insulated against high literature or the secret goings-on between plutocrats and politicians to pull down democratically elected governments.

But suddenly after a long drought, it has started delivering blockbusters based on the strange genre of horror comedy. Beneath their paradoxical twists and turns, these films offer us an ineffably human magic of an age great and sick at the same time.

Mrinal Pande

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

I have been binge-watching some old horror comedies and two recent remakes of old super-hit films in Hindi: Stree (1 and 2) and Bhool Bhulaiyaa (1 and 2). It was partly out of a writer’s curiosity to see how the two essential classical rasas (hasya and raudra) could be yoked together and create narratives that resonate within India and among diasporan Indians alike.

Truth be told, the genre had hit our screens with Bhoot Bungla, a cult film created by the gifted and irreverent comedian Mehmood. For a long time after that, the genre had no takers. The Ramsay Brothers in the ‘90s tried to revive horror solo, but after some initial successes, they failed to evoke the larger public’s interest.

In 2007, as the new millennium bared its fangs and a revolutionary digital communication technology, horror comedy perked up. But it took India a whole decade for Stree (2018) to arrive on our screens. The southern film industry suddenly showed us a sluggish Bollywood hooked to Hollywood, whose actors and directors needed Hindi-Urdu film scripts and dialogues served to them in Roman as they walked a new path to the public’s hearts and wallets.

Always more grounded with a sharp ear for dialects, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada films easily combined mythical spooky characters with irreverent comedy that came out of metros and armed itself with with rural goddesses, spooks, shamans and rural kulaks in ancient ancestral havelis. The genre thrives on pan-Indian patriarchal khandans whose young are educated abroad and visit home carrying with them unthinkable life choices.

Of the two major hits in Hindi, Stree is based on Kannada folklore and Bhool Bhulaiyaa (two seasons with a third in the making) is a remake of the Malayalam film Manichitrathazhu.

The narratives of all these people with fierce-looking patriarchs barking out orders are nevertheless led by the young, who have wandered into what to them by now is an alien culture. The havelis, their inherited spooks as well as scared and mysterious inhabitants provide the backdrop to high horror, while comedy derives from the frantic bumbling attempts of the loud young visitors at injecting their own thinking while also trying to make themselves understood to their families frozen in time.

Keeping the ghosts propitiated with booze and blood provides a nice side income to local black magicians, priests and their sidekicks, who lead the comic subplot.

Some common pan-India patterns emerge in all. One is the simultaneous rise of mobile connectivity in the most regressive rural areas, where many affluent families have sent their young abroad for higher learning. Well, they return only to find an India being pushed towards a ritualistic feudal past and a Hindu dharma to which their families subscribe.

Women are educated now and wear modern clothes, but rural or urban, most families will organise month-long wedding festivities like movable feasts carrying the young and the baraatis from Europe to metro cities. The final stopover is in their native village, rich in both horror and comic clashes between the living and the dead.

Also read | ‘Stree 2’: A Mediocre Film of Ideas, Desperately Trying to Become a Spectacle

Public opinion is the final arbiter for all filmmakers keen to rake in enough on the first opening to cover costs and more. With porn flowing freely into smartphones at the press of a button, the truth is, all the officially young have turned away from old world romances between ghosts and mortals (from Madhumati to Nagin) that thrived on tree-hugging in forests and dream sequences.

Even the music and the dances presented by crowds dressed in faux rural ethnic costumes (like Gujarat’s much-publicised Garba today pushes the envelope some more with the irreverent braiding of bhangra pop and desi rap and ye olde Bengali romantic ditties like ‘Aami je Tumaar’).

Isolated from frustrated and sour family elders and greedy priestly classes thriving on rituals, the celebrations of temple festivals, exorcism and ghost-busting, all that the havelis now offer are tourist packages or solitude and women left behind nursing many anxieties. They and their souls provide the opportunity to populate films with ugly form-changing ghosts, demure sexy bahus and sex-crazed young teens.

As India – and indeed the world – descend more and more into existential terror and despair, the confused young, brought up in a dehumanised world of Facebook, Insta and smartphone images and podcasts, enjoy sequences like an educated female ghost flying in the air, reading messages scrawled on walls in red such as “O stree kal aana” (in Stree) and turning back, while the uneducated male ghost disregards the words to steal ‘modernised’ women. The male ghost drags ‘modern’ women to his lair and punishes them, no not by raping, but dressing them as tonsured female monks in white.

These films are a vaudeville version of Mira Nair’s film Water, and the dishevelled and mad ghost woman dancing alone in a haunted part of the haveli in candle-lit halls can be read as a spoof of all those grand operatic Sanjay Leela Bhansali films.

The real immutable subject of horror coms are backgrounds. They are like the invisible cities of which Italo Calvino wrote, designed to counter boredom and drift. How could you otherwise survive so much chaos and extermination worldwide?

Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.

Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.

In the Land of the Vishwaguru, We Are Frogs in a Well

At a recent trip to Uzbekistan, I was expecting to be treated as a visitor from the country that we have been regularly informed during last 10 years, is the “vishwaguru”. 

Caveat: I risk confirming the status of an ‘anti-national’, given to me by many of my friends and relatives, after this piece sees light of the day. 

My recent sojourn as a tourist to Uzbekistan recently made me realise that we Indians are like frogs in the well confined to a cocoon created for us by the totally controlled media spreading government-sponsored propaganda. 

We Indians are happy with whatever life presents us because we have no one else except Pakistan and Bangladesh to compare with. Most of us (at least 1.35 billion out of an estimated 1.40 billion Indians) do not have means to travel and get a first-hand feel or knowledge of how much the other countries of the world have progressed leaving us way behind in almost all spheres of activity.

Having travelled abroad earlier too, I have experienced the much better level of infrastructure, systems, discipline, cleanliness and behaviour of people in those countries. However, I was particularly conscious to take note of these aspects during my  latest visit abroad. I was particularly conscious and anticipating that I will come across the “danka of India and Modi” (danka is a ceremonial drum) that is supposed to be playing in the world. I was expecting to be treated as a visitor from the country that we have been regularly informed during last 10 years, is the “vishwaguru” or at least is fast on its way to become one. 

However, I found that the country just about one-eighth of India in geographical area and having a population of only 38 million is way better in all the aspects mentioned above. The country which is ranked 67th or so in the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product, leads the world’s fifth largest economy by far in infrastructure and functional systems. 

The well-maintained roads ensured that the traffic was always smooth both within the cities and the highways. We did not encounter any “toll booths” anywhere on our journey on the highways, unlike in India where we find toll booths at short distances, in spite of which the highways are good only in patches. Even the single road to Chimgan mountains, two hours’ drive away from Tashkent, was without all pervasive potholes or speed breakers that we find in India. Suffice to say that in India the roads, especially, beyond the highway, are in despicable condition.  

The only police presence that I saw was that of “tourist police” at places of touristic importance. The traffic was smooth because everyone followed traffic rules. No one overshot traffic light, nor did they drive on the wrong side. Even the pedestrian traffic followed discipline, stepping out to cross the road only upon green light for them to walk. This was in spite of the fact that there was hardly if any presence of police on the roads. Technology, obviously, is the deterrent besides the pressure of societal norms. 

A lot of touring by us was by train. The distance of about 525 kilometre from Tashkent to Bukhara took just over four hours to cover, in spite of two halts en route. We on the other hand are still in the process of grandiosely flagging off “Vande Bharat” which can at best be termed as medium fast, hardly covering 300 kms in three hours or more. Unlike in India, the train staff was courteous and stood outside the bogey at the door to guide the passengers to their respective seats. Heaps of garbage along the railway line – a common sight in India – was nowhere to be seen. The trains were punctual to the last minute.

The “Nirmal Bharat” campaign started at the beginning of this century, has obviously failed to make an impact even after being rechristened “Swachh Bharat” and billions of rupees spent in advertising it. The campaign was bound to fail because of absence of any infrastructure for waste disposal. We also need to imbibe the sense of discipline and cleanliness amongst our children in their formative years in the schools. However, there isn’t enough emphasis on these aspects. Dependence merely on sloganeering and media hype is not likely to succeed in moulding behaviour rooted in a culture since centuries.

Discipline and appropriate social behaviour can be ingrained only if we as a society try and inculcate a sense of moral responsibility on part of citizens towards the society. It is the shared sense of respect for the rights of others, duty towards them and the society that can motivate people to behave appropriately. The sense of cleanliness and discipline thus gets imbibed into each individual and becomes inherited culture. We in India however, totally lack this sense of responsibility and care for others and towards the society. Breaking law in India is considered niche and the law breakers are looked at with awe, especially if the law breaker is well connected and powerful, besides having the ability to short circuit the due process of Law by paying out the law enforcers. 

The second reason for such impeccable discipline in Uzbekistan is the widespread use of technology to detect crimes and strict enforcement of law of the land irrespective of any external considerations. While one is not privy to actual data, one can safely presume that the rich and powerful perhaps too are treated in the same manner as any common citizen.

The levels of education in Uzbekistan too appear to be much better as compared to India. The cost of education, especially the higher professional education appears to be much less there. I found several young boys and girls travelling to Tashkent in our flight and interacted with some. A common refrain was that they preferred to go to Uzbekistan and other countries of Western Asia for medical education because it worked out much cheaper at Rs 3 million tuition fees for six years plus their personal expenses. Whereas in India the same education would cost upwards of Rs 15 million plus personal expenses if they fail to get into a government medical college through the centralised NEET examination. As per them, the standards of teachings imparted are equivalent if not better when compared to India. Lack of quality education in India has led to the presence of a large number of “professionally qualified” but actually unemployable young people in the society available for the politicians and religious bigots to exploit.

Samarkand. Photo: Flickr/Henrik Berger Jørgensen (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

We had two very young guides conducting us at Samarkand and Tashkent. Both of them were studying and working part time as tourist guides, even though they need not have done this because of sound financial conditions of their parents. In India this is unthinkable, especially, amongst the middle- and high-income households. The elite in India would rather present their minor children with a high-end SUV which they drive rashly and kill unsuspecting pedestrians after downing a few drinks, secure in the knowledge that the money power and contacts of their parents will save them from any penal action by the law enforcing authorities. It is only the poor who are compelled by circumstances to take up work at the cost of a formal education in order to supplement the income of their household. 

I was surprised at the amount of knowledge and world view that these young guides had, not only about the tourist sites that they took us to or Uzbekistan only, but also about what developments taking place in the world and their impact on Uzbekistan. To the contrary, one finds very few, if any, young and formally educated persons in India having well-rounded knowledge and analytical ability. There are hardly any young or even senior people willing to engage in any meaningful discussions on any issue beyond the bigotry of fixed ideas or knowledge acquired through social media.

Such a state of affairs prevails here because formal education in India doesn’t encourage critical thinking. It doesn’t prepare people to face up to the challenges of the world. The result is that we have young people resorting to cultural and religious bigotry, moral policing, superstition and unscientific practices. No wonder the country has failed to achieve either moral ascendency or actual development. Whatever successes that we have achieved in the fields of science, technology, and sports have been in spite of impediments as mentioned above and due to individual brilliance.   

Last but not the least, one very important aspect of the society in Uzbekistan is communal and ethnic harmony in the country which has a majority of 96% Muslims (84% being Sunnis and 12% Shias) and barely 4% practitioners of other religions (2.3% being Orthodox Christians and remaining 1.7 other minorities). Even a minuscule minority of just 200 Jews have a functional synagogue in Bukhara where they continue to pray and welcome visitors of any religion or ethnicity with open arms (most of about 95,000 Jews left for USA, Germany and Israel after the dissolution of the Soviet Union). Different ethnic communities like the majority Uzbeks, Taziks, Kazaks and Russians too live in perfect harmony. There have hardly, if ever, been any reported case of ethnic or religious strife. Our Russian guide at Samarkand told us that the only time they faced some restrictions on open practice of religion was during the Soviet era till 1991, when it was practiced mainly in the confines of homes. 

There has been no reported case of practitioners of majority religion going and dancing in front of churches or synagogues on Eid or shouting religious slogans and waving weapons as happens quite frequently in India or vice-versa. None from religious minority is compelled to shout slogans equivalent of “Jai Shri Ram” that the protagonists of Hindutva force Muslims and other minorities to do in India. No one is ever known to have attacked the only synagogue or tried to fly a green flag on it or on any of the churches in Uzbekistan. No one scoffs at inter-religious or inter-ethnic marriages and cries “love jihad” or imposes food choices on minorities.

This short trip to Uzbekistan has brought in a realisation that India needs to do a lot of catching up in spite of the size of its economy, geographical size and population. We risk having continued ethnic strife if the people in power continue to resort to divisive policies, be they religion-based or caste-based.

I must confess that the short trip is not enough for a person to understand the nitty-gritty of the dynamics of a society, however, it is absolutely clear that the “danka” of India doesn’t actually play as we have been made to believe during the last decade. India is yet a far distance from arriving on the world scene. India has the potential to achieve greatness, which can happen only by inculcating discipline, morals and compassion. The people in power must work towards uniting the society instead of playing divisive politics. The common citizen thus empowered will have “true sense of patriotism and nationalism” which is totally different from the one being spread and talked about now these days. 

Sanjiv Krishan Sood was Additional Director General, BSF.