Tag: British Council

Denied Indian Visa, Shahidul Alam Attends Delhi Event Via Skype

The Bangladeshi photographer had been critical of the Indian government – a stance which has cost him a visa earlier too.

New Delhi: From a waiting room at London’s Heathrow airport, with children’s toys scattered all around him, a cheery Shahidul Alam addressed an event at the city’s British Council via Skype.

This was not the medium through which Alam had planned on addressing the audience.

Alam was to have spoken on the relationship between politics and art in person. But for reasons unknown, he was denied a visa to India.

So he improvised with what he could. He addressed the audience via Skype and took questions via WhatsApp.

All this work-around meant that the 2018 Facebook post he had made was still alive in the memories of authorities.

A Bangladeshi photographer, Alam had been jailed for over 100 days last year by the country’s government, over a Facebook post in which he had been critical of the state. The 63-year-old was TIME magazine’s ‘person of the year’ for 2018. The magazine said he had gone from “photographer to prisoner.”

Over a connection which cracked often, Alam addressed the packed hall, talking about his work and going through a slide-show of some of his photographs, which were projected on the screen. There was one photo he took of a group of Rohingya people. He also showed an image from an exhibition about Kalpana Chakma, a woman who went missing in 1996, and was apparently abducted by the army.

Alam also spoke about his time in jail in Bangladesh. “I used that time productively. I convinced the wardens to let us paint. The various prisoners and I made 33 murals. There is a gallery now in that jail.”

He then displayed a photo of a boat, which also inspired a mural that was painted by those in prison with him. “This is by far the photo I am most proud of,” said Alam.

Alam projects the photograph of the boat and the mural of the photo in the prison he had been at, on the screen. Photo: The Wire

He also spoke about how tough it has been to find galleries to exhibit the art of people like him and described an incident from many years ago when he wondered if he could hold an exhibition in a mosque. He said he had looked into history and seen that mosques had been used for versatile purposes. Alam managed to convince the heads of one mosque and organised an art exhibition there. “People of all religions and sexualities came,” he said.

Shohini Ghosh, the event’s moderator, said that the fact that Alam used spaces like jails and mosques for art meant that there are spaces still available and spaces still left to conquer for the arts. Ghosh is a professor at Jamia Millia Islamia University.

By then, the audio was choppy for Alam, so conversation moved to WhatsApp, on which Alam took a question from this reporters as well: Has his unique situation impinged on his art, does his art profit from this?

Alam replied that his life has changed dramatically since he was imprisoned and then released. “A woman came up to me with a child and asked me to bless him. She said she wanted him to grow up to be like me. I found it very powerful. We think we should keep our head down but there are people wanting to revolt.”

“I should thank the Bangladesh government,” he added.

Also read | ‘The Tide Will Turn’: Read Arundhati Roy’s Letter to Bangladeshi Photographer Shahidul Alam

Before the controversy, he said, some people abroad and some from Bangladesh’s creative circles knew him for his work. After his release, the equation changed. People on the streets sometimes hugged him with tears in their eyes, saying that his case had touched their lives.

The controversy has also been challenging, because while previously he would bicycle or walk to meet people, talk with and photograph them, now Alam says he doesn’t travel alone and is constantly reporting back home.

“We need to ensure our governments don’t get away with keeping us all separate,” he said, ending his presentation.

Replying to subsequent emails from The Wire, Alam said he did not know why his visa was denied and he was not given an explanation. “I can only surmise. Several other prominent citizens have been denied visas. All of them have been critical of the Indian government.”

He recalled that in the early 2000s too, he had been “consistently” denied an Indian visa for many years. This was after he exhibited work done by children born in Sonagachhi, Kolkata’s red-light district.

Alam would now catch the connecting flight from London to Germany where he will work. Next, he will attend the UN General Assembly in New York. He had planned to make a quick stop in Delhi for this talk, but the plan had to be scuttled over the visa denial.

The panel discussion in Delhi today was part of a day-long series of talks by the Serendipity Arts Festival and Alkazi Foundation. Alam was on a panel titled, ‘Political Dimensions of (Arts) Practices.’ The other panelists were Shohini Ghosh, Ashmina Ranjit and Sudhanva Deshpande.

Why was Shahidul Alam in jail?

Last year, Alam live-streamed a video on Facebook where he spoke about student protests in Dhaka and about how he alleged he was attacked by members of the ruling party when he attended the protests. He said they broke his camera while he was filming the protests. He had also spoken to Al-Jazeera around that time, speaking critically of the government.

Also read: Why the Bangladesh Government Is Scared of Shahidul Alam

The student protests had been over the demand for safer roads after two young people were killed in a road accident last July.

Alam was arrested on the allegation of spreading “propaganda and false information”.

In November 2018, Alam was granted permanent bail in Bangaldesh after 102 days in custody. Last month, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s stay order on further probes by the government against the photographer.

Alam is an award winning photographer, journalist, curator, teacher and activist. Many famous organisations and personalities lent their support to Alam’s release including Amnesty International, International Federation of Journalists and several Indian photographers, filmmakers, artists and journalists.

“Had there been any evidence, it would have been in the public domain. Yet, over a year after my arrest, torture and period in jail, the prosecution has not even been able to frame charges. I salute the judiciary for their independent decision. They are the one of the few hopes that Bangladesh has left,” Alam had told The Wire, after the court ruling.

The English Way with Words

This is a response in the form of a satirical poem, on the British Council’s earnest efforts to celebrate its 70th anniversary with 70 English words of Indian origin that are a part of the Oxford English Dictionary.

When it comes to the dictionary,
It is good to remember history.

The year English begun making
Its way into Oxford’s first edition,
The rani of Jhansi went to war
To stall the Company’s expedition,
She fought for her people, while
The Company knew annexation.

Words clashed like swords, they
Fell like bodies bathed in blood.

Ghalib cursed the country’s fate,
Of lives dragged through the mud.

The war of tongues was won, by
Victorian English with a gun.

We became a colony of bees, our
Queen lived across the seas.

It took time for the British to learn
We were already a civilisation.

Also read: Poem: Statue of Unity [Thus Spake Sardar Patel]

Vidyasagar, once denied entry for
A banquet, in dhoti-kurta, came
Back accordingly, to feed his suit.

It took time for the churidars, and
The pyjamas, to enter the world
Of civility accorded to jute.

Did the cummerbund’s entry
Into the Oxford dictionary,
Improve the status of workers?

Or were the sahibs smoking the
Cheroot in bungalows, happy
Playing the role of precursors?

Did the choice of the word ‘loot’
Include the trillions that were
Drained away to British pastures?

Or does civilised irony of colonial
Crimes fall shy of such gestures?

Neither a raja nor a mogul, not the
Most detestable mantri, yaar, can
Match the thuggery of British Sarkar.

Also read: Hanuman, the Ninth Author of Grammar

The lessons of Kipling’s Jungle Book,
Where Mowgli defeats Shere Khan,
(Wonder if he’s a Bengali Tipu Sultan?),
Offers, unlike Orwell’s Animal Farm
(Where he predicts a communist Czar)
A justification of the Empire, facing
The bunch of brown, lawless langurs,
And remember Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the
Protective mongoose, saving English
Skins from fear of the Naga, till their
Bodies opened their eyes to oriental
Charms and learnt the benefits of yoga.

Kubera, the treasurer of Hindu gods,
Also had a mongoose, that stole gems
From the snakes, and spat them out.

Our mongoose is your golden goose. 

There is no nirvana, if the ego is fixed
On the maya of wealth, no mantra
Can help cure such greed, no shawl hide,
No guru help you heed. We live
And die by our karma alone, if you
Believe the Buddha, not a wily pundit,
You may escape history and the myth
Of origins: English or Sanskrit.

§

The 70 words:

Bandana; Bangle; Churidar; Cummerbund; Pashmina; Pyjamas; Shawl; Chit; Gymkhana; Khaki; Palanquin; Polo; Pukka; Tiffin; Bungalow; Chintz; Cot; Lacquer; Shampoo; Tank; Veranda;  Blighty; Calico; Cashmere; Doolally; Dungarees; Jodhpurs; Jungle; Mandarin; Mogul; Pundit; Purdah; Swami; Thug; Yaar; Avatar; Dharma; Guru; Karma; Mantra; Nirvana; Yoga; Atoll; Catamaran; Cowrie; Dinghy; Godown; Gunny; Jute; Cheetah; Langur; Lilac; Mongoose; Myna; Patchouli; Teak; Cheroot; Choky; Coir; Cushy; Loot; Punch; Roti.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is a poet, writer and political science scholar. His book, Looking for the Nation (Speaking Tiger Books, 2018) has been published recently.

The British Council ‘Mandela and Me’ Exhibition: History or Corporate Washout?

The exhibition is a particularly blatant attempt to harness Mandela’s legend to a corporate agenda.

The “Mandela and Me” exhibition at the British Council in London marks the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth in 1918. The exhibition is sponsored by Anglo American, the mining giant that was the biggest corporation in South Africa during apartheid and has, since 1999, been headquartered in London.

This corporate connection influences the narrative that is spun at the exhibition. For example, it completely ignores Anglo’s own role as a founder and principal beneficiary of both British colonial rule and later the apartheid regime.

A film shown as part of the exhibition features young South Africans relaying what Mandela means for them. They appear inspired. Yet, I couldn’t help feeling that this was an exercise in the construction of public memory that has connotations of manipulation.

The inter-generational theme is repeated in the form of Mandela’s image, constructed as a mosaic of young South African faces. There is also a section interspersing anti-apartheid movement placards with protest concerns today.

Choices have been made in this selection. The British Council building is just off Trafalgar Square, close to the South African embassy, the scene of a non-stop picket to release Mandela and all political prisoners from April 1986 until just after Mandela’s release from prison in February 1990. The picket doesn’t bear a mention.

The exhibition shows video loops on Mandela’s life and apartheid. What’s missing is that Mandela was born into a British colony, founded after the second Anglo-Boer war to secure the country for immensely profitable gold and diamond mining interests. It was into this racial capitalism, already established 100 years ago, that Anglo American – the corporation – and Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela – the person – were born.

For most of the 20th century South Africans were ruled by the white minority. Their role was accepted by successive UK governments as long as profits flowed to the City of London (of which, again, no reference in the exhibition).

The narrative of black struggle against oppression has been co-opted. “Mandela and Me” applies another lick of paint to the ever thickening layers of corporate whitewash.

Anglo’s 100 years

In 2017 Anglo American celebrated its own centenary. The company’s story about itself is unsurprisingly sanitised. You won’t find anything about colonial labour exploitation, or even apartheid.

What is the untold history?

In the middle of World War 1, Ernest Oppenheimer bought into goldfields that were being opened up on what was known as the Far East Rand. Anglo American was formed to attract US and UK finance. By 1928 Anglo was a middle ranking gold producer. In 1929 it took over the De Beers diamond monopoly, and by 1958 it had become the biggest mining company, as academic Duncan Innes wrote in his seminal study, “Anglo American and the Rise of Modern South Africa” (1984).

Anglo paid African workers industry standard rates, which were a tenth of white workers’ pay. Anglo’s affiliate De Beers had already built its diamond business by paying extreme poverty wages to migrant workers held in prison-like compounds, as Innes wrote. At the urging of mining magnate and prime minister of the Cape Colony, Cecil John Rhodes, the same labour system was transferred to the gold mines.

Mandela was born in the Eastern Cape, one of the labour reserve areas. Cheap labour required dispossession that had already been institutionalised under British colonial rule. In 1913 the Natives Land Act was passed, designating 87% of the land for white ownership.

In 1948 the National Party won the election and institutionalised apartheid. The regime imposed even more segregation, intensifying discrimination. Pay differentials increased up to 20 to one by 1970. Anglo American’s business boomed during the apartheid era, and by 1990 the group was South Africa’s dominant economic actor, according to David Pallister et al in “South Africa Inc: the Oppenheimer empire” (1988).

The British Council’s wider purpose is to generate “soft power”, as acknowledged in its 2012 report “Influence and Attraction”. The then Foreign Secretary William Hague wrote in the foreword, Britain remains a modern day cultural superpower.

Indeed. This exhibition begs the question when does cultural superpower become cultural imperialism? The exhibition extracts from the anti-apartheid struggle what can be reshaped into a cultural asset of soft power empire.

The iconisation of Mandela

The iconisation of Mandela goes well beyond this exhibition, but this is a particularly blatant attempt to harness his legend to a corporate agenda.

After his release from 27 years in prison, Mandela was heavily courted by Anglo’s Oppenheimer and then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as the moderate solution in the end game of apartheid. My view as an activist scholar is that the pressure worked, and as I wrote Mandela made a U-turn and decided not to nationalise the banks and mines as promised in the ANC’s strategic programme, the Freedom Charter.

Huge economic interests are still involved. London is the world’s financial centre for mining majors. Anglo made $5.5 billion operating profits worldwide in 2017, of which some $3 billion came from South Africa. The Johannesburg-London axis constructed by Rhodes still revolves.

Why should this matter? The British Council’s mission to build trust between peoples is fundamentally undermined by its co-option by corporate interest. Britons need to challenge the official narratives that leave out the imperialism of their establishment. Where the exploitation continues, the struggle continues.The Conversation

Andy Higginbottom, Associate Professor of International Politics, Human Rights and Social Justice, Kingston University

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

In Pakistan Too, Tough Times Lie Ahead for NGOs

The administration’s new rules are aimed at hobbling voluntary organisations which are doing good work

A meaningful public participation in the legislative process is a fundamental principle of legislative transparency. It is an effective tool to avoid enactment of laws by undemocratic or arbitrary regimes, keeping relevant stakeholders in dark. Citizen participation also helps to improve the quality of legislation by bringing the legitimate concerns of those affected by law to the notice of lawmakers in a timely manner.

In Pakistan, in April 2015, the draft of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill had to be withdrawn after widespread criticism as the National Assembly standing committee finalized the draft without taking Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and information technology industry into confidence. In the wake of the controversy surrounding the arbitrary suspension of operations of Save the Children organization, an inter-ministerial committee has been assigned the task to formulate fresh guidelines to regulate international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). But the element of public debate on the subject is missing as the committee or the concerned authority, the interior ministry, has not shared any details of the shape of future law.

It is being widely speculated in Pakistan that the new law will place stringent restrictions on the operation of foreign funded NGOs (INGOs) and also introduce cumbersome reporting procedures. Human Rights organisations may be the worst sufferers. The speculation appears not wide off the mark in view of the recent announcement of the government prescribing INGOs to work only in specified areas, pending a comprehensive regulatory framework. Previously, the INGOs had to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Economic Affairs Division (EAD). Now, this responsibility has been shifted to the Interior Ministry and all INGOs have been required to complete a fresh registration process within three months. Under the new arrangements, applications of nine INGOs for no objection certificates (NOC) have been so far rejected. Just last week  is that the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan has started the process of license revocation of more than 20 INGOs, including that of the British Council.

The draft of Foreign Contributions Act 2015, which is likely to be presented before the federal cabinet any time, has put in place strict requirements for utilization of foreign funding by INGOs and vests the authorities with arbitrary powers to cancel the NOCs.

The three areas of major importance in respect of functioning of INGOs are: the procedure of registration; use of foreign resources; and accountability to the host state government. The international norm is that the procedure of registration should not be prohibitive. In majority of countries with liberal regimes, the registration takes place on notification to the concerned authority of the government. And if the authority rejects the application, it must give a detailed order, which is appealable. The present arrangement prescribes no means of grievance redressal in case of denial of NOC by the authority.

Hampering NGO operations

According to the Draft Foreign Contribution Act (FCA) 2015, any INGO seeking to utilize foreign assistance must register with the EAD. Further, the interior ministry, provincial/local departments and other stakeholders will vet such application. The whole process may take up to four months. This prior approval is absolutely unnecessary and will be tantamount to hampering the operations of INGOs. Instead of prior approval, a notification of details of foreign assistance to the concerned authority would be sufficient. The authority may object to such foreign funding within a stipulated period of notification. The objection must be based on clear and sound reasons. The INGO may also be required to submit an annual statement of its accounts, which is auditable by the state government.

Another requirement under the FCA 2015 is that the INGOs must specify the geographical area of their operations in advance. And the NOC of an INGO will be liable to cancellation if it operates outside the notified area. The state government has also been given the power to unilaterally terminate the license of an INGO after furnishing of a three months’ notice.

Undoubtedly the proposed FCA 2015 sets unjustified and onerous requirements for the operation of INGOs and should be revised before submission to the Parliament. The wiser course will be to put it on hold and allow the inter-ministerial committee to draft a single, all-encompassing law in this regard.

The working committee, headed by PM’s adviser on foreign affairs Tariq Fatemi, must clearly set out the objective of legislation, seek the feedback of INGOs and foreign donors, and make the draft of legislation public before submitting it for parliamentary approval. While finalising and debating the bill, the lawmakers should be guided by the principles enshrined in the constitutional framework and the international human rights instruments the country has ratified.

Article 22 of the ICCPR states that no restrictions may be placed on the exercise of freedom of association ‘other than those which are prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others’. The goal of the new law should be two-fold: one, to facilitate the working of the INGOs; two, to ensure transparency in their activities and funding sources on the other. Nothing more, nothing less.

Given the concerns raised regarding advancement of hidden foreign agenda, there is no second opinion that a comprehensive law should be brought to regulate the registration and functioning of INGOs. But any attempt to impose arbitrary restrictions in the disguise of regulation will imply a violation of international commitments and attract criticism of the international community.

Nauman Asghar is a civil servant and columnist based in Pakistan.